The Horse You Came in On (17 page)

“Why here?” asked Melrose, more of himself than of Hughie.

“Maybe she wanted a peek at the oddball that brings the flowers and champagne. Every year, on the guy's birthday.” He nodded toward the monument, indicating Poe. “January nineteenth. Who knows? Maybe it was the oddball offed her.” The hands went around the throat again.

“That's unlikely. What motive would he have?”

“Yeah.” Hughie scratched his neck. “You want to see Lexington Market? Biggest market in the East.”

“Another time, perhaps.” It was still early, not yet one o'clock, but Melrose had had enough touring for one day. “I have to meet someone at Johns Hopkins.”

 • • • 

Outside Gilman Hall, Melrose tipped Hughie generously. “I enjoyed that more than I can say.”

“Hey, no problem. Any place you want to go while you're here, just give me a jingle.” Hughie jotted his number on a scrap of paper. “I'll be hanging out in Fells Point, anyway, same place.”

“If I want a guide, I'll know where to find one.”

“Right. And you can toss that thing away.” Hughie nodded towards Melrose's guide book.

“Absolutely.” Melrose saw a dustbin a few feet away and threw it in.

“Yo. See you around.” Hughie manhandled the steering wheel, reversed, and spat up a bucket of gravel. Arm out the window, he called back a farewell and started down the drive. Two students jumped and dropped their books.

Melrose waved and moved over to the rubbish bin. A girl in a sort of Indian wrap stood and watched him as he rooted through the debris for his
Strangers' Guide
. “I dropped this,” he said, smiling.

The look that followed him from under her dark, Groucho Marx-ish eyebrows was unbelieving and disdainful. Tramps on campus.

“Philip?”

The young woman's eyes widened behind glasses unsuitably large for her delicate, triangular face. Backlit by the light of the wall sconces, her hair was like transparent gold.

He'd been lucky. She was the first person he'd come across in the Barnes Foundation, apart from the guard at the end of the driveway and the lady in the cubicle at the entrance taking tickets and seeming to wish that she weren't so engaged.

She shifted her stack of books from one arm to the other and repeated the name: “Philip?”

Jury was also lucky that the girl standing now before him appeared friendly; his impression thus far was that the Barnes Foundation had opened its doors to the public only under extreme duress and would be perfectly happy to slam them shut again, even in the face of Scotland Yard. The hours (he'd noticed) were very rigid, as were the rules. No Spiked Heels Permitted! He had mused over this.

“Philip.” The third time it was not a question but a statement, a sad one, the way she said it; she said it slowly, as if she were tasting the name, straining after a memory, an exact place and time to fit it to. Or was he simply being overimaginative? Could one invest a name with all of that meaning? It might have been her expression, then—more wistful, even, than her voice.

“Philip Calvert worked here, I understand,” said Jury.

She dropped her eyes to the several heavy books. “He did, yes. Once.”

There was such a woeful note of finality in her “once” that Jury hesitated to question her further. He was used enough to having to confront friends and family of the deceased; this girl had that sort of effect on him, and he wondered if she did on others as well—and if people didn't tend to shy away from such a person, one who could make them feel helpless. Yes, he was lucky to have hit, straight off, on someone who knew Philip Calvert, but unlucky she had known him that well, or been that fond of him.

“You wouldn't be Heather, would you?”

That surprised her. “I'm Hester. But how do you know me?”

“From a Lady Cray. Lady Cray lived with Philip's aunt, Mrs. Hamilton. Frances Hamilton.”

“Philip used to talk about her—about both of them, yes. But I didn't know them.”

“They knew you.
Of
you. Philip talked about you, you see.” Jury smiled, hoping this would be good news.

It was. The pale face brightened with mild hints of color—cheeks rosier, eyes a less vapid blue-gray, deepening. “We were good friends.” Even the lips, as she smiled, seemed fuller.

“Hester, would you like to have coffee with me? Or is it too near your lunchtime?” Jury checked his watch; it was barely eleven. “Or is it too early for you?”

