The Old Wine Shades (27 page)

‘Be an interesting spot for a murder.’

Torres cocked his head at Melrose. ‘You’re interested in murder?’

‘Not beyond, you know, the usual.’ He was thinking of the gardener, and the man William Cannon, who had died in the Winterhaus woods so long ago. ‘Any in yours?’

‘My what?’

‘Your past.’

They entered the trattoria, where Ben Torres was greeted in such a happy way, one would have thought he ate there every lunchtime. Perhaps he did. He certainly had no need of the menu, just ordered the calamari and suggested Melrose have it, too. He felt it would be ungracious to order something else. He knew at some point in his life he’d be trapped into eating calamari.

But when it came he found it was quite delicious. Done with currants, or something, and the garlic was so transparent it looked shaved. Tomatoes, olives and couscous completed the dish.

‘I wish I could have my cook do this dish, I really do.’ Melrose was thinking mainly of setting a big plate of it—perhaps just the calamari—in front of Agatha when next she came to dinner, which he hoped would not be soon.

‘Odd, but someone else was visiting me months ago and we talked about the house. Winterhaus. Someone I had known in a minor way. But I don’t think he was interested in leasing it. . . .’ Torres’s voice trailed off and he drank some wine.

Harry Johnson. Go on go on go on! And then it suddenly occurred to Melrose that he was being a total dunce. That of
course
Ben Torres would not tell him the story his mother had told him, Ben. He’d want to lease the house, not turn people away, and a recounting of Winterhaus’s strange history would be unlikely to attract a prospective customer. Well, nothing to be done about it now. They ate their lunch and drank their wine (which was superb) and talked for another hour, until Melrose left, stomach full, hands pretty empty.

He visited the Duomo; he strolled around the Uffizi; he went to the Accademia, or rather, sat in the piazza where he looked at Michelangelo’s David, or rather the copy of it; they’d taken the real one away, which got Lou Reed’s voice going in his mind.

They’ve taken her children away

Because they said she was not a good mother. . .

He sat in the piazza, stirring and stirring his tiny cup of espresso, and wondering why he was stirring, since he’d added nothing to it. He plunked in the mite of lemon peel. He stirred and gazed solemnly at the copy of the David and wondered how long it took to clean up a piece of sculpture. Lou Reed went on, singing about this benighted, drug-raddled woman. There it was: his highly developed aesthetic sense. Lou and Michelangelo.

The figure is not created but discovered. Michelangelo believed he was freeing the figure-imprisoned in the slab of marble. Melrose liked that idea.

He stirred and went over his mental list, wondering if he had forgotten anyone. Vivian, Joanna, Trueblood, Agatha . . .

Mrs. Withersby!

He had forgotten Dick’s char. Well, he’d just have to go back, wouldn’t he? What a lovely prospect.

He stopped stirring and drank off his thimble of coffee, then rose and headed back over the bridge to the glove shop.

‘Nothing,’ Melrose said to Jury the next morning, with the telephone receiver in one hand and his jammed-up croissant in the other. One of the staff had brought the phone into the little breakfast room for him. ‘Not a damned thing more than Harry Johnson already told you; indeed, there was a good deal less. I also got the impression there was much more, but that he didn’t want to talk about it. But, then, could that simply have been me with my preconceived ideas?’

Yes.

Melrose looked around. Where had that answer come from? ‘Did you say something?’

‘Me? No, I’m simply enjoying the silence of a transatlantic telephone call.’

‘Very funny. ‘You won’t solve it, you know.’ I’m quoting Marshall Trueblood. ‘Not unless fate steps in and takes your side.’’

‘I’m sure he’s right. Maybe this is too tall an order even for the stepping-in of fate. But how did Ben Torres strike you? Harry Johnson thought the man extremely agitated, even paranoid.’

‘Well, he didn’t impress me as a man ready for the Stoddard Clinic. He seemed pretty calm. But then, of course, it’s been almost a year since Johnson spoke with him, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m leaving this afternoon on the late side. I’ll be back in London around seven or eight.’

