The Old Wine Shades (10 page)

‘Walked in with this dog Bingo–’

‘Mungo.’

Melrose nodded. ‘Walked in with Mungo and without knowing you, started in on this elaborate tale. What brought it up? What were you talking about?’

‘Dreams. The belief of many researchers in the field that dreams have no real meaning. I said how do these dream experts get around the idea that there’s always a narrative. A dream is a story. The scientific take on this is that the dreamer supplies the narrative. Well, I was talking I guess about narratives, about stories, and how all of us seem to want a story.’

‘Which is what you meant before.’

‘Yes. In any event, Harry said if I wanted a story he could tell me a story. And that was it. The Gault woman and her son vanished, along with the dog. The dog came back.’ Jury smiled.

‘‘The dog came back.’ Crazy. The dog was brought back, don’t you imagine?’

‘Yes, probably. But I like to think of Mungo’s making this arduous journey back to London.’

‘Sentimentalist. But if the story is really a lot of codswallop, then why drag the dog into it? That the dog was with them and managed to get back from wherever they were is pretty fantastic.’

‘The whole damned thing’s fantastic.’

‘Maybe your first instinct was right and he’s just winding you up. But why?’

Jury shrugged. ‘Because he could?’

Melrose gave a short burst of laughter. ‘Yes, there’s always that.

Because he could.’’

13

It would hardly be called lively, but there were a few more customers in the Old Wine Shades the following night. Jury supposed lunchtime was when the pub did most of its business. The City was not a residential area, but a region of office blocks, financial institutions, the Corn Exchange, Leadenhall Market, Monument and St. Paul’s. Although there were a few private residences, the heart of the City beat in time to the making of money.

Jury posted himself in the same chair at the bar and ordered a glass of Beaujolais (paying no attention to year or provenance, whieh earned him no points with Trevor). He hoped that long talk the night before with Plant hadn’t tainted his ability to listen to the rest of the story–the third installment–without prejudice.

Did Harry Johnson know who Jury was? Had he read about the CID cock-up in the papers? It was interesting to speculate. And while Jury was speculating, Harry walked in with Mungo on the lead. Mungo was a dog who seemed to like routine; he sat looking up at Jury until Jury reached down and rubbed his head. Then the dog settled under his chair.

‘I’m beginning to feel,’ said Harry Johnson, as he tapped a cigarette on his silver ease, ‘a sense of déja vu–a kind of traneelike state. Are you?’

Jury smiled. ‘How many people have you told this story to?’

‘No one.’ Harry’s lighter clicked open, spurted flame, shut. He examined Jury-

(Or so it felt to Jury.)

–through a brief scrim of smoke rising upward from his cigarette. ‘You’re wondering why I’m telling you this, right?’

‘I am, yes, seeing that I’m a perfect stranger.’

‘I suppose I wanted to tell someone who didn’t know the people involved. You’d get a clearer picture, maybe.’

‘I don’t know why you’d think that.’

Harry Johnson smiled

‘You still think I’m winding you up?’ He ordered a glass of Pinot Gris Grand Cru (‘89, if you have it, Trev’) and Trevor went off, smiling.

‘Not that, necessarily, but whether you have some ulterior motive.’ That sounded like worn-out dialogue in a bad film.

‘It’d be easy enough to check up on what I’ve told you. Call the agent; better yet, go to Lark Rise and see the agent and go to this Winterhaus and have a look round.’

‘But Gauh’s agent knows nothing of the history of the house.’

‘She knows Ben Torres.’

‘She knew only that he wanted to rent it, didn’t she? At least that’s what I gather from what you’ve told me.’

Trevor set Harry’s glass before him, poured a small amount of Pinot Gris into it. Harry thanked him and lifted the glass, sniffed it and rolled it around, making little waves. He sipped it. ‘Good. Excellent.’

Trevor filled the glass, asked Jury if he cared for another drink, and, when Jury nodded, picked up the bottle of Beaujolais, which he clearly regarded as plonk, and poured some more, then walked away.

