The Old Wine Shades (17 page)

The driver shook his head. ‘She got hold of a Brighton paper every week and she’d check the obits until one day nearly two months after it happened, there was this chap’s picture. Well, the poor bugger up and died, right? He was fifty-three, pretty young, depending which side of it you’re on, but the obit didn’t give cause of death.’ He shook his head, took Jury’s cab fare. Jury stepped out of the cab.

‘Poor bugger should’a gone to the police.’

‘But he did, didn’t he? Look where that got him.’ Jury slapped the top of the cab, and the driver was on his way.

21

Trevor, the barman, was happy to suggest something. ‘This’—he held up a bottle of Pinot Blanc—‘is an absolutely glorious wine from Luxembourg,
Vin de Paille.
Pricey, but worth it.’

Harry told him to pour. ‘How pricey?’

‘This’ll run you forty quid the half bottle.’

‘You certainly know how to spend my money, Trev.’

‘I certainly do.’ Trevor smiled and poured.

They were sitting that evening in their same bar chairs, with Mungo parked underneath.

Jury studied the wine bottle. A 1982. Was that a good year? Maybe for wine, but not for Jury. ‘Hugh Gault. What does his doctor say?’

‘That he’s overworked. Of course, the doctor doesn’t tell me anything much as I’m not family.’

‘Denial, I’d imagine. Maybe it’s what we all do at some point in our lives—deny. Or dive into work or booze to forget and keep forgetting. Hugh might have committed himself just to escape. He can sign himself out. Maybe he should.’

‘You could be right.’

‘If he had to slog through one day after another, it might help him; hell, it might even restore him. Do you see what I mean?’

‘I do, yes.’

Jury picked at the wine label. ‘He doesn’t believe they’re dead, does he?’

‘No, he doesn’t. They could be anywhere.’

Jury wondered if he was to take that literally.

‘Einstein distrusted quantum mechanics; he jokingly asked the question ‘Is the moon not there unless I can see it?’’

‘I’ll drink to that.’ Jury raised his glass.

‘No, no. The point is not that it
isn’t
there, but that we can’t
know
if it’s there or not.’

‘The cat’s alive, the cat’s dead.’

‘Exactly. Nothing is real until you can measure it. And the act of measurement is part of the reality it’s measuring. Look.’

‘Look’? I’d better or you’ll disappear.’

Harry laughed. Then he said, ‘Take a blood-pressure reading. The nurse can’t know what it is until she straps that cuff around your arm and pumps. But the resulting pressure is that particular systolic and diastolic only in the act of measurement. Measurement means interaction. There is no way you can measure something without interacting with it. Measurement is not impersonal. It isn’t an objective reality.’

‘The cat may be dead or the cat may be alive.’

‘You seem to be using this as a mantra.’

‘I think it’s a good one. And I’m starving.’

Harry checked his watch. ‘Dinner?’

Jury nodded, drank off the last of the wine. ‘We’ve got to drink the rest of this. I mean at forty quid, well . . .’

Harry laughed. ‘Thanks for reminding me.’

There wasn’t much left. He divided it between the two glasses, a long swallow each.

As Harry dropped some notes on the table, Mungo unsettled himself from under Harry’s chair—from under both their chairs, really, for he’d stretched out under the two—and they left the pub.

They were sitting in a restaurant in Docklands, another dog- friendly one, or so Harry said. Jury wondered if the ‘friendliness’ was occasioned by one big talking point, money, which Harry had clearly slipped the maitre d’. The place was overpopulated with the up-and-comers and their mobiles. Nirvana, some of these places were.

‘You were talking about Ben Torres. Go on.’

Harry drank his water and then his wine. They’d been unadventurous and settled on a Burgundy. ‘According to Ben, his mother told him this person returned several times, always standing at the bottom of the garden at the end of the drive, simply waiting— or watching—she didn’t know. She said she was working up the courage to walk out and ask him what in heaven’s name he was doing—’ Here Harry stopped and pulled out a small sheaf of paper, a few pages folded over. He opened them. ‘This story I have notes on; otherwise, I wouldn’t remember the details.’

Jury broke off a piece of a baguette. ‘You’re doing pretty well at it.’

‘Finally, on the fourth or fifth night of it, not consecutive nights, for there were a few between for as long as a week, but on this night she was about to confront him, she opened the door to find he’d disappeared. Between the time she was inside the house, looking out and going outside, he vanished, he was gone. Couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, she said.’ He interrupted himself. ‘It sounds as if his mother was actually telling the story. But, of course, it’s Ben’s story.’ He stopped. ‘Is that important?’

Jury didn’t think he expected an answer. He was asking himself. When Harry stopped and took a roll from the bread basket, Jury thought that that was the end of it, all that Harry knew about the Torreses. He looked around the restaurant, into the shadows of its candlelit corners, as if they might contain the rest of the story. ‘That was the end of it?’

Chewing, Harry shook his head, held up the pages. ‘Not exactly.’ He looked down at the paper.

Jury wondered why he felt relieved. ‘What then?’

‘It was the end of this man’s midnight vigils on the drive but not the end of his story. Shortly after that, perhaps a week after, one night the gardener, who lived’—Harry looked down at his notes—- ‘on Laycock Road, was going home. There’s a path through the trees which he always took. About halfway in he heard something, a rustling sound, which he took to be a fox or squirrel. But then he heard a voice, only he couldn’t make out any words. He walked a little way into the trees, nearly stumbling over a man lying there in great distress. The gardener, whose name was’—he turned a page—’Cannon, William Cannon—was extremely frightened, not of the man, but of the situation. He wanted to go for help, but the man caught at his arm. Only just able to talk, he said, ‘Tell them to leave this place.’ The words were so faint, Cannon had to put his ear to the man’s lips. ‘Cannon had been a gunnery sergeant in the war and had seen so much of death, he knew the man would be gone before he could even contact police or medical help.’

