Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 18

"The third one?"

"This time I was to go to Brussels. The directions were the same: to go to a cafe in the Grand' Place. I had never been to these places, Zurich, Brussels, Peter-St. Petersburg, I mean-so it was difficult. The note called for the same things: the Fauchon's bag, the money, the bag set down beside the table.

"I thought I must have an enemy, some very cruel person who was playing a game. But I discarded that notion. What was going on was too bizarre. What satisfaction could there be in doing this only once every three or four months? Each time, I returned to the flat in Paris because I was so afraid of missing the one letter that would bring back Sophie. For how could I afford not to do what they said, these letters? How could I take the chance?

"Anyway. Do you know Brussels? The Grand' Place is that beautifully lit square van Gogh painted. It's surrounded by lights, and the light simply melts toward the center. But light is deceptive, isn't it?" Then she said, "Well, I simply couldn't stand Paris and that flat any longer. So four months ago, I came here, came home. And there's the property: Michael's uncle left him some property, a big house in Wales." Now she seemed slightly anxious. "I'm to see a solicitor about it next week. Thursday. I'll be out of here by then, won't I?"

"That's up to Detective Inspector Chilten." It wasn't, of course. It was up to the law regarding detaining people without arresting them. "But I imagine you will." She seemed more worried about the property than about her plight. Which simply could mean that she wasn't aware of her plight.

"It's in the Black Mountains, near Abergavenny, if you know Wales. I love the Beacons, love to climb there. They're deceptive, though; they seem an easy climb but suddenly they can be surrounded by mist." She smiled at Jury. "A challenge."

Jury leaned forward. "Did you ever consider someone wanted to keep you in Paris? Or away from England, at least, and so kept giving you false hope about your daughter?"

"Good lord, no." Her voice caught in a laugh. But the laugh died, or snagged on something she appeared to have recalled. "Unless it's got something to do with the will. Michael's uncle's will. I have to take possession of this house by Christmas. And I have to meet with the solicitor on November twenty-seventh. That's Thanksgiving in America. But I'll be out of here by then."

Then, as had happened the previous morning, sounds came from beyond the door. It opened, and the WPC entered. Jury rose and watched Kate McBride rise also and the constable take her arm-took it gently, Jury thought. She was a woman who merited the concern of others, he thought.

As she walked out, she turned and said, "Thanks for coming." She turned away and then back. "Would you bring me some cigarettes when you come again?"

Jury nodded. He imagined he would come again. Certainly, she did.

22.

Melrose recognized her as soon as he saw her standing in the doorway: Mona Dresser might have stepped out of one of the huge posters that had decorated the facade of the film palace Melrose had gone to as a child. As far as he knew it was his first theater experience: at the end of Mona Dresser's career and the beginning of his. That theater! The gilded halls, the chandeliers, the red plush and velvet. A moviegoer familiar with only the little sterile box-shaped screening rooms of today could never picture it.

"Miss Dresser," he said, smiling broadly. "I'm Melrose Plant." When she looked merely puzzled, he wondered how Jury had identified him. "Superintendent Jury told you I was coming, didn't he? Lord Ardry, perhaps he said."

"And which are you?"

"Both, actually. Though I prefer Melrose Plant."

"Hm. Were you ever an actor?" They still stood in the dark doorway.

Melrose was enormously pleased by being thought an actor. "No, never. Why?"

"Because you have a sort of magnetism many actors have and that insinuating actor-y manner. Smooth talker, I'd bet. Also, you're good-looking."

Melrose wasn't sure, now, that he wanted to be thought an actor; he didn't care for that "insinuating" stuff. But he broadened his smile to one even more "magnetic" (he liked to think). "What I do ordinarily is nothing at all. I sit in my big house drinking port by the fireplace and watching my old dog sleep."

"Sounds like we're two of a kind, then. Come on." Her hand did a little pirouette as she motioned him into her parlor.

That's what she called it. To Melrose the word had always conjured up small gas fires, thriving cold, horsehair armchairs, and a cloth laid for tea, gaudy cups and plates inscribed with names of seaside resorts. This description most certainly did not fit the room in which they stood and which looked to him like a stage set. No, a film set, for he could imagine a camera panning over its walls, where the paintings hung so closely together (was that an original Matisse?) they virtually blotted out the plaster beneath; the flower-patterned slipcovers, shiny with firelight; the lamps spilling their dusty-gold light across the carpet; the dark velvet curtains enclosing in their folds an even greater darkness. The room was very long, furnished with chaises, sofas, armchairs, big ottomans, pillows on the floor-she could have held a slumber party.

