The Horse You Came in On

by Martha Grimes

  Melrose frowned. God, Jury wasn’t enamored of this Lady Kennington, was he? Was he going to get himself into one more romantic mess? Melrose fiddled with a jabot he had hitched on and thought about Ellen. About Ellen, he could not help but feel protective. And he had to admit, she didn’t waste words—certainly not in her writing. Was that the appeal of the story of Sweetie? That it was so spare? Poor Ellen. Poor? How could a person with a mind such as hers possibly be “poor”? God, but he could be patronizing. He had moved in his weighty garments to the table with the stereopticon, his mind having registered that the voice no longer spoke from the shadows, and he thought he remembered hearing a rustle and a creak and a fragile movement of the beaded curtain, so the Black Aunt had perhaps left the room.

  He remembered a passage from Windows as he slotted a picture of the St. James Hotel into the holder and, looking at it, wondered if it had been around in Poe’s day. He thought, how baroque was the style of the Poe story by comparison with Ellen’s style. Violette indeed. And yet . . . incredible as it seemed, and as much as he agreed with the curator, still it was possible, wasn’t it? Possible, yes, but highly improbable. Melrose lowered the stereopticon.

  He looked around the room, wondering what it was that was tickling at his mind like something was tickling at his chin. He brushed it away. The bird croaked “Eh-more!” and Melrose slid another double picture into the stereopticon. The little gathering at the railroad station. The same people, in the next picture, climbing down from the horse-drawn cab . . . and he started wondering, then, what had happened to Edgar Poe after he’d emerged from a similar cab on that night that he’d died (or nearly done) that no one could really account for. Here was the lobby of the St. James, the potted palms, the long runners of Oriental carpeting; next, the dining room that flooded him with nostalgia. He sighed. “I got the doin’s! I got the doin’s!” Melrose pictured Estes clapping his hand to his heart, in imitation of John-Joy. Had there been something, then, in a pocket? The breast pocket of a shirt or a jacket?

  Melrose turned the wooden handle idly and thought about John-Joy’s coat. What would the police have done with the clothes? Would they have inspected everything? Would they have looked in all of the pockets?

  “You look lovely.”

  Melrose whirled around. He hadn’t heard the door open.

  Jury and Wiggins stood there regarding him. He came out of his partial fugue state and realized he was fiddling with a feather boa. Quickly, he went to the pier glass and saw that he had donned not only the boa but a Spanish shawl of red silk and a tall jeweled turban made of cloth of gold. Hell’s bells.

  “Couple of bars around here that might suit you,” said Jury. “But not the Horse, if you know what I mean.”

  Tossing off the turban, the shawl, and the boa as quickly as was humanly possible, Melrose said, “I’m buying myself some vintage clothing.” He kept his tone as cold as he could and pulled the evening cape back off the hanger.

  “Definitely you,” said Jury.

  “All of this was necessary to get some information from the denizens of Cider Alley, in case you’re wondering.”

  “You were in Cider Alley, were you? Did you get any information?”

  “A bit. What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to talk to the little girl.”

  “Jip? I expect she’s in the back. The aunt was out here.”

  Melrose brought his palm down on the bell on the counter.

  “What happened to your own clothes? Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “I gave them away. Here’s Jip.”

  Jury looked at the little girl who parted the bead curtain. She was very pretty, beautiful even, with skin tinted the color of shell, pearlescent in the reflected light of the Tiffany lamp. Her hair was reddish brown. The curtain fell behind her with a windchimey tinkle.

  “May I help—oh, hello!” She smiled at Melrose. “I didn’t recognize you in that.”

  “No, well, your aunt thought I looked quite elegant. I think I’ll just have this, then. It seems to be—” Melrose squinted at the tag—“seventy-five dollars. I don’t know what my friend wants.” Melrose walked away, back to the cart that he’d stashed in amongst the clothes and rugs.

  “Present,” said Jury, smiling down at Jip. “For a friend of mine, a young lady.”

  Jip said nothing, just nodded.