‘You’re stopping in Boring’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘At least the Florence trip wasn’t a trip wasted.’

‘Why not? I didn’t get anything out of Ben Torres.’

‘No, but you got the gloves.’

32

 
‘The same, Mr. Johnson?’

Harry nodded. ‘No hope of my venturing into the unknown, Trev.’

Trevor smiled and looked at Jury. ‘You, sir?’

‘Let me have a glass of red. Maybe that one I had before?’ Trevor looked pained at that ‘glass of red’ appellation. ‘That was a Pinot Noir, sir. An ‘81.’

‘Oh. Well, it was quite good.’

Trevor shook his head and went to fetch it.

‘Okay, go on,’ said Jury. Under his chair, Mungo’s warm nose seemed to be whiffing at Jury’s ankle.

Harry nodded. ‘I could think of nothing else to do; the options had pretty much got down to zero. What was it Sherlock Holmes said? After you’ve eliminated the impossible, you take what’s left, no matter how improbable? But nothing was left.’

‘Something was. Because there had to be. She—they—didn’t vanish into thin air. Or another dimension, no matter what Hugh Gault wants to think,’ said Jury.

‘You’re right. You see, I honestly thought the house, Winterhaus, had something to do with it. That sounds spooky, but that’s what I thought. I couldn’t find evidence that it was the last place she’d been, but it appeared to be the last place she was seen, by the woman in the Swan who saw her by the roadside.’

It occurred to Jury then, the business of the key. ‘If nothing had happened to her, wouldn’t Glynnis have seen the agent when she returned the key?’

‘There’s a kind of letter-box thing at the agency to one side of the door that people can use to hand back a key. Probably that’s what Glynnis did. In any event, Marjorie Bathous hadn’t seen her. And the key wasn’t returned to the agency.’

‘I keep going back to square one,’ said Jury. ‘If they left of their own accord—Glynnis and Robbie—they would have taken Mungo. But if they were abducted, it’s unlikely the villain would have taken the dog too, isn’t it?’ Again, he heard Vivian’s,
Why didn’t they take Mungo?

He told Harry about Vivian’s question.

Harry said, ‘They did take him, though, didn’t they? But he came back.’

Jury felt the whip of Mungo’s tail and looked under his bar chair. Mungo came out from under it and turned a wide-eyed look on Harry and then on Jury. Back and forth.

Harry smiled, ‘Talk about a look of devotion.’

To Jury, it looked less like devotion and more like disbelief.

‘If only you could talk, boy,’ said Harry, reaching down to ruffle his neck.

But Mungo avoided this by sliding under Jury’s chair, where he put his paw over his eyes.

Their second round came, and Harry went on. ‘It sounds absurd, I guess, but having tried everything within reason, I decided to go beyond it and organize a visit to Surrey with someone who dealt in the paranormal.’

‘A psychic?’ Jury set his replenished glass down. He’d meant to drink, but hadn’t, now that they were dealing with other worlds.

‘Psychic, medium, whatever they call themselves. I was almost ready to go in a tent and spend time with a fortune-teller.’

‘And she—or he—went to the house?’

‘Yes. A Mrs. Chase from Putney. She was the picture of everyone’s favorite auntie. Sweet face, gray hair, well-padded figure. I felt if she dabbled in the occult, the occult must be more down to earth than I’d ever given it credit for. Well, she stopped before the French door and stared out. I asked if there was something out there, or someone, but she said nothing, nor answered except to say, ‘It’s extremely cold in here.’

‘Then we walked back to the furnished drawing room. She stood in the middle of it, looking around. ‘This is not your house, is it, Mr. Johnson?’

‘No, it belongs to a man named Torres.’

‘Of whom you spoke before. Where is Mr. Torres?’

‘In Italy,’ I said, ‘near Florence.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘I’ve spoken to him, yes.’

‘Did he tell you why he no longer lives here?’

‘Too many unhappy memories.

‘‘I shouldn’t wonder. You don’t feel it, do you?’

‘What?

‘The atmosphere.’

