She walked into the room, tossed the coat on a chair in a heap, and moved to the Welsh dresser. “Mind if I join you?”
“No, of course not,” said Vivian, but without enthusiasm, Jury noticed. Her moral debt to Isabel Rivington seemed to pinch her a bit around the mouth.
Isabel went heavy on the bourbon, splashed some soda into it, and came over to put an arm around Vivian, squeezing her tightly. The gesture struck Jury not so much as affectionate, but proprietary, entrapping. Then she plopped down on the couch, punching the cushions behind her. “You two are certainly pulling long faces. Didn’t Melrose feed you properly? You should have come to Lorraine’s — quite a spread.”
“It was a marvelous dinner,” said Vivian a bit snappishly. Jury was glad to see some spirit.
“Simon wasn’t very happy at your absence,” Isabel added, casually.
Vivian said nothing.
“Unfortunately, the Reverend Denzil Smith was there, so we spent most of the evening listening to stories about priests’ holes, and smugglers’ holes in coastal inns, and the history of inn signs. These murders have really got him going. And the rest of the time we spent talking about poor old Ruby. It’s really dreadful. The vicar said you’d searched the house top to bottom looking for some sort of bracelet. And the girl’s diary.”
Jury did not reply. He only wished some of these villagers would keep their breath to cool their porridge. Jury looked at his watch. “Thank you for the drink. I must be going.”
Vivian walked with him to the door, and as he started down the path toward the Morris, she called, “Wait!” Then she dashed back into the house and returned with a small book which she held out to him. “I don’t know if you like poetry . . . I’d think anyone who quotes Virgil must . . .”
He looked down at the book — a pamphlet whose cover was thick, dark paper; whose title he couldn’t read in the dark. “I like poetry, yes. This is yours?”
She seemed to be looking all around, everywhere but at him, clearly embarrassed. “Yes. It’s mine. That was published three or four years ago. It didn’t sell like hotcakes, as you can imagine.” When he didn’t answer, she kept on talking, as if trying to fill up the space between them. “Of course, you don’t have time, I suppose, to read anything but police reports. But there aren’t many poems there, actually. I don’t write all that many. I mean, I find it hard to write even one . . .”
As her voice trailed off, Jury said. “I’ll find the time.”
• • •
He spent the night in bed, reading Vivian’s poetry. The poems were certainly not the work of a weak-minded young woman who lets herself get pushed about, or who would let herself be talked out of marrying the man she wanted to.
And then he suddenly thought: perhaps the trouble was that Melrose Plant did not want to marry Vivian Rivington.
The book of poems fell from his hands as he went to sleep wondering how anyone could not want Vivian Rivington.
CHAPTER 15
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26
Sergeant Wiggins told Jury, over a breakfast of sausages, fried eggs, and kippers, that he had rung up the Yard as soon as he’d talked with Jury yesterday and that they’d turned up the addresses of two of the former servants at the Goat and Compasses. “Daisy Trump and Will Smollett, sir. They seem to be the only members of the staff sixteen years ago who’re still around. And we’ve located none of the inn guests as yet. I can try and ring up this Trump woman and Smollett and arrange for you to see them.”
“Absolutely,” said Jury, helping himself to more kippers. “It was Trump and Rose Smollett who figured most in finding Mrs. Matchett’s body.”
“Also, I made a few notes here about Mr. Rivington.” Wiggins pushed a sheet of paper toward Jury.
Jury read over the half page of neat typing and found the sparse facts there not much addition to what Isabel and Vivian had told him. Except it gave the exact time of the accident, which was what Jury found so interesting.
“Thanks very much, Sergeant. You did a damned good day’s work, and I’m sorry I spoiled your Christmas dinner.”
Wiggins would rather have a commendation from Jury than a Christmas dinner any time. He smiled, but the smile was cut off abruptly by a coughing fit. He excused himself to go upstairs and spray his throat.
“Tell Daphne Murch I’d like to see her, will you, on your way?”
Daphne appeared five minutes later, coffeepot in hand. “Were you wanting more coffee, sir?”
