The Man with a Load of Mischief

by Martha Grimes

  It was not that Inspector Jury suffered under the illusion that his colleagues in New Scotland Yard were all solid with integrity and full of the milk of human kindness — the London bobby in domed hat and short cape happily directing tourists all over town. Or the higher-ups such as himself appearing in neat, shiny suits, under the fanlights of dark doorways, saying to the bathrobed mistress, “Merely a routine inquiry, madam.” No, they were not all cool-headed, diamond-witted upholders of law and order. But Racer contributed so little to that pleasant old stereotype. He sat there now, looking terribly county, and thinking, probably, about his dinner or the latest conquest with whom he would share it, leaving the Jurys of the world to sort out the mess.

  Jury looked out from under the tent of his hand. “A man with his head shoved in a beer keg?” He still hoped Racer would tell him it was all a bad joke.

  Racer only smiled sourly. “Never heard of the Duke of Clarence, eh?” The superintendent was fond of matching wits with Jury, and in the way of true masochists and gamblers, kept it up, though he never won.

  “He was drowned — or so the story goes — in a butt of Malmsey,” said Jury, stealing Racers little bit of erudition.

  Annoyed, Racer snapped his fingers as if he were calling a dog. “The facts, let’s hear the facts.”

  Jury sighed. Having been given a rundown on the murders in Northamptonshire, he was now expected to give it back, like a stenographer. Racer always listened carefully for errors.

  “The first victim, William Small, found in the wine cellar of the Man with a Load of Mischief. Choked with a length of wire, his head shoved in a beer keg. The proprietor brews his own occasionally —”

  Racer interrupted: “Too many brewers taking over all these old inns. Give me a free house every time. . . .” He took out his little gold toothpick and, while starting in on his rear molars, motioned for Jury to continue.

  “The second victim, Rufus Ainsley, found at the Jack and Hammer, on the wooden support beam above the clock, the one the carved figure of the smith stands on. . . .” Once again, Jury looked at Racer, hoping he would tell him it was a joke. But the chief superintendent merely sat there, having removed the toothpick and looking as if the elves had come in the night to stitch together his leathery lips along with the shoes. What unnerved Jury was that Racer found nothing at all odd in this lot. Apparently, since the Duke of Clarence had got his, heads in kegs of beer were not to be wondered at.

  Jury went on: “A waitress at the inn — Daphne Murch — was the first one to come on the body of William Small, and she called the proprietor, Simon Matchett. There were a number of people in the bar, and all claimed not to know the deceased. Small had appeared, according to the proprietor, only that day, desiring lodgings. That was the first crime. The second occurred twenty-four hours later. The body of Ainsley had been put up on the beam in place of the mechanical figure. . . .” Jury’s voice trailed off. The murderer as Guy Fawkes prankster made his blood run cold.

  “Continue.”

  “The body of Ainsley was apparently lowered out the window of a box room directly above the beam. The height of the beam and the snow would account for no one’s noticing it for hours. . . .” He wondered if he were dreaming. “The victims were both strangers to Long Piddleton, having arrived within a day or two of one another —”

  “Day or two? What sort of gibberish is that, lad? What do you think you’re doing, Jury? Guessing long shots? Mucking about in the football pools? A policeman’s job is to be exact!” And he plugged his mouth again with the thick cigar, staring at Jury while the intercom buzzed. Racer flipped the switch. “Yes?”

  It was one of the girls who worked in C-4. She had brought round the file on the Northamptonshire murders.

  “Bring it in, then; bring it in,” said Racer irritably.

  Fiona Clingmore entered and, getting her priorities straight, smiled warmly at Jury before handing over the manila folder to Racer. She was wearing one of those 1940 outfits she seemed to like: black, high-heeled shoes with a button strap across the instep, tight black skirt, black nylon blouse with long, full sleeves which always made her look en négligée. As usual, her neckline was down and her skirt was up. Fiona always seemed to wear her clothes at half-mast; perhaps she was mourning chastity, thought Jury.

  Jury watched the superintendent’s eye peeling the clothes from her like an onion, layer after filmy layer. “That’ll be all,” Racer said, and shooed her off with a flap of his hand.

