The Horse You Came in On

by Martha Grimes

  Mrs. Wassermann, who was nobody’s fool either, simply wasn’t tuned in to the Palutski wavelength. The Palutski wavelength could zap any male between twenty and sixty within sight of those lapis lazuli eyes. But when it came to sweet young couples, Carole-anne passed them by as if she had a white stick and a dog in harness.

  Lately, the empty flat above Jury had become Mrs. Wassermann’s nemesis, a vast and empty cityscape that was in danger of being overrun by rats and ruffians. Mrs. Wassermann was here all day, pretty much alone, what with Jury gone and Carole-anne keeping her version of a “steady” (meaning, hours that suited) job in Covent Garden: whatever didn’t interfere with her novice acting.

  The pressing problem now was that Carole-anne wasn’t here at night either, hadn’t been for the two weeks of the run of the play in Chiswick in which she’d landed a tiny part. Jury had taken Mrs. Wassermann to the opening night, and he (though not she, who believed Carole-anne could do anything) had been surprised to find that the girl could act. Indeed, the girl was the only thing worth watching in an otherwise dreary production that thrashed about like a fish unwilling to be reeled in. She glittered. Jury had met the director and producer that evening, a silly twit who said the production was headed for the West End. Carole-anne said it was headed for the river.

  “You throw away a perfectly good sock,” said Mrs. Wassermann, who had rescued it from the wastepaper basket. “I can darn this with no trouble at all.” She opened her bag and stuffed in the sock. Dolefully, she looked at Jury’s suitcase. “And you are going away again.” Her tongue clucked.

  “Not for long—only a few days. To visit my friend in Northants.”

  “Ah, yes, the earl. Why does he not visit you?”

  “Well, when he comes to London, he usually stays at Brown’s. You know, in Mayfair.”

  Mrs. Wassermann opened and closed the clasp of her bag, growing thoughtful. Then she said, “Just think. Wouldn’t it be nice for him if he had, you know, a little pied-à-terre?”

  Her eyes were on the ceiling.

  4

  I

  “I hear you caught the squeal, sir.” Wiggins looked up from his paperback when Jury walked into their office.

  “Caught what?” Jury aimed his mac in the general direction of the coatrack and missed again.

  Wiggins tilted his book from side to side in a paperback wave. “That’s what they say in the States, sir. In these Eighty-seventh Precinct books they’re always saying it. It means the ones who’re on rota when a crime gets called in. ‘Caught the squeal.’ ” Wiggins had clearly grown fond of the phrase. “Eighty-seventh Precinct. They’re by Ed McBain.”

  “Well, I wish Ed had caught this one. I’m not on rota; I’m on holiday. If you can call it that.”

  But the sergeant was not commiserating. He had, after all, just been forced to move into the muster room when the fresh paint was applied here in their office. He was allergic to paint. So it was either the smoke and smells of the muster room or paint fumes. Wiggins’s life seemed permanently caught between hell and high water, the devil and the deep blue sea, a rock and a hard place.

  “He’s very good, sir.”

  Jury was opening and closing drawers. “Who?”

  “Ed McBain. Very authentic background. It’s a relief to read somebody who knows how the police really work instead of these detective-story writers who just make up anything that suits them. You really get a feel for American cops here.”

  “I didn’t know you read mysteries.” Jury slammed another drawer shut.

  “I don’t actually, except these ones. I read one and thought it was pretty snappy, so I picked up another.”

  The phone rang; Jury yanked it up before it had barely finished its initial brr-brr. A few “Yes”es and he dropped the receiver.

  “The guvnor?” asked Wiggins, not bothering to look up from his paperback.

  Jury winced. “No. Fiona. I caught the squeal.”

  Wiggins sniggered and Jury walked out.

  • • •

  Fiona Clingmore lifted her towelled head from her portable steambath and said, “You’re supposed to be on leave, you are. Disgraceful.”

  “So where is he? I thought he was desperate to see me.”

  She shrugged her shoulder to indicate a room out of view. “With the AC. That’s where he called from. What you been doing on your holiday?”

  Is that what they called it? “Been to eleven films in the last ten days. I thought I’d get it over with all at once.”