  “Something really colorful. But I don’t know what. Clothes? Jewelry?” He bent over the glass case. For a long time he studied the rings and necklaces, the semiprecious stones. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Got any ideas?” On a shelf behind her sat a row of dolls, all looking a bit worn and dusty, a rather international set, for each was dressed in elaborate costume. “Those are nice, those dolls.”

  Jip scratched at her elbow and looked up there with him. She appeared to have had an inspiration. “Does she like dolls?”

  “I expect so.” The girl looked so eager that he hated to say, No, she’s too old.

  “The reason I wondered is, I’ve got a Barbie I’ll sell cheap. And that’s really American. The reason I’m selling it is I’m saving for a new one.”

  “Okay, let’s see it.”

  She was back through the curtain and in less than a minute back again at the counter with the doll. The doll had bright copper-colored hair and was dressed in some sort of western outfit—ten-gallon hat, embroidered shirt, even a lasso.

  “The new ones do all sorts of things. I’d like either the rock star one or the mermaid. The mermaid’s hair turns different colors when you put water on it.”

  “Incredible. But this one just sort of sits there.”

  Her saddened expression told him yes, this was unfortunately so. “But she’s in mint condition.”

  Jury smiled. A term learned no doubt from her aunt and the business. “How much do you want for this one?”

  “Is five dollars too much?” Her tone was tentative.

  “I wouldn’t think so. Tell you what, if she’s got a change of clothes, I’ll make it ten.”

  Sadly, the light went out in her eyes as she shook her head. Was the deal now scotched?

  “Not to worry,” said Jury, letting his eye travel over the row of dolls on the shelf behind her. He caught sight of a male doll, probably meant to resemble some Arabian princeling, as it was dressed in balloon pants and a scarlet vest and holding a scimitar. “See that one? Bring him down a moment.”

  Side by side, the dolls looked approximately the same size. “Think his clothes will fit her?”

  Enthusiastically and without embarrassment, Jip stripped Barbie’s breasts of their embroidered shirt and exchanged the jeans for the filmy trousers. “Even trade.”

  They both contemplated the newly fitted-out dolls. Jury rather liked the olive-skinned, mustachioed Arabian dressed in the Wild West outfit. The copper-haired, blue-eyed Barbie was, like Carole-anne, in mint condition. “What she needs now is a headdress.” Jury pulled over the box of handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, headbands, and pulled out a gold lamé collar, probably once the adornment of a dressy frock. “Now if this were just cut up a bit—wait.” He moved across the room to where Melrose sat amidst the vintage clothes and surrounded by the contents of the wire basket, inspecting a brown suit jacket with shiny lapels. On the floor lay an old army blanket, another blanket of some Indian pattern, a pair of striped trousers (that didn’t match the jacket), some T-shirts, books, shoes missing their heels.

  Jury lifted the bejeweled turban from the hat rack and said, “If you’ve quite finished with this . . . ?”

  • • •

  Ha ha, thought Melrose, pulling a face at Jury’s departing back and returning to his inspection of the brown jacket. Nothing in the breast pocket. There’d been nothing in the trouser pockets either, nor the plaid shirt.

  Melrose raised the books, one after another, held spine side up and gave each a shake. Nothing fluttered out. He turned over the one in his hands—a largish, thin volume that looked like an old hotel register, date
s back in the 1700s. How had the man ever come into possession of this? Not a hotel register; more like an old church register. He put it aside to look at later and opened the next book.

  “Like this one,” said Jury, looking at the turban on the counter. “I’ll be glad to pay you, say, another five dollars to make a turban for her. That’s fifteen dollars altogether.”

  Jip said she was good with a needle and thread and could cut up and sew the turban first thing this evening. “But you can take the Barbie doll with you now.” She reached behind the counter for tissue.

  “Oh, I’ll just wait till you’ve finished.”

  Jip looked back at the bead curtain, anxiously. “I think you should take her.”

  Of course, the exchange of clothes hadn’t been blessed by the aunt, and he wondered if he should not just buy both dolls in case there was trouble.

