The Man with a Load of Mischief

by Martha Grimes

  CHAPTER 14

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25

  When he awoke on Christmas morning, the folder was on the floor. He retrieved it, and spent a good hour going through the loose pages. What Matchett had told him was here confirmed. Both he and the girl, Harriet Gethvyn-Owen, had alibis — all of those people in the audience. It was the maid, Daisy Trump, who had brought Celia Matchett her tray. Her mistress had called to her to bring it inside (though usually it was left by the door) and put it on the little table just inside the door. So Daisy could testify to having seen Celia Matchett alive then. The cocoa was drugged, and that was one thing the police couldn’t understand: why would an ordinary thief drug the cocoa and then come back to rob her office? Why not wait until she was out of it? Jury agreed it made little sense. He looked at the diagram of the office. Desk facing window, where she had been sitting. Door to hall opposite desk. Little squares marking off tables, chairs, bureau.

  Jury replaced the papers in the folder. God. Two days ago he had only two murders to solve. Here it was Christmas morning, and he had five.

  • • •

  “More coffee, sir?” asked Daphne, hovering at his elbow, waiting to be of service.

  “No, thanks. Did Ruby ever say anything about being a hairdresser’s assistant in London?”

  “Ruby? That’s a laugh. She wouldn’t do work like that. She had a job, all right. More like posing for — you know, photos.”

  Jury thought of Sheila Hogg, and her supposed “modeling” job in Soho and wondered. Through these meditations he heard the distant brr-brr of the telephone, and in a moment Twig was fetching him.

  • • •

  “Jury, here.”

  “I’m at the Long Pidd station, sir.” Wiggins had begun referring to the village in the affectionate diminuitive. The piercing whistle of Pluck’s kettle served as background music. “No diary in Ruby’s room at home or in the vicarage.” Wiggins interrupted himself to thank Pluck for a cuppa. “Now, this Mrs. Gaunt — and isn’t she the old flintheart? — said she’d often seen Ruby write in a book. She said it was small and dark red. Didn’t she ever get huffy, though, when I asked her if she’d taken a look in it!” Wiggins slurped his tea. “Said she didn’t remember when she last saw Ruby writing in it.”

  “All right. Now, there are a couple of bits of information I want. First of all: William Bicester-Strachan. He was with the War Ministry, so ring up C1 and see if you can get the story on some sort of inquiry at the time he lived in London. Second: have them go through the obits for an accidental death that occurred roughly twenty-two years ago in Scotland — Sutherland, to be exact. James Rivington was the name. I’m particularly interested in the exact time of his accident.”

  “Very good, sir. Merry Christmas.” Wiggins rang off. Jury sat there feeling a little ashamed of himself. He supposed that for a long time he had been underestimating Wiggins, who certainly did his job as long as his health could hold out. Would his poor corpse be clasping a notebook, along with his handkerchief? For years, Jury had been trying to call him by his first name, but somehow stuck at “Al.” Well, he was always right there with his pen and cough drops. Jury thought he was probably looking forward to his Christmas dinner with Constable Pluck and his family. And Jury was certainly looking forward to his, with Melrose Plant. And family. But first he would have to stop by Darrington’s and Marshall Trueblood’s.

  • • •

  “That girl, Ruby Judd. She was a real busybody. No wonder the vicar liked her, she could talk the teats off a cow. They must have had some lovely old natters.” Sheila Hogg was well into her third gin-and-tonic by now.

  “Where did you run into her, Sheila?” asked Jury.

  “In the shops. She was always mooning about me thinking that she might be invited up to the house to have a look at the Great Author.” She was sitting by Jury, swinging a silken leg and a foot clad in a velvet shoe which matched her long skirt. But she was looking at Oliver — and looking, Jury thought, bleak, despite the sarcasm.

  “And did she?” asked Jury. “Get over to the house?”

  “Oh, yes. Several times, she carried my parcels for me. Went all over the place, oohing and aahing and peeking behind doors and so forth. Nosy little — well, she’s dead now.”

  “And you, Mr. Darrington. Did you have anything to do with Ruby Judd?”

  The pause was fractional, but still too long. “No.”

  “Is that a fact, love?” said Sheila. “Then why is it she suddenly started coming the heavy over me? You didn’t give her a bit of a feel now and then?”

