Deception on His Mind (Inspector Lynley, #9)(151)

Agatha eyed her. She wondered once again what on earth she was thinking of, keeping such a pathetic creature in her employ. Aside from her lack of intellectual gifts, which rendered her useless for entertaining conversation, Mary Ellis was in the worst physical condition of anyone Agatha had ever known. Who else would be sweating, out of breath, and red in the face simply because of moving a piano and a few other paltry sticks of furniture?

“What are you good for, Mary, if you don't come at once when you're called?” Agatha demanded.

Mary dropped her gaze. “I did hear you, ma'am. But I was on the ladder, wasn't I. I had that portrait of your granddad ready to move, and I couldn't put it down very easy.”

Agatha knew the picture she was talking about. Above the fireplace, nearly life-size, in an ancient gilt frame … At the thought of the girl successfully heaving that painting round the drawing room, Agatha eyed Mary Ellis with something akin to respect. It was, however, an emotion from which she quickly recovered.

Agatha harrumphed. “Your obligation to this household is first and foremost me,” she told the girl. “See to it that you remember from now on.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Mary's voice was glum.

“Now, don't sulk, girl. I appreciate your moving the furniture about. But let's just keep things in their proper perspective. Now, give me your arm. I mean to go to the tennis court.”

“The tennis court?” Mary asked incredulously. “What d'you want with the tennis court, Mrs. Shaw?”

“I mean to see what condition it's in. I mean to start playing again.”

“But you can't—” Mary gulped the rest of her sentence back when Agatha cast a sharp look in her direction.

“I can't play?” Agatha said. “Rubbish. I can do anything. If I can get on the phone and win every necessary vote on the town council without their even seeing the plans …” Agatha chuckled. “I can damn well do anything.”

Mary Ellis didn't ask for clarification on the topic of the town council as her employer would have liked her to do. Agatha was hungry—indeed she was ravenous—to tell someone of her triumph. Theo was the person she'd have liked to crow to, but these days Theo wasn't ever to be found where he was supposed to be, so she hadn't bothered to try him at the pier. She hoped her hint had been broad enough for someone even with Mary Ellis's limited mental powers to take and run with conversationally. But that was not to be. Mary stood mute.

“Damn it, girl,” Agatha said. “Have you got a brain anywhere in your skull? Yes? No? Oh, bother with you anyway. Give me your arm. Help me outside.”

They tottered together out of the library and towards the front door. Having a captive audience, Agatha explained herself.

She was talking of the redevelopment plans for Balford-le-Nez, she told her companion. When Mary made sufficient guttural noise to indicate comprehension, Agatha continued. The ease with which she'd got Basil Treves in her corner on the previous day had suggested that she might do the same if she invested equal telephone time with the rest of the council.

“Save Akram Malik,” she said. “No point trying to get him in line. Besides”—and here again she chuckled—”I want old Akram to face a fait accompli.”

“There's to be a fete?” Mary asked eagerly.

God, Agatha thought wearily. “Not a fete, you idiot thing,” she said. “A fait. A fait accompli. Don't you know what that means? Never mind.”

She didn't want a digression from the topic at hand. Treves had been the easiest of them all to get on board, she confided, what with the way he felt about the coloureds. She'd got him in her corner last night. But the others hadn't been as quick to haul themselves to her side. “Still, I managed them all in the end,” she said. “I mean all of them that I need for the vote. If I've learned nothing else from business in all these years, Mary, I've learned that no man—or woman—turns away from the idea of investing money if the investment costs him next to nothing but still allows him to accrue a benefit. And that's the promise of our plans, you see. The town council invests, the town improves, the beach-goers arrive, and everyone benefits.”

Silent, Mary appeared to be mentally chewing on Agatha's scheme. She said, “I've seen the plans. Those're them in the library on that artist stand.”

“And soon,” Agatha said, “you shall see those plans taking a concrete form. A leisure centre, a redeveloped High Street, renovated hotels, a reconstructed Marine Parade and Princes Esplanade. Just you wait, Mary Ellis. Balford-le-Nez is going to be the showplace of the coast.”

“I sort of like it like it is,” Mary said.

They were out of the front door and on the sweeping drive. The sun was baking it so thoroughly that Agatha could feel it. She looked down and realised that she wore her bedroom slippers rather than her walking shoes, and the heat from the pebbles on the ground was seeping through the thin soles. She squinted, unable to recall the last time she'd been out of the house. The light was almost unbearably bright.

“Like it's?” Agatha dragged on Mary Ellis's arm, leading her towards the rose garden to the north of the house. The lawn dipped in a gentle slope beyond the plants, and at the base of this slope the tennis court lay. It was a clay court that Lewis had constructed for her as a gift for her thirty-fifth birthday. Prior to her stroke, she'd played three times a week, never very well but always with a stubborn determination to win. “Have a bit of vision, girl. The town's gone to ruin. Shops are closing on the High Street, the restaurants are empty, hotels—such as they are, at this point—have more rooms to let than there are people on the street. If someone isn't willing to give Balford a transfusion, we'll be living inside a rotting corpse in another three years. There's potential in this town, Mary Ellis. All it takes is someone with the vision to see it.”