“Lord Ardry asked me if Billy was a Henry James devotee—”
There was no hitch in the voice at the mention of Billy.
“—and wonders why he took up the tenancy of Lamb House.”
One would think she wanted to make sure that her husband knew what had been said out of his presence, so that he wouldn’t fumble and let something slip.
Roderick thought about Billy’s tenancy. “Well, I know he liked books, loved books. He said he found them a comfort.” Roderick paused to reflect on that. “Are you a James scholar yourself?” Roderick seemed to have forgotten what had brought Melrose among them.
“Not at all.” Drat, wasn’t he supposed to be writing a book on Henry? “A scholar, I mean. Nothing so grand. I’m doing research with an eye to writing a book, but that’s all.”
Olivia laughed. “I should say that’s quite enough!”
“Kurt Brunner, on the other hand, is a true aficionado of James. You’ve met him, haven’t you?”
Melrose nodded as Roderick sat contemplating the ceiling, the cherubs overflowing each of its corners. “That might be the reason Billy took on Lamb House. He’s an interesting chap, Brunner,” said Roderick, frowning as if he’d not thought of that before. “German. From Munich, or is it Berlin? I think. Freshen that?”
He had risen from his chair and reached for Melrose’s glass. He took Olivia’s and went to the drinks table.
“Do you know Rye at all?” she asked.
“Only what I’ve picked up since being there.” He hoped the conversation wasn’t going to deteriorate into talk about the surrounding country. “Kurt Brunner showed me around. He’s an interesting person, as you said. What will he be doing now?”
“I don’t know,” said Olivia. “Perhaps he’ll go back to Germany.”
Think him back to Berlin: a peremptory disposal of a man who’d been their son’s employee and friend for five years. Anyway, one might think Roderick, if not Olivia, would be having Kurt Brunner around here every day in order to find out every last bit of information about Billy.
Melrose felt stricken for Billy Maples’s sake. He seemed not to have made a very deep inroad into the affections of these two. A story of James’s he’d been reading came back to him. “The Bench of Desolation.”
Nobody here was sitting on it. Why?
Well, for God’s sakes, it wasn’t the mystery of the week: many grown-up children were simply estranged from their parents.
He was turned in such a way on the couch that he could see through the long windows on either side of the drinks table. They—Roderick and Olivia—were more or less facing him and could not. What he saw was the face of the lad he’d seen outside. The boy was standing there.
As Olivia and Roderick kept the talk up of the countryside, the quaintness of Rye, the history of Hastings, Melrose looked at the boy. The boy’s gaze was adamant, not unfriendly but determined. Melrose quite enjoyed a good stare now and then, but he couldn’t get the boy to drop his gaze and go off.
“Something wrong, Mr. Plant?”
“Wrong? Not a bit, no.”
Olivia turned to see what was going on but before she could complete the turn, the face disappeared from the window. She looked a question at Melrose.
“There was…someone out there, I thought.” Now, why had he not simply told her what he saw? He didn’t know. Except that whenever he got around children, as hard as he tried not to get sucked into that vortex of childhood, he failed. There was something about him that brought out a child’s patronizing ways. He liked to think of himself as an adult they could spar with. Actually, he was more like a seal they tried to train. They became their most condescending little selves around him. This was more or less encapsulated in the face at the window at that moment: with Melrose they stared. With other adults, they vanished.
Roderick turned to look. “Probably only Malcolm.”
Jury’s voice: “You should talk to Malcolm.”
He had neglected to tell Melrose that Malcolm was a child. From Roderick’s tone, it was fairly clear Malcolm wasn’t theirs.
“Who is Malcolm?”
“Our nephew,” said Olivia. “My sister’s boy. She’s hit, you know, a bad patch. Malcolm’s been with us for two years now.”
Roderick laughed. “I’d hardly call two years a patch, Olivia. It’s more like the entire canvas, isn’t it?”
What a break! “Speaking of canvas, I couldn’t help but notice the magnificent Klimt in the foyer.”
