The Horse You Came in On

by Martha Grimes

  Ellen frowned. What was Alan Loser doing up here?

  What he was doing, she realized in the next second, was holding a gun in his hand. It appeared to be pointed at her.

  “I think you have some papers here that belonged to Beverly Brown.” He smiled engagingly as if for all the world he hadn’t actually snicked the safety back on that gun.

  At least that’s what she thought that tiny, alien sound had been. She stared at the gun and at Alan, open-mouthed. Horrified, she froze.

  That is, one part of her froze. Dedicated Self whispered, Now, how the hell long is this going to take?

  Ellen opened her mouth; nothing came out. Finally she said, “What about her? What’re you doing?” She backed up and the chain dragged.

  Alan hadn’t noticed the chain until now. He actually put his head back and laughed. “The writer at work?”

  Drawing herself up, still enough herself to be defensive, she said the usual thing. “It’s a scene in my book. I’m acting out. I do it a lot. Please put that gun down.” And a thought glimmered in her mind. “I’m not going anywhere, obviously.” She tried to make it sound snotty, as if he were truly stupid.

  He laughed again, lowered the gun. “No, I don’t suppose you are. But that’s not precisely the point, in the end.”

  Her momentary relief vanished. In the end? What end? Whose? She swallowed and then asked, trying to sound as argumentative as possible, “What in hell do you want?”

  “For starters, I want whatever Beverly Brown gave you.”

  “The Poe manuscript? But it’s a—” Should she tell him it was a forgery? “—questionable. No one knows whether it’s even authentic yet.” She started backing towards the window, checking the time. Jesus.

  “The manuscript. Of course it’s not authentic. One of Beverly’s little jokes.”

  Some joke! “You knew it was a fake?”

  “Certainly I knew. Beverly and I were—well, at least before Patrick came along. I want whatever else she gave you.”

  Three minutes.

  Ellen’s glance flicked from the clock to the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. “Down there.”

  “Bottom drawer?”

  “It’s locked.” She dragged the little key from the rear pocket of her jeans. Tossed it to him.

  Alan nodded towards the chain. “It won’t reach, will it?” Holding the gun, muzzle towards the ceiling, he walked over to her. He yanked on the chain, measured the length with his eyes and smiled. “Cooperative of you to chain yourself to the desk like this.” Then he moved back to the filing cabinet, knelt and put the gun on the floor as he fiddled the key into the lock.

  Two minutes ten seconds.

  Ellen stared up at the clock.

  She had backed nearly to the window. Keeping her tone idiotically conversational, she asked, first clearing her throat to get the words out: “What are you looking for?” Her eye was on the gun, right there by his foot. Within his reach, not hers.

  “Beverly’s notes.” He looked up and smiled brightly. “And a birth certificate.”

  One minute fifty seconds.

  “Proof you were born?”

  He stared. “Gallows humor? I must say, you have more guts than Beverly did.”

  Than Beverly did? Oh, God . . .

  He was bending over a thick folder, sitting cross-legged on the floor, like some damned student reading his manuscript. “Thing is, she thought she could blackmail me. She wasn’t stupid. It didn’t take too much intelligence to figure out what had happened to Philip Calvert.”

  “Calvert?”

  One minute thirty seconds.

  Alan looked up at her, quizzically. “You hadn’t figured it out yet?” He went back to the folder. “Never mind—you would’ve. It was Beverly’s idea, actually; her way of getting back at Patrick for dumping her.” He looked up, up at the ceiling, and shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder about him; he’s hopelessly childish. And yet I’m the one who was always accused of irresponsibility and so forth.” He turned a few pages, seemingly engrossed in what he was reading. “Beverly knew he was a Calvert. I told her. When she happened to meet this Philip Calvert, she got the idea. What a stunning idea, really. And anyone who could manufacture an entire—well, nearly entire—story by Poe, even for five minutes, could certainly toss off a false document or two. Scribble some lines in a book . . .” His hand wrote in the air.

  “What are you talking about? I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about!”

  Alan looked up. He moved the gun fractionally, as if he were arranging a place setting. It still rested by his shoe. “Please, Ellen. You’re not stupid.”

