The Horse You Came in On (31 page)

She shrugged. “Sort of.”

“Well, I expect I couldn't have stopped him, but that doesn't mean I couldn't have told the headmaster myself.”

“Would the police do anything to you?”

Jury thought that past and present were confusing themselves in her mind. “To me? No. We hadn't committed any crime.” They hadn't, Jury and the “bully,” committed any act at all. But confession was so much in the air, the little girl wasn't even realizing that Jury's story, up to now, had had nothing in it at all about crime or police action. It was her
own
story that had that in it.

 • • • 

Melrose had returned and was hanging over the counter pretending not to listen and looking for some excuse so that he could. He moved his attention from the ring tray to the turban and turned it in his hands, his glance sweeping from Jip to Jury, back and forth, as the two continued their discussion—a rather cryptic one, Melrose thought. He sighed. After
his baroque tale of Julie and the sleigh, she seemed all too eager to be taken into Jury's, not Melrose's, confidence. On the other hand, she didn't seem to mind his presence here during this exchange.

“But what if the bully tried to make you believe it never happened
at all?
That you never were there and didn't see anything?”

Were
where
and saw, or didn't see,
what
? Melrose wondered, fitting a Masonic ring on his little finger.

“Well, he couldn't make me believe that.”

“Why?”

“Because he was always there, behind the tree.”

Jip's “Oh?” was still puzzled.

“Don't you see? If it really hadn't happened, he wouldn't need to keep popping out from behind that tree and trying to scare me. Right?”

She saw the truth of this. More of their exchange followed, largely a reflection of what had been said up to now, a working through of the old muddle, the old fear, until she could bring herself to talk about what had happened.

“I was there,” she said abruptly.
“We
were, Mary Ann and me, in the churchyard.” Before Jury could say anything, she hurried on. “But Mary Ann says I'm crazy; she says nothing happened.” Jip's head was down, turned toward the Barbie doll. It was as if the suspected “craziness” were worse to contemplate than the scene in the churchyard. “She said a lot of people went to the churchyard on these nights, to see the man put the flowers on the grave.”

Carefully, Jury asked, her, “And did you see him?”

She nodded. “I think so. I'm not sure now what I saw. We were back behind some headstones—not together, but in different parts of the churchyard. Then when we heard—when
I
heard this noise, it sounded like a yell, cut off—Mary Ann must have run. She ran away and left me there by myself. I stayed. There was someone so near along the path there that I knew if I tried to run, he'd see me.” She shook her head. “And I felt something rush by me . . . I had my eyes closed; I couldn't stand to look. And finally I got up when I didn't hear anything else, and I ran. I was cut up from the bushes and rocks.”

“You didn't see the person?”

Violently, she shook her head. “Only that he was wearing a kind of black cloak.” She paused. “If Mary Ann finds out . . .”

“Oh, you don't have to worry about Mary Ann.” Jury took out his notebook and asked for her full name. Mary Ann Shea, he wrote. Next, he carefully took down the Shea address. Jury made it sound very official.
“Mary Ann won't be looking through the window anymore, Jip. I guarantee it.”

And as if by means of some sort of Scotland Yard alchemy, Mary Ann had indeed disappeared. When next they turned and looked, the window gave out on nothing else but the wintry afternoon.

“I called Pryce,” said Jury, coming back to the table with a pitcher of beer. The Horse was filling up; a guitarist was competing at the moment with something on the big TV.

“What will happen to her?”

“To Jip? Nothing at all. Pryce will ask her a few questions, but I told him it was unlikely she could identify whoever it was she saw.”

“Poor Jip,” said Ellen, looking up from the book open before her.

Jury drank his beer, watched Wiggins spoon the white powder into his glass of water. “Headache?”

“What? Oh, this, you mean?” Wiggins watched—Jury thought almost happily watched—the liquid fizz and the opalescent white froth mist across the top of his glass.

The music of the young guitarist was now replaced by some quiz-show noise on the television that seemed to involve whole families competing.

