The Man with a Load of Mischief

by Martha Grimes

  • • •

  Delaying as long as possible his goodbye to Vivian Rivington, Jury sat in the Long Piddleton police station, shuffling through papers and listening to a mild argument between Pluck and Wiggins. Pluck, upholding the virtues of country living, was scouring the Times for the latest rapes, muggings, and murders in London’s alleyways, when the door seemed to wrest itself open as if torn by ghostly hands and Lady Ardry walked in. Melrose Plant, looking apologetic, followed her. At the sight of Agatha, Pluck and Wiggins exchanged glances and retreated with tea and newspaper to the outer room.

  Lady Ardry shot out her hand like a switchblade and pumped Jury’s. “Well, we did it, didn’t we, Inspector Jury?” Her earlier rancor had quite vanished in the breeze she had flapped up with her victory flag.

  “We, dear Aunt?” said Melrose, settling himself in a chair in the corner so that he was behind her and in the shadows. He lit up a cigar with an especially heavenly aroma.

  Jury smiled. “Well, whoever did it, Lady Ardry, just let’s be glad it’s done.”

  “I just stopped in to ask you to lunch, Inspector, and happened to meet my aunt coming down the street —”

  “Lunch?” said Lady Ardry, who was arranging her cape about her chair like the Coronation robes. “That should be jolly. What time?”

  “The invitation, dear Aunt, is for Inspector —”

  But she merely flapped her hand over her shoulder. “We’ve more important matters to discuss than food.” She planted both hands firmly on her walking stick. Jury was happy to see the cutoff-fingered mittens back in favor. Clasped about the wrist of one brown mitten was Plant’s emerald-and-ruby bracelet. Jury thought its regal splendor had already begun to tarnish.

  “Had to be him, didn’t it? Matchett. Always thought so. One can tell from the eyes, Inspector. It’s always the eyes. Paranoid, quite mad, Matchett’s are. Hard and cold . . . Well!” She clapped her hand on the desk. “All I can say is, it’s good you were here, Johnny-on-the-spot, instead of that awful man, your superintendent. I’m sure you wouldn’t care for me to repeat to you the contemptible way the man acted in my house —”

  “We certainly wouldn’t, Agatha,” said Melrose, who was slowly enveiling himself in a shroud of smoke like a kind of translucent armor.

  Over her shoulder, she tossed back at him: “All well and good for you to sit up there in Ardry End, lolling about over port and walnuts —”

  “Lady Ardry,” said Jury, aware he was jeopardizing his newly won popularity, “had it not been for Mr. Plant here, we’d never have got the evidence to put Matchett behind bars.”

  “Decent of you to say so, my dear Jury, but then you always were a generous, pretty-spoken man —”

  Behind her, Plant choked on his cigar.

  “But,” she continued, “we know who did the work in this case.” She gave him a smarmy smile. “And it wasn’t Plant, not much more was it that crazy superintendent, who’s been too busy sniffing up to all the girls in the village.” She polished one or two of the emeralds in her bracelet with a mittened hand, then leaned across and whispered, “I hear he was in the Jack and Hammer last night, hanging round Nellie Lickens.”

  Jury indulged his curiosity. “And who’s Nellie Lickens when she’s at home?”

  “You know. Ida Lickins’s girl. Who keeps the junkshop. Nellie does for Dick Scroggs now and then, and no better than she should be —”

  “Idle gossip, Agatha.”

  “Never you mind, Plant. Granted, my own humble abode isn’t Ardry End” — and she turned to sneer in Plant’s direction — “but Superintendent Whoever-he-is had no right to treat me in that offhand manner. Walked into my cottage, took one look, and turned on his heel and walked out. Even had dinner laid on. Some of my very nice eel stew — you needn’t make that retching noise, Plant — and the man had the audacity to walk into my kitchen and look in the pot!”

  “Terribly sorry, Lady Ardry, if New Scotland Yard has inconvenienced you in any way —”

  “Well, let me tell you, I’m sure I manage to make my guests quite comfortable. As a matter of fact, I’ve just been thinking today of putting up a B and B sign. I seem to have a knack for that sort of thing —”

  “Lovely,” said Melrose, through a screen of smoke; “then our next series could be called ‘The Northants. Tourists Murders.’ ”

  “As a matter of fact, Plant,” she threw over her shoulder, “I wonder you don’t do the same. Do you some good to work for a living.”