  With another smile and a wink at Jury, she left. Racer saw that and said with sarcasm, “Quite the ladies’ man, aren’t you, Jury?” Then he snapped, “D’ya think we could get back to business, now?” He spread out some photos that he had taken from the folder and tapped the first with his finger: “Small, William. Killed between nine and eleven on Thursday night, December seventeenth, as nearly as the Northants boys can fix it. Ainsley, killed sometime after seven on December eighteenth. Twenty-four hours apart. No identification. We only know their names because they signed the registers. Small got off a train in Sidbury, but we don’t know where he boarded. Nothing to connect either one of them with anyone in the village. That’s the lot. Some lunatic loose, no doubt.” Racer started to clean his nails with a penknife.

  “I only wish they’d called us in immediately; it’s a cold trail —”

  “Well, they didn’t, then, did they, lad? So get down there and pick up the cold trail. You expect things to be easy for you, Jury? A policeman’s life is full of grief. Time you learned it.” He snapped the penknife shut, and began cleaning his ear with his little finger. Jury only wished he would complete his toilette at home.

  Jury knew it infuriated Racer to have to put him on the case. Everyone in the division felt that it was Jury who should be chief superintendent. For his part, Jury did not really care. He didn’t want to be in charge of a division, and God knows he didn’t want to spend his time investigating complaints against other policemen. Having no wife and no children dependent upon him, he could afford the lesser salary, which was ample for his modest needs. What did all this superstructure matter, anyway? Jury had known PCs who were as invaluable in their expertise and knowledge as were the men on the Olympian heights of the commissioner.

  “When did you want me to leave, sir?”

  “Yesterday,” snapped Racer.

  “I’ve still got this Soho murder —”

  “You mean that Chink restaurant business?”

  The phone interrupted them and Racer yanked it up. “Yes?” He listened a moment, flicking glances at Jury. “Yes, he’s here.” He listened a moment longer, a mean smile playing on his thin lips. “ ‘Over six feet, chestnut hair, dark gray eyes, good teeth, and a ravishing smile’?” his voice fluted. “That’s our Jury, all right.” The smile vanished. “Tell her he’ll call her back. We’re busy.” Racer slammed down the receiver, bouncing several ball-point pens. “Except for the ‘ravishing smile’ bit, that description could fit a horse.”

  Jury asked patiently, “May I inquire what that was all about?”

  “One of the waitresses down at that Soho restaurant.” Racer looked at his watch. The call must have reminded him of his own engagement. “Got a dinner date.” He tossed the folder across the desk to Jury. “Get down to this godforsaken village. Take Wiggins with you. He’s not doing anything except blowing his goddamned nose.”

  Jury sighed. As usual, Racer hadn’t even asked him to choose his own detective sergeant. Wiggins was a young man made old through hypochondria. Likable enough, and efficient, but always on the verge of keeling over. “I’ll gather up Wiggins and leave early in the morning,” said Jury.

  Racer was out of his chair and pulling on his beautifully tailored overcoat. Jury wondered where his chief superintendent got his money. Taking bribes? Jury didn’t care.

  “Well, gather him up, then.” The superintendent flicked his thin, gold wristwatch. “Dinner at the Savoy. Got a gal waiting.” His smile was lascivious as he drew a shape in air. A
t the door he turned and said, “And for God’s sake, Jury, remember you work here, will you? When you get to that one-eyed village, report in for a change.”

  • • •

  Jury walked down the hall — and what lackluster halls they were, now, compared with the Victorian elegance of the old building. No marble and mahogany here, certainly. Crammed and jammed as old Scotland Yard might have been, he preferred it. When he got to the door of his own office, he found Fiona Clingmore hovering nearby, as if she had hit the spot purely by accident. She was buttoning up a black overcoat.

  “Well, Inspector Jury, off duty at last?” Her voice sounded hopeful.

  Jury smiled, reached inside the door, and grabbed his coat from the tree. His mates had left, so he switched off the light and shut the door. Looking down at her face, less young than one might have supposed at a distance, and at the high-piled yellow hair on which perched a kind of pillbox hat, Jury said, “Fiona, you know what you make me think of?” She shook her head, but looked at him expectantly. “All of those old wartime movies where the Yanks stream into London and fall in love with the local girls.”

