Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 19

"What are you doing?" Melrose decided to be direct.

"I'm looking for my cat. He's a ginger cat."

"There are plenty of charming surfaces for him to lie on. Why would he shove himself under a chair or a sofa?"

Still on her stomach, she said, "I don't know. I'm not a cat. His name's Horace." She got up and, with her hands on her hips, rotated her head slowly to take in the charming surfaces. Then she dropped down again to look under the other slipcovered chair.

Given her apparent disregard for him, Melrose could only a.s.sume she had come into the room to inspect him. "You wouldn't by any chance in the world, by the most incredible coincidence, by the longest shot imaginable, and in line with my usual great good luck, be Linda Pink?"

"Yes!" This word was shouted from under the chair, where her head was.

"I admire your enthusiasm for yourself, but would you get up off the floor?"

She did, and so quickly that the air seemed jarred by her presence.

At that moment a really big, drab, scuffed-up cat, which had clearly gone the rounds with neighboring cats, came in and took up a position by her side.

"Horace, where've you been?"

"Having a kip in a dustbin, it looks like."

Horace, insulted, swayed off with his chin in the air.

"Why don't you sit down?" Melrose asked, sitting himself.

"I don't know."

Why were children always so literal? "It wasn't actually a question, Miss Pink. It was more of a request. So that I can ask you a few questions."

"Are you a policeman too?" she asked, without sitting down.

Melrose debated lying but, unable to see the consequences of this, either good or bad, decided not to. "No. But I'm best friends with one you've talked to already." He had always thought the "best friends" concept really packed a punch with children.

"With one of those Scotland Yard ones?"

"Yes."

"He's my favorite policeman."

"Mine too." Melrose looked over his shoulder. "What happened to your aunt, anyway?"

"She's out in the kitchen talking to Billy. He's always got all these problems and talks a lot. What kind of questions?"

"Things about the herb garden, you know, where you saw this bod-ah, lady. There seems to be some question about when you saw her and where she was lying."

"In the lad's-love. It was around seven o'clock, I guess."

"Aren't we close to Fulham Palace here?"

"Yes, it's only over there." She pointed off in a vague direction. Was he worth the trouble?

"Listen: If it's all right with your aunt, would you like to take a walk there? And perhaps find an ice-cream vendor. I'm sure they must have a refreshment place, for all the tourists."

She stopped plumb in her tracks and stared at him.

Good heavens, he was worth it!

Melrose put his plan for a walk before Mona Dresser, who agreed to it. Melrose said he could perfectly understand if she thought it might not be good for Linda to return to the scene of the crime. He supposed there would still be tape around the place and they wouldn't be able to venture too near it.

Out of earshot, Mona said Linda had been questioned by so many policemen, and had of course been talking about little else, that she saw nothing against it. "But I don't think you'll learn anything new. She's very certain of her story; Linda can be quite stubborn."

Really? Melrose raised his eyebrows.

"You lead," said Melrose, once they were out.

Was there any doubt that Linda would do otherwise? She was already ten paces ahead of him.

"Wait at the curb!" he ordered.

This got him a look reserved for fools.

"Where are we?" He was casting glances about as if they'd left civilization behind.

"Bishops Park Road," she answered, half running ahead.

When had they left the Fulham Road? Melrose had always loved the way London streets simply left off being what they were and started being something else, as if naming streets were nothing but whim. The Fulham Road lay more or less between the King's Road and the Brompton Road. Fulham was in SW6, and just off most of the maps of Central London, as if it had nearly made it but not quite and so had been banished to the outback that tourists don't visit. It hadn't that chic Belgravia look to it, where the bright sun fell across the pavement in spatters of gold coins. Nor had it the elan of Chelsea, or even the bedraggled charm of flowery South Kensington, which it bordered.

"We're here!" called Linda, as if the imposing stone gate piers were invisible to him. Then, moving off in another direction, she called, "We can get ice cream!"

The refreshments were located just a short distance from the gates. Melrose asked, "Do you want your ice cream now or when we leave?" This caused her face to pinch up with such a look of pained indecision, he knew they'd be stopping here all day if he didn't say, "Or both?"

Happy with that solution, she gave her order for a chocolate ice-cream cone, all the while looking with such longing at a gla.s.s jar holding candy sticks that he bought her one of those too. They returned to the gates and the grounds. Licking her cone, Linda had on her face the mesmerized look that cats get when lapping up bowls of milk.

They walked through the gate piers, and Melrose felt immersed in that left-the-world-behind feeling that washes over one on the other side of gated grounds. Perhaps one thought of all gates as symbolic of a pa.s.sage from one life zone to another. (You are leaving SW3 for SW10, which has been freshly renovated for your pleasure.) For one thing, the familiar noises of children yelling, traffic rushing, sirens, and bells were so diminished that they might have been part of the old frayed world unraveling.

Beside him, Linda carefully sculpted her cone as painstakingly as if she were Rodin. "The Palace Museum's right up that road a little."

"I don't-"

"We've got to get maps."

