The Horse You Came in On (40 page)

Agatha said, “
She
wants a large dining hall and
he
wants to garden—”

“Bluhhh,” said Trueblood, simulating sickness. “God, but I loathe men who like to garden. They're always wandering around in their oilskins and thick shoes going on about compost and spouting the Latin names of flowers.”

“I can think of sillier pastimes,” said Jury, with a level look at Trueblood, who raised a sculpted eyebrow. “You didn't at all mind Lady Summerston and Hannah Lean. Indeed, I seem to remember you made quite a little money off your wares.”

“You don't seem to understand. They were
not
weekend people. It's a whole different sort of thing. Don't you know the WEMs are invading the provinces? Taking over whole villages—”

“You make it sound like Long Piddleton's going to have a Night of the Living Dead.” Jury noticed that Plant had called Trueblood's attention to something beneath the table. He rose. “Well, I'm taking a little walk. Look in on Vivian, maybe.”

Agatha, who had risen to make her way to the bar, said, “They've taken a six months' lease. To see if it suits.”

Both Trueblood and Plant looked at Agatha. And then at each other. They smiled.

“What are you two grinning about?” asked Jury.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing.”

 • • • 

A little snow was falling now, slowly, tiny flakes, far apart. Outside the Jack and Hammer, Jury stopped by the window in the embrasure of which they had been sitting.

“. . . couldn't have missed it,” Trueblood was saying.

“Well, you did. It was right there.”

“Put it away,” whispered Trueblood. “Here comes Agatha back.”

Jury shook his head in wonder and looked down the High Street to see the local postman trundling along on his bicycle, stopping first at Jurvis the butcher's, then at Miss Ada Crisp's across the street.

The elderly postman Jury had run into once or twice—run into almost literally, since the man could hardly see. Abner Quick was old as the hills, deaf as a post, and blind as a bat. People were always getting the post wrong, getting other people's and having to take it round to the addressees themselves. Agatha, of course, had made it her mission to rid Long Pidd of Abner Quick, but she hadn't been successful. Actually, receiving another's letter and therefore having to go round to that person's cottage was more an occasion for an extra cup of tea than for complaint. And if one didn't care for a cup with the addressee, one had only to wait for Mr. Quick to come round later or drop it off at the sub-post office and let the postmistress deal with the problem.

At the moment, Miss Ada Crisp was standing by her door reading one of the envelopes Abner Quick had chosen for her hand to receive and looking terribly upset by it. She looked up, saw Jury directly across the street, and waved him over.

“Hullo, Miss Crisp.” She looked horribly worried. “Can I do something for you?”

“It's that Mr. Browne who owns the Wrenn's Nest.” She looked off down the pavement to the corner. Then her pale eyes looked up at Jury, miserably. “Says he's going to send me a summons.”

“Summons? Why on earth would he do that?”

“Wants me out, that's why. Wants my shop.”

She stood there with her biscuit-colored eyes and hair into which the gray melted like the new-falling snow and wrung the end of her coverall apron. “I've been here forty years, Mr. Jury. That
person
only came three years ago and thinks he owns the village. All he does is make trouble. He keeps saying he wants to ‘expand' his business. Now, I ask you—whatever does a little village like this need with a huge bookshop?”

Jury read over the document, which was indeed a legal summons. He was sure complaints about Miss Crisp's premises (“public nuisance”) were without foundation, but, of course, the idea was undoubtedly to attack her nerves, not her reason. It was infuriating. It was also unfortunately the provenance of the law to find a basis for baseless allegations, so that any fool, anyone seeking redress or revenge, could bring a lawsuit. Jury looked off down the street for a moment and smiled.

The smile seemed visibly to shore her up, to lift a weighty burden from her thin shoulders.

“Not to worry, Miss Crisp. Perhaps I'll just stop and have a word with Mr. Browne.”

“Oh,
would
you? I'd be ever so grateful.”

Jury turned, as he walked away, and called back, “Remember the pig, Miss Crisp.” This was a reference to the lawsuit Agatha had brought against the butcher, Jurvis—or, rather, against Jurvis's plaster-of-Paris pig.

