“Oh, for God’s sake, there is no right solution. And any hack can write like Poe—any idiot can imitate writing that distinctive.”
Ellen glared at him.
“Excepting yours. Babe.” Quickly, before she could bump her chair around he leaned over and kissed her.
She pulled her sweater sleeve down over her hand and made a big production of scrubbing at the damp spot on her cheek.
36
I
The subject of hacks being never far from Ellen’s mind, she raised the question of the disposition of Vicks Salve on the way to BWI—“disposition” meaning “how to dispose of.” Ellen rattled on at some length about this and concluded by saying, “There are four of us. We can just track her down and kill her.”
Hughie, who’d been adjusting his fish mobile with one hand, released the steering wheel to its own devices so that he could hold up his other hand, fingers splayed. “Five. Don’t forget me.”
“Great. You can drive the getaway car.”
Jury turned in the front seat. “You’re speaking to police officers, remember.”
Ellen sank down into her cramped space in the rear seat between Melrose and Wiggins, who sat with his flight bag, now transformed into a cornucopia of anodynes and amulets, securely on his knees. Ellen said to Melrose (somewhat fumily), “You told me you worked out a way to get her.”
Melrose looked around from the flying landscape, bulldozers and fluorescent orange cones finally giving way to grassy embankments and evergreens, and said, “I have.”
“What? How?”
“I don’t think I should tell you right now; it would diminish the plan’s effectiveness.” Melrose expected bitter railing, but he was surprised. Ellen pursed her lips, was thoughtful, said nothing.
Melrose continued. “You see, what you want here is not a showdown, a slug-fest, a shootout—”
Ellen smiled as she turned over these three alternatives.
“No. What you want is something that goes on and on. Like living well being the best revenge. That sort of thing. So what I’m thinking about seeps in like poison. It’s rather like the predicament Sweetie’s in—”
“You’re going to seek her out and shove letters through her mail slot.”
“No, this is more subtle and much more insidious. There’s one possible drawback: it’s not necessarily public humiliation, such as it would be if you took her to court and won your suit. Vicks Salve will know, and you will know, and possibly a few astute others will know. But in all probability, not many people will get it.”
“Will she know I know?”
“Obviously, or it wouldn’t be fun.”
Ellen sat back in her place with a satisfied smile. “Are you ever going to tell me what it is?”
“Yes. When you come to Northants. Enough time should have elapsed by then.”
She screwed up her face as if she were in pain. “I can’t wait that long!”
“Ellen, remember something.” Melrose put his arm around her, squeezed her shoulder. “You’re a writer, and writers are always at risk. More than musicians and painters, because any damned fool out there thinks if he wants to, he can write. He may not be able to brush his teeth in the morning, but what the hell, he can pick up a pen and write. That’s why I finished off Beverly Brown’s story—to demonstrate how easy it is for a hack to copy a real writer. Beverly Brown knew that. This might not sound all that comforting, but what you’ve got to remember is that this particular hack is an impostor. But you, you’re the real thing.”
She was silent for a moment, looking out of the window, thinking this over. Then she said, “I don’t know when I can get to England, though. My writing schedule is absolute hell.”
“That, dear Ellen, is clear to us all.”
Along I-95, the getaway car sped on.
II
Hughie had popped open the trunk and was stacking their luggage on the curb; the service roads were choked with traffic. People rushing, horns bleating, blaring, blasting.
Suddenly, Melrose remembered Diane Demorney’s comment and said, “Hughie, a friend of mine said that Baltimore used to be called ‘Nickel City.’ True?”
“Yeah.” Hughie turned to give the finger to some cabbie who was trying to maneuver past, turned back and repeated, “Yeah, ‘Nickel City’—I remember that.”
“Why? She said that once they made nickels here.”
Hughie thought this uproariously funny. “Made nickels . . . that’s rich. No, it’s because Baltimore was so cheap; probably still is, you compare it with D.C., New York. Used to be you could get a lot of stuff for just a nickel. Let me tell you, good buddy—” Hughie smiled and slammed down the lid of the trunk—“you’d better be more careful who you listen to.”