"Is this uncharted territory?" said Melrose. "Anyway, you know where everything is."

"Almost. But you want to know about how the herb garden's laid out, don't you?"

As if she hadn't got it memorized, he thought, as he followed her into the cool environs of the little museum, which was composed simply of two or three rooms in what had been one of the wings of the palace. That building was itself so utterly unimposing-just a large squarish brick building-that he hoped people didn't come here thinking they'd find another Hampton Court or Versailles. But of course they wouldn't visit Fulham for that; he believed the poster on the pillar one pa.s.sed to go to the museum: LONDON'S BEST-KEPT SECRET.

They went inside and entered a room overseen by a pleasant-looking woman to whom (obviously) Linda was no stranger. She sat overseeing the guides, cards, booklets, and maps and greeted Linda as if she were family: Hel-lo, dear, is this a friend of yours?

Melrose should have brought along his hoop and stick. He wondered if the discovery of a body in the knot garden out there somewhere had put a damper on business. Increased it, probably. He asked her.

The lady seemed at one remove from them, as if she had one foot in the museum and one in a better world altogether. Oh, for a day or two. But you know how things are so soon forgotten, how transitory and ephemeral they are. And she went on with this sort of talk until Melrose wondered if the ghosts of all the bishops of London were using her as a sounding board. But she seemed content enough and looked on everything around her (including Time, including them), speaking of the comings and goings of seasons and people as if she had already left this vale of tears and found a vista far finer. Melrose thanked her and tightly folded a twenty-pound bill into a small square and pushed it down in the Fulham Palace fund collection box.

Outside again, their walk took them by trees of every imaginable sort. He wouldn't have known any of them except for the giant oak and-in a generic way only-the pines, if he hadn't had the botanical garden tree map. They pa.s.sed cedars, oaks, several kinds of maple, a giant redwood, and a sweet gum, and off on the other side were probably a dozen others.

"It's around here," Linda said, walking backwards.

"There must be forty or fifty different kinds of trees," Melrose said.

"There are. Come on."

The tree question put to bed, he followed her inside a large walled garden, which looked now, in November, unkempt, stiff and stale, heavy with brush. The knot garden that figured so prominently in this odd case was before them. To its left was a long quarter-moon-shaped fence with wisteria vine climbing its entire length and breadth. The fragrance must be, in the spring, simply heavenly, especially overlain as it would be with the infusion of scent coming from the herb garden. On the right was a gla.s.s house that had, he supposed, been a greenhouse but was now fallen into a state of total decay, gla.s.s broken, walls listing or collapsing. No wonder there was a fund for raising money. There was also a vinery, the old vines looking as hard and old and unyielding as hemp.

The garden itself was a fish shape, pointed at either end, widest in the middle. Where the fish's head might have been was an herb called feverfew. (Melrose had never heard of it and made a mental note to speak to Sergeant Wiggins.) At the other end, the tail end, was a triangular patch of thyme. He held the drawing out, noticing how the various patches of herbs on the one side were repeated both in shape and kind on the other. There were two patches of each herb. Top and bottom, end and end, were mirror images of each other. He was brought out of contemplating the mechanics of the design by Linda.

"Look!"

He looked across a circular patch of tansy and saw her lying in brown brush. He walked around and asked her what the devil she was doing.

"I'm being her, the dead body." She lay with arms outstretched and face up.

"You shouldn't be lying in the-" He consulted the herb map.

"Lad's-love. Wait," she said. "Her eyes were open. Like this." Linda opened hers wide, ghoulishly.

"You have a brilliant future ahead of you as a scene-of-crimes expert."

"They said it was the lavender patch, but it wasn't."

Melrose kneeled down and looked at the patch of lad's-love. "Look, the police are usually very exact, they take pictures and measurements and just about everything. Could you have made a mistake?"

"No." She brushed a few twiglets and dead leaves from her hair.

"I'm going in there for a moment." He nodded towards the vinery.

He walked around inside the decaying gla.s.s house-or, at least, as much of an "inside" as it had, for what there was now was almost completely exposed to the weather. There was a bothy and a small building that had served as a potting shed. He moved through shards of pottery, pieces of gla.s.s. He stood turning over half of a clay pot, knowing he wouldn't find anything, for the Fulham police would have scoured the place thoroughly.

The trouble with the Fulham police was that they were trusting no one but their own findings. Understandable, he supposed; they certainly weren't trusting the report of a ten-year-old.

Still. If she'd gone close enough to see that the eyes were open, if she'd been that free of confusion, Melrose was willing to believe she knew just where the body had lain and when it had lain there.

23.

It didn't surprise Melrose that the Crippses weren't on the phone, or, on second thought, it did. Ashley Cripps by now should have figured out a way to ambush the neighbors' telephone service, as he had done their electric. He was very good with wires. But perhaps it would take climbing up a pole, and Ash wasn't one to exert himself.