Harry didn’t answer Jury’s question about what the agent knew, but said, instead, ‘Shall I tell you the rest, though? I mean, do you want to hear it?’

Jury smiled. ‘Absolutely.’

Harry drank the wine. ‘Then Hugh went to the house.’

‘To Winterhaus?

‘Yes. And the wood. The police had looked round, but after all it wasn’t a crime scene, so they weren’t about to spend time and manpower when as far as they knew, Glynnis Gault hadn’t even been there.’

Jury nodded. ‘Tm rather surprised they bothered looking in the first place.’

‘Well, perhaps there was not too much going on in Lark Rise, so they wanted to be helpful. I expect they saw how distraught Hugh was. The whole thing was crazy and it’s possible they were intrigued, too.’ Harry stopped talking and drank his wine. ‘Um-um. This is good.’

Jury waited.

Harry said, ‘Did it ever occur to you that what is unseen and unheard is more frightening than what we do see?’

‘Oh, yes. Imagination can toss up things far worse than a John Carpenter film. It’s the not knowing.’

‘Whatever is there, you get only the sense of. Hugh said he most definitely got the sense of something very scary.’

‘In the house?’

‘In the wood.’

Mungo came out from under Jury’s chair and gazed up at him.

‘What’s up, boy?’ Jury scratched his head. Mungo went back under the chair.

Jury went on: ‘But your friend Hugh was not in a state of mind where he would find otherwise. I doubt he would find the place benign, given what he thought.’

‘You think he was imagining things?’

‘Of course. That’s what we were just talking about.’

‘No, in this case, you’re saying there was no basis for the imagining.’

‘Why didn’t you go with him? Hugh, I mean?’

‘Hugh didn’t want me to. He wanted to be by himself. I didn’t press him on that point. Anyway, the wood, he said, was very cold.

At the edge of it, he found a sort of playhouse, you know, we call them Wendy houses. It was in a sorry state, probably hadn’t been used in years. He thought it a strange place for one. What child would want it all that distance from the house? Besides, children are frightened by such places, aren’t they?’

‘Depends on the child, I expect.’ Jury was suddenly famished. ‘Let’s have dinner.

Mungo stirred beneath the chair as Harry said, ‘Right,’ and finished off his wine.

They settled on an Indian restaurant called the Raj. The walls were painted a soft shade of pink and Jury liked the quiet of the place.

They ordered curries and papadum. Jury smiled, thinking of Long Piddleton’s own Trevor Sly of the Blue Parrot. Although Trevor didn’t serve Indian food. It was something else, Arabic or something.

The waiter had brought them tall glasses of an Indian beer and now returned with their food.

Jury turned his glass round and round. ‘Tell me: is Hugh a reliable source?’

Harry looked up from his plate, surprised. ‘You mean was he lying?’

‘No. But he is in this Stoddard Clinic, you said. His imagination could have been working overtime.’

‘Hugh’s a scientist, don’t forget. Yes, he’s reliable.’
 

Jury thought about this, then asked, ‘When you were in the house itself, how did you feel?’

‘Feel? You mean did I feel there was a ghostly presence?’ Harry smiled.

‘Did you?’

‘No, not really.’ He again smiled slightly. ‘But Hugh did.’

‘What?’

‘That Glynn had been there. He thought he even recognized her scent, her perfume.’

‘Well, Hugh would’ve thought he felt her presence, wouldn’t he? If for no other reason, the power of suggestion would do it.’ Harry nodded.

Jury went on. ‘This old man, who appeared to be issuing a warning that day, you never got a lead on him. Isn’t there a village near? Or at least a pub? There’s got to be a pub.’

‘There is; it’s about a mile farther along the road. The Swan, if I remember correctly. Handsome building, half timbered, well kept up. Hugh asked the manager about the Torres house and had he heard anything odd about it. The barman–also the manager, I think–said he hadn’t except that he knew it was for lease. Then he asked if he’d seen a woman in here, alone or with her son. Hugh pulled out his picture of Glynnis and the boy–here, I have this one.’ Harry drew a photo from an inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to the jury.

