The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mysteries)

by Martha Grimes

Melrose did not want to visit the subject of Aero as the steering wheel jumped in his hands and he nearly ran down a goat. What was a goat doing on a street in one of Nairobi’s most urban districts? “From what you’ve said about Aero, that doesn’t surprise me. But we’re not all Aero.”

  They drove through ever less crowded urban streets to a neighborhood saturated with flats to one that was clearly quite different from the area that Masego Abasi lived in.

  Riverside Drive was hilly and winding and guarded. Rich-looking houses were nestled in lush gardens, each property walled and gated. Add to that a security guard and there wouldn’t be much casual hanging about in the street.

  “So how do we get to see him?” The question appeared rhetorical, for she answered it herself. “I could climb over that wall, maybe.”

  “And maybe get shot by the guard.” Melrose thought for a moment. “He doesn’t live here.”

  “Why? He had a lot of money. He’s probably rich.”

  “Possibly, but you told me he liked cafés and restaurants and was always eating out. If you lived there—” Melrose nodded toward the long, low house. “—you’d have a cook.”

  “We can just sit here a while, can’t we?”

  “That guard will get suspicious. I think we should drive on by, maybe come round again.” Melrose turned the key, told Patty to make herself invisible and drove by the house. “We’ll haul up here, wait a minute, then drive back the other way. Now you can sit up.”

  “But if he’s giving a fake address, why this one? Why not a flat or a little house in a crowded street? Harder to find.”

  “He’s not giving the address. It’s a matter of record.” Melrose paused. “But why are we assuming it’s a fake address? Why not a fake name?”

  As they drew near the house, Melrose saw the gate cranking open and a Mercedes edging past gate and guard.

  Patty watched it for a few seconds, then opened the passenger door and jumped out.

  He yelled, “Patty, wait!”

  She didn’t wait. She darted across the road, unnoticed because the Mercedes had paused and the driver beckoned to the guard. He went round to the driver’s side to say something. The guard just missed seeing Patty, who, as the car slowly proceeded from gate to road, flung up her arms and scissored them back and forth.

  Now of course the guard did see this little tableau and hurried toward the car as it stopped. But Patty had got to the driver’s side first and said something. The car idled as this brief conversation took place, and the driver apparently reassured the guard, when he appeared, and the guard backed off. Melrose could see that the driver looked a little worried as Patty backed away and waved the car on, smiling.

  As it drove by, Melrose slid down in his seat.

  Patty returned to sit beside him. “You were right. That’s not him.”

  “B.B., damn it, could be anyone, then.” Melrose put the car into gear. “Let’s go back and see Kione.”

  “He’s not anyone. He’s a policeman.”

  “What?” Melrose stomped on the brake.

  “He’s that policeman. At the station.”

  Melrose gasped. “You can’t be talking about Chief Inspector Kione! He’d have recognized you.”

  “The one who came in the room.”

  “The one who came in? But, Patty, for God’s sake, why didn’t you say something to me before now?”

  “Well, because I wanted to see who this Banerjee was. To make sure.”

  “Patty, you didn’t see the policeman who came into the room.” And nor had the policeman seen her. The chair hid her.

  “I heard him.”

  Melrose frowned. “But his voice wasn’t—”

  “You never heard him before.”

  He had never known anyone to sound so certain.

  “If you don’t believe me, let’s go back to the police station and find him. If I see him, I’ll know him.”

  Melrose pulled away from the curb. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

  “Why not? He’ll remember me. He liked me.”

  “Not that much, kiddo.”

  “You’re telling me he’s a cop?” said Jury when Melrose called him at home. Jury added. “This killer is a policeman?”

  “And one high up the ladder, given Kione’s attitude toward him.”

  “What did Kione say?”

  “I didn’t tell Kione, did I? The only evidence we have is Patty Haigh’s. Do you really want to put her in between Kenyan and Tanzanian police?”

  “From what I’ve heard, they’d be the worse for it. What about Masego Abasi?”

