The Five Bells and Bladebone (36 page)

“I’m not her.” Her head lolled, fell back against his arm.

He put his arms around her, lay his head against her hair.

Ambiguous to the end.

I
N THE
F
IVE
B
ELLS
and Bladebone, Jury sat listening to the jukebox and waiting for Tommy Diver to shake a few hands and say good-bye.

He pegged five ten-p pieces into the jukebox and went up to the bar with his empty pint. Molly must have been out sweeping the streets for business; it looked as if everyone in the Commercial Road had landed up here. He could barely see Tommy in the back, where they had, naturally, started a game of poker or gin. Jury wondered how much money the kid had left.

Kath emerged through the smoke into his line of vision and decided to be generous with advice if he’d be as generous in the drinks department. He stood them all a round. “Long as you vote, it don’t make much of a damn who for. Excepting this one” — she pointed to a picture of a porcine-faced gentleman — “that’s standing for the same borough I am. He’s a thief and a fornicator.” Today she wore three hats, proceeds from her tenancy in the park: a sombrero, a trilby, and, topping those, a rugby cap.

“I’ll remember,” said Jury, stuffing the pamphlet in his pocket.

Jack Krael, eye fixed on a point in air before him, asked, “You getting anywheres with that Sadie Diver business?”

“Yes.” Jury put down his money and motioned to Molloy to fill Jack’s glass. “I think we’ve pretty much wound it up.”

Jack looked around at Jury. “It weren’t Ruby, were it? She, ah, knew the man, and there was talk going around . . .”

“No, definitely not. She’s right out of it.”

“Good.” That point settled, he returned his gaze to the air. Jury stood, back against the bar, listening to Linda Ronstadt, still trying to get home to the bayou:

“
Savin’ nickles, sa-ha-vin’ dimes . . 
.”

Then Jack said, “If it wasn’t her, who was it then? Or can’t you say? I expect you can’t.”

Jury was silent for a moment, listening to the description of the fishing boats. “No one you knew. A stranger.” He stubbed out his cigarette in a tin ashtray.

“It’s too bad about the lad, though.” Jack was rolling a cigarette, pinching in the end, patting his pockets for matches.

Jury gave him a light. “Yes, it’s too bad.” He tossed the dead match in the ashtray. “Well, we better be going.”

Jack stuck out his hand. “Pleasure. Come round sometime.”

“
 . . . and be happy again
.”

“Thanks,” said Jury.

ONE WEEK LATER

M
AJOR
E
USTACE
-H
OBSON
, local magistrate, managed to open his eyes long enough to inform Lady Ardry yet once again that she must stop addressing him as
M’lud,
that it wasn’t appropriate in this sort of case. He failed to add, however, that he wasn’t a lord, and sank back into his chair, small hands folded over a hard little grapefruit-like paunch.

Agatha should count her blessings, thought Melrose, as he sat between Vivian and Jury in the old schoolroom made quite warm by the presence of some thirty observers. Major Eustace-Hobson was known for meting out a sleepy justice whenever he undertook a duty such as the present one. He was not a man who believed that Britain ever had been a nation of butchers, or that the welfare of the realm depended on its greengrocers.

He was, in other words, a dreadful snob, who kept sweeping away Mr. Jurvis’s objections and allowing Agatha her long-winded perorations.

In the absence of Sir Archibald, Agatha had decided to act as her own counsel, and was doing whatever she could
to impress upon the court the physical pain this was causing her because of her foot. Raymond Burr in a wheelchair was a symphony of motion compared to Agatha dragging her foot. For a good five minutes now she had been blathering on about the rights of pedestrians, a dangerous tack to take, thought Melrose, since she herself had been driving her car. But she maneuvered around this point adroitly by shifting attention to that bane of the pedestrian’s life: the zebra crossing.

“You know and I know — well, we
all
know—” Here she swept her arm about the schoolroom. “— the disgraceful failure of motorists to allow us, the beleaguered pedestrians, to cross where it is our legal right to do so. I am merely pointing out that to put that pig on the pavement is as unlucky for the pedestrian as a speeding car at a zebra crossing. Now —”

Quickly, before Jurvis could get to his feet and question that analogy, she droned on. There was no question she had done her homework. She had cited and cited from behind a barricade of dusty books and papers, and was citing now:

“There was in nineteen-aught-fourteen the case of a gentleman who sued the local pub because its old gallows sign had become unhinged —”

Jurvis jumped up. The poor man could stand it no longer. “If anything’s unhinged round here, it’s —”

Major Eustace-Hobson’s eyelids snapped up and he told Mr. Jurvis in a very sharp tone that that would be enough.

“But there’s no comparison, sir: ’twas the
sign
moved there. My pig, it didn’t move a step.”

