The Man with a Load of Mischief

by Martha Grimes

  “You handled yourself very well, Daphne. Not many people could have kept such a cool head.” That was not in Lady Ardry’s accounting, but then he didn’t believe her, anyway. Twig gave a little supercilious snort.

  The color had crept back into her cheeks, and she turned to Twig, now with somewhat more spirit: “You needn’t sneer, Mr. Twig. It wasn’t you as walked down them steps all unsuspecting-like and found the poor soul —” She clapped her hand over her mouth, and her eyes began to fill with tears.

  “It must have been an awful experience for you.”

  “Oh, horrible, sir. Half in and half out of that keg, he was. I couldn’t hardly believe it. Thought someone was playing a kind of joke. Like Guy Fawkes night, or something. Then I recognized it was Mr. Small, from the suit.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Went running up them stairs again. And just as I got through the door, here came Lady Ardry out of the loo — excuse me, sir —” and she blushed. “I could hardly talk for my heart going like a hammer. She asked what was wrong, and I just kept pointing down them stairs, and then she went down and pretty soon I heard this screech, and up she come like a herd of elephants, shouting at the top of her lungs. Then everybody just kind of went crazy. I run into the kitchen and put me head in me hands.”

  Jury put his hand on her arm. “Thank you, Daphne. I don’t have any more questions.” As they all rose, he reflected that Daphne Murch was probably the only one who had told him the plain, unvarnished truth so far.

  • • •

  Matchett appeared in the doorway of the dining room. “Inspector, if you and your sergeant would like an early dinner, it will be ready shortly.”

  Saying he felt a chill coming on from the cellar damp, Wiggins had gone to sit by the fire, together with the dog. “We would,” said Jury. “And I’d like a word with your cook.”

  • • •

  The cook’s information was predictably negligible. Mrs. Noyes hadn’t seen this Mr. Small. She was so frightened by his death, it was all Mr. Matchett could do to get her to stay on. Jury thanked her and went back to the bar, where Matchett was rearranging bottles, discarding empties.

  “As well as you can remember, what were Small’s movements on that evening?”

  Matchett poured them both a whiskey, and reflected. “He dined about seven, before the others came. Then he disappeared — probably went back to his room — then reappeared around eight or eight-thirty. Had a drink in the bar. I don’t remember seeing him after that.”

  “That was with Mr. Trueblood?”

  “Yes. I think Willie Bicester-Strachan was in there, too.”

  “So everyone saw him, or could have done.”

  “Yes, I expect so. I was kept busy myself, so I didn’t notice who was where, when.”

  “And not everyone was stone-cold sober? Which would only add to the difficulty of remembering?”

  “I admit having a few myself. The holidays, you know.”

  “But you can’t say definitely that anyone had gone down the cellar stairs between the time your man Twig brought up more wine at eight forty-five and Miss Murch went down sometime round eleven?”

  “No.” Matchett shook is head. “There’s something I just can’t understand, Inspector —”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your questions. You seem to think someone here, inside the inn was . . . did this murder. No one here even knew this Small.”

  “No one said he knew Small, you mean.”

  • • •

  Dick Scroggs was wiping down the bar when Jury walked into the Jack and Hammer later that evening, introduced himself, and showed his identification. This set up some low mutterings from the half-dozen regulars, who seemed to separate like two waves of the sea, three on each side of Jury. They pulled their caps down or merely lowered their noses into their pints of Bass and Ind Coope. One would have thought Jury was going to arrest them all on the spot.

  “Yes, sir,” said Scroggs with excited flicks of the bar towel. “Heard you was in town. I expect you’ll be wantin’ me to answer questions.”

  “I would, Mr. Scroggs. Could we go up to the room Mr. Ainsley occupied?” Jury felt the eyes of the men in the room burning into his back as Scroggs led him up the rickety steps, explaining that he didn’t often have a call for one of his three rooms, as his was really more of a public house than Matchett’s place. This Ainsley had just popped in several days ago asking for a room. Didn’t say where he came from, nor where he was going.

