The Old Wine Shades

by Martha Grimes

  ‘The parents aren’t in the picture. She lives with an aunt— that’s Brenda Hastings—but you know that. The aunt has told her any number of times not to play over here. It doesn’t do much good. She still comes.’

  Dryer smiled. ‘You’re a font of information. Superintendent.’

  Jury returned the smile. ‘The person you want to talk to is Harry Johnson. That’s where I heard it.’

  ‘I certainly shall.’ Dryer glanced at his watch. ‘It’s gone 2:00. Could we repair to the Swan before it closes?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘It’s partly to have a drink, partly to see if any of the customers know anything. Actually, it’s mostly to have a drink. I don’t see hope of getting sod-all out of the customers.’

  The Swan’s car park was crowded, considering this was midday.

  As they walked across the gravel, Jury said, ‘Where do these people come from? There are practically no houses around here and the nearest town’s Lark Rise and that’s ten miles away, with its own compliment of pubs.’

  Tom Dryer laughed. ‘Come on, Mr. Jury, haven’t you heard the old joke that if you were lost in the jungle with nothing but a bottle of gin and one of vermouth, a dozen heads would pop up in the bush and tell you how to mix a martini?’

  Inside, the barman gave Dryer a most respectful hello.

  ‘How you keepin’, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘Well, thanks, Clive. I’ll have a pint of whatever’s in those taps. Guinness. Good.’

  Jury asked for Foster’s. Clive shoved two large glasses under the taps and pulled both. ‘Heard about that murder up at the big house. Nasty business.’

  ‘Already? It’s only been a couple of hours since I heard about it myself.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you know how t’is.’ Clive stood with beefy arms on hips, waiting for the foam to subside and pulled some more. ‘It’s all them police cars in front of the house, innit? Plus the mortuary van. All that’s kind of a hint.’ Here he gave a gasping sort of laugh, like a swimmer surfacing for air, as he knifed the foam off the Guinness. He set the glasses in front of both of them.

  ‘Well, I agree it’s a nasty business.’

  ‘Strange, that. I can’t remember we ever had a murder round here.’ Clive’s deep frown suggested he really was trying to think of one, rather than trying to coax information out of DCI Dryer.

  ‘I can’t either,’ said Dryer, with a smile, before he and Jury went to a table.

  Dryer said, ‘Mrs. Gault and the boy—’

  ‘And the dog.’

  ‘—yes, what is all of this about a dog?’

  ‘Mungo is his name. He was with Glynnis Gault and her son. A short while ago, he came back.’

  ‘Came back? What on earth do you mean? Came back to London? By himself?’

  ‘I would imagine he was brought back.’

  Tom Dryer looked utterly confused. ‘Why? That’s equally strange.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense.’ Dryer shook his head and drank his beer. ‘Now she’s dead, and the boy still missing. And the dog—’ He turned to look at Jury. ‘Are you quite sure you heard this right?’

  ‘Talk to Harry Johnson.’

  ‘Why in hell would somebody keep the woman for almost a year and then murder her, and in that house she purportedly was taken from? I perceive, as Wallace Stevens said, ‘the need for a thesis.’

  ‘Jury nearly choked on his beer. ‘Stevens, the poet? Surrey police quoting Stevens?’

  ‘What’s wrong with Surrey? Wallace Stevens is very interesting.’

  ‘So is Arabic, but I can’t speak it. Wallace Stevens is very difficult. I can’t make him out.’

  ‘Oh, come now. ‘She sang beyond the genius of the sea . . . Like a body wholly body, fluttering its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion made—’

  Jury interrupted. ‘You think that’s easy to understand? I beg to differ.’

  Dryer said, ‘Well, even if it isn’t it’s quite beautiful.’

  Jury’s attention was taken by Myra Easedale, where she was sitting at what must have been her table, talking to a young washed-out-looking woman with dingy hair. He said, ‘That older woman over there’—he inclined his head toward their table—’that’s Myra Easedale. Have you spoken to her?’

  ‘Yes. That is, one of my men talked to half a dozen people in here. She was one who’d actually seen Mrs. Gault and her son. That made the third time this woman was seen. There were the agent, the couple in Lark Cottage and she, the third person who actually saw her.’