  “God, but you’re vulgar, Sheila!”

  “Mr. Darrington, it’s very important we know as much as possible about Ruby Judd. Is there anything you could tell us that would help? For example, did she ever mention anything to you about anyone in Long Piddleton that might have been cause for blackmail?”

  “I don’t know what you’re bloody talking about.” He shoved his own nearly empty glass toward Sheila. “Give me another drink.”

  “Where were both of you Tuesday week? The night before the dinner at the Man with a Load of Mischief?”

  Oliver lowered the hand that held the glass, looking at Jury with eyes glazed over either by gin or fear. “I suppose now you think I killed Ruby Judd, is that it?”

  “I have to check the movements of all of those people at the inn the night Small was murdered. Obviously, there’s a connection.”

  Sheila’s foot seemed to stop in midswing. “Do you mean to say you think it was one of us? Someone at the Man with a Load of Mischief that night?”

  “It’s certainly a possibility.” Jury looked from Sheila to Oliver. “Where were you?”

  “Together.” Oliver drained his glass. “Right here.”

  Jury looked at Sheila, who merely nodded, her eyes on Oliver. “You’re quite sure of that?” Jury asked. “Most people can’t remember where they were two nights ago without searching their memories. This was over a week ago.”

  Oliver didn’t answer. But Sheila did, turning a somewhat over-bright smile on Jury that belied the grim determination in her tone: “Believe me, sweetie, I know when Oliver is here.” The smile faded as she looked at Darrington. “And when he’s not.”

  • • •

  It being Christmas, Trueblood’s shop was closed, so Jury went round to his cottage, situated in the village square. It was a charming house, cruck-ended, the gracefully curved split oak meeting at the top and straddling the base. On the near end were two well-spaced diamond-paned windows.

  Trueblood was just putting the finishing touches to his toilette (could it be called anything else?), preparatory to dining with the Bicester-Strachans.

  “Aren’t you coming along, old chap? Give you a good opportunity to question us all at once. The creme de la creme of Long Pidd. Except for Melrose Plant. He wouldn’t be caught dead at one of Lorraine’s omnium gatherums.” He affixed a knot in his gray silk tie.

  “I’m having dinner with Mr. Plant.” Jury was looking for a place to sit, but every bit of furniture looked too precious to carry his weight. He finally settled on a plum-velvet love seat. “I take it Mrs. Bicester-Strachan was interested in Mr. Plant?”

  “ ‘Interested in’? Darling, she nearly wrestled him to the floor one night at the Load of Mischief.” Trueblood flipped his tie inside his vest, adjusted his perfectly tailored jacket, and fetched a cut crystal decanter, two tulip-shaped sherry glasses, and a bowl of shelled walnuts, which he set before Jury.

  “I assume you’ve heard by now about Ruby Judd.”

  “God, yes. The one who did the moonlight flit. Pity.”

  “It wasn’t exactly a ‘moonlight flit,’ as you say. I think she was seduced away by someone. The murderer probably suggested she pack up a bag to make her absence more acceptable. Otherwise, there might have been questions asked.”

  “The sort that are being asked now, I take it?” Trueblood lit up a small cigar. “And you want to know where I was on the night in qu
estion. Whatever night that might have been, say I, innocently.”

  “Yes. But that’s only one question. The other is, What was your relationship with Ruby Judd?”

  Trueblood was shocked. “My ‘relationship’? Surely you’re jesting.” He crossed his beautifully tailored legs and dribbled a bit of ash into a porcelain dish. “Why, if you old dears at the Yard found me in the back streets of Chelsea with a ring in my ear, you’d pull me in before I could get my falsies off.”

  Jury choked on his sherry. “Oh, come on, now, Mr. Trueblood.”

  “Call me Marsha. Everyone else does.”

  Jury hadn’t the time for Trueblood’s patter. “Were you or were you not sleeping with Ruby Judd?”

  “Yes.”

  Jury still had his mouth open, prepared to override more of Trueblood’s jokes. The direct answer threw him off balance.