  “Are you suggesting I make Ardry End into a Bed and Breakfast establishment?”

  “Certainly. You’d do a smashing business.” From the way her eyes glittered, Jury was sure she’d just come upon this quixotic notion. Now she would tilt at whatever windmills rose in her path. “Twenty-two sleeping rooms — my heavens! — why didn’t we think of it before? With Martha to do the breakfasts and me to take charge — a gold mine!”

  “I haven’t the time,” said Melrose calmly.

  “Time? You’ve nothing but time. That University business hardly takes up more than an hour a week. You need something to do, Melrose —”

  “But I have something. I’ve decided to become a writer.” Through tendrils of smoke, Melrose smiled weirdly at Jury. “I’m writing a book.”

  Nearly overturning her chair, she jumped up. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Just that, Agatha. I’m writing a book about this whole grisly affair.”

  “But you can’t! That’d be two of us doing it! You know I told you I was writing a kind of semidocumentary. Like that Capote person about those murders in America.”

  “Not Ka-put, for God’s sake. Ca-po-te. Three syllables, long O. Must you slaughter the names of your own countrymen?”

  “Never mind. I’ve got the whole thing plotted out.”

  “Well, then, you’d better be getting on with it. Or I’ll finish before you do.”

  “Finish! Well, it’s not all that easy, you know. You’ve got to find a publisher. We who scratch away at our desks all day know how difficult this writing game is —”

  “I’ll simply buy a publisher, then.” Melrose kept his eyes clamped on Jury.

  “Oh, that’s just like you, Plant.”

  “Isn’t it just. I’ve already got my first chapter done.” Melrose tapped the ash from his cigar neatly into the palm of his hand.

  She whirled on Jury as if she meant for him to stop this madman in his tracks. Jury only shrugged. “Well, you two can sit here lollygagging all afternoon. I’ve got to get back to my writing.” She raked her walking stick across door and doorjamb in her sudden exit.

  “At least,” said Melrose, “we’re rid of her for the afternoon, Inspector. Time to have a quiet luncheon. That is, if you’ll come?” Plant rose, depositing his cigar ash in a tray on the desk.

  “I’d be delighted.”

  Plant extended his hand and Jury rose. “An inappropriate thing to say, in the circumstances,” said Melrose, “but I’m sorry it’s all over. I seldom meet anyone whose mind does not unravel like an old piece of tatting when life becomes problematical.” He drew on his kidskin gloves and patted his cap into place. As he turned to the door, Jury asked:

  “Mr. Plant. One question: Why did you give up your title?”

  “Why?” Plant was thoughtful. “I’ll tell you, if I can depend on your not letting it get around.” Jury smiled and nodded. Plant lowered his voice to a whisper. “When I put on that cape-like gown and that wig, Inspector, I looked exactly like Aunt Agatha.” He was out the door. Before he closed it, though, he stuck his head round the corner. “There was a reason. I’ll tell you some day. Good-bye, Inspector.” He touched his fingers to the brim of his cap in a salute.

  • • •

  As he walked out the door shortly after Plant had left, Jury heard Pluck and Wiggins arguing.

  “Now just look here what happened yesterday in Hampstead Heath,” said Pluck, slapping his fingers against a page of the Telegraph: “Fifteen-
year-old girl goes and gets herself assaulted.” He tossed the paper aside. “An you say London’s a right old place. Ha! You won’t catch me living there.” As Jury shut the door, Pluck slurped his tea and added: “Man could get himself killed.”

  • • •

  He had agreed to meet Vivian around noon, and it was close to that now, and he was putting off the meeting. When he saw Marshall Trueblood behind his Regency window, pecking with his finger like a bird against the pane, Jury was glad of the reprieve.

  “My dear!” said Trueblood, as Jury walked in the shop. “They told me you were leaving! Listen, you could have pasted my ears to the top of my head when I heard it was Simon! Simon, of all people! I mean, he was so attractive! Was he trying to implicate me by taking my letter opener, the rotter?”