  “Oh, yes I am! I’m very stupid!” Her progress backward towards the window had been taken by mere inches over the last minute and a half. Forty seconds. Oh, God—go off go off go off go off—

  “All right,” he said, as if concurring with her stupidity. “It might not have registered up to now. But as soon as it got bruited about that Patrick was the present Lord Baltimore, I’m sure you’d’ve realized.” He held up a sheet of paper, waved it tantalizingly.

  What in God’s name was this maniac talking about?

  “Bev’s notes. This genealogy.”

  She followed the motion of the paper. Ten seconds. “That’s just stuff from her work with Owen Lamb. I didn’t pay attention to it.”

  “You would have. Later. Well, it’s been nice talking to a captive audience—”

  The sudden noise was ear-shattering.

  The terrible racket of the alarm sent him reeling, sprawling as he rose, and in this half-crouch, his foot shot out. The pistol slid across the floor and Ellen fell on it, allowing herself one second of ecstasy over this totally unexpected boon before she fired.

  Alan Loser yelled and grabbed at his knee, clamped his hands around the blood oozing through his fingers.

  “Goddamn bastard!” she screamed, in the sudden release of tension. Then she cocked the gun and sighted.

  At the same time, she heard a rush of feet and in another few seconds, Richard Jury and Melrose Plant burst into the room.

  “Ellen!”

  Jury went to Loser; Plant to Ellen.

  She shook off the arm he dropped around her shoulders. “Writing’s a bitch.”

  35

  They were sitting in the Horse having a farewell drink when Ellen said, overcasually, “I don’t guess those reporters were especially interested in my writing habits, were they? I mean, they wouldn’t bother mentioning it in their columns?”

  “You mean such as having to chain yourself to your desk in order to write?”

  “I mean the way I always try and live the experiences of my characters.” She glared at Melrose.

  He poured another beer from the pitcher and said, “Yes, well, that particular scene must be giving you a lot of trouble, since you chain yourself to the desk every day. And night.”

  “You don’t need to comment—no one asked you to.”

  But he did need to. As if puzzled, he thumbed his copy of Windows. “You know, I don’t remember anything at all about Sweetie—or Maxim, for that matter—going about in chains.” He snapped his fingers. “Ah! Is that the title, then?”

  She narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “What do you mean?”

  “Chains. Is Chains the title of the last in the trilogy?”

  “How hysterical.” Ellen bumped her chair around so that her back was to Melrose.

  Wiggins was busily making room in his flight bag for several containers of Bromo-Seltzer. “You were very brave, miss. That took a lot of courage, what you did.”

  Ellen looked smilingly at him. “It did, didn’t it? See, what I intended to do was dive out of the window when the alarm went off. I figured he’d be too confused by the noise to fire. But then he kicked the gun. How is the creep?”

  Said Jury, “According to Pryce, he’ll live.”

  “Pity.”

  “Shattered kneecap. That’s painful.” Jury smiled.

  “I jus
t wish I’d killed the son of a bitch. And how did he ever think he’d get away with murdering me?” Her tone implied she must surely belong to that rare breed of mortals who must go unmurdered.

  “I expect if the police came up with any motive at all, it would be either the jealous ragings of some of your colleagues or someone after that manuscript. You had it, after all.”

  “Yes, but it’s not genuine, we know that.”

  “We do, but who else? Your friend Vlasic didn’t know, for instance,” said Jury.

  “Vlasic,” said Melrose, making a face, “would love to have discovered that manuscript.”

  “Made him look a bit of a fool,” said Wiggins. “One of his own students coming up with a find like that.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ellen. “Are you saying that detective might have arrested Vlasic?” She thought this over. “I’m kind of sorry I butted in.”

  Jury went on: “And Phil Calvert’s and John-Joy’s deaths would probably have gone unsolved. As good a detective as Pryce seems to be, what connection could he have made between the two?”

  Said Wiggins, “Not as good a detective as Lord Ardry, perhaps.”

