“Anyone at the ball could have been the dreadful Madame Vronsky.”
Her eyes opened wide. “What ball?”
“The fancy dress ball.”
“You didn’t say there was a fancy dress ball.”
In his mind, he had seen the sleigh pull up at a huge stone mansion from which music floated. Balalaikas. Clear as crystal. “Sorry. Well, it was going on when our sleigh pulled up at the house. A big house.”
“Have you got to Georgia by now?” She seemed very forgiving of his springing this ball on her, especially as it followed on the heels of the trot.
“No. We were near the steppes.”
“Of the house?”
“No, no. The Russian steppes. You know.” Of course she didn’t; neither did he. That was Siberia, anyway, wasn’t it?
“This house was very grand. It had its own stables, even its own chapel. Julie slipped away from the ball, evading Rudolf—he was one of the sons of this wealthy family, and she was having a bad time of it with him. He was actually a count and she was engaged to him. But she didn’t want to marry him. Anyway, she told me she had slipped away from him and that she had to meet someone outside by the chapel. I stood on the terrace watching as her white cloak disappeared around the little path that circled the chapel.” Melrose heard the dozen long-case clocks chime. It was eleven o’clock! He’d been here well over an hour. “And that’s when I heard the shot.”
Jip jumped slightly. “What shot? What happened?”
“Rudolf had followed her. He shot Julie.”
“No!” In her distress she upset the plate of Oreos. Her tone was full of bitter disappointment when she said, “That’s not fair.”
“Life,” said Melrose sententiously, “isn’t fair. That’s just in books.” But her face had paled so much and her amber eyes were full of such distress, he added quickly, “She didn’t die, for heaven’s sake.”
Jip turned her head and the colors of the Tiffany shade washed over her hair. She put the hat back on, as if she wanted the big brim to hide her. Then she lowered her head, pleated her skirt with her fingers. Her voice, when she spoke, sounded strained. “I thought it was like that girl in the churchyard.”
The mood had changed considerably. Perhaps it was simply the fact of the unseen dangers that one had to face that upset her. “The girl in the churchyard.” He sat down again and asked for another cup of tea. “I understand someone visits the grave of Edgar Allan Poe every year. And takes brandy or champagne and some flowers.”
She nodded. The big hat seemed too heavy now for her head. “My aunt thinks he’s crazy. I don’t think he is. I think it’s very nice to visit somebody’s grave and drink champagne. It means you’re not forgotten.” Her tone and glance suggested she herself might have been.
“It certainly does,” said Melrose. “It certainly does. Though Poe would not be forgotten, anyway, would he? Because of his writing.”
“It’s not the same.” She picked up her cup, didn’t drink, set it down. “What happened to Julie?”
“She married a corsair. They live in Minsk. This trunk that the young woman purchased—did you ever look inside the trunk after Beverly Brown bought it?”
“But she was shot!”
“Not fatally. Did you look inside the trunk?”
She chewed her lip, debating her answer. “Will you tell anyone?” She had risen to lift the shawl from the bird cage. Squawk.
“Tell? No. I can keep a secret.” Melrose was sure that she knew something.
“No, you can’t.”
“What?”
She resat herself and inspected the small pillar of ruined Oreo biscuits. “You weren’t supposed to tell anyone Julie’s secret.”
Julie’s secret? What was—oh, drat! He searched for an explanation for his betrayal of Julie. “Not while she was alive, I wasn’t.”
“She is. She married somebody and lives in Minsk.”
Melrose racked his brain. Then he smiled. “Not she, Julie—she, Madame Vronsky. Whose husband Julie killed accidentally. Probably Julie worried that Madame Vronsky might seek revenge.” How he could pull chestnuts out of the fire!
Jip appeared to be chewing this bit of information over with one of the discarded chocolate biscuits.
And Melrose returned to the secret he had sworn himself to keep. “Tell me about this trunk.”
Suspicion of his methods seemed to fight with regard for this romantic stranger. “I wasn’t supposed to look in it, but I did. It was full of old clothes like petticoats and blouses that were stained, and a lot of them torn. Why would anyone want them, I wonder? There were just a lot of old clothes and some sheets and stuff and a few books.”
