Melrose moved on to headier stuff bound in leather and gold-tooled.
• • •
Theo Wrenn Browne was devastated.
Or so he put it, when the subject of the grisly discovery of Simon Lean’s body was introduced. That the corpse had turned up on Trueblood’s premises did not seem to fill him with a similar dismay. “Too bad for Marshall,” he said blandly, holding a sample of calfskin up to the light, in the way of a photographer studying negatives.
Theo was still on his ladder-perch, and Jury was leaning against a counter not much bigger than a lectern, positioned by the circular metal staircase.
“Did you know him well, Mr. Browne?” asked Jury, turning over a handsomely bound copy of The Moonstone.
“Simon Lean, you mean? No. No, I mean, scarcely at all. Wasn’t much of a reader, you see. I couldn’t say that I knew him, no —”
“But well enough to know his reading habits, at least.” Jury smiled, lay the book back on the counter.
“What? Oh, not really —” Theo’s expression was hidden as he fussed about with some papers beneath the counter. Then, looking up, he said smoothly, “I think it was Trueblood told me that, actually. You see . . .” Ignoring his own sign, he lit another small black cigar, and leaned forward, cozying up to Jury’s elbow. “You see, Trueblood’s been buying up old editions — most of them junk, but one can’t expect an antiques dealer to know simply everything, can one? — and consequently he’s gone several times to Watermeadows to look over the library. I might say that I don’t believe in making a nuisance of myself. Lady Summerston’s very possessive of her husband’s books. Trueblood does rather put himself forward, though.” He wiped a bit of stray ash from the counter into a dustbin and continued. “Anyway, I was talking to Trueblood, giving him a bit of advice on a foxed first edition, and he happened to mention that Lean read very little, what a pity to waste such a fine library. The old lady can’t read much at all because of her eyes —” Jury heard the beginnings of rancor creep into the voice. “— and as far as the wife goes, well I think thrillers might be more her style. I abominate them myself. But one does have to please one’s customers.”
“So you know Mrs. Lean.”
“No, only him. Simon.”
“Did you know him well?”
“Not very.” He was looking toward the rear of the shop, rising from the little ladder to crane his neck. “The Broadstairs woman is an awful nuisance. Never buys, only takes notes. You’d think it were a lending library.”
“I understand that Miss Demorney was a friend of Mr. Lean’s. You know her, don’t you?”
The effect was electric. Theo stiffened, the knuckles of the hand holding the calfskin going white. “If you’re implying that Simon and Diane were . . . I take it you’ve been listening to the gossip . . . .”
“Policemen tend to do that sort of thing.” Jury smiled. “But I’m not implying anything. Just trying to get relationships straight.” And Theo’s calling Lean by his first name certainly suggested a stronger one than the man had admitted to — and was trying to hide. “You’ve got a writer here in Long Piddleton. Joanna Lewes, isn’t it? I didn’t see her books in the window.”
Jury liked the whiplash reaction as Theo snapped his face first to the window, then back to Jury. Jury was looking at the porcelain replicas of Beatrix Potter characters and the stuffed and cuddly versions of Maurice Sendak’s friendly-looking monsters, all larded in amongst the shelves to lure parents. “You’ve got a grand business here, Mr. Browne. I imagine Long Pidd’s glad to have a book shop. A service to the community, I’d say.” Jury looked up at a china Tom Kitten and felt just about as mewlish, but smiled inwardly.
Theo Wrenn Browne went right for the bowl of cream, his manner changing from ashen-faced anger to pleased surprise. “I’d say that it’s done something for the village. One doesn’t have to go all the way into Sidbury or, for that matter, Northampton, which is far preferable to Sidbury. The shops there seem to cater for the newspaper–greeting card—magazine readers. People standing two deep in W. H. Smith’s having a free read of Private Eye.” His glance strayed to Melrose Plant, having a free read of his own.