  The room was a square, ill-lit box with the standard furniture: bed, bureau, a rather tatty-looking armchair. Its closet gave up no secrets; its dormer window was the third in the row of five that ran along the front of the Jack and Hammer.

  Scroggs had moved to a door in the wall at right angles to the window. “Now this door leads to the next room. All of these rooms joins one another; as there wasn’t no other guests, this Ainsley says not to worry about locking up the other doors.”

  “In other words, one could go from this room into the box room without even going into the hall?”

  “He could have done, yes.”

  “Convenient for the murderer.”

  They walked through the door into the next room, identical with the first except for the differently arranged furniture, then into the box room, which was filled with odds and ends of furniture, old lamps, suitcases, papers, magazines.

  The casement window was low in the wall, partially obscured by thatch, and, when Jury pushed at it, easily opened. Directly below, not more than a foot down, was the wooden beam on which had stood the carved figure “Jack.” The murderer had simply lifted the mechanical smith from the supporting pole and stuck his victim out on the beam.

  “You told Superintendent Pratt this Ainsley came in about seven, is that right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And did what?”

  Scroggs scratched his head, then remembered. “He asked for his evening meal — that is, after I showed him the room. He had that around eight and then sat about for a bit and went up to his room, oh, I think it’d just gone nine.” Dick Scroggs reflected a moment, and then added: “I mean, I guessed he was going up to his room.”

  Jury looked at him. “That’s an interesting distinction, Mr. Scroggs. What you mean is, he could have gone out? By a back door?”

  “Well, yes, he could have done. Not by the front, no, because I’d have seen him. But that back door” — Scroggs hooked his thumb downward — “it’s nearly always open.”

  “He could have met someone outside, then?”

  Scroggs nodded. “Or someone could’ve gone up to his room, too, I didn’t see.”

  “Who else was in the Jack and Hammer?”

  “Near everyone, that evening.” He screwed up his face in an effort of remembering, and ticked off the names of the same people who had been at the Man with a Load of Mischief, with the exception of Trueblood and Lady Ardry. Not, thought Jury, that that accounted for much. As Scroggs had said, anyone could have walked in the rear door and up the stairs.

  Scroggs looked out of the window. “It’s something, init? Just sticks him out here for all the world to see. Don’t make sense.”

  “It wouldn’t, I guess, Mr. Scroggs. Except all the world didn’t see Ainsley for some time, did they?”

  CHAPTER 7

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23

  When Richard Jury awoke next morning in his comfortable four-poster, it was to the sight of new-falling snow. The latticed window was the first thing he saw as he propped himself up in bed to fumble for his alarm and note the time: 8:15. He lay back against the pillows and watched the snow drifting past in wet, fat flakes, and closed his eyes again, feeling rather sanguine. Anyone else, he supposed, would be thinking, What a hell of a way to spend my Christmas holiday. But Jury thought it rather perfect: a postcard village filling up with snow.

  He got out of bed and walked over to the casement window, which he threw open and gave himself a rousing
chill. He thought of Keats in the inn at Burford Bridge, writing: “Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.” And Jury was hit with a wave of nostalgia. Before it could overcome him, he dressed quickly and went down the hall to Sergeant Wiggins’s room.

  • • •

  Unlike Jury, Wiggins did not seem at all eager to be pulling on macintosh and Wellingtons for a tramp around the village.

  “I feel awful feverish, sir. I was just wondering, sir, if perhaps I could lie in a bit and join you later, maybe?”

  Jury sighed. Poor Wiggins. But since he was a hindrance knocking about with his pockets full of drops and pills, Jury readily agreed. “Of course. You do that. Maybe a hot buttered rum would fix you up.” Piteously grateful, Wiggins sighed his relief, looking a bit like a snowman under his mound of white sheets and counterpane.

  It might stave off some terminal respiratory ailment if Wiggins could be made to concentrate on the case instead of the bottles on the nightstand, so Jury drew over a chair, straddled it, and said, “What do you think, Wiggins?”

  Wiggins’s handkerchief was up to his nose. “Bah wha sah?”

  “The case, Wiggins. The condition of the cellar.”