  But she assured him it would be all right. If her aunt noticed and said something, well, she had the extra five he’d paid for the clothes. Then she set about with the tissue paper, wrapping the doll. She said, “I used to live in England.”

  “Did you? You know, you’ve got a bit of an accent.”

  She didn’t respond, just pasted a square of Scotch tape over the folded end of the tissue.

  “How long has it been since you were there?”

  Jip thought for a moment. “Five years, I think. I was five. Or maybe six. It might have been six years.”

  “When I was six, there was a war on. That was a long time ago, of course. But I’ll never forget it. Because of the bombs.”

  She looked up at him, anxious. “Did they fall on you?”

  “On all of us in London. A lot of us kids were evacuated, sent to live with people out in the country.”

  Her hands stopped on the taped package and she kept her eyes down.

  “It was a bad time.”

  “Who did you live with?” She asked this carefully.

  “A family in Somerset. A long way away.”

  Her glance kept straying towards the shop windows in front. Jury finally turned to see what she was looking at; there was a heavyset girl out there looking in. Jury frowned. A chum? A school chum, perhaps. But she did not look chummy, not with that expression on her face.

  When he looked again at Jip, he saw her eyes were down now, intent upon the package, or seemingly so. Her face was flushed, a scarlet mottling of the clear skin.

  “Friend of yours?” he asked.

  She shook her head. Then nodded it, slowly. “Her name’s Mary Ann. She’s in my school.” Her voice was unhappy.

  Jury considered Mary Ann for a few moments and then said, “When I was in Somerset my mother wasn’t with me. Of course, I had to go to school; there was never any getting out of school. And it’s even worse in a new place. Being the new kid in school is always hard.”

  “I hate school.” Again the glance flicked towards the front of the shop. Then she relaxed a bit. Jury turned to look out of the window. The girl was standing stock still. “Well, I especially hated this one in Somerset, because there was a bully—”

  A voice behind Jury, Melrose Plant’s, asked, “What about his clothes? Did that detective you were seeing check out his clothes?”

  “John-Joy’s? Yes. There was nothing. Why? What should he have been searching for?”

  Melrose shook his head. “Not sure. Just the doin’s.” He stood there with an old pair of trousers draped over his arm.

  “The what?” Jury called after him. No answer.

  Jip regained his attention. “What about the bully?”

  Jury couldn’t think, not with Plant standing there, the old pair of trousers draped over his arm. He frowned at Plant and waved him away. Then he said, necessarily keeping it vague, “Something happened, and he claimed he was going to tell our third-form teacher . . .”

  “What? What happened?”

  Jury thought for a moment. “It was strange. Something went missing from one of the tutors’ desk. He said I took it, but I didn’t.”

  She had been wrapping the silky ribbon round and round her finger, listening intently. Her expression changed, became a little crestfallen. The cases were not at all similar.

  Jury added, “But that wasn’t all. I think perhaps he might have taken it himself.”

  Her expression changed again. Back on track, it seemed to say. “And he said he never did it.”

  “Yes.”

  “But what if you really had done it?”

  From the anxious tone, Jury thought it was safe to assume Jip had herself done something. “In that case, it would have been up to me to either tell the headmaster or not. None of his business.”

  “What if he’d done it too? The bully?”

  “You mean, what if the two of us were in on something together? And he wanted to blame me?”

  She shrugged. “Sort of.”

  “Well, I expect I couldn’t have stopped him, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have told the headmaster myself.”

  “Would the police do anything to you?”

  Jury thought that past and present were confusing themselves in her mind. “To me? No. We hadn’t committed any crime.” They hadn’t, Jury and the “bully,” committed any act at all. But confession was so much in the air, the little girl wasn’t even realizing that Jury’s story, up to now, had had nothing in it at all about crime or police action. It was her own story that had that in it.