• • •
Only, Melrose’s free read was far more interesting than anything he might have found in W. H. Smith’s. He looked from the Matisse sketch to the fresh binding, the floral borders, the beautiful endpapers. He shook his head slowly in wonder. Well, he certainly had to give the man credit, having the nerve to hide it in plain sight.
The several sketches were original Matisse. That would have made it valuable enough.
That Matisse’s signature was one of the two on the flyleaf would make it worth a small fortune.
The other signature was James Joyce’s. That would make it priceless.
• • •
“You don’t care for Joanna Lewes’s work, then?” asked Jury.
Theo made a strangling sound. “Those formula romances could be written by monkeys and they wouldn’t need infinity to do it.”
“But she’s very popular. You were talking about catering for different tastes.”
“Taste is the word. Joanna the Mad’s stuff is completely without it.” His eyes seemed to take in all of Jury’s face, clutching it in their embrace as he leaned closer. “Do you know the woman has contracts for as many as four, four books a year?”
“And here I am plodding along on a cop’s wage.” Jury was studying one of the Sendak Wild Things. “I don’t know, I guess I have some respect for anyone who can actually finish a book. It’s not easy.”
Theo’s laugh was shrill. “I assure you it isn’t. It took me five years to write one novel.”
“Nothing ever came of it?” Which, Jury knew, was just the way to put it if he wanted to see Theo Wrenn Browne turn about the same shade of green as the stuffed monster smiling through its fangs like a kid with overbite. How did Sendak always make them look so friendly?
He seemed actually to crumple, to thin out before Jury’s eyes. “It would have done, had Joanna had the decency to . . .” He stopped, took another cigar from its metal tube, and lit it.
“ ‘Decency to’?”
Fidgeting with his lighter with a shaking hand, he said, “She refused to pass it along to her publisher. It’s Bennick’s. They’ve a cheap line of romances —”
“There’s a coincidence. Simon Lean had some connection with Bennick’s.”
“He’d nothing to do with editing — accountancy or something.” Theo smirked. “Simon couldn’t have edited the Bald Eagle, he was that unaware of language.”
Jury put the monster back in its windowed box and said, “Sounds to me as if you were on better speaking terms with him than just nodding good-bye.”
Theo crushed out his barely smoked cigar. “If you’ll excuse me, Superintendent, I must lock up.”
Down the staircase at that moment came a child humping along a good-sized book, whom Theo regarded coldly. She was dressed in a blue pinafore, with sturdy legs, feet tucked into dirty sneakers. The crown of the little girl’s head was barely level with the walnut countertop and a mountain’s distance from the owner, who looked down upon her from his high peak with an appropriately glacial expression. “I didn’t know you were up there; thought you’d gone hours ago. This isn’t a library, you know.”
She neither looked at him nor spoke, and laid the large book on the counter. Then she opened a plastic purse from which she lifted a handful of coins. The book was a Maurice Sendak. Jury thought he had read all of Maurice Sendak, but the little girl’s book was unfamiliar. The cover showed a young girl with a face so pale and hair so flaxen that the resemblance to Carrie Fleet made him physically ill for a moment. An open window with wind gusting the curtains and a blanketed baby had produced on the heroine’s face a look of piercing sadness.
The little girl, though, looked anything but sad as she fingered the book, and put her money on the counter. Theo Wrenn Browne sighed and, with exaggerated labor, started coun
ting through the ten- and twenty-p coins.
Jury saw that the little girl was watching him watching her book, and, perhaps sensing acceptance, picked it up and opened it to a center page that must have been her favorite, so quickly had she found it. It showed small, gray-hooded figures with black blanks for faces coming through a window carrying a bundle that, on the next page, turned out to be an ice-baby. She said nothing.
“I think the other baby will be brought back.” He smiled.
Standing there, still oddly on tiptoe, as if reaching for that strange peak from which adults conferred their favors and punishments, she frowned. For the picture had made her momentarily fretful; after all, the baby had been taken away by creatures in cloaks.
“Maybe she needs to be taken somewhere. For some reason,” said Jury.