  Fiona giggled. “A bit before my time, that is.”

  That was true. But she still looked out of another era. She might not be pushing forty, but she was close enough to give it a nudge.

  “I don’t think my Joe’d like you talking this way to me, Inspector Jury,” she said coyly.

  She was always talking about her Joe. No one had ever seen him. Jury had guessed some time ago that there was no Joe. There may have been once, but no more. He looked at Fiona smiling at him, saw how empty her eyes were, and felt a sudden rush of empathy, of kinship, even. “Listen,” said Jury, looking at his watch, “I’ve got to go down to Soho on a bit of business. Since it’s a restaurant, and I’ve not eaten . . . how about it? Want a bit of supper? I’m certainly due for a break.”

  Her face was flooded with what looked very much like a dawning day. Then she lowered her mascaraed lashes and said, “Oh, I don’t know if my Joe’d go for that, but . . .”

  “Joe doesn’t have to know, now does he?” She looked up, and Jury winked at her.

  • • •

  It was nearly midnight by the time Jury had finished with his Soho restaurateur and Fiona’s incessant chatter. When he emerged at the Angel tube stop, he was extremely tired and did not relish the idea of an early train to Northamptonshire. He consoled himself by thinking that getting out of London for a few days — or weeks, even — might be pleasant. He had nowhere to go for Christmas, anyway, except to his cousin’s miserable house in the Potteries, to be pulled about by her two kids.

  Jury yanked a leftover Times from under the brick by the tube exit, tossed some coins on the rest of the skinny pile, and walked off toward home.

  It had started snowing — a thin, powdery snow, not the kind of wet, fat flakes that stuck on your lashes and stayed on your tongue. Jury liked the snow, but not the London kind, which only served to muck up traffic in its gray and slushy runoff. It was coming down heavier now, grainy as sugar, and pricked his face as he walked along Islington High Street toward Upper. He swerved off into Camden Passage, which he liked at this time of night, eerily silent as the little shops were, the night disturbed only by the tinny sound of bits of paper being bounced by the wind. The Camden Head was closed up and the little stalls set up by the antiques people all taken down. When they were doing business out here in the open the place was fairly jammed, and Jury liked to hang about sometimes and watch the shoplifters work. His favorite dip, Jimmy Pink, was fond of Camden Passage — Jimmy could take your pocket along with what was in it without your knowing. Jury had nicked him so many times here that he had suggested to Jimmy he might as well set up a stall himself.

  He walked out of the passage into Charlton Place, thence to Colebrook Row, a lovely little crescent of houses where he wouldn’t have minded living himself, then on for a couple of streets to his own row of houses. Most of them had been converted into flats. It was a bit seedier, but not unpleasant, for it fronted a little park across the way, to which each occupant had a key.

  Jury’s own flat was on the second floor. There were five others, and he scarcely saw his neighbors because of his weird hours. But he did know the woman who lived in the basement rooms — Mrs. Wasserman. He saw there was a light glowing there, behind heavily grilled and draped windows. Two geraniums flanked the steps, summer and winter. Mrs. Wasserman was up, as usual.

  He let himself in and switched on the overhead. The room sprang up in the light and left him, as always, dismayed by the mess, as if thieves had just ransacked his rooms and made a fast exit. It was the books, mostly. They spilled from the cases and tables. In the bay window, which overlooked the park, was his desk. He lay the folder down there and took off his coat. Then he sat down and went through the photographs once more. Incredible.

  The first was taken in the wine cellar of the Man with a Load of Mischief and was dark and grainy, but one could still see with startling clarity the almost torsoless body. The victim had been lifted over the waist-high keg used for home brewing, so that his head and shoulders were in the keg and the rest of the body dangling down the side.

  Jury wondered why. Why, that is, given that William Small had been garroted with a length of wire, had the murderer bothered with this grotesque embellishment?

