The Drowned Man (22 page)

When the sommelier left, Alice said, “No. You might say that I am in the non-insured business.”

“Okay. What kind of business are we talking about? And why were you on my floor?” His voice had quickly turned hard.

“I'm in a cash business. I know you can appreciate that.”

Lembridge had implied that Crerar was avaricious, a man with too much discretionary cash (unlike the academic himself), and Alida, during the long hours on the bus, had tried to guess how brutal and grasping the businessman would turn out to be. If anything, he was both shrewder and more lustful than expected. She decided to be forthright, in order to find common ground in their mutual greed, all the while dangling the chance of sex.

“I have something you'll want to purchase,” she said.

“First, tell me what business you're in.”

“Rare documents, artifacts that have come onto the market,” Alida said.

“Or haven't come onto the market, young woman. From what sources do you get hold of these items?”

“Let's leave that for a moment. There's a proper order to do these things,” she said.

“I need to know who referred you to me,” he insisted, although the possibility of sex muted his tone.

“Put it this way. We will need an authenticator who is acceptable to both of us. Once we agree on that expert, you will know who gave me your name.”

“I have to assess the risk. The trail of ownership must be validated,” he said, leaning close to her. “I can't risk buying an item on the Stolen Art list.”

Alida respected Crerar's spine. He outmatched Johnny and Lembridge both. She shifted tactics again.

“Nonsense,” she said, mustering an edgier tone. “The risk-reward is based on your needing to own this item, even if you only visit it once a year in the safety deposit chamber of your bank. With that in mind, previous ownership is moot. The bonus, Mr. Crerar, is that no one knew this document existed until three months ago, so that listing problem is solved. The only issue is authentication.”

“Call me Ron, Miss Smith, please.”

For the balance of their lunch, she managed to control the negotiation. She refused more wine. She let drop that the two documents were Civil War–era treasures and then she linked them to the assassination. Within ten more minutes, she had him begging to know how John Wilkes Booth might be connected to them. She feared for a second that he had heard about the Booth letters already, but it was a natural question. When she informed him that she had photocopies of two letters in her briefcase, one signed by the assassin, he gave her a broad smile of admiration. If only he knew that the originals were slotted in her portfolio, too, right next to the copies. Ten minutes later, the duplicates, set out on the linen tablecloth, effectively closed the deal. She sensed his testosterone rising as the greed took hold.

They worked through the arrangements over the next hour. Alida ordered three desserts, but only because she was hungry. He seemed charmed, as if gluttony equated with self-assurance. The price came down from $85,000 to $50,000, subject to verification by the document expert. She said she had someone in mind. They discussed a mutually convenient venue outside Rochester. Summing up, Alida promised to call him within a week to confirm the expert's name and the locale for the exchange. It was all so reasonable. They would close the deal ten days hence in a safe spot a few miles back down the I-90. She refused his dinner invitation, saying she was far too full.

Michael and Maddy drove down to Henley on a Saturday morning. He took the wheel. Jasper positioned herself in the centre of the back seat and served as a kind of moderator between husband and wife.

Michael, Peter and Joan's only son and their oldest child, couldn't believe his luck when Maddy came into his life. He worked in the parole system in Leeds and she was high up in women's services. He believed they were a complete match. The loss of the baby had sent her into a depression, from which she seemed to have recovered. Now, he found Maddy's passion for amateur sleuthing amusing and gratifying, for she was jollier than he'd seen her in months. He watched her sort her stack of lists and diagrams and he smiled, ready to give her his total support. His love for his wife didn't prevent him from indulging the family habit of edgy sarcasm. As they crossed into Oxfordshire he said, “This is a shot in the dark, if ever there was one.”

“Thanks for that, dear. But you didn't see my clever dissection of the population of Henley-on-Thames. Your dad would be proud.”

“Did you perform a regression analysis of the entire Oxfordshire demographic, then?” Each had a half dozen credits in social statistics.

“No, it's just a bloody list, my love. But I'm so confident of finding her, I'm doing this on a Saturday.”

“Which means what?”

“The town registry is closed on Saturdays. Have to rely on my own resources.”

They drove on in silence for several miles. “And I have my trusty dog,” she added.

“What was the name of Sherlock's hound?” Michael said.

“Toby. He was in the story I was reading last night.”

Michael looked over at her. “Have you been in dad's study?” It wasn't meant as an admonishment, and Maddy knew it.

“Peter okayed it. And your mum said it was all right to borrow the books. She's read them, too, she said.”

Michael felt like the odd man out in a family of detectives.

