16
THE gallows sign of the Mortal Man creaked eerily in the wind and the snow, lit by a dull metal lamp that lent its sickle-curve of light to the mortality of the sallow-faced figure in the sign. The light spilling from the windows of the inn’s public bar was no brighter, no more cheerful. It crept round the edges and through the slits of a boarded-up window, whose shutters banged as fretfully as did the sign. No matter that during the day, the Mortal Man must have belonged to the pretty picture cut by the village green, the duckpond, the row of thatched-roof cottages beyond — here, in the dark and the cold it looked vacant, transient, divested of an inn’s life and good cheer.
• • •
Inside, this impression was quickly dispelled. There was surely enough life to go round the green and back several times over. A cacophony of shouting voices met him — or rather, blasted past him, in the person of a woman, a youngish girl, a younger boy with a dog. The dog stopped when he saw Jury, as smartly as if he’d run into a wall, ran madly three times around Jury’s legs, and continued, yapping, after the boy.
In another minute, this happy quartet rushed back from the other direction, apparently not having solved their logistical problem, if that were the problem. The dog remembered to run around Jury’s legs again, in some sort of magical incantation, before it zipped off after the others.
“The common form of greeting at the Mortal Man,” said Melrose Plant, who appeared in the doorway of the public bar, smiling broadly, smoking one of his small cigars. “They’ll be back; you escaped serious damage this time, but don’t press your luck.” Plant motioned him in. “The St. Clairs have saved you, possibly, a trip to the Steeples. Count yourself twice fortunate.”
• • •
Behind the bar, the burly owner appeared to be comparing notes with a tall man who sat with three glasses before him at a nearby table. He was introduced to Jury as St. John St. Clair, and the young woman next to him as the daughter, Lucinda. The gentleman behind the bar, who was slapping his bar towel around, apparently on the track of a fly, snapped it so smartly at the mirror that a patch of the gilt frame fell off.
Jury’s offer to stand drinks was met with a sad head-shake by St. Clair. He had tried, he said, studying the three glasses before him, all of the Warboyses’ stock of Irish whiskey. They had been found wanting. This was, of course, no reflection on Mr. Warboys but on the general instability of that country. The chief difference between the innkeeper and his unhappy guest was that one had a round, red face; the other, a sad, long one. For both, Armageddon was drawing near.
Nathan Warboys lost no time in trying to persuade Jury that, if he had any plans for marrying, he should drop them immediately. “Take my Sally. I mean, I mean, don’t think I don’t know what that ’un’s always on about. Out she goes, every night, dressed like a dog’s dinner.”
Apparently, the hound had taken this as a call to the front, for he streaked across the room and grabbed St. Clair’s walking stick between his teeth with an almighty growl. As he pulled and growled, the handle caught on the narrow table leg, sending table and drinks spilling about. Nathan Warboys picked up a piece of the wood stacked against the counter and let it fly, barely missing Melrose’s head, then said someone would be in to mop up the mess.
Melrose hoped not. St. Clair took it quite philosophically, dabbing at his shirt and picking up the conversation where Nathan had dropped it. “You are right, of course, Mr. Warboys. Marriage can be an extremely sad affair, though I can’t agree it is the fault of the woman. No, it is the fault of everybody. Certainly, there are wives — not yours, not mine, at least not yet — who do cause the most dreadful trouble. Why, look at poor Marion —”
“Marion’s never caused any trouble, Daddy.”
“She hasn’t, no. We know of no trouble at all she’s caused. The fact Hugh stays away must be owing to something else, but we don’t want to talk about that. They don’t make cloth like they used to; I doubt this stain will come out.” He patted his tie with the bar towel. “I’m speaking of that person that poor David is accused of murdering. What a perfectly dreadful mess.”
“Did you know her, Mr. St. Clair?” asked Jury.
Nathan Warboys topped up his glass and said, “You want to stay away from them kind, you do.”
“No, I didn’t. Fortunately. Though I believe Lucinda did.”
When Jury turned to her, Lucinda said, “I met her once, Ivy Childess. I hardly knew her. It was at a little party in Knightsbridge.” Eagerly, she leaned toward Jury and said, “David couldn’t possibly have done that. It’s just not in his nature to do something so — awful.”
