The Old Wine Shades (3 page)

Harry went on. ‘Two days later I turned up on his doorstep. We had drinks, we had dinner at a little trattoria. I’d never eaten a cappesante like that before.’

‘I’ve never eaten it at all. Go on.’

Harry smiled. ‘His story–and, incidentally, he didn’t know my reason for wanting to hear it; all he knew was that I was interested in the house and wanted to know its history, as the estate agent knew sod-all about it. She didn’t know much, Ben Torres told me, because he hadn’t told her much; it didn’t strike him as necessary to do so. But if I wanted to know before I leased the property, he was happy to tell me. I was presenting myself, of course, as a prospective tenant, or, rather, not presenting myself as anything else. I think he enjoyed the fact that I’d come all the way to Italy just to talk about this house. Torres’s father was Italian; mother, British.’

‘He was raised in England and lived there until he was in his twenties. Hated it–so drab, wet and cold, and the people not especially warmhearted.’

‘His parents were divorced, his father in Italy, and that meant excursions to Italy a number of times to see his father, who lived in Siena. Winterhaus, the one that Glynnis Gauh went to see, was in his mother’s family.’

‘The last time he said he’d been at this property in Surrey was when he gave the listing to an agency two years before. Ben Torres said to me, ‘Let me tell you a story. The place belonged to my mother’s family. My mother died when she was barely forty, in London. It was completely unexpected. She hadn’t been at all ill. I was sixteen. My father was living here at the time. They were divorced, had been for years. It surprised me they’d ever come together-they were so different. Sometimes I think that’s what marriage is: a reconciliation of differences, and sometimes it succeeds. Not a grand vision, is it?’

‘‘At any rate, my mother–her name was Nina–had always liked that house in Surrey; she’d been a child there and found it mysterious. But then most children find mystery in things adults wouldn’t give a toss for. More than once someone had made my mother an offer for the house–and if you saw it, you’d know it’s quite a lovely site, even if it hasn’t been properly kept up. But my mother wouldn’t sell it, and not because she’d lived there as a child but because of something that had happened there and that she felt responsible for. I mean not that she’d done anything but that she didn’t want to subject some stranger to the unhappy aspect of the house.’’

Jury lowered his fork. ‘‘Unhappy aspect’?’

But Harry Johnson merely raised his hand to ward off questions.

‘Torres went on: ‘I myself was eight years old when she told me about it. Well, I’d kept after her and after her to explain what she meant. Finally one night, as she was tucking me into bed and was about to read me a story. She had the most beautiful voice. But I didn’t want to be read a story, I wanted her to tell me one.’ ..... All right, Benjy, I’ll tell you a story.’

‘She closed the book and set it aside. And she told me this story then and Lord knows how many times since, as I was always asking for it.’

.... ‘A stranger was standing out there at the bottom of the garden. At first I thought he must be making a delivery or was perhaps an acquaintence of our father’s. But he did not move from the end of the path. He was not a vagrant, that was clear from his overcoat and his hat.’

.... ‘And his bowler hat.’

‘I said, ‘You left it out.’’

‘I would often interrupt in this way to ensure all of the details were included and even such commonplaces as weather and light, the slant of the sun, the turning leaves–all of these details had to be absolutely accurate, by that I mean always the same, before I would allow her to proceed.’’

Harry Johnson paused to have a sip of wine. Their dinners appeared as if by magic. Jury had ordered his dish because he wondered if its stunningly complicated name would turn out to be a simple dish. Whatever it was, it was good.

This ‘stranger’ (Jury thought) would be the harbinger of bad news or would himself be the bad news. He would die, Jury was sure. ‘He was murdered, right?’

Harry opened his eyes wide with astonishment. ‘You’re jumping the gun. Ben Torres would have your head on a platter for that.’ Harry laughed.

‘Go on with the story. The stranger.’ (Who will, he added to himself, be murdered.)