Maddy had visited Henley-on-Thames as a child and vaguely remembered the bridge and the waterfront. The Thames, of course, gave the town its charm and its drawing power for those seeking a semi-rural retreat. The world-famous regatta was over for the year and the town had returned to its lazy, riverside calm. They arrived as the locals were descending into the core for Saturday shopping. The couple found themselves moving against the flow but within a few streets the traffic thinned. They pulled over to reconnoitre. Maddy had annotated her printout map of Henley with swooping red arrows.

“Are we invading the Falklands?” Michael said.

“We start from the centre and work out to the fringes, pausing only for pee breaks. Jasper, don't drool on the assault plan.”

The maiden name of Alice's mother was Mabel Ida Parsons. By lunchtime, they had checked every “Parsons” on Maddy's list, starting with the directory entries that listed an “M. Parsons” and an “I. Parsons.” They called ahead but if they got no answer, they drove to the address. They advanced from the core to the suburbs. Henley was not a big place and they finished their itinerary faster than anticipated. No one offered a connection to a woman who had spent time in India. The only “Nahri” named in the directory did not answer, either to a call or a direct visit. Michael and Jasper stayed in the car while Maddy knocked on the doors on either side of each listed address. There were no responses.

Back in the car, she said, “What a crappy detective I am. Your dad would find her in a split second.”

“With the resources of the entire Yard behind him,” Michael said. “We can keep looking, Maddy, but we don't know she ever had her own house. She may be sixty-five or ninety-five, or dead.”

“She's not dead. I'm sure. Let's check the nursing homes.”

He leaned towards her, ostensibly to look at her list but really to show solidarity. Jasper poked her head between the seats to see, too.

“Okay,” he said, “we start at A and go to Z. What's first on the list?”

“Albemarle Nursing Home.”

“What's last?” Michael said.

“Retirement Home for Superannuated Zulus.”

There were seven old-folks' facilities in Henley with variations on retirement, care, and nursing in their titles. They visited five and rang up the other two. None of the administrators counted a Mabel Ida, née Parsons, Nahri among their occupants, nor did any recall a citizen of Henley by that name. Maddy sat in the passenger seat in a dejected slouch and Jasper poked her with her damp muzzle. It had begun to drizzle. It was already mid-afternoon and they were back on the high street. Michael looked up the road through the windscreen.

“I need one more variable in the mix,” Maddy said. “I would bet the lotto Ida followed in the footsteps of Orwell's mom. I'm sure of it.”

But it was Michael who experienced the moment of gestalt. While they sat there in the street in the rain, neither ready to head back to Leeds, he read through her printout of Eric Blair's Wikipedia biography. Michael had never read Conan Doyle but he knew who Dr. Watson was and that had so far been his role on this trip, providing support and occasional flippant suggestions. But for that moment he became the detective — not Sherlock, but Peter. Michael had once overheard Joan say that she thought Peter had psychic powers, a magical ability to put facts together and divine the truth. As a boy, Michael had been scared of his father's putative gift. Now, on a quiet street in Henley, he came to understand Peter's secret, mundane as it was: the job of the detective is to persevere until small truths reveal themselves to his tuned-in instincts.

“Can you wait here?” He got out of the car.

“Can't we come?” Maddy said.

He turned and leaned into the car. “Would you say from the sign up the road that that might be the oldest tea shop in Henley?”

He came back in five minutes and scurried in from the rain. “Not only did I find her, I was swarmed by three women who demanded to know how she was, would I say hello, and could I please report back on her condition.”

Maddy's look was almost feverish. “How did you figure it out? More important, where is she?”

“She's in a retirement place in Shiplake. You said Mabel wanted to be a British lady. Where would a British lady of limited means spend a lot of time? Tea rooms, of course.”

“And Orwell spent a couple of his childhood years in Shiplake, just up the road from here!” Maddy burst out.

“She ran a hat shop in Henley for twelve years. Two streets over, but it's closed now. She had tea here every afternoon. But there's a reason they pestered me for information, Maddy. She's got cancer.”

They decided to have lunch first — “Anywhere but that tea room,” he insisted — before venturing to Shiplake. They ate sandwiches in the Saab in a park by the Thames, both of them a bit amazed at their detective work.

Mrs. Mabel Nahri, known locally as “Ida,” was passing her latter days in what was billed as an “assisted living” flat in the only such facility in the village of Shiplake. The administrator of the home, a prim woman of about fifty, accompanied Maddy and Michael from the entrance up to the second floor. She halted outside a room that plainly was Mrs. Nahri's.

“You will find the room a bit strange. Assisted living implies a degree of independent capacity, to prepare one's own meals, for example. Ida no longer has the wherewithal. But she has been here for years. We maintain a more medically intensive service on the fourth floor but we didn't have the heart to move her. We brought the mountain to her.”

“Is she fully aware?” Maddy said.

“She does not suffer from dementia but the cancer has weakened her,” she whispered at the threshold. “If she becomes agitated, it's from worry over her two daughters.”

