The Old Wine Shades (36 page)

The doctor smiled. ‘You seem to have some knowledge of this.’
 

Jury shook his head. ‘Not at all. I’ve had a lot of conversations with Harry, and I picked up a little. Believe me, I don’t understand it. But Harry’s field was quantum mechanics, he said.’

Dr. Santiago laughed. ‘Harry doesn’t have a field. He’s never worked, as far as I know. He’s wealthy. Family money.’

‘Yet he talks about it quite knowledgeably.’

‘I didn’t say he wasn’t smart. He absorbed what Hugh Gault said and he did some research. Certainly read Hugh’s books. Harry is a very intelligent man. Make no mistake about that; it could cost you.’

‘It already has.’ Jury’s tone was acidic.

‘So he’s still putting on the physicist’s hat, is he?’

‘Yes. Tell me, how did Hugh Gault take all of this so-called friendship?’

The psychiatrist gave Jury a long look, debating. ‘Hugh’s still a patient here.’

Jury said, ‘I’m not asking you to repeat what Hugh Gault said in his sessions with you. Only what could have been observed by any of your staff.’ Jury remembered how friendly the nurse, the receptionist had been to Harry. Of course, they would be; they knew him.

The doctor nodded. ‘Hugh appeared to humor Harry. I think Harry’s fantasy of the book they would write—’

‘He was going to coauthor a book with Hugh Gault, he said.’

‘It was an elaborate fantasy, Superintendent. They’d win the Nobel Prize. His idol—Harry’s, that is—was Niels Bohr.’

‘The physicist.’

Santiago nodded. ‘Quantum mechanics.’ He held up his hands, palms flattening the air between them, as if to preempt Jury’s objections, and smilingly said, ‘Before you say anything, let me assure you I know nothing about quantum mechanics. I had to read up on it a bit to talk to Harry. This is part of the little I know about the subject.’ He leaned forward again, as if to bridge the distance between them. ‘What Harry especially liked was complementarity. Bohr’s theory.’

Jury searched his mind. ‘You can see one part of something or another, but not both at the same time.’

‘Exactly. Like the well-known picture of what might either be a vase or the profiles of two people. You know. One could say Bohr was Harry’s God and Hugh was some sort of ministering angel.’ The psychiatrist grinned. His face was astonishingly boyish when he did this. ‘Harry was also fascinated by the theory that you can’t speculate about where something is until you measure it. It’s a lot like the tree in the forest thing. Or the existence of the moon. If you’re not in the forest to hear it, no tree fell. If you can’t see the moon, it isn’t up there.’

Jury thought about this. ‘But that isn’t exactly it. Isn’t it more that the question is meaningless because the subject
can’t
be measured?’

‘Very good. You learn quickly.’

‘Not quickly enough, Doctor. He had me fooled. But if you believed that the tree wasn’t there, you’d have no trouble rearranging time and space, right? Because Harry insisted that Hugh believed his wife Glynnis stepped into another time, or spacetime, another dimension—that sort of thing.’

Santiago laughed. ‘Sounds like Harry.’ He started rolling up his tie again, staring down at it. ‘It’s
Harry,
not Hugh, who believes that theory. That’s where he thinks Niels Bohr is—on or in a different level of spacetime.’ He dropped his tie again, smoothed it and drummed his fingers on the edge of the desk.

Again, Jury smiled at the mannerism. The tie was definitely a tell.

‘After the death of his son—’ said Dr. Santiago.

‘Robbie? I understand the boy was autistic.’

‘He was, yes. I think Hugh and his wife disagreed about how best to handle this, at least in the matter of schools—well, I’m saying too much here, perhaps. But the fact is Robbie died in a boating accident. One of the sails came round and hit him and he went over the side of the boat. Of course the Gaults blamed themselves for the boy’s even being
on
the boat; he was so young and knew nothing about boats. He drowned. Hugh and Glynnis—’ He stopped, knowing he could be breaching a confidence. ‘Let me put it this way: Hugh came here under the crushing weight of the boy’s death. His wife, Glynnis, went away to stay with her father in the south of France, I believe. They handled the tragedy separately. It’s unfortunate when that happens, but it happens more often than one would think, more often than the couple finding strength in one another.’ Dr. Santiago was saddened by this. ‘Which I think is the saddest of all. What is marriage for, anyway, if you can’t share such a tragedy?’ He sighed and sat back. ‘But, then, I expect one is so overwhelmed by the event, one hasn’t room for working on anything else.’