  So Dryer had known all of this. Jury hadn’t needed to fill him in. ‘I thought she—Myra Easedale—made a very good point,’ said Jury. ‘She said she couldn’t understand why Mrs. Gault, who’d either been or was going to Winterhaus, would park the car by the road directly opposite the Winterhaus drive and get out and consult a map. I could only assume she wanted to be seen. Which brings us back to the whole notion of staging.’

  Dryer turned his glass round and round. ‘You may be right.’ Jury was thinking. ‘The body in that Stevens poem—’

  ‘The sea is like a body, the body of the singer, ‘fluttering its empty sleeves—’

  ‘The ‘mimic motion.’ Mimic. Look, I know this is way out, but that’s how this whole business strikes me. It only appears to be real; it’s actually miming an abduction and a murder.’

  Dryer looked at him, eyebrows raised. ‘I assure you, she’s quite dead.’

  ‘Oh, she’s dead all right. I just don’t think she knew she would be. For her, the play turned real.’

  ‘You’re saying the whole was, well, we did say ‘staged.’ We did indeed. From beginning to end? But to what end?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  An hour later, Jury left for London, still not knowing.

  38

  Baffled, Melrose Plant looked at his goat. Aghast, who was quietly eating the primulas. He was not baffled by Aghast, but by the phone call from Richard Jury.

  If Melrose couldn’t work it out before Glynnis Gault was found dead, he certainly couldn’t work it out after. Her murder presented fresh problems, one of which was, What had happened to the boy? Why wasn’t he found dead, too? Or at least found?

  Melrose gave Aghast a brief talking to about diet. Aghast just looked at him and slowly chewed. He was always chewing, whether he was eating or not. Melrose picked up the lead and took him back to his stall.

  Then he went inside the house, pulled on his wool cap and set out for the Jack and Hammer.

  ‘That there lady turned up yet?’ asked Mrs. Withersby, who was smoking one of Trueblood’s cigarettes while she leaned on her broom. When she saw Melrose Plant come in, she took up her station by the table in the window.

  ‘If you’re talking about the Gault woman’—he sat down between Trueblood and Joanna Lewes, the only ones at the table at the moment—’yes she has. Dead.’

  Mrs. Withersby could barely contain herself and slapped her leg as if this news were cause for celebration. ‘Tol’ ya! Din’t I tell ya?’

  ‘No,’ said Trueblood, ‘you did not, old dustbin.’ To Melrose, he said, ‘Where?’

  ‘Details, details,’ said Joanna Lewes. ‘Let’s hear them!’ Understandably, she was one to enjoy a good murder, if it was artfully done.

  ‘I don’t really have that much information beyond the basics. The body was found in that house in Surrey I told you about.’

  ‘The house she vanished from? And all this time later? This is spooky,’ said Joanna.

  She said it, with a shiver Melrose thought she would have described as delicious. It even reached her mouth.

  ‘Tol’ ya,’ said Mrs. Withersby again.

  ‘Oh, shut up, Withers,’ said Trueblood as he reached in his pocket and extracted his money clip. ‘Here, get yourself a drink.’ He took a five-pound note from the clip.

  She grabbed it up smartly, saying, ‘I don’t see you yobs waitin’ on yerself, so why should I?’ She fluted her or
der for a gin to Dick Scroggs, who paid no attention to her.

  ‘You don’t get waited on because you’re the char, Withers.’

  ‘Ha! You fink you’re better’n me?’

  ‘No, I don’t fink. I know I’m better’n you.’

  Mrs. Withersby gave Trueblood a killing look and sloped off to get her gin and argue with her employer, who had been enjoying a quiet read of the Sidbury newspaper.

  ‘She was where in the house?’ asked Joanna.

  ‘The drawing room, the room that still had furniture in it. It was set up by the agent because a totally empty house is so lifeless. You know how empty a place can look. Anyway, that’s where Mrs. Gault was found, lying on the floor.’

  ‘Blood?’ asked Trueblood richly, as if he’d just hiked in from Transylvania.

  ‘No. She was smothered.’

  ‘How?’ asked Joanna. ‘A pillow?’

  ‘Apparently, somebody pressing down hard on her chest.’

