The Horse You Came in On

by Martha Grimes

  “Ellen has done rather well for herself.”

  “I don’t know what you know about semiotics, Superintendent—”

  “Precious little.” Jury had plucked the brown book from the desk.

  “Ellen’s trouble is, she believes in words—”

  “Given her job, I’m not surprised.”

  “—and the trouble with readers is just that: they try to find the matrix, the clues to meaning. Deconstruction is the only viable—”

  “This yours?” Jury interrupted by flagging Vlasic down with Unleavened Crises.

  Vlasic looked extremely pleased. “You know what they say: ‘The novelist bows when the poet passes.’ ” He stuffed the pipe back in his mouth and aimed a flame-throwing lighter at it.

  “Yes,” said Jury, noncommittally. “Tell me, do you know a man named Patrick Muldare? He teaches here, doesn’t he?”

  “Ha! A dilettante if ever there was one. The only reason he’s permitted to teach here is because he’s given the university a considerable amount of money.” Vlasic pulled a catalog from his row of books, flipped through it, and handed it to Jury. “Can you imagine? A course in football?”

  Jury took the catalog, read the title, smiled. “Entertaining. Where can I get one of these?” He held up the catalog.

  “Keep it, keep it.”

  His eye on the two cartons of books under the desk, Jury asked, “Would it be too much of an imposition to ask for one of your books, Dr. Vlasic?”

  “No, no—delighted.” He pulled one from a box.

  “Autographed?”

  Vlasic signed the flyleaf with a huge flourish, as if his arm were unwinding: “VLASIC.”

  “I’m ever so grateful, thank you,” said Jury humbly. “You know, whether that Poe manuscript is genuine or not isn’t precisely the point in terms of its value to Beverly Brown. Or anyone in a similar position,” he added.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Well, it would be valuable to any scholar. Even if it’s not the real thing, a dissertation could be written taking it apart, breaking it down, and so forth. Disproving it would be nearly as much of a plum as proving it.” Jury picked up Unleavened Crises again, leafed through it. “I mean, say, for someone who might want to write a book exposing the fraud. Be a leg up for a career, wouldn’t it?”

  Vlasic made no comment.

  21

  “Beverly, Beverly, Bever—ummmm.”

  Owen Lamb talked like that. Proper names seemed to call up magical incantations, soughing off into mantra.

  He sat in his office at Johns Hopkins, surrounded by tiers of books, shelved and unshelved, some on his desk, most on the floor, engulfing his small frame. Professor Lamb had a short torso, and his red suspenders made it appear even shorter, as if they were yanking his waist up to mid-chest. His skin was fine and white, almost translucent, like old rice paper, and delicately webbed.

  “An awful thing—yes, awful.” He shook his head, scratched at his earlobe absently. “Have they found out anything yet?”

  “Detective Pryce is still investigating the death. Did you know her very well?”

  Lamb seemed to find this amusing. “I don’t know anyone very well. I keep pretty much to the books. Beverly did some work for me. She was a pleasant girl, extremely bright. Extremely.” He frowned, turning this assessment over. Then he leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. “As far as this alleged Poe manuscript is concerned, though, I consider it highly unlikely she could have written it.”

  “You think it’s genuine?”

  “I didn’t say that. Hell, no, I don’t think it’s genuine. Whole thing smacks of forgery, doesn’t it? Hard enough to forge his signature, much less an entire story.”

  Jury frowned. “But you’re contradicting yourself, Professor Lamb.”

  “Hmph! I am, I suppose. I simply mean, it seems utterly impossible.”

  “I’m not that familiar with the works of Poe, but it does have a kind of Poe-esque ring to it.”

  “Oh, but he’d be fairly simple to imitate in substance, wouldn’t he? I mean, as writers go? Let me tell you something about forgery, gentlemen: it’s not the substance, no, it’s the style. Difference between a forged and genuine document is nearly always with the form. Beginning with the handwriting.”

  “What about that?”

  “Inconclusive. But I’ll tell you something.” He stopped, he smiled, as if taking pleasure in a rather good trick. “Whoever wrote that script has awareness of an important concept: that writing has a certain rhythm, and the rhythm is nearly always destroyed by an amateur because an amateur depends upon visual input. That way, you get the kind of hesitating script that breaks the wave formation.”

  Wiggins looked confused. “Could you explain that a bit, sir?”

