The Anodyne Necklace

by Martha Grimes

  Derek, furious, crunched across the gravel of the stableyard.

  Emily looked from the silver-knobbed stick to Melrose. “Did you ever kill anyone?” She seemed hopeful.

  “Only in the Foreign Legion. What the devil was that all about?”

  Holding the book firmly under her arm, she went about retrieving her pitchfork. “He’s horrid.” She then dragged pitchfork and book into the stable where stood a magnificent golden horse, apparently being made ready for the carriage rides.

  Melrose sat down on a convenient bale of hay and lit up a small cigar. “Is he always like that?” He wondered what the book was and why she seemed intent on keeping it so near her person.

  “Yes.” Now she was stamping out of the stable block over to the bins of feed. Half of her disappeared into one of them, and the remainder of her speech about Derek’s horridness was lost in the echoing bin. As she got out the bucket of feed and once more entered the stable, she said, “All boys are horrid.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. They can be rather fun. After all, they grow up to be people like me.”

  Her eyes appeared over the stable door to regard him with distaste.

  “Did Katie O’Brien have a particular boyfriend?”

  “I don’t see why we have to talk about boys. It’s stupid.” She tramped out of the stable and back to the barrels. The one she was drooping over now was so large that she had to drape herself over its rim to reach what was left of the oats at the bottom.

  “Look here, do you want some help?”

  “No.” Her legs dangled down, toes missing the ground.

  “Derek Bodenheim acts very strange for a young man of twenty-odd.” Back with another bucket, she went into Shandy’s stall, making a retching noise in her throat at the mention of Derek. “Do you think he’s quite right in the head?”

  “No. He was horrid to Katie, too. She hated him.”

  “Did he tease her, too?” Melrose’s interest quickened.

  “You know. Sneaking up on her and grabbing her and trying to kiss her.” Small shudder as she raised a forkful of hay to Shandy’s hayrack. “She said he had a wet mouth. . . . I’d rather not talk about it.”

  There was a lengthy silence, broken only by the scrape of the pitchfork. But Melrose sensed she was interested, although she didn’t want to admit it. He knew she was hiding something that had to do with that book. “Let’s pretend something.”

  No answer came from the occupants of the stable except for the sound of the pony chewing.

  “Let’s pretend we live in a magnificent country—a kingdom, say. Full of green fields and amethyst skies.” That made him uncomfortable; how had amethyst got into it? “And you are a beautiful princess.” He noticed the sound of the scraping pitchfork had stopped. “And I—” Oh, heavens, what should he be? Why hadn’t he thought this through? Something unattractive, he knew, to make the story more acceptable to her. “I am a stupid, ugly, nasty gnome.”

  A velvet cap and eyes appeared over the stable door. Behind her, her pony chewed its fodder, unmindful of princesses and gnomes.

  “Indeed, I’m a perfectly horrid dwarf who’s always going about the kingdom doing mischief. I pinch cakes and tarts and muffins straight out from under the nose of Cook. I am so small—and ugly, of course—they hardly know I’m around.” He paused to reflect and to relight his cigar. “Now, you are the gorgeous princess of this kingdom of, ah, Nonesuch.” Warming to his tale, Melrose started pacing the small enclosure. “Your gowns are magnificent. One of them is a violet color, studded all over with amethysts.” Melrose flicked her a glance to see if she was attending closely to this baroque and colorful tale. She was. “The dwarf—that’s me—is very conceited. I have a brother who is even a worse gnome than I—” Did that sudden snort come from Emily Louise or the pony? “He is even more conceited; he thinks, despite his silly behavior and evil, horrid ways, he is a handsome gnome. Even though he’s no higher than a table leg and his head is flat and his cheeks stick out—”

  “Maybe he’s got mumps.”

  Melrose stopped pacing, annoyed. “Gnomes don’t fall prey to human diseases. They’ve got their own. He’s—”

  “Like what?”