Roderick smiled wanly. “It’s very good, isn’t it? A reproduction, of course. Were it the real thing, it’d fetch millions—many, many millions.” He turned his gaze to the area of the fireplace. “Same goes for that Soutine. Not such a splash as the Klimt, but still good.”
Melrose said, “Oh. I’m surprised. I assumed the Klimt was the original, seeing that’s it’s bolted to the wall.”
Roderick laughed. “That’s not for it’s value, man; that’s because it kept falling down. It’s rather heavy.”
“Would you mind my having a closer look at the Soutine?” Whether they’d mind or not, Melrose was already up and over to the fireplace.
“Not at all, not at all,” said Roderick.
Whether the original or not, it was a landscape of tortured trees and a collapsing house—a storm, perhaps. It made Melrose think of van Gogh; the bold brushstrokes, the intense colors, the feeling that nothing was going well here. “I wonder, would you mind if I took it over to the light to have a look?”
Roderick’s pause was notable. But it was a small painting and there was no reason—was there?—to refuse. “Why, no…I expect that won’t hurt anything.”
Melrose took it down, carefully, and walked it to the window. He studied the painting for a moment or two, then ran his finger over the frame, and then, as if accidentally, turned it over for no more than two seconds before he looked again at the picture and took it back to its resting place.
Something, some mark, had been inked over on the back. He couldn’t tell what.
Roderick, lit up by liquor, was talking about Malcolm. At least, Melrose assumed they were not talking about him.
“—nothing but! He’s surly, unresponsive, destructive, and terrible to that little dog of his,” Roderick said.
Sounds a right treat, thought Melrose.
“—ties the animal up and pulls him up that garden wall.”
“He’s only ten, Roddy.”
“Won’t be eleven if your sister doesn’t get back here and see to him.”
Melrose smiled. As mum hadn’t been keeping up with Malcolm for two years now, the boy was probably in no danger of not celebrating his next birthday. “Perhaps he misses his parents.” That mite of sympathy from himself surprised him.
“Surprisingly,” said Roderick, “he did appear to be talking to your detective friend.”
“The superintendent,” added Olivia.
“Ah, yes, Superintendent Jury does have a way with children.”
Roderick barely let him finish before he said, “Can’t imagine what the boy could have told him that’s in any way helpful.” The crease of Roderick’s brow grew deeper, as if this were worrying him.
“Well, Roddy, you know Malcolm did get on very well with Billy. He quite liked Billy. He might have been the only person Malcolm did like.” As if looking for the departed, her eyes searched the room.
“I expect my son had a way with children, too. I never understood it, as he hadn’t much of a way with grown-ups.” Roderick’s hand slipped across his eyes, perhaps wiping at incipient tears.
Melrose set down his glass. “You know, I’d rather like a turn around your gardens. One of the things I most enjoy about Lamb House is its garden. I’m quite a gardener myself. Oh, do shut up before you stick your foot in it again! “Would you mind?”
They both shook their heads. How could they mind? This eccentric titled gentleman comes to visit and takes the painting off the wall and then invites himself out of your company? W
hat’s to mind?
“By all means, Lord Ardry,” Olivia said. “Best be careful if Malcolm is out there.”
“Oh, all right,” said Malcolm from the top of the brick wall, as he heaved a great sigh and started lowering himself and Waldo down to the ground.
All right to what? Melrose hadn’t ordered him to go into his tea. It was apparently an “all right” to just one more demand on him that he took like a curtain call. Melrose was fascinated in spite of himself by the descent. The terrier was tied around the waist with a red and blue bandanna over which were several windings of rope, much like the harnesses in pictures Melrose had seen somewhere of cattle being transferred from dock to ship.
The dog, unable to paw around at the wall for fingerholds, had to swing to and fro, sometimes hitting the brick, sometimes not. The boy had the rope tied about his waist and running over his shoulder in what he imagined to be mountain climber style. The other end of the rope had been slung over a sturdy branch of an oak. The dog was the first to plop to the ground and then the boy.