  Wiggins looked thoughtful and swiped the handkerchief under his nose once or twice. Then he carefully folded it and held it in an almost holy way, as if it were a fragment of Veronica’s veil. “The lock being broken? Is that what you mean?”

  Jury nodded, waiting patiently. When Wiggins did not continue, Jury said, “It’s not likely anyone came in that way, is it? Pratt said there’d been a heavy rain the night of the seventeenth.”

  Wiggins brightened and sat up a bit. “And the stairs looked like they’d got years of dirt and muck on them. But the inside was clean.”

  “Precisely,” said Jury, smiling. Wiggins looked pleased. “Besides, think a moment.” Jury lit up a cigarette. “Why in God’s name would anyone coming from outside want to meet Small in the cellar? And then have to break down the door? It won’t do, will it?”

  “But if they didn’t come from outside, they must’ve come from inside.” He pointed ceilingward. “It must’ve been one of them upstairs.”

  Jury swung his legs off the chair. “Dead right, Wiggins. Get better now, for I’ll need your help.”

  Wiggins was already looking better as Jury turned at the door to say good-bye.

  • • •

  After breakfast — an ample one of eggs, sausages, and kippers, served up by Daphne Murch — Jury crossed the courtyard to the police car parked there. The snow layered the thatch and the cobbled yard, rimmed the bird bath in which wrens were even now leaving their tiny prints. He would first have to deliver Pluck’s precious Morris to him; then he could have his tramp in the snow while making his official inquiries. Leaning against the car, he let the wet snow fly in his face while the engine warmed, and he studied the small map Pluck had made for him, indicating the houses of those people he would have to see. He decided to start with Darrington, at the other end of the village. Jury licked the snow from his lips and got in the car. He loved winter above all seasons, even spring. He also liked rain over sunshine, mist over a clear view. A bloody melancholic, he thought, as he drove out of the courtyard.

  • • •

  Oliver Darrington lived on the other side of Long Piddleton, toward Sidbury. As the Dorking Dean Road became Long Piddleton’s High Street of rainbow shops and houses, Jury passed the Church of St. Rules and the vicarage on his right, then drove to the square. There was the tea room and bakery, where he supposed Miss Ball was up to her elbows in flour. After he drove over the bridge, Jury saw Marshall Trueblood standing behind his fancy window, and returned a brief salute when Trueblood waved. The Jack and Hammer was closed like a clam, with that air of desolation some pubs have prior to their 11:00 A.M. opening.

  Jury parked the car in front of the police station and turned the keys over to Pluck after the sergeant had come running out, apparently in a great state of nerves over the welfare of the Morris.

  “I’ll be at Darrington’s house if you need me, Sergeant.”

  “You’re walking, sir?” asked Pluck, with mild amazement.

  “Um. I’ve been too long in city pent.”

  But Pluck apparently didn’t care how pent Jury had been; he was busily inspecting the car for scratches.

  Jury set off down the High Street, admiring the gemstone colors of cottages that glimmered in the bright sun, and when he had come to the end of these, started singing some song he dredged up about the Coldstream Guards. Singing, apparently, rather loudly, for a window flashed up in a thatched cottage near the Sidbury Road and a head popped out for a brief moment. He stopped singing, and watched while a curtain was drawn slowly back. He looked at his map. Lady Ardry lived in that cottage.

  • • •

  Darrington’s house looked just the sort of thing a moneyed writer might choose — secluded and Elizabethan. It was barricaded by ash, tall hedgerows, willows, and elms and sat rather back from the road.

  The creator of the Superintendent Bent series must have found it financially rewarding, given that house. Jury had read the first, Bent on Murder. Clever enough, he guessed, if you liked fictional detectives who were cool, strong, and iron-nerved. As Jury pushed the bell and heard its silver echoes in the hall, he only hoped the writer did not identify with his detective, to be forever propounding his own theories.