  “Whyn’t you go somewhere sunny and warm? You’re the one ought to be having a holiday on the Costa del Sol, not him.” Fiona patted some astringent lotion on her face and squinted in her mirror to view the pore damage. “He says he’s taking Cyril with him next time he goes to Spain. He saw this animal rights stuff about the disgraceful things they do over there. There was this picture—can you imagine?—where this Spaniard has a cat by one leg and he’s swinging him round his head.” Fiona clucked her tongue and shook out her hair. “Well, any man that’d doctor a cat’s tuna. . . . Poor defenseless animal.” She took out her sponge bag.

  Jury hunched down in the office chair and watched the poor defenseless animal. The cat Cyril was probably working out some equation in thermodynamics that would levitate him to the top of the water cooler. The small ledge was too tiny to hold him, accommodating nothing larger than a paper cup. One sat there beneath the spout. Jury wondered what fate the cat had in mind for Chief Superintendent Racer that involved the water cooler. Cyril wasn’t simply sitting there waiting for Fiona to turn the spout and make bubbles rise. After another moment of staring up at the water bottle, he swayed off towards the chief’s office.

  Fiona sighed. “He’ll be at that fax machine again.” She made no move, however, to go in and collect him.

  • • •

  Jury sat down in the chair across the desk from Racer’s own swivel chair, occupied now by Cyril, whose head Jury could just see over the desktop. Some of the furniture had been shoved into one corner and covered with dust sheets preparatory to redecoration. In another corner, lengths of ceiling molding were leaning against the wall. It looked like some sort of major overhaul, inconvenient for working, convenient for spending even longer periods of time at one’s club.

  Cyril’s eyes were on the new facsimile machine. Ever since Racer had laced Cyril’s tuna with tranquilizers and transported him to one of the pounds, Jury had imagined reprisals, in one form or another, taking shape in Cyril’s mind.

  Cyril sat there and Jury sat there, both of them in their separate ways making plans. Jury thought again about the possibility of a unilateral transfer to the provinces and wondered if he should mention it to Racer. Thus far he had mentioned it to no one. He thought again of Macalvie, of Northants and Superintendent Pratt, of the Warwickshire constabulary and Stratford-upon-Avon. He would stop off in Stratford before going on to Northants.

  The fax machine beeped twice and then started humming, and Cyril came to quick attention. Now he was on the desk, stalking the machine. Cyril and Jury watched the paper, listened to the machine spit it out inch by inch. Jury leaned over and read. The fax was from the assistant commissioner. He did not read the message, however; Cyril was on it in a flash, sending the paper fluttering to the floor. Then Cyril looked at Jury and slowly blinked, as if the cat were waiting for any suggestions Jury might have with regard to this fax. Jury shrugged.

  Cyril slid down from the desk, caught up one corner of the paper in his teeth, and dragged it across the room to the outer office. At the door he paused and appeared to be scanning the room for Fiona, who, Jury saw, was not there. Probably gone to the ladies’ with her sponge bag. Jury moved over to the door to watch.

  The fax now lay beneath the water cooler, on the little ledge that held the small paper cup, full of water. The cat did a quick, balletlike turn in the air and knocked the cup off the ledge.

  They both stood there watching the water soak into the message, after which Cyril paw
ed and clawed it around into a soggy ball.

  Fiona marched in. “Has that cat been at that water cooler again?” She put her makeup bag on the desk. Her lips were a bright and pearly red, her eyelids winged out in various mutations of blues and lavenders. “And you just standing there?” She picked up the cup and the stringy wad of paper and tossed them both into the wastepaper basket.

  II

  Racer flipped the intercom switch and barked at Fiona: “Hasn’t the AC called?” When she told him no, he switched the object of his spleenish displeasure to Jury. “If you don’t want trouble, then you shouldn’t be around.”

  “I’m ‘around’ because you requested it.” If Jury were on the moon, Racer would send a space shuttle.

  “This Hamilton person’s family knows the assistant commissioner. That’s what I’m waiting for. Information.”

  Now Jury was sorry he hadn’t read the fax. “So? I know the AC too, but that doesn’t mean I’d put me on a case.”

