Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 31

"Hey? Hey? You there?"

"Sorry, I'm trying to figure out-listen, have you a painting there you could wrap up"-Melrose's eye fell on the copy of the Telegraph he'd meant to read-"wrap up in newspaper and lug it along here?"

"I'm in Bethnal Green, love."

"I know. But couldn't you get a couple of hours off from your job? I mean, it's not going to take more than a half hour once you get here. The gallery's only ten minutes away."

"Yeah, I expect they'll let me."

"And, Bea, listen. What we're doing is undoubtedly larcenous. But I'm working it out that if we're caught you'll be an innocent partic.i.p.ant, manipulated by me, Fingers Plant."

"You are a caution. Manipulate me? Don't make me laugh, Fingers." She hung up.

Melrose was less than a minute getting up the stairs with the newspaper. He wasn't more than five minutes using it to cover his already gallery-wrapped snow painting. He carted it downstairs, returned to his club chair, and signaled Young Higgins, pointing to his cold coffee. When the steaming pot arrived, he told the porter to watch out for a guest; he was expecting a young lady within the next half hour.

It was difficult to tell if this request sent Young Higgins into cardiac arrest, for that was what he looked to be in most of the time. Finally, but frostily, he said, "Certainly, sir."

It wasn't, after all, Ladies' Day.

While he waited for Bea, he wandered into the saloon, once a gaming room, now a library filled with dark leather volumes and dim lamps, room of permanent twilight. On a bulletin was a notice from the Managers announcing a candidate for election. Melrose remembered his father, the old Earl of Caverness, saying that one's name would be down in the book a decade or even two before coming up for election. He wondered if a candidate could still be blackballed by one vote. He enjoyed the image of members filing up and dropping a white or black ball in the box. He turned to see a portrait of Wellington on the far wall, regarding him coldly.

The shelves contained tooled-leather volumes of various histories of Europe, all under a layering of dust that spoke sadly of their lack of use. On a lower shelf, gaudily jacketed guidebooks sat beside leather-bound ones that looked to be somewhere around a hundred years old, but that didn't matter. Greece and Turkey-the one he pulled out-never changed much. It was quite interesting. He could take a ferry to Delos and visit a flea market in Athens if he wanted.

Melrose disliked shopping-really, what had he to shop for, what with Mr. Beaton making his clothes and Ruthven and Martha buying the food?-but he liked reading about it.

From Rhodes he could hop up to Turkey and shop at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul-my lord, three thousand shops on sixty streets! . . . Here was a t.i.tle for you: Grand Vizier of Suleyman the Magnificent (that was one he would divest himself of in a New York minute). He wondered if he'd get elected to Boring's.

He wandered around Turkey for a while, looking for bargains, and then skipped over to Morocco. Marrakech. He could walk through Djemaa el Fna square and see jugglers and acrobats and snake charmers-Covent Garden, in other words. He could bargain in the souk for copper and carpets. Look at those rugs! And then up to Casablanca, where he pictured himself in Rick's club behind a veil of smoke, with Claude Rains behind another demanding to see his pa.s.sport. Thence to Tangier-how the very air thickened with romance!-where he could buy a carpet or a camel for a pittance. Well, a camel would certainly spiff up the Blue Parrot, Trevor Sly's pub. He saw himself in a fez, babbling in tongues, bargaining with the vendors for silver and leather.

It was a mere hop, skip, and a jump across the Straits of Gibraltar to southern Spain, but he'd have to search out another guidebook for that. He reshelved Turkey and found garishly covered Fodor's and Nicholson's guides for Paris, remembered that sw.a.n.k marketplace beloved by Sophie McBride, and looked it up in the Fodor's index.

Fauchon's . . . grocery to billionaires . . . famous for the artistic arrangement of its fruits and vegetables . . . smiling salespeople. . . . He read on, and his frown deepened. He checked the Nicholson guide also. He looked at the far wall, as if some explanation might come from the portrait of the Iron Duke, and read it again, and jumped when Higgins slid up to him out of seeming nowhere to tell him his guest had arrived.

Melrose took it as a good omen that Nicholas was in charge, Sebastian having taken a client to lunch at the Ivy. The fellow, said Nick, was an old bore and he himself hadn't wanted to go. To Beatrice he said, "Wonderful to see you, darling."

Melrose thought that if it was at the "darling" stage, Bea was becoming a valuable commodity.

"I think we've sold him your Limehouse painting, sweetie. Seb's client."

"The old bore? Sounds likely for one of my lot, right?"

Despite this careless-seeming soignee att.i.tude, Melrose could feel her excitement.

"And what do you mean, you think?" said Bea.

