All of this pact business made her excited, slightly breathless. “Well, I’ll tell you the truth. I’ve had my eye on that bracelet—” She slipped from her stool and reached into the glass case and came out with a bracelet of small colored stones that didn’t look to Jury as if it were worth holding your breath over. To each his own.
“All right, if you can hold out, I’ll buy you this.”
She beamed with the novelty of this idea. “Now, what about yourself? I got to give you something.”
He doubted, looking at her, she had two pence to rub against each other. “You can give me a kiss.” He smiled at her indrawn breath, her look of uncertainty. “I’m safe. I’m Scotland Yard CID. Here.” He showed her his ID.
Now she was completely hooked. She smiled. “That’s all? Just a kiss?”
He nodded. “It’s enough. What’s your name?”
“Des.” She blushed and said, “It’s really Desdemona, but I hate it, so I made it just Des.”
Jury touched his hair in a mock salute. “I’ll see you in a few days, then, Des.”
As he moved up to security and tossed the bag on the runner, he looked back. She waved. Jury thought of where he was going. He had heard about the light in the American Southwest, about the skies, about the sunrises and especially the sunsets.
Could he possibly make it through a Santa Fe sunset without a cigarette?
He waved to Des.
Maybe. Just maybe.
NINETEEN
“OD’d on black biscuits, did you, Sergeant?” asked Melrose, then silently berated himself for being so cavalier. He pulled up one of the molded plastic and tubular-legged chairs in Wiggins’s room in Fulham Road Hospital.
Looking literally pure as the new-driven snow, as he lay between ice-starched sheets, hands folded on the top one, Sergeant Wiggins replied, with a sniff, “Police are supposed to keep going, no matter how sick we are; if one of us gets run down or ill, well, we’re not supposed to mind. It’s quite unfair, it is.”
Melrose reached into the parcel he had brought and pulled out a packet. “You’re absolutely right, Sergeant. I only wanted to make sure you were allowed these.” He put the black biscuits on the bed, and the rest of the bag with it. While Wiggins inspected the parcel from Health Ways, Melrose looked round the spartan room. In its distilled whiteness, there appeared to be only one floral offering, a rather wistful-looking bunch of Michaelmas daisies clumped with a spray of fern soaking in a tall glass. Before this was propped a card with another “Wiggins” name on it. Melrose deduced this must be from one of the Mancunian Wigginses. He was upset that there weren’t more flowers, more of a recognition that Wiggins was, after all, hospitalized. Not even from Jury. Probably too busy darting off to New Mexico.
But Wiggins seemed well satisfied by Melrose’s gift. He drew first one thing and then another from the brown bag: rolls of crystal mints, a couple of packets of Fisherman’s Friends, herbal tea, digestive biscuits, and a handsome ceramic cup emblazoned with a W. “This is most awfully kind of you, Mr. Plant.” He pulsed with pleasure. “You know, it’s not at all pleasant to be trapped here, all day long, no one much to talk to and nothing to do.”
He did not, Melrose observed, seem at all trapped. He enjoyed turning and re-turning the top of the sheet and smoothing the whole works out. Melrose still did not know what had brought the sergeant to this (he suspected) highly enjoyable hospital end. “So if it’s not the Black Biscuit Death, then why’re you here? Tests of some sort?”
“The superintendent didn’t mention what it was?” This was put in a tone of mild surprise and also relief.
“Not a word. Only that it wasn’t serious.”
Tearing off the cellophaned top of the black biscuits, Wiggins pursed his mouth and appeared to be thinking this over. “It’s not serious, no. Just an accident. Stupid of me. A little job I was doing for Chief Superintendent Racer, an electrical thing. Got a bit of a shock, see—” he offered the packet of biscuits to Melrose, who gently declined the treat—“faulty wiring, I expect. You’d think a CID sergeant would know better than to go mucking about with electricity.”
Melrose hadn’t the vaguest notion what the sergeant was talking about, but he didn’t pursue the matter. Instead, he reached into his pocket and brought out the paperback he had also purchased. “There’s this, too. It’s absolutely right for the situation.”