“I’ll certainly remember that, Hughie.” Melrose paid him and gave him a huge tip.
Ellen pulled something from her holdall and handed it to Jury. “This is for you. It’s from Jip.”
Jury looked down at the rather worn snapshot and frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, she just said maybe you could find it.”
“Find it?”
Ellen sighed. “You’re supposed to be a detective.”
“Uh-huh.” Jury smiled. “I just thought she might have added something to those instructions you’re not telling me.”
“Well, she didn’t. Except it’s of her, when she was younger, and she said maybe it was taken in London. Or some city in England.”
Jury looked at the snap again; it seemed a generic shot, some building or other, Jip sitting on a sort of bench. “All right. Tell her I’ll try.”
“And she told me to tell you goodbye,” said Ellen, looking up into Melrose’s face. “Melshi.” She did not even crack a smile.
The taxicab behind Hughie honked his horn, moved forward and crashed right into Hughie’s bumper, and another cab driver, leaning out of his window, was shouting at Hughie to move.
The four passengers stood on the curb watching the inevitable result of this minor accident where each party was secure in the knowledge that he alone had justice on his side.
Hughie yelled back at the other driver, which of course resulted in a few more hurled insults, and then the two of them were out of their cabs, doors flung open amidst the porters and the bags, the arrivals and departures, the two of them going at it hammer and tongs:
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you!”
“Well, fuck you, man!”
“Fuck you, dude!”
. . . and on and on that litany born of the city streets, repeated over and over, fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou, accompanied by gestures, two fingers poked into a shoulder, another poked into the air, poke poke poke, in such a way that it was clear no one was really going to fight, but that they were merely engaged in a ritual of insult, a steady rain of invective as necessary and appropriate for this occasion as the telling of beads in church . . .
. . . until they had both returned to their cabs, slammed their doors, and, leaning out of their respective windows, flung one last “Fuck you!”
Then the final salvo, Hughie yelling:
“—and the horse you came in on!”
Interlude
Sergeant Wiggins insisted on having the seat in the middle and stuffed his Bromo-Seltzer-laden bag under the seat in front.
He sat belted and buckled while the plane taxied along for takeoff, shut his eyes when it lifted off the tarmac, and when the seat-belt sign winked off, climbed from his pinched position over Melrose’s feet to begin his circuit of the cabin. He wasn’t, he said, waiting until the fear-of-flying attack got too much of a grip on him. He was taking action immediately. Better safe than sorry, right?
“Don’t forget,” said Melrose, whose own bromide was the astonishingly awful prose of Elizabeth Onions, “it’s right-right-right and then left-left-left. Three rights, and back again.”
Wiggins frowned, standing out in the aisle. “I don’t remember actually changing directions on the
flight over. Did I?”
“You did, yes.”
“Well, it certainly worked. Be back in a tic.”
Jury slept, his head against one of the mingy plane pillows. Melrose, whetted by the events of the last week, shoved what was left of The Parrot and Pickle in the pocket of the seat in front of him, pulled out the manuscript book he had purchased, and uncapped his pen. As Joanna the Mad had said (and the Onions woman was a perfect example of the dictum), “Any idiot can write a book.”
Fuelled by the experience of finishing up the Poe-Brown story the evening before, Melrose had started again on his own mystery. After casting about for titles, and thinking of Wilkie Collins, he had decided on The Opal.
His detective, an amiable fellow named Smithson, was a Scotland Yard CID man with strong lashings of American private eye-ism. And since he had discovered that, in America at least, lady sleuths were all the rage, he had decided to have Smithson aided and succored by his brilliant wife, Nora. Smithson drove a battered car and took his cat (named Chloe) along for the ride, as cats were also extremely popular.