Under the riveting gaze of Malcolm Mott, Melrose introduced himself. “I’m Lord Ardry. How do you do?”
“And I’m Gene Autry. I’ve been better.”
Melrose took a step backward. “Gene Autry? You’re not old enough to remember him. That singer cowboy? Why that was decades ago!”
“Billy has records. We listened to them.”
It was somehow poignant that Malcolm seemed to assume the whole world must know who Billy was.
“And do you sing?”
Malcolm scraped his poorly cut brown hair off his forehead and said nothing.
Melrose thought it might give him a leg up if he mentioned Jury. “You met a friend of mine the other day—a detective?”
Now Malcolm looked less hostile, but still suspicious. “You mean the one from Scotland Yard?”
“The very chap, yes. I’m sorry about Billy Maples. That was terrible. I’m living in his house in Rye at the moment—”
“You are?”
“I am. It’s just until the next tenant’s ready to take over. Have you been there to visit your cousin?”
Malcolm nodded. “A couple times, I did.” He looked off. “There was a writer lived there once.”
For some reason this struck Melrose as inexpressibly sad. It was as if something in his experience—and in Malcolm’s—were summed up and sealed. But he didn’t know what. “What did you do there?”
Malcolm shrugged.
Melrose waited but Malcolm said nothing more.
“I really like the garden. It has that high wall all around.”
Malcolm was silent.
“Aren’t you going to untie that dog?”
“No. Maybe we’ll have another go at it.”
“But doesn’t he mind?” Waldo didn’t look as if he minded anything. Melrose had never seen such a stolid dog before.
“Nah. He kind of likes it.”
“Just how do you get that idea?”
“Well, you don’t hear him barking or growling or anything, do you?”
“Perhaps he doesn’t think it’ll do any good.”
Malcolm looked at Waldo, frowning. “Why’d he think that?”
“Because you’re so determined.” Melrose rather liked that morsel of analysis, but it didn’t get him anywhere. “Did you climb the wall at Lamb House, you and Waldo? And perhaps your cousin liked to climb.”
Malcolm gave him a pained look. “He did. And he used to like to walk on the nature preserve. Billy liked all the different birds and stuff. You can’t see them anywhere else. Plovers and little grebes and that.”
They stood in silence for a moment, and then Malcolm asked, “What’s it mean if you die intes—what’s the word?”
“Intestate, you mean? Ordinarily, it means your estate either goes to the Crown or perhaps to your nearest relation. Or both.”
“What? Nah. You’re making it up.”
“Why on earth would I do that? I’m not getting your cousin’s money.”
“What about his flat in Chelsea?”
“I’m not getting that, either.”
Malcolm was about to reply when their names were called.
Melrose thanked the maid, who had brought his coat.
Roderick was standing with him at the door. There was no sign of Olivia.
“Talking to young Malcolm, were you?” asked Roderick. “That’s an uphill battle. Malcolm is not very forthcoming.”
“Neither am I,” Melrose replied, holding out his hand, taking leave.
Roderick laughed and shook his hand.
THIRTY-ONE
Jury had always liked this part of Chelsea between the Fulham and King’s roads. Deep pink clematis spilled more profusely over gates; dogwoods were more abundant in their show of blossoms; willows lacier in their weeping branches. Perpetual spring had taken root here and flourished.
Rose Ames’s house of ruddy brick was a patch of real estate on Bury Walk worth, he’d guess, a million quid, with its front and back gardens and old stone wall offering as complete a privacy as one could hope to get in London.
The stone walk from pavement to front door already gleamed in the afternoon sun; still, a boy was sweeping it. Nearby, a gardener was hard at work on a bed of primulas. Jury wondered how large Rose Ames’s staff was.
So when she appeared at the door dressed in black, he supposed she must be an elderly servant, very neat, not a hair out of place, a housekeeper, perhaps, and he automatically asked to speak to Mrs. Rose Ames, surprised to find that he was already doing it, then later thinking it wasn’t surprising, Rose Ames not being the sort to bother with middlemen or protocol or image. She was direct, conceding a point or two to polite society in offering Jury tea, which he turned down.