Wiggins carefully wiped his fingers on a tissue before he sat up a bit straighter and took the book. “Well, now. The Daughter of Time.” He pressed the book to him and seemed to be studying the ceiling for a syllabus that would tell him whether he was familiar with its contents, whether he’d read it.
“Josephine Tey.”
“Oh, yes. A very fine mystery writer.” He studied the cover. “No nonsense about them back then. Perfectly straightforward, dead-on detectives. Professionals like me, or amateurs such as yourself—” benignantly, he inclined his head—“no women, no gays, no lesbians, no whores, no animals. No cats. I’ve noticed cats are enjoying a certain cachet.” Wiggins zipped the pages of the book back and forth with his thumb as if he were about to shuffle cards, then he sat forward. “Would you mind giving these pillows a plumping?”
Melrose did so, patting and pushing, and Wiggins settled back with a satisfied sigh and his new book. “Now I remember: this is the one where her detective’s flat on his back in hospital!”
“That’s why I chose it. An historical case. He comes up with a rather slippery solution to the question of the murders of the princes in the Tower of London. King Richard being the chief suspect. Our detective clears his name. More or less. His lady friend, I believe it was, brings him all sorts of books and other information and he puts it together. Now, what I thought was that if I were to fill you in on whatever details I happened upon in this Tate Gallery-Exeter Cathedral-Old Sarum show, the two of us might come up with something.”
Wiggins, clearly excited, was nonetheless thumbing slowly through the first few pages of his book, looking quite grave. This was serious stuff, then. “What you mean is, that with the super in the States, we might on our end be extremely helpful. And don’t forget there’s also Commander Macalvie. We can get his input, too.”
“Commander Macalvie never did strike me as the person to ‘input,’ ” Melrose said dryly.
Wiggins’s retort was that the issue had never arisen before, and, don’t forget, he was the patient. “Mr. Macalvie and me, we understand one another.” He seemed a trifle hurt that Melrose did not realize Wiggins was not just another patient in hospital in Macalvie’s eyes.
“Uh-huh.” Melrose hoped his plan to amuse Wiggins wasn’t going to backfire.
As if taking sustenance from Josephine Tey, Wiggins stroked The Daughter of Time. “It’s a good idea. Tell me, then, whatever you know about this case.” Wiggins settled back, aligning his new book with his sheet and his crossed hands.
“Unfortunately, not much, not yet.” Melrose told him the little Jury had told him. One piece of information was about Macalvie’s having come across an address book in Nell Hawes’s possession and the phone numbers in it. Melrose had called Commander Macalvie for a few more details, which he shared with Wiggins. “Besides Angela Hope’s shop, there’s a pharmacy, a hotel, and a private residence, where the party claimed not to know anyone named Frances Hamilton or the Hawes woman or Angela Hope.”
“That’s the lady found at Old Sarum.” When Melrose nodded, Wiggins said, “They said they didn’t know her? This Hope person?”
Melrose nodded again.
Wiggins looked deep in concentration as he studied the photocopied pages. “It seems odd, doesn’t it? I can see a tourist would set down the number of the hotel or a restaurant or some shop she wanted to go to—”
“And I can see a tourist might meet somebody in her travels who would give her his phone number, too. What’s odd about that?”
Wiggins looked at his new paperback as if he were going to kiss it for coming up with this gran
d idea of solving mysteries from hospital beds. “Well, nothing at all. Except it’s odd that the person then would disclaim any knowledge of the party.” Carefully, Wiggins smoothed his sheet. “Why are you so sure it’s a telephone number?”
Melrose was completely surprised. “Because . . . I just told you; the New Mexico police apparently rang it. It was answered. Whoever answered said he didn’t know what they were talking about.”
Wiggins shrugged. “Obscene telephone callers often use random numbers.”
“What does this have to do with obscene calls?”
“It doesn’t. That’s not the point; the point is the randomness. Given all the telephone numbers there are—Lord knows what the figure would run to—a person could come up with an authentic telephone number purely by accident. Just because there is such a number doesn’t mean it can’t be something else besides.”
Melrose thought this over. It was, actually, possible.