Miss Crisp laughed and waved.

Inside the Wrenn's Nest bookshop, three people stood in line while Theo Wrenn Browne stamped a book and admonished the first of the three, a little girl, who waited in silent humiliation on the opposite side of the counter. She had left chocolate fingerprints on one of his rental books, and he was threatening to keep the deposit. The two adults behind her tried to look away. She ran out with her book.

The Current Books for Rental shelves had been started largely as competition for Long Piddleton's tiny but adequate library. It was unusual for a village the size of this one to have a library at all, and the villagers had been just proud until Theo Wrenn Browne had determined to demonstrate its needlessness. He himself supplied the latest crop of bestsellers, thereby putting a considerable dent in the library's patronage. For the library had to wait for its books, whereas Theo Wrenn Browne could get his immediately, weeks before they were even reviewed. It wasn't money but misery—other people's—that motivated him.

While words like hard coin fell on the next borrower's head, Jury read the sign setting out the lending rules. Deposits were required, and there were different rates for different days and for different books. An accountant would have a hard time juggling this information, but when a person wanted a new book, a bestseller, or one by his favorite writer, well, he'd put up with a lot of nonsense, even the excoriating comments of Theo Wrenn Browne.

When the last borrower had left, his book stamped (his days numbered), Theo Wrenn Browne called out an enthusiastic greeting.

Jury smiled his hello and said, “I see you've started up a new line of business here.”

“Ah, yes. Public service, you know.” He enjoyed a martyred sigh. “Our library is so behindhand, Mr. Jury. I keep telling the council that.”

“Didn't know there was a council.”

“Oh, yes. Long Piddleton's got a lot of problems. What I'm pushing for now is for us to compete in the Prettiest Village in England competition. I don't see why it always has to be the Cotswolds—Bibury and Broadway and those places—do you? Northants doesn't have to be always thought of as industrial. I'm trying to change our image. What we need is good PR. Attract more tourists, that sort of thing. I think, you know, we're beginning to attract Londoners.”

“Too bad. I was wondering, Mr. Browne, if you might have a copy of
Bleak House
.”

“Dickens? I'm sure I do. Come along back here.”

Jury thought, as he followed through the shelved books, it was a shame that the Wrenn's Nest had to suffer the waspish presence of Theo Wrenn Browne. It was a lovely shop: black beams, polished floors, cushioned window seats, nooks and crannies. And an extensive collection of antiquarian books along with the recent ones.

“Here we are. You like Dickens, do you? Well, one
does
. Honestly, the
tripe
that people come in and buy. I have to
stock
it, you know. Dreadful thrillers, idiot mysteries. Genre stuff. God. Well, I'm in
business,
aren't I? I can hardly set myself up as the arbiter of taste and refuse to sell Danielle Steel. Finally, I had to stock Joanna the Mad's books. My customers were going to Sidbury and even all the way to Northampton to get hold of them. Rubbishy romances.” He shuddered pleasantly and handed down the copy of
Bleak House
. “But at least I'm glad to see you're reading Dickens.”

“The Dickens isn't for me; it's for an acquaintance who's thinking of bringing a suit. I thought he should get a taste of what the law's like.” Jury riffled the pages. “I've had a lot of dealings with civil suits, and I can tell you, I wouldn't, for love nor money, ever get involved in one.”

Theo Wrenn Browne brought his neat little hand to his mouth. “Oh?”

“Last person I knew did it lost everything—bank account, job. . . .” Jury shook his head and sighed. “This is fine. I'll have this.”

Theo Wrenn Browne coughed nervously. “But surely, if one is
justified
 . . .”

Jury gave a short, astonished bark of laughter. “
Justified?
What difference does that make? Most recent case I know of was a prominent shopkeeper in Piccadilly. He'd got people living over him, woman and her brood of six kiddies, that made his life a misery. Not only was there screaming and shouting the whole day long, but the kiddies managed to get into his shop at night and take things, mess things up, create havoc. The poor fellow tried to get them off the premises and went to court. He was at it for three years, had to pay out so much money to the solicitors and so forth he lost his business, finally. Now he's on the dole. Terrible.”