Melrose had tried the Museum of Childhood, where Bea Sloc.u.m worked, and been told that Sat.u.r.day was her half day. If Bea had a telephone in her Bethnal Green flat, it wasn't listed. The next stop in his search for her was the Cripps family-though "family" in this case was not to be taken as the unit social services had in mind-as Bea was some kind of distant cousin and (if her painting was any indication) had a fondness for Catchcoach Street.

At the moment, Melrose was in a sandwich bar in Canary Wharf, seated on a stool and staring at the Thames, which appeared to be standing still, in tune perhaps with Melrose's own mental state. (He was big on the pathetic fallacy; he took his sympathy where he could find it.) He had considered eating one of the tautly wrapped sandwiches perched behind the gla.s.s but decided tea was all he wanted. Anyway, why would one of these doughty office workers want sun-dried tomato in with his cheddar? This was apparently nouveau-plowman's fare.

So his tea was getting cold as he thought about his visit to Fulham Palace. He had thought a wander about the rejuvenated Docklands might revive his flagging mental processes, but no ideas had come. Nor had the Thames budged an inch. He wondered what Wordsworth had gotten so excited about. He left the sandwich bar and searched out a newsagent's and sweet shop to fill up his pockets with bags of candy.

The Cripps kiddies were in the front "garden" (a euphemism in this case), rampant as moles or gophers, even in the near-dark. Or perhaps especially so, since the habits of the Crippses might best be relegated to the dark. Moles and gophers, though, at least spent a lot of their time underground.

Stopping on the pavement some yards from the house, he watched them at their ghastly games. More than one was taking place. Given there were seven of them, there were enough kids to go around.

The baby pram had been placed near the front door and then forgotten by Mum, leaving the baby to its fate. Two of the kiddies, boy and girl, were rocking it-not by way of appeasing the baby (who was letting out a high, thin wail) but as a way of competing to see which side could topple the carriage first. Any non-Crippsians would have checked to see the pram was empty before embarking on such foolishness. The Crippses, however, would check to see it was full.

Melrose had forgotten most of their names (a mercy to himself), but he recalled that one of the girls was Amy and one Alice. He believed it was Alice on the pram, competing with her brother. It amazed Melrose that any baby could survive in the Cripps family. But, just look, six of them certainly had-seven, counting the baby. So far.

Another boy of five or six, twin of one of the girls, was easy to recognize as Piddlin' Pete. Right now he had his pants down and was p.i.s.sing into the plastic birdbath. His sister Amy (or Alice) acted in counterpoint. Her favorite trick was to hold up her skirt and let anyone interested know that she wasn't wearing knickers. Another boy was tied to a tree, while the oldest of them marched round it with a flaming torch, throwing off eerie shadows in the encroaching dark. Good lord, what was all of that newspaper and kindling bunched at his feet?

The position of the carriage was becoming more and more precarious, and the baby's howl more frightening, which naturally made the two Crippses on it laugh all the louder. Melrose threw caution to the winds (though he made sure he had the candy spills before advancing) and walked towards the house.

It was the oldest one, as stout and pugnacious as his da, and with the Crippses' signature sandy hair and eyelashes and whey-colored skin, who saw Melrose first. He dropped the torch (fortunately not on the kindling, but into one of the many holes in the earth) and set up a yell. They all stopped what they were doing (except for the one tied to the tree) and stared.

"Elroy! Elroy!" He turned towards the house and yelled even louder, " 'Ey, Mum, Elroy's here!"

Then they all rushed him, all except Piddlin' Pete, who grabbed at his crotch, not in the way small boys sometimes do, betokening anxiety, but with the clear intention of pointing his sprig of a p.e.n.i.s towards the visitor.

"Whatcha got, Elroy?" "Give us some sweets, Elroy, go on!" "I ain't got n't'un underneath, see?" "Go on, Elroy, gi' us them sweets!"

Melrose drew out the little bags and began dispensing them, negotiating for information. "Tell me, is Bea Sloc.u.m here?"

Having secured for himself the largest bag, full of lemon sherbets, the oldest, toughest one could afford to dispense with the formalities of welcome. "Mebbe she is, mebbe she ain't. Who wants t'know?"

"Me, obviously."

Having whisked the last little white bag, this one containing Gummy Bears, from Melrose's hand, Piddlin' Pete was now marching about singing, "Bea, Bea, pee, pee, pee."

"I shouldn't try it, were I you. Not if you want to live to see another urinal." It occurred to Melrose that lack of a urinal held no horror for Piddlin' Pete. Obviously, he had inherited this obsession with his private parts from his father, Ashley, long known in police circles as Ash the Flash.

Then the door was thrown open and White Ellie filled it with her huge, slack, ap.r.o.ned self, waving a spatula. "Look 'oo's 'ere! I was tellin' Ash t'other day, 'I do wish that Melrose'd not be makin' it so long between visits.' Put that skirt down, gurl!" This was directed at Alice (or Amy).

Melrose said, pa.s.sing through the door, "Just call me Elroy."

White Ellie chuckled richly as she shoved the pram through and picked up the baby, out of harm's way for another few minutes. "Robespierre, 'ere, remember 'im?"