  Melrose sighed. He wished Wiggins wouldn’t adopt this new way of addressing him. But then it was Lord Tweedears to Lord Ardry, he supposed. “It was Hughie who put me onto it. It was all of that talking about the Delaware lineage.”

  “You’re too modest,” said Jury.

  Ellen said, “My God, and the whole idea was to make it look like Pat had killed them. And he might have managed to do it, too, with that title as a motive. But what about evidence? How was he going to link Patrick to that cabin in Pennsylvania?”

  “As long as Muldare didn’t have an ironclad alibi for that time—and I expect Loser would have made sure he hadn’t—then, as long as the police assumed a motive for Muldare’s killing Calvert, that wouldn’t have been a problem. Same thing would hold for John-Joy.”

  “And he had the godawful nerve to actually write on Milos’s hand. Why didn’t he just run, get the hell out?”

  “He wanted the doin’s,” said Melrose.

  Wiggins sighed as the tiny white bubbles erupted across the surface of his glass. “We’ll never know what happened.” Looking at the circle of uncomprehending faces, he added, “The story. ‘Violette.’ ”

  “Ah!” said Melrose. “Not to worry, Sergeant Wiggins. I’ve got the denouement right here.”

  “Where did you come across that?” Wiggins was astonished.

  “It was in the file. Beverly Brown’s.” He turned to Ellen, adding, “The one in your office.”

  Jury folded another stick of Teaberry gum into his mouth and just looked at Melrose.

  “It was not!” said Ellen. “I’d’ve seen it.” She made a motion to snatch the page from his hand, but Melrose pushed her away. “He had the papers—Alan Loser, I mean—spread around on the floor. He didn’t give a damn for the manuscript, so this page was just mixed up amongst the others.”

  Jury chewed his gum, rested his chin in his hand and gazed at Melrose.

  “I’ll just read it, shall I?”

  Wiggins’s “Yes” was eager. Ellen was miffed and kept saying she couldn’t understand how she could have missed it. Jury said nothing.

  Melrose adjusted his spectacles and opened his mouth to read, but then asked, “What did you consider the most intriguing question in the story?”

  “Nothing,” said Ellen, returning to her notebook.

  Wiggins was somewhat more enthusiastic. “What happened in the courtyard. It’s kind of a locked-room puzzle, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Oh, that?” Melrose was dismissive. “That’s rather simple.”

  “It is? Well, then what about Violette? How did she die?”

  Melrose smiled. “Who said she died?”

  Said Ellen, her eyes trained on her notebook, “Oh, stop. That’s your favorite question.”

  Melrose adjusted his glasses and read:

  My dear madam,

  The moisture of these cold stones thickens like blood beneath my fingers, and the ink that flows through this pen in a viscous stream seems dark red upon the page.

  This must be my last communication to you.

  So enraged became M. P—— at my announcement that I had seen nothing, heard nothing in my long sojourn of the previous night in his chamber that he insisted we descend to the courtyard and to the scene (his sad delusion!) of the dreadful assignation that he had witnessed three times in succession.

  How I would, had I the means, return to that horrible fancy of his, if return I could! For the actuality is so much more to be feared!

  He became, as we stood below in the inky darkness, increasingly more incoherent—a man driven to the limits of his mental resources by a fancy that had totally overtaken him—until, in his frenzy to convince me that all had passed as he so described it, he drew—from some hiding place—two rapiers, holding down one and throwing the other towards me. I still at this moment can hear that icy clang as it struck the stones at my feet.

  I was appalled. Yet, I was forced to wield this devilish sword as M. P—— began his thrusts and parries. I begged him to stop—he would not

  And then he laughed. This was not the laughter of a madman or even of a passionate one. Nor was the melancholic gentleman lost in his world of dreams and delusions. The person who now confronted me was a man of deliberation, calculation and cold reason who introduced himself to my astounded ears as “M. William Quartermain.” He then told me the story—

  “Another one?” asked Jury, unwrapping his stick of Teaberry. He grinned at Melrose, who ignored him.

  This was indeed the dwelling place of one M. P——, but he himself was not that gentleman. Mr. P—— lay dead in an antechamber on one of the lower floors of the house. “Murdered—by a jealous husband.”