  “The only thing he’s sure of is that the painting didn’t go to the Zane Gallery—unless whoever bought it from Abasi later sold it, but that seems unlikely. He couldn’t identify Rebecca Moffit. At first he said no; then he looked again and said maybe.”

  “That’s odd, in a way. I’d think a face would be almost engraved in an artist’s mind. Especially that face.”

  “I agree.”

  Jury sighed. “So all we know is that she didn’t get the painting from the Zane Gallery and, consequently, there’s no necessary connection.”

  Melrose was standing at one of the lodge windows holding the phone and now he looked into the black night. “There’s one other thing—”

  “What?”

  “If she did go to Abasi’s studio, why?”

  There was a silence while Jury thought this over. “You mean why was she looking for an Abasi painting?”

  “I mean both: what would have taken her to the studio? This is not exactly a street lined with shops, boutiques, antiquarian bookshops and shoes, that someone might be strolling along. What took her there? For that, she’d have to have been a real admirer of his work,” said Melrose.

  “And obviously seen it before. His stuff does hang in some galleries. Johannesburg has one, Dubai, too, I think Zane said.”

  “You don’t go to Nairobi by way of Johannesburg. Or Dar es Salaam. Dubai, possibly. But consider this: you’re a tourist on her way to Nairobi. You’d go direct from London. Even assuming you had a layover in Dubai, would you start hitting the art galleries, and even if you did would you hit the right one with Masego Abasi’s work?”

  “It doesn’t sound very likely. What is far more likely is that she saw his work—”

  “In London. In the only place that has it: the Zane Gallery.”

  “Good job,” said Jury.

  “Yes, wasn’t it? So how’s the croupier doing?”

  “A good job.” Jury rang off.

  Mbosi Camp, Kenya

  Nov. 6, Wednesday night

  24

  A night drive, for God’s sake?

  There had already been a five A.M. drive followed by Nairobi police, guards, and gates. Surely that was enough activity for any person? “No thank you.”

  Enough for any person wasn’t enough for Patty Haigh. “Oh, come on.” Her tone was a near-wheedle “The Attaboys aren’t going. Just us and Lumbai and Montre.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m going anyway.”

  “No, you are not.”

  Hands on hips. “You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my da.”

  “No, but I am your unc, remember? You don’t want me to tell the Van der Moots I’m not, do you?”

  Patty moved closer to his chair and looked straight into his eyes. “You wouldn’t rat me out!”

  “Oh, yes, I would.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You’re not a rat.”

  Melrose didn’t know whether to be complimented or just plain irritated. “They would not let you go on your own.” Considering how Patty had fetched up here, that was a pretty ridiculous concept.

  “We’ll see.” She ran off toward Trish Van der Moot, and Melrose watched the transaction going on between them. A flurry of hands and words before she came trudging back.

  “I can only go if you agree.”

  “I don’t.”

  Patty fell down into the other wing chai
r like a rag doll.

  Melrose looked at her sulky little face and thought it over, the story that he had, of course, disbelieved because it was so outlandish: Patty following a killer. Patty boarding a plane to Dubai and then to Nairobi. Patty befriending perfect strangers because they would serve her purpose and then dismissing them when they no longer did. Patty inveigling her way into the Hemingways Hotel. Patty in the dangerous zone of Kibera. Patty walking alone from that slum to the Mbosi Camp.

  That this same Patty would not be permitted to go out with two adults on a safari drive without him or at least his say-so seemed unbelievably absurd.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Her quick look was all gratitude. She jumped up. “You’ll go?” Her voice was a childish squeal.

  He wondered how often Patty got to act like an ordinary child. He nodded.

  She danced around his chair.

  They had been driving for an hour over every rock in Kenya when Lumbai spotted the leopard. His binoculars raised, his torch lowered, he directed the eyes to the left. “Leopard cub. It’s very near. We must be quiet.”

  Patty stood up ramrod straight beside him. “A cub!”

