Part 4 (1/2)
”Yes, Sterling, we get the point,” Saint Just said as the limousine slowed and the driver made the very tight turn between stone pillars. He had turned onto a gravel drive that led downhill rather than up, then finally leveled as the trees disappeared behind them and a parklike setting opened before them, a bubbling stream nearly encircling the large cut-stone manor house at the center of everything.
The dividing gla.s.s slid down soundlessly and the driver announced: ”Medwine Manor, everyone. You just stay dry in the back while I fetch brollies for you. This is a fierce mist.”
”Mist?” Maggie said as rain drummed on the roof of the limousine. ”This mist starts looking anything more like a deluge and I'm going to ask you two to begin building an ark.”
”Oh, Maggie, but I'm afraid Saint Just and I don't know how to-oh. I see. Never mind.”
Saint Just smiled at his good friend, deliberately shaking off any lingering melancholy. After all, he had proven in these past months that he was nothing if not adaptable. ”Have no fear, Maggie. I shall carry you over the threshold, if necessary.”
”It won't be,” Maggie said, avoiding his gaze, as well as his offered hand once he'd stepped out of the limousine. ”There's a porch-portico. I'll make a run for it.”
Saint Just and Sterling followed, taking advantage of the umbrellas the driver offered, stopping just below the curved stone steps to admire the facade of the three-story building.
”Not quite up to what we've been used to, is it, Saint Just? A bit ragged about the edges, and all of that.”
”And yet, obviously being improved upon. Notice the scaffolding to your left, Sterling, in front of the west wing.”
”Are you two coming, or what?”
”I do believe Maggie thinks we're lagging behind, Sterling,” Saint Just said, motioning for his friend to precede him up the steps, to where Maggie waited in the open doorway.
He handed the umbrella to the driver, who also took Sterling's, mumbling something about driving around to the back door to unload the luggage, then took a moment to inspect the foyer.
”I knocked, but no one came, and when I tried the door it was open,” Maggie told him, wiping raindrops from her face. ”Oh, this is big, isn't it?”
Saint Just took inventory of the large foyer, at least forty feet square. An intricate black-and-white marble tile floor shone beneath a soaring ceiling painted to look like a summer sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. A wonderfully broad stone staircase rose slowly from the open hallway, and a gallery stretched around three of the four age-darkened white marble walls that had been carved to include columns and angels and G.o.ddesses, or some such romantic nonsense.
That last wall, along the stairs, was dominated by an immense mural stretching from the ground floor up to the top of the first floor, a creation that depicted a goodly number of dancing, frolicking ladies and gentlemen being attended by rosy-cheeked children.
”I can only sigh in relief to see that as you were thumbing through books and building my various estates, you didn't pattern any of them after the interior of this pile. The decor is rather...flamboyant.”
”Yeah, well, I think it's pretty neat,” Maggie said, her head back as she turned in a slow circle, looking at their surroundings. ”No wonder they decided to film here. Wow.”
”The place is pa.s.sable, I agree,” Saint Just said, amazed to find he was feeling more and more comfortable by the moment. Then again, after all, this was his milieu, real or imaginary. ”Ah, and I may be wrong, but I do believe our host approaches now. He's not rigged out well enough to be a servant.”
They all watched as a fairly squat man dressed in hunting clothes that had obviously seen their share of hunts came lumbering down the stairs, one hand on the stone railing, his gaze directed at his boots, as if he'd taken a tumble once and planned never to do that again.
Not until he had safely navigated the stairs and stood on the parquet floor did the man raise his head and smile at Maggie. (Saint Just and Sterling could very well have been invisible.) ”Hullo, you beautiful bit,” he said, waggling his bushy white eyebrows. ”Welcome to Medwine Manor. I'm Sir Rudy Medwine, and you're gorgeous. Another American actress, I hope. We've already got one, but she's a little starchy. Don't think she likes me. She should. I'm very rich. Mine's the Medwine Marauder, best fis.h.i.+ng reel in the world. Knighted for it, I was. Now I'm living the high life. Used to live down the road from this place, in a pokey two-up-two-down, and now all this is mine. You want to know me. Really, you do.”
Maggie opened her mouth, may have said, ”Uh...” before Saint Just deftly stepped in front of her and bowed to Sir Rudy. ”Sir Rudy, how delighted and, indeed, honored we all are to be numbered among your guests. Please allow me to present to you Miss Maggie Kelly, who, writing as Cleo Dooley, penned the brilliant book that will be filmed here on your marvelous estate. I, for my sins, am Alex Blakely, Miss Kelly's personal a.s.sistant, and the gentleman just now waving to you is Sterling Balder, her spiritual advisor. We are all quite happy to make your acquaintance.”
Sir Rudy pointed his finger at Saint Just. ”You...you're English. Upper-crust English, at that. Are you all English? I wanted Americans. I distinctly told them I wanted Americans.”
”For what?” Maggie grumbled.
This was certainly going well.
”Miss Kelly is very much the American woman, Sir Rudy,” Saint Just told him, taking the man's arm and leading him back to the staircase. ”Sterling and I are English, yes, although it has been years since we've been on this side of the pond.”