“I just wanted to talk with you for a minute, Daphne. Sit down.” She did not hesitate at all, having got used to her exalted position as chief witness and friend of Ruby Judd. “Daphne, there are two articles, things that belonged to Ruby, that haven’t turned up, and it seems to me they should have: that bracelet, and her diary. Now, you said she never took the bracelet off, right?”
“That’s what she said, sir. And it’s true — I never seen her without it.”
“She wasn’t wearing it when we found her.”
“Well, that’s ever so odd, that is. Especially as she was going somewhere. I mean if she wouldn’t take it off to clean and dust, she’d be sure to wear it when she went on a trip, wouldn’t she? Maybe the clasp broke, or something. I remember not long ago . . .” Daphne paused and averted her face.
“Yes?”
She coughed nervously. “Oh, it wasn’t nothing, I guess. It was up in her room at the vicarage. We’d visit one another. Sometimes she’d come here; sometimes I’d go there. Well we were fooling about — having a pillow fight, actually — and we were really slugging away at each other, so hard Ruby rolled off the bed and right under. That set us laughing fit to kill. I reached down and tried to grab her — just grabbing under the bed — and she held my wrist so hard my bracelet came off. The clasp on it’s not very good. Then as I was laughing and trying to get it back, she rolled out from under the bed and said, ‘That’s funny.’ I remember that clear as a bell. ‘That’s funny.’ Well, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. Or had some kind of awful shock. She just sat there holding my bracelet and looking like she’d come over queer. Then she kept looking at her bracelet, and she said, ‘I just thought I’d found it,’ like she was talking to herself. I told her to stop acting the fool. She got up then, but just sat down hard on the bed, and kept shaking her head. And it wasn’t long after that that she started this business about knowing something, about having someone on a string.”
“What did the bracelet look like?”
“Nothing special. Just a charm bracelet. I do think the charms were real gold, though. At least, she said they were, but you never could believe Ruby. I remember there was one of those little cubes with a quid inside it. And a tiny horse. And a heart. And some others I can’t remember.” She looked at Jury almost fearfully. “You think what’s happened to Ruby had something to do with that bracelet?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
• • •
Jury got out of the blue Morris in front of the Long Piddleton police station and went inside. He was yanking off his coat when the telephone rang. It was Detective Sergeant Wiggins.
“I got hold of this Daisy Trump, sir. And also the Smolletts — or, rather, a cousin who lives next door. Smollett’s away, and the missus died a few years back. Rosamund, that would be.”
Damn it, thought Jury. “What about this other woman — can I see her?”
“Daisy Trump? Yes. Lives in Robin Hood’s Bay. Up in Yorkshire.”
“Get her down here, Sergeant. Wait a minute. You go up to Robin Hood’s Bay — shouldn’t take you more than a few hours. And book a room somewhere for the Trump woman. My God, is there an inn in the whole of Northants that a murder’s not been done in? Have we run out altogether?”
Wiggins turned away from the phone and Jury heard a mumbled conference before the sergeant was back again. “There’s the Bag o’ Nails. That’s near Dorking Dean, sir. It’s a few miles beyond the Swan.” Wiggins slurped his tea. “Wasn’t that the name of
one of the Matchetts’ inns?” he asked brightly.
“Yes,” said Jury. “It’s a fairly common name. Well, book her in there, and for heaven’s sake put a police guard on the poor woman.
“Yes, sir,” said Wiggins. “Superintendent Pratt’s wondering if you could come to Weatherington. He’d like to go over some details of the case with you.” Wiggins lowered his voice as if London might be listening in. “And Chief Superintendent Racer’s been ringing up in a real state. Is there something I can tell him the next time he calls?”
“By all means. Wish him a Merry Christmas for me. Belated, but from the heart.” Jury hung up as Wiggins snickered. No love lost.
• • •
Melrose Plant was sitting at the table in the bay window polishing off a piece of Mrs. Scroggs’s veal-and-egg pie when the door was shoved open and Marshall Trueblood walked in. Trueblood was a person whom Melrose found he disliked more in the abstract than in the actual living flesh. On a late winter afternoon over a friendly pint, Trueblood could be an entertaining person.
“Hallo, old bean, mind if I join?” Trueblood was shaking out his gray cashmere scarf which he draped over a chair.