“So if the number’s of whatever we’re looking for is the same as this number in—where?”
“Española.”
“Española, it could still be coincidence.” Gently, Wiggins closed his eyes and folded his hands across his book, managing to look like the Wise Hermit in the Cave.
Melrose felt abashed, embarrassed by what he now realized had been a rather patronizing attitude towards the sergeant. For it was certainly a thought. A very good thought. It was just that Wiggins, for all of his virtues, had never displayed much deductive prowess. Wiggins’s value lay in his loyalty, his methodical note taking and attention to detail, and especially in his being able to mirror the fallibilities of witnesses. They were able to identify with Wiggins. No one in the sergeant’s presence felt the need to be infallible—to be brave or strong or healthy. Kleenexes could be brought out, snifflings and snufflings begin, heads and joints ache, tears fall like rain. Jury (Melrose thought) was good at this sort of thing himself. But Wiggins was better; Wiggins was Everyman. Those were his virtues, not deductive brilliance.
Thus, Melrose was completely taken aback by Wiggins’s having brought up a point that no one else had, including Commander Brian Macalvie. They were all assuming that here were several telephone numbers.
“What do you think it might be, this number?” asked Melrose, feeling inept.
But the Wise Hermit kept his eyes closed, fluttered his hand (rather dismissively), and said, “Well, we’ll just have to put on our thinking caps, sir.” He yawned.
“Yes. We will.” Melrose rose. “I’ll be going, then. To do some thinking.”
Wiggins made no move to detain him, nor did he open his eyes.
At the door, Melrose heard a snore coming from the bed, a series of snores, catching in Wiggins’s throat. He lay there, mouth open, jaggedly snoring away, his head on a short pillar of fluffy white pillows, hands crossed on The Daughter of Time.
The Hermit asleep in his cave of clouds.
• • •
MELROSE’S FIRST STOP was at the nurses’ station, where he spoke to Matron about the possibility of getting a private nurse for the sergeant. Yes, of course, that could be arranged. Melrose gave her his address and telephone number and said he would be responsible for whatever charges were incurred, only not to tell the patient that this nurse was a private nurse. Matron understood.
His second stop was at a florist in the Fulham Road near the hospital. Here he put on his thinking cap and came up with a short list of names. He then directed a pleasant woman to make up various bouquets, took four white cards from the rack, and wrote four different names. He changed his handwriting for each of them. He gave the florist his instructions for delivery, telling her the bouquets should be delivered at four different times, not all together, then paid her a king’s ransom and went whistling on down the Fulham Road.
TWENTY
Mr. Beaton, Melrose’s tailor, did not “maintain an establishment” in the heady environs of Mayfair or in Regent or Bond Street. Amazingly, Mr. Beaton had his shop—or to be more precise, his rooms—on the first floor above a sweet shop in the Old Brompton Road, near the Oratory.
Melrose liked the sweet shop too, and always stopped in it, hoping that this time the person behind the counter would be a little gray lady in purple bombazine, lace collar, and cameo brooch, who would smile diffidently as she plied the metal scoop in the tilted glass jar of gummy bears. This person existed only in his imagination, or, possibly, was patterned on someone in his childhood, which, he liked to think, had been full of sweet shops. The shop girl here today was certainly not this person; she was a slack-faced girl with frizzed yellow hair, who was sitting reading and chewing gum and, given the look she shot at Melrose, would be far better off in a chemist’s dispensing cold poison instead of here in such aromatic premises dispensing lemon drops.
Well, she didn’t bother him beyond the limits of her first chilly stare and he merely wanted to gaze at the rows of thick glass jars and the displays of boxes of Cadbury’s and Opera Assortments. He asked for assistance, and the girl tossed aside the gossipy magazine, unfolded herself from the chair and tugged down her sweater. Melrose purchased tiny amounts (to the shop girl’s everlasting annoyance) of lemon sherbets, fizzy bears, Smartees, sour bats, toffees, and Rainbow Crystals. He did not want the sweets; he wanted to watch the little engine of sweet-buying hum along: the aluminum scoop; the weighing up, and the frown this always seemed to elicit; the depositing into small white bags; the quick screwing of the tops. He paid for these six little screws and asked that they all be placed in a larger bag. Naturally, she did not want to do this, for no other reason than it was written into the shop-assistant script not to want to do what the customer wanted—and to so indicate by either grimace or posture or overall manner, or even by outright words. Hers was grimace. Melrose absolutely beamed at her, which annoyed her still further, her large lifeless eyes retreating as soon as they could behind the armor plate of tabloid newspaper.