Jury stopped munching. ‘Another story? I think this is number four, or even five.’

Harry looked puzzled.

‘Well, the way I see it, we’ve got a story within a story within a story within a story.’ He was recalling what Melrose had said and was ticking these off on his fingers: ‘There’s the story of Glynnis Gault’s disappearance; there’s Ben Torres’s story; there’s his
mother’s
story; and now there’s this man Cannon’s story.’ On a cocktail napkin, Jury drew four squares and said, ‘There’s a fifth one somewhere.’ He frowned.

Harry laughed. ‘I expect you’re right. It gets further and further away from the Gaults, I suppose.’

‘That’s not what I was thinking.’ He remembered Melrose Plant’s comments.

The waiter had materialized before their table and launched into that evening’s specials. Jury ordered the Dover sole because it was a marvel of simplicity, grilled, with butter. Harry ordered a complicated fish, which had to swim through some serpentine recipe on its way to the plate. Chilean sea bass, that was it. The waiter departed to get their salads.

Jury asked, ‘Are you really so certain that Glynnis did not leave of her own volition?’

‘Leave Hugh? No, I’ll stick by that. They really loved each other.’

It was heartfelt, Jury thought. It was also in the past tense. ‘Then possibly there was some other reason for leaving.’

‘The thing is, if leaving was in her mind, why in God’s name would she take Robbie?’

‘Or Mungo.’ Jury smiled as he felt the dog plop against his shoe. He looked under the table. Mungo returned his gaze. Jury thought he looked bored.

‘Glynn wasn’t like that—to walk out and take their son without any warning. She’d never have done that.’

Past tense again. A bread bearer was back with another big, flat basket of rolls and baguettes. Jury took a roll, wondering if Mungo liked rolls. He broke off a lump and slipped his hand under the white tablecloth. There was snuffling and a quiet chomp.

‘How was Robbie? How was he treated at home?’

Harry looked completely at sea. ‘You’re not suggesting—you think Robbie was mistreated?’

The waiter had made a quick return and was setting down their salads.

‘I’m not suggesting anything. It was a question.’ Jury cut off a bite of endive. ‘The thing is, you’re determined that Glynnis Gault wouldn’t take off because she was unhappy in her marriage. You’re sure she wouldn’t have disappeared of her own accord. Given, just for the sake of argument, she
did
disappear of her own volition, then what made her do it? She didn’t want to leave her husband, so why did she? Robbie was okay, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, insofar as I know.’ Harry frowned at his salad. Pears and walnuts. ‘Did I order this?’

‘Yep.’ Jury had ordered the house salad.

‘I must be drunk.’ Harry cut off a little bit of Stilton and topped off a bite of pear.

A couple dressed in Ferragamo blue and Armani gray glided into the chairs held for them by two waiters, who hovered for a few moments. Jury wondered who they were. Or what. The woman was wearing three rings on one hand. They were big enough to serve as brass knuckles, which would help when she got mugged.

The sommelier was back with a bottle of white, presenting it for Harry’s inspection. Harry nodded. He and the sommelier exchanged a few words in French as the wine was uncorked, then poured. The sommelier then strolled next door where he had a lengthy conversation, again in French, with the handsome couple. The man spoke his French in a loud voice as if to signal to those near him that he did indeed speak it. Harry, on the other hand, had spoken it softly and far more swiftly and clearly did not mean to advertise his expertise.

Harry said, ‘The only thing I’ve ever heard them argue over was school. Well, I told you that. It’s the reason Glynnis wanted a house near Lark Rise. That school is supposed to be very good. Autism can take a number of different forms; with Robbie, it was simply not talking, or speaking only minimally. Robbie had been doing just middling well at his current school, but Hugh didn’t like the idea of uprooting him. It’s what they argued about.’

‘Then Robbie wasn’t given to fits of temper, excitability, violence?’

‘No. Glynnis couldn’t tell how he felt about school; she assumed he did only marginally well because he didn’t like it, or wasn’t interested or something like that. In any case, it wouldn’t be cause for separation.’

‘Well, it certainly wouldn’t explain what happened. Far from it. But he was okay with this excursion to Surrey?’

‘Yes.’

Jury still hadn’t told Harry he’d been to the house, but he didn’t know why. He asked, ‘Did you take Mungo?’

‘Mungo was gone, remember?’

‘Ah. Of course. So you haven’t been there recently?’

‘No.’ Harry shook his head, seemed to be giving his salad some thought.

‘Do you think the dog could pick up some scent? I wonder if a retriever or a bloodhound could pick up something after a year.’

‘Well, Mungo isn’t a bloodhound, that’s certain. I’m not sure what he is. With those ears, though, he’s certainly got hound genes. Hugh got him from a shelter.’

‘Good for him; he doesn’t regard dogs as a status symbol.’ Harry pulled up the tablecloth and looked, made some sort of
click click
noise.

Totally meaningless, Jury supposed, to an animal.

‘Definitely not a status symbol.’ Harry laughed. ‘Glynn was never concerned with status, either. The right people, the right frock, the right address.’

‘She sounds nice; she sounds very likable.’

‘Oh, she was, she was.’

‘You keep using the past tense. Have you given up, Harry?’

‘No. It’s just that she’s been gone so long now, she seems at such a distance.’