“Good lord, he’s so young to be a marquess.”
“Not in here,” whispered Melrose, watching Tommy take a drink from his pint. The table was set up, the pyramid of balls in place. “The trouble is, great-auntie is going too far in putting up with the piano- and oboe-playing. He’s absolutely dreadful — what’s he doing with his damned oboe case, for God’s sakes? That must have been what he had strapped over his shoulder.”
It was true that Tommy Whittaker had brought his oboe case, from which he removed two wooden cylinders. He screwed them together with a practiced quickness and chalked the tip.
“It’s a cue! You’re carrying a cue in your oboe case,” Melrose said to Tom.
Tommy looked from Plant to Jury. Without the hint of a smile he said, “You ever try playing snooker with an oboe?”
V
SAFETY PLAY
SIXTEEN
1
HE certainly didn’t play snooker the way he played the oboe.
He was playing against Clive, who was obviously unnerved before Tommy even got to the table. Clive missed an easy pot after running up a break of twenty-four. Now, with the reds positioned around the black, Tommy built his break up to forty on the black-ball game alone. It took an amazing repertoire of strokes to do it. Clive sat down and watched with the others. On the last red, Tommy brought the cue ball down the table to the balk line in position for the colors. He pocketed the yellow with enough screw to bring the white back in position for the green, did the same thing to take the brown, then sent the white up the table with a cannon off two of the cushions, but was snookered on the blue because of a red just barely touching it. He played a safety shot.
By the time Clive got up to the table Tommy’s score on the break was 54, the sort of score even a professional would be happy about. But it wasn’t the accuracy that amazed Jury; it was the speed. Tom didn’t appear to stop and think, yet it was clear he played with a diagram in his mind, seeing several shots ahead, as a chess player can see plays beyond plays. Except that Tom moved more like a tornado than a chess player.
“Where did you learn to play like that?” Melrose offered him his cigar case.
“Practice,” said Tommy simply, thanking Melrose for the cigar, and going back to the table. Clive had glued the cue ball to the cushion and couldn’t get at his color. He tried to lay a snooker on Tommy, which Tommy quickly got out of at the same time he used a stun shot to pocket the remaining red and bring the white back to pocket the pink. That left only the black, and the frame was over.
“Practice! You must have started when you were one.”
Tommy smiled. “Five, actually. See, my father liked billiards. I used to have to move a packing case round the table to stand on.”
“I’ve never seen anyone so fast,” said Jury.
“Then you’ve never seen Hurricane Higgins, have you?”
2
“WHAT do you mean, no ride?” Melrose thought with dread of the skis.
Hornsby had begun calling Time a half-hour ago and was barking it now to get a few of the rock-hard regulars out.
“It would be better if we didn’t turn up at Spinney Abbey together.” He nodded toward Tommy, talking to Clive, who was being a sport about having lost miserably to this boy. “Besides you should see he gets back —”
“He could get to the Antarctic if there were a snooker table there. Anyway, you certainly don’t have any hopes that our friendship is going to remain a secret once Agatha sees you, do you? She’ll have our long-standing acquaintance chronicled like Euryalus and Nisus.” He knew Jury’s fondness for Virgil.
“I know it won’t be a secret. But you’ll still be more of a help if we don’t appear to be working on this case together.”
“Well, what case are we working on, then? What do you expect to find?”
“Frederick Parmenger, for one thing. So get your skis on. You’ll probably get there before I do. Through Spinneyton, turn right, is that it?”
“Believe me, once you’re on that road you can’t miss the abbey. It’s the only thing with lights for miles around. But isn’t it a bit late for Scotland Yard to be knocking up people?”
“Yes. But I do it occasionally. Takes them by surprise.” Jury smiled and pocketed his cigarettes. “They’ll all be tucked up in bed.”
“Probably. Nothing ever happens in the country.”
“Don’t count on it,” said Jury.