She shook her head. “I bring sandwiches. I have two today; do you want one?”

Her offer of a sandwich struck him as so unabashedly generous—she didn't know who he was; she hadn't even asked—that his throat constricted. Jury turned away to look up at the wall behind her, which soared upwards, crowded with paintings, as if the person who had acquired them was so intoxicated with each one that he had hung them all feverishly, and with no concern for convention. The effect was overwhelming. Jury was used to the more sober march of carefully spaced, eye-level works, arranged according to artist or period and collected similarly in different rooms. But this wall, shooting twenty feet up, made no distinctions. Goya nearly leaned into van Gogh; Renoir all but stepped on Cézanne; impressionists fought like children for attention. The four walls were awash with paintings. Pulling his eyes away from the riot of colors before him, he said, “Would your sandwiches keep? I'd really like to talk to you about Philip Calvert. I'm from Scotland Yard. A policeman.”

“Really?” Her eyes widened. And then she looked hurt. “Oh, I
hope
you'll find out what really happened.”

“I intend to.” She was the sort of girl you made promises to and then hoped like hell you could keep them.

 • • • 

She returned wearing a bit of lipstick and a coat that looked too lightweight for January. The small, round collar added to the illusion of youth. Jury wondered now whether her relationship with Philip Calvert were a romantic or a sexual one, for she seemed so unsophisticated and artless.

The cafe she took him to was one of those depressingly white ones full of hanging baskets of ferns and spider plants that looked as though
they'd drown in one's soup. They both had coffee, and Hester had a Danish pastry.

“When his parents died, he went to England to live with his aunt—Mrs. Hamilton. I think he said she was his only relative. He went to Cambridge and majored—you call it ‘reading,' don't you?—he read art history. He had to lie about Cambridge for this job. Experts are barred here. For ten years Phil lived in the U.K., and then he came back to Philadelphia.”

“Why did he come back?”

“He didn't want to live in England. His aunt did, though. She loves England.”

Jury realized then that Hester wouldn't know the aunt had died. He told her.

She didn't speak for a long time, just kept turning her fork over and over. “I wonder if she died of a broken heart.”

Jury was taken aback. Hester sounded as if it wouldn't be difficult.

She told Jury what she knew of Fanny Hamilton. “She kind of planned her life around him. Pinned her hopes on him. I wonder if she was disappointed because he didn't become a great artist or something. She had a lot of money and told him she'd be glad to finance a year in Paris. Do people still think that way? That you have to go to Paris to be an artist?” She sighed. “Phil didn't care about money, though—only art. He
breathed
art.”

Jury smiled. “He seems to have found the right place for it, then. I've never seen such an art gallery. Was Barnes rather eccentric about painting?”

She laughed. “About everything, probably. But especially about art. It wasn't until recently you could even get in to see it; I think it's probably the greatest private collection in the world. You mustn't call it a ‘museum,' either. It's the Barnes
Foundation
. He wouldn't let in the art experts. He hated them; he hated them telling people how they were supposed to experience art. And in his will, he set down that none of the paintings could be moved—each had to stay just as he put it. He wouldn't let them out on loan or for exhibitions. It's only just recently, after a lot of infighting about the estate, that there's to be an exhibition in Washington. For the Barnes Foundation to permit this—” She shrugged. “It's a real art-world event.” Hester sighed. “I think it's nice, really. His collection's so
personal
. No one could tell him what to do. I think it's good to be the type who can just say ‘fuck off.' ”

She bit into her pastry, and Jury was slightly taken aback to hear the words in Hester's mouth, uttered so matter-of-factly. “Yes, it is good. Wish I could.”

“Oh, you probably do, but in a different way.”

Jury laughed. He asked about Philip. “Did he paint, then?”

She shook her head in that stern, quick way children often do, so that her hair lifted and swung about her shoulders. It was a darkish blond that would have been an indifferent shade had it not had such a high gloss. It looked polished. “He was happy just to look. I think he knew every single painting in the collection and everything about it. He'd straighten them. If one was the barest millimeter out of alignment, he'd straighten it. Do you know, when I see him in my mind's eye, it's not his face I usually see, it's his back, and he'll have a finger raised to a frame. Barnes would have loved him.” Her smile was distant, not meant for Jury. She lifted her fork and set it down again, as if eating caused her uncertainty. “I think he was lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“He was just what he wanted to be—I mean, doing what he wanted to do.”