  “Sure, but first let me say, I’m not really that expert when it comes to handwriting. The reason I know anything at all is because, being a genealogist, I get a lot of documents in here to study, and I’ve seen quite a few forgeries. To really be conversant with handwriting, you have to understand anatomy: bone structure, complex of small bones of the hand and wrist. You have to know about ball-and-socket joints, about wrist pivot, that sort of thing. But going back to the wave formation thing—line movement, line quality, is very important. What you see almost all of the time is the natural, meaning smooth, uninterrupted flow of curves. Now, the more slowly the pen moves, the more disturbance you get in line quality. Try it yourself; just slow down your handwriting and you get the tremor, the hesitancy, the slight stutter. Letters are not discretely formed, see. That’s the way we formed them when we were small and just learning how to write. But now that we can write, our writing sets up a definite rhythm. The rhythm results in wave formation. Then there’s ‘monitoring’—something you can see in a forged document or signature. You can easily write your name with your eyes closed, correct? Not, though, if you’re forging a signature. You ‘monitor’ the letters—you look back and forth, back and forth.” Owen Lamb gave a self-deprecating little shrug. “However, someone a hell of a lot more knowledgeable than I will have to pass judgment on that document. As I said, my field of expertise extends more to documents trumped up by some charlatan selling aristocratic pedigree to some damned fool who wants to be related to Napoleon. Signatures, I suppose I’m pretty good on, but—” he stopped and shrugged—“occasionally, I get some bona fides that aren’t totally out in orbit.” He stopped again, frowning slightly. “I did a while ago, actually, from your country.”

  “There was a signature on that manuscript,” said Wiggins.

  “I must admit, it passed my cursory tests. That Poe signature appeared more as a pattern than as a string of letters, and it’s the string of letters you see in a forged signature. I didn’t detect the usual pauses, pen lifts, that sort of thing. But it won’t pass an expert’s scrutiny, I’m sure.” He laughed. “You don’t think a bunch of crusty old experts are going to let her get away with such an outlandish attempt? A mere schoolgirl putting it over on the academic community!”

  “Chatterton did.” Jury saw himself in the Tate once more. The mental image saddened him. “Or would have done.”

  “You’re right there. And just look at Walpole’s reaction when he discovered he’d been had.”

  “And she was hardly a ‘schoolgirl,’ Professor Lamb. Twenty-eight and working on her Ph.D.” He did not think Beverly Brown should be dismissed so summarily. “And if the document passed your examination, why are you so sure it’s a forgery?”

  “Oh, I’m not. I’m merely prejudiced against its being genuine. It seems so unlikely. According to Dr. Vlasic, who brought it to my attention, Beverly Brown found it in a trunk. Really, now.” He shook his head.

  Jury smiled. It was the same thing Melrose Plant had said.

  “What about paper, ink, that sort of thing? Wouldn’t it be difficult to find paper made at that time?”

  “Oh, yes. But not impossible. Forgers sometimes use flyleaves from old volumes.”
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  “But here we’re talking about more than a single page. That would take a number of volumes, all with the same sort of paper.”

  Owen Lamb thought for a moment. “It’s possible she might have come across stock from a paper mill operating at that time. Perhaps one in Britain. The ink she used—I’m assuming she wrote the manuscript, now, understand—doesn’t look to me like an example of the really old stuff. The ink on those pages has that brackish, purplish tinge you see on forged documents. And ink before about the middle of the last century would show evidence of corrosion because of the iron in it. This alleged Poe manuscript doesn’t. But with someone as resourceful as Beverly Brown—” here he smiled a little—“she probably would have gone to a great deal of trouble to find the right equipment. Who knows?” He shrugged. “Maybe she found a batch of antique paper and got ideas.”

  “Did she ever talk to you about her friends?”

  “Oh, possibly. But I didn’t listen.” Behind his thick spectacles, his eyes swam and darted. He wiped his hand down over his face, readjusting the gogglelike glasses.

  “What sort of work did Beverly Brown do for you, Professor Lamb?”

  His chair creaked forward and gently disturbed a stack of books by one of the legs. Dust rose and settled again. “She was helping me with the index for my book,” he explained, pinching the bridge of his nose and again resettling his glasses. He waved his arm toward the shelf to his right. “Indexes are boring. She’s probably the only person around who’s dipped into the infrastructure of one of these centuries-old families be sides me. History and literature were her subjects.” He scratched his balding head and asked Jury: “Who’s head of the department these days?”