3
HE WOULDN’T have admitted it to Tom, but even with the wind in his face, Melrose was actually finding it rather pleasant, slipping along silently in the dark this way, over a ground made of glass. Perhaps it was that Jack London side of his nature, for he fancied himself as the hero of Skier. As he was considering Going for the Gold, his thoughts drifted like slow-falling snow to Ardry End, port and fireplace, and he decided, No, he really wasn’t like MacQuade’s hero.
Tommy’s mind was also on the book: “It’s really suspenseful; I don’t know how he did it,” said Tommy. “It must be hard to write a book with just one character and keep up the suspense.”
“Tour-de-force stuff,” said Melrose. “No wonder it took the prizes. Not a bad chap, either, MacQuade.”
What there was of a moon had got stuck behind some cloud mass and the only illumination came from the dial of Tom’s compass. “We’re all right. The abbey’s only another half-mile. I recognize that wall over there. I think it’s an old farm, or something.”
All Melrose saw was a black outline. “Speaking of walls — how do you manage snooker at St. Jude’s? I mean you must have to practice like mad to play the way you do. You’d hardly have time for study.”
“I don’t study. The tutors occasionally wonder where I am — like a misplaced pipe or spectacles. I don’t think they’d miss anyone as long as nothing interfered with the cricket matches. I manage to get over the walls early and down to the games place in the village. And, of course, I read a lot after lights out to try and keep some sort of track of what I’m supposed to be learning. I made myself an authority on Mesapotamia; that way they think I must know a lot about everything else. It’s amazing, really, how much people think you must know if you know about something nobody else much cares about. Actually, practicing’s harder when I’m home.” It was the wind’s sigh or Tom’s, Melrose didn’t know which, across the snow. “You see, Aunt Betsy absolutely hates me playing. It reminds her of Father, I guess, who never paid much attention to me except at the billiard table. Well, she’s right, he was a sort of playboy type. Never worked, spent a lot of money. Frivolous, she calls him. Them. Though I don’t mean she speaks unkindly of them to me, really. When I’m home I have to think up all sorts of ruses to keep my hand in. Piano lessons — that’s for limbering up the fingers. Aren’t I a rotten pianist though?” He seemed almost proud of the lack of accomplishment.
“Never known a rottener.”
Tom laughed. “And the oboe. That’s just to get out of the house with my cue stick. I mean, it’s not easy to carry a cue stick around without someone’s asking about it. Then, also, I’m a crack shot.”
Melrose stopped. “With what?”
Tom had stopped too, like Melrose’s own shadow. “A rifle, of course. And pistols. We’ve got a rifle range. Father set it up for practice. But ever since Aunt Betsy’s got onto this animal-humaneness thing, there’s no shooting on the grounds. Mr. Seaingham tries to reason with her, because, you know, he’s a great one for birds. Pheasant and grouse and quail. Everytime the Seainghams visit he sees great balloons of birds rushing out of the brush and bracken —”
“Any pigeons?” asked Melrose, pushing his skis up a small incline. “Wait a minute. What’s shooting a gun got to do with snooker?”
They started up again, ski poles propelling them beneath a few stars that looked hard as iron. Tom said, “For my bridge arm, naturally. It’s exactly the way you use your left arm to support a rifle. It’s to train me to keep the arm true. If you moved a rifle — or pistol, for that matter —
by so much as a quiver, the bullet could be deflected a couple of hundred feet.”
“You go through all of that for snooker?”
“If I could play the way I want to every day, I guess I wouldn’t. But when you can’t do what you want, well, you’ve got to substitute, to find a way round it.”
His aunt, thought Melrose sadly, had a nephew with the dedication of any writer or painter, and she couldn’t see it.
Tommy went on about the pub near his school. “Naturally, none of them know I’m from St. Jude’s or that I have this damned title.”
They whished along in silence for a moment, until Tom broke it by saying, “Did it bother your family when you gave it up?”
“My mother and father were dead. Lady Ardry is my only relative.”
“Oh. My parents died when I was ten.”
“Do you remember them well?”