Polly Praed would accuse him of knuckling under to the demands of the marketplace. Yet Polly was one of the great knucklers-under of all time. Her heretofore quite ordinary detective had lately fallen victim to alcoholism, manifested in an obsession with California Chardonnay; was hinted to be sexually dysfunctional; was trying to stop smoking; and was undertaking a health regimen which included eating plates of sea kelp. Polly should talk, thought Melrose.
And (he suddenly decided) he would make it an inverted mystery, in the Francis Iles vein. Yes! He felt he was back there in the Horse with Elroy watching the Super Bowl. Yes!
“What the hell are you doing?” Jury blinked at him, roused from sleep.
“Me? Nothing.” Melrose bent over his notebook. Hell, there was no reason for Trueblood to do all the writing; Melrose’s imagination was certainly equal to—
And then once again he suddenly remembered the black notebook.
Where was it?
Part 3
GIN LANE
37
“If you’d’ve been here, you’d’ve met him. Or her.” Carole-anne Palutski waved her freshly polished nails around to dry them and started in on her toenails. Her legs were drawn up on Jury’s old sofa, a towel beneath her feet, careful of the fabric.
Jury had been back in Islington less than an hour, he’d called up to Carole-anne to come down and have a cup of tea with him, which she had, bringing her painting equipment with her.
“And what is Him or Her like?”
“He or She is highly creative, for one thing.”
That certainly boded ill. It made Jury nervous to speculate on Carole-anne’s notion of creativity. “Old or young? Or middle-aged?”
“Yes.” Her chin was resting on her updrawn knee as she dotted the polish about.
“Yes what?”
“He or She is old, young, or middle-aged.”
Oh, for God’s—“Carole-anne. I live here. I’ve lived here for many, many years. I have a right to know who’s going to be living above me.” Jury stabbed his finger towards the floor above.
She did not even flinch at his tone. Carole-anne never paid any attention to Jury’s avuncular commands. “As I said—” perfect nose raised slightly in air, mild sniff—“if you’d’ve been here instead of flying all over the place, you’d have met them. Him or Her.”
That was it, of course. Jury had had the godawful nerve to take off for the States and leave her here to live her own life entirely without his aid and succor. Mrs. Wassermann could help Carole-anne out in some ways: raising a hemline, lowering a neckline, making mysterious phone calls that cast her in the role of Carole-anne’s aged aunt, transporting chicken soup upstairs, and so forth. But one had to face it: Mrs. Wassermann was not six-two with changeable gray eyes and a smile that could cause a meltdown. Not only had Jury left, he had left without telling her; without even writing a note; without even bringing back a present from the States. The States, where she had never been in her whole life. (Jury’s glance had slid over to the unpacked suitcase, where the Barbie doll lay nestled in tissue, gold turban and all. He refused to give it to her, refused to mollify her.)
He sat there making circles with his thumbs, teacup poised on arm of chair, glowering at her. Then he smiled. “I can narrow it down easily enough.”
“I’ve no idea what you mean.”
“I can tell you the sort of person you let the place to.”
She wiggled her shoulders and gave him a smarmy smile. “Well, I don’t see how.”
“I’m a detective. We can eliminate the following: Female, age group sixteen to sixty, good-looking. That takes care of a sizable number. We can also eliminate the up-to-sixteens—unlikely one would be looking for a flat—and the over-sixties, because you wouldn’t need another Mrs. Wassermann to do for you.
“Now: most likely would be male, age group sixteen to sixty, good-looking. We can eliminate the young ones, same reason as females, and eliminate over-sixty because you sure as hell wouldn’t want a man coming along and taking up Mrs. Wassermann’s time and attention.
“So the most likely candidates would be one: handsome, youngish man; or two: unattractive female.” Jury looked at her from under lowered eyebrows and with a wicked smile. It was impossible for Carole-anne to keep reactions from showing in her face. “But, you see, there is a flaw in your selection process.”
“Don’t be daft. I naturally rented it to the most dependable person. He or She I made sure is very neat and clean and a nonsmoker.”
Given the state of Jury’s ashtrays, that was highly unlikely. He scrunched down in his chair, closed his eyes and waited.
