“Just another case,” said Lasko, mysteriously.
“You mean you aren’t going to tell me?”
“No.”
“I’ve been told to try and find Lady Kennington and you aren’t going to tell me why?”
“No.” Feudalism long forgotten, Lasko pulled rank. “Mr. Plant, it’s official business, isn’t it? I can’t go discussing it with the public, now can I?” He whipped out a smile as if he were a waiter snapping a napkin onto a lap.
“Well, good God, I’m not exactly the public. And I’m doing you a favor. Trying to, at least.”
Lasko smiled. “Him. You’re doing him a favor.”
“I know professional jealousy when I see it. Sure you don’t want to have dinner with me? Food’s good here; I’ve eaten it before.”
“Thanks very much, I appreciate it, but I better get back.” Lasko reached for money, but Melrose waved him off. “You’re my guest. Oh . . . incidentally, I was wondering . . . I don’t expect we might just have another look round that house?”
“I don’t expect so, no, sir.”
Exasperated, Melrose said, “I merely want to check and see if that news—” Melrose shut up. For if there was something to be found, if that newspaper offered up some clue that might lead him to Jenny Kennington, would he want Lasko to know right away? “Oh, very well I’m going back to my hotel, then. Uh, is there a newsagent’s still open?—it’s after six,” he added, checking his watch.
“Right down there, round the corner. Or if that’s not open, W. H. Smith’s might still be.” Lasko gulped the last of his pint. “Thanks for the drink, Mr. Plant. Mind you call your pal.”
Melrose gave his departing back a sour smile.
3
• • •
MELROSE CALLED his pal.
Back in his pleasantly Tudorish suite at the Shakespeare Hotel, and with his two local and one regional newspaper, Melrose put in a call to the Fulham Road Hospital. It was nearly seven-thirty and he had not yet had his dinner, but he felt a little sorry for Wiggins, knocked up there in a hospital bed, and he felt obliged to return his call. He would just chat briefly and then have a bath.
As the call was put through the various switchboards, he hummed to himself and mentally reviewed the restaurants he thought were possibilities. He had stopped at several points throughout his return walk to check menus, and had also studied the one outside of the Shakespeare’s dining room. Blinis, to begin, and then either the queues de boeuf or perhaps the langoustines crème glacée and a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape or a Pouilly-Fumé. His mouth watered; he was starving; perhaps he wouldn’t bother with a bath.
“Sergeant Wiggins!” He feigned a bit more enthusiasm than he actually felt. After all, he’d seen him only yesterday. “How are you coming along?” He asked this routinely as he shook open one of the newspapers and searched through the pages. No crossword.
“The treatment here is really quite wonderful, Mr. Plant. I’d no idea being in hospital could be such a relaxing experience. It’s hot and cold running nurses, it is—” Wiggins came close to giggling—“at my beck and call. Tea whenever I fancy, properly done, too. Pot and china cup, none of your polyethylene cups. And this one nurse, Lillywhite, her name is, is ever so accommodating.”
Melrose, who was lying full-length on his comfortable queen-sized bed, opened the other paper, and turned the pages. No crossword. His eyelids were growing heavy as the sergeant rattled on about the hospital “amenities.” The third newspaper revealed a crossword puzzle, true, but it was clearly not the one Jenny Kennington had been working on. He sighed and tossed it aside and listened to Wiggins go on about the “cuisine.” This brought back oxtails and wine, perhaps that delicious-sounding iced nougat for dessert. He shut his eyes, but briefly, snapping fully awake at Wiggins’s puzzling reference to the rondels.
“What about them? What sort of clue?”
“This Helen Hawes was one of the tapisters. And she died while she was studying the rondels, as I understand it. If you’re on your way to Exeter, I’d give those cushions a serious look, I would.”
What was he talking about? Melrose was afraid he knew. “Sergeant Wiggins, you’re not seriously suggesting something was embroidered into one of the cushions?”
“A threat of some sort. Stranger things have happened.”
No, they haven’t. The hand not holding the receiver made a crablike crawl across his scalp, massaging his hair up into licks.