“Do they visit often?” Maddy asked.

“Alice came by a month ago but her visits have been sporadic. She's the one who pays the expenses. The other sister, Avril, is mentally challenged and lives in a facility a few miles off.”

“How are the payments made?” Michael said.

The question was impudent, Michael realized too late. They had already admitted that they weren't family members, but the presence of the dog had implied that they were friends of the family. The woman now pursed her lips and hesitated, prepared to defend her patient's privacy.

“What is your connection to the Nahris?”

Maddy and Michael each presented a business card. The woman seemed to have the impression that they were some kind of inspectors on a formal visit. She frowned and looked down at Jasper.

“We're hoping to find Alice,” Maddy said. Her tone implied that Alice was in some trouble, unspecified.

Maddy watched the administrator weigh all the factors. Alice didn't visit often, Maddy could see, and it was never the woman's intention to be confrontational — she welcomed visitors and Ida had so few.

“A bank in Henley covers the invoice each month. Most months, anyway.” The woman's demeanour softened as she glanced again at Jasper. “It will be all right to take the dog inside. It might cheer her up. By the way, always address her as Ida.”

She opened the door for them. The flat was one large chamber that managed to combine sitting room, bedroom, and kitchen. Bookcases, a sideboard, worn Persian rugs, and landscape prints personalized the space but the hospital bed in the centre of the chamber spoke “critical care.” Medical machinery surrounded the bed. Maddy found it impossible to guess the age of the woman in it. The wasting cancer had shrunk the skin around her face and neck. Her eyes widened when she saw Maddy. The tendons at her throat tightened like ropes as she struggled to speak. “Have you seen Ali and Avy?”

Maddy pulled up a chair next to the bed and reached for the woman's hand. Jasper lay down on the rug next to her; Ida did not seem aware of the dog. Maddy remembered that the woman wasn't suffering from dementia, and spoke to her accordingly.

“No. When was the last time you saw Alice?”

“I can't remember when but we had tea together, watched a movie together.” Ida turned away.

While it seemed disrespectful to launch immediately into a cross-examination of the old woman, Maddy seized the opening. “Do you know where Alice might be?”

Her gaze swung back to Maddy. “She would never return to India! There is no possibility of that.”

Maddy had dealt with hundreds of lonely women not all that different from Ida, and she knew when to back off. She remained quiet as the old woman lay back on her pillow. But there would never be another opportunity to trace Alice Nahri backward in time. Nor could Peter afford to wait for Alice to show up in Shiplake again.

“Where would she . . .”

“Alice is in London,” the old woman whispered.

“Do you have a number where you can reach her? She needs to know about your health.”

“My daughter will know.”

Ida had exhausted herself. She closed her eyes but remained half awake. Michael circled the room, inspecting the framed pictures of Alice and Avril as children. Avril, unsmiling, was tiny and looked at the camera with sad, worried eyes, while Alice, much taller, projected impish confidence. Maddy continued to hold the woman's hand until she dozed off, then she joined Michael in his circuit.

Most of the books on the four-tier stand were bought-by-the-yard classics in cheap leather bindings, but Michael noted that well-thumbed copies of Orwell's
Coming Up for Air
and
Burmese Days
held pride of place on the eye-level shelf.

“Notice anything special about the items here?” Michael said.

Maddy allowed him his detective moment. “Not a thing.”

“There are four videotapes on the bottom shelf. The television over there has a
VCR
attached to it. What do the movies have in common?”

Maddy knelt down and removed the four James Cameron films:
Titanic
,
The Abyss
,
The Terminator
,
Avatar
. The first three were videotapes but
Avatar
was a
DVD
, not playable on Ida's machine. The boxed set looked new, whereas the others showed frequent use,
Titanic
the most.

“Seems to me Ida is more the
Howard's End
,
Brideshead Revisited
type,” Maddy said, her tone conceding that she had no real insight into Ida Nahri's tastes.

“Certainly not a Bollywood fan.
Titanic
and
Avatar
are the top-grossing pictures of all time. I wonder if they were as big in India when Alice lived there,” Michael said.

Maddy examined the videos one by one and gained some understanding of Alice's visits to her mother. Ida had been ill a while. Maddy's own mother had died a lingering death in a hospital and she knew that the boring stretches — Mum dozing, Mum out of the room for treatments — expanded time itself. These were Alice's favourite flicks, not Ida's.

“If I tell you, will you find Ali for me?” the old woman called out suddenly. She struggled to sit up in bed. Maddy moved to her side and leaned in close.

“Yes. Can you help me?”

“How far along are you?”

“We think she went to America.”

“No, I didn't mean that.” Her voice grew stronger. Her focus became bright and direct. “You're pregnant, aren't you? I'd say three months gone.”