“What flaw?”
He pretended to be asleep. Given the jet lag, it wouldn’t be hard.
“What flaw?” She raised her voice.
“Huh? Oh. Well, if you rented it to a female, she would be your notion of ‘unattractive.’ ”
“I’m sure we agree on what that is.”
Jury shook his head. “The only notion of ‘attractive’ we agree on is you. And lord knows if many more women looked like you, it’d burn another hole in our atmospheric Islington ozone.” Jury smiled. She was frowning, trying to work out if that was a compliment.
Then she said, as she screwed the cap back on the stoplight-red nail varnish, “I always thought SB-slash-H was attractive. Just like you.”
“Oh, really? Funny, I seem to remember your mentioning a TV an tenna when you were talking about her figure.” Susan Bredon-Hunt was an old flame.
“I don’t recall,” said Carole-anne airily. She swung her feet from the sofa, wiggled her toes and leaned back, displaying a body that bore no resemblance to a TV antenna. “Anyway, I don’t have to rent it to this person on a permanent basis. They’ve only paid rent for the last two weeks of the month.”
Jury went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “You see, to me a woman can be attractive for reasons other than the physical. What you fail to see is the effect of intelligence and spirit on physical beauty. I’ve seen women you might consider absolutely dowdy, but who had so much of a spiritual quality that I wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of my life with them.” Jury was leaning back, staring up at the ceiling, wondering where he’d ever seen her.
“Who’s talking about the rest of your life, anyway?” Carole-anne now had the rest of the month to worry about. She bit her lip, stood up, said, “I’ve got a phone call to make.”
“Oh?” Carole-anne wasn’t on the phone. “Aren’t you going to use mine? As usual?” Graciously, he swept his arm towards the instrument.
“No, I’ll just go down to Mrs. W’s.” She shoved her feet into her black mules. “Back in a tick!” This she called from beyond the door.
Jury sat there smiling until he dozed off.
38
“Are you telling me, Jury, the man killed three people for a bogus peerage?”
“No. For money and revenge—th
e two best motives, other than love. Anyway, it wouldn’t be the first time murder had been committed for a title. And the title, incidentally, is hardly bogus. ‘Absolute Master of Maryland and Avalon, Baron of Baltimore,’ Jury quoted. “ ‘Avalon settled by colonists that were taken over by George, First Lord Baltimore, which was then abandoned, and later restored to Cecil, Second Lord Baltimore.’ Then Charles, Third Lord; then down to Frederick, where title died, or became a title de jure, if that’s what you—”
“Oh, stop gibbering, will you?” Racer sniffed, ran his thumbs beneath the lapels of his jacket. The suit was new. He sorted through half a dozen faxes, hit the intercom and demanded of Fiona that she produce the rest of the fax pages from the commissioner’s office that had been coming through just before he left for his club. “I saw it with my own eyes, Miss Clingmore!” There was only the answering hum of the machine; Miss Clingmore did not respond. Racer jiggled the switch and repeated her name. No answer.
Jury cast his eye around the freshly decorated office. New carpeting, fresh paint. But not even the gentler diffusion of the new indirect lighting system could soften the purpling-over of the chief superintendent’s complexion.
It could and did soften the cat Cyril, however. While Racer was barking into the intercom, Jury was checking out the new continuous concave lighting and noticed a burnished copper tail hanging over the edge of the ceiling molding up there on Jury’s right. The tail twitched lazily. The rest of Cyril was apparently lying on the ledge built all around to accommodate the tiny halogen lights, the molding added to hide the ledge.
“What’s so funny?” Racer’s head jerked up from the intercom that he had been trying to shake into submission.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I was just admiring the new decoration. Very attractive.”
“And pricy. Don’t worry—it came out of my own pocket, in case you think I’m dipping into public funds.” Racer smirked. Stopped smirking. “What about this Tate Gallery business? ME seems to be waffling on the cause of death.”
The Horse You Came in On Page 29