There was no question that Plant had been right about Lucinda St. Clair’s attachment to David Marr. Jury wondered how far it might take her, that attachment. “Do you visit the Winslow house much, then? Do you go up to London, Miss St. Clair?”
“Hardly ever,” said Lucinda.
“Best you don’t, my dear,” said her father. “And don’t forget Edward’s misfortune,” St. Clair went on, his sonorous voice blending with the hollow sound of the bell in the village church tolling the hour.
Warboys, a toothpick jumping about in his mouth, said, “You mean that there wife of his, a right treat, weren’t she? Just up and left and never a good-bye, and never a word since. Well, that were a long time ago, weren’t it? Still, it’s some way for a wife to act, just leavin’ without so much’s a word.” Nathan then seemed to be reconsidering the merits of this unwifely behavior when his own wife appeared to shout out last calls for dinner.
The St. Clairs left; Plant and Jury walked across the hall to the dining room, while from upstairs came a series of small crashes.
“It’s just a Warboys, straightening up your room,” said Melrose.
• • •
“You are being treated to an evening of the Warboyses in full revel.” Melrose Plant repositioned his cutlery and tucked up his threadbare dinner napkin.
Jury squinted his eyes. “Never, never have I seen you eat a meal with a napkin under your chin.”
“That’s because you’ve never seen me dine with the Warboyses.” He lifted his roll, found it rock-hard, and hit it with the handle of his knife. “There!” The roll splintered and crumbled on the plate. “The Warboyses have unleashed my taste for violence.”
“Are they joining us, then?” asked Jury, who had reached down to scratch Osmond behind the ears.
“Probably.” Melrose lifted the edge of the tablecloth to look at the hound, napping happily at Jury’s feet. “That dog must be dead.”
The dining room was more festive than usual; they were not the only occupants of the room: in a far corner sat a man and woman who had no doubt been lured in by the announcement outside that an “English dinner plus all the trimmings” awaited them. The Warboyses’ idea of “traditional” probably ran more to Sainsbury fruitcake than homemade Yorkshire pudding, Melrose thought. He observed that his and Jury’s companions-in-adventure were quite silent, looking at the black panes through which they could see nothing but their own reflections. Married, he assumed, and hoped he wasn’t stereotyping the couple. But he wondered why married folk always seemed uncomfortable when they dined in public, as if afraid that someone would think they’d just come from a steamy assignation if they looked at each other.
A string of white lights made an arc at the top of the window; the Warboyses’ stockings were nailed to the mantel. Melrose had watched Bobby Warboys going at them hell-for-leather, all the while blathering out his complaints, as if he were nailing the entire season to a tree. A small Christmas tree with tiny winking lights sat amongst some souvenirs on a shelf overhead—a flowered bottle of green glass with the legend A Present from Wells-Next-the-Sea; several little photos of what looked to be absent Warboyses; one live plant and one in its throes; a stuffed red fox with its one good eye trained on Melrose (the other probably having been shot out by Nathan); a bowl of plastic fruit, whose grapes, Melrose said, must have given this particular wi
ne its special piquancy. By the dining-room door sat a cross-eyed porcelain leopard, bedecked with tinsel. All oddments culled from some jumble sale, it looked like.
“Where’s our soup?” said Melrose, twisting round to stare down the kitchen door.
On cue, Mrs. Warboys charged through it with two plates of soup. Short, stout, pale, she had been turned by the kitchen catastrophe into a quivering, livid mass. She put Melrose in mind of a mad blancmange. The soup slopped up the sides of the bowls when she set it down and announced the entree selection: “Veal cutlet, toad-in-the-hole, and Bombay duck.” She flicked a glance right and left to see how each of them took it.
Melrose looked at Jury who said, “Oh, go ahead.”
“I’ll try it, though Bombay duck is hardly my idea of your traditional Christmas dinner. I was thinking more along the lines of some nice, rare roast beef.” He smiled so hard he thought he’d grow dimples.
“Aye, ’tis. But we’re out.”
“Out?”
Mrs. Warboys nodded over her shoulder in the direction of the couple at the window. “Them two’s ‘ad the last bit.”