They were silent for a moment.

Then Jury said, ‘Mrs. Gault, I take it she’s only recently back?’

‘That’s right. Only a few days, actually. I’m glad they seem to take comfort in each other now.’

Jury digested this information and said, ‘To Harry, her disappearance could easily have meant that she’d gone over some space- time edge.’

‘Yes, I expect it could.’

‘To Harry, a very satisfactory explanation. Then, of course, one might want to get rid of the evidence?’ Jury rose.

Santiago rose, too. ‘I don’t follow that.’

‘I mean that if a man believed that the tree only fell and the moon only shone in his presence, he might get rid of anyone or anything that proved he was wrong. He might get rid of whatever gave his reality a kick in the pants.’

‘Neils Bohr might have agreed.’ The doctor smiled. ‘I must say, Superintendent, you’re a quick study. You appear to have picked up a lot regarding quantum theory.’

‘Not quick enough, Dr. Santiago. Harry took me in.’

Dr. Santiago shrugged slightly. ‘You’re not the only one.’ He looked at Jury. ‘Is that why you’re so angry?’

‘Angry? I’m not angry.’ Jury frowned, feeling the anger spread almost like a blush and was irrationally irked with himself.

‘Hm. But you are. Superintendent.’

Jury shook his head. ‘No.’

Dr. Santiago ignored this. ‘I don’t think it’s because he took you in. I think it’s because you like him. And that, Superintendent, must be infuriating.’

48

Marshall Trueblood held up one of the London dailies, a salacious rag, but then
weren’t
they all? ‘This?’ he asked, tapping an item in that paper. ‘Do you mean this?’

‘That’s
it, yes,’ said Melrose.

‘Rosa Paston,’ said Trueblood.
‘That’s
her name. Paper says. Well, this is a development!

‘The victim has been identified as Miss Rosa Paston of London and Venice, Italy. Previously, she had been looking at property near Lark Rise in Surrey, presenting herself as Mrs. Glynnis Gault.’

‘That’s
interesting,’ said Diane, crowding her head into True-
blood’s
viewing space.

‘What?’

‘The
Forester’s
agent—this Marjorie Bathous—identified her as Mrs. Gault, saying it was the suit
she’d
been wearing when she first came to the agency. A black suit. Marks and Spencer. Hm.’ Diane sat back, smoking and considering. ‘So this
woman’—said
Diane
Demorney—’what’s
her name?’

‘Rosa Paston,’ said Melrose, remarking that Diane had the attention span of a flea.

‘Rosa Paston
could’ve
been the
man’s
lover.’

‘Could’ve
been a lot of things,’ said Trueblood.

‘Although I find it hard to believe a woman would do this for love. Money, yes. Probably he paid her.’
 

‘Maybe she did it as a fling,’ said Joanna Lewes, marking up a page of her manuscript.
‘Where’s
your sense of humor?’

‘In the toilet,’ said Diane. ‘No, I doubt fun had much to do with it, not with her wearing a suit from Marks and Sparks. That means either love or money. If
there’s
enough of either in the world to make one wear a suit like that.’

‘You’ve
a damned strange way of assessing value,’ said Joanna with an abrupt laugh.

‘Melrose, you see that jacket
you’re
wearing?’ said Diane.

He held out an arm, fastened his eyes on the brownish-green wool and nodded. ‘I do indeed see it.’

‘That cloth is one of the premier Donegal tweeds. The cut is clearly that of the sharp little tailor
who’s
done for your family for a hundred years. Now, would you have the gall to walk into his rooms in a jacket off the Army and Navy rack?’

Melrose squinched up his eyes and looked at the ceiling in a pretense of thinking. Then he said, ‘No.
You’re
right. I
wouldn’t.’