‘She seemed to turn from comfortable nanny figure into someone measured and exact. Hardly the medium dished out to us by the telly. I didn’t expect Mrs. Chase to be struck by great waves of emotion, and she wasn’t.

‘She asked me, ‘Now, why am I here? I mean, what is it I should be looking for?’

‘It was then I told her about Glynnis and Robbie. She was not one for hasty answers, certainly. For some moments she thought about this.’

‘They were here, certainly.’

‘And then?

‘She looked at me for a while without saying a word. Then she said, ‘I don’t see the boy as clearly. Robbie? Is that his name?’

‘I nodded; I couldn’t believe what she was implying. ‘You’re suggesting that they met someone here?’

‘Well, you could put it that way.’

‘‘Could—?’ I didn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Mrs. Chase, this doesn’t make sense.’

‘At that, it was her turn to stare. ‘Mr. Johnson, you didn’t hire me to make sense. Quite the contrary, I think. She was murdered in this room.’ Mrs. Chase directed her attention to his feet. ‘You’re standing on the spot where her body lay.’

‘I stepped back, horrified. I couldn’t take this in; I couldn’t assimilate it.’

‘Did you believe her?’ asked Jury.

‘After another minute of blank fear, no, I didn’t. I believed she was merely earning her five hundred quid.’

‘Lord, that’s steep for a pleasant drive in the country. The trouble is with so-called psychics, their doubtful visions are difficult to disprove.’ Jury added, ‘As if I’ve ever known one.’

Harry laughed. ‘As to proof, well, if indeed Glynn’s body was to be found—’

He said this very quickly as if any stumbling or hesitation over the words would turn what he said to fact.

‘You didn’t report this to the police, then?’

Harry snorted. ‘Not bloody likely, I didn’t. Tell the police a psychic says Glynnis Gault has been murdered?’

‘And you didn’t go over the grounds yourself?’

‘All right, I did. Looking for freshly turned earth, for a grave, I did. I was ninety-nine percent sure this Chase woman was making it all up.’

‘Or, possibly, was telling the truth, but mistaken about what it was. There’s always that.’

Harry nodded. ‘There was that minuscule one percent. Always that small chance—and, anyway, looking for a grave there would probably be useless as the killer would have buried the body someplace else, don’t you think?’

‘Possibly, yes.’ Jury leaned his arm on the bar, his head propped by his hand. ‘It seems to me you’re giving more than one percent credence to Mrs. Chase’s theory, you know.’

‘Yes. I meant, at the time, I didn’t believe her. But when I thought about it later I thought it was possible that someone could have followed Glynn from London, or at least known where she was going.’

Jury smiled. ‘That puts Marjorie Bathous and Forester and Flynn in the frame.’

‘That I
don’t
believe I was thinking of a person out of her past, an old enemy, an old lover, an old acquaintance—someone to whom she was a threat, someone who wanted revenge.’

‘So this Mrs. Chase might have been truly capable of calling up that image?’

‘Hell, it wouldn’t be the first time a psychic has made some discovery like that. I’d have to accept, obviously, that she is a psychic,’ said Harry.

‘That, or a good actress.’

Harry had been staring at his drink; now he turned quickly to look a question at Jury.

‘Let’s say either she herself was involved in the killing or someone hired her to tell you what she did.’

Harry frowned. ‘What an elaborate ruse.’

Jury drank off his wine and motioned to Trevor, who came down the bar with the napkin-wrapped bottle. Jury nodded to him and turned back to Harry. ‘Not necessarily elaborate. Say it was a job the killer didn’t want associated with London. He chose this obscure house in Surrey that she was going to view. The Chase woman is hired to feed you this story, which further removes it from reality, and Glynnis and Robbie vanishing would shore up her so-called vision—’

‘Wait a minute, though. How could anyone be sure that I’d contact this Mrs. Chase? I didn’t know her.’

‘How did you find her?’

‘A woman who knew someone who knew about his wife and son wrote to Hugh. He showed me the letter. She said—the letter writer—that Mrs. Chase had found her missing daughter.’