The Man with a Load of Mischief

by Martha Grimes

  “I’ve known that for some time.”

  “With all of those things he’s got coming in from abroad — probably even from Pakistan and Arabia — well, where would you secrete hashish or cocaine you wanted to smuggle into the country?”

  “I haven’t a clue. In my ear?”

  “These men who were killed were, what d’ya call them? ‘Connections.’ Well, it could have been a gang war.”

  “But Creed was a retired policeman.” Despite himself, he had to reason with her.

  “Exactly, my dear Plant! He was after them, don’t you see? The whole dope ring. So Trueblood had to —” And she drew her finger across her throat.

  Melrose hated himself for asking. “And Ruby Judd —?”

  “A go-between.”

  “Between who?”

  “There’s always a go-between.”

  Melrose left it. “Look, Jury must be informed of this bracelet.”

  Agatha drank off her shooting sherry. “Perhaps Interpol can locate him.” She smiled meanly.

  • • •

  Jury sat in the lounge bar of the Man with a Load of Mischief waiting for Melrose Plant. They had arranged that morning to meet at the Load of Mischief that evening. Jury checked his watch: 8:35.

  Jury yawned. Well, where is he, then? Looking at his face in the long bar mirror, he saw it distorted by the bronze-tinted glass etched in an elaborate filigree of morning glories and vines. No, he probably really looked that bad. He felt very tired after an afternoon of going over the evidence with Superintendent Pratt.

  He also felt sorry for himself, observing the proximity of Vivian Rivington and Simon Matchett at a table in the corner. Near them sat Sheila Hogg and Oliver Darrington, who had been engaged in unfriendly colloquy when he first came in, but who were now putting on smiles for Lorraine Bicester-Strachan and Isabel Rivington. Willie Bicester-Strachan Jury had seen wandering through the rooms, looking for the vicar. He had asked Jury just a few moments ago if he had seen Smith.

  Jury heard his name and looked up in the mirror to see Melrose Plant standing behind him. “I — we— just got here. Sorry I’ve been so long, but my dear aunt has been bending my ear for the last hour. She’s out in the hall now doing the same to Bicester-Strachan.” Plant took the stool beside Jury. “Have you seen Denzil Smith?”

  “No, but he’s supposed to be here.”

  Plant seemed concerned. “Look, according to Agatha —”

  “Agatha can speak for herself, thank you very much!” She squeezed in between them, shoving Jury aside. “A pink gin, please, Melrose.”

  As Melrose ordered drinks, he said, “Surprisingly, Inspector, even I think you should listen to what my aunt has to say.”

  Jury noticed that Lady Ardry’s ruby-and-emerald bracelet encircled a handsome leather glove. He wondered what had happened to the mittens and felt almost a sense of loss. She regarded him now much as the Queen might have run her eye over some drab of a kitchen girl. “Had you come to me, Inspector, I might have been able to give you one or two little ideas.”

  “I should certainly appreciate your giving them me now, Lady Ardry.” Jury tried to look properly abject, and only hoped she would come straight to the point . . . which, of course, she didn’t. First she had to arrange a few oddments about her person, the little button on the glove properly seen to, the ratty-looking fox furpiece moved a fraction of an inch, her hair smoothed into no place it seemed to belong. As Melrose put her pink gin in front of her, she was prepared to speak. “This afternoon I paid a visit to the vicar. It was after I’d stopped off at the Rivingtons. And I must say, Melrose, the light of your life Vivian, might be a wee bit more hospitable. If you want my opinion, Chief Inspector—”

  “And pigs might fly,” said Melrose. “Get to the point, Agatha.”

  “You needn’t take that tone. There’re quite a few little things I discovered during the course of my questioning of suspects that the inspector might pay dear to know.” She simpered. Jury kept his countenance and waited patiently. To attempt to hurry her along would only make things worse. “At any rate,” she went on, “it’s very well to go about ignoring quite obvious things — such as Trueblood’s being an antiques dealer—”

  “Get to the vicar, Agatha.”

  “Who’s telling this, Melrose?”

  He shrugged. “The Ancient Mariner?”

