The Dirty Duck Part 14

"They never heard of the Rose, or Eleanor, or Marlowe. But they said in the back they did have a couple of separate rooms for people who wanted to have their own party. Come on, let's check it out."

Harvey led the way down a narrow dark hall at the end of which two doors debouched off to right and left onto identical rooms, furnished with round tables and chairs just as uninviting as the ones in the main bar. The only other door led to the outside, with a sign on the lintel, "Mind Your Head."

Minding their heads, they crouched and went through into the garden, or what might at one time in the dim, dead past have been a garden, now gone to seed. An opening in the crumbling stone wall led to the alley.

Melrose sat down on a listing bench as Harvey surveyed the scene, delighted. "It could have been just like this, Mel." And he started going through a director's motions, someone blocking out places on a stage, putting Kit there, Bob here. "I mean, can't you just see it?"

"No," said Melrose, charmingly. He yawned.

"Don't tell anyone," said Harvey, once they had gained possession of a table in the Half-Moon's dark public bar, "but I write a little poetry myself."

"Believe me," said Melrose, wondering if anyone had ever drowned in a gla.s.s of ale like the Duke of Clarence in a b.u.t.t of Malmsey, "I won't tell anyone."

"Sonnets, mostly. Yes sir, I got them all in here." He patted the computer, drank his beer, and looked sidewise at Melrose. "Want to hear a line? 'If sands still bear the imprint of a sandal-' "

Melrose interrupted quickly. He would nip this recitation in the bud, even if it killed him. "Were I you, I'd stick to computer programming."

Sadly, Harvey shook his head. "You know what, Mel? You kind of take the bounce out of life."

"Not out of your life, surely. You'll still go bouncing along with no hindrance from me."

"What do you do for fun, anyway? You got a girl?"

"A 'girl'?"

"Yeah. You know." Harvey drew curves in the air.

"I know what they are. At the moment, unfortunately, no. You?"

He looked off across the small sea of dark, empty tables. "Once I did. Was going to get married. I didn't know her all that long. Love at first sight-for both of us." He sighed. " 'But that was in another country. And besides, the wench is dead.' "

Melrose was not at all surprised at Harvey's quoting Marlowe, but at the extremely un-Harvey-like bitterness in his tone. "I'm very sorry."

"Ah . . ." and the motion of his hand seemed to wave away wench, death, and that other country. "I don't brood. That's the worst thing you can do is brood. You get to the point you can't think of anything else, know what I mean? Listen-" Harvey smiled and slapped a pound note on the table. "Put up a quid-isn't that what they call them, 'quids'?"

"Quids, yes."

"Okay, now you put up a quid and we'll see who buys." Harvey raised his gla.s.s. "I'm betting you don't know who said this."

"Said what?" Melrose obediently unlayered a pound note from the wad in his money-clip.

" 'Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?' "

Melrose frowned. "Good grief, every schoolboy knows that line. It's Shakespeare."

Looking terribly smug, Harvey shook his head.

"Of course it is. Ye G.o.ds, haven't we all just seen As You Like It umpteen times? Touchstone says it."

"Uh-uh. Marlowe."

"Marlowe? Ho ho. You buy."

"Ho ho, you buy."

To Melrose's eternal annoyance, he leaned over and tapped away at the Ishi, waited a moment, brought up a file, and sat back, complaisance written all over his face.

Melrose leaned over and read: It lies not in our power to love or hate, For will in us is overruled by fate . . .

Where both deliberate, the love is slight; Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight "From Hero and Leander," Harvey said, and lifted his gla.s.s. "You buy."

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned," said Melrose, without rancor. He was always willing to be educated, even by the Harvey Schoenbergs of this world. "You mean the bard stole it?" Melrose gathered up their gla.s.ses.

"Nah. He quoted it. Look at a text. It's in quotes." Harvey leaned across the table, said sotto voce, "Which is one more clue in my theory-"

"See you later," said Melrose quickly, making for the bar.

But of course, Harvey remembered his place quite perfectly. As Melrose set the pints down, Harvey repeated: ". . . one more clue." He started punching up the Ishi again, saying at the same time: "Far as I'm concerned, you put the sonnets together with the stuff from this play, and it adds up to one word. For example, look at this. Touchstone again: 'It strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.' "

Melrose frowned. "Referring to what?"