“Yes. Mother was beautiful. I don’t think she liked me mussing her up. Well, she wasn’t all that affectionate. Father was kind of fun, especially at the billiards table.” He laughed. “Oh, that was a lark! But they were always off and about, usually on the Continent.” There was a brief and (Melrose thought) regretful silence. “Wish they’d taken me with them. But I always stayed behind with Aunt Betsy.” As if he’d been disloyal to his great-aunt, he added, “Not that I don’t love her. In everything but snooker, she’s champion. She’s the one that’s taken care of me. I’d do anything for Aunt Betsy,” he said quite thoughtfully. Then he added: “Of course, you were old when you got rid of your title.”
“I don’t think under-forty exactly old.”
Tom refused to comment on that. “I would do — get rid of mine — except I just can’t see hurting Aunt Betsy. She lives for the honor of the family. Whatever that has to do with it.”
“But it’s your life and you can’t let anyone else live it for you.”
As if Melrose, by so saying, had actually given him a push into his real life, Tommy laughed and shot ahead of him toward the abbey that yet remained perhaps a quarter of a mile away.
It was another ten minutes before Melrose, feeling like a walrus on skates, had slogged his way to the little door in the abbey wall. It was just in time to hear a cry and see Tom Whittaker keel over as if he’d been shot in the back.
4
THE skis were angled upwards out of the snow, and Tommy flat on his face in it, when Melrose had finally managed to shove his way up to him.
“Damn all!” cried Tom. “Help me up, will you?”
To Melrose’s infinite relief, the snow-muffled voice came quite healthily through the ski mask and the dark.
It was extremely difficult uprighting someone wearing skis, particularly by someone else wearing them, but Melrose finally pulled the boy up. Tommy yanked off his mask and ran his hand over his face where the snow had lodged round the eye- and mouth-holes. “Where the hell did that spring from? Felt like a log.” He managed to maneuver the skis around so he could bend his knees and feel round with his hands. “Didn’t you bring a torch?” he asked Melrose, peevishly.
“No. This is the first time for me in this survival-training course.”
“It’s like a dead animal, or some — oh, my God . . . ”
“What is it?”
“That ermine cape of Mrs. Seaingham’s. Here —”
“Don’t pick it up,” said Melrose quickly. He had finally yanked the buckles from the ski shoes. Here, near the walk, the snow was only ankle deep. He waded through it.
“Why not?”
Melrose kneeled down and felt, very carefully, in the snow. The ermine was dusted with snow, its soft nap tacky with ice. What was under it lay facedown. “Because,” he said, finally answering Tommy’s question, “you didn’t fall over a cape, old lad.”
He wondered who in the world would want to murder Grace Seaingham.
5
THE second shock came when, after the alarm was raised by Marchbanks and Ruthven, rousing Seaingham and his guests, that the first person to materialize at the bottom of the staircase in the Great Hall, wrapped in white satin, was Grace Seaingham.
She asked him why they were staring at her so. And what on earth was wrong?
Melrose put it as gently as he could. “I think we’ll find, Mrs. Seaingham, that one of your guests is — missing.”
• • •
It was certainly not Lady Ardry.
She came trumpeting down the stairs in robe and mobcap. Why had they been woken from their slumbers, she demanded? Why was Melrose in that strange getup? Why, why, why?
Lady St. Leger, staring at Tommy, was just as eager to know. “Where — what on earth have you been doing, Tom?”
“Skiing,” said Tommy. He hadn’t meant it to be funny.
Still, MacQuade laughed.
Melrose did not realize he had been holding his breath until he saw Vivian and let it out. Her hair all awry, her dressing gown several sizes too large; she was not one of those beauties who looked her best when awakened from sleep. She appeared to be drugged. Too much brandy, he thought. Nor would he answer her when she yawned and asked him if he’d made up a new game.
• • •
All of the guests, and Seaingham himself, were now gathered in the living room. Most of them made immediately for the drinks table.