As Jurvis was told once again to sit down, Richard Jury, seated between Plant and Marshall Trueblood, pulled the Northampton paper from his pocket and reread the account of Hannah Lean’s death. A verdict of suicide had been reached, “whilst the balance of the mind.” And the
motive for this was, of course, the shock caused by the tragic death of her husband.

Rough justice, at least, thought Jury. Pratt had done a superior job of stonewalling reporters. He had agreed with Jury that despite what happened finally, it was certain that the two of them meant to do away with Hannah Lean: the recorded delivery, the stuff that had been taken from Watermeadows, the talks police had had with the manager of Tibbet’s and even Trevor Sly — all pointed to that end.

And then Pratt had added sadly, “Any sharpish solicitor could have got her off for the murder of her husband. Didn’t that occur to her?”

Jury folded the paper, the account he’d read by now half-a-dozen times, and put it back in his pocket. It was just in time to hear Major Eustace-Hobson handing down a verdict.

Agatha won.

 • • • 

“And justice triumphs yet once again,” said Marshall Trueblood, as he stood in Shoe Lane lighting a green cigarette. “I think dear Agatha must have sent out invitations.” The four of them stood watching the onlookers swarm out of the old village school at the end of the lane. Like filmgoers, they came out chatting and laughing and having a jolly time going over the performance.

As they left Shoe Lane for the main street, Melrose heard Alice Broadstairs say to Lavinia Vine: “One pound thirty. You know that
is
a good price for mince.” Lavinia nodded. “
Awfully
good. We shall have to stop going to that man in Sidbury.”

“That’s the most
unfair
decision I’ve ever heard!” said Vivian, her face made even more beautiful by the heightened color her fury lent it. “If anyone was the perpetrator, it was Agatha! Poor Mr. Jurvis.”

“Jurvis! Don’t be an idiot, Viv-viv,” said Marshall
Trueblood. “He’ll do a smashing business after all of this.”

“It’s the principle,” argued Vivian.

“It’s the money,” said Trueblood. He was holding the
Ulysses
under his arm. He tapped it. “It was only when Theo was told the book was relatively worthless because it’d been rebound that he decided to be awfully generous and return to me what was mine.”

“How could it be worthless? Who told him that?”

“A quite well-respected collector, a friend of mine, called round at the Wrenn’s Nest.”

Melrose stopped. They were standing outside of Pluck’s place, where three villagers were trooping in with cake boxes and biscuit tins. “How much did you pay this respected collector?”

“I? I?”

“You, you.” The four of them continued down the pavement.

Diane Demorney came up to them on the arm of Theo Wrenn Browne. “I must say I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in days.” Days, apparently, having been numbered since the investigation had taken the spotlight away.

“It was fixed,” said Vivian, rather snappishly.

Diane raised an eyebrow. “Well, good God, darling, I certainly
hope
so.” Her smile at Jury was blinding. “I’m having everyone round for cocktails, sixish. Do come.”

 • • • 

“Just look at that,” said Trueblood. “What’d I tell you? Won’t be an ounce of beef mince or a chop to put your name to after that lot’s through.” A line snaked from the door of Jurvis’s shop past Ada Crisp’s and the Wrenn’s Nest. Like strangers meeting in a bomb shelter, the people in the queue seemed to have developed a camaraderie.

“Come on, I’ll buy you all a Yellow Lightning, or whatever Scroggs is calling the new one,” said Trueblood, pulling at Vivian’s arm. “It’ll put blood in your veins, Viv-viv. You want to look spiffing for Count D. —”

“Oh,
shut
up!” And as they started away, she turned back. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Oh, yes,” said Melrose. “I just want to show Richard something.”

 • • • 

“I’ll be damned,” said Jury. They were standing out in the road looking up at the shop. There was a large, old sign with fresh paint. At least that part that spelled out
Jurvis. Fine Meats
, was fresh. It had been lettered in gold like an arch over the faded sign of the Pig and Whistle. It hung from a wrought-iron standard over the door. The plaster pig, now having achieved celebrity, stood right at the sill of the door in all of its glory and flamboyant garlands.

“Remember, I told you Sly’s place was once the Pig and Whistle. Naturally, he charged me a king’s ransom. Jurvis loves it. I don’t think Agatha’s seen it yet.” Melrose noticed the folded-up paper in Jury’s pocket, and also noticed it had got a lot of wear. “That was a terrible business,” he said, eyes still on the sign. “A dreadful irony. She should just have killed the bastard. Sentiment would have run completely in her favor.”

“That’s what Pratt said. Something like that.”

There was a long silence, as Jury and Plant stood there in the middle of the High Street, eyes turned up toward the sign.

“So the pig was guilty,” said Melrose.

“And the perp walked,” said Jury.

They turned and crossed the street to the pub, where Jury took out the paper, looked at it once again, and dropped it in a dustbin beside the door.