  “Never mind. He’s not sick; he’s just—horrid.” Now she’d made him lose the thread. He was working Derek in. Ah, yes, vanity. “So because he was so vain and because his mum and dad would let him do anything . . . did I mention his family? His family—mum, dad, and sister—all perfectly awful. They treated the other villagers—subjects, I mean—as if they didn’t amount to a hill of beans. So one day this horrid gnome went straightaway to the palace stables where the princess was walking to and fro in her jewel-studded gown and reading a book.” He looked at her. She stared back. “And he sneaked up behind the princess and grabbed her and tried to kiss her.” She obviously didn’t like that part of gnome behavior. Her expression was fierce. Melrose rushed on. “He was trying to find out what was in the book, the stupid, clumsy lout. But it was a royal secret, and the princess didn’t want him to know. He was a spy, she decided. So you know what she did?”

  She stared at him blankly.

  “She went to the royal guard!” That was a clever way of bringing in the police, thought Melrose, pleased with himself.

  “Is Jimmy Poole going to be in this story?”

  “Jimmy Poole? Of course not. What the devil’s he got to do with it?”

  The small face disappeared from over the rim of the stall door and he heard the pitchfork again.

  What was the matter with her? It was a whale of a good story. “You see, the gnome—”

  “I don’t wear dresses and I don’t kiss gnomes.”

  “Well, I haven’t got to the end. You’ll love the end.” What was the end?

  “I don’t want to hear it. It’s a stupid story.”

  Oh, devil take her. He might just as well be direct. “What was that book Derek was trying to get away from you, and why’d he call it ‘dirty’?”

  Brief silence. “Because it’s about men and women.”

  “That takes care of ninety-nine percent of the world’s literature. Anyway, why do you want to read it? Since you don’t kiss gnomes.”

  “I’m not reading it. I’m giving it to that Scotland Yard person.”

  As if, he thought, the name Jury weren’t engraved permanently on her heart.

  “Superintendent Jury said he was going to Stonington. When you’ve finished with the horses, why don’t we go along to the Blue Boy? With your book. I’m sure, though it’s barely nine, there’s always a lemon squash about.” Two could play at this game, though he suddenly realized he was playing it wrong. He’d have to get the book before she held him up for drinks and crisps. “As a matter of fact, I think you ought to give it me now, and then we’ll go along to the Blue Boy.”

  She was stroking the mane of the golden horse, stalling for time. There was an incongruous blue ribbon on its mane, which she undid and flung to the ground. “I’m not giving rides if it’s got to wear that.” She hazarded a glance at Melrose and, seeing him adamant, said, “Oh, all right!” She stomped over and dropped the book in his lap.

  It was, he realized, a burden she was only too happy to palm off on someone else. “It’s Katie’s,” she said.

  “Katie O’Brien’s book? What’s all the secrecy about?”

  “I don’t know. She told me to get it out of her room in case anything happened.”

  “Was she expecting something to happen?”

  Emily shrugged and looked over his shoulder at the book.

  It was covered with a piece of white graph paper on which the word GEOMETRY had been printed, angling down the front. He removed the cover and saw it was a standard, neo-Gothic bosom-ripper, titled Love’s Wanton Ways. “Was she hiding this from her mother?”

  Obviously thinking Melrose quite dim, Emily said, “It’s not the book, it’s the cover.” She took it from him, unfolded the homemade cover and held it up. “See. It’s a kind of map.�
�

  It was a very strange sort of map, meticulously drawn in pencil and ink, bearing the legend THE FOREST OF HORNDEAN. Thick woodland surrounded a central picture consisting of small figures, a castle down in the right-hand corner, and numerous trails and roads. There were bear’s tracks, a footpath, a grotto, a trail left by a giant snail. All of these were partially enclosed by a moat and a yellow brick road.

  The Church of St. Pancras sat above a small bridge.

  And running right through the center of everything was the River of Blood.

  SIXTEEN

  I

  THE woman who ran out of the front door of Stonington just as Jury stopped his car in the circular drive was carrying something wrapped up in a blanket. As he crunched up the gravel toward her, she called to him, “Would you please go with me to the vet’s? I can’t drive and carry the cat, too.”

  Drooping out of one end of the blanket was a black, wedge-shaped face, a tiny ribbon of blood matting the fur between nose and mouth.