“Please do.” As Melrose waved his hand toward the window seat, the door opened again. Smiling, Melrose added, “Indeed, we might as well make a party of it, now Her Grace has arrived.”
Mrs. Withersby was standing in the doorway, glancing suspiciously around, as if the pub might have changed hands overnight and she could be walking into a nest of thieves and cutthroats.
“Hallo, Withers, old trout,” said Trueblood. “Shall you buy this round, or shall I? Let’s not haggle now, you’re much too generous.” Trueblood was counting out some change.
Mrs. Withersby had not put in her teeth today, and when she spoke her mouth caved in toward the back of her head.
“Well, if it ain’t the owner of the Pansy Palace. Time you bought. I stood the last round, less’n a week past.”
“Withers, the last time you ever stood a round was in the ring. What’ll it be?”
“Usual,” she said, and flopped down beside Melrose, whom she immediately began to upbraid. “Ain’t it time you be doin’ an honest day’s work, me lord?”
Melrose inclined his head politely and offered his gold cigarette case, at the same time pulling back from the onslaught of a combination of gin, garlic, and whichever of her mum’s inspired recipes for longevity Mrs. Withersby had been engaging in that day.
“So whatcha doin’, me lord, back here in the dark with Pretty Boy, hmm? Hope yer dear auntie don’t here of it. Ah! Thank ya, dearie,” she continued, changing her tune as Trueblood set her pint in front of her. “Yer a sweetheart, you are, salt of the earth, always did say so. There’s others should be as generous.” And she cast a malevolent look at Melrose.
“Tell us, Withers,” said Trueblood, pleasantly, as he lit up a Balkan Sobranie of bright lavender, “what you think of all the hideous doings in Long Pidd. I hope you’ve been assisting the police with their inquiries.” Trueblood leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “I didn’t tell them, of course, that I saw you crawling down from that wooden beam” — he pointed toward the window — “on the Fatal Night.”
“Piss off, ya pansy! Ya niver seen no sucha thing!” She drew from her sweater pocket a butt, pinched off the burned end, and plugged her mouth with the remainder.
She got the butt going, blew the vile smoke in Melrose’s face, and said, with pride in her voice, “Flayed me a skunk this mornin’.”
Trueblood, who had taken out a small, silver penknife, was cleaning his nails. The news did not seem to perturb him. “Flayed a skunk, you say?”
Mrs. Withersby nodded, beat her empty glass on the table, looked heavenward and nearly shouted, “Flayed me a skunk and nailed the carcass to a tree!” Apparently, she was issuing a warning to whatever gods were up there. “Me mum always flayed a skunk when evil was abroad. It keeps off the ghouls —”
The door of the pub swung open once more, and Lady Ardry appeared, swathed in her Inverness cape.
“Well,” said Melrose, “not quite all of them, I see.” He watched as his aunt’s eyes peered through the dark interior and came to rest on their happy band. What a tableau they must have presented.
She stumped over. “So here you are!”
“Hello, old sweat,” said Trueblood, folding up his little knife and dropping it into his pocket. “Join us?”
“Yes, do,” said Melrose. “Here are your three favorite people in Long Pidd, all foregathered to greet you.” He rose to offer her a chair.
Mrs. Withersby was gumming her greeting when Lady Ardry, brandishing her stick, nearly decapitated her. “I must talk with you, Plant.” She looked at the others darkly. “In private.”
Trueblood made no move to leave, but simply drank his bitter. “Have a seat. Withers here has flayed a skunk.”
Agatha looked as if she’d gladly drive Trueblood under the table with her stick. “Was looking for you earlier, Mr. Trueblood. Might have known you’d be here imbibing rather than tending to business, and there’s your shop standing wide open. Don’t you know just anyone could walk in and help himself?”
“True. What’d you help yourself to? Pockets out, now, there’s a good girl. Under that cape you could secret my Georgian love seat.”
Agatha brandished her stick and Trueblood reared back. “A private word, my dear Plant!”
Melrose yawned. “Oh, why not come along with us to Torquay. We’ve planned a lovely holiday, and you could make a fourth.”
