The Dirty Duck Part 13

Farraday managed to stand on his feet when Jury told him. He reminded Jury of a cliff's edge eroded again and again by an onslaught of seawater. One wondered when it would crumble. Not yet, apparently.

Penny Farraday walked backward into the shadows and then turned and ran to the bathroom. Jury could hear the sounds of retching. He wished he could help her; he was too busy trying to deal with Farraday.

Farraday, his face as drained as if a knife had let his own blood, managed to bring the brandy snifter Jury had handed him up to his lips. His hand was shaking violently. His mouth worked a little; he finally said, "When did it happen?"

"The doctor says last night, early this morning. Sometime about midnight, probably."

"Why'd it take so long-?" The voice sounded strangled.

Jury finished the question for him. "So long for the body to be found? Whoever did it hid the body pretty well, under a clump of shrubbery. It was a woman out walking her two dogs who found her. She wouldn't have, except the dogs were snuffling the bushes. We didn't get there until nearly ten this morning."

Farraday seemed to have lost interest in the explanation halfway through. He ran his hand down over his face like a man whose eyes had been hurt from staring too long into the sun.

Jury disliked thinking that if Farraday were putting on an act, it was a d.a.m.ned convincing one. Whoever was doing this was certainly narrowing the suspects. A grim thought. But who else could it be except someone in this tour group? Unless it was a person completely unknown to Jury who had followed Honeysuckle Tours.

"Do you think you can talk about it? Or do you want me to come back?"

In answer, Farraday turned his head, looking back to the doorway through which Penny had gone. "How's Penny?"

"I'll get her, if you want-"

"No, no. Listen. You might as well know it, you'd find it out anyway. Things between me and Amelia, they weren't all that hot."

Meaning absolutely rotten. He refilled the brandy gla.s.s from an a.s.sortment of bottles on the table beside the couch and handed it to Farraday.

"Thanks." He drank some more and a little blood suffused his gray face. "I wanted her to stay in last night. Go to dinner with me, Simpson's maybe, and then just stay in. But she wouldn't." He cleared his throat.

"Why?"

"Amelia don't like just to sit around . . ." His voice trailed off.

Jury didn't want to say what he was thinking: Not even after the murder of her own daughter?

Farraday said it for him. "My G.o.d, wouldn't you'd've thought that after Honey Belle-?" He shook his head and whispered it: "As G.o.d is my witness, I don't think she gave much of a d.a.m.n. Oh, I know it don't-didn't-bother her that Jimmy's missing. She never made no bones about him and Penny, the way she felt about them. But Honey Belle-that's her own flesh. I don't know, I just don't know."

"Do you think she had a more particular reason for wanting to go out than plain boredom?"

Farraday looked up at him. "A man, you mean?"

Unhappily, Jury nodded.

"Mr. Plant?" said the young woman at Brown's reception desk. "I believe he went out with the gentleman in-" Her eyes drifted so imperceptibly over the cards that Jury had the feeling they never left his face. "-Room 106. Mr. Schoenberg." She smiled. She was a very pretty woman.

"What time did they leave, do you know?" Jury returned the smile.

"Well, I'd say somewhere near nine o'clock."

Jury wished that all of the staff at Brown's could pinpoint the comings and goings of its clientele with such accuracy. "You may have heard. There's been an unfortunate-accident-"

That she had heard was clear from the brief nod, the more sober arrangement of features. A remarkably well-trained staff, thought Jury. Whatever their private amazements, excitements, or thrills, they'd keep themselves to themselves. "This Mrs. Farraday left the hotel last night, latish. Were you here?"

The young woman shook her head, perhaps more saddened that she hadn't been there to supply the Superintendent with more information than by the thought of a guest's untimely demise. "That would have been the night receptionist-" She made as if to pick up the telephone. "-Would you like me to call her?"

Jury shook his head. "Just ask her to call me if she remembers anything about Mrs. Farraday." He dropped a card on the desk. "This Mr. Schoenberg. Harvey. Do you have a booking for his brother?"

Again the discreet eyes flicked through some cards. "We do, yes. There's a Mr. Jonathan Schoenberg expected this afternoon." The light green eyes regarded him hopefully, as if she had finally given up some information he could use.

"Thanks. You've been most kind." Jury smiled again.

The eyes became slightly less discreet.

23.

A trip through history with Harvey L. Schoenberg was like following a horse with blinders on. The horse could see everything straight ahead, and as long as it did not have to interpret its position by putting it in the context of views to the left and right, it did its job. Indeed, it did wonderfully well-knew every cobble in the street, every turn of the road, every lamppost.

"Traitors' Gate," said Harvey, rapturously, still talking about the view they had had of it, looking across the ma.s.sive arches of Tower Bridge. They were now standing on the Southwark side of the River Thames, having been deposited, at Harvey's insistence, right on the other end of the new London Bridge. "Imagine the heads that were stuck up there!"