“And whatever documents you’ve come up with, I’d appreciate seeing.” His tone was slightly condescending.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Melrose switched the receiver to his other ear. “I saw you just yesterday, remember; I showed you the only ‘documents’ I’ve seen. I told you everything I know.”
Was that a patronizing sniff that came down the wire? “Mr. Plant, there’s always things that go missing—”
“Damned right. And they’ve gone.”
“I was thinking you might just fax me whatever you’ve come up with since. I’ve a few ideas—”
“Nothing since.”
“Nothing, Mr. Plant?”
Wiggins said this ever so gently, the insinuation clear: without Superintendent Jury (and, by extension, Sergeant Wiggins) to shore him up, Melrose Plant might as well skip off with his hoop and stick, for all the good he was doing.
Melrose held the thin receiver away from his ear, above him, as if it were a Slim-line human face, and stuck his tongue out at it. When he returned it to his ear he heard:
“. . . mander Macalvie. I’ve already got a call into Exeter HQ for him. I’m sure he’ll fax me the documents his end, and if you could do the same your end—that is, when you’ve got something—it would be a big help. Now, as I said, I’ve some theories, based on reading I’ve been doing. They might have been drugged.”
What? What in hell was the man talking about? Melrose switched the receiver again, rolled over onto his side. “Sergeant Wiggins, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You haven’t been doing your research, is why,” said Wiggins, in a tone of remonstrance better suited to third form. Pages and papers riffled and rattled. “First of all, there’s plenty of poisonous plants in the American Southwest. . . . ”
“For heaven’s sake, Sergeant, if they’d been poisoned, the police would know it, wouldn’t they?”
One could almost see the satisfied little crimping of the sergeant’s lips. “If you’d my experience of poisons, sir, you’d know that it’s not that easy to detect. For one thing, you have to know what you’re looking for. Now, if these two Englishwomen had come across a peyotist—”
“A what?”
“Peyotist. It’s a religion, really, of the native American Indians. Peyote is used in their rituals.”
Melrose yawned. “Is Carlos Castaneda in this story?” He closed his eyes.
Wiggins ignored this and started in—grindingly “in”—telling Melrose all about peyote and other hallucinogenic drugs. “See, I’ve had this Nurse Lillywhite getting reading material for me. It’s incredible how kind and helpful these nurses here are. Lillywhite’s run out to Dillon’s for me several times, and once even went all the way to Tottenham Court Road to get some obscure book at Foyle’s—”
Thank you, Nurse Lillywhite. Your next check will not be in the mail. Melrose’s stomach rumbled as he pulled one of the pillows from underneath his head and put it over his face, wondering if anyone had ever managed to suffocate himself.
The sergeant droned on, finishing with an account of poisonous plants and turning to other matters. “Now this turquoise stone. You might be ignoring something important there—”
Melrose only wanted to ignore everything except the oxtails and blinis as he blew hot breath back on his nose.
“You’ve heard of the Ojibwa—”
Pause. “Tu whu?”
Pause. “Are you all right, Mr. Plant? Not coming down with this virus going round, I hope?” Wiggins los
t interest in Plant’s health, and went on. “The Ojibwa actually believe that stones have the ability to respond—that’s putting it much too simplistically. Let’s just say, some stones are animated. Not all stones, of course . . . ”
Perhaps if he rolled over on his stomach. The receiver slipped away as he now pushed his face down into the pillows and total blackness. He would lose consciousness either way, what did it matter, but he did give a passing thought to how the Ojibwa knew which stones were animated. Not the ones within listening distance of Wiggins’s hospital bed, he bet.
The peroration of the sergeant, desperate sounding, staticky, came from the receiver as Melrose decided against the iced nougat in favor of a rhubarb coulis. When the sound stopped altogether, he rolled over again, yanked up the receiver, and said, “Fascinating, Sergeant Wiggins.”
“Thank you. You’ve no idea how much I appreciate your bringing me this Josephine Tey mystery—”
Oh, that had been a brilliant idea, thank you very much! Melrose checked his watch. Wiggins had been going on for a goodish twenty or thirty minutes, nonstop.