"I'm fairly sure. He'll be back after lunch, and he told me quite firmly to take it down. See?" Nick pulled Bea's painting out from under the counter.

Melrose was again struck by its freshness. There was something about Bea's paintings that made the viewer think he was seeing a place for the first time.

"D'ya mind if he takes these two back to the storage room? I just want to set them up against the ones I brought in yesterday and see if they got a prayer. I'm not really sure about them, especially the big one." She tapped the one Melrose was carrying and handed over the smaller of the two, also wrapped in newspaper. "Can he just take them to where my others are?"

Nicholas graciously waved Melrose along to the rear of the building, and he started down the hall with both paintings.

When Beatrice saw Nicholas start to follow after, she said, "Wait just a tic, Nicholas, will you? I want to talk to you about frames. I don't much like the one you used."

As Melrose went into the storage room he could hear them arguing amiably in the background. He saw the individual crates immediately. Two of the paintings were inside wooden crates, but they were as yet not nailed shut. Inside each was a brown-paper-wrapped painting. The other two-and, Melrose bet, the poor cousins-were leaning against the stone wall. He knew all he could do was guess, but he worked it out that he had better than a fifty-fifty chance, if he was reasoning correctly. All he had to do was pull one out, remove the newspaper from the one he'd brought with him, and slip it in the crate instead. He positioned the one he'd removed by a lone painting of a water spaniel in its declining years-what was that doing with the Fabricant brothers?-took the newspaper from around Bea's own painting, only half the size of Ralph's, and set that against the other. He left the room. The operation had taken only a minute. Nicholas would have no sense of his malingering back here.

As he walked up to them, he said, "I'd certainly say the small one's wonderful, Beatrice. As good as, if not better. Go back and have a look. Cigarette?" Melrose snapped open his gold case and shoved it in front of Nick's face.

Beatrice excused herself. When she was halfway down the hall, Melrose called, "Oh, wait a tic, darling" (he was fast picking up the lingo). He quickly reached her, said, "It's by the dying dog," and as quickly returned in time to light Nicholas's cigarette. "What on earth's the problem with this river scene of hers? It's gorgeous." Melrose had picked it up and was holding it at arm's length.

Exhaling a thin stream of smoke that turned lavender against Bea's sun-drenched water, Nicholas agreed. "G.o.d, these people are such perfectionists."

Melrose laughed, was laughing still when Bea came trotting along with a newspaper-wrapped painting and her own smaller one, now unwrapped. She handed the larger over to Melrose and directed Nicholas to study the smaller. "I like this one, but I got to do more work on the big one, Nicky love."

Nicky love? Ye G.o.ds, he wouldn't last for a moment in the art world. Melrose had to give Nicholas credit for a quiet study of the painting before he broke out in compliments. The Fabricants were, after all, serious lovers of art. Too serious, probably. It occurred to Melrose that Nicholas might not even be in on it. Melrose even doubted that Ralph himself was in on it, although he couldn't explain to himself how they'd managed the trick if he weren't. If, indeed, they had managed a "trick." He could be dead wrong.

"We'd better be going if we're going," said Melrose, "if we're to catch that show at Bingham's." A showing of avant-garde work was being advertised in the arts section wrapped around the painting he was holding.

Nicholas screwed up his face in distaste. "You going to that thing? I can guarantee you won't see anything worth the visit."

Melrose laughed as his glance slipped down the ad again. "He's one of my dear aunt's favorite people. Shamus Neeley."

Nick looked at him uncertainly. "Neeley's the owner, not the artist."

"I know." Idiot, stop trying to be clever. "My aunt always goes to his shows. She's a big supporter of the gallery."

Nicholas smiled. "Well, if she's that sort, tell her we're here, won't you?"

"Will do. Come on, Beazy."

Bea squinted up at him. Beazy?

Outside, Melrose stopped for a moment and leaned against a shop-front. He took out his handkerchief, surprised that he'd been furiously perspiring. "Ye G.o.ds."

"That dog wasn't dying. I could have missed it."

Melrose gave her a look. "Oh, certainly. Anyway, you were sublime. Sub-lime. I just wanted to grab you!"

She sidled up to him. "Well, give old Beazy a kiss, there's a good lad." He did. They were leaning against the wall, locked together, until they both had to stop for air. "We'll miss Bingham's," said Melrose.

"I've better art at my place."

"I'll be a monkey's." He kissed her again.

42.

She's been moping about ever since she got home from school."

Jury tried to picture Linda "moping about" and couldn't quite manage it. He smiled.

"I don't know what she wants to see you about, Superintendent."

Mona Dresser waved him into the living room.