“Did you see this so-called Poe story in it?”
She frowned. “I don’t remember. There were pages of writing, and old books that looked like the sort we keep records in—” here she looked back towards the counter—“but I don’t remember anything else.” She shrugged.
Jip didn’t seem to feel there was anything odd in his asking all these questions about Beverly Brown and the suspect manuscript. “And she took the trunk and all of its contents?”
She nodded. “What I wonder is, why didn’t she just take all the stuff out of the trunk if the trunk was what she wanted. It took her and the cab driver and me to carry it out to her car, it was so heavy. Why did she leave all the old clothes in it? A lot of people have bought trunks and they just ask to take the stuff out. It’s the trunk they want.”
“That’s an excellent point.” Unless you didn’t know what story you were going to tell about exactly where this manuscript was located. Melrose got up from his bench. “I must go, Jip. I shall be late for my appointment.”
As she herself rose, she asked, “But what about Julie? You never finished.”
“Ah, yes. Well, don’t worry. I’ll return and finish the story.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll try, yes.”
“You’re forgetting your book!” she called after him.
That old thing. He went back to the counter, collected the volume she’d wrapped, and as the little bell jangled when he opened the door, he heard the cry behind him: “Eh-more.”
He wondered what would have happened to poor Poe’s career if he’d chosen a macaw instead of a raven.
14
Melrose returned to his room at the Admiral Fell Inn to collect his Strangers’ Guide and his copy of Windows and then went in search of a cab. He was not to meet Ellen at Hopkins until around two, and he thought he might as well do a little sightseeing. Jury was in Philadelphia, and Wiggins was roaming around at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, probably getting inoculated.
No cabs passed. Finally, he came upon a black one sitting at the corner, the cabbie reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette. Melrose tapped on the windowpane with his walking stick and the cabbie rolled down the window and squinted out at him.
“Yo.”
“Are you off duty?”
“Just reading the sports. Where you want to go?”
“Actually, I have an hour or more and I’d like to see Baltimore. I thought perhaps I could do it by cab. Do you have a spare hour or two?” Melrose checked his watch. “I don’t have to be at my destination until one-thirty or two. Johns Hopkins. That would be my last stop.”
“Okay by me. I just flip on the old meter and away we go.”
Melrose asked, as he positioned himself in the rear seat, “You’re familiar with Baltimore, I expect?”
The cabbie snorted and pulled away from the curb. “Been hacking for thirty years, buddy. If I ain’t now, I never will be.” He wrenched his neck around to regard Melrose over his outflung arm. “You ain’t from around here. I can tell by the accent.”
“British.”
“Thought so. I never been to England. Always wanted to go. I got a cousin lives over there. In Cornwall. You been to Cornwall?”
“Oh, yes. It’s beautiful.” Melrose pulled out Ellen’s book and sat back
. His plan to continue with Windows as they drove along was very soon nipped in the bud by the cabbie, who started talking about himself and told Melrose his name was Hugh, “but everybody calls me Hughie.”
Hughie was a square, squat man with a round, rather shiny face partly hidden by a cap of black and green plaid with ear flaps. His quilted shirt was of a similar material. Melrose was very soon apprised of Hughie’s hacking history, the number in Hughie’s large family, and their whereabouts across the United States from the Dakotas to Wilmington, Delaware. There was even a cousin who lived in England. The tour was turning out to be a voyage around Hughie.
“Lives in some little place called Mousehole. It’s on the water.”
“I’ve heard it’s charming.”
“I seen pictures. Always wanted to go. Which part you from?”
“Northamptonshire. About a hundred miles northwest of London.”
“Guess I never heard of that. No, I lived in Baltimore, man and boy, fifty-nine years.”
Melrose smiled at the pronunciation. But it was all part of the same thing, wasn’t it? Constant usage had worn the sharp edges from the syllables, eliding “Bal-ti-more” to “Bawlmer” and “Mousehole” to “Mowsel.”
“You couldn’t do better than me. Been hacking for a good thirty of them fifty-nine years.” He proceeded to bring Melrose up to date on most of those fifty-nine years. His wife was dead; his daughter lived in Towson.