“—and it’s amazing what a person can do even bunged up in hospital. Well, her detective solved the case.” There was a small commotion somewhere in the room, female laughter, comings and goings, to-ings and fro-ings.
“This is something! I’ve just received more flowers, Mr. Plant! I’d no idea I was so popular.” And then a brief, weighted silence. Wiggins added mournfully, “I expect you haven’t had time, yourself. To stop by a florist, I mean. Never mind.” His sigh was grandly forgiving.
Wishing he had a few dozen peyote buttons to toss around, Melrose said he would be sure to send some, tout de suite, said he had to ring off, said goodbye, slammed down the receiver.
FURNISH THE DOCUMENTS! FIND JENNY! SEND FLOWERS!
4
HAVING NOW fully enjoyed his langoustines crème glacée topped off with the iced nougat (with Armagnac!), every bit as delicious as its name, and having put one of the bread rolls in his pocket, Melrose was taking a walk before retiring, a rare after-dinner ramble. The after-dinner pursuits at Ardry End were more along the lines of port and a book by the fire, with his dog, Mindy, asleep (or possibly dead, he was never sure which) at his feet.
After dinner at Ardry End—wait just a tick, now. . . . He paused and studied the paving stones. The French for after dinner—? Après diner? This had a definite ring to it! “Après Diner at Ardry End.” Could he turn this into a book, a series of anecdotes about country life, along the lines of A Year in Provence? Why, Mr. Momaday was certainly a match for any of those Provençal eccentrics; after all, Melrose must have talent, too, what with all of these writers—Polly, Ellen, Joanna—treating him as if he were Maxwell Perkins—
Oh, do shut up! cried his other, sensible, sterner self, glaring over the top of gold-rimmed spectacles. Bad as Sergeant Wiggins, his other self muttered.
Melrose sighed and walked on, past W. H. Smith’s, past Boots (were there a Smith’s and a Boots on Venus, he wondered?) and on down the High Street. He abandoned his nonfiction writing career, but not his fiction, not Gin Lane. And, of course, all of this talk with Polly, all of this thinking about writing, brought to mind Ellen Taylor and that trilogy of Windows, Doors, and the untitled third. It brought to mind his promise to help her draw a bead on that absurd woman who was stealing Ellen’s stuff. Melrose chuckled. His plan was brilliant! Ellen would love it. But he had to work out some of the details first.
Strange how his feet had carried him smack-up to the stone steps of the Dirty Duck. Save that for later. He crossed the road and found the path that led round beside the theatre and on into the graceful, grassy expanse of trees flanked by the River Avon.
It was a lovely night, but misty, and the ghostly columns of the little brass-rubbing center rose before him like blanched bones. He struck out from the gravelled path across the grass to the river, where he stood on the bank and looked out at the sinuous light the moon cast on the gently moving Avon. All was silent. How silent the nights could be, even in London, in pockets such as that part of Bethnal Green through which he’d taken his short walk after the meal with Bea. What had she said . . . ? That the fondling and kissing in the Tate had been merely a put-on, that Gabe liked to see other people’s reactions. And Bea had had her eyes open, sitting there, out of boredom. If that were the case, though, had Gabe also let his eyes flutter open?
Checking reactions of the gallery-goers? And his eyes were looking across at Frances Hamilton. Well, it was a small thing but worth asking about.
Melrose looked down at the undulating, marshy grasses serving as a sort of soggy mattress for a circle of sleeping, bobbing ducks, several with their heads beneath their wings. He took the bread roll from his pocket and began tearing it up. A platoon of other ducks—the Avon Night Patrol—rowed over in military formation upon seeing this bit of action. Out of seeming nowhere, as if floating on air, an illusion caused by the mist across the river, came two swans, one black, one white, moving in for a share of the spoils.