It was, as before, a pleasantly disheveled room. Like a none-too-young demimondaine, the room tried to keep itself up but never quite managed. Pieces of clothing, scarves, silk throws were tossed across all available surfaces. Still, it gave Jury a pleasant shock to find the room exactly as he'd left it. Not even the shadows on the walls had shifted. Before he sat down in the chair he'd occupied before, he picked a silk scarf and a handbag from the seat.

"Oh, just toss those things aside, Superintendent. We're not very good housekeepers here, as you already know."

Jury smiled. That he "already knew" apparently released Mona Dresser from the bother of citing particulars. "Where's Linda, then?"

"She wants you to go to the palace with her. Don't ask me why."

"Okay, I won't. But I will ask you one or two questions."

"Of course."

"There's been another murder. It's been in the papers, so I expect you've read-"

"Simeon Pitt, you mean. I knew him."

"You did?"

"Not terribly well, but he must've stood in for whoever covered the theater for a short while. Or perhaps it was just the one occasion. She Stoops to Conquer, the one we took on tour, you know."

"The one you took to St. Petersburg."

"Yes. Petersburg was only one of the cities."

"Why would he have been covering a play touring the Continent?"

"I don't know. Some loony idea his paper had. He was quite generous in his praise, and I don't think people realized this-I mean, the sort of person he really was. I thanked him for that review; I got to know him a little, in the way of things. He did not set out to savage paintings or plays-well, he could hardly have savaged Goldsmith, could he? He was not trying to sell himself or prove how clever he was." She sighed. "So if you're going to ask me, did rage drive me to kill the poor man-" Mona reached for the sh.e.l.l cigarette box.

"No, I actually didn't hit on you as the killer."

She wiggled her eyebrows at him as she struck a match to light her cigarette faster than he could reach over with the table lighter. "You don't think I've got the b.a.l.l.s to walk into that men's club and stick a knife in someone?"

"I don't think you're foolish enough to do it." Jury smiled. "It's taking one h.e.l.l of a chance."

Concentrating, she bunched her lips around her cigarette, turned it, said, "So it must be someone who enjoys that-taking chances, I mean. Have you anyone on your list with a flare for melodrama? I mean, other than me?" She smiled broadly.

She was waiting for him by the stone pillars, and he had to credit her with a serious intention in this meeting, for he felt she would otherwise have been waiting in the little building that dispensed tea, biscuits, and ice cream.

"h.e.l.lo, Linda," he said, and, matching her serious turn, kept the smile out of his face and voice. "You wanted to see me?"

She had a hard rubber ball that looked as if dogs had been chewing it, which she tossed and caught, tossed and caught. "I found something in the herb garden. Come on!"

She led him through the grounds, keeping her silence and tossing her ball, led him into the walled garden and thence to the herb garden. In the ruined greenhouse she plucked an object from the worn sill. "I left it here because I know you're not supposed to move stuff. It's this necklace." It was a locket, corroded with age. "I sprang it open. Look."

It had been pried open, and the little monochrome portraits inside of two children, a girl and a boy, in Victorian dress seemed to shrink within the tiny frames. A circle of gla.s.s still covered the boy's face; the girl's was stuck to the metal through the glue of time. They both looked serious and sad, as children always seemed to in those old days. Maybe they still do.

"It's probably her children."

Jury shook his head. "No, they can't be. This locket's been here for decades, Linda. It's nearly green from oxidizing."

Linda looked at him carefully, inspecting him almost, as if a mark would appear on his skin betokening a break in the chain of truth. Jury wondered whether she wanted to believe or didn't want to believe the children were those of the woman she'd found dead. He didn't know. Did she look relieved? He didn't know that, either.

Then she spun away like a pile of leaves, with the chewed-up ball, which she started bouncing. But it was too damaged to bounce, so she tossed it up in the air. She was gearing up for something, Jury thought.

"I found it when I was here with that man that knows you."

Jury frowned. "You mean Mr. Plant?"

"We went on the tour. He didn't know anything about the palace at all."

"Neither do most people. It's one of London's secrets, they say."

"Well, it'll stay that way if they don't get a tour person who knows more." She caught the ball, threw it up again.

Jury smiled. "In a couple of years, you can apply for the job."

Compliments were of no interest to her at the moment. "He made me lie down in that lad's-love where the body was."

"Mr. Plant made you do that?" Jury doubted it.

"Almost. He would've if I didn't do it anyway." The ball landed on Jury's leg.

"Ah. But you did."

"I guess you think I'm wrong too."

"No, I don't think you're wrong, Linda. I just can't explain it, that's all."

There was a silence. "If I'm the only person that knows it, I guess somebody'll come and get me like he said they got Sophie."