  ‘Who found her?’ asked Trueblood. ‘Police?’

  ‘No. There’s a little girl who lives nearby who likes to play in an old Wendy house on the property. She went into Winterhaus for a glass of water. Then into the drawing room and found the body.’

  Joanna put her hand to her forehead as if this news were painful. ‘Poor tyke,’ she said.

  ‘Not terribly tykish, she isn’t. Still, I expect it was kind of awful. Anyway, she went rushing off to tell her aunt, and the aunt called the police.’

  ‘Staging,’ said Trueblood. ‘I mean, really.’ He gave a stunted sort of laugh.

  ‘What?’ asked Melrose.

  ‘Well, as you said before, or as Superintendent Jury said, it looks—sounds—staged. I mean disappearing—mum, boy, dog—in the first place is funny enough. But to be murdered nearly a year later? And murdered there? That’s choreographed to within an inch of its life, right?’ He sipped his drink.

  Melrose bit his lip. ‘I suppose so. Which only raises the question, Why?’

  ‘Good lord, the entire thing’s a ‘why’; it’s been a ‘why’ all along. And Richard Jury’s no closer to an answer than he was. Rather the reverse, I’d say. All this murder does is cloud the issue. But, as I said before, he won’t solve this; he’s allowed himself to get stuck inside the system, and you know what that chap Gödel said.’

  ‘Gödel was paranoid. He thought someone was trying to poison him, so he starved himself to death.’

  Diane looked alarmed. ‘How dreadful. How unspeakable.’ Trueblood went on: ‘That theory of his’—he shut his eyes, his face turned slightly upward to the ceiling, trying to drum up the theory—’incompleteness! That’s the one: the theory of incompleteness. Clever notion—’

  Oh, shut up. It irritated Melrose to death that Trueblood was sitting there working out the incompleteness theory.

  Diane turned to Trueblood. ‘He might have starved himself to death. But he still took fluids, didn’t he?’ She raised her glass for a bracing sip of vodka.

  39

  Jury stopped at a light outside the South Kensington tube station, an extremely complicated little confluence of roads, lights, pedestrian crossings and small islands where one could safely cower to avoid being hit by impatient drivers coming from three—or was it four?—directions.

  Stopping there, he was wondering how to tell Hugh Gault about his dead wife when Vivian’s question came to mind again: Why didn’t they take Mungo? What the hell did she mean?

  Damn. He missed the light turning green until the car behind him tapped its horn. Jury jerked to and continued along the Fulham Road. He passed the Fulham/Broadway tube stop and another death-defying intersection and drove on up the Fulham Road. The night was black as tar, starless and cold.

  He slowed a little as he passed the iron gates of Fulham Palace. Jury thought again of its gardens and what had happened there, and saw in his mind’s eye the knot garden with its medieval herbs, the dead woman lying incongruously in a pitch of lavender. He saw the gorgeous grounds full of trees—silver lime, holm oak, chestnut, redwood—and wondered if he would ever have reason or nerve enough to walk through those trees and gardens again.

  The elegant Stoddard Clinic gave off that same rather comforting sense of having removed itself from the demands of ordinary life, somewhat in the manner of Hugh’s many dimensions and alternate worlds. For some reason. Jury thought of his delayed reaction to the light’s changing in front of the South Ken underground: he intuited—and it was high time his intuition kicked in—that Hugh Gault’s idea of time was far more like that complicated arrangement of lights and crossings than it was like tracks running parallel.

  He had called already, and that and his ID had gotten him past the gatekeeper. Now he sat there in the clinic’s car park, under a massive oak, trying now not to think. The whole thing was unraveling like a frayed gown, and he didn’t want it to come undone too quickly. He turned the envelope holding the crime scene photos Dryer had supplied him with around in his hands, feeling a lot like he must have felt when he was a boy, slapping the book shut as the end of the story approached, even though it was a book someone had read to him many times before. He did not want the words at the end spoken. This, he thought, was a very strange analogy and he wondered what he meant by it. Instead of concern for the dead Glynnis Gault, was he concerned about the end of the story?

  He pocketed his key, got out and stood looking at the clinic’s complicated Gothic façade. Everything was complicated, he thought. Everything. He smiled a little, thinking this whole case would be solved not by he himself—Jury the dimwit—but by Wiggins, Carole-anne and Vivian.