  “Probably. I doubt he could have taken the vicar by surprise as he did the others and strangled him, anyway.”

  “My God, I just thought: poor Vivian. What if she had married the man?” Trueblood shuddered as he lit up a bright pink cigarette. “So it was Matchett who murdered his wife?”

  “It was. He finally admitted to that.” Jury looked at his watch and rose. “If you’re ever in London, Mr. Trueblood, be sure to look me up.”

  “I wouldn’t miss the chance, darling!”

  • • •

  There was a bench on the green, and the square was once again a clear, glistering white, for it had snowed during the night. Jury sat there, staring at the ducks. Then he stared across the square at the dark stone of the Rivington house. He should go over as he had promised. But he just sat there. Finally, he saw the door of the house open, and a figure come out, coated and scarved. She left behind her a very neat set of tracks on the smooth, crisp whiteness, a single line of them as she walked toward him.

  As she came round the edge of the pond, he got up. “I thought,” she said, smiling, “you were going to come round at eleven. I was watching out the window for you, and then I saw someone sitting over here, and wondered if it could be you.” Jury said nothing, and she went on. “Well, I just wanted to thank you for everything.”

  His mouth felt stiff with the cold. But he finally brought out, “I hope you weren’t too . . . downcast by the news, Miss Rivington.”

  Her eyes went over his face. “Downcast. What a felicitous choice of word. No, not really. I was just horribly shocked. I seem to have surrounded myself with people I couldn’t trust.” She wrapped her arms about her, warding off cold, and the tip of her overshoe pushed back the snow. “Isabel told me the truth. About what happened to my father.” She looked up at him, but Jury did not comment. “She said it was her conscience, that it was weighing very heavily on her. I wonder. After all these years, would one’s conscience suddenly begin acting up? You were her conscience, weren’t you?” Vivian smiled. Jury stared down at the snow as if daisies might suddenly spring through it, the way things do in timed-release photos. When he didn’t say anything, she went on. “There’s one thing, though, I must know.”

  “What’s that?” His voice sounded strange to him.

  “Simon and Isabel.” She had her hands stuffed in the big pockets of her coat now, and her head was bent so low all he could see was the knitted crown of her cap. “Were they lovers?” She raised her head and looked directly at him. “Did they plan on rather unceremoniously disposing of me and then making off — as they say — with the swag?”

  She was smiling slightly, but the pain in her eyes went through Jury. It was precisely what Matchett had planned, Jury was certain. He had needed Isabel to push Vivian toward him. The idea of her fiancé and her sister making love and laughing about it behind her back — that must be something of the image she was carrying about in her mind.

  “Was that the way it was?” she asked.

  “No. You — and the money, I guess — would have satisfied Matchett.”

  Vivian expelled a long breath, as if she’d been holding it. “I don’t know why that would have bothered me so much, now he’s been taken in. But it would have.” She sighed. “Awful to say, perhaps, but I’m relieved, I think. I mean, at not having to marry him.”

  “ ‘Having to’? You never had to.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “I don’t think he was the man for you, in any event.” Jury looked up at the clouds scudding across the watery blue of the winter sky. “Not your type.” He stood there, waiting for God to solve his problem.

  “What type, then?”

  “Oh, someone more reflective, maybe.”

  She was silent. Then she asked, “What was that line, the one you quoted? Agnosco . . . something?”

  “That? ‘Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae: I recognize the vestiges of an old flame.’ ”

  “He must have been something.”

  “Who? Aeneas?”

  “No. The old flame. If not even Aeneas could take his place.”

  “I think the thing is, maybe he could.”

  “I wonder.” She too turned to look up at the weak blue of the sky. “I think I shall go to France or, better yet, Italy.”

  Or Mars.

  She stood there for a moment longer, looking at him, and then turned back toward her house. “Goodbye. And thank you. How inadequate that sounds.” Her hand merely grazed his.

  As he watched her walk away, making another neat line of tracks across the unbroken snow, he thought, You’re a real devil with the women, Jury. It’s no wonder they all come screaming out of the bushes and tear at your clothes every time you happen to walk by. From this distance, it was like watching a doll go into a dollhouse and shut the door behind her.