“Thanks, but I’m tea’d up for the day.”
A slight smile from Rose Ames. “I’ve always thought there could never be enough tea, though certainly enough day.”
Oh, Wiggins, where art thou?
Jury grinned. “My sergeant would love you, Mrs. Ames.”
She appeared to understand the allusion, but said nothing. Enough banter.
Jury had taken a seat in a crisp, glazed cotton chair in a riotous pattern of violets, hydrangeas, roses, and bright green intertwining vines. The material was so silky he nearly slid off its edge, where he was resting his elbows on his knees, hands folded before him.
“It’s about your grandson, Billy, Mrs. Ames.” He did not know why he chose to speak of Billy Maples by his given name only, as if he knew him, as if he knew her. Perhaps she was one of those people who suggest to strangers someone they know or once knew, but couldn’t quite put their finger on. Jury wondered who it was Rose Ames brought to mind, this person he couldn’t put his finger on. There was the old woman in that awful retirement hotel in—South Shields, was it? Some place in Tyne and Wear; or the elderly Emily Croft, who had cautioned him that “death was always with us.” Yes, these women did come along in his life, not quite stamped from the same stamp, but identical enough that he noted it now. He thought of Lady Cray and smiled.
Rose Ames waited with an uncanny calmness, a measured look, a repression of feeling that perhaps broke free in the carousing slipcovers.
He smiled again, before he remembered the woman was in mourning.
“Billy,” she seemed to be reminding him. She cocked her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re from Scotland Yard.” Reminding him again of all the things he had forgotten. “Another policeman—or detective—was here.” She thought a bit. “A man named Chilten? And a female.” She pondered. “Aligar?”
“Aguilar.”
“They were from the Islington station. She seemed to be in charge. She’s awfully, oh, intense, isn’t she? Rather ferocious. I’d hate to have her after me.”
“So would I.”
“Why now is Scotland Yard interested?”
“In this case, they asked me to help. You see, I was called in fir
st because the person who found the—who found Billy was a friend of mine. So he called me.”
Again she cocked her head. Running it all together like a string of beads. “But the one who found Billy was a child. A twelve-or thirteen-year-old boy, I understood.”
Jury nodded.
“A friend of yours?”
He looked around the room, wishing he’d left out that detail.
But she had sat back in the sofa among the violets and roses smiling rather cheerfully. Apparently, she liked the idea. As if any Scotland Yard detective—a superintendent, no less!—who was that off the wall should be, if not exactly trusted, at least acceded to. She looked around the room, too, keeping him company. Even in the midst of what Jury felt must be real grief—her clothes, her strained eyes, her own lack of color spoke to that—in the midst of all this she could connect.
“I really am sorry, Mrs. Ames, but I need to ask you a few questions.”
“All right.” Her long narrow fingers plucked at the black sleeve at her wrist.
“You and Billy got on well, did you?”
“Yes, very well, but not always.” She considered. “He was much too impetuous sometimes, and I took him to task for it. He thought I was too hard on him.”
“Impetuous how?”
“One thing was that he’d give rather large sums of money away, I believe to artists, who of course could use large sums of money as they don’t work.”
Jury wanted to laugh. Or perhaps she was being ironic. “Probably an artist thinks he does work.”
She puffed out a breath through pursed lips. “Not from what I could see. This particular gallery that he favored appears to go in for paintings of pleased-looking cows, and there’s one revisionist Mark Rothko by a color-blind painter. Have you been to that gallery?”
“I have, yes. The Melville. I don’t know how I missed the Rothko imitation. I saw the cows; if those were the painters Billy wanted to support, I don’t blame you for thinking he threw the money away. But I don’t think those painters were the ones.”
“Nevertheless, I told him he was crazy to be giving money to some artistic illiterate who could best paint by numbers. His answer was that it was his money and he’d do what he liked with it.”
Dust Page 17