Ellen was underscoring passages in Vicks Salve's novel with a heavy hand.

And heart, Melrose supposed. It was difficult to keep his mind focused while she sat there sighing, softly swearing and moaning.

Wiggins sipped his Bromo-Seltzer and licked his lips. He said, “Well, I think we've got to assume there's a connection. We've nowhere to start, otherwise. Nowhere.”

“All right. If there's a connection between John-Joy and Philip Calvert, and if Beverly Brown's notes are right, then there's a connection with Patrick Muldare, again making the assumption that those initials are Muldare's. Alan Loser says that John-Joy would come around to the shop and hang out with Milos. They were by way of being friends. Then again, Muldare says he never heard of Philip Calvert.”

“Beverly Brown knew him, you said,” said Wiggins.

“According to Hester, yes.”

“Listen to this,” said Ellen. She read:

Lovey stood in the heat-saturated air, hardly aware of the heady fragrance of the bougainvillea vines, looking down at the long colonnade
with its Corinthian columns glowing in the moonlight, framing the door at the end, and smelled the salt air coming off the sea, pulsing with the ebb and flow of the waves. Victor! He was supposed to meet her, where was he? She looked towards the door.

“Victor—let me guess—has met a fate very similar to Maxim's.”

Ellen clapped the book shut, stretched her arm out on the table, and dropped her head against it. Inconsolable.

Wiggins offered her a drink of his Bromo-Seltzer, but she refused.

Melrose said, “The curator called literary theft worse than murder.” He reached over and put his hand on her hair. She didn't shake it off.

“What do you think, Ellen?” asked Jury.

“What do I think what?” said Ellen, her voice small with a sadness that seemed born of the ebb and flow of the sea she'd just read about.

“About Patrick Muldare. You know him better than we do.”

Ellen refused to raise her head and her voice rose muffled from the table. “All he cares about is football. He's actually hoping his group'll get the expansion team.”

“So he said.”

“He'll have to beat out Barry Levinson,” said Melrose, watching the telly, where the chubbier of the two families was jumping up and down, applauding itself. “It's going to be pretty hard to beat the guy who made
Bugsy
and knows Annette Bening.”

“Barry Levinson? Annette Bening? What are you talking about?” Ellen turned her head and propped her chin on her forearm.

“Did you bring along more of the Poe manuscript?” Wiggins asked her.

Slowly, she nodded the chin resting on the outstretched arm. She was refusing to absolutely raise her head, and her hand crept over the carryall, feeling about for its contents like the hand of a blind person.

“Go on, read it to us,” said Jury, coaxing her.

Still with her chin resting on her forearm, Ellen asked, plaintively, “You want me to?”

Jury nodded, smiled.

Her head came up, almost perkily, and she brought out the manuscript. Lovey might just as well have dropped dead as stood there pulsing with heat, or whatever she'd been doing. Melrose was annoyed. When they had first met up there on the Yorkshire moors, he had thought Ellen impervious to the Jury charm.

“We just left off where Monsieur P. was talking about having discovered the handkerchief in the courtyard. It's got his initials embroidered
in one corner.” Wiggins looked round at them, summing up, in case they'd forgotten the plot.

Ellen coughed a little, balling her fist before her mouth, true to the Poe-esque spirit of putrid afflictions. She read:

My dear madam—

That you appear to be insensible to the sufferings of M. Hilaire P—— only is further proof that the gentleman of whom I speak is not the “William Quartermain” of your own acquaintance. Had you but lingered for a moment in the chamber where I spent so many hours, you would understand. You are convinced that M. P—— was merely employing a ruse to keep me there for motives which you (or so you claim) understand but do not reveal to me; pray, allow me to continue my story—

My host held out the handkerchief, and bade me inspect it, which I did. The initial “P” I certainly saw, entwined with the “H” of his Christian name. He then rose and moved to a cupboard from which he took down an ebony box, inlaid with mother of pearl. He opened this and presented it for my inspection. The box held linen, several more of these handkerchiefs. They were of the finest linen, and the initials worked in a similar manner on each. My host spoke—

“Do you believe me now?”