Melrose tossed out crumbs as he wondered if Jury had yet received his fax. Ten o’clock here. . . . That would make it five over there, wouldn’t it? No. There was another time change between the coasts—one hour? Two? Three? Where was New Mexico? Probably somewhere around California, in that area. Melrose ran a couple of blanked-out maps of the United States through his mind but could only fill in Baltimore, which was near New York City. And California. He knew where that was, naturally. With his hand full of unshed crumbs (which the swans were busily demanding) he tried to fix New Mexico on his mental map. In the manner of a blindfolded child trying to pin the tail on a donkey, he made a mental stab. THERE!
Where had that homeless chap been from? Baton Rouge, that was it. Where was it? Baton Rouge, what an exquisite name. . . . It was Jury’s fault, of course, this blank map. If Jury had had him come along, he’d know where the damned place was.
He chucked the remaining breadcrumbs across the river’s surface and dusted his hands. The bossy swans made mince of the ducks’ efforts to capture this treat. Bullies, thought Melrose, who decided to stop feeling sorry for himself. Jury was probably right: Melrose would be of more help going back over the ground that Jury had already trod, talking to the same people and forming his own impressions. Viewpoints were important. He continued to stand on the cold, damp riverbank and consider those impressions.
But all he could think of was Miss Fludd.
And Turner’s black dog.
He heard, in the distance off to his left, muted voices—the audience leaving the theatre, fanning out across the car park, the pavements, the several pathways to their numerous destinations. Flooding the Dirty Duck, undoubtedly, so he’d just as well skip that and go on back to the hotel.
One route was to walk along Ryland Street and then to cut over, and he did so. As he passed Jenny Kennington’s little house, he stopped and inspected its windows. Dark.
The abysmal pressure of time seemed to weigh on him. He turned up his coat collar against the foggy night and wondered again about New Mexico, about the sun going down, or the sun coming up.
THIRTY-THREE
Movie sun.
What would they have done, Jury wondered, looking down towards the road, if the light hadn’t cooperated? For it certainly was doing so. Far away, but seeming close, were the Sangre de Cristos where light spread in a wash of watercolors across the sky, turning the underneath side of the clouds to gold.
He had this fanciful thought while standing on the wide stone steps of the Rancho del Reposo lodge, watching the progress of the film crew in the distance. Voices, tiny and unintelligible, carried weakly through the cold air as if blown back from the narrow highway down there where several of them were waving their arms or using bullhorns to reroute traffic. This consisted of sending the occasional car from the narrow paved road into the oblivion of an even narrower dirt road. But the drivers didn’t seem to mind; most of them had pulled over and up on
a shoulder to rubberneck the film folk.
The Rancho del Reposo was, in the words of those old film westerns, a “spread.” It was a rich (though not necessarily tasteful) mixture of architectures—Moorish, western, Spanish, the glassily American. Red pantiled roofs, adobe walls inset with hand-painted Spanish tiles, the glass excrescence of what could have been an arboretum off to one side but which appeared to be a dining room or else an informal cafe. It was linked to the main structure by a portico lined with cacti and desert grasses. The spread of the ranch’s many buildings—low, discreet adobe casitas sheltered by piñons and juniper—stretched away for acres from the main building. All of it looked incredibly pricey. Inside, several fires burned brightly, Saltillo tiles shone beneath long, colorful rugs, guests sat about having coffee, most of them with camera equipment or walkie-talkies or other filmmaking paraphernalia hanging from leather straps or wound somehow about their persons.
The two women behind the desk just inside the entrance were what Jury had come to think of as Santa Fe cheerful; in addition to the goodwill they exuded for the sake of the Rancho del Reposo’s PR, was also that extra something, that dollop of aren’t-we-all-lucky-to-live-here? air.
Jury returned the smile of the hearty receptionist and asked (by way of breaking the ice), “What’s going on down on the road? Filming something, are they?” He looked through a wide glass door out to a patio, where more people were sitting at tables than he would have expected outside in February. Still, it was warm in the sunlight.
“Oh, yes. We’re used to it, aren’t we, Patsy?” This was directed to the other woman, a rather heavy, horsy type, who smiled and nodded and went back to sorting registration cards. “There’s usually some film or TV company around. It’s the scenery, you see.”
Rainbow's End Page 30