The Blue Last (44 page)

Melrose was relieved to get away from the Gemma affair. Was Polly smarter than they? “Good heavens, Polly, that's terrible. But you do write other books.”

“I could have written
À la recherche
et cetera and they'd still have me swimming the genre gutter.”

“But I like your Inspector Guermantes. Of the Sûreté.” He'd like him better if Polly weren't fishing names out of Proust.

“So do I, but that doesn't mean I have to dance every dance with him. Only, if I don't I'll probably have to go back to being a wallflower.”

“That you will never be.” Melrose pushed back from the table and signed for the waiter, lurking back there in the shadows with two others. “I've got to go, Polly.”

Polly regarded her empty Weetabix bowl. “Yes, I guess I should, too.”

“Polly, when are you ever going to come visit me? I've asked you several times.”

“I'd like to.” She gathered her coat around her. It was one of Polly's unflattering colors, a rust shade that really looked rusty. “But I'd undoubtedly be overwhelmed. By your house and your ritzy friends.”

“You're no competition for Mrs. Withersby, that's sure.” Tired of waiting for his bill, Melrose dumped money on the table, including a hefty tip.

“Who's she?”

“One of my ritzy friends.”

 

 

 

Melrose's first stop was in Regent Street, where he went into Hamley's. Given that this was only two days before Christmas, he had not been mistaken about the crowd. The place was jammed, understandably, with children.

Ill-advisedly stopping to inspect this year's toy rage—some sort of lunar space station manned by robotic personnel—he found himself surrounded by kiddies, one of whom got her sticky fingers on his black jeans and looked at him as if he were a ladder she was about to climb for a front-row seat. Her little look was so baleful, he sighed and picked her up and set her on his shoulders. Now she got her fingers into his hair, and he listened to the chattering, gasping children who coveted this toy. The place thronged and thrummed with pre-Christmas anticipation.

The parents of these children were all mucking about with apparently no care that their little darlings might be in the arms of the Regent Street Ripper. Tired of his hair being shredded, Melrose set the little girl down where she promptly began wailing to be taken up again, her little arms reaching pitifully upward. He patted her head and strong-armed his way through a crowd as thick as treacle. A haggard sales assistant pointed him in the right direction.

He searched the tables and walls but found nothing he wanted. He turned away when his eye lit on one article that just might do as it was very stretchy. He plucked it from the long hook on the wall and plowed through the field of wildflower children to the cash register.

Outside, he stopped on the pavement to think. People swam around him as if he were no more than an irritating rock in the middle of a stream. Then he walked the short distance to Liberty's and into its stationery department. There he purchased a pad of paper and ventured down to the coffee shop where he got himself an espresso. He sat down with the pad and carefully drew a picture.

Following this he found a pay phone still working in Oxford Street and called Mr. Beaton. Melrose told him what he wanted and apologized for such dreadfully short notice.

After this, he took a cab to the Old Brompton Road.

Mr. Beaton, whose premises were above a sweet shop, was delighted to see him again after—what was it—three years?

“My lord,” said Mr. Beaton with but a marginal bow.

Melrose had never had the heart to tell Mr. Beaton that he'd given up his titles years before. Mr. Beaton would put it down to carelessness at best, slovenliness at worst. Mr. Beaton never changed: always the morning coat, always the tape measure. If Melrose had his way he would hang the George Cross on the ends of that tape measure.

Mr. Beaton's apprentice—this one, tall and angular with a shock of ginger hair—copied the fractional bow.

“Now, if you brought your drawing, I'll see what I can do.”

Melrose produced the picture he'd drawn in Liberty's coffee shop. “I'm pretty certain it's to size, Mr. Beaton. I've a good memory for things like this.” Had he?

Mr. Beaton instructed his apprentice to bring out certain bolts of cloth. The young man slipped into a room at the rear and was back in a few seconds, carrying the bolts of material.

“Just feel this, now, Lord Ardry.” Tenderly, the tailor held out several inches of material from one of the bolts.