Melrose looked around and then said, quite simply: “Beatrice Sleight’s been murdered.”
• • •
Except for Susan Assington, who spilled her drink — and even that seemed to happen in slow motion — they were frame-frozen in various attitudes of astonishment and disbelief.
It was Frederick Parmenger who broke the tension by laughing. “I must say, it’s a damned original ruse — whatever it’s for.”
They all went into motion again, some with nervous laughter, some by dropping into chairs. Agatha sighed and tucked a rag curler beneath the sleeping cap that made her head look like a big mushroom. “Don’t pay any attention to Melrose. He’s being dramatic.”
Only Charles Seaingham had the sense to see that Beatrice Sleight was conspicuously absent. His military bearing wilted as he looked at Melrose. “You’re serious. But, my God, what . . . where . . . ?” He looked around the room, as if a body might materialize there on the rug at his feet.
“Outside,” said Melrose. “Tom and I found her. Near the walk that leads to the Lady Chapel.”
The frozen looks returned. “You can’t mean —” began Grace Seaingham, and, seeing Melrose and Tommy meant it very well, put her hand on her husband’s arm for support.
“You’re certain she’s dead?” asked Sir George Assington.
“Yes.”
“Please — have a look, George,” said Seaingham. Melrose stopped him. “It might be as well to wait for police.”
“They’ll be hours getting here,” said Seaingham.
“Actually,” said Melrose, “I don’t think so.”
SEVENTEEN
1
THUS, when the enormous brass ring on the door rose and fell twice, they acted as if it were the knocking on the gate in Macbeth.
When Jury was led into the living room by Ruthven — who wore an old striped robe as if it were his morning coat — Melrose wished he had had a bit more time to gather his wits about him.
Wit was the least of Lady Ardry’s problems as open-mouthed she hove herself from the rosewood settee, unmindful of the haircurlers sprouting from her cap, and yelled out, “Good God! Inspector Jury!” When they last met, he had been a chief inspector. And although Melrose had told her many times he was now a superintendent, she wasn’t buying it, since she hadn’t been in on the promotion. Jury smiled and shook her hand and Agatha, apparently having forgotten there was a dead woman in the snow, seemed about to do introductions all around.
Melrose saw Jury’s eye light on Vivian Rivington, whose nervous little smile was as unconvincing as any murderess’s. She quickly stepped back from the firelight into the darker reaches of the shadows beyond.
M
elrose cut across Agatha’s voice-over, saying, “You’d better have a look outside, Superintendent.”
• • •
Jury got up from where he’d been kneeling beside the body and knocked the snow from his trousers. “Shotgun.” He beamed the torch Marchbanks had found for him around the area where the body lay. “Bloody mess.”
“Sorry if the snow’s mucked up. We didn’t know there was a dead body lying here.”
“I’m not blaming you. Where’s the gun?” He seemed to be addressing the night more than Melrose Plant.
“Back in Seaingham’s gunrack would be my guess.” Melrose pointed. “The gun room — that’s where he keeps all his sporting equipment — is just inside the solarium entrance.” He returned his gaze to the ground. “How long’s she been dead?”
Jury shook his head. “Not very long. Face and neck haven’t even begun to get stiff, and the cold would help the cooling. Actually, you should be able to gauge time of death better.” He snapped off the torch. “When did you last see her?”
“Nineish. Tom and I left right after dinner. They were all going into the drawing room for drinks.
Jury shrugged. “Probably knock off another hour there. I’d guess whoever did it just waited until everybody went to bed. She probably hasn’t been dead much over an hour. What do you know about her?”
“That she wasn’t popular.”
“That,” said Jury, “I can see.”
• • •
From Charles Seaingham’s study, Jury called the Northumbria station. Cullen was working the night shift and complaining bitterly about the gang in the shopping center who’d just made mincemeat of some of the furnishings in one of the pubs there. Jury broke the bad news that the night wasn’t over for Cullen.
Jerusalem Inn Page 15