  The woman who opened the door was, by anyone’s standards, dishy. A bit tartish, perhaps, the way she lounged there in the doorway in such fabulous disarray, her burgundy-red housecoat nearly falling off her shoulder. Wanting only to see her reaction, Jury said: “Mrs. Darrington?” and then watched her face register, in rapid succession, embarrassment, irritation, and sadness. In Jury’s experience, the Darringtons of this world seldom married ladies with “modeling” jobs in London. Even if you met this one inside 10 Downing Street you might still think you were slumming.

  “I’m Sheila Hogg. Long o, please. Oliver Darrington’s secretary. You’re the police, aren’t you? Come in.” And she held the door wide, but not happily. Her manner was just a shade too bored to be convincing. In the circumstances, no one could be that offhand about a visit from the police.

  He followed her through to the living room, divesting himself of his raincoat as he went. It was a handsome room into which she led him, with scrolled and pointed paneling around the door. On either side of the fireplace was a very comfortable looking couch, and it was onto one of these that Sheila Hogg more or less dropped, before she remembered that Scotland Yard would also want to see Oliver. She excused herself, went to the bottom of the staircase in the hall, and called up that the police had come. When she came back, she pushed some newspapers and magazines from the couch and invited Jury to sit. On the butler’s table in front of the couch were the leavings of a toast-and-coffee repast, and she offered coffee to Jury, though without much enthusiasm. He declined, and got to the point before she struck up a conversation about the weather, for lack of something better.

  “What time did you and Mr. Darrington arrive at the Man with a Load of Mischief the evening Mr. Small was killed?”

  She had taken a cigarette from a packet on the table and was waiting for Jury to give her a light. She screwed up her face at this question. “Nine, I think, perhaps nine-thirty. We came in on the heels of Marshall Trueblood.” As she leaned over to accept Jury’s light, her robe fell open slightly; as he had suspected, there was nothing underneath. “Let’s see: Agatha and Melrose Plant were already there. But then, Agatha’s always first everywhere. Afraid she’ll miss something. How Melrose stands her is beyond me. He’s got the patience of a saint. Wonder how he’s managed to stay single.”

  Jury imagined Sheila probably thought of most men in terms of coupling. If not with her, at least with someone.

  “Are you?” she asked, looking him up and down.

  “Am I what?”

  “Single.” Her g
lance was appreciative.

  Jury was spared answering by a voice behind him: “Oh, for God’s sake, Sheila. Whether the inspector’s married is none of your damned business. Oliver Darrington, Inspector.” He held out a deeply tanned and well-tended hand, which Jury rose to shake. Turning once more to Sheila — Darrington seemed embarrassed by her very presence — he said, “And we usually dress for Scotland Yard, Sheila.”

  Her robe showed a good deal of leg, curled up as she was on the couch. She stubbed out her cigarette and swung her legs down. “For heaven’s sake, Oliver, he’s the police. Nothing bothers them, they’re like doctors. Seen everything, haven’t you, love?” And she turned on Jury a sultry and winning smile.

  Jury simply smiled at her in answer. She might be a trollop, but Darrington was a prig, and he preferred trollops to prigs. Jury felt the same antipathy toward Darrington as he had toward Isabel Rivington.

  Darrington was wearing a fawn-colored jacket, exactly the shade of his hair, an expensive silk shirt, open at the neck, into which was stuffed an equally expensive ascot. It made Jury slightly self-conscious of his own blue necktie, slightly askew. The man was handsome, but with a profile a little too Greek, features a bit too chiseled; and, like a statue, he seemed chilly and unbending.

  Darrington poured himself some coffee and told Jury the same story the others had told — or hadn’t, since they were all looking at it through wine-starred eyes. The only thing he added was that Matchett had supplied the champagne. “Holidays, and all that. He can be very generous at times.” The implication was that at other times he couldn’t.

  “Talking about Simon, are you?” said Sheila, who had come back into the room in about the same condition she had left, having merely exchanged the revealing robe for an equally revealing one-piece, green velvet lounging-pajama thing, the long zipper of which still dipped below breast level. The secretive smile that played on her lips suggested to Jury that Matchett might have been generous in more ways than one. However, this did not dispel Jury’s impression that Sheila’s main mission in life was Oliver Darrington.