  • • •

  Melrose had returned and was hanging over the counter pretending not to listen and looking for some excuse so that he could. He moved his attention from the ring tray to the turban and turned it in his hands, his glance sweeping from Jip to Jury, back and forth, as the two continued their discussion—a rather cryptic one, Melrose thought. He sighed. After his baroque tale of Julie and the sleigh, she seemed all too eager to be taken into Jury’s, not Melrose’s, confidence. On the other hand, she didn’t seem to mind his presence here during this exchange.

  “But what if the bully tried to make you believe it never happened at all? That you never were there and didn’t see anything?”

  Were where and saw, or didn’t see, what? Melrose wondered, fitting a Masonic ring on his little finger.

  “Well, he couldn’t make me believe that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was always there, behind the tree.”

  Jip’s “Oh?” was still puzzled.

  “Don’t you see? If it really hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t need to keep popping out from behind that tree and trying to scare me. Right?”

  She saw the truth of this. More of their exchange followed, largely a reflection of what had been said up to now, a working through of the old muddle, the old fear, until she could bring herself to talk about what had happened.

  “I was there,” she said abruptly. “We were, Mary Ann and me, in the churchyard.” Before Jury could say anything, she hurried on. “But Mary Ann says I’m crazy; she says nothing happened.” Jip’s head was down, turned toward the Barbie doll. It was as if the suspected “craziness” were worse to contemplate than the scene in the churchyard. “She said a lot of people went to the churchyard on these nights, to see the man put the flowers on the grave.”

  Carefully, Jury asked, her, “And did you see him?”

  She nodded. “I think so. I’m not sure now what I saw. We were back behind some headstones—not together, but in different parts of the churchyard. Then when we heard—when I heard this noise, it sounded like a yell, cut off—Mary Ann must have run. She ran away and left me there by myself. I stayed. There was someone so near along the path there that I knew if I tried to run, he’d see me.” She shook her head. “And I felt something rush by me . . . I had my eyes closed; I couldn’t stand to look. And finally I got up when I didn’t hear anything else, and I ran. I was cut up from the bushes and rocks.”

  “You didn’t see the person?”

  Violently, she shook her head. “Only that he was wearing a kind of black cloak.” She pause
d. “If Mary Ann finds out . . .”

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about Mary Ann.” Jury took out his notebook and asked for her full name. Mary Ann Shea, he wrote. Next, he carefully took down the Shea address. Jury made it sound very official. “Mary Ann won’t be looking through the window anymore, Jip. I guarantee it.”

  And as if by means of some sort of Scotland Yard alchemy, Mary Ann had indeed disappeared. When next they turned and looked, the window gave out on nothing else but the wintry afternoon.

  28

  “I called Pryce,” said Jury, coming back to the table with a pitcher of beer. The Horse was filling up; a guitarist was competing at the moment with something on the big TV.

  “What will happen to her?”

  “To Jip? Nothing at all. Pryce will ask her a few questions, but I told him it was unlikely she could identify whoever it was she saw.”

  “Poor Jip,” said Ellen, looking up from the book open before her.

  Jury drank his beer, watched Wiggins spoon the white powder into his glass of water. “Headache?”

  “What? Oh, this, you mean?” Wiggins watched—Jury thought almost happily watched—the liquid fizz and the opalescent white froth mist across the top of his glass.

  The music of the young guitarist was now replaced by some quiz-show noise on the television that seemed to involve whole families competing.

  Ellen was underscoring passages in Vicks Salve’s novel with a heavy hand.

  And heart, Melrose supposed. It was difficult to keep his mind focused while she sat there sighing, softly swearing and moaning.

  Wiggins sipped his Bromo-Seltzer and licked his lips. He said, “Well, I think we’ve got to assume there’s a connection. We’ve nowhere to start, otherwise. Nowhere.”

  “All right. If there’s a connection between John-Joy and Philip Calvert, and if Beverly Brown’s notes are right, then there’s a connection with Patrick Muldare, again making the assumption that those initials are Muldare’s. Alan Loser says that John-Joy would come around to the shop and hang out with Milos. They were by way of being friends. Then again, Muldare says he never heard of Philip Calvert.”