The Five Bells and Bladebone (17 page)

When she didn’t answer, Jury said, “I was wondering how many times he didn’t turn up. And how often you went to that summerhouse.”

 • • • 

“But
that
wasn’t supposed to be the question!” said Melrose as they walked back to the High Street. Joanna had simply refused to say anything, so Jury had said he would call on her again. Said it like a sympathetic doctor might to a fractious patient. “It was supposed to be ‘Was Simon Lean blackmailing you?’ Or something like that.”

“Why?” Jury looked up at the sky that had begun to darken, at the stars that showed there mistily as if behind a scrim.

“The coincidence of the publishing house. Blackmail or
revenge. Perhaps Simon Lean had blasted one of her books a long time ago —”

“Lean was in the business end, accounting. Close to the money, you know.”

“I don’t see how on earth you deduced all that from Heather and Jasper.”

“A shot in the dark. When she gets wound up, even talking about the real world, she seems to forget herself.” Jury shrugged. “So I thought she’d get even more involved if she was telling a story. She couldn’t help herself. She even had her heroine staying at an inn in the middle of nowhere.”

“Like the Blue Parrot. Hell’s bells. I
like
old Joanna. I’d hate to think she was under suspicion.”

Jury smiled in the dark, shifting the stuffed monster from one arm to the other. “Not to worry, there’re no end of suspects.” They were nearing the Jack and Hammer. “And I have a suspicion I might find someone else in London. Simon Lean’s mistress, perhaps. If I
can
find her.”

“You’re not really going tonight?”

“Yes.”

They stood looking through the amber window of the Jack and Hammer, where Marshall Trueblood and Vivian Rivington were in deep conversation. “He just wanted the money,” said Jury, almost absently.

“Joanna’s, you mean?”

“I was thinking more of his wife.”

“What do you think? Is she the most likely suspect? Isn’t that usually so?”

“I expect so,” said Jury, watching as Trueblood collected the glasses and left his and Vivian’s table. Vivian was looking toward the window, where they stood in the unlit dark, looking not at them but through them.

“I’m off, then. I’ll be back, probably tomorrow. If I don’t have a breakdown on the M-1.”

Melrose watched him walk off down the shadowed street, the stuffed monster under his arm.

T
OMMY STOOD
with his case on the pavement, much as he had stood on the dock at Gravesend. The fancy ironwork streetlamp, made to simulate the old gaslights, veiled him in its cone of light. The narrow, flat-roofed house had been done over in some attempt at Edwardian style; the ones on either side looked like cripples, broken windows boarded up. The first in the line was flush up against a black warehouse, graffiti fading from its slablike door. Limehouse Causeway and Narrow Street were pocked with such doors.

The address he was looking for was in Narrow Street. Its door had a brass knocker in the shape of a schooner. The house itself was up for sale, but the sign listed as if it had been planted there for some time. And no wonder, thought Tommy. More than two hundred thousand, leasehold. Sadie’s place was a basement flat. He wondered what her rent was; he’d have thought she’d more likely be living in one of the council flats across the road. Cap back on, he opened the wicket in the black iron railing and went down the four steps to Sadie’s flat, where a pinkish light glowed dimly behind frilled curtains.

He could not understand her absence; she’d known he was coming in late, and she said it would only take fifteen
or twenty minutes to get to her place. Take a cab, she’d said; but he said he’d take a bus or the tube. That had made her laugh. Take a cab for once. But he hadn’t liked to spend the money she’d sent him on luxuries like cabs — and you always had to give a tip, and he wasn’t sure how much.

Now the door was locked, but since the dim light glowed behind the poplin curtains, he supposed she’d just gone out for a bit, gone down the pub, maybe. He lit a cigarette from the ten of Players he’d bought and inhaled as deeply as he could. Tommy hid his smoking habit, not that it was much of one. Aunt Glad was hell on smoking before you were at least eighteen. Why his lungs would collapse between fifteen and eighteen he didn’t know. Lungs, lungs, she kept nattering at him. If she ever saw him working side-by-side with Sid, cigarettes dangling out of the corners of their mouths, she’d probably kill him.

Again, he took the wristwatch with its broken strap from his pocket, shook it to see if it was running, wound it though it didn’t need winding. Exactly thirty-four minutes he’d been sitting here on the stone step, looking up sharply when he heard the click of heels, which was seldom. It would be another hour or so before the pubs closed, and he certainly hoped she wasn’t drinking and forgetting he was coming. He leaned his head back against the brickwork of the enclosure; his cigarette sparked the night as he drew on it. He stubbed it out suddenly, collected his case, and went up the stairs. He knocked and waited, knocked and waited. No one seemed to be in. The only lights were the streetlamp’s and Sadie’s.

Farther along, where Narrow Street converged with Limehouse Causeway, he saw a yellowish light flick on at the top, in what must have been one of those lofts the rich did up. Probably someone who’d been in bed and got up. Tommy left his case, walked along until he came to the warehouse. He could track the progress of the person up
there by the light that moved from window to window, as if it were floating up there like an imprisoned moon. Then the house went dark for a moment until a rainy, rainbow pattern of colors washed over the stair where he stood from the stained-glass fanlight.