  And Mungo. Perhaps Mungo most of all.

  Jury crossed the entrance hall to Reception and told the sleekly suited receptionist with the black helmet of hair that he’d come to see Hugh Gault. Of course she would already know this, having been notified by the guard at the gate. Yes, he’d been here before. Jury showed her his ID, and she swept her hand back over her glossy black hair as if the warrant card were a camera. She wondered, was something wrong? Not at all. He merely needed some information from Mr. Gault.

  ‘He’ll be down in a minute anyway, if you’d care to wait?’ With a pen she pointed round to the same drawing room he and Harry had waited in before.

  Then Jury turned back to the receptionist: ‘

  ‘Anyway’?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You said Mr. Gault would be down ‘anyway.’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s already been told he has a visitor.’

  The visitor, then, was either the amiable woman with the fading good looks who glanced up from her magazine and gave him a quick smile, or the gaunt young man holding a sheepskin jacket in his lap who looked at Jury and away, his brown eyes incurious.

  Jury had no time to pursue the question of who was who before Hugh Gault walked in and the woman stood up and they embraced. No, hugged was what they did, and hard; they seemed to be gathering warmth from each other.

  Hugh released her and held out his hand to Jury. ‘You’re Inspector . . . no, Superintendent Jury. It’s nice to see you again.’ He turned back to the woman, introducing her. ‘My wife, Glynnis.’

  Things change as you look at them. One thing becomes two things.

  He looked at Glynnis Gault.

  He won’t solve it, you know. . . . Only if Fate steps in and takes his side.

  Fate just stepped in.

  40

  Jury reached out his hand to Glynnis Gault with a peculiar feeling (though oddly pleasant) that he was getting too much water up his nose and coughing from it, and would she kindly pull him out?

  She had a sweet voice and a warm hand. ‘My goodness, what’s Hugh been up to? I’ve been away for some time.’

  Indeed you have. Jury wanted to say. About nine months. But he was so surprised he could only gaze at her. Then after a few seconds of this, he said, ‘Mr. Gault’s done nothing at all. I just wanted him to look at some police photographs.’ He was relieved that the reason for br
inging the pictures would not now materialize, or worse, that he or DCI Dryer had come with the news that Glynnis had been found murdered before she herself had arrived here. It could so easily have happened.

  ‘Let’s have a look,’ said Hugh, motioning for all of them to sit. Jury drew out the two photos of the dead woman and cautioned them that the subject was dead, had been murdered.

  They—Hugh and Glynnis—were of that rare breed of witness who thought before they spoke.

  Hugh shook his head. ‘No, sorry.’

  Glynnis also said no. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘That’s the problem. We don’t know. She was found asphyxiated in a house in Surrey that’s presently unoccupied. The woman had apparently disappeared nine or ten months ago, along with her son and the family dog.’

  Glynnis laughed. ‘I’m sorry, but, the family dog! Jury nodded and watched both of them sit back, making themselves comfortable, ready for the story. Jury told the bare bones of it, reserving for the moment the dead woman’s masquerade as Glynnis Gault. And the boy’s as Robbie Gault. And Mungo’s as, well, Mungo. He was reserving this part of it—indeed, the most significant part of it—because the whole story was so incredible. Yet he had believed it, hook, line and sinker. ‘You’re a font of information, Superintendent.’

  He said, wanting immediately to call it back: ‘The dog came back.’ He realized how strange the whole thing sounded. How exceedingly strange it sounded coming out of his own mouth, a Metropolitan policeman. A New Scotland Yard detective.

  They looked at one another. Hugh repeated it: ‘The dog came back?’

  ‘It’s an account that was given me by Harry Johnson.’ He waited for Hugh to seize upon this piece of news. He did.

  ‘Harry? You’re saying Harry told you this story?’ Hugh laughed.

  His wife looked as if she thought it was too fantastic.

  ‘He did, yes.’

  Glynnis laughed. ‘Please, Mr. Jury, this is some police trick, isn’t it?’

  Jury felt his mouth going dry. ‘No.’

  Hugh said, ‘I was more than a little puzzled when he brought you—’