“But they’re the only others here.”
All the while keeping an eye on them, Jury smiled and sipped his wine, a bottle that Melrose had wrestled from Nathan’s stock. Everything that the Warboyses owned was considered their personal treasure, from the blind-eyed fox to the indifferent wine. “Toad-in-the-hole for me, Mrs. Warboys,” said Jury.
“Yessir.” She smoothed out her apron and her frown and nearly curtsied. Then she clutched the tray to her bosom and tramped off, some of the steam having decompressed.
“Toad-in-the-bloody-hofe? You’ll be sorry. It’s probably real.”
“Haven’t had any of that since my days in Good Hope.”
“Isn’t that the euphemism for that chilly institution you spent your childhood in? It’s always sounded to me like a Siberian winter.”
“It was.”
Since the kitchen door worked both ways, Mrs. Warboys’s exit provided for William’s entrance. He sped by the table. “You seen Sally?” he asked of them, though he’d never seen Jury until that moment. No, they hadn’t. “She’s gone and forgot the spuds for supper.” He wheeled away.
“Who’s Sally?”
“Another Warboys, the woods are full of them.” Melrose continued spooning up his soup.
Jury drank his wine. “Give me your impression of the Winslow family.”
“I don’t think David Marr has much of an alibi, to tell the truth.”
“There was a call; we traced it.”
“Yes, but there’s also an answering machine. Not even Telecom, incredibly efficient as it is when it comes to tracking down delinquent payments, could tell you who or what answered, could it? Only that a connection was made.”
Jury was silent for a minute. “And you think Marion Winslow is lying.”
Melrose shrugged. “Marion, David, Edward — they’d all lie for one another.”
“But if the telephone rang, someone would have heard it.”
“No. The servants were gone. You know, I was thinking —” He finished his soup and laid down his spoon. “— that alibis work two ways, don’t they?”
• • •
At that moment, Sally Warboys scudded across the dining room like gray clouds hurrying before a storm and carrying a brown bag full (Melrose supposed) of the dinner spuds. “Before the storm” was accurate, too, because her father rode fast on her heels, his arms windmilling, unmindful of his clientele. Sally smacked her way into the kitchen, and Nathan apparently didn’t think he needed to improve upon the bedlam (a thunderous fall of pans, a rain of cutlery), for he came straight out again. A dusty-looking cat just managed to flash its way through the door and around Nathan’s foot before it got mashed by one and kicked by the other. Melrose watched its lightning progress across the room and its skid to a stop by the arched doorway, where it hissed at the porcelain leopard that it had, apparently, never accepted as cousin.
“Here he comes; pretend we’re deep in our soup,” whispered Melrose to Jury.
Nathan Warboys wouldn’t have cared anyway, since he was not a thrifty speaker and demanded no payment in the coin of someone else’s comments. With his usual scowl he said, “I mean, I mean, look at ’er, would ya? ’Ow many men you got ’ere? I says to ’er. It’s a right treat, innit, and ’er out every night . . .”
Melrose tuned him out; Jury sat there all ears. Melrose wondered under what particular slag heap of Nathan’s conversation Jury expected to find the golden nugget. Around Jury a frozen spring became a waterfall, and Warboys was set to run like Niagara. Fortunately, the shrill brr-brr of the telephone called him to his duty.
His place was taken now by Sally Warboys, who dealt the dishes round like a card-sharp, knocking half the cutlery from the table before she slopped off to entertain further disasters.
“You were talking about Marr’s telephone call. Go on.” Jury forked up some potatoes.
“The call provides Marion Winslow with an alibi, too. The impression I got of her was fleeting. But even that left me with the feeling that she’s a determined woman. And Edward obviously thinks so, too, loyal as he is. Loyal as they all are to one another. Of course, I only saw her for a minute on the stair.” Melrose set down his wineglass and inspected his Bombay duck, poking it here and there with his fork. After a moment he said, “Did you notice the portrait of Edward’s wife?”
Jury nodded. “Mrs. Winslow said she kept it because of Phoebe. There’s no love lost between her and the ex-wife.” Jury pulled half of a sausage from the pastry blanket.