  In a flash, before anyone knew what she was doing, she had flung open the door, jumped out and started toward the cub.

  “Patty!” Lumbai whispered fiercely. “Stop!”

  But she paid no attention, lurching across the space in a stumbling run toward the leopard cub that seemed more fascinated than afraid of this sudden onslaught of unfamiliar creatures. For Melrose was out of the car and running after her. He wanted to yell but that would only worsen a situation that really seemed as bad as it could be. The cub. Patty. Patty who hadn’t seen the mother leopard in the tree above her.

  The leopard draped across an overhanging branch now rising scyth-like from the black branch above them. Melrose felt even his breath violated a necessary stillness. While he plowed through the knee-high grass he saw in the next two seconds the leopard on the branch connect with Patty’s presence. It was as if an electric current had swarmed down the tree and parted the grass.

  The branch was empty; the grass was full of black shadow. Melrose was only a few feet from Patty. He flew toward her. It was hard to believe he and the leopard were moving at nearly the same moment.

  Melrose sprang.

  Patty fell.

  The leopard leapt.

  Far from being grateful to Melrose for saving her life, or to Lumbai for his aim with the rifle, or that her life had been saved at all, Patty wailed and complained all the way back to Mbosi Camp. Her principal complaint, though, was aimed at herself: “It was all my fault!” she kept yelling. Its being her fault did not keep her from yelling at the others, at Lumbai for shooting, at Melrose in general as she pelted him with her fists. “Its mother’s dead!” A fist clubbed Melrose’s biceps. “The cub’s an orphan! The cub’s an orphan! You’ve got to go back! You can’t leave that cub on his own. He’s an orphan!”

  In an evenness of tone that Melrose attributed to child-mastery, he said, “No, Patty, the cub is not an orphan. He has Kenya. He has Africa.” Melrose found this a beautiful sentiment, that the continent could parent the orphaned cub.

  “Like I have Brixton?” she shouted.

  * * *

  Melrose was personally so relieved to find himself still alive that he didn’t resent that no one had told him how brave he’d been. Except for a splintering crack, he had heard not a sound, felt not a twitch from the animal that lay in silence beside them. The leopard had dropped with the weight of the night. In those few moments of pulling Patty away from danger, he understood what someone had said about Africa: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up you’d better be running.”

  He looked out at the black night, with its spillage of oddly lightless stars, and felt for a moment that he too had Africa.

  Nor did she stop once back in the tent. She was at least aware enough of Melrose’s having saved her life to thank him, grudgingly. But then she returned to her wail (at decreased volume) about the leopard’s death.

  “Where was the father,” said Melrose, “in this family tableau?”

  “So you’re going to blame it on them, the leopards? We’re the ones with guns.”

  “And they’re the ones with cunning and claws. I would take your side, Patty, if we were back in the days of Hemingway and the white hunters, but in this case the rifle is merely a defensive weapon. We would both be dead if Lumbai hadn’t fired.”

  “So instead of us being dead, the leopard’s dead.”

  “Right.”

  “But who gets to decide?”

  “Who, indeed?”

  Artemis Club, London

  Nov. 7, Thursday morning

  25

  When Jury walked through the door of the Artemis Club the next morning, the first person he saw was Marshall Trueblood, who asked him what the brown-paper-wrapped thing under his arm was.

  “A painting. A Masego Abasi.”

  “What—?”

  “Never mind. What’ve you been doing?”

  “I had a bit of a rummage in the gallery,” said Trueblood.

  “Rummage?” said Jury. “How in hell did you manage that? Zane watches the place like a hawk.”

  “Not during dinner. He’s quite serious about dinner, which he has in the dining room. So he has one or the other of us take over.”

  “‘One or the other’? Surely he doesn’t put any trust in you? You’ve been here less than a week.”

  “You give me too little credit, Superintendent. I have an antiques shop, remember. You’ve never actually seen me sell the stuff. I’m a great salesman. You also forget that Leo Zane is a snob and a seeker of prestige. I expect he’d kill for a title. Melrose Plant would have wowed him.”