“What’s that monument, there?” They were driving along Pratt Street, and Melrose craned his neck, watching it go past his window.
“That? Naw, you don’t want to see that. There’s lots better along Fayette Street.”
“Perhaps, but we aren’t on Fayette Street,” said Melrose, quickly flicking through his Strangers’ Guide. He could not find whatever they had just passed.
“You got your Aquarium, you got your Harborplace, you got your H. L. Mencken house, your Babe Ruth birthplace—I guess everybody’s heard of the Babe. He’s the only player in baseball history ever got an intentional walk with the bases loaded. Then there’s Lexington Market. And you got to see the new ballpark at Camden Yards. Man, what a stadium! One hundred million bucks that cost, that’s what I heard. Orioles play there. There’ll be a new football stadium, too, if we ever get the fucking franchise. Excuse the French. We oughta be in line for it. Hey, there’s your Aquarium! You gotta go in there. We could stop, you want to.”
Melrose said no, not today, and Hughie shrugged. Then he pointed out the ship docked on the far side. “Now, that’s your USF Constitution. First ship ever in the U.S. Navy, and fought in the Revolutionary War. You ought to go on board it sometime.”
As they turned up Charles Street, Melrose leafed quickly through his guide in earnest. The tranquil ship they had just passed wasn’t the Constitution but the Constellation. And it wasn’t the Revolutionary War but the Civil War in which it had seen action. He started to say something, but Hughie was now on the subject of the last presidential election.
At the top of Charles Street, Hughie pulled over and parked in the square, where one of the monuments he considered worth seeing sat. Monument Square, Hughie told him it was called. It was a pretty, well-kept little square and the monument to George Washington sat in the center of it. “First monument to George in the U.S. of A. This was before the one in D.C.” General Washington stood atop a beautiful marble shaft. “Over two hundred steps, but a great view of the city. You want to go up? I’ll wait.”
Melrose declined; he was too busy checking out Hughie’s information. It was correct—so far. They both stood looking upwards at the statue, where the sculptor had depicted Washington in the act of signing or handing over something.
Hughie said in a rather reverential tone, “Signing the Declaration of Independence.” He stamped his foot hard, several times, on the ground. “There’s a couple hundred Civil War soldiers buried right here in this quarter-acre.”
Melrose was riffling the pages. “Wait a minute. You’re confusing Washington and Jefferson, aren’t you? And are you sure you don’t mean the Revolutionary War?”
Hughie mumbled something about hair-splitting, and they both climbed back into the cab.
“But the monument,” said Melrose, determined to explode this mine of misinformation, “is to General Washington.”
“You got it,” said Hughie cheerfully as he slammed down on the gear shift. “Where to now?”
“Westminster Church.” Melrose sighed.
As they drove on towards the church, Hughie started talking about Napoleon’s brother. “Married a Baltimore gal, no kidding.”
Napoleon’s brother. Melrose’s finger itched for a gun.
“Got his button caught in her lace dress. I wonder—” Hughie was driving with his arm slung across the back of the seat, and now he turned his head and added “—where the button was.” He laughed hysterically, just managing to veer out of the way of a huge semi.
The driver of the big truck, a black man about the size of the Redskins’ wide receiver, leaned on his horn, which only prompted Hughie to roll down his window and yell, “Get a life, asshole!”—which further incited the truck driver to mouth, from behind his own window, “FUCK YOU.” Now, having improved road and race relations, Hughie aimed to run a yellow light like a charging bull as it turned red.
He grumbled about the drivers, about the glutted Baltimore streets, about hacking in general. “Aw, it’s a job,” he exclaimed with disgust, with a wave towards Melrose in the back, as if Melrose had been arguing with him. “So what do you do?” he asked.
“ ‘Do’?”
“Yeah. For a living. You don’t mind my saying it, you sure don’t look like you’re hurting.” He was half turned in his seat as the cab idled at the next light, giving Melrose’s cashmere coat, his silk scarf, his Egyptian cotton shirt the once-over.
“I’m one of the idle rich.”
