The Five Bells and Bladebone (13 page)

“It depends on the circumstances.” She unplugged her cigarette, put down the holder.

“We’ve got the circumstances.”

“Simon? What motive would
I
—”

“I’m not talking motive, just how you’d do it.”

“Will this incriminate me?”

Was he supposed to say, Yes, but go ahead? “No. It’s just a game.”

“Ha! I imagine the last game you played was when you were five.” She leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, as if she were reflecting deeply on the puzzle. “First, one wants to avoid
blood
. God
knows,
one wants to avoid it on an Armani silk suit —”

“Was that what he was wearing?”

She sighed. “You don’t really think you’d catch me with that old trick? Simon
always
wore Armani, and one of them’s sand-colored silk. I merely threw that in for color.”

“Mmm. Go ahead. What would your method be, then? Garroting? Poison?”

“Drowning. Just drug him and overturn one of those rowboats.” She leaned forward, chin on fisted hand. The martini warmed in the glass she seemed to have forgotten, now. “I’m telling you what I wouldn’t do. I
wouldn’t
do something so absolutely bizarre as put the body in a piece of furniture.”

“But if you wanted to hide it —?”

“Oh, really, Superintendent. There’s a perfectly adequate lake just beyond the cottage. Dump it there. Faster and simpler and safer. A dead body in a
secrétaire
would begin to pong the room up in a couple of days, surely. Although my acquaintance with dead bodies is minimal. As for the method, yes, strangling would do, I expect. The details, naturally, I’d have to think about. I’m merely filling in the brushstrokes, taking the larger view.”

“Tell me, though. You’ve never been to Watermeadows. How’d you know about the position of the cottage?”

She just looked at him. “All you’re trying to do is trap me. How disgusting, after I’ve done half your work for you. Simon
described
the place, of course.”

“Right down to the rowboats?”

She sighed. “Oh, very well. Yes, we’d had an assignation
— I’m sure that’s the sort of word you like — in that summerhouse several times.”

“What did he tell you about his wife?”

“Same things all men tell me. A bit of a frump, a bit of a bore — but with” — her teeth flashed whitely — “a bit of the ready. So obviously he preferred to put up with boredom and frumpdom instead of give up the lolly.” She stared at him. “Good Lord, Superintendent, you’ve brought out the shopgirl in me. I haven’t used language like that in years.”

“You’ve got a bit of the ready yourself, Miss Demorney.” He smiled. “He’d give up his wife for
you
, surely.”

He was amused she took this buttering-up as a serious compliment. Diane Demorney did not have quite as much of anything as she wanted to think — brains, money, beauty. “Well, thank you. I, however, didn’t want Simon. And anyway, I’m not talking about my kind of money. I’m talking about serious money. The sort that’s been around so long it looks specially made for the Leans, like a new wardrobe.
Money
, Superintendent. You know.”

“Not on my salary.”

She leaned forward so that he could light her cigarette and get a better look at the cleavage. “What do you have, then? Two up and two down?”

“Nothing nearly so attractive. One up and one beside it.”

“
That
must be difficult.”

He was glad Wiggins wasn’t there to take notes. “Did he tell you anything about her divorcing him?”

“
Hannah?
Divorce Simon? Don’t make me laugh. But what makes you think I was the only local who went to that summerhouse?”

“Who’re you hinting at?”

“I’m not about to name names, Superintendent.”

“That’s obstruction.”

“Do policemen really say things like that? Now, if you’re
absolutely dying for a murderer, I might go along with it for a bit of fun. But how do you like my theory?”

“Seems perfectly plausible, Miss Demorney.”

The martini pitcher pressed to her breasts as if she were the nubile maiden about to be anointed, she said, “Oh, call me Diane, won’t you? And my theory’s far more plausible than what happened, that’s certain.” Annoyed now, she retrieved her glass, tossed the contents into the fireplace, and refilled it from the pitcher. “I can’t imagine anyone’s doing what someone did; it simply
screams
for attention. You’d think someone simply
wanted
the body to be found.”