  Jury smiled. “I wouldn’t know, Professor. I’m from Scotland Yard.”

  Owen Lamb began rocking in his swivel chair, spinning his thumbs around each other. “Beverly used to chatter away about E.A. Poe. Some sort of nonsense dealing with the Poe arcana—perhaps it was his family, I don’t know. I don’t care too much for Poe, do you? All of that Gothic stuff. Beverly seemed to like it, though. Anyway, she wanted me to help her with someone’s lineage—you know, the family tree stuff. Chic, nowadays. I told her I was a genealogist, not a family historian. I get a lot of requests from these DAR types wanting to know if their great-great-great-aunties had ever consorted with George Washington.”

  “Do you remember who the ‘someone’ was? The person whom Beverly Brown was interested in tracing?”

  Lamb waved his hand dismissively. “Beverly spent a good deal of time rummaging through Poe’s ancestors. She had a good mind for genealogy—which is unusual for an intellectual. Perhaps she stumbled on one of them whom she thought important—I don’t know. One of the Clemms, maybe.”

  Wiggins turned from the chart on the wall, a complex charting of ancestry. “This is interesting, sir. Mark Twain is a distant relation of the Princess of Wales.”

  “Everyone’s related to the Princess of Wales. Even that bum the police found in Cider Alley is probably related to the Princess of Wales.” Owen Lamb looked at the chart. “Thirteenth cousin isn’t much of a relationship, is it?”

  Wiggins had a way of attaching himself to the working life of witnesses; it was either as if he had always wanted to do what they were doing, or as if they possessed some power and wisdom that would save him from some future debacle. He stood there in front of the chart pinned to the bulletin board, rocking on the balls of his feet, and said, “One of my own ancestors was a genealogist and sociologist, I recall.”

  “Really?” asked Lamb.

  “Yes, sir. Now I think of it, I believe he was titled. Family name was spelled differently. W-I-G-H-A-N, or something like that. He chronicled the plague, too, as I remember. Like Defoe. He was a . . . viscount? No, a baron. That’s it. Baron Tweedears. D’ya know, I’d all but forgotten that!” Wiggins smiled broadly, obviously happy he’d remembered it now.

  Jury’s eyes widened. Tweedears? He was always surprised when one of his sergeant’s relations popped up, usually out of the blue of conversations such as this one; Wiggins was himself the sort of person one always thought was travelling light, as it were, without benefit of family. Jury knew he had a sister in Manchester, but that was more or less the extent of family. Nor was it surprising that Wiggins would have some distant kinship with the Black Death.

  And although it was never Wiggins’s intention to exact an answer from a witness by showing interest in his line of work, this was sometimes the happy result. The fact was, people often forgot Wiggins was a policeman because the sergeant seemed to forget it himself.

  Owen Lamb was running his finger across a row of shelved books, all with forbidding black bindings. “Tweedears, Tweedears.” No expert, not even one as modest and unpretentious as Owen Lamb appeared to be, wants to admit ignorance in his field or be bested by an amateur. He pulled down a musty volume, wet his finger, and riffled the pages, damply. “Ah! Here we are!”

  “ ‘Tweedears,

  “ ‘Sir Eustace Wickens of Ranesley, County Mayo, son of Avery D., by Mary, da.—’ ” Wiggins looked a question at Owen Lamb.

  “Daughter,” said Lamb.

  “ ‘. . . daughter of Fitz-Hugh of Aintree, nephew and h.—’ H?”

  “Heir,” said Lamb. “Here, let me.

  “ ‘Nephew and heir male of Eustace Lord Leith, born about 1545, sole heir to said uncle in family estates, 9 April 1570, was created a baronet, county Banff, and subsequently, 21 May 1579, was created Baron Tweedears—’ et cetera, et cetera—let’s get to something inter—ah! ‘In 1580 joined in conspiracy to place the Queen of Scots on English and Irish throne and was—outlawed—’ ”

  Wiggins took an involuntary step backwards.