  “After my visits to just about everyone on the list —”

  “The bracelet, Agatha.”

  “I’m coming to that.”

  “Am I to understand this has something to do with the Judd girl’s missing bracelet, Lady Ardry?”

  “That’s the thing I’ve been trying to tell you, were it not for the constant interruptions of my nephew. I found the brac —”

  “He found, you mean,” corrected Melrose. “You admitted you had nothing to do with the finding.”

  “Well, where, Lady Ardry? We looked the whole house over.”

  Agatha studied the tips of her shoes. “I’m not sure, but —”

  “Oh, hell, Agatha. Smith wouldn’t tell you where because he didn’t want to have you tell the whole of Long Piddleton.”

  “That was not the reason.” She looked thoughtful. “He didn’t want to endanger my life!” Shen she looked worried. “Good God, it won’t will it?”

  Jury felt his scalp prickle. “When did he find it? How long has he known about it?”

  “I don’t know, precisely. I was with him this morning. He’d been trying to get ahold of you, but you were out gadding — following up wrong leads, no doubt.”

  “And you actually saw this bracelet?”

  “Well, naturally!”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Denzil has secreted it somewhere. He said he was going to put it right back where he found it, it was such a good hiding place. But he wouldn’t tell me where.” She shoved her pink gin around, sulkily. Then she said, “My whole theory about this whole dreadful catalogue of crimes has to do with Marshall Trueblood’s —”

  “Marshall Trueblood’s what, old twig?” Jury had not seen him come up. Trueblood did not seem at all put out about being talked of behind his back. He smiled happily all around the table. “And listen, love, hadn’t you better give back my letter opener before I take it up with the police? You were in the shop alone today, remember?”

  Agatha turned red. “I beg your pardon, sir! I want none of your cheap Arabian goods!”

  “Oh ho. Not cheap this. Cost me twenty quid, it did. So give it back, will you love.” He snapped his fingers several times.

  Jury got up from the table and strode over to Bicester-Strachan’s group. “Mr. Bicester-Strachan, did the vicar say he was going to be here at some definite time?”

  “Yes.” Bicester-Strachan took out a big turnip watch. “An hour ago. Eight o’clock sharp, he said.”

  “Christ,” muttered Jury. He rushed back to the table and said, “Mr. Plant, can we use your Bentley?”

  They were out of the door before the others could close their gaping mouths.

  CHAPTER 16

  The knifelike letter opener had been plunged into his chest nearly all the way up to the ivory-carved hilt. The body of Denzil Smith was lying in the middle of the library floor, face up.

  Though not a shambles, the library of the vicarage had clearly been searched: books thrown from the now-bare shelves, drawers pulled out, closets opened.

  “I don’t understand,” said Melrose Plant. “If he were after the bracelet, why would the murderer have exposed himself just to retrieve it? Wasn’t it only an ordinary charm bracelet to anyone except himself and Ruby Judd?”

  “I don’t imagine it was only to get at the bracelet. Maybe he came for something else: Ruby’s diary. One missing article has turned up, and he might have thought the vicar had the other. He certainly couldn’t afford to take that chance.” Jury went around behind the desk, sat down, and, being careful to use a handkerchief while he did so, called the Weatherington station. He left
instructions for Wiggins to come along with the lab crew. Then he called Constable Pluck.

  “My God, sir, not another?” Pluck was breathless.

  “Yes, another. Now, what I want you to do is get up to the Man with a Load of Mischief straightaway and start getting statements — Simon Matchett, the Bicester-Strachans, Isabel and Vivian Rivington, Sheila Hogg and Darrington. Also Lady Ardry. Get rid of everyone else.”

  In a voice that might have been used to discuss a child’s serious illness, Pluck said. “I don’t know if I can rightly get up there, sir. It’s the Morris, see. She’s making this funny little pinging noise, I don’t —”

  “Constable Pluck,” said Jury, with charming affability, “you’ll have a funny little pinging noise between your ears if you don’t get up to the Man with a Load of Mischief immediately. For God’s sakes, man! Take anyone’s car. Take Miss Crisp’s from next door; stop anyone going by in the street —”

  At Jury’s tone, Pluck must have straightened. Even his voice saluted. “Yes, sir!”