"If it's all the same to you, I'd sooner not. Public executions and the like never appealed to me. Neither did bear-baiting."

"Oh, come on, Mel! Where's your sense of history?"

"In my stomach."

But Harvey refused to allow any dampening of the spirit, although he was not averse to a dampening of thirst. "Let's find a pub. Right here, nearly where we're standing, was the Bear Tavern, a very popular place." Harvey had faced round, and was pointing off. "Over there was Tooley Street-"

"Over there is still Tooley Street, unless my eyes deceive me."

"Yeah, yeah, but I'm trying to tell you how it was, back when Marlowe walked these streets. There were a bunch of pubs up this way-"

"I'm sure there still are."

"-There was even a Black Swan here; north of St. Thomas's Hospital-"

"There is always a Black Swan. There are Black Swans the entire length and breadth of the British Isles."

Harvey sighed and folded the old map of Southwark he'd been consulting. They commenced walking up Southwark Street. Harvey shook his head, a man who cannot understand other men. "You're just not into the spirit of this little pilgrimage, Mel."

"I thought we were going to Deptford. To Mistress Bull's tavern, where this iniquitous murder took place."

"We are, we are. But we've got to have a walk around Southwark. Think of all the time Marlowe spent here." They had walked down a flight of stone steps and now stood looking up at the imposing facade of Southwark Cathedral. Schoenberg consulted his map, hitching the Ishi farther up on his shoulder. "This was the Church of St. Mary Overies. You know that story? Real sad. Over there was the Stews."

"Stews?"

"Red light district. Southwark was a real cesspool. Criminals used to run over here from the City so they wouldn't be prosecuted-kind of like someone in the U.S. running from one state to another. I wonder where Hog Lane is. That's the place where Kit had the duel with Bill Bradley."

"Marlowe was always having duels. That's why I can't understand your tenacious belief in this absurd theory. Let's have a drink."

They had walked through a series of mean little streets fronting warehouses behind the cathedral until they had come upon a pub, crowded despite its location. Melrose wondered where in heaven's name all of these people came from.

"Look at it this way," said Harvey, clasping his pint of stout between both hands, and looking with earnest gray eyes at Melrose. "Okay, I agree he was always jumping the gun with people. But explain how in the h.e.l.l could an 'accident' like that happen? I mean, him running his own dagger into his own eye. Or right above it, I mean?"

Melrose lit his cigar. "Simple. Allow me to demonstrate." Melrose picked up his walking stick. "a.s.sume that the k.n.o.b of this stick is the hilt of a dagger. a.s.sume you-Frizer-are sitting wedged between Poley and Skeres and Marlowe is pommeling you about the head with the dagger's hilt. It was common to do that in that day and age, a kind of precursor to the serious bit of dueling or whatever. That means that the blade of the knife is pointed at Marlowe, doesn't it? So when Frizer is trying to deflect the weapon it goes into Marlowe's forehead." Melrose shrugged. "I don't see why that's so hard to understand."

Harvey looked at him with some respect. "Say, you've really done your homework, haven't you?"

"Yes. I did a little reading in the Stratford library. Somehow I feel it is inc.u.mbent upon me to disabuse you of this theory about Shakespeare . . . I mean, really . . . oh, not that d.a.m.ned computer again, Harvey, for G.o.d's sakes."

But Harvey had the computer out and was punching keys to beat the band. Then he sat, lips pursed, waiting for his file to come up. "Here it is: medical report. A wound like that couldn't have killed him. It would have sent him into a coma."

"Medical report? What medical report?"

Harvey scratched his head. "Well, an interpretation, let's say. By a scholar. And another thing: if all this was going on, why the h.e.l.l didn't Bob Poley and Nick Skeres help old Kit out? Answer me that. They were his buddies, weren't they? So they just sit there? The only reason they'd just sit there is because the whole thing was planned out in the first place!" He flicked off the Ishi and raised his gla.s.s in a gesture of triumph and gazed around the smoke-filled, crowded room. "Just imagine what these places used to be like."

Melrose hoped whatever imagining was going to take place would be in Harvey's memory bank and not in the Ishi's. If he was forced to watch him bring up one more file, Melrose would seriously consider throwing himself into the Thames.

"Imagine pulling up your horse in the courtyard and having the servants run out to you, the hostler take your horse and the drawer light a fire in your chamber-"

"And the hostler always managing somehow to feel the weight of your purse, and the chamberlain rob you of it afterwards-"

"What a cynic." Harvey continued, in a weepy tone: "And the host helping you off with your boots, just as if it were your own home; and the tapster chalking up the score at the bar-"

"And ye merry host being as much moneylender, guller of country b.u.mpkins and young gallants, as he was publican; and the drawer always managing to add a few more chalk-marks to the board than were rightfully yours-"

"You're really fun, Mel, you know that? But think of the meals you could get, sitting before the blazing hearth-for maybe eight shillings you'd have plates of mutton and chicken and bacon, pigeon-pies, bread and beer-"

"And the inns gathering places for duelists and courtesans . . . at least it kept them off the streets."