Melrose always felt humbled in the presence of Mr. Beaton, for the old man's attitude toward cloth was as reverent as a priest's toward the chalice. Just then, providentially, sunlight filtered through the small panes, fretting the cloth. Melrose fingered the wool and sighed. Woven air, spun sunlight, Melrose had never felt anything as soft and weightless.

“It's a silk worsted, quite fine. Would it do?”

“It'll do wonderfully, Mr. Beaton.”

Pulling at his earlobe, the tailor studied Melrose's sketch. “Quite a pleasant little challenge this will be. I've never done anything like it. Now: when would you be wanting this, Lord Ardry?”

Melrose blushed. “Well, I hate to ask it of you—I mean, given it's Christmas and all—but, you see, I'll be going back to Northamptonshire tonight—this is something I'd really like to deliver before I go—if it's possible?”

“In other words, right away.”

“Could you possibly?”

Mr. Beaton removed his pocket watch from an honest-to-God pocket and said, “It's getting on for three . . . Shall we say six? Or you can call me at five and see how I'm doing here.”

“Admirable. I can come back then. And, of course, don't worry, it doesn't have to be perfect.”

Mr. Beaton raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

The apprentice blinked once, hard. For even he had caught this graceless remark.

So Melrose slunk down the narrow stairs, feeling gauche and crude, and with an eye unalive to anything aesthetically pleasing.

When Mr. Beaton plied his scissors and thread, there was no such thing as “less than perfect.”

 

 

 

Melrose taxied back to Boring's, where he fidgeted, packed and bit his nails, a childish habit he had never been able to shake; he seemed to bite them only when he was deep into something—really deep, and that seldom happened, only when he was reading Henry James or Proust or working on one of Jury's cases. (Would Jury be complimented? Proust, after all, was no slouch.) He was certainly deep into this case. He lay on the bed thinking deeply. There was something neither of them had seen, and he thought it was something obvious. He could feel it as obvious. He gave up and stumbled downstairs with his single bag.

It was after five o'clock, and Melrose decided not to call, but simply to go back to Mr. Beaton's. He had a whiskey as he waited for the boy who dealt with keys and cars, who drove them off to some mysterious parking arrangement (garage? rooftop?) only the boy knew about; then he drove them back to appear magically outside of Boring's door.

Melrose tipped him handsomely, remarking to the lad that he probably had the most important job in London; people would probably die to have someone else park their cars. Then he got in, turned his face skyward in the deepening dark and thanked God for money.

When he got to the Old Brompton Road, he parked illegally (as there was no other option) and took the steps two at a time to Mr. Beaton's rooms.

“Absolutely perfect, Mr. Beaton. You're a wonder.” Melrose held up the garments, marveling. “I don't suppose you'd have a box—”

The apprentice immediately went into the back again and returned with a small box, perfect for the clothes. “Is it a gift, sir? I rather thought it might be and found this silvery paper if you need it—? I could wrap it up.”

Melrose thanked him profusely. “That's very kind and it would be a big help.” He turned to Mr. Beaton. “Mr. Beaton, I would be happy to pay you now, if—”

Eyes closed, Mr. Beaton shook his head. “Not at all, not at all. I'll put it on your account, my lord. Happy to do it.”

After securing his package, Melrose thanked them again and raced down to his car.

 

 

 

Sir Oswald Maples lived alone in a cream-painted mews house off Cadogan Square. He lived by himself despite the fact that he needed two canes in order to get to the door in the wake of Jury's ring.

He said, holding up one of the canes as if to shake Jury's hand, “It's not as bad as it looks. I don't always need these, just when the knees start going underneath me. Come on in.” He used a cane to wave Jury into the living room.

Jury thanked him and removed his coat, which Sir Oswald told him to toss over the banister. Then—again with the cane—he pointed to an overstuffed armchair across from a sofa where he'd been sitting himself. He must be over eighty, yet brandished the canes in the high good humor of a boy. Watching him whip them around to lean against the arm of the sofa, Jury wondered if he thought they were playthings. Had there been a servant and a buzzer to call him hence, Jury was sure he would have used the tip of the cane to press the button.