Hughie laughed. “Hey, lucky you, right? You got one of them stately homes my cousin says she’s always touring through?”
“Yes.” He turned the page of his Strangers’ Guide, following the little family in their walk round Monument Square. They hadn’t been much help.
“You a lord or a duke or one of them? You got a title?”
“Well, ‘lord’ isn’t really a title; it’s more of a form of address. But I am one, yes. Or used to be.” Ordinarily, Melrose avoided this subject of his orphaned titles, but he thought Hughie would get a kick out of it.
“Naaaaaw! You’re pulling my leg.”
“No. Earl of Caverness, that’s me. And Viscount Ardry, and other things to boot. But I gave them up, the titles.” He snapped shut his book, watched the panoply of crowded little shops going by.
“No kidding?” There was a brief silence while Hughie mulled this over. “So how come you gave them up?”
“Oh. Didn’t want a title, I expect.” Melrose was sorry he’d brought it up.
Hughie chortled. “You afraid your relatives will ice you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“See, I’m kind of a student of history. These Delawares, what happened was, the nephew murdered one of his uncles to get the title, and it turns out the asshole, pardon my French, kills the wrong uncle. Can you beat that?” Hughie laughed uproariously. “Well, I guess that kind of thing happens all the time over there.”
“I don’t think so. Where is Westminster Church, anyway?”
“Not far. Listen, you know what happened there—I mean, near Poe’s grave?” Melrose said he didn’t. “Girl was murdered a week ago. Christ. Can you feature it?”
“I believe I read about it.”
“Black kid, Hopkins student. Probably raped, but the cops, they don’t tell you much.”
Melrose wondered if he might actually know something helpful. “What did they—?”
But Hughie, never topic-less, was on to another. He said, again over his shoulder, “I just remembered: you seen Diner?”
“Seen what?”
�
��It’s a movie. Diner. You want to know about Baltimore, you should see it. This guy, this director, he’s from Baltimore, and he’s made these movies all about it. Tin Men is the second one. Diner’s got Mickey Rourke in it. Danny DeVito, he’s in Tin Men. It’s all about aluminum-siding guys—you know, how they sell it and all.”
“Sounds exciting,” said Melrose, turning a page of Windows.
“It’s a trilogy. What’s the third one?” Hughie hit his palm against the wheel in an effort of remembrance. “The hell’s that last one? Anyway, this director’s got a real thing about Baltimore. What’s his name?” Hughie was mumbling to himself.
Melrose sighed. Another trilogy. Life was taking on a definite triad-ish look.
• • •
Westminster Church was a not-very-attractive pile of brown bricks located on a corner near the vast Lexington Market. Its little graveyard lacked that sense of the past to be found in English churchyards. Here there were no listing gravestones bound with vines or trailing ivy, no mounds fattened with spongy mosses.
Although there was a handsome monument to Edgar Allan Poe near the front of the churchyard, the actual gravesite was located down the path and near the back. It was here that Melrose and Hughie stood looking down at the slightly sunken ground and the grave bedecked with a bouquet of plastic pink flowers. Where, Melrose wondered, were the roses? He thought it a bit sad.
“Avalon!” said Hughie suddenly, snapping his fingers.
“What?”
“That movie. You know, the one I was trying to think of. The third movie by that director that I can’t remember his name. Avalon is his third one. See, it was all about this family of immigrants—I guess that was the director’s family, maybe his granddad and so forth.”
“Avalon was the island limbo of King Arthur,” said Melrose.
“That what it is over there? Well, over here it’s a movie.”
As Hughie filled him in on the history of the immigrant family, Melrose studied the poet’s grave and wondered about Beverly Brown. He turned and walked slowly back down the path that led around the church and to Poe’s monument. Hughie followed, talking all the while. Finished with his movie-trilogy commentary, he would now treat Melrose to a helping of his forensic genius. “That kid that got killed must’ve been lying here,” said Hughie, spreading his arms to measure off a segment of pavement near the white marble monument. “See that gutter there? That’s where they found the body.” He encased his thick neck in his two hands to simulate the act of strangulation.
The Horse You Came in On Page 12