The Dirty Duck (4 page)

Melrose was almost afraid to answer. “I expect so.” He and Jury had tickets in the stalls.

“Man, I wouldn't miss it. There's all sorts of evidence . . . it's a revenge tragedy, you know.”

“Really?”

“They're all the same. Now Kyd—Tom Kyd, I mean—was a good friend of Marlowe's; but all I can say is, with friends like that—who needs enemies?” Schoenberg waved him back. “Come on, sit down a minute, I want to show you something.”

With a sort of dreadful fascination, as if he had been hypnotized by the snake's eye of the computer. Melrose sat down again.

Harvey punched the keys around, saying, “Can you feature it? Kyd saying all this stuff against Marlowe?”

“. . .
amongst those waste and idle papers (which I carde not for) & which vnaskt I did deliuer up, were founde some fragmentes of a disputation toching that opinion affirmed by Marlowe to be his, and shufled with some of myne (unknown to me) by some occasion of our wrythinge in one chamber twoe yeares synce. . . . That I shold loue or be familer frend, with one
so irreligious, were verie rare . . . he was intemperate & of a cruel hart . . . an athiest . . .”

“Of course, we have to remember Kyd was being tortured into giving evidence against Marlowe—”

Melrose, quite familiar by now with torture, rose. “It's been most enlightening, Mr. Schoenberg.”

“Harve. Kyd wrote
The Spanish Tragedy—”

“I know,” said Melrose icily.

Harvey Schoenberg sighed. “Like I said, read one, you've read 'em all. Those revenge tragedies are all alike.”

Melrose had to argue, despite himself. “I would certainly not class
Hamlet
in the general category of revenge—”

He was not to be permitted to complete his thought, apparently.

“Why? Same old stuff. Trouble is, Hamlet wanted revenge on Claudius and went around killing all the wrong people before he finally got around to the right one.”

Melrose had to admit it was a refreshingly simple way to look at
Hamlet.

D
etective Superintendent Richard Jury was not kidding himself.

He knew that stopping here to visit his old friend Sam Lasko had merely been an excuse to spend a few days in Stratford, so that he could appear, as if by some strange coincidence, on Jenny Kennington's doorstep.

He sat with his feet up on Detective Sergeant Lasko's cluttered desk, scanning the Stratford telephone directory. He was trying to look awfully casual about the search for the number; he was certain the lady in the corner—Lasko's secretary—had eyes like lasers beneath those heavy brows and hornrimmed glasses with which she could burn straight through the telephone book to the page of
K
's he was scouring, and then smile meanly and go tell the world. Jury tried to empty his mind. Probably, she was a mind-reader too.

He found the entry
Kennington, J.,
and picked up a pencil and wrote it into his notebook. And then, telling himself he was really only looking for the best route to London, he got up and looked at the blow-up of a map of Stratford. She lived in the old part of Stratford—

“Can I help you find something, Superintendent?”

The voice hit him between the shoulder blades. Quickly, he turned. Was she laughing, secretly? “What? No. No, I was just looking up the route to London.”

“What's the matter,” she asked, “with the one you came on?” She
zapped
her page from the typewriter, and smiled her psychic's smile.

He started to mumble something about construction and road workers but decided she would find out later that he was lying, so he said nothing. But she was rolling another sheet into the typewriter, as if the question had been an idle one anyway.

Sap,
he thought, not of her but of himself. Jury leaned back in Lasko's chair, and wondered what it was in his nature that kept him impervious to the siren song of some truly seductive women, but made him take a dive for another sort—

All of this water imagery was transporting him to the banks of the Avon, where his imagination rid Stratford of all its tourists and replaced them with Jenny, walking there alone. The iridescent blues and greens of the ducks bobbed sleepily in the reeds and rushes; the swans slid by in the cool, companionable stream. His mind snapped pictures: ducks, swans, Jenny Kennington. Then it moved forward to September. September would be even better. Sunlight filtering through the trees, a skin of golden light on the water. October. Better yet. Cold enough that she would start rubbing her arms and need someone to warm her up. . . .