  “But only the once, mind you. Well, she was rather a cute little baggage, but deadly dull. Mindless. Now, look, darling, you’re not going to let this get around, are you?” Without the act, Jury realized he might be appealing to women. Trueblood went on: “It would simply ruin my reputation. My business would go down the drain. And I’ve this, you know, friend in London who would be heartbroken if he knew I’d been unfaithful. Silly little twit, Ruby was. But what’s one to do in a one-eyed village like this except listen to all the argy-bargy between the old crows like Miss Crisp and Agatha. I gather she’ll be at Melrose’s ruining the festivities. Oh, do come to Lorraine’s, you’d have so much more fun. There’ll be so many more people to accuse —”

  “I’m trying to find out just who it was in this village Ruby Judd knew enough about to get herself killed over.”

  Trueblood looked puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “I think she was blackmailing someone.”

  “Me? That’s just like the coppers. Run about in their panda cars looking for the queers to blame the rising crime rate on —”

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t think it was you, but I may take you in anyway just to get some proper answers.”

  Trueblood lowered the pitch of his voice to a more normal tone. “Oh, very well. I’ll try to remember if the girl said anything that might help. She had so little to say one would want to listen to. Stuff about her life, that sort of thing.”

  “Tell me about that, then.”

  “I was only laying her, Inspector, not doing her biography. I hardly listened.”

  Jury wished someone had listened to Ruby Judd.

  “She did say her mother was an old stick, and her father on the hob but mostly falling off. Gin. Sister spent her nights in front of the goggle-box mooning over American detectives.” Trueblood took a swig of sherry and lit another small cigar. “Then there was this aunt and uncle in Devon where she spent most of her ill-trained childhood. Then on and on through odd jobs here and there —”

  “Like ‘modeling’? Read for that, porno stuff.”

  “Who, her? I doubt it. Oh, I think she might have tried to rustle up a bit of street-corner business now and again, but she’d have made a poor dirty postcard.”

  “Where were you on the night of December fifteenth, Tuesday?”

  “All by my lonesome, dear. Where were you?”

  • • •

  “More goose, sir?”

  Ruthven was standing at Jury’s elbow, offering an enormous silver platter on which rested the remains of two birds, still in their adornments of cherries and truffles. But it hardly registered on Jury, whose eyes were on Vivian Rivington, seated across the table from him. Her amber hair curled above her gray cashmere sweater, and she looked as if she had materialized out of the mists of Dartmoor or the mysterious moors of Yorkshire’s West Riding. If the goose had got up and started quacking across the table, Jury wouldn’t have noticed. Her sister, Isabel, had opted for the Bicester-Strachans.

  Lady Ardry spoke now. “Not very hungry, hey, Inspector? Perhaps if you’d be up and doing a bit more, you’d have some appetite. As I’ve been doing.”

  “Indeed, Aunt? And just what have you been doing?”

  “Investigating, my dear Plant. Can’t have more of these murders, now can we?” She piled some chestnut stuffing on a split scone and tucked this starchy ensemble into her mouth.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Plant. “Perhaps one more. No, thank you, Ruthven.”

  “I’ll have some more,” said Agatha. “And speaking of the investigation, have you your alibi ready, Vivian?”

  Jury cast Agatha a malevolent look. She had obviously not forgiven him for establishing an alibi for Melrose Plant.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Vivian, “I’ve probably less of an alibi than anyone else. Except Simon, perhaps. We were at the Swan when that man was killed.” She looked at Jury so unhappily, he had to avert his gaze to the wineglass.

  “We’re all in the same boat, dear,” said Agatha with mock sweetness. “Excepting, of course, for Melrose. Only one in Long Pidd with an alibi.” She said it with such snappish truculence, one would have thought Melrose had been printing up alibis in the back room and refusing to hand out copies. She was wrestling a forkful of food from the drumstick she had speared from the silver platter, as if she and the bird were locked in mortal combat. “You needn’t snicker, Inspector. Plant isn’t out of the woods, not yet. Remember you were only with him from eleven-thirty until noon or so, when I returned.”

  “But you were with him for three hours prior to that, Lady Ardry.” What the hell was she up to, now?

  “You sound as if you were sorry Melrose has an alibi,” said Vivian.

  “Let’s flip for it, Aunt Agatha,” said Melrose, taking a coin from his pocket.

