The Horse You Came in On (7 page)

Naturally, he despised Joanna Lewes. But although he had refused to carry her last several novels, he was now forced to bow to the pressure exerted by her local fans to stock “the new Lewes.” And having failed to
expunge the blot of its success from his shop, he had turned to far easier game: Miss Ada Crisp, whose secondhand furniture shop was just one door away from the Wrenn's Nest. Inspired by Lady Ardry's legal battle with Jurvis, the butcher, he had hired a Sidbury solicitor. It was Theo's notes, his documentation of the hazards Miss Crisp (and her Jack Russell dog) held for the village, that he now dropped into Melrose's hands.

Melrose dropped them back. “Are you kidding?”

Theo Wrenn Browne was hardly pleased with this assessment of his case against Ada Crisp. “I don't see why. Her shop is a danger to the community. All of that rubbish out on the pavements, and that rat terrier of hers grabbing at anything that moves!” He ran his finger round his high starched collar and sat there envying Trueblood's expensively turned-out nonchalance.

“Oh, come on, old sweat,” said Trueblood. “Ada's shop's been just that for forty years, and no one's fallen into one of the chamber pots.”

They were interrupted by the appearance of Vivian Rivington, wearing her rose wool and her woebegone look. She plunked down her sherry and herself and sighed and said she'd been packing. Vivian was always packing, either in England or in Italy. She'd been back now for just three months and was being kept here by the wiliness of Marshall Trueblood and the cunning of Melrose Plant and her own unconscious—or even conscious—inclination. They were certain she did not want to marry the odious Italian count, but after all of these years of engagement, they supposed she couldn't think of an honorable way of ending it.

“Vivian,” said Diane, her smile as dry as her martini, “you should know about all that drop-dead art, having spent so much time in Venice and Florence.”

Melrose and Trueblood exchanged a glance. Diane would lose no opportunity to remind Vivian of the fiancé lurking in Venice, not having slipped and drowned as yet during
acqua alta
. Vivian was scheduled to return to Venice next month.

“I don't know what you mean. And I don't spend all that much time—not
that
much,” said Vivian, as if the expenditure of time were somehow a reflection of the strength of the attachment.

Diane hated it. She hated that Vivian would be a countess, and also lost no opportunity to decry it as an all-too-ordinary little title. “Aren't counts rather thick on the ground in Italy?” she said ruminatively.

Said Marshall Trueblood, “Thick under it, Vivian's sort.”

“Oh, shut up!” Vivian's shell-like complexion turned the color of her rose wool frock.

“Titles—how do they signify, anyway?” offered Agatha, making Melrose look up in astonishment.

Getting no mileage out of his proposed suit against poor Ada Crisp, Theo Wrenn Browne went back to opining the total lack of merit of Ellen Taylor's book, while Diane took to opining the lack of merit of Ellen Taylor's face. That face was on the back of the dust jacket, and Diane was scrutinizing it as closely as if the cops had asked her to pick one out of a lineup.

“She looks,” said Diane, “as if she's just got squashed in a revolving door.”

Melrose looked at the picture. Ellen's face did have a bit of the Silly Putty look to it, true, together with the wide-open, astonished eyes. “Well, she doesn't look like that. She's quite pretty.”

“She is; I remember,” said Trueblood.

Diane tapped the little biographical paragraph. “She's from Baltimore.” She paused a bit dramatically. “E. A. Poe and Johnny U.”

Everyone turned to stare at her, which was what she wanted. She was as pleased over this coupling as ever she had been over herself and any of her lovers.

“What are you talking about?”

She raised a feathery black eyebrow. Diane was quite beautiful, with her perfect skin, marble white against the satiny black fall of her hair. But despite the inclinations of Nature, nothing seemed to have rushed in to fill the vacuum: Diane's mind was hermetically sealed. That was why it was always mildly astonishing when she came up with some esoteric fact that no one else knew. That, of course, was the idea. She was a gatherer of esoteric facts. Trivial Pursuits had been invented for the likes of Diane Demorney. “I assume you've heard of Edgar Allan Poe.”

“Oh, don't be daft, Diane,” said Trueblood irritably. “We're talking about Johnny whoever.”