  “ ‘—and his title forfeited.’ His brothers apparently took part in this rebellion. They were attainted, too. Then we get a lot of barons de jure—third baron, de jure; fourth baron, de jure; fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. . . . There we get ‘James Arundel Wickens, Gentleman of Bedchamber, died after casual encounter with prostitute—’ not the happiest marriage of events, hey?—‘on whose death lands regranted by patent 1 October 1790;’ then Aubrey, ‘title and land regranted by letters patent, 1790, died 1804 following casual encounter with prostitute, and consequent duel.’ Well! Title attainted once again, good grief, just for a casual encounter and duel? Seems rather hard on the fellow. ‘Succeeded by son—’ this is your guy, isn’t it?—‘Elphinstone Fitz-Hugh Wickens, spelling changed to Wiggens, distinguished genealogist and writer on heraldic subjects, ninth baron de jure’!” Then Owen Lamb snapped the book shut. “How about that, Sergeant?”

  Wiggins was speechless. “Pardon me, but does that mean . . . ?”

  “You’re Baron Tweedears? Possibly de jure. We’ve only just got through the ninth baron and you don’t know but what the title might be in abeyance, dormant, forfeited again between the ninth and whatever the last baron—you? I’ll have to check my Cockayne. Haven’t you ever looked in Burke’s Peerage, Mr. Wiggins?”

  Wiggins was looking nowhere but at the copier over in the corner beneath a window. “I was wondering, sir—could I just make a copy of that page?”

  “Be my guest. But what about your father, Sergeant?”

  “What about him?”

  Lamb blew air through his nostrils, dragon-wise. “That’s what I asked you, isn’t it? Didn’t he ever say anything about this lineage?”

  “No, sir. He didn’t. Never knew, I expect.” The light flashed in the Xerox machine, scanning the page.

  “Give the book here when you’re through.”

  Wiggins handed it to him, and Lamb flipped through the pages again. He smiled. “I forgot your coat of arms. Here it is:

  ‘Argent a bear rampant and lion displayed gules. Crest: Burning bush proper. Supports: Dexter, a swan; sinister, a fish, scaled.’ ”

  Wiggins beamed.

  Jury sighed. Alfred Edward Wiggins, Baron Tweedears. God.

  A title to kill for.
r />   22

  “It’s ridiculous, of course,” said Wiggins, but the rather elaborate way in which he touched his tie and raised his glass, as if he were toasting his ancestors, suggested he thought it was anything but.

  The four of them had enjoyed an excellent meal, consisting largely of mussels (“with sand,” said Melrose), at Bertha’s, and they were now gathered in the Horse You Came In On at the same table they had occupied the evening before.

  “A peer of the realm! Imagine!” said Melrose.

  “It’d be a turnup for the book as far as Chief Superintendent Racer is concerned, wouldn’t it, sir?” Wiggins said to Jury. “Go spare, he will, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “He’ll go spare, all right,” said Jury, thinking that if there were any going spare to be done, he, Jury, might be the first one to do it. Baron Tweedears—good God! “Your guvnor’ll likely put a gun to his head. We might finally get rid of him.” Jury was carefully arranging the manuscript pages Ellen had handed him.

  Melrose had complained that it was his turn to read; Ellen said no, it wasn’t, the superintendent hadn’t finished what he’d started yesterday; Melrose said this was a fresh batch of pages; Wiggins questioned Melrose about the Ardry-Plant coat of arms; and so on and so forth.

  Jury let them quarrel for a few moments and then hushed them with a look and a rustle of pages and said, “Another letter.”

  Madam,

  I was not long in the company of M. P—— on that evening before I was made aware of his acute distress of mind, as he recounted to me his strange story. I, lost in my contemplation of this odd Perspective induced (or so surely I thought it must be) by the aromatic oils, bade him continue.

  “This affliction—for I cannot call it an illness—”

  Wiggins interrupted. “I wonder if this is what we call ‘essential oils’ this ‘Hilaire P.’ has got going.”

  Jury cut him off from speculating on a fresh cure for something—anything. “I don’t call it anything, Wiggins. Just listen.”

  “This affliction—for I cannot call it an illness—was a faintness, a shortness of breath, but was so disabling that I took at once to my bed until it might give over its hold on me. And so I lay in a fitful doze off and on and into the early morning—awakening at last to the sharp sound of a cry from below. It appeared to come from some point beneath my window. Still drowsy from the effects of the cordial I had taken to allay the dizziness that had so swiftly overtaken me and that I had hoped would assist my slumbers, I rose to investigate the source of the disturbance.