"Oh, come on! Wouldn't you give an arm and leg to set the clock back four hundred years if you could?"

"Set the clock back? No, thank you. Back to a day when goldsmiths were bankers and barbers were surgeons? To a day when streets were no wider than lanes, so that only two creaking carts could pa.s.s; and lanes were as narrow as public footpaths? When those overhanging upper stories that Americans find so quaint were needed for living s.p.a.ce? When there were riots, fires, rabbit warrens of tenements, and the air was so fetid with pestilence that one had to draw curtains round one's bed to sleep through the night without getting the plague? When the constant refrain was 'Chattels and goods had he none'? Set the clock back? Don't be an idiot." Melrose drank his ale.

"Man, you're really on a downer."

"The entire sixteenth century was on a downer, my dear fellow. If you Americans had had a taste of Elizabethan politics, you'd have applauded Nixon for being so forthcoming and upstanding."

"Nixon? That s...o...b..?"

Feeling he'd gained an advantage in a most unexpected quarter, Melrose smiled a wonderful smile and said, "Oh, I don't know. I've always thought of Richard Nixon as Mary, Queen of Scots."

"I can't believe it," said Harvey, looking sadly from his map of old Deptford up to the new, but seedy-looking, development. "Pepys Park. Can you feature it?"

"You didn't imagine, did you, that Deptford Strand would still be the site of duels and ruffs and painted ladies?"

"Well, yeah. But, I mean really . . ." He looked behind them, across the street. There was a pub called the Victoria. They had pa.s.sed the John Evelyn a while back. "I mean, can you imagine turning the whole d.a.m.ned place into a bunch of apartments?"

"Yes." Melrose looked down at Harvey's map. "I see no Rose tavern there. Mistress Bull's."

Harvey scratched his head. "Well, no one knew where it was, exactly. Come on, let's keep walking."

"Let's go back to Brown's," said Melrose.

"Stop raining on my parade. Come on."

And they continued their walk toward the river.

"How about this place?" said Harvey, looking up at the tall facade of an unsavory-looking pub with a dull sliver of yellow on its sign announcing it as the Half-Moon.

"Good as any, I suppose. The original tavern belonging to your Mistress Bull is certainly gone by now."

"How do you know this wasn't it?" To one side was an alley no wider than a gutter. An unprofessionally lettered sign with an arrow pointed, apparently that way. "See, it says there's a garden out back."

"It's probably the way to Kew."

The building was decidedly ugly, its dark frontage running up into an overhanging upper story, giving it a listing and dropsical look. A large lattice of flaking green paint flanked one side of the door.

"The place must be old. That lattice used to be the sign of an ale house. They painted them red or green." Harvey was looking reverently at the ugly building, his cap crushed in his hands.

"Oh, for heaven's sake. You don't really think you're going to find the original, do you? Do you think it's still standing as a living memorial to your theory? Come on; I'm thirsty. Let's see if the happy host has some Old Peculier."

The inside was no more inviting than the outside. No light intruded by way of the leaded gla.s.s panes made still more opaque by a layer of grime. Down the length of the long bar, being slowly wiped down by the publican chewing on his cigar, ran a quite magnificent beveled mirror with a gold-leaf frame sporting cupids and Pans and other minor deities probably doing things they'd no business doing in public. The few patrons-it was yet barely eleven in the morning-looked as if they'd been born in the place. They all seemed to have soaked up some of the darkness of the interior. From cigarettes, smoke rose in thin tendrils. The customers coughed. The room had a brackish, dead-fish smell. But there was the magnificence of the mirror and the old china beerpulls to salve the customers' souls. Not that these looked terribly soulful.

"Hiya," said Harvey, plunking some coins down. "Two of those." He pointed to one of the beerpulls. As the publican set up gla.s.ses, Harvey said, with his usual bonhomie, "Say, this wouldn't by chance be the old Rose tavern, would it?"

"The ol' wot, mate?" The owner squinted his eyes.

"Used to be a tavern in Deptford Strand they think was called the Rose. Run by one Eleanor Bull. Near as I can make out, it would have been around here. Christopher Marlowe was murdered there." Harvey shoved Melrose's ale down the bar and took a drink himself.

"Murder?" He went a little pale. "Wot you talkin' about? 'Ere now, you be police, or wot?"

"Police? Who, us? No, no, no. You don't understand-"

Nor would he ever, thought Melrose with a sigh, separating himself from the uncomfortable wooden stool and taking his drink to a table. He watched Harvey natter on. A dour-looking woman who walked down the bar like someone with springs on her feet joined in the discussion. Harvey finally shrugged and came to join Melrose.