“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you?”

 • • • 

Constable Pluck had grown (in his own mind) several inches in stature in his role as Long Piddleton’s single policeman and therefore keeper of the keys to Trueblood’s Antiques. Even though Superintendent Pratt had been disposed to return them and let Trueblood open up shop, Pluck was hanging on to them as long as he could, the massive ring strung through a loop in the waistband of his uniform trousers.

Right now he was jingling them, as he tilted backward on two legs of his chair and planted his feet on his wooden desk very near Jury’s downturned face. “Bit of a cipher, inhn’t it, sir?”

Jury was reading what remained of the blue page found amongst the cinders of the summerhouse fireplace. The documents expert at the Home Office lab not far from Northampton had managed to virtually reconstruct the letter. Deducing the size of the burned-off bottom portion from the singed upper part had further enabled him to calculate the spacing between words, working with the few letters that remained. These he had placed in what must have been their original position. The characters and words had been lined up — the word
pub,
followed by an
n,
the
rest of whose letters were burned out, followed by a
th,
followed by the word
church
.

“Do you know where Mr. Plant is?” Jury asked, head still propped in his hands, studying the words through the protective coating. “Ring Ardry End, would you?”

That Pluck did not like being reduced in rank to mere secretary was clear from his huge sigh and his being in no hurry to pick up the phone. When finally he got Plant’s butler, Ruthven told him that he had gone to Plague Alley.

Pluck returned the receiver to its cradle and said sagely: “I’d let him have a look at that, if it was me. Mr. Plant does crosswords; he’s good at filling in blanks.”

 • • • 

Which was what Melrose felt he was doing, sitting here listening to his aunt and drinking tea he was sure had been wetted from this morning.

“Twenty-seven thousand pounds!” She was sitting in the same chair, rattling a newspaper clipping in Melrose’s face.

“What’s that to do with me?”

“Haven’t you been listening? Paid for a
title,
Plant.
You
are worth far more than that!”

“I’ve never before heard you express such a sentiment. I’m touched.” He studied the dregs of his tea.

“Not
you!
Your titles. If titles are bringing that sort of money at auction, think what you could have done with yours!” She adjusted her half-glasses and read off sums and buyers. An Egyptian had made off with the lordship of Mumsby and Thrysglwnyd Manor for sixteen thousand, five hundred. An American had topped that with thirty-six thousand for something that had to do with Abraham Lincoln. “And you simply
gave
yours away.” She glared at him.

“Not to an Egyptian, as I recall. And I didn’t give them away, I gave them
up
. There’s a difference.”

The difference meant not a jot. “You could have been
rich
.”

He yawned. “I
am
rich. Somehow the idea of putting my titles on the auction block strikes me as a bit too trendy. Is that what you got me over here for? You made it sound to Ruthven as if you’d run into that pig again.”

“Well, it
is
to do with my case.” She leaned over to adjust the bandage on her ankle. “I thought you might like to get hold of Angus Horndean —”

Of Horndean, Horndean, and Finch, the very proper and very pricey firm of solicitors that had taken care of the family for a hundred years. Melrose sat back and studied the binestem choking the small windows, then the low-beamed ceiling and the cobwebs there that Mrs. Oilings had included in her live-and-let-live cleaning program. He was merely trying to think of a sensible response to this silly request. “Angus Horndean’s success in writing briefs to prosecute papier-mâché pigs is limited, Agatha.”

“I should have known you’d take that tone.”

As he once again reminded her it was either no case at all or, at most, a small claims case, the telephone rang. He nearly jumped to answer it and was relieved when Jury’s voice came on the line. “Immediately,” said Melrose, nearly dropping the receiver in his haste to collect his walking stick and raincoat.