  Jury banged down the receiver and balled up the bit of paper on which he had doodled a picture of a Morris running into a tree. As he started to toss it in the wastebasket, he noticed a sheet of paper lying half under a piece of lavalike rock that served as a paperweight. Jury pulled it out and looked at what appeared to be disjointed notes made, possibly for a sermon.

  “Listen to this,” said Jury to Melrose, who was still standing in the middle of the room gazing down at the vicar’s body. “Listen, the vicar’s made some odd notes here: “Bacchanals . . . Hirondelle . . . God encompasseth us . . .’ What on earth do you suppose he means by all that?”

  Plant came around the desk and looked down at the paper and shook his head.

  “We’ll take it along as soon as the fingerprint man goes over it. But, frankly, I certainly haven’t a hope of anything turning up by way of fingerprints.” He made a survey of everything else on the desk: blotter, ink bottle, pens, a vase of late roses. His eye traveled down the row of open drawers, seeing their contents had been disturbed but not ravaged. There was a squelch of tires outside to the rear of the vicarage, and through the dark pane they could see a flashing blue light, either police car or ambulance. Then the crew from Weatherington came stumbling in, along with Detective Sergeant Wiggins, all of them looking punch-drunk from these constant calls to Long Piddleton. Rain had started and was coming down in sullen, slanting waves, with brief flurries of thunder, like drumrolls from a far-off planet, and spurts of lightning — the perfect night for a murder.

  “Who is it this time?” asked Appleby, wearing a smile like a Christmas wreath.

  Jury, feeling shabby and guilty about the vicars death — could he have averted it by being in Long Piddleton instead of Weatherington? — said bleakly, ‘The Reverend Smith. Denzil Smith. He was vicar of St. Rules.”

  The police photographer — they always reminded Jury of rather grim-faced tourists — was taking pictures of the corpse from every conceivable angle, bending himself like a contortionist. Jury fingered a cigarette out of his packet and watched the print man with his glass and brush dusting everything from doorknobs to lampshades. One detective constable had stationed himself at the door, one was roaming the upstairs, and one was about to start taking directions in this room from whoever wanted to give them.

  When the picture taking was finished, Dr. Appleby bent over the body, and Wiggins stood behind him, notebook in hand. Wiggins looked peaked. And no wonder. Appleby droned on with the details about the manner of death, the condition of the victim — height, weight, years. He put the approximate time as between six and eight that evening. But state of rigor, he said, was not that conclusive. There was a jarring familiarity about everything, as if the same film were being run again and again.

  There was another crunch of tires, slamming doors, opening doors, and the stretcher men came in for the removal of the body. They stood mutely at attention waiting for Appleby to give the sign. Appleby finished his cursory examination, and they wrapped the body in a rubber sheet.

  When everyone had finished in the library, and the print man had trudged upstairs with a detective sergeant, Appleby lit up. He blew a small smoke ring and said, “I was considering a little cottage here for my retirement. But in the circumstances, I’m not sure it would be a good investment.” He snapped up his bag and was at the front door when he turned to tell Jury he would see him. Soon.

  “That doctor’s got a weird sense of humor,” said Melrose.

  Jury was back at the desk, plucking the paper up and studying the notes the vicar had made. There had been a smear of ink on his finger, Jury had noticed, and there was a similar smear on the paper.

  Car doors outside were opening and slamming shut. Headlights turned the fog yellow as the cars backed up. Wiggins returned and collapsed on the couch, pulling out his handkerchief. Long Piddleton was doing his mythical ailments no good at all. A clap of thunder and a terrified shout from Wiggins made Jury whirl round to see, in a flash of lightning, a shape and a pale face outlined beyond the French window behind the desk. Jury bolted toward the window and then stopped, seeing who it was: “Lady Ardry! What in the hell — ?”

  “Agatha!” exclaimed Melrose.

  She stepped inside, dripping buckets of water. “No need for obscenities, Inspector. I’ve been watching the proceedings.”

  Jury had had enough. “Wiggins! Slap the cuffs on her!”