  “Well, for some reason—don’t ask me effing why, Jury—the family wants you.”

  “The family doesn’t know me.”

  Racer’s response fell somewhere between a smirk and a simper. “Apparently they do.”

  “I don’t know any Hamiltons. Not one.”

  “It was another name.” Racer punched the intercom switch again, told Fiona to get the AC on the line. “This woman—friend of the AC—had a nephew, or the dead woman did—hell, I can’t remember all the details—that was murdered somewhere around Philadelphia. The States.” Racer was searching around his desk, looking under the blotter. “Where the hell are those tickets? I left them right here. And where are my color chips? They were here, too.”

  “I don’t get this. What does a killing in the States have to do with us?”

  “Victim was born here.”

  “So?”

  Racer stopped his search for the color chips, flipped the switch, and asked Fiona if she had the assistant commissioner on the line. “And this woman’s a friend.” (Is this the way you treat your friends, Jury?)

  “Look, I’m supposed to be on leave. I’m sure whatever cops caught the squeal over there, they can handle it. I’m sure they prefer to handle it.” Infuriated, Jury stood up. Usually, he had more patience. Not lately, though.

  “You don’t have to get so damned shirty about it. No one’s telling you you have to do anything. Just go along and see this woman and mollify her. That’s all.”

  The AC wasn’t there. “His temp sec”—Fiona always loved it when someone higher up had temporary help—“wants to know, didn’t you get the fax?”

  “Well, did I, Miss Clingmore? How the fucking hell should I know, if I’ve been out of the office?” Racer was peering at the facsimile machine. “And where in hell are my air tickets, Miss Clingmore? I left them right here tucked into the blotter!”

  Racer’s hols, naturally, took precedence over anything else.

  Jury thought he heard a series of cracks of Fiona’s gum, like tiny pistol shots. “You’re the one wants that fax machine in his office. Maybe it fell on the floor.”

  “I’ve looked on the floor.”

  “Well, she says she sent it, that’s all I know.”

  “Stop wasting my time arguing, and call her back. Bloody hell!” Racer flipped off the intercom. “I don’t know how this goddamned place operates with these civilians who can’t even count their toes. That effing cat would make a better typist.”

  The fax machine burped and then stuttered out its message. Racer ripped it out, read it, said, “SW3, Jury. Warminster Road. Belgravia. Her name’s Cray.”

  5

  She opened the double doors of the elegant sitting room with both hands, one on each of the brass doorknobs, making an entrance that would have seemed theatrical if it had been any woman other than Lady Cray.

  And she looked, thought Jury, exactly as she had the last time he’d seen her in the Lake District. That had been at the inquest. Her well-tailored suit might have been the same one, a silvery-blue-grayish material of wool silk that exactly matched her eyes, eyes that were precisely the tint of crystal, that elusive gray called “Waterford blue.” The January afternoon was in league with Lady Cray. Slants of silvery light lay in decorous oblongs along the pale blue Chinese rugs and sparked the Waterford bowl on a little rosewood table. The sun, unusually clear for this time of year, striped the twin sofas and upholstered side chairs, all of them done in a shimmering crystalline-finished material the shade of Lady Cray’s suit.

  “Superintendent, I am overjoyed you have come!” She looked brightly from Jury to Sergeant Wiggins.

  If any miserable case could be said to have in it a pleasant turn of events, Lady Cray was just such a turn. He took her hand and accepted her offer of tea or champagne or both.

  After she had settled them into chairs of cloudlike comfort, she said, “I know you haven’t called to talk about old times, but my God, those were the days, weren’t they?!”