”Centuries, even,” Maggie groused, following the two men while Sterling brought up the rear.
The small party climbed the stairs slowly, giving Sir Rudy ample time to catch his breath, but he was huffing and puffing by the time they reached the first floor.
”I think everybody's in there,” the man said, pointing to closed double doors that probably led to the main saloon. ”They're not a happy bunch. The rain, you see. It's keeping them indoors. And that scaffolding has to come down before next week, for the filming. Dicey, that. I ordered a joint and pudding for dinner, hoping to cheer them up, but they haven't eaten yet, so be careful none of them tries to take a bite out of you.”
”Charming,” Saint Just said, turning to hold out his arm, indicating that Maggie should proceed, enter the room ahead of him. ”Sir Rudy is rather unusual, isn't he?” he asked her quietly as she stopped beside him.
”I like him,” Sterling said, standing on tiptoe, the better to see once Sir Rudy had crossed the wide hallway and pushed open the doors. ”No airs and graces about that man. None at all.”
”And I'm a toplofty prude, I imagine?” Saint Just asked him.
He should have known Maggie would answer: ”If the high-topped Hessian boot fits, Chauncy,” before giving him a wink and heading into the chandelier-lit expanse of the main saloon.
Left with little else to do, Saint Just followed, to be met by an odd a.s.sortment of people, some of whom lounged on green-on-green-striped satin couches, some of whom propped up the enormous marble fireplace mantel, and one who was stretched out on the floor, a long leg behind her ear, most of her backside showing, the rest of her fairly magnificent body covered in a bright-blue leotard.
”Ladies and gentlemen,” Sir Rudy announced in a booming voice. ”Here's more of you, come to join the party.”
One of the gentlemen at the fireplace pushed himself away from the mantel and strode towards them, his rather pasty flesh sheened with perspiration, his totally bald head glistening under the light from the chandeliers.
”Must be one of the actors. He looks like a pint-size version of Telly Savalas, except he's more rubbery. I wonder if he's going to offer us a lollipop,” Maggie said out of the corner of her mouth.
”I beg your pardon?”
”An actor, Alex. Played a cop on an old television series. Kojak. My dad was crazy about him. It isn't important.”
”Indeed,” Saint Just said, feeling more and more comfortable in this large room, more and more in his element. And because of the way he felt, he stepped forward, extended his hand to the bald man, gave a slight inclination of his head. ”Alex Blakely...and you are...?”
”Peppin,” the man said in an oddly thin, high voice. An almost childish voice. ”Arnaud Peppin, reluctant director of this grand epic, if we can ever start filming. The leads are here, so who are you? Although you already look and sound more English than that idiot over there. He wants an accent coach, like that's going to happen on our budget.”
”Mr. Peppin, of course. How...charming,” Saint Just said with another slight nod and a smile-not having the faintest idea what the man was talking about. Clearly he was going to have to correct that lapse, and quickly. He then repeated the introductions he had begun with Sir Rudy.
By now, all eyes were on the newcomers, except for those of the woman who was still on the carpet, although now she was lying on her side, her head propped in one hand, her other hand sliding caressingly down the side of her breast and onto her hip as she smiled only at Saint Just.
Nothing all that out of the ordinary there. He had been very carefully created to have that effect on women. It was a gift. Occasionally a curse.
Arnaud seemed remarkably unimpressed to learn that the author and her entourage had arrived. Saint Just knew this because the man turned his back to him and said, ”Relax, people. Joanne will handle this. It's only the writer.”
Saint Just immediately and quite automatically put his right arm straight out to his side, and Maggie's advancing body immediately and very predictably slammed against it.
”Only the writer? Only the writer? Hey, cue ball, let me tell you a-”
”Ms. Dooley! Oh, how thrilled I am to meet you! I heard you were coming. I'm Sam Undercuffler, screenwriter.”
Saint Just lifted his quizzing gla.s.s to his eye and inspected Undercuffler as he scurried over to them. The young man was depressingly brown. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown slacks; brown tweed jacket with brown suede patches at the elbows. The barrel of a cheap brown pipe protruded from his jacket pocket. His brown shoes, lace shoes, were badly in need of reheeling and a good polish.
”Oh, so good to meet you, Ms. Dooley-Cleo. May I call you Cleo? I adapted your book for the screen. Well, you probably figured that out, since I said I'm the screenwriter. Oh, would you listen to me? I'm just so excited to finally meet the creator of the brilliant Saint Just Mysteries. The brilliant creator of the brilliant series, I should say. I'm playing with an idea of my own, for my own television series, you understand, but I know you wouldn't want to hear about that. Would you? Please, if there's anything you want, anything you need...”
Saint Just stood amused as Maggie tried to get her hand back from the screenwriter, who was still pumping it with all the enthusiasm of a dairy maid only three churn strokes away from b.u.t.ter. ”Two writers. Together. Members of the same literary fraternity. Why, he even looks so much the writer, doesn't he? Isn't this wonderful, Cleo? I imagine you two will have so much to talk about.”
Now, sometimes Maggie said bite me, out loud, so everyone could hear her. But sometimes she could say bite me without actually uttering a word. Her facial expression was more than enough. This was one of those times.