‘Ben Torres said, ‘My mother made the correction about the hat. Then she continued:

‘‘He stopped there at the end of the path for some time. I don’t know why I didn’t go out and ask him who he was and what he wanted. I was afraid, a little afraid. I tried to read my book–I’d been sitting in the window seat reading, but I couldn’t and when a slant of sun fell across the page, I looked again and he was gone. It was close to dusk. I was so relieved not to have to wonder if he would be there after dark and if he was going to try to get in the house. He was gone, thank heaven. But three days later he appeared again. At the end of the path in the same spot. I–’ .... Then she stopped and I said, ‘‘You told yourself you had to do something.’’

..... Yes. The thing is we were there by ourselves. You were only eight. ‘‘

‘Then Ben Torres, in telling me, became agitated, as if he still felt his mother’s uncertainty and fear. ‘‘So my mother did call the police station.’’

.... ‘But what am I to tell them? Simply that a man had on two occasions stood just at the end of the garden path? Why would the police bother to investigate that? Still, I made the call, Benjy, and was surprised that they were so polite.’ ....

‘England’s finest,’ put in Jury and received a withering look from Harry Johnson.

‘Ben Torres went on: ‘The mystery of the stranger captivated more than frightened me, but, then, I was not easily frightened. My mother knew this. Still, she did not tell me the rest of it.’’ Harry stopped to take another drink of wine.

Jury said, ‘Stop long enough to eat. This meal is definitely worth it.’

‘Oh, I’ve eaten it many times. It’s delicious.’

Jury liked that filling up on memory. His thoughts turned to that painting, The Butterfly Eaters, that he’d seen in Newcastle at the Baltic. Dining on illusion.

Harry continued. ‘He said: ‘It was my father who told me the rest, years later. The house, my father said, had a sad history, a dismal history.’

‘‘This is what that detective told your mother: There was a family who lived there, who had leased it, named Overdean. They lived there with their son, seven-year-old Basil. The boy and his mother were murdered in their beds one night. The father himself wasn’t touched. ‘‘

‘In such cases as this,’ Harry went on to say, ‘the crime always points first to a family member–in this case the father, who hadn’t been touched despite the viciousness of the attack. There was no motive anyone knew of and his fingerprints were not on the knife; they’d been stabbed repeatedly. The knife appeared not to belong to the house. But all of that could be explained by the prosecution. Well, you know what police and lawyers are like–’

‘I do indeed.’

‘–in the absence’ of any counterevidence, they could just say the father had wiped the knife clean of his fingerprints and could easily have brought another knife into the house–’

Jury interrupted again. ‘And then hung around in bed while his wife was being murdered. Please.’ The waiter had come to clear away their dishes. Jury’s plate was wiped clean.

‘That’s exactly what I thought.’

‘He was convicted?’

Harry nodded. ‘The judge in this case seemed dubious about his guilt. He sentenced him not to life but to twenty years. He only had to serve ten; his behavior in prison was perfect. I think it was very flimsy evidence.’

‘It was certainly circumstantial. I’m surprised the defense wasn’t able to drive a wedge of doubt into it.’

The waiter returned with the dessert, a crême brûlée infused with lavender and glazed on top. ‘And what about the stranger? Mr. Torres hasn’t explained him yet.’

‘Listen first to what his mother said about the house: ‘She told me once, ‘Benjy, houses are more than wood and stone and plaster. Houses breathe, too. I think they bear the imprint of all the people who’ve lived in them. ‘‘

‘Including Mrs. Overdean and her son? That doesn’t strike me as very good storytelling, not to a little kid.’

‘I’m only repeating what Ben Torres told me. ‘And the silent stranger in the bowler hat?’ I asked my father.’

..... Your mother didn’t know. Perhaps it was the father come back.’’

‘Dead or alive?’ asked Jury.

Harry laughed. ‘Alive, I believe he said. It wouldn’t be so surprising for him to come back to the house where everything had gone wrong, where he’d lost–’ Suddenly, Harry stopped.

‘Where he’d lost everything, you were about to say. Like your friend Hugh Gauh. Except in his case, there seems no rational explanation for his wife and son’s disappearance.’ Jury looked down when Mungo stuck his head out from the curtain of the tablecloth.