  “Prose seems to be falling off just a bit,” said Jury.

  Wiggins looked at his superintendent reprovingly.

  “And we’re going to miss our plane if Poe doesn’t wrap this up in another ten minutes or so.”

  Melrose ignored Jury’s exaggerated pointings at his watch.

  “—jealous husband.”

  Almost fearing to ask, and fearing, too, that the answer was all too evident, still I said—“And the wife?” “Dead” was his single word by way of answer—

  “Are they still fighting?” Ellen’s voice came from the small cave of her crossed arms upon which she had lowered her head. “While they’re doing all this jawing?”

  Said Melrose, massively irritated, “I do not go to sleep when you’re ‘jawing’ around about Sweetie and Maxim.”

  “I’m not asleep,” said the blurry voice. “I’m resting. I just got through entertaining a psychotic killer last night, remember?”

  Wiggins was clearly distraught with both Jury and Ellen and said to Melrose, “Please go on, sir.”

  Melrose continued but sped things up a bit:

  “It’s a bit patchy here; Poe—”

  “Beverly Brown, you mean,” said Jury.

  “Yes, Beverly Brown must have had a bit of a problem. Our narrator was by way of being a ‘fall guy’ for Quartermain. He wanted somebody to take the blame, is my guess. But let’s get to the surprise,” said Melrose enthusiastically.

  My dear M. S——

  “Who’s ‘S’ ”? asked Wiggins.

  “The narrator.”

  I had never meant that you should suffer thus and would, were it within my meager power, come to your aid. Alas, I cannot. Who would believe me?

  It was before dawn of that morning when my husband approached you in the Tuileries that I made my escape, fleeing from those rooms as if pursued by all the devils in hell. For I knew, I was certain, that, should my husband find me, he would certainly kill me. Oh! You can not begin to imagine the abstracted fits of passion of which he was capable, and now, having murdered my beloved Hilaire, he would give me no peace, except the peace of Death.

  “Definit
ely fallen off,” said Jury, yawning.

  Melrose glared at him.

  —peace of Death. Wretched and afraid, I hurriedly took myself to another part of the house, thinking that he would never suspect I still remained within view. For it was myself, sir, that you saw there at the window across the courtyard. I have since flown, never to return. Having read of your apprehension by the Sûreé, I felt I must write to you this last time.

  You may use this letter in whatever way you see fit. Should it be proof of your innocence in this affair, I should rejoice.

  With sorrow and gratitude, I remain, Violette Pontorson

  Ellen’s head had come up, swiftly. “What? There was no face in any fucking window across the courtyard.”

  Melrose pursed his lips. “The curtains shivered, I distinctly remember—‘shiver’d apart as if from a ghostly hand.’ ”

  “So what? We’re supposed to think Violette was over there all the time caught in the curtains? Blaaah!” This unattractive noise came from a head that had fallen like a stone back on her crossed arms.

  “So it’s been Violette all along who’s been writing the letters?” said Wiggins. “I’ll have to agree, that’s certainly a surprise.”

  “With a Mont Blanc,” said Jury, rising and adding, “I’m going to get a cab for us.”

  “Hughie’ll take us. What does that mean, ‘Mont Blanc’?” Melrose frowned.

  “That pen at the beginning that was sweating blood. Or ink. The ink was flowing through it, if I remember. Must be a fountain pen.”

  Ellen’s head snapped up again. “An inkpen.” She looked at Melrose. “He’s talking about writing with an inkpen. In the 1840s?”

  Melrose thought for a bit, then clucked his tongue. “Well, Beverly wasn’t perfect, after all.”

  Jury smiled, slung the strap of his flight bag over his shoulder. “Beverly would never have made such an egregious error. I’m going for the cab.”

  Ellen and Wiggins looked at Melrose open-mouthed.

  “Is nothing sacred? Plagiarizing a plagiarist? Good God, is nothing safe?”

  “I thought it was a pretty good solution myself, sir,” said Wiggins, recovered from his astonishment.

  “Good? But it wasn’t the right solution,” said Ellen.