Both of them had been looking up at the ceiling, and Jury shook his head sadly, as if the kiddies who figured in this tale of woe had materialized in the elegant private apartments above, where Theo Wrenn Browne read the latest rubbishy romances.

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr. Browne,” said Jury as he paid for his book and left Theo Wrenn Browne a wiser, if paler, man.

 • • • 

Across the wine-brown stone bridge, the cottages, sub-post office, and Betty Ball's bakery clustered on three sides of the green. Although Vivian's house was far too large to be a cottage, that was how she referred to it. According to the note Sellotaped to the door, she would return shortly.

Jury walked across the green, now with its sugar-coated layering of snow, to the bench by the duck pond and sat down.

He thought about Jip. Jip with her specter aunt and her strange story. From his pocket he took the old snapshot and studied it. He felt saddened by this little girl. Perhaps he could help her. He could try, certainly.

Then he thought of Jenny Kennington and felt a kind of content. He must go tomorrow or the next day to Stratford to see her. He sat back and watched the ducks sheltering under the overhanging branches of a blackthorn bush. The last time he had sat on this same bench had been over ten years ago; he'd been sitting here with Vivian.

Ten years, a decade ago. Was it possible?

The little pond wore a skin of rime, melting now in the unseasonable warmth of late-January sunlight. Two ducks bobbed sleepily beneath the overhanging branches of a small willow trailing its tiny leaves across the pond's surface. Jury sighed and rose and thought that a cup of tea and some biscuits in Betty Ball's tearoom wouldn't go amiss.

The bakery was behind him, across the road that split at this end of the bridge and straggled around the green where he'd been sitting. The bakery was on the bottom floor of three levels, and the tearoom at the top, which made it a long climb for a cup of tea or coffee, but Betty Ball apparently liked to keep the floor between for some purpose of her own. Perhaps she lived there. Or perhaps she had, like Carol-anne, plans.

Jury took a table in an alcove so that he could look out onto the village below. He could see most of it, all the way to Plague Alley, where Agatha lived, even while he was sitting down. If he stood, he could see all of the nearer part of Long Piddleton. So with his cup of tea and a muffin, he stood there sipping and munching and looking out. This posture gave him quite a bit of childish pleasure, for he imagined his view of the village to be godlike from up here, and he liked the sense of omniscience even if he couldn't, godlike, participate in the omnipotence. It was fun seeing the village from this perspective, a miniature village, where he could now retrace his steps simply with his eyes.

He saw Trueblood and Melrose Plant emerge from a door on the other side of the bridge, undoubtedly the Jack and Hammer. They walked in the direction of the bakery. Occasionally they stopped to discuss something, and once appeared to be engaged in what looked like an argument,
with both assuming various postures and gestures of irritation or impatience. On the other side of the bridge, they headed off to the right, and Jury noticed that Melrose Plant was carrying a large brown envelope. They passed several houses on that side of the duck pond and then stopped before the sub-post office. Plant started into the post office with the parcel, but Trueblood pulled him back. Then they more or less huddled, Trueblood moving off a little and gesticulating with the usual Trueblood theatrics, waving his arms in the air as if he were conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, pointing across the bridge with a batonlike finger. Trueblood then walked back and forth, looking here, looking there. As Plant simply stood there, he walked away some hundred yards, apparently saw something, for he ran back, and then both of them leaned against the whitewashed Tudor building housing the post office and its stores, smoking cigarettes, and looking as casual as any couple of delinquent schoolboys waiting to be busted by the headmaster.

Jury had finished his carrot muffin and his cup of tea without even realizing it; now he reached back over the table to pour himself another cup from the pot, milk from the jug, and feel around for the muffin plate. And he did all this pouring and muffin hunting without taking his eyes from the little drama proceeding below.

Abner Quick had appeared now, having bumped over the brown bridge on his bicycle and come to rest in front of the post office. Melrose Plant and Marshall Trueblood greeted him in comradely fashion, and Abner went on into the post office, presumably to collect the second batch of letters for the day and get down to the business of misdelivering them.