  Her face went through a selection of random expressions from disbelief to tooth-clattering fear. Wiggins, who had no cuffs and never had, was looking at Jury with wonder.

  She found her voice. “Melrose! Tell this crazy policeman he can’t —”

  Melrose merely lit up a cigar in leisurely fashion. “I’ll get you a good solicitor, never fear.”

  She was about to go for her nephew, when Jury stepped between them. “Very well. We shan’t take you in yet. But what were you doing out there?”

  “Watching, naturally. I wasn’t standing about trying to get a suntan,” she snapped.

  “I shouldn’t take that tone with the inspector, Agatha. You may have been the last person to see the vicar alive!”

  She gulped and went dead white. She might want to be a witness, but not that much of one. “Well, I followed you. Shortly after you left the inn. Borrowed Matchett’s bicycle. Damned unpleasant ride it was, too.”

  “You stood outside all this time?”

  “Got here when that doctor was messing about over the body. I saw it! Trueblood’s letter opener! Told you, didn’t I?” Then she must have remembered poor Denzil was a good friend, and she dropped her head in her hands. There were moans.

  Jury said to her. “You saw the bracelet here earlier?”

  She nodded. “Feel a bit faint. A spot of brandy, perhaps?”

  Plant went to get her the drink and Jury sat down opposite her. “Lady Ardry, what was the vicar doing while you were here?”

  “Talking to me, naturally.”

  Jury said impatiently, “I mean, what else?”

  “I don’t know. Wait a bit. Yes, he was doing his sermon. Trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, as usual. Some sort of gibberish about church building.” She accepted the snifter from Melrose, knocked back half the drink, wiped her mouth rather inelegantly on her new leather glove and looked round the room bleakly.

  Jury produced the paper from the desk. “Does this look like anything the vicar might have included in his sermon?”

  Agatha got out her glasses, peered closely at the notation on the paper and said, “What’s this nonsense? ‘God encompasseth us’? Doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t sound like Denzil, either. Too religious.”

  Jury folded the paper and put it in his inside jacket pocket. “If you saw the bracelet, where was it then?”

  She pointed: “He took it out of the desk drawer.”

  “And said he was going to put it back in the same place he found it, is that right?” She nodded. “We’ve searched this house top to
bottom,” said Jury, shaking his head.

  “How about the church?” asked Melrose.

  “My God!” said Jury. “Of course — no one thought of the church. Let’s have a look, then.” He told Wiggins to stay in the house.

  • • •

  “Stay clear of the dog’s side,” whispered Agatha as they made their way up the church walk, she trailing.

  “The what?”

  “Oh, you know. They always bury a dog underneath un-baptized babies and suicides to keep them from walking.”

  “How interesting,” said Jury.

  • • •

  Jury had his electric torch, and Plant had got another from the Bentley. The church was damp, very cold, and lit by spider-webs of moonlight diffused through the window traceries. Switching on his torch, Jury let it play over the pews, which ran the length of the nave. Empty squares in the side panelings showed there had once been nameplates — now, democratically, removed. He imagined one of them had been the private pew of Melrose Plant’s family. The larger pews were lined with baize or puce. Rows of plainer ones were meant for the farmers and simpler folk, and were unlined.

  Since Agatha had no torch and could not get Plant’s out of his hand, she held first to one sleeve, then to another. At one point, she caught her heel in the loose, soft carpeting that lay over the brass rubbings and nearly fell. Jury and Plant heaved her up.

  “Where the devil are the lights?” asked Jury. No one seemed to know.

  They walked down the nave, fanning the aisles with their torches, and Agatha plucking at their sleeves like a blind woman.

  There was a rood loft, no doubt rebuilt after the Reformation. A loft staircase had been cut in the masonry. The pulpit was higher than any Jury had ever seen before, one of those eighteenth-century “three-deckers,” the pulpit, lectern, and clerk’s seat combined in three tiers. A little staircase running up to the pulpit allowed the vicar to ascend.

  “I’ll just have a look up here,” said Jury, mounting the narrow, thin stair. There was a shelf running around the inside of the pulpit, on which were a few books, and he ran his flashlight over them. Only a well-thumbed New Testament, and a Book of Common Prayer.