 • • • 

“Pub near a church,” said Melrose. “Pub near
the
church.” He and Constable Pluck were leaning over the blackened letter. “That should narrow it down to about a thousand possibles.”

Jury told Pluck to get a facsimile of the letter from Northampton and said, “Maybe not. It’s either E-one or E-fourteen, so we’ve narrowed it to Wapping, Stepney, Whitechapel, Limehouse.” He put the letter away and said to Melrose, “That new pub you mentioned. Let’s have a go at the manager, shall we?”

T
HE SIGN
of the Blue Parrot hung hawklike over the Northampton road. Anyone out for a cheerful carouse might have taken its artwork for a band of gypsies dancing on top of a caravan. Up closer, the figures were clearer, but still life-sized. The Blue Parrot (the eastward-pointing arrow told the driver) was located down a furrowed dirt road that no one would be tempted to investigate except a farmer searching for strayed cows.

“ ‘The Blue Parrot.’ Wasn’t that Sydney Greenstreet’s pub, the one in
Casablanca
? And the only parrot I can make out is in the background there, sitting on someone’s head,” said Melrose.

“How does he do any business, then, out here?” Jury studied the huge, bizarre sign, meant to represent one of those cafés full of smoke and beaded curtains, flimsily draped ladies and swarthy-faced men with eye-patches or knives in their teeth — the sort meant to suggest Tangier and the Casbah — that probably never existed, anyway.

Melrose accelerated and the Silver Ghost ran smoothly down the dirt road as if it were spinning on satin. “He does quite well. He’s got all of the youth of Dorking Dean and many from Northampton convinced it’s an opium den. No, no, he doesn’t push the stuff. It’s just a self-fulfilling
prophecy, that’s all. They go there and smoke whatever they smoke and drink some of his home brew and think they’re in Cairo, or one of those places Peter Lorre was always turning up in in dark glasses. The place was empty, nearly derelict for years. I’m sure Sly bought it for tuppence, tarted it up out here in the fields, and joined the campaign for real ale.”

The pub lay ahead, a bright-blue-washed, but otherwise undistinguished building, poking out of acres of stubble turned gold by the setting sun. In the strange light, and without the screen of trees through which they had just passed, the Blue Parrot shimmered like a mirage.

Plant stopped in a circular courtyard consisting of almost-buried bricks around a dry basin in which birds were having a dust bath. The silver sheen of the Rolls, a ray of sun sparking its roof, contributed to the mirage-effect. Above the dark-beamed doorway was another sign, this one appreciably smaller, but no less suggestive, depicting a veiled lady with a jeweled forehead and a turbaned man in bloomers about to enter what was surely meant to be a den of drug-laced iniquity. A camel, like an afterthought, was tethered to one side, as if they’d just tied it up for a bit while they went shopping.

“Is this Mr. Sly an Arab or an Alexandrine?”

“He’s from Todcaster. Years ago this used to be the old Pig and Whistle. He took down the pig and stuck up the camel. He appears to favor the desert.”

An understatement if there ever was one, thought Jury, who was almost ready to believe everyone came here on camels. In the shadowy environs of the Blue Parrot, ceiling fans churned creakily in the cool darkness, fake palm trees were stuck in the deserted corners, and a camel train threaded its way in gold across the top of the long mirror over the bar. Each of the cane tables spotted down the length of the room was adorned with a small, plastic camel that held a box of matches on its back like a tiny howdah.
There was also a large cardboard cutout of a camel just inside the door, its hump a chalkboard on which was written the day’s menu. Jury wondered if Miss Crisp had a strong sideline going of plaster and cardboard animals. The only thing missing, oddly enough, was the blue parrot itself.

“Maybe he sent it out for stuffing,” said Jury.

“Just so long as it’s not the special of the day,” said Melrose. “Look at that —” Melrose tapped the tip of his walking stick on the chalked-up hump. “It’s written in Arabic — well, let’s say something that vaguely resembles Arabic.”