Melrose stepped out of the door of the sweet shop, comforted by the knowledge that the prototype was still around, that Style still existed, that shadows still danced in Plato’s cave. From the sweet shop he turned into the next door and walked up the darkish steps to the first floor and Mr. Beaton.
Here in Mr. Beaton’s combined living and working quarters, the existence of Style was verified. Mr. Beaton looked, simply, like a tailor. If Beatrix Potter had been interested in people as she had been in animals, she would have drawn Mr. Beaton. He was small to the point of delicacy, with a domelike head that glistened in a cone of lamplight; wore rimless glasses that he never looked through, only over; and sometimes a green eyeshade rode high on his forehead; but always there was a tape measure round his neck. Mr. Beaton had always had an apprentice, several different ones over the decades. They were interchangeable. This young man had a shock of brown hair, wore glasses also, and like his Master, was very polite and decorous. In this shop, one could die of decorum.
Melrose forgot, from year to year, how he would always enter these rooms with a sigh of pleasure. Nothing had changed; nothing ever would. Mr. Beaton had been his father’s tailor, and had been apprentice when the elder Mr. Beaton had been Melrose’s grandfather’s tailor. There was a nucleus here of persons so tightly knit that Melrose found it nothing short of miraculous, and could, therefore, forgive himself for the sentimental notion that nothing changed here in Mr. Beaton’s. Having little to do with the present, Mr. Beaton had plenty of room for the past. Oh, yes, he read the papers, and knew that governments came and went (“Conservative, Labor, Sociopath,” Mr. Beaton would chuckle), but that made no odds to him.
On one or two occasions, Lady Marjorie—Melrose’s mother—had accompanied his father here, had sat silent and smiling while Mr. Beaton took his measurements. Had never interfered, had not spoken unless her husband asked her opinion about materials or colors, had sat quietly with folded hands and either gazed out of the wavering glass of the casement windows, then probably as now covered with a patina of umber dust that gave th
e scene below a slightly golden glow; or seated at the round table, chin in her hand, looking at the framed photographs of Beaton ancestors. The windows were still streaky with dirt, and the ancestors still arranged on the table in pewter or dark wooden frames. And if she did speak, it was always to compliment his skills.
Melrose knew all of this because Mr. Beaton had told him. Lady Marjorie, Countess of Caverness—now there was a lady, there was a lady who deserved a title!
“My lord.” Mr. Beaton’s brief nod was in no way obsequious, but an acknowledgment of old ways and traditions. Melrose had never told him that he had given up his titles, because it would have been too disturbing to Mr. Beaton, too much an indicator that carelessness and slovenliness were rampant, or that modernism was afoot. Modernism had had nothing at all to do with it, and God only knew, certainly not carelessness.
“I’ve just got in this very fine worsted—” here he nodded his apprentice toward a curtained alcove where he kept his bolts—“that I think you will find satisfactory.” The tall young man brought it out, a heavy bolt of dark gray wool. Mr. Beaton drew down a corner for Melrose’s inspection. “It feels like silk.”
Melrose drew the dark gray material through his fingers. It did not feel like silk; it felt like air. “Mr. Beaton, this is ethereal. How can wool be so light?”
The question was rhetorical; the tailor smiled and shrugged—an infinitesimal movement of the upper body. All of Mr. Beaton’s movements were like that, graceful but parsimonious, as if, being so small, he were intent upon husbanding his energy for the task at hand.
For Mr. Beaton, it was not enough simply to be exquisitely dressed. It was also de rigueur that no one should know you were doing it—a man wore his clothes as he wore his sainthood: without advertisement.
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