The Old Wine Shades (9 page)

Who the hell was Hubert?

‘–the young lad, he’s one of the few children in fiction I’ve found convincing.’

Major Champs said, ‘We agree on that certainly.’ They disagreed about other things and that was just splendid! Melrose fancied an argument that would offer up all sorts of morsels for him to file away before he saw her again. ‘In what way, precisely, do you find Hubert convincing?’

‘Because... well, look at the way he responds to his mother’s death and his father’s suicide. Then the sister’s falling from that cliff side–’

Melrose smiled slowly. He had no idea what they were talking about. ‘Yes, but did she really fall?’ Of course she didn’t. Had any victim ever ‘accidentally’ fallen off a cliff or for that matter, a chair–in any mystery? ‘

Colonel Neame slapped the chair arm and said, gleefully, ‘Exactly, exactly! And did the mother really have a heart condition?’ Wink, wink, nod, nod.

Melrose was picking up stuff. But it left him wondering about the chef and that dinner party at the beginning. What did all of these deaths in one family and the poodle have to do with that? Were all three of them reading the same book? Yes, the title of the one Major Champs held was quite definitely The Gourmandise Way.

‘Thing is,’ he said, brow knitted in puzzlement, ‘I’ve only gotten around, oh...’ He was going to trap himself if he wasn’t careful.

(After all, he’d acted as if he’d read about Hubert.) ‘Well, I’ve not gotten terribly far, and I just wonder about the ‘gourmand’ idea.’

‘He’s the father, isn’t he? He’s the chef.’ Major Champs gave Melrose a lowering look from under his thick eyebrows.

‘Oh, the chef! Yes, of course, he’s the chef.’ Melrose took a long swallow of his whiskey, commenting on how smooth it was.

Where did that damned poodle fit in? She’d asked him how he liked the Labrador, so she was certain to ask about the poodle.

‘Evening, gentlemen,’ came a voice from behind Melrose.

‘Superintendent!’ said Major Champs and Colonel Neame in unison.

Jury made a slight bow and greeted Melrose Plant. ‘Back in the enfolding arms of Boring’s.’

‘Delighted to see you, Mr. Jury, or’–Colonel Neame continued, sotto voce–’is there trouble afoot?’ From his expression, one could tell he was hopeful.

‘Not yet, anyway.’

Major Champs said, ‘I hope a body doesn’t turn up every time you do, Superintendent!’

‘So do I.’

They laughed at this and slapped their chair arms.

Melrose had beckoned to one of the porters as soon as Jury appeared. Sit down, he said to Jury, making room on the leather sofa the unfortunate color of dried blood.

Jury removed his coat and sat as the porter (slightly stooped, but not as old as Young Higgins) came up to their group. Melrose said, ‘Whiskey all round.’

Colonel Neame reminisced: ‘That death here was quite the most exciting and unnerving time I’ve had since the war. A real shocker, that was. To think the killer just walked in, stabbed poor Pitt and walked out again and no one the wiser.’

Said Major Champs, ‘Just goes to show how dead we all must look in Boring’s.’

Jury laughed. ‘No, I really don’t think so; what it shows is how shockingly easy it is for someone to commit a murder in a public place. Like this.’

The waiter reappeared and set down their drinks.

‘Cheers,’ said Melrose. They all raised their glasses.

‘So you’re not here on police business?’

‘No, just to have lunch.’

Major Champs harrumphed. ‘Well, I’m surprised someone hasn’t killed the cook.’

Melrose laughed. ‘That bad?’

‘Lamb was tough. Still, food’s usually decent enough. I expect even the cook can have a bad day now and then.’

‘But not as bad, let’s hope,’ Melrose held up the book, ‘as Miss Praed’s chef.’

12

Young Higgins informed them that as there’d been a run on the lamb during this luncheon, he hoped the cold beef tongue would suffice. Or the stuffed portobello mushroom?’

Melrose raised an inquiring eye. ‘A run? But there’s no one else here, Higgins.’ Melrose spread his arms in testimony to empty space.

‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ said Jury. ‘The mushrooms are fine with me, Higgins.’

‘Mushroom,’ said Melrose. ‘There’s only one.’

‘What are they stuffed with, Higgins?’

‘What is it stuffed with? Good grief,’ Melrose said. ‘Wiggins would know more about portobello mushrooms than you.’

‘If it was stuffed with a ground physic, maybe,’ said Jury.

‘With what?’

‘A ground-lamb mixture, m’ lord,’ said Young Higgins to Melrose.

Melrose said, ‘Don’t tell me, I’m not having them.’

‘It,’ said Jury.

Melrose gritted his teeth.

‘I guess now we know what happened to the lamb!’ said Jury with a manufactured gleeful smile.

Young Higgins joined in the revelry with a wrinkled smile of his own. ‘Yes, sir, and we also have a tomato-mozzarella salad.’ Jury spread his huge white napkin across his lap. ‘Sounds good.’

‘Indeed, sir.’ Higgins bowed. ‘And you’ll be having the cold tongue, m’ lord?’

Melrose shivered. ‘No, I guess I’ll have the portobello mushroom. We’ll both have it.’

‘Them,’ said Jury.

Melrose glared.

‘And we’ll have the salad also?’ said Young Higgins.

Melrose was tempted to say they would but was Young Higgins joining them? Higgins seemed to have adopted this Irish idiom of asking a question that wasn’t a question and, in the bargain, including himself in. Instead, Melrose said to Jury, ‘We will, won’t we?’ Jury nodded. ‘We will, yes.’

The elderly waiter shuffled away.

‘Young Higgins isn’t getting any younger.’ Jury sighed as if this marked a stage in his own increase of years.

‘He’s not getting any older, either. He was probably an eighty year-old teenager.’ Melrose opened the carte du vin. ‘The wine, the wine, the wine... Now what goes with portabello mushrooms?’ He ran his eye down the list. ‘How about a nice little Merlot?’

‘How about a nice big Merlot? Or maybe a Montrachet ‘66. All of the other ‘66s are over the hill. Undrinkable. But what I’d really like is a Bordeaux, say a Chateau Petrus? It’s pretty pricey, but you can afford it.’

Melrose shut his eyes. ‘Now, we’ve become a wine enthusiast?’

‘I don’t know about you, but I have. The bottle shouldn’t be much over a couple hundred pounds.’

‘Really? Well, let’s have a case if that’s all!’

‘Okay.’

Melrose sought out one of the waiters, his eyes connecting with those of the (really) young ginger-haired one who came over snappily. Melrose gave him the wine order–the nice little Merlot–and the waiter sailed off.

This done, Melrose rested the wine list against the marble column by which the table sat. The columns were fixed at strategic places around the room, which was a handsome one, with its dark wood and vaulted ceiling and snow-white tablecloths. ‘Okay,’ he said again. ‘You have a story to tell me, you said.’

Jury thought for a moment, but not about Harry Johnson.

‘Maybe that’s what we live for, why we go on.’

Melrose gave him a look. ‘You never got over the Henry James contest, did you? ‘Why we go on,’ indeed. Are you saying we live for stories?’

‘Children do, don’t they? Isn’t that their favorite thing?’

‘After beating each other up and tying firecrackers to their dogs’ tails, yes, I imagine they like to relax over a good story. I expect you’re making a point, but I don’t know what it is.’

‘I’m not sure I do, either. The Henry James competition, remember: ‘Man walked into a pub,’ et cetera,’ Jury said.

‘Ah. The master himself would put it perhaps as ‘After a grave exchange with his interlocutor, Lord Joyner made his way to his dear old Pot and Pickle,’ blah blah blah.’

‘Off the top of your head, damned good James.’

‘It’s not easy being Henry James.’

‘No. Well, that’s the point about this story. It begins in just that way. A man walked into a pub and told me this story.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘That’s exactly what I said to him. Told him he was winding me up. Anyway, the pub’s in the City. It’s called the Old Wine Shades.

I was there, sitting at the bar, glooming away, nothing special–’

‘Special what?’