"Marlowe's murder, of course. Don't you remember? 'Le reckenynge'-it's what the fight was over, the settling up of the bill in the tavern." He outflung his arm as if they were indeed sitting in that selfsame tavern. "Do you know that line about love at first sight is the only time Shakespeare ever quoted another poet in his plays?"

"So?"

"Ah, come on, Mel. Use your loaf, as they say over here. Marlowe's death is obviously really bugging the h.e.l.l out of Shakespeare. Now put that together with everything else I've told you-"

Melrose was quite happy to have forgotten everything Harvey had told him in case it resulted in brain rot. He studied the ma.s.sive and ornate gold-leaf mirror over the bar as tap, tap, tap went Harvey's nimble fingers on the Ishi.

"-together with the other sonnets, and especially this one." The screen scrolled up, Harvey banged a key in triumph, and read, " 'Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing-' "

Melrose, feeling displays of temper to be ungentlemanly, not to say emotionally depleting, was seldom given to them. But now he banged his walking stick down on the table, making both Harvey and the Ishi jump. "You go too far! That is probably one of the most beautiful sonnets ever written, and obviously written for some woman-the Dark Lady, probably . . ." His voice trailed off. Melrose really was not at all sure of his ground, but he refused to let this sonnet become grist for the Schoenberg Ishi. "The Dark Lady," he repeated. Why couldn't they talk about the French symbolists?

"Ah, don't be so romantic. It was Shakespeare's apologia, or whatever you call those things. Just wait till I tell all this to old Jonathan." Harvey's expression grew uncharacteristically dark. "He'll be in this afternoon. Concorde."

"Jonathan must have a bit of the ready." At Harvey's questioning look, Melrose added, "Money."

"Yeah. Well, the folks had it." Harvey brightened up and said, "But so do you, with a t.i.tle to boot. Listen, come on and have dinner with us, okay?"

Melrose was curious enough about the brother to agree. "You really dislike your brother, don't you?"

"No love lost on either side. But this Shakespeare-Marlowe business-I told you it could all be summed up in one word."

Blackly, Melrose regarded him; hating himself, he asked anyway. "What word?"

"Remorse. Billy-boy knows what he's done, and there's an end on it." Happily, Harvey drank his pint.

"I certainly hope there's an end on it." Melrose bethought himself. "Do you realize we've been sitting here talking about Marlowe's murder instead of these murders much closer to hand?" He looked at Harvey who was closing up the Ishi. "Tell me. You surely must have a theory on that."

Harvey shrugged. "Some nut. Who else could it be?"

"One of you."

Harvey stared at him.

And it was Melrose now who happily quaffed his ale.

24.

"Honycutt," said Wiggins, "is at the Salisbury pub."

"The Salisbury. He doesn't waste any time, does he? Well, come on then, we might as well join him."

The Ford idled away, seemingly forever, waiting for one of the green lights which never appeared to get one much farther round Piccadilly Circus and its eternal traffic snarl. In defiance of lights, laws, and even the knowledge that heavy metal can play h.e.l.l with human flesh, pedestrians kept trying to make a break for it. One could hardly blame them, since all the cars were in compet.i.tion with them, as if one and all were dicing to see who could get through the light first or last before it changed.

"Why don't they just take down the b.l.o.o.d.y lights and let's have a free-for-all," said Wiggins, nosing forward where three middle-aged ladies apparently didn't know or care how close they were to his b.u.mper. The base of the statue of Eros was crowded as usual with office workers and battalions of pigeons, all on their lunch-hour.

"Excepting Farraday himself, we're no clearer to a motive for any of these people than we were before. He might have murdered Amelia out of jealousy. Had plenty of reason, that's for sure. And might also have killed the stepdaughter, who was a real s.e.xual tease, though that seems a thin motive-"

"What about the girl, Penny? She hated both of them." Wiggins had finally managed to leave the Circus for Shaftesbury Avenue, and was looking for a place to park.

"No," said Jury, in a tone that made Wiggins look rather sharply round. "That I can't believe. She's only fifteen."

Pulling the Ford up on the pavement in a sidestreet near the Salisbury, Wiggins clucked his tongue. "Only fifteen. Never thought I'd hear something like that from you, sir. Getting soft, are you?"

"Me and Attila the Hun," said Jury, climbing out of the car. "But that still doesn't explain the murder of Gwendolyn Bracegirdle."

"Why do they like turtlenecks so much?" asked Wiggins, once inside the Salisbury, which was jammed as usual at lunchtime. Although its clientele was diversified, it had a long-established reputation as catering for the gayer London crowd.