  “What has that to do with you, then? I mean, you don’t have a title to wow him with.”

  “No, but a great-uncle was a well-regarded painter named Abu Kabiga. He was a Kenyan.”

  “What? Are you telling me you’re part Kenyan?”

  “Of course not. The relationship—if there were such a person—would be by marriage. It’s what I told Leo Zane, sitting in the gallery. I told him I was fortunate enough to own a couple of my uncle’s paintings. Abu had been a great tribal leader.”

  “What tribe?”

  “Maasai, of course.’”

  “Why of course?”

  “The Maasai are the haute couture of tribes. May I continue? Zane said he’d like to see them. ‘I’m extremely fond of Kenyan art,’ he claimed. I made some insightful remarks about the Abasi paintings and Postimpressionism which quite startled him. He asked if my uncle painted in that school. Abasi’s vivid strokes and colors.

  “I told him no, my uncle was more in the Tingatinga line.”

  “What the hell’s that?” asked Jury.

  “Hold on,” said Trueblood; “just wait. Zane’s hope of finding new Kenyan art dwindled. He said, ‘Tingatinga artists are thick on the ground. That art’s a bloody factory of art.’

  “‘Oh, but my uncle was early Tingantinga, which is quite rare.’ His interest piqued again. ‘I expect it would be,’ he said, and asked if I’d had the paintings valued.

  “‘Last year. A hundred thousand for one of them, two hundred thousand for the other.’ Leo whistled at that, but said, ‘I’ve never heard of this Kabiga.’

  “‘Why would you have? He rarely sold a work and when he did it was only to kings and presidents. Remember President Nyerere?’ Of course he didn’t. I went on: ‘When Tanganyika and Zanzibar joined and became Tanzania, it was Nyerere who was the first president. My great-uncle knew him.’ Well, Zane was fascinated. He said he had to see the paintings; said he wanted to have one in the gallery.

  “I told him I didn’t know that I’d want them on public display. Abu Kabiga wouldn’t. He was an extremely modest man. So, one evening he asked me to keep an eye on the gallery when he had dinner. I know his schedule. He always
eats at seven and takes half an hour doing it. While he’s gone he has somebody sit by the door of the gallery to make sure no one gets in. I said of course I’d be glad to.

  “After he went down to dinner I went in. He keeps his desk drawer locked. Naturally, I wanted to see what was in it, so I picked the lock.”

  “How?”

  “With a paper clip. There was money, but not more than a few hundred. There were photos: pictures of three paintings that are hanging on various sections of the wall, none of them good. I’m wondering, why the snapshots?”

  “Perhaps he wanted to show them to prospective buyers, I mean send the snaps to see if the buyers were interested.”

  “A picture of the picture wouldn’t tell you anything.”

  “There are postcards that show Mark Rothko.”

  “There are postcards that show squares of color, not Mark Rothko.”

  “Well, you’d know, wouldn’t you, your great-uncle being the famous Abu Kabiga.”

  Trueblood ignored this, saying, “I think the snapshots are there to identify them for some reason. And what if the reason is that what you see is not what you get?”

  Jury frowned. “Meaning—”

  “The bad art is covering up something good. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Valuable paintings that have been painted over?”

  Trueblood nodded. “And that’s not all. Unlocking the center drawer at the top of the desk also unlocks the side drawers.”

  “And you found—?”

  “What was even more interesting: the drawer that looks like a file drawer is filled with broken glass and double-edged razor blades.” Trueblood smiled.

  Jury registered surprise. “For God’s sake. To what end?”

  “To secrete something.”

  “But what?”

  “Well, I didn’t have time to investigate, did I? Furthermore, who would do it? There are like shavings of glass, like broken lightbulbs. Rip your fingers right up, wouldn’t it? If he’s got something valuable—”

  “But why do something so elaborate as that? Keep the stuff in the wall safe in his office.”