“That would be lucky. Not many people do.”

“Do you?” she asked.

He was thrown, again, off guard. It was disconcerting. Hester was like one's alter ego. “I don't know. You can get so wrapped up in your work you don't stop to wonder.”

“You're really good at it, though.” She put down the small wedge of pastry she'd been holding, as if she'd found it wanting.

Jury laughed. “Well, thanks. How can you tell?”

“Look at all the talking I've been doing.”

“I appreciate it. Would you tell me what you know about his death?” He hoped the question wasn't too harsh.

But she was very matter-of-fact. “He has a cabin up north. It isn't much, just a big room with a kitchen and a bed and a wood-burning stove. But he never did need very much. Just the basics, as they say. I hate the phrase, but it fit Phil.”

Jury thought it probably fit Hester, too.

“Maybe that's why he liked me,” she said, musing with unself-conscious candor. “We used to drive up there weekends in his Jeep. I wasn't with him that last time, of course. I can't tell you what happened. I only know what the police told me. That he was shot. That it might have been an attempted robbery.”

“You look as if you don't agree.”

She studied the tendril of a spider plant and answered, “Well, you'd sort of have to see the place to know. Have you seen it?”

Jury shook his head.

“You know it's mine, now?”

Jury was surprised. “No. He left it to you?”

She nodded, pleased. “See, there was only his aunt. At first, I was surprised that Phil had made a will. I mean, he was only twenty-seven. But he was a very tidy person, no loose ends. He was—composed. And he was very thoughtful, always.”

“I'd like to see it, the cabin. I have to see the sheriff up there, anyway.”

Her response was to search in her shoulder bag and produce a key. It was tagged “Phil's.” “I can tell you how to get there.”

“I thought you might come with me.”

Her eyes opened wide and her expression was wondering. “Oh!” She stretched her arms out, as if here were an idea worth an embrace. “When?”

“Well, what's wrong with right now?”

This
was
an exotic notion. “But I have to work!”

“Oh, but I expect the Foundation could let you off for an afternoon.” He pulled out his ID, held it up between index and third finger, moved it back and forth. “For police business. Hell, how many requests do they get from Scotland Yard?”

As if it were hypnotic, something dangled there to put her in a trance, the warrant card held her gaze.

“When was the last time you went skiving?”

“ ‘Skiving'?”

“Fooling around?”

She raised her finger to the drooping plant and touched it as if it might have been one of those picture frames Philip was always righting. “Not since Phil died. I guess that's what we did. We went skiving.” She smiled at Jury. “Skiving.” She was bemused by the word, just as she was by Philip's name.

 • • • 

Bud Sinclair looked at Jury and chewed the end of his cigar. He sat behind his desk wearing a neon-bright vest that Jury assumed was for hunting, and warmed his hands in his armpits. “We got something international going here? I was kind of surprised.”

Jury smiled. “Well, I was, too. I'm just doing a favor for a friend, really. It's not my case; it's yours.”

Bud Sinclair smiled broadly. “Aw, you can have it, Superintendent. I sure as hell ain't having any luck. And it's a cold, cold trail by now. That must be some friend, you'd come all this way for.”

“She is. His aunt—but you would have talked with her: Frances Hamilton?—died a short while ago in London. It's
her
friend I'm trying to get some information for.” Jury told him what Lady Cray had said.

“Aw, that sure is a shame. Nice lady, that Mrs. Hamilton. Kind of excitable, though.”

Jury wished he could say the same for Bud Sinclair. Right now his attention was drifting to the magazine on his desk,
Guns and Ammo,
which Jury had interrupted the reading of. Jury himself was looking down at the police photographs that Sinclair had spread across the desk for him to view. “You said the place was taken apart?”