Wiggins was right; fifty percent of the crowd seemed to be wearing them. The young man at Valentine Honeycutt's table certainly was. Honeycutt had wasted no time. When Jury and Wiggins approached, he looked up and withdrew his hand from his friend's knee. The friend, tight-jeaned, turtlenecked, and sipping his beer, turned eagerly toward the new arrivals. Honeycutt wasn't quite so eager.

"Oh, no," he said with a sigh.

"The Bad News Bears," said Jury, not waiting to be asked to have a seat. He smiled at the young man, whose own teeth were whiter than snow and whose dark locks framed his smooth face, one would have said Byronically, except one knew Byron had other ideas. "Sergeant Wiggins, Mr. Honeycutt."

Catching on, the young man looked horribly sad, as if he'd hoped for better things at this unlooked-for expansion of their small party. Though he seemed to realize during his first lingering look at Jury's smile, that he wasn't Jury's type.

"Sorry to interrupt. We'd like a private word with Mr. Honeycutt."

Jury suffered a small, whispered conference between the two before the one in the turtleneck moved himself and his gla.s.s off. The jeans were decidedly constricting; Jury could almost hear splitting seams.

Honeycutt was dressed in his usual modish fashion: silky-leather jacket, silk scarf wound round his neck and waterfalling down his back, white cord pants. He only needed racing goggles. "What is it now?" he asked, as if Jury were nothing but a fun-spoiler.

"Mrs. Farraday. Amelia. I'm sorry to have to tell you, but she's met with an accident. Fatal."

"Oh, G.o.d!" he said, pushing himself against the back of the red banquette. Above him, on both sides of the slightly recessed seat, tulip-shaped wall sconces glowed. The Salisbury had one of the handsomest interiors of any London pub. "Where? How?"

Jury sidestepped that question with one of his own: "Were you at the hotel last night, Mr. Honeycutt?"

"Until around nine-thirty, ten-ish. Then I went to that little restaurant nearby, Tiddly-Dols." When he saw that Sergeant Wiggins was writing this down in a notebook, he frowned. "Why?"

"By yourself?"

"No, with a friend-look, why these questions?" His brief, nervous laugh was more of a high-pitched giggle. "You make it sound as if I need an alibi, or something. You surely don't suspect-"

Wiggins interrupted. "And what time did you leave Tiddly-Dols, sir?"

Honeycutt wrenched his gaze from Jury's and said, "Oh, I don't recall precisely. About eleven . . . But I still don't see-"

"Your friend's name, sir?" asked Wiggins, wetting the tip of his pencil with his tongue. Wiggins feared every ailment known to man except, apparently, lead poisoning.

Honeycutt opened his mouth and shut it again and returned his gaze to Jury.

Seeing he was getting into the noncooperative stage, Jury said to Wiggins, "How about getting us something at the hot-foods counter? Piece of shepherd's pie for me. And a pint of mild-and-bitter." Wiggins closed his notebook and got up. Jury smiled. "Haven't eaten yet today. Food's good here."

Honeycutt seemed to relax. After all, anyone about to eat shepherd's pie would hardly go for the jugular, would he?

"You still haven't told me how it happened, Superintendent."

"In Berkeley Square last night. Not far from that restaurant, as a matter of fact. About midnight, the police surgeon puts it at." Jury smiled again.

The jugular had definitely been gone for. Valentine Honeycutt went several degrees of pale. "You certainly don't think I-"

"Oh, I don't think anything at the moment. But I imagine you can understand that we'd want to account for the movements of the only people in London-as far as we know-who knew her. They'd be the ones on Honeysuckle Tours. Thanks, Wiggins." The sergeant had set before him a steaming plate of minced beef topped with nicely browned mashed potatoes. He also put Jury's pint and a half-pint of Guinness on the table. "Aren't you eating, Wiggins?"

Wiggins shook his head. "Bit of a stomach upset." He had extracted a small foil-wrapped package from his coat pocket and proceeded to drop two white tablets into the Guinness.

Jury had thought his sergeant would never surprise him again, until he heard the fizz. "Alka-Seltzer in stout?"

"Oh, it's wonderful for digestion, sir. And Guinness is good for you." Wiggins reopened his notebook. The velvety foam of his gla.s.s erupted with little bubbles.

"Did you see any of the others on your tour last night? Or did your usual policy of laissez-faire still hold?" asked Jury.