“Good lord.” She heaved a sigh and lifted her giant martini glass. “Johnny Unitas. You've never heard of the Baltimore Colts? God! I assumed
everyone
had heard of them.”

“Melrose has been rattling on about going to Baltimore,” said Agatha.

The rattle had taken place at Ardry End accompanied by the dire rhythm of Lou Reed strong-arming his guitar. Melrose loved Lou Reed. Lou Reed (“the Maniac”) drove Agatha crazy, but, unfortunately, not away.

At the time he got Ellen's call, this eschewer of titles was sitting upon his hearth (metaphorically speaking) pawing over Debrett's in search of one. She had been zipping through the pages with the speed of a centipede for the last hour, trying to track down her heritage. Spurious heritage,
Melrose imagined. It had been pointed out to her in a letter from one of her Wisconsin relations that her paternal great-uncle (or great-great-) had been a certain Baron Fust—Fust being Agatha's maiden name before she had married Melrose's uncle. That entitlement might actually be something that ran in her veins (well, in the veins of the male descendants) and not something to be caught on the fly (“Lady” Ardry indeed!) had her slavering even more than did the jam-laden scone in her hand. Titles before tea, Melrose supposed.

“Baron Fust! Imagine!”

“Everyone will be a baron for fifteen minutes,” said Melrose.

At that moment Ruthven brought in the telephone extension. “Long distance, sir, from America.”

“Ellen!” Melrose straightened suddenly and came out of the somnolent state the presence of his aunt usually induced. “Where the hell are you? . . . Baltimore?”

Agatha relaxed her ear a bit. Whoever Ellen was, she was far enough away to present no immediate problem.

“Your book? Yes, yes, I did. Thank you.” Pained, Melrose's eye strayed to the end table where Ellen's book had been lying, unfinished. “I know it won that award, yes, I know. That's wonder— . . . like it?” Since he hadn't read all of it, his answer would be qualified a bit. “Naturally. Yes . . . Oh, quite, well,
different.
”

The book in question was now in Agatha's hands.
Hand
—in the other was a brandy snap. Ellen's book had been stacked atop Polly Praed's newest which she had sent to Melrose in the form of galleys. Perhaps he should become an editor?

“Come to
Baltimore?
” Oh, Christ, why had he said it aloud? Agatha was staring over the top of the book. She had even stopped chewing. “I'll see. . . . Well, yes, I know I said I would . . .”

What Ellen told him next was rather surprising, and he only barely missed echoing it when he saw Agatha's eyes riveted on him. So he registered no emotion, no interest, just kept saying “umm” and “ohmm” like a mantra, as Ellen related her little tale.

It was so difficult for him to make a trip, to bestir himself, to drag himself away from hearth and home and the Jack and Hammer. He sighed. He would like to see Ellen, though. “Policeman? . . . Are you talking about Richard Jury?” Pretending not to remember his name! “He's going to be visiting me, as a matter of fact. . . . Yes, but, Ellen, Scotland Yard CID men cannot simply throw up everything and go racing off to the States.” Actually, Jury could drop anything he damn pleased, given he was on leave. “. . . In another day or two. Yes.” That
was when Jury was supposed to come. He wanted to see Pratt in Northampton, for some reason.

Agatha was all ears. She was even forgetting to eat her brandy snap. He really should have taken this call out of Agatha's earshot—if there was such a place. Saddam Hussein's bunker, perhaps. Melrose sipped his sherry, said, “I absolutely promise, Ellen. . . . Yes. I'll call. . . . Yes. . . . No. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . No. . . . No. . . . Goodbye.”

“I know that name—I'm sure of it. Ellen, Ellen. Haven't I met this person?” Actually, she had. At Victoria Station when Vivian had been leaving that time for Italy.

“No.”

“You're not considering going to the States, my dear Plant?”

“No.” Yes, he was. Not only was he very fond of Ellen, but he knew she would have slashed her wrists before calling him if she hadn't been in dire straits. He frowned. He had no doubt about the “dire,” but he wondered if the “straits” were what she'd said they were.

“I should think not. However, if you
do,
let me know, of course, and I'll go along, as I haven't seen the Fusts in years and I would like to have a chat with them over Debrett's. Now here's a Life Baroness. ‘Dixie Bellows . . .' ”

Dream on, thought Melrose.