  No, thought Jury, they weren’t. Jane Holdsworth appeared to him, not as he had last seen her but as he first had, standing there in Camden Passage in a white macintosh, inspecting something from one of the rain-wet antiques stalls. The piece of clothing she was holding up, an amber-colored shift or something, exactly matched the color of her hair. A shift—or something? He remembered, of course, very precisely that it had been a negligee, taken from a rack of vintage clothing. And there had been a brooch she had held to the coat, testing its color and shape. That had been amber, too. This scene of a lifetime ago unrolled in his mind with a torturous slowness, as if warning him that, having remembered at all, he would have to look at every glint of light in the brooch, every wavering shadow that fell across the cloth, the folds becoming more palpable, as if each little fold were statue drapery set in marble. He felt this in a moment of blinding acuity. And this was a mercy, really: that he had remembered the first time he saw her and not the last. But Lady Cray had not known Jane Holdsworth, though she had known the family, finally. Jane was there at the beginning, Lady Cray at the very end.

  He was only partly conscious of asking her about the Holdsworths, but he supposed he must have, as he looked away, through the french windows to the cold garden beyond.

  “Of course I’ve seen them! Did you think I wouldn’t? Alex and Millie . . .”

  Jury was only half listening as she talked on about Alex Holdsworth and the little girl, Millie. The smile frozen on his face must have looked natural enough, for she didn’t seem to notice anything absent in his responses.

  “They live there now, you know, with Adam. He still goes to Castle Howe occasionally, just to drive them all crazy. We have an absolutely wonderful time, Alex and Millie and I. We go to violent films together—terminators, aliens, and so forth—and I get a few of my unsuspecting friends together and we all play poker. Alex does, rather. And we spend a good bit of time at Cheltenham races.”

  “Winning?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Well, of course, winning. We’d hardly go to lose, would we?”

  His smile now was genuine enough; it was hard not to smile, thinking of Alex and poker and the ponies.

  A maid entered with a silver tray and ice bucket, managing to set down silver tea service and Dom Pérignon with practiced movements. Wiggins rose to help with tray and bucket and was rewarded with a timid smile; the deployment of the champagne in the ice bucket and the tall, fluted glasses was done in a dither of cast-down glances, as if she wondered if she had the right to be in the drawing room. To Wiggins’s kind murmurings, she made no reply.

  Said Lady Cray when the maid had made her exit, “Afraid of her own shadow, I sometimes think. Don’t take a blind bit of notice, Sergeant Wiggins. Sugar?”

  Wiggins had opted for tea, and when Lady Cray held the silver bowl aloft, he told her three, please. “But she seems quite good at her job,” he said, his glance having followed the little maid all the way out of the door.

  Jury took his cup, and their hostess pour
ed herself a glass of champagne.

  “She’s certainly a superior cook. She’s clever, too, surprisingly enough. I always think it’s too bad to combine superb cooking with social awkwardness, but there you are. I put up with the speechlessness to get the cooking. Fanny was very fond of her, though.” Lady Cray sighed. Here she leaned forward and picked up an unusual bit of sculpture, a block of turquoise banded with silver and adorned with a little silver figure playing a flute. “I shall truly miss Fanny Hamilton, Superintendent. It’s her nephew I talked to the commissioner about. But may I first tell you something about Fanny?” She replaced the turquoise piece and sat back.

  “Of course.”

  “She moved in here with me about a year ago, after I came back from Castle Howe. . . .” She paused and gave Jury a look. “Incidentally, I’m not sure what might have happened had it not been for that whiz of a barrister.”

  Pete Apted, Q.C. Jury smiled. He was the legendary barrister who had taken on the defense in that instance. “Yes. Mr. Apted doesn’t take hostages, does he?”

  She went on. “Fanny was, in many ways, a silly woman. Well, perhaps I am too. But we weren’t very much alike, and I might not have had her here to live had it not been for the great friendship of our respective husbands. Bobby and Dickie—Dickie was Lord Cray, incidentally—were just the best of friends imaginable. Both of them were pretty silly, too; but they were lovable. And when it comes to the ‘male bonding’ thing, well, Bobby and Dickie could have given lessons.” Here she held up crossed fingers to testify to this close friendship, causing an enormous diamond to spark into life. “They lived together, and died together.”

  “Died together?” asked Wiggins, his pencil poised over his notebook.

  “Yes, Sergeant. On the cricket ground.”

  “What?” said Wiggins, astounded.

  There was too much opportunity for a risible response here, and Jury bit his lip and refused to look at Wiggins, although the sergeant’s capacity for comic reactions was not notable.