  “You needn’t be frivolous,” she said to her nephew. Then to Vivian: “Certainly, I would be glad if Plant were clear. Only the truth is bound to come out in the end—”

  “Truth? What truth?” asked Jury.

  Carefully she put by her knife and fork, giving them their first rest in the last half hour. Snuggling her chin on her clasped fingers, elbows on table, she said, “I mean that I wasn’t with you for every minute. Don’t you remember, my dear Plant? I went out to the kitchen to see to the Christmas pudding. Martha does like to skimp on the mace . . .”

  If Melrose had forgotten, Ruthven hadn’t. Although he didn’t spill a drop of the wine he was pouring, he closed his eyes in pain.

  “I thought you’d merely gone to use the facilities.” Melrose sighed and asked Ruthven to clear away the dinner plates. “Anyway, you couldn’t have been gone very long.” Reprieves from Agatha were never long, his tone implied.

  Jury watched enviously as Vivian put her hand on Melrose’s, which was twirling the stem of his wineglass. “Agatha! You should be ashamed!”

  “We’ve all of us got to do our duty, my girl, no matter how painful an office that may be. We can’t go about protecting our loved ones, merely because we wish to see them as innocent. The moral fiber of Britain was not built upon —”

  “Never mind about Britain’s moral fiber, Agatha,” said Melrose. “Tell me, how did I manage to get to the Swan, kill Creed, then nip back in the short time you were in the kitchen driving Martha crazy?”

  Calmly, she buttered a biscuit. “My dear Plant, I hope you don’t think I have been sitting around working out your crimes for you?”

  Jury blinked. He had read several books on formal logic, but Lady Ardry defied them all.

  “However,” she continued, “since we’re speculating, you could have jumped in your Bentley, dashed off —”

  Jury couldn’t resist. “But, surely, you remember, Lady Ardry, the motor of the car was dead cold. It took us a good five minutes to get it going.” Vivian Rivington bestowed upon Jury a beatific smile.

  As Agatha’s face fell, Melrose said: “Don’t give up, Agatha. How about my bike? No, too slow.” He seemed to be debating the little problem. Then he snapped his fingers. “My horse! That’s it! I could have saddled up old Bouncer, dashed acros
s the meadow to the Swan, dispatched Creed, and back again — zip! like a bunny.”

  Vivian said, “It would have to be zip! like a bunny, consider-your horse.”

  Melrose shook his head. “Well, there it is, Agatha. It simply won’t wash. My alibi stands.”

  As Agatha gritted her teeth, Ruthven brought in the dessert — a magnificent pudding. He touched a match to its brandy-soaked surface. After he served it, he poured some Madeira into the third wineglass.

  When Melrose observed Agatha sitting there glumly, probably working out another way to destroy his alibi, he said to Ruthven: “That small package up there on the mantel. Hand that over to her ladyship, will you?”

  Agatha’s face brightened as she took the present and opened it.

  Vivian gasped when Agatha drew from the small box a bracelet of emeralds and rubies. They gleamed, nearly spurting into small flames themselves when they caught the candlelight. Agatha thanked Melrose lavishly, but without a trace of bad conscience for all she had just been trying to do. She handed the bracelet to Vivian, who admired it and passed it across to Jury.

  He had not seen the real thing since he was very young, working the robbery division. He knew now why rubies were described as “blood red.” Suddenly that missing detail floated into his mind. Rubies. Ruby. A bracelet. That was it, that image of the wrist sticking out of the ground. Ruby’s wrist, but no bracelet. She always wore it, sir, never took it off. Daphne’s voice came back to him.

  Then where was it? His eyes were riveted on the gems as he passed the bracelet back to Agatha, his mind still so much on Ruby’s naked wrist that he barely heard Agatha’s comment:

  “Quite handsome, Melrose. For paste.”

  • • •

  The ladies retired to the drawing room, leaving Jury and Melrose to their port. Retired was perhaps not the most apt description of Lady Ardry’s leave-taking. Vivian finally got her out of the dining room, but Agatha managed a few assaults on it, coming back to collect various items that seemed to have dropped from her person — handkerchiefs, buttons, and her bracelet, which she had left in an untidy heap on the table as if its red and green magnificence were a handful of olives.