Ducks bobbed and swans floated up there behind the scrim of the station ceiling and Jury thought of a way to put all of this magic-act into operation. Why not invite her to dinner with him and Melrose Plant at the Black Swan tonight? And the theatre afterward? For her, safety in numbers. Plant wouldn't mind, certainly, although he hadn't met her when he'd been in Littlebourne last year—

Hold it, mate. Melrose Plant must be one of the most eligible men in the whole of the British Isles. He had intelligence, looks, character, warmth. Whether Jury had enough of those himself, he didn't know. But he knew damned well he didn't have the rest of it, like money. Melrose Plant was filthy rich. And titles. Though Plant had given them up, his titles trailed after him like the wake of a ship. The Earl of Caverness. Lord Ardry. Twelfth Viscount in the Ardry-Plant line—

Lady Kennington and Lord Ardry . . .

Forget dinner at the Black Swan.

This is ridiculous! You're a policeman!
He surged out of Lasko's chair.

“I
am?”

To Jury's everlasting mortification he found he had spoken aloud. He was saved from replying by the blessed and sudden appearance of Detective Sergeant Lasko, who at that moment came through the door.

“Trouble over at the Hilton,” he said, tossing a cap which failed to meet with an old coatrack. Lasko had a basset-hound sort of face, eyes and folds of skin beneath them pulled down by weights of sadness. His temperament matched his looks. He moved slowly, as if constricted by his blanket of gloom.

“Trouble?” asked Jury, happy for anything which would pull the typist's eyes from him.

“Man named Farraday says his son's gone missing.”

“What's he think happened?”

Lasko shrugged. “Last time they saw him was at breakfast Monday. He said he was going over to Shakespeare's birthplace. In Henley Street.”

“Monday?
This is
Wednesday.
They don't seem in much of a hurry to find him.”

Shaking his head, Lasko hitched himself up on the edge of his desk. “The reason they didn't report it was apparently this kid—he's nine—has a way of wandering off. That is, he's independent, I take it, and I also take it from some of the things the sister said—one of the sisters, that is—”

“Hold on, Sammy, you're losing me in the thicket of these relations.”

“Okay. There's the father, James Farraday—” Lasko retrieved a small notebook from his rear pocket and leafed through it. “James, the father; there's a stepmother, Amelia-something, funny name; a sister, Penelope; another sister, no, stepsister with another funny name—I don't think I wrote it down right—Bunny Belle? Bunny Belle is the woman's daughter by another marriage and I wouldn't mind disappearing with
her
from Monday to Wednesday, let me tell you; or, to tell the truth, Amelia's not half bad—”

Given his own recent reflections, Jury's patience was not even dented. He was a patient man, in any event. He waited for Lasko to stop looking sourly at his own secretary for not having some of Bunny Belle's qualifications.

“They're an American family?”

“Who the hell else stays at the Stratford-bloody-Hilton except auto conventions? Inside, you'd think you were in New York. You ever been to New York, Jury?”

Lasko had been going on about the States ever since Jury had arrived that morning. It was a love-hate relationship. Lasko was dying to go to Miami and the Florida Keys. But he hated some of the brassy Americans he'd run into. Jury said no, he'd never been to the States, and Lasko stuck a toothpick in his mouth and went on. It danced as he talked.

“Like I said, this boy—name's James Carlton Farraday—likes to go off on his own. When they were in Amsterdam, he wandered off for hours—”

“Hours isn't two days. What were they doing in Amsterdam?”

“Tour. They're with one of these tour groups. In Paris he was gone for over twenty-four hours. Local police found him asleep in a church pew. Weird kid, right?” Lasko shrugged. “The girl, Penny, implied that he wasn't all that keen on his family.”

“You mean she thinks maybe he's run away? That would be bloody silly in a foreign country.”

“The kid's independent, like I said. Or they said.”

“Well, what leads do you have?”

“None.” Lasko looked gloomy, then looked hopefully at Jury. “I just thought maybe you—”

Jury shook his head, but smiled as he said, “Uh-uh, Sammy. I just came down here for a visit. This is your patch, not mine.”