The girl’s eyes widened. Here was a point she must verify against her previous experience of cloaked creatures. Her look was a mix of wonder, expectancy, and a world of clouds and winds that didn’t follow any earthly rules of behavior.
Her feet hit the floor, and so in a sense did Jury’s, when the thin-reeded voice of Theo Wrenn Browne announced that she hadn’t enough money. “You’re a whole pound fifty short. Run along to your mum, then. I’ll just keep it here for you. But mind you come back first thing in the morning or I’ll have to put it back on the shelf.” For resale, it was clear. “This is the last one,” he added, to make matters worse.
It was as if through the open window on the book’s jacket, something had flown from the room — the glimmer of mahogany, the slants of moted light — something.
Jury had the sudden and momentary feeling that he was falling through ice. He was sure, no matter how irrational the thought, that Theo Wrenn Browne could have murdered anyone without turning a hair. He reached in his pocket, said, “Well, mums aren’t always at home, are they?” and tossed a pound coin on the counter. He could find no more change and called over to Melrose for the loan of fifty p.
Melrose carefully reshelved the book and pulled out his money clip. He walked with the new Onions over to the counter and thrust a fifty-pound note into Jury’s hand.
“Fifty p, not pounds.”
“Take it out of that,” he said, nodding toward the note, while reading of the gardener and the constable raking through the roses of The Maypole Murders, destroying every inch of evidence. A police constable who didn’t immediately get in touch with his superiors . . . ?
The little girl was having a delightful time, it seemed, more or less surrounded by Jury and Plant. She gazed from one to the other in perfect silence.
Melrose’s eye left the page to fall on the child and he was pleased to see that she had been properly (that is, silently) brought up. He even smiled at such golden silence. And he was of course aware that Theo Wrenn Browne would have liked to swat the lot of them out of the store, but he could hardly do that to police or to the lord of the manor. And here was that lord with his money clip.
“I don’t believe I can change that note, Mr. Plant,” he said with a false smile.
“Oh. Well, let’s just open an account then,” said Melrose, brightly.
“An account?”
“We can just put the fifty p on the account.” Melrose returned to the petunia patch.
Theo Wrenn Browne’s mouth was tight as sticking plaster. “Never mind. Effie, just bring along the rest of it later.” And with his hand he waved her off.
“That’s settled then,” said Melrose, wondering if a merger of Austin-Rover and British Leyland went this way too.
Effie hugged the book, ran to the door, circling round as she did so, waved to Jury, and set the delicate blossoms of cyclamen quivering as she ran out.
“I’ll have this, I suppose,” Melrose said wearily. “There’ve been eight murders already, and I think it’s neck-and-neck to see whether it’s the reader or a character who turns out to be number nine.” Melrose slapped open his checkbook, and then his eye hit on the shelves on the right. “And that Beatrix Potter figure, there.”
“Little Pig Robinson?”
“Yes. With the telescope. Doesn’t miss a trick, I’ll bet. What’ve you bought?” he asked Jury, picking up the box. “Good Lord.” He set about writing his check as Theo, pleased with this last-minute bonanza, wrapped up the pig. “I meant to ask you about your aunt. I hope she’s on the mend.”
Purchase a pig, and thoughts of Agatha spring to mind, he supposed. “Umm. On the mend, yes.”
“Well, I certainly hope she wins her case. Frankly, I’ve been more than once discommoded by Jurvis. Why the High Street need be cluttered up with pigs and chamber pots is beyond me.”
The chamber pots belonged to Miss Crisp, next door. She must have got in a rather large shipment. Cats were curling up in them and sunning themselves.
“Yes,” said Melrose tearing out his check and thinking of the tub of cyclamen he’d nearly fallen over.
Jury handed Theo Wrenn Browne his card. “I’ll be going to London tonight, Mr. Browne. When I come back I’d like to put a few more questions to you.” That should give him time to reconsider his relationship with Simon Lean.
Unhappily, Browne took the card and, more happily, closed and locked the door behind them.
• • •
“Must you carry that doll-thing?” asked Melrose. “Couldn’t you at least have him wrap it or put it in a bag? Why did you buy it anyway?”