  • • •

  How long he sat there, staring at the ducks, he didn’t know. They were bobbing in the warmer water beneath the brown rushes, some of them in pairs, as if even they were better at this sort of thing than was Jury. He was supposed to be at Melrose Plant’s for lunch. As he was dragging himself off the bench, he heard a rustle in the bushes behind him and turned just in time to see the top of a mousy brown head disappear below the line of shrubbery.

  “All right. Out of there, straight away.” Jury used as sinister a tone as possible. “If I once use my trusty Magnum forty-five on you, you’ll go round with your stomachs looking like doughnuts.”

  Giggles. Then slowly the Doubles came forward. The little girl turned her face down to the ground, circumscribing a circle in it with the toe of her old boot.

  “Well, James. And James. And why are you on my trail today? Come on — out with it!”

  A bird-titter from the girl as she dipped her face as if she meant to wash it in the snow. The boy said, “We heard you was leaving sir. We come to give you this.” He pulled from his sagging coat pocket a rather dirty package, wrapped in leftover Christmas paper. It was flat, and tied with a bit of heavily handled ribbon, which once had been white.

  “A present? I certainly do thank you.” He undid the package and found a piece of cardboard, cut to serve as a kind of crude frame, and against this was glued a picture. It showed a mountainlike projection, covered in deep snow, and off in the distance a dark, amorphous creature, like a poorly focused King Kong. It had come from a magazine. Jury scratched his head.

  “It’s that Abominable Snow Man,” said James, his tongue sticking on abominable. “Lives in — what’s the name of that place — ?” and he looked to his sister for information, but got only a furious shaking of her head. Her lips were, as always, sealed.

  “The Himalayas?”

  “That’s it, sir. Don’t it look like him, though?”

  Jury scarcely knew how to answer. But he said, “That’s quite wonderful, James. Really, it looks exactly like him.”

  “And just look at them tracks, Mr. Jury. That’s what I thought you’d like — them tracks. Just think what he could do round here!” And James spread his arms to take in the village green. Then observing the neat lines which Vivian had made coming and going, he said, “Who’s been muckin’ it up?”

  Jury smiled and folded the
wrapping paper back round the picture and said. “Your other present just about saved my life.” And he related a blow-by-blow account of the confrontation in the church.

  Their large eyes nearly swam in their faces at the telling of this marvel.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” said the girl, and quickly clapped her hand to her mouth.

  Jury said, “So one good turn deserves another. I thought perhaps you two would like to take a little ride with me —” He pointed to the police car.

  “Crikey!” said James “You mean in that there police car?” Totally awed, they looked at one another, and then nodded their heads firmly. Confirmation and reconfirmation.

  As Jury bundled them into the car, he noticed how much better he felt. He envisioned the sweeping, untrammeled vistas of Ardry End, glistening, snow-crusted, smoothly white and gently curving.

  As the High Street became the Dorking Dean Road, Jury thought, Oh, what the hell?

  And turned on the siren.

  APRIL 15, LETTER FROM MELROSE PLANT TO RICHARD JURY

  Dear Jury,

  You have been gone for three months now and, with only Agatha to keep me company, it seems like three years. Her visits are, however, considerably reduced, owing to her belief we are in a mad race to see which of us will finish his book first. I simply tell her I’ve done another chapter, and that sends her scurrying home.

  Speaking of writers, Darrington has gone off to America to set the course of the American novel back a few hundred years. I was not really surprised when I learned of his plagiarism — you didn’t think Pluck’s lips would stay sealed on that one, did you? Sheila was glad to be rid of him. She’s talking about writing up the whole business of their fraud for the newspapers, even if it means going to gaol herself. The girl has a conscience.

  Lorraine ages monthly from her frequent trips to London and mentions dropping in on you. Lock your doors, old chap. Willie has found another companion in the new vicar, a much younger man, but still, vicars always look as if they need to be dusted daily.

  Isabel has gone and so has Vivian, but definitely not together. Vivian settled a bit of money on her with the understanding she’d stay out of her life. Vivian has got herself a villa in Naples. Aren’t you due for a holiday?