Read The Old Wine Shades Online

Authors: Martha Grimes

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Traditional

The Old Wine Shades (43 page)

BOOK: The Old Wine Shades
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Harry laughed. He took it all absolutely happily. What amazed Jury was that he apparently didn’t feel in any danger. The kids had fled, after all. They could be talking to police a mile a minute. Talking away. Identifying Harry. ‘Yes, he’s the bloke that had us prisoners.’ Pointing to a picture: ‘That’s him all right. We’d not forget him, not bloody likely.’

Jury’s fantasy. Except there was no picture, no identification. Was Harry one of those people—seldom seen, in Jury’s experience— who would stonewall until the bitter end, until the wall completely crumbled?

‘You’re just too bloody clever, Harry.’

‘I?
I’m
clever. No, I’d say the cleverness crown definitely goes to you. And that friend of yours. Niels Bohr, for God’s sake. Niels
Bohr.
I’ll say this for your friend. He had me going for a while. He had a grasp of the principle of complementarity almost as good as Hugh’s. He’s quite brilliant, your friend. We went back and forth, through a bottle of Bordeaux’—Harry tapped his glass again—’not this, but an excellent Chateau Margaux, right Trev?’

‘Right. That cost you,’ said Trevor, with a huge smile. Trevor was fascinated. He stood behind the bar polishing the glasses, which he would then hold up to the light to check for smears.

‘Anyway,’ Harry went on, ‘we went back and forth, back and forth. It was like a game of chess, really.’ He smiled, remembering. ‘Who got checkmated?’

‘Oh, we didn’t get to the end after I realized you’d just slipped away. Where did you go?’

‘I had a date. ‘ Jury leaned toward him, lowered his voice. ‘What were you going to do to them, Harry?’

‘Them who?’

‘Timmy and Tilda.’

Oh, lord, are we back to
them
again?’ He checked his watch.

‘Dinner?’

‘No, thanks. I’ve got to be some place.’ Jury got up, finished his glass of wine.

So did Harry finish off his. ‘Well, I’m starving. So I guess it’s to be just Mungo and me.’

Mungo came out, looking (Jury would have said) jaded (if that was possible for a dog), world-weary, dead tired, knackered. Jury reached down and gave his head a rub. Jury hadn’t taken off his coat, so he didn’t need to put it on.

After Harry got into his black cashmere and dropped some enormous sum of money on the bar, they walked out. Harry stopped outside to light up a cigarette.

‘Give me one of those, will you?’

‘What? A cigarette? You stopped smoking.’ Harry held out his cigarette case. ‘Well, I hate to be the cause of your starting up again.’

‘I bet you do. Harry, I’m going to dog your footsteps.’

Mungo looked sharply up.

‘Sorry.’

‘Think nothing of it.’

‘I wasn’t talking to you, Harry.’

Harry laughed. ‘Good, we can meet regularly right here for a progress report. Right now, I’m starving. Night.’ He walked off, whistling, turned around and waved.

Mungo turned around, too.

Jury was glad he couldn’t see his expression.

He put the cigarette in his mouth, patted his coat up and down frisking himself for matches, knowing he had none. But it was a pleasant reminder of what he used to do.

Jury smiled.

It wasn’t for the smoke.

That, he tossed in the gutter.

BOOK: The Old Wine Shades
9.2Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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