“. . . a mere count,” Agatha was saying now in the Jack and Hammer, relegating Count Franco Giopinno to the title scrap heap. “Now the Fusts—”

“Were merer barons,” said Melrose.

Diane Demorney, still pushing her bit of arcana about like a stale canapé on the cocktail platter, cut across the Fust family's baronetcy, saying, “If you're going to Baltimore, Melrose, you'd better read up on baseball and football. The 1969 game between the Jets and the Colts, for instance.” She directed her seductive curl of a smile towards Melrose as she drew the vodka-pickled olive from her glass. It was her own thin-stemmed, broad-brimmed glass, and she had brought it to use in the pub. Melrose calculated the circumference of its bowl; frozen over, it would have accommodated the skaters at Rockefeller Center. That brought America back to mind, and he looked again at the picture of Ellen on the back of the dust jacket. He smiled. That affrighted look, as if the photographer had been holding a gun on her instead of a camera, made him want to laugh.

“Victoria!” Agatha banged her fist on the table, jumping her glass of
sherry. “That's where I saw her!” Agatha's eyes were riveted on the picture. “You saw her, too, Vivian.”

“Saw who?”

“This Taylor woman. Strange-looking person. When we were at Victoria Station seeing you off. You remember.”

Vivian looked as if she'd prefer not to. “No.” Vivian did not want to travel backward in time to Victoria any more than she wanted to travel forward in time to Venice.

Diane was clearly annoyed that the spotlight, something she was sure God had given into her own white hands for safekeeping, was capriciously moving around the table. She snatched it back with her next obscure reference:

“Nickel City.”

They all looked at her again.

“Well, that's what they used to call Baltimore. Nickel City.”

“Why?”

“They made nickels there.” She went on: “The Colts and the Jets . . . Joe Namath. One of the most famous games ever played—Supper Bowl III.”

“ ‘Supper Bowl.' Do you
believe
that?” said Melrose Plant to Marshall Trueblood after the others had finally cleared out of the Jack and Hammer and he was able to retrieve the notebook.

“Anyone who'd call Kuwait ‘Kumquat' can make me believe that, yes. Now, I'll dictate, you write.”

“
I'll
dictate,
you
write. I wrote earlier.”

Trueblood sounded exasperated. “I was right in the middle of a thought, old sweat, when everybody trooped in.”

“Your thoughts have no middles. Beginnings, endings, no middles.” Melrose uncapped his pen and smoothed down the page.

“Now: she'd been put in the crypt. The crypt . . . hmm.”

“ ‘Dank vault,' ” quoted Melrose.

Trueblood pursed his lips, said, “ ‘
The poor monk, Franciscus, standing at the opening of the dank vault with his stick and bowl
—' ”

“Who's Franciscus?”

“The
monk
.”

“There was never any monk.” Melrose was thumbing back through the pages to see if he'd missed the monk.

“He's new. Believe me, the monk is necessary for the poor girl's spiritual comfort.”

“What the hell for? She's dead, isn't she?”

“Just write, will you?”

Melrose shrugged. “Okay.”

Trueblood repeated: “ ‘
Franciscus, standing there with his bowl and stick'
—no, ‘his stick and bowl.' That's rather poetic—
‘standing there with his stick and bowl
' ”

Melrose mouthed the words slowly: “Standing—there—with—his—stick—and—sup-per—bowl—”

“Not ‘
supper
bowl,' damn it!”

When Richard Jury, directed to the Jack and Hammer by Ruthven, was passing the pub's casement window, he saw Ruthven's master, head bent over a book or a notebook, seated just inside the window tête-à-tête with Marshall Trueblood. They were sitting, backs to the window, at the table that looked out over the High Street. Trueblood's voice wafted out to him:

“ ‘
O God! My sufferings are . . .' 
”

The voice faded. The casement window was open the barest crack, and Jury reached out and opened it another half-inch. Trueblood's voice again:

“ 
‘My sufferings are not complete! If she but knew it, my own death is nothing
—' no, say ‘is
as
nothing.' ”

“ ‘Is as'?” (said Melrose). “Sounds rather stilted, doesn't it? Anyway, we don't want crossings out.”