As Agatha banged her stick on the table, Mrs. Withersby jumped up, muttered, and shuffled off.
“Scroggs!” shouted Agatha, as she took Mrs. Withersby’s chair, “bring me some of that shooting sherry.” But Mrs. Withersby was back.
“If’n it be down this evenin,’ if’n it be fell from the tree, then the spell’s broke, and the evil’s done!” And she slammed her empty pint on the table, this time making Agatha jump.
“What are you raving about, my good woman?”
“Told you,” said Trueblood. “About the skunk. We’re waiting for it to fall from the tree so’s we can all sleep in our beds again.’ ”
“Mr. Trueblood,” said Agatha with mock sweetness, “you’ve ten people in your shop all wanting service. Hadn’t you better see to them?”
Trueblood drank off his pint and got up lazily. “Never had ten people in my shop in my life. But I can see I’m not wanted. Ta ta.” And he took himself off.
“Well, you’ve managed to clear the table, Agatha. Now what the deuce is it?”
Triumphantly, she announced: “We’ve found Ruby Judd’s bracelet!”
“What? And who’s ‘we’?”
“Myself. And Denzil Smith.” She tossed off the Reverend Smith’s name so casually that Melrose suspected who had really done the finding.
“They searched that vicarage from top to bottom. Where was it?”
Agatha was overlong in answering. He could visualize some mole in her mind burrowing down for an answer that wouldn’t discredit her. “I don’t think I should say.” Casually, she added: “It was on the premises.”
“Meaning, dear Aunt, you don’t know. The vicar found it, then. He’s given it to Inspector Jury?”
“He would do, I’m sure,” said Agatha sweetly. “If he could find Inspector Jury. He always seems to be darting about the countryside when you need him.”
“Have you told anyone else?” Melrose felt uneasy with this discovery floating about the village.
“I? Not I! I keep my own counsel. But you know what a gossip Denzil Smith is. I just came from Lorraine’s and they’d heard it already.” This was said with some irritation; clearly she wished she had got to them first.
Melrose sighed. “Inspector Jury will be the last to know.”
“If he’d stay in the village for two minutes running, he might be the first. I’ve just been to the station. Couldn’t get a thing out of Constable Pluck. I’ve been
spending my morning doing what Jury should be doing.”
Melrose seriously doubted that, but couldn’t resist asking: “And what have you been doing?”
“Systematically questioning the suspects on this list.” She drew from her pocket a bit of paper, wilted like a lettuce leaf, and handed it over to Melrose, at the same time shouting again to Dick Scroggs to bring her sherry and be quick about it. “I’ve been working my way up the High Street.”
Melrose adjusted his glasses and surveyed her list. There were two headings: Suspects and Motives. “What are all of these Jealousies doing under Motives? Who would Vivian Rivington be jealous of? And you’ve struck Lorraine’s name altogether.”
“One can see she didn’t do it. Ah, here’s my sherry.” Dick stood over her, waiting to be paid. Melrose dug down for some change.
“Incidentally, we’re all going along to the Load of Mischief for dinner tonight.”
Melrose held his glass in one hand, the list in the other. “Who’s ‘we all’?”
“The Bicester-Strachans. Darrington and that scarlet woman he runs round with. And the light of your life, Vivian.” She added slyly: “Simon was at her place when I was there this afternoon.”
Melrose ignored this. “How do you know Lorraine wouldn’t have been involved in these murders?”
“Breeding, my dear Plant, breeding.”
“That explains why her horse wouldn’t have done them, but not Lorraine.”
Still perusing the list, he noticed his own name was buried among the others, in smaller print, squeezed in between Sheila and Darrington almost as an afterthought. Under Motive was a question mark. “Do you mean you can’t think of a motive for me, Aunt?”
She grunted. “Didn’t have you down at all, at first. It’s that damnable alibi you and Jury trumped up between you.”
“I notice, though, that your name is absent.”
“Of course, you simpleton. I didn’t do it.”
“But under Trueblood’s name you’ve got Drugs. Drugs? What’s he to do with drugs?”
She smirked. “My dear Plant. Trueblood is in the antiques business, isn’t he?”
The Man with a Load of Mischief Page 20