It was a sumptuous and dazzling set that Mona Dresser did not fit, with her somewhat dumpy figure, her round, obliging face, her untamed gray hair, and her tan cardigan and dark blue pinafore with, yes, a bunny family stamped on its bib. Since she herself did not seem quite at home in this heady setting, her visitors, paradoxically, did and wanted her to be comfortable too.

"Well, Mr. Plant, do have a seat and tell me who you are. Or aren't. I like a bit of mystery. I think I have some port, but I don't have a dog. I could borrow the neighbor's, though."

Melrose had chosen a cloud of an armchair covered in crushed velvet. He stopped her from rising to see to his comforts. "No, no. You can get the dog later. Miss Dresser, I just want to say you're the first actress I ever saw, and I still remember it. I think I know the secret of your appeal-"

"Because I was brilliant?" She waggled her eyebrows.

"Not that, it's because you made absolute strangers feel they'd known you all their lives. And that's acting genius."

She blushed. She fidgeted with the sleeve of her tan cardigan. "Oh, this is so much nicer than talking to Fulham police." She thought for a moment. "Although that superintendent-our mutual acquaintance-did have a definite sort of charm."

Melrose sniffed. This was the aunt who was your aunt-yours, not his. "Sort of, yes, for a policeman. He wanted me to come here to see if you might have thought of anything else. And also to talk with your niece."

She looked a bit doubtful. "With Linda? Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm not absolutely sure where Linda went. That doesn't mean she won't be back; she could come racing in here any moment."

Racing in. Melrose did not like the sound of that. Adults don't generally "race." Had Jury been completely honest with him?

"Are you a private detective, then? A gumshoe?"

"No. No, I'm not."

"You're someone who's got nothing better to do?"

Melrose scratched his ear.

"Well, your friends, the real policemen, seem to think Linda might be wrong in what she saw." She held up her hand as if to ward off any objection. "If Linda says it, it's so."

Melrose smiled. "She's that dependable?"

"Oh, Linda's not at all dependable. What I mean is, if Linda reports something to you, if she describes a scene, something she saw, it's accurate down to the blades of gra.s.s around the burial site or the color of the handful of dirt tossed on the coffin."

(She went in for grim metaphors.) "Her powers of observation are quite spectacular, better than that Ful-ham policeman who came round." She shrugged. "But I don't know what else there is to tell. You'd better go and ask the family about all this."

"I had dinner with them last night."

Mona was astonished. "You mean you know them? The Fabricants? That dreary Russian woman?"

Melrose burst out laughing. "Somehow I wouldn't refer to Madame Kuraukov as dreary. No, decidedly not."

"Oh, she's exquisite to look at, I daresay. But she has no conversation. None. That's what I meant. I can't think why Clive ever married her. For her looks, I expect. But I still don't know how you come to know them." She leaned forward, pulled her skirt down farther, clasped her hands around her knees like a schoolgirl waiting to be told a bit of gossip.

"I met the brothers-your nephews?"

"Nicholas and old Seb? None of mine I shouldn't think, unless by marriage. But I scarcely see them. Go on."

"I met them in their gallery. I'd gone there to have a look round."

"This was all accidental?"

Melrose pursed his lips. "Coincidental, perhaps. Anyway, I managed to get myself invited to dinner."

"But how? They might be peculiar, but surely they don't invite every Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry who comes into the gallery back to their house for dinner."

"I had leverage: I bought three paintings. Gave them the impression there was more where that came from, obviously had them believing I had a good deal of money."

"Have you?"

"Yes."

"What did you buy?"

"Do you know Ralph Rees? One of his."

"Not one of the snow contraptions? Not one of those?" She clamped her hand to her forehead in mock horror. I can't believe you'd do that. You seem sensible enough."

"I am. I purchased it for a friend who favors white."

"He certainly must."

"She."

"She admires things virginal, does she?"

"Hardly."

"All this makes me thirsty. Would you like some tea? Or a drink?" Melrose declined, and she sat back and fingered a ball of yarn. "That poor boy," she said, sighing.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Ralph Rees. I do feel sorry for him." She shook her head.