“But this guy Farraday is over at the Hilton raving away about Scotland Yard. I told him we could handle it, that it wasn't Scotland Yard's sort of thing, and that only made him madder. He's
American,
Richard. He's going to dance right into the bloody embassy and he's stinking rich and has a lot of influence, so he says.” His tone growing steadily more wheedling, Lasko said, “Look, if it was a murder, I bet you'd do it.” And then he looked around the office, at the tables and chairs and secretary as if he might just scare up a dead body somewhere for Jury.

“It's not a murder, though, is it? And your Chief Constable's not asking for help from us—”

In a dramatic gesture, Lasko slapped his palms against his chest.
“I'm
asking—your old buddy, Sam Lasko. Look, all I want you to do is go along and have a talk with this Farraday. That's all. Just to shut him up.”

Jury looked at Lasko speculatively and pocketed his cigarettes as he said, “Okay, but that's all, Sammy. I'm supposed to meet a friend for dinner tonight and I have—a few other things I want to do while I'm here, so don't expect me to do anything.”

Lasko looked about as happy as Jury had ever seen him look, which wasn't very much. “That's great. These people think the only police in the whole bloody world are the FBI and Scotland Yard.”

Jury picked up his notebook. “Not to worry. An hour with me and they'll change their minds.”

T
he Farradays were sitting at a table in that part of the lobby of the plush Stratford Hilton sectioned off for the serving of drinks. Four pairs of eyes appraised Jury with varying degrees of interest.

Farraday himself, despite Lasko's report, seemed skeptical when Jury handed him his card. Lasko had probably made most of it up anyway, except for the initial report. Skeptical, but not unfriendly.

James Farraday rose and shook Jury's hand before immediately turning to collar a passing waitress. “What'll it be, Mr. Jury?”

Jury declined the drink. Farraday ordered it, anyway. Whiskey, no ice. “I know you fellas like your liquor warm, the Lord knows why.”

“He said he didn't want any.” The voice came from the shadows.

“Now, you just mind your business, Penny. He's just being polite.” Farraday smiled at Jury with an assurance that Jury imagined informed everything he did.

The girl Penny he liked immediately, despite the way she sat there with her arms lapped over her thin body giving him a look hard as rocks. Penny was the green, not the ripe, daughter. Jury judged her to be around fourteen or fifteen, with a tawny, almost dusty look—as if she'd been walking down a dirt road barefoot. Freckles spattered like tiny drops of mud all over her face; long, straight hair the color of leaves underfoot; high cheekbones and light brown eyes flecked with gold, and tilted, giving her an intriguing, vaguely Oriental look. Her posture and her look told him she didn't know how pretty she was.

And no wonder. Sitting there between the stepsister and stepmother, both of them as ripe as peaches, with their highlighted blond hair and flushed cheeks—it would be hard for Penny Farraday to think she was
anything but plain. The mother wore a white sundress with plenty of cleavage and a lot of strain across the breasts; the girl was dressed in a halter and shorts, hot-pink. They matched the lipstick she was running her small tongue over at the moment.

“This's my wife, Amelia Blue; that's Honey Belle, there, my stepdaughter.”

The only person who seemed to be under a strain was Penny. And perhaps Farraday, himself, though he was the sort of man who'd probably rather die than show unmanly anxiety. But his voice did. “Look here, what're you fellas going to do about Jimmy?”

Jury took out his notebook. “Get some more information for one thing, Mr. Farraday. Sergeant Lasko says you last saw him on Monday morning.”

“Correct. Said he was going to that birthplace.”

“He often went off by himself?”

“Well, he
surely
did,” said Mrs. Farraday—Amelia Blue—in an accent that ran like molasses. It went well with the rest of her. Jury bet the girl talked the same way. Both of them looked thick and ready to be poured. “You just got to keep a
leash
on James Cahlton.” And here she shot her husband a hard glance.

“He likes to go off, see. We're always having trouble with him, the way he goes off, never says a word.” Farraday took a deep drink from what looked like a triple whiskey. “It's hard to keep up with him.” There was a hint of pride in his voice, and he looked around, almost as if he expected the boy to come walking in. And his face grew sad. Farraday tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a strangle. “We lost him for hours in Amsterdam—”