“Why’re you so cross? All you did was hold up the wall and read that idiot thriller.”
“Not quite all. Theo has just rebound a quite valuable book, thereby reducing its value, I expect; but I also expect it’s not one he means to sell.”
Jury stopped, his arms holding the big-fanged monster to his chest. He frowned.
“You look absolutely ridiculous; I wish Vivian were here. Oh, you want to know about the book?”
“It would be nice, yes.”
“It’s one of the most valuable I can imagine. Ulysses. Sketches by Matisse, signed by both of them. Matisse and James Joyce, I mean.”
“In other words, Trueblood’s.”
“In other words, Trueblood’s. Yes. I don’t imagine there are two of them in Long Piddleton.”
• • •
“It’s Darrington’s old house,” said Melrose, as they turned the corner. “Perhaps there are ghostly emanations, an aura, left by Oliver. Considering that he didn’t bother writing his own books, I’d at least give Joanna the Mad credit for hers. As she said to me once: ‘Steal? From whom? Who in the hell else would write this crap?’ ”
Jury was beginning to like her already. “What possible reason would she have had for meeting Simon Lean at the Blue Parrot?”
They were now on the outskirts — if Long Pidd could be said to have them — and Melrose said, “Walk more briskly. Plague Alley’s just across the way.”
“What of it? Agatha’s laid up with a bad sprain.”
“Even if she were, which she isn’t, she’d follow us till her legs turned to stumps.”
Before them lay the Sidbury Road, running white between the darkening fields, past a run-down inn placed back from the road.
“What’s happened to the Cock and Bottle?” asked Jury. A weather-worn sign sat propped against a rusted pole.
“After the body was found on the road, they weren’t doing very much business.”
“That was six years ago.”
“People have long memories.” They were walking up what seemed an endless gravel drive to Joanna’s house as Melrose discoursed on the latest Onions. “The killer, or somebody, had to take the stuff out of the trunk — old wedding gown and silk shawls and the usual things one finds in trunks — so that he could stuff the body in.” They had come to the front door at last, and Melrose picked up and let fall the huge knocker. “Well, it simply reminded me of Trueblood’s secrétaire à abattant. The books would either have been there, stacked on the floor, or old Theo might have done the stacking himself. Either way, he was in that summerhouse.�
�
Fourteen
JOANNA LEWES pulled open her front door, holding a sheaf of manuscript pages in one arm and a good thousand-page best-seller that Melrose recognized as the one in the window of the Wrenn’s Nest.
She peered out at them, trying to push her tinted glasses back on her nose with both arms full. “Just making comparisons,” she said.
Whether she meant of the two books or the two visitors, Melrose couldn’t say. Before he met her a year or so ago, Melrose had envisioned a writer of romances as being rather plump and peachy, a once-pretty housewife going to seed. But Joanna Lewes was blade-thin and running to gray rather than fat, although he didn’t suppose she was more than fifty. Nor was she really unattractive, just a little thin and worn, like one of Theo Wrenn Browne’s antique volumes in need of rebinding. Everything about her was no-nonsense, including her attitude to her books, which were (she often said) utter nonsense.
This was what she was saying now in answer to Jury’s questions about her writing, but saying it lengthily as they passed from doorway to hall to study. The library, the former owner used to call it; the only difference in it was that now it looked used. Columns of books and magazines and crooked stacks of paper stood against the walls, and the desk was covered with manuscripts and gimcracks such as a kitchen-frog that should have been holding a scouring pad, but whose gaping mouth was instead doing service as an ashtray. A nearly empty liter of Ribena dripped stickily amongst the mess like a statue in a leaf-choked pond.
She still held on to the manuscript pages as she offered them a seat and herself perched on the fireplace fender. Melrose wished Jury would stop asking her questions about the writing life, as if he meant to take up the quill himself. Standing there as if he had all the time in the world, completely foreign to murder or other nasty business, he remarked on her apparent productivity.
The Five Bells and Bladebone Page 11