I hastened to assure him that I had not doubted him except insofar as I thought he might have been dreaming, and he smiled and with a languid wave of his hand said,

“It is of no matter. I would ask you, I would
implore
you to do me a service: to pass the rest of this night in my bedchamber.”

My mind filled with the most unspeakable dread.

“There is no danger!” he cried. “None. I would otherwise not ask this of you. It is only a matter of verifying the truth of my experience, and of my sanity. Man! I must
know.
”

“My dear M. P——” I said as kindly as I could. “And if I should
not
be able to put your mind at rest? What of that? If there should be no repetition of this duel, no crying out of the name
Violette?
”

The interval was over and Melrose watched the guitarist resume his seat on the stool. Well, he wasn't too bad; at least he was playing acoustic and not electric guitar. Melrose wondered what Lou Reed would have done with the Violette story. (“Violette said/As she got up off the floor, / This is a bum trip / And I don't love you anymore.”)

“Will you stop that humming!” Ellen said irritably.

Wiggins said reproachfully, “I'd like to know what's happened to Violette.”

Melrose said, “She's dead.” He was sick of this twaddle. “She's under the floorboards, wait and see. Edgar Poe could play better guitar than Beverly Brown could write.”

“Oh, be quiet,” said Ellen, crackling the brittle paper as she picked up the next page.

Melrose turned to listen to the pleasantly weepy voice of the guitarist going against the grain of his song.

Jury said, “I think it's rather intricately done.”

“So is the L.A. freeway,” said Melrose.

Ellen read:

“Then if you hear and see nothing, I must accept my own—”

I understood him and in the heavy silence that followed there was in me a great bewilderment and confusion of spirits. But, finally, I agreed, insisting, though, that before I was to occupy that bedchamber, we must descend to the courtyard where I could satisfy myself as to its security.

We descended, and with our lanterns as the only light to penetrate the inky dark, I observed the cobbled yard. It is difficult to describe that courtyard, which was not long in casting over my spirits, like a cloak of jetty black, its impenetrable gloom. Walls surrounded us on three sides, and on the fourth the iron gate, through which no one—if the rusted lock were to be believed—had passed these many years. The dry fountain, the sere trees, the spongy mosses that pressed upwards through the stones—all, all would testify that no one had been within these walls. I was yet not satisfied. For I believed (despite your protestations, madam) that M.——was as sane a man as I, and that being the case, these surrounding walls and gate must have afforded entry to the companions of his sleepless nights—the swordsmen. From one wall to the next, I moved, my hands against the moist stones, searching out some possible, secret entrance.

And at one point, fanciful though it must sound, I felt the cold stones
weeping
—

Melrose interrupted. “Not the floorboards, the walls.”

Ellen and Wiggins glared at him. Jury was studying the manuscript page Ellen had just read and set aside.

“How bloody tiresome,” said Melrose, yawning. “It's just ‘The Cask of Amontillado' all over again. He's gone and walled her up.”

“Don't pay any attention to him; he's just being mean,” said Ellen, carefully returning the page to its plastic sleeve.

Wiggins stared. “But, miss—what happened? Was there a secret passageway, or something like that?”

Ellen shrugged and sighed. “Don't know.”

Wiggins looked crestfallen. “You mean that's the
end?
”

“It's all that she gave me. If there's more, I haven't found it.”

Said Melrose, “You shouldn't be carrying that around. You should turn the whole works over to the police. Or Owen Lamb. Or somebody.”

“Why? Since it's a fake?” said Ellen, with an acerbic sweetness.

“A dangerous fake.”

Jury started to laugh.

They all looked at him.

He was laughing harder.

“
Well?
What?” asked Melrose.

He turned the manuscript page so that they could see it and pointed to the bit about the handkerchief. “It's the bloody initials. ‘HP.' Embroidered on the handkerchief.”

“Right. And . . . ?”