Melrose leaned over to look at Jury’s plate: “I don’t see why Mrs. Warboys had to waste the Yorkshire pudding on toad-in-the-hole.”
“How you do suffer. How’s your Bombay duck?”
“It walked from Bombay. You know, Rose’s leaving certainly wouldn’t sit well with the Winslow family. Neither would this duck.” He held up a morsel.
“Get back to the telephone call. When did she send the servants away?”
“I calculated it must have been the day of the murder.”
“But she wouldn’t have known her brother would call; the servants’ leaving wouldn’t have been planned because of a nonexistent telephone call.”
“Perhaps it was her intention to go to London without anyone knowing about it. Of course, she would turn on the answering machine. She certainly wouldn’t want any calls slipping through her fingers on that particular night. I mean, of course, if she hopped it to London. And since she often uses the machine when she’s in another part of the house, or napping, no one would question her not answering. Well?”
“There’s the same problem, the problem of motive. Why would she kill Ivy Childess?”
“Possibly, to protect one of them — David or Edward. That might be the only thing that would drive her to kill anyone.”
“Protect them from what, though?”
Melrose sighed. “You’re no fun.”
“But this is. Like the plum in the Christmas pud.” He speared the other half of the sausage and held it up on the tines of his fork. “I rather like your theory, except for something rather obvious.”
“I hope you’re not foolhardy enough to say things like that to Commander Macalvie. ‘Obvious,’ indeed!”
“Take the Beedles over there for example —”
“The who?” Melrose followed the direction of Jury’s gaze. The gentleman at the far table was seeing to his bill. “How’d you know their name?”
“Nathan Warboys. Weren’t you listening? I’ve been watching them and their extended silence. Marriage can be very relaxing, I think. No demands to make clever dinner conversation, for one —”
“Why don’t you settle down?” Melrose got out his cigarette case, took out a thin hand-rolled cigar, and snapped the case shut.
“I’m talking about the way things seem. Appearance can often be the truth. One needn’t interpret their silence as anger or
anything at all except a desire not to converse. Sheila Broome and the lorry driver, for instance. Why not assume that Sheila and the driver were acting quite naturally? The quintessential hitchhiker refusing to converse with the person who picks her up? And the telephone call that definitely was made, made by David, answered by Marion? And the servants going off to visit a sickbed because someone got sick on that weekend? The killer could have been a woman, yes, of course, and could have been Marion Winslow. But as I said, there’s still motive to consider.”
Melrose took from his pocket Edward Winslow’s book of poetry and handed it to Jury. “He’s quite good. You know, you say these two killings have one thing in common: the method. Garroted with their own scarves wound about their necks. It makes me think of Porphyria.”
“Porphyria?”
“Browning’s Porphyria: ‘ . . . Then glided in Porphyria.’ Her lover strangled her with her own hair.”
“That’s interesting. The Porphyria murders. Macalvie would like that; he’s big on repeat killings.” Jury checked his watch. “I’m due at the Winslows in a little while and then back to London. Come to London, why don’t you?”
Melrose shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.” He held up one of the two small photographs lying on the table, put that down, held up the other. He held it at arm’s length, drew it forward, held it out again. He scratched his head, grimacing. “That waitress at the Little Chef. Exactly what did she say when you showed her the newspaper clipping of David Marr?”
“It was Macalvie showed her. Mary Higgins said he — David, that is — looked familiar. So Macalvie had a good-looking dark-haired cop go in for a coffee, a man about the same height and build as Marr, and she said he looked familiar, too. Macalvie thinks she was trying too hard.”
Melrose picked up the picture of the Winslow family again. “It seems strange, though, this Little Chef business.”
“Strange, how?”
“Well, it’s unlikely the person who killed Sheila Broome would go in the cafe, isn’t it? But assume he did. This waitress, you said, or Macalvie said, was very observant. Spotting the lorry, the driver, the girl in the rain.” He shrugged. “It just seems odd she’d be so vague on the matter of identifying the picture, assuming, of course, there was something to identify. Perhaps, then, to her, it’s a bit of a blur. . . . I was going back to Northants tomorrow. But I think I might just go to Exeter, if that’s all right.”
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