‘Glynnis Gauh?’ It showed a pretty woman with short, lightish-brown hair and a lovely smile. ‘She’s very attractive.’ He handed back the picture.

‘Anyway,’ Harry went on, pocketing the photo, ‘the fellow in the Swan said it could be, for there had been a woman, a stranger, in who’d bought two lemonades, one for her son. Yes, he did recall that.’

‘Anyone else, other customers, who seemed to be interested?’

‘No. Oh, they were interested all right. Imagine what a juicy bit of gossip to be going on with. A vanished wife and mum. Last them the whole year, wouldn’t it? They probably thought the obvious-she’d have wanted to give this fellow here–Hugh–the boot.’ Harry signed to the waiter, and when he came asked for tea and brandy.

The waiter nodded and slipped away as quietly as Young Higgins, but considerably more upright.

Jury said, ‘It must have been very hard on Hugh, knowing they’d be thinking that.’

‘The only thing hard on Hugh was not knowing where his wife and son were. Everything else took a backseat: embarrassment, making a fool of himself—no, those things barely registered.’

‘He passed the photo around?’

‘Yes. There were perhaps a dozen customers and Hugh said they seemed to be wanting to recognize the woman in the picture. A couple of them said yes, they thought she’d been in the pub. One thought he’d seen a dog, noticed it because the dog reminded him of his own, that his had died. I think Hugh said some woman or other in the pub had driven by and slowed and asked if she needed assistance. Glynnis was stopped by the side of the road, across from the Winterhaus property, reading a map. Hugh ought to have gotten her name.’ Harry frowned.

Jury felt Mungo rearranging himself and in a second he’d stuck his head out from under the tablecloth. Jury scratched his head. He said, ‘You know I feel like Mungo here. You keep tossing things across my path as a sort of lure to listen, don’t you?’

Harry laughed. ‘You think I’m stringing you along, is that it?’

‘You do seem to have some agenda here that Mungo and I are not wholly aware of.’

Mungo looked up as if he too were waiting for details, but then, hearing of the fate of the dog belonging to one of the Swan’s customers, decided to pull his head back under the tablecloth, as if the details of dog deaths were better left unsaid and unheard.

Harry set down his brandy, smiling. ‘No agenda, really.’

‘Glynnis was reading a map?’

‘That’s what the woman said.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Reading a map. The houses were what? A half mile apart along that same road. Why would she have needed a map?’ Harry put down his brandy, untasted. ‘I don’t know. I guess Hugh and I were so hell-bent on finding out where she was that we didn’t pay much attention to what Glynnis was doing. Reading a map didn’t sound so unusual in a place she’d not been to before.’ Harry paused, looking at Jury. ‘You’re extremely observant. You don’t miss a trick. Hugh should have put you on the case.’ Jury closely observed Harry’s expression as he said this. Was he being sardonic? He couldn’t tell; Harry just took a drink of brandy.
 

Jury said, ‘Not really. My advantage in this case is that it’s all new to me; I don’t know the Gauhs. But when I asked why she needed a map, I meant, was she going someplace else? Not to Winterhaus but to a different place altogether off that road, or if not off it, then farther along–or, indeed, even back along that road? She might have made a call or received one that had her getting out a map. Or she might have seen another estate agent’s sign along there and she was including it in her property search. Do you remember seeing anything along that stretch of road?’

‘No, nothing. Which is not to say there was nothing. But I don’t recall any property signs.’

‘It’s just a thought. And this woman in the Swan might be wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t a map.’ Jury thought for a moment.

‘Where was Robbie?’

‘Well, we supposed he was in the car. Since Glynn was standing against the driver’s window, Robbie wouldn’t have been visible, would he? Or maybe the reason for stopping in the first place was Robbie needed to get out and have a piss. There was a dry stone wall along there and trees. He could have stopped behind one or the other.’