‘For a gloom.’

‘Ah. Go on.’

‘A man walked in, clearly well off, clothes like yours–’

‘This rag of a jacket?’ Melrose pulled the collar down for a better look.

‘–and sat down beside me. Somehow that sounds ominous.’

‘Yes, like Little Miss Muffet. Go on.’

‘He told me this story.’ Here Jury related the story to Melrose in great detail. Gödel. Niels Bohr. Wave function. It took him through the salad, the portobello mushroom, the pudding and now through brandy and coffee. ‘His name is Harry Johnson, did I mention that?’

‘Yes. That’s the strangest story I’ve ever heard,’ said Melrose, as he returned to the lighting of a cigar. ‘Not only because of the initial situation, but because it’s a story within a story within a story.’

Jury frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘It’s four stories. Didn’t you notice?’ Melrose shoved his cup and glass aside and leaned toward Jury. ‘One’–he folded down his index finger–’is Johnson himself; he’s the frame of the story.

Two’–the second finger bent inward–’is the story of the disappearance of the Gault woman’–third finger ticked this off–’three is Ben Torres’s story, and four’–fourth finger down–’is the story his mother told him.’

Jury reflected. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘And in a way, it gets further and further from the first story. It’s like those little Russian nesting dolls. Matryoshkas?’

‘If it is, what’s your point?’

‘Well, that would certainly make me wonder if he’s telling the truth.’

Jury smiled. ‘You know that would somehow be the most outrageous thing of all. Is he? I asked him that during the first dinner and he asked why would he lie. To what end? Sergeant Wiggins thinks he followed me into the pub, that he knew who I was and told me the story.’

‘You’re still left with ‘why?’ You believe him?’

‘Not altogether. It becomes harder and harder the more he tells and yet easier and easier with his telling it.’

‘You mean we’ve not come to the end?’

‘No, apparently not. He said that first night that there was no end. By that I expect he means no solution.’

‘Does he think perhaps you might be able to solve it?’ Jury shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Say he does know who you are. Sergeant Wiggins may well be right.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Just say he does know you. What if this is not something that happened, but something that’s going to happen.’

Jury looked disbelieving at first and then amused. ‘How could it be–’

‘Richard. You can listen to all this codswallop night after night, yet you can’t entertain this theory? Admittedly odd, but then so’s the whole story.’ Melrose rolled his cigar around in his mouth. ‘An event in the future.’

‘When did you take up cigars?’

‘This afternoon. I knew it would annoy you to death.’

‘Thanks. Well, this theory of yours, can you take it out for a walk? Explain it?’

‘No. Let me think .... If this is to happen in the future, it must be that Mr. Johnson is protecting himself or someone else. But how would it do that?’ Melrose rubbed the back of his neck. ‘What if this Hugh–’

‘Gauh.’

‘–if Hugh Gault was trying to acquire this property for some reason–no, no, no. That’s not what I mean ....

A hypothetical: you investigate, you solve this mystery–’

‘Not officially. I’m on leave, remember? CS Racer thinks I need a rest. What he really thinks is I need another job.’

Melrose made a face and was silent.

Jury broke the silence. ‘You’re theorizing that Wiggins is right, that Harry knew who I was, that he deliberately sought me out?’

‘I expect that’s what I’m saying, yes. I don’t think it would suit his purpose to tell this story to just anybody. Hasn’t your picture been in the paper, showing you as an example of police brutality?’ Melrose grinned.

‘Don’t exaggerate.’ Jury sat back. ‘That is a point I hadn’t considered- He might have recognized me, true.’ Jury frowned.

‘And there’s this shadow over your police record. You’ve ‘shaken the very foundations of police work.’ That’s a quote from one of the rags.’

‘So I would be particularly vulnerable.’

‘Like that, yes.’

‘I have to admit I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘It’s still murky, of course. Say he wants to engage you, wants you as a witness. What I can’t get my mind around is that Harry Johnson walked into–what’s the pub?’

‘The Old Wine Shades.’