"Why? Because he's not any good?"

"Oh, no. Because he is. You see that portrait of me? It was just a little while before Clive died that he said he wanted a portrait of me as the character I'd played in our last production." She sighed, remembering.

Melrose got up to look at the portrait on the opposite wall. "I can hardly believe it!"

"Understandable, seeing me now. I was younger then." Mona rose and joined him.

"No, no. I'm talking about Rees's painting."

"Oh. Yes, if all you've seen of his work is that ridiculous stuff in the gallery. It's just beyond me, it really is. I couldn't help it, I simply told him he'd taken a wrong turning."

"I don't understand why he would change so dramatically."

"He claims his portraits were facile. They're too representational."

"That's generally what portraits are supposed to be," said Melrose dryly. "What would he say about John Singer Sargent? Too facile? Too easy?"

"I said much the same thing. You see this small one, this scene in Surrey? That's Ralph's too."

It was a traditional sort of British landscape, sheep in a summertime meadow, a wagon filled with hay. "Yes, this is something I wouldn't mind hanging up at all. Do you know him well?"

"No, not really. I ran into him the first of the year and he told me he was doing something entirely different."

"If he was talking about his Siberian Snow, he was certainly telling the truth. Do the Fabricant brothers have much influence over him?"

"Certainly. They have a gallery, after all."

"Oh, but no decent painter is going to change his entire approach just to see his work displayed."

"Why not? Writers become hacks to sell books, don't they?"

Melrose shook his head. "Probably they were hacks to begin with." He leaned closer to the painting to look at the country scene. "Anyway, in this case, it would be the other way round, wouldn't it? Those white paintings aren't commercially viable; it's his other stuff that is. This agreeable little painting could find a buyer very quickly."

"I suppose so. His portraits were well regarded. And so young-in his mid-twenties-when he did mine."

They stood in silence for a few moments, contemplating the group of paintings. "Is this Matisse an original?"

"Yes. The Mary Ca.s.satt isn't, though. It's a very good copy, a self-portrait."

Melrose nodded and inspected another Impressionist painting, Monet or Manet, possibly, which showed a large gathering of people in the open air. He was struck by the similarity of several of the subjects, such as the two little girls at the center. "Whose is this?"

"Manet. It's called-oh, something in the Tuileries Gardens."

They were silent for a few moments. He was trying to think of some way to approach the subject of the murder, when she helped him.

"My sable coat on a murder victim." She shivered slightly. "Hard to believe."

"I imagine. But . . . why did you give it to Olivia Inge?"

"She needed money, but I couldn't simply give her money. I told her if she didn't much fancy fur she should go ahead and sell it. Olivia's not well-off financially, and I knew she wouldn't take any from me, but I thought that might be something she could convert to cash."

"So you weren't surprised when she sold it."

"Not at all. I don't think I'd have taken it to a consignment shop, though. That did surprise me. She got two or three thousand for it. And the shop, of course, got its commission. Still, it's hard to imagine a person with that kind of cash to spend would be in a consignment shop. That's what surprises me."

"You don't have much to do with the Fabricants, then?"

"No. I have no reason to. It would be strange for me to want to be around Clive's second wife. Particularly when she's Ilona Kuraukov. But they are not as disinterested in me as they might appear to be. They like to put Pansy in my way."

Melrose frowned. "I'm sorry?"

"Money, dear boy, money. They seem to have some idea I'd settle a large part of it on Pansy. Because of Clive, you see. They seem to want me to regard Pansy as Clive's granddaughter, which she isn't. Seb took the Fabricant name when his mother married Clive. That does not make Pansy any sort of blood relation; she's nothing to me. She doesn't even like me." She was interrupted by a rather fearsome banging on a door somewhere out of sight. "That'll be a delivery from the grocer. His boy does like to make as much ruckus as possible. Please excuse me."

Melrose nodded and watched her go. He then fell to contemplating the people in the Tuileries painting. He was struck by its seeming to be a collective portrait and, again, how much these men in top hats and beards resembled one another, as the two little girls in their full sashed dresses seemed so alike.

But his thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of a girl of around nine or ten, who set about looking under the chair opposite. Then she made quite a production out of rising from her near-p.r.o.ne position, ignoring his presence, and getting down to look under the sofa.