  “Sure, only let’s use my car. You hold the cat and I’ll drive.”

  She was silent as he held the door for her. He backed up and started down the long gravel drive, passing a squat gatehouse on his right. When they got to the Horndean Road, he said, “Which way?”

  “Left. Toward Horndean.” She turned her head then to look out of her window, cutting off conversation. A square of paisley lawn tied at the base of her neck held back her oak-colored hair. He knew Lady Kennington had few servants—just a gardener and a cook. This was certainly neither, so it must be the lady herself. Jury was disoriented. He had got a picture firmly fixed in his mind of an imperious, elderly woman, perhaps thin and gray-haired, wearing a dress of lavender silk adorned by a cameo. The reality was substantially different.

  “What’s the matter with the cat?”

  “I don’t know. I think it was hit by a car, but I don’t know. I saw it running up the drive an hour ago and didn’t think anything was wrong.” She looked out of her window, rather than at Jury, as she said this.

  He turned to peer at the cat, which looked back, glassy-eyed, and made a sort of weak sound, as if it and Jury shared some secret knowledge of what happens to cats in this condition. The speculations of the woman beside him were probably just as sad.

  “It’s another mile or so,” she said, her attention still riveted on the misty-morning fields and hedges that flew by. He could not see the face now, only that square of Liberty lawn, but what he had seen he thought to be a fine face. Pale, green-eyed, intelligent. The last word he would have used to describe her was Sylvia Bodenheim’s word—“drab.”

  “This cat feels cold.” Her hand had slid inside the blanket. “I bet it’s dying.” She sounded utterly forlorn.

  “That’s only because of shock. The temperature drops a little.” Jury had no idea how cats reacted to shock, only people. He looked at the cat’s eyes, now closed. “It’s just sleeping.” Actually, it looked dead.

  She did not reply. Even the air that moved between them seemed abject. He felt he was letting her down, her and her cat. It was irrational. She was just one of those people who could make you feel guilty without even trying to.

  “Is that your favorite cat?” What a stupid question. He cursed himself as he negotiated a sharp curve that seemed to have flown toward the car from nowhere.

  “No. It’s just an old cat that wandered onto the grounds one day.”

  Jury looked again out of the corner of his eye, furtively, almost as if the look might kill the cat. The head hung limp as a shot gamebird. He resisted the strong impulse to poke the cat to see if it was alive.

  In her voice was a note of defiance as she added, “I don’t even like this cat.”

  “Of course.”

  Quickly she looked at him and just as quickly looked back through her window. “Oh, just shut up and drive.”

  He had offered to go in with her. He felt she needed, if nothing else, the moral support; but she had asked him only if he would mind waiting. She had still not bothered to introduce herself or ask him who he was.

  Finally, he had got out of the car and walked aimlessly about in the damp of the barnyard. The veterinarian’s surgery was in a tiny cream-washed building on what appeared to be part of a large farm. Jury leaned against the fence and looked at the distant line of ash and oak, which marked this side of the Horndean wood, disliking the idea of asking her all of those questions.

  It wasn’t more than fifteen or twenty minutes before she emerged, looking even sadder, but it seemed an age. “It’s got a broken jaw, a compound fracture, and its pelvis is dislocated, or something. Can you ever understand them? It’s going to be awfully expensive. A hundred or more pounds it could run to, he said, and then he kept saying it was my decision.” Standing beside him at the fence, she gazed off into the distance at the sheep and the cows this side of the line of trees. She frowned, as if they might be called on to explain this matter to her, as if the entire animal world had let her down.

  “Well, you could have it—put down. Wasn’t that what the vet was implying?”

  “He made me think he wanted to save the cat.”

  “But it’s your cat. What’s its name?”

  “Tom or something. And it’s not ‘mine’ in that sense.” She still did not look at him; it was as though she were disappointed or angry with him, as she might have been at a relative who’d gone off and left her and only just turned up on her doorstep with no excuse and no explanation for his erratic behavior. “It’s not mine in the sense I should decide it can die. Especially since I don’t like it. That makes it worse. You see—” And now she did turn to look him squarely in the eye, as if it were important he should understand this theoretical point. “You see, you can’t go killing things off just because you don’t like them.” Her tone was instructive, as if Jury were the type who might go carelessly disposing of whatever he didn’t like.