“It's rheumatoid arthritis, but the discomfort comes and goes. Would you like a drink, Superintendent?” He pointed to a tumbler beside him containing a finger of whiskey. “Or is it a bit early in the day for you?”

It wasn't yet noon, but Jury felt a sadness descend on him whose source he couldn't name—or perhaps he could. He felt as if he needed a drink, after all. Sure.
Needing a drink
was the first step. Or maybe it was the last. But he hated to see Maples drink alone . . . No.
That
was the last. “No thanks. I just drank a bucketful of coffee.”

Maples nodded and leaned back against the green love seat. “You wanted some information, you said on the telephone, about Ralph Herrick.”

“Yes. As I told you, it was Colonel Joss Neame who mentioned you as possibly remembering Herrick. You knew him.”

The older man nodded. “I did, yes.”

“You were with the code and cypher branch of intelligence?”

“Ah, yes. GC and CS.”

“I'm involved in a homicide investigation. A man named Simon Croft was shot. You might have read about it.”

“Oh, yes. I've seen that house on the Thames. Often wondered who lived there.”

“Simon Croft did. Alone. He was writing a book about certain years of the Second World War. Croft knew Ralph Herrick. Croft was only a boy, but he rather idolized the man. A fighter pilot, a hero. Not surprising, I suppose.”

“Indeed not. No, there was no question about Herrick's heroism. His courage was almost—wanton.”

Jury smiled. “A strange way of putting it.”

“I know. But it was almost seductive, that courage, and he did throw it around. I don't mean he bragged; that was the last thing he'd do. I mean—it was as if courage were an afterthought. God knows he had it, though. He took out, nearly single-handedly, four Junkers over Driffield, in Yorkshire. The bombers didn't have a fighter escort; they realized finally they couldn't send bombers without escort by Messerschmitts, but the 109s didn't have the range to fly all the way from Norway.” He grew thoughtful. “Herrick commanded a squadron of Spitfires that intercepted the German bombers which were hammering one of the Chain Home radar stations. Absolutely critical. Herrick's squadron downed all but one. No, there was no question about his courage, Superintendent.”

Jury thought for a moment. “His family—rather, the one he married into—talk about him as though he were, well, an idol. He was idolized by more than one member. But one person took exception to this picture. She said she found him much too ‘plausible . . . one of those smooth racketeers one sees in old American films.' That was her description.”

Maples threw back his head in a soundless laugh. “That's very good, that is. Let me tell you something about Herrick: a great deal of that courage he displayed was of the daredevil kind. I think it came from his not giving a bloody damn about much of anything. In some way I think he felt the whole war was a card game and he had an ace in the hole.”

Jury smiled. “Did he play it?”

Maples reached for the decanter he had placed on a table beside him, poured himself another drink and raised the decanter in question to Jury, who again declined. “Oh, I'm quite certain he played it. But the important thing was the game itself.”

Jury handed him the book, opened to the page on which Simon had listed the dates. “This book belongs to Simon Croft, Sir Oswald. Joss Neame helped identify some of this marginalia. He thought you'd be able to help.”

Maples took the book, took up his rimless spectacles and bent over it.

“And the last page, that list of words, I marked.”

Turning to the page, Maples read off the list. “ ‘Enigma' . . . God, I don't believe this.' ” Sir Oswald nodded. “Pretty obviously worried about it, wouldn't you say? Ralph Herrick's work with the Enigma codes is what I wondered about. It could be what this Croft fellow wondered about, too.” Maples put down his glasses, tented his hands and regarded Jury over the tips of his fingers. “We learned from certain decrypts—and also a POW—about an operation that was going down in the middle of November on the night of a full moon—thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth. It was to be a three-stage operation: code name ‘Moonlight Sonata'—a sonata, you see, being a three-part piece. So the note there—” he pointed to Jury's book “—refers to that plan of attack.”