She’d been carrying an electric torch; that was what caused the ghostly movement of the light from window to window. Tommy had never seen any woman so good-looking, certainly not as old as this one, who had to be at least thirty, he guessed. Even Sadie wasn’t as pretty. This woman was tall and what they called “willowy” and had (at least from what he could tell in the dim light) long hair the color of Altman’s ale, Sid’s favorite drink. Smoky was what he’d call her eyes, though he couldn’t really make out their color.

When she asked him what he wanted, she frowned slightly.

“Sorry, miss, but that house down there — my sister lives in the basement flat.” He stopped, embarrassed because he’d gotten her up.

It must have made her impatient, as if that was all he was going to say. “Yes?” she prompted him.

Nervously, he started wadding his cap as if he were playing an accordion. Bunch, spread, bunch, spread. “My sister’s not there, and there ain’t — isn’t — no one else at home. The thing is my sister —”

“What’s your sister’s
name?
” Opening the door to arm’s length, the hand of her outstretched arm held the door; her shoulder rested against the jamb. She seemed bored.

“Sadie. Sadie Diver. The thing is, she was to be here when I came, and I’ve been here for upwards of a half-hour, and there wasn’t no one else to ask. I’m her brother.”

“So I gathered,” she said, looking at a little wristwatch. “Probably at the Five Bells. It’s not eleven yet.”

Tommy frowned too. Ten was late to him; he was always up at dawn, his feet slapping down on cold linoleum. “Well,
but . . .” He didn’t know what to say or ask. “Do you know her, then?”

“I don’t know the name. I may have seen her.” She yawned and ran both of her hands back through that old gold hair, looked at him and blinked. She couldn’t have been more bored.

“You mean you think I should go down to the —?”

“Five Bells. But that’s not the only pub . . .” Her voice trailed off, uninterested.

“It’s strange.”

“How, strange?”

Tommy thought a bit. “Well,
really
strange.”

“I
mean
in what
way
 . . . oh, hell, you might as well come in. Can you fix fuses? All I’ve got for light is this damned thing.” She picked up the torch. “They went out a while ago. But not the whole street, obviously, because that streetlamp’s burning.” There was a kind of childish resentment in the tone. “
Can
you fix a fuse?”

Tommy was just looking at her. Of course, if you’re that pretty you’re expected to be dumb. He frowned. “You mean, can I
change
one? You don’t exactly ‘fix’ fuses. You just screw them in and screw —”

“Look, I don’t bloody care about screwing
anything
, just can you do whatever needs to be done to get some
lights
on in here?”

She needn’t be so sharpish, Tommy thought.
He
was the one who came for help, and she didn’t seem to be of a mind to give it. He stuffed his cap in his pocket and his case over the sill and said, “
Any
man can fix a fuse,” just to let her know there was a difference between men and women that way.

He wasn’t much into what they were calling “women’s liberation.” He’d never known a girl yet that could change a fuse.

She led him through a room as big as a lake. The huge windows that looked out toward the river reflected the
light from her torch, giving the weird impression that someone on the other side was seeking him out. Tommy always carried a small torch clipped to his belt in case of emergencies. There were always emergencies round the house in Gravesend — light bulbs shattering as if someone had shot them, the fridge and cooker breaking down, blinds snapping up as if raised by invisible hands. The light’s beam was slender but strong, and it danced on the kitchen’s enamel and chrome.

The fuse box was in a larder off the kitchen. He ran the thread of light across the top of it; there were a dozen fuses at least scattered there, different strengths, different-colored tops, probably spent. It was hard to tell in the dark.

“What’s this lot, then?” he asked, picking up one and looking at the glass top. She was holding her torch on the box.

“Fuses. They look rusty to me. They were here when I moved in.” Impatiently, she shifted the light. “I thought the hell with it and just went to bed.”

Tommy shook his head in dismay. Just went to bed. Probably thought little men would come in the night to sort out the fuses and screw in fresh ones. From all the money it looked like went into this place, why didn’t she have a circuit breaker, anyway? He asked her.

“A what? Look, you needn’t put on that face.
I
certainly wasn’t going to stop here all night trying to work them out, putting one in, then another. I had to hold the torch, too.”

“You got two hands.” Waiting for someone to come . . . In all of this business he had nearly forgotten why he
had
come along. “What time’s it now?”

The way she sighed you’d think she was paying him by the hour. She flashed the light on her watch. “Five of. If your sister’s gone to the pub, she’ll be back soon. Can’t you get
on
with it? I’m cold.”

Again he wondered at this total inability of women to fix
the simplest things. Faced with the easiest of mechanical tasks, like changing a fuse or a tire, or hoisting a sail, their hands turned to clubs. Aunt Glad was like that. She could do anything when it came to cooking or slipcovering chairs, but if he hadn’t been around, Aunt Glad would be living in the dark (just like this one) amongst crippled appliances.

“The thing is,” said Tommy, “I’ve come all the way from Gravesend.” He squinted down at the little circle of glass and determined that here was a good fuse, at least it looked like. “And I don’t see why Sadie’d be going down the pub when she knew what time I was getting —” Lights everywhere sprang up, as if it were Christmas and switches were being thrown all over London.

She looked around, marveling at this sudden display of light. “Well, you’re pretty clever!”

Clever. Tommy squinted his eyes in disgust. Sometimes he thought Sadie was the only sensible girl he knew. Probably that was because she’d been on her own for so long. Sadie was the clever one, by half.