  The photograph of the Jack and Hammer was even more bizarre. The body of Rufus Ainsley, limp as it was after the rigor had passed off, had been supported by the narrow metal bar that had secured the carved figure to the beam. This tube had been run up inside the victim’s shirt, a rope lashed around his midsection, and all then covered by his buttoned-up suit jacket. There were still clumps of unmelted snow on his shoulders. There it was, then, the body hidden in plain sight, the best place to hide anything — beneath your feet or over your head. The victim was a smallish man, five feet five or six, so he made a good stand-in for the carved figure. Hard to say how long it would have been before someone had looked up; anyway, people see what they expect to see.

  But again, Why? What purpose was served by this elaborate ruse?

  He gathered up the photos, opened the shallow desk drawer, and slid the folder in beside a small, framed photograph. It was lying in the drawer, face down. Jury had taken it off the desk, but couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. When he was younger, Jury hadn’t given much thought to marriage. He thought about it now, though. In forty years, rarely had a special woman come along. Maggie had been one.

  Jury put her picture back, face down, closed the drawer, and was locking it with a little key when he heard a rap at the door.

  “Inspector Jury,” said the woman outside when he opened the door, clasping and unclasping her hands, “he’s out there again. I don’t know what to do. Why don’t he leave me alone?”

  “I’ve just got in, Mrs. Wasserman —”

  “I know, I know, and I hate to trouble you. But . . .” She spread her hands in a helpless gesture. She was a heavy woman, dressed in a black dress pinned at the bosom with a filigree brooch. Her black hair was pulled back smooth and tight into a bun coiled up like a spring. She made him think of a tightly wound spring herself, as she kneaded her hands and pushed her sweater sleeve up to the elbow in a nervous gesture.

  “I’ll go down with you,” said Jury.

  “It’s the same shoes, Inspector. You know, I can always tell by the shoes. What’s he want? . . . Why don’t he leave me alone? . . . Is that grill strong enough, do you think? . . . Why does he keep coming back and back? . . .” Her questions floated back to Jury as they descended the flights of stairs to her rooms.

  “I’ll just have a look.”

  “Yes, do.” Her hands went up to her face, as if even Jury’s glancing out of the tiny front window might endanger them both. Opposite her door was a window, level with the top step and the pavement. “There’s nobody there, Mrs. Wasserman.” Jury knew there wouldn’t be.

  It happened about every two mo
nths. At first Jury had tried to convince her of the truth: there was nobody there. Mrs. Wasserman spent a lot of time watching the feet on the pavement, the bodiless feet and legs passing by her windows. It was the one pair of feet, of shoes, she had fixed on and claimed came back and back again to harass her. Stopping. Waiting. She was terrified of The Feet.

  Jury had tried to convince her The Feet weren’t there, that He wasn’t there, until it had at last come home to him that he was upsetting her more. She needed to believe it. So over the past year, Jury had helped her make her flat as impregnable as a fortress: heavier grillwork, deadbolt locks, chains, burglar alarms. But still, without fail, she’d be up at his door. Each time he did something — another lock, another alarm, maybe — and each time she was flooded with relief. He assured her that someone could ransack New Scotland Yard before they could get into the Wasserman flat, and she thought that funny. He had run out of ideas by now, though.

  He looked out the window, saw nothing, tested the grillwork as a matter of form. She was watching him anxiously. He knew that if he hesitated too long, she would lose faith. Out of his pocket he took a tiny, round piece of metal and held it up. “Mrs. Wasserman, I really shouldn’t do this, it’s not legal” — and he grinned and so did she, sharing the secret — “but I’m putting this on your telephone.” He picked up the base of the phone and attached the disc to the metal plate underneath. “There. Now, if anyone should bother you, just lift the receiver and push this metal disc to the side. It’ll ring my phone upstairs.” Her face brightened. “But, look, only use it if you absolutely have to — an emergency — because it buzzes Central and I’d be in one hell of a jam.”

  Relief flooded her face and it was pathetic to see. He knew she wouldn’t use it; it was only the reassurance she wanted, and he was safe for another two months. Then the tension would build again and she would see The Feet. It was almost like the tension of a sexual deviant or a drug addict. And there was so little to distract her from her obsession. He often wondered about the emptiness of her life. He would look in her dark little eyes sometimes and see himself reflected there.