‘Of course you
wouldn’t.
It would be like me wearing pink jeans.’

‘Is it possible you two are missing the point of all this?’ Trueblood rattled the paper, jabbed his finger at the news item.

Diane
wasn’t
troubled by the point of all this. ‘Of course it could be that she
didn’t
want to get her Dolce and Gabbana messed about. The problem
isn’t
hers now.
She’s
dead as a doornail. What about this boy who masqueraded as her son? What happened to him? Or may be going to happen?’

Joanna struck out half a page and raised her eyes to look at Diane. ‘Good lord, Diane. It almost sounds as if you care.’

Diane brought her silky eyebrows together, as if she were weighing the words. ‘Well, not care,
exactly,
but it goes against the grain to see one so young in danger. He was part of it. Of course, he could have been a friend of the killer. I mean, part of the conspiracy. But why were they doing it? I must admit it is an intriguing little problem.’ She sipped her martini. ‘Ah, well, Superintendent Jury will sort it.’

Marshall Trueblood, still with his eyes on the paper, said, ‘Not unless fate steps in. I told you.’

‘But fate,’ said Melrose, ‘apparently has.’

49

The boy’s name was Timmy. He had seen her picture, the dead lady’s, in one of the newspapers lying on a table in the lounge and had no idea what to do or if he should do anything. He remembered her, of course he did. He wasn’t stupid. And he wasn’t deaf, either.

Timmy sat on the edge of his cot after he’d made it, pulling the rough brown blanket tight and tucking it in. Most of the others couldn’t make their beds; all they could do was yank and pull. There were five other cots in his room. They all looked unmade or stirred up. His things were in a small trunk at the foot of his bed. Being orderly and neat made him feel safer.

He looked at the woman’s picture again. When she’d come here to take him out she’d been wearing fancy sunglasses and had the lightest hair, long to her shoulders. But then she’d gotten rid of the sunglasses and changed the hair. He wanted to ask her why she’d done this, but of course he couldn’t. She had smiled and said her name was Rose or Rosa and that this was all a huge trick, a game they were playing.

And all this time later, inside that same house, somebody smothered her or something. Why? Why was she there again? Why hadn’t she come to take him along? If she had, would he have been dead now, too?

It was terrible now, to think about that day, for now fear had attached itself to it. Now, it was dangerous. It had been such a wonderful day. Especially running down through the untended gardens behind the house to where that girl was playing. And that dog. That dog would always be his favorite. Even if he were to get his own dog, no, that dog was the best. Not that there was much hope he’d ever have one.

He stood up and, with the paper under his arm, went in search of help.

Not that he had high hopes of finding that, either.

‘I see two possibilities,’ said Tom Dryer. ‘One is a small school for autistic and deaf and dumb children. I mean hearing- and speech- impaired children. We can’t even say that anymore—‘impaired’; now we have to say ‘challenged.’

‘We can’t say much of anything anymore,’ said Jury.

Dryer laughed. ‘No. Another place is a family who takes in handicapped children. I understand a few have been autistic, so it’s possible the lad might have come from there. If you’re right about this. Why don’t you take the school and I’ll take the family?’ He tore off the notebook page on which he’d written the address and handed it to Jury.

‘The Lark Rise Special School, isn’t it? This is the one Harry Johnson told me about. One of the reasons Robbie’s mum wanted a house there. Why she was looking. Not just a weekend getaway place. Not that that makes any difference anymore,’ Jury added, ruefully.

‘There’s a Mrs. Copley-Sutton in charge.’

‘Have you talked to her?’

‘No. I thought it would be better for one of us to simply turn up unannounced.’

‘So you’re thinking if someone came along—someone being Harry Johnson’s girlfriend—and wanted to take out one of the boys, Mrs. Copley-Sutton would permit this?’ said Jury.

‘If the visitor claimed to be some relative or even friend of the family. Yes, I think she would. Especially if a sizable donation to the school came along with the family friend. This headmistress has a reputation for being a bit of a wide lady, so to speak. Nothing terrible, of course; she’s very nice to the children, but still—’ Dryer shrugged. ‘Do you have your mobile?’