  They were back in the car now, splashing through standing pools collected in the ruts of the dirt road. He turned to look at her again, and again saw only the scarf with the light hair curling beneath its edges as she faced determinedly away from him. She seemed only to want to commune with the hedgerows and fields, and her voice was as misty as the fields as she said, “I don’t even like that cat.”

  Jury made no comment.

  II

  Stonington’s square, gray facade reminded Jury of a prison. Its stark front was broken only by monotonous oblongs of leaded glass, which managed to give the impression of windows narrowly barred. It struck him as rigorously medieval. The wide steps were flanked by an urn on either side, empty. An untidy row of trees lined the drive. From what he could see, there were no ornamental gardens, no sculptured lawns, nothing to break the monotony. And no sign of life, animal or otherwise. Directly across the road was the Horndean wood, dark, thick, and impenetrable.

  They had, on the ride back, introduced themselves. She did not seem unduly concerned about his position; once inside the house she hung his coat on a brass coatrack with some care, shaking beads of water from it. The light drizzle had stopped, finally. It was very cold in the enormous entry-room of the house, which struck Jury as almost cloisterlike, with its stuccoed walls and small embrasures for statuary.

  “I should have lit a fire,” she said, looking at the cold hearth. “But it’s not so bad once you’re out of the hall.” Her tone was apologetic, as if the cold of the day were her personal responsibility, something from which she should protect visitors. She led Jury into a much smaller room, but only a few degrees warmer, where the fireplace looked as unused as in the entry room. This room was all cold leather and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. There wasn’t a piece of furniture here that looked comfortable. Weak sunlight spread through the panes, sickly, like a promise of winter. Beyond the window was a sort of cloistered courtyard or piazza, surrounded by the outer walls of the house. It surprised Jury, somehow: the look of the prison gave way to the look of the abbey, even to the colonnaded walks on e
ither side of the courtyard. He almost expected to see abbés or nuns prayerfully walking there. The center of this court was dominated by a large, dry pool and a statue of a cloaked woman, head bent. It was not a very good piece of statuary, but in its surroundings, it was affecting.

  “Do you mind if we talk somewhere else?” asked Lady Kennington. “I’ve always hated this room.”

  The “somewhere else” was an even smaller room with a French window at one end through which he caught another glimpse of the statue from a different angle. Here, a fire had been lit. The room was bare except for some packing cases in one corner and a chintz-covered chair draped with a shawl. Beside the chair, sitting on the floor, was a teacup.

  “I was sitting in here when I saw the cat.” She gestured toward the window on the other side.

  Jury was looking at the blank places on the walls where pictures had clearly hung.

  “I just had Sotheby’s in to take the furniture. Except for the chair, which they didn’t want. You’ve come about that woman they found in the wood, haven’t you?” Jury nodded, and she looked at him mutely before she turned away as if trying to divine the answer to a difficult puzzle set for her. She dragged the square of paisley from her head and ran her hand, like a comb, through her hair. “I think she was coming here to see me.”

  “Didn’t you wonder when she didn’t turn up?”

  “Yes, of course. But I supposed that you just can’t depend on people . . . well, you know. I rang up the agency Friday, finally. The woman in charge there was surprised, but, again . . . she just put it down to irresponsibility on the girl’s part. Apologized profusely and offered to send someone else. I told her not to bother, what I wanted done wasn’t all that pressing. I’d call her later. . . . ” Her voice trailed off as she shook her head in wonder.

  “When did you hear about the murder?”

  “Not until early this morning, really. I was out last night. I went to the pictures in Hertfield and when I finally got back I found a message from Annie—she’s my cook—to call Hertfield police straightaway. I guess I was expecting some sort of police car; I guess you think it’s pretty odd getting into that state about a cat, after there’s been a murder.” She’d moved over to the French window and what little sunlight there was bathed her loose, gray sweater so that it glinted like metal. “I really didn’t connect you with the police. Sorry.”