•
‘And his dog’s.’

Harry signaled to the waiter for coffee. ‘I asked Ben Torres, ‘What about the stranger? Did your mother think he must be Overdean?’ Ben laughed. ‘I hardly think so. He would have been a bit too old, wouldn’t you say? Overdean would have been long dead.

No, that’s quite impossible unless, of course, one believes in ghosts.’’

‘And do you? Did Nina Torres?’ Jury asked.

Their waiter filled their cups with coffee and set the silverplated pot on the table. Harry shook his head. ‘I can speak with certainty only for myself. No, not for a minute. Mrs. Torres, though, sounded as if she might have. Hugh? Before this happened, I would say definitely not. But now he’s searching for any explanation at all.

It’s all too depressing.’ He paused. ‘One thing that Ben Torres felt important: that I should stay away from the wood behind the house.’

‘Stay away how?’

‘Literally. And this is interesting. He repeated the warning given us by this Mr. Jessup: to stay away from the wood.’

‘Why?’

‘Torres didn’t say why. He just waved the question away as if, you know, I were crazy for even asking it.’

‘And did you stay away?’

‘It was the first place I went after I got back from Florence. Look, if someone pointed to a spot and told you to stay away, you wouldn’t, would you? It’s a challenge to one’s curiosity.’

‘And what did you find? What danger lurked there?’

‘None. Surrey police had combed that wood looking, I expect, for… remains.’ Harry picked up his cup of coffee and swallowed as if he swallowed the word with it.

Remains. A word that Jury had always hated–it was so distant, so clinical. ‘What about house number one? Wouldn’t that be a likely place to search? No one even knows if Glynnis and her son ever got to the second house.’

‘No, you’re quite right.’ Harry leaned back in his chair, his cup and saucer in his hands.

‘It strikes me, you know, as a hell of an odd pattern.’ Harry’s frown deepened. ‘What pattern?’

‘Well, surely you saw it. The Overdean woman, Nina Torres, Glynnis Gauh. All were alone with their eight- or nine-year-old sons.’

Harry leaned forward in his chair. ‘No, I didn’t see it. I must be blind.’

Mungo slid his muzzle out from under the table and rested it on Jury’s shoe. Lazily, he blinked when Jury looked down at him. As if he couldn’t be bothered. As if he thought the conversation was ludicrous. As if Jury were the biggest kind of fool.

Mungo yawned.

The wood’s not it.

3

That’s what it would be, a slap on the wrist delivered by an assistant commissioner or even the commissioner himself, for going into that Hester Street house without a warrant. Jury was surprised he hadn’t been suspended as yet.

‘I’ll try talking them down, lad. You’ll have me to thank for saving your job.’

Was Racer kidding? Jury knew about how much the man would stand up for him.

‘Thanks.’ He’d been sitting across from Chief Superintendent Racer (his boss, guv’nor, supervisor) trying to think of something nice to add to the ‘thanks’ and coming up empty. He was more interested in the cat Cyril, who had flattened himself pancake-like to the floor and was snaking along to Racer’s big desk while Racer babbled on, unaware. There was just enough room if Cyril could maneuver his body, all of it, to rug level and slip through the three or four-inch space. Cyril liked occasionally to get his teeth around Racer’s ankle and pull. When Racer yelled, Cyril would slip back through the opening and make for the door, trailing Racer’s sputtered imprecations like a row of cans tied to his tail.

It was just something to do. Jury smiled.

As Racer’s taking advantage of the present situation to lecture Jury was just something to do. In the pause while Racer was thinking up more things to say, Jury rose, asked, ‘Will that be all?’ and started for the door. Behind him, CS Racer gave voice to either a yelp or a screech, and right away, Cyril shot out from under the desk to the door that Jury was holding open for him. They both missed the heavy paperweight that bounced off the rug behind them.

*
 
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That night, after leaving the restaurant, Jury agreed to meet Harry Johnson the next evening at the Old Wine Shades and pick up the story where Harry had left it.