The Stargazey (34 page)

The guide frowned. “I'm not sure I—” Then, understanding, she smiled. “Oh, yes. The wick'd gate. Not
wicked
, dear. Yes, as you can see the gate is made so that the small door there will accommodate only one person at a time. That's to see if the person is friend or enemy and to
avoid opening the entire gate and letting a battalion of men on horseback through.” Sunlight touched the guide's glasses. The lenses gave off a blind glare that made the woman look sinister. As she turned towards the big front door again, she looked back and said to Linda, “We won't eat that inside, dear, will we?”

We will if we want to, thought Melrose, watching Linda lick her icecream cone, just as we will continue to think of the gate as “wicked.”

After a few comments about the wide hallway's woodwork and ceiling, the guide led them into a large, empty, and very chilly room. To the stragglers in their group (Melrose being straggler number one), she said, “We all want to keep together now.”

No, we don't.
Melrose loathed touring houses. He looked at Linda, who was listening raptly to the guide's description of the architecture of this room, of the big fireplace adorned with tiles and with carvings of bowls of fruit on the overmantel.

Having polished off her ice cream, Linda's hands were now clasped almost reverently at her waist, and her mouth was partly open, as if she had trouble breathing through her nose. Why, wondered Melrose, was she listening so intensely, her lips moving as if taking the words in through her mouth? Why was she listening when she apparently knew more than the guide? She knew, he imagined, what the gardener knew, what the guide knew, what the museum keeper knew, and possibly what even the bishops of London knew. It occurred to him (and it saddened him to think so) that Fulham Palace was Linda's home-away-from home. The roads, walks, borders, and boundaries were as familiar to her as the layout of her aunt's house. It was for this reason that Linda wanted to hear about the palace; it was like hearing one's favorite story again and again at bedtime. And the storyteller better look sharp! Any discrepancy or any hole in the narrative would be brought swiftly to that person's attention.

Which was what she was doing now, upon hearing a list of contributions made to this room—the Great Hall—by various bishops of London. Linda piped up: “Tell us about the tortures. The ones Bishop Bonner did.” A few chuckles could be heard from the visitors, and the guide's face reddened a little, drew in like a knot.

It was clear the guide meant to skip Bishop Bonner's doings—why, Melrose couldn't say, as it was much the most interesting news yet—for she was leading them through the door, across the hall, and down a narrower hallway. The building had the cold feeling of one not much used to pilgrims. Nonetheless, Melrose kept up. They were taken into a small and quite beautiful chapel. Melrose moved to the front of the little group to stand beside Linda, ostensibly to monitor her behavior but more (he suspected) to be on the winning side. They were given details about the east window and the quatrefoil and, when one of the pilgrims asked about the use the chapel was put to, were told that the rector of All Saints had to give permission for anything taking place here, such as weddings and christenings.

“Which he won't,” Linda told the assembly, with a sigh that might have been heartfelt, suggesting her own baptism hung in the balance.

“Perhaps,” said Melrose, as they were filing down the hall again, “we could go see the rector of All Saints about the jeopardy in which he's placing your soul.”

Linda peered up at him, her face screwed up in a knot, like a big carbuncle. “What're you talking about?”

“I have no idea.”

The next room was light and airy but also without furniture, or at least period furniture. Melrose spent the few moments not listening (he could always ask Linda) but, instead, thinking of Simeon Pitt. His death was too unexpected; his murder, too bold and too brazen. Why hadn't the killer waited until Pitt was outside the club? And this was, apparently, a woman's work, to boot. She had stabbed Pitt with surgical precision; there had been no aborted or exploratory cuts, no evidence that Pitt had raised his hands and arms in self-defense. Melrose had an image of this woman rising from her chair to go to Pitt's, leaning over him, ostensibly to look at something in the paper or to hand him something. The woman was undoubtedly
not
the niece, Barbara Amons, so how had she explained her presence?

Was it someone Pitt knew? (For there was no reason it couldn't have been a total stranger.) What about the artists he was so tough on? This line of thought was fruitless, since Melrose did not know who Pitt knew, or the artists Pitt took down. Who was the person Pitt had called—Jay?
This could have been a man or a woman. Melrose squeezed the bridge of his nose. Why couldn't he have been more like Linda, absorbing Pitt's every word?

He still couldn't get over the audacity of the whole thing, more audacious, even, than the murder in the public grounds of Fulham Palace.

Melrose stood there, eyes blind to the moldings, ears deaf to the guide's description, thinking about the killer's moving the body. If Jury believed Linda, he did too. He wanted to go back to the herb garden and was glad that this room was the last thing on the agenda. He whispered, “We've got to go.”

“It's not finished yet. We get tea and biscuits now. You have to wait.”

Exasperated, Melrose said, “I'll get you tea and biscuits later.”

Unmoving, she demanded, “Where?”

“At the Ritz. Only come along now; we're going back to the gardens.”

Seeing it had something to do with the dead body, Linda didn't offer more argument, and they left the palace proper.

Outside, Melrose turned to her and said, as sternly as possible, “Linda, do not—I repeat, do
not
—get separated from me again! Do not run off the way you did.”

She scratched her neck and said, “It was
you
that got separated from
me.
You weren't keeping up.” She looked around as if she might go back in and get a few witnesses to this careless behavior of his.

“You know what I mean. Here, you must hold my hand.”

“I don't want to. Then I can't do anything on my own.”

“That's the point; you're not supposed to be doing things on your own. At least, not when I'm with you.” Was that circular reasoning? “All right, you don't have to hold my hand if you promise not to go running off. The same thing might happen to you as happened to poor Sophie.” They were walking past the giant redwood tree.

“Who's poor Sophie?”

“You don't know her. When she was younger than you are now, she got separated from her mum in a shop—”

“What kind of shop?”

“A market. A fancy one in Paris.”

“I've never been to Paris.”

“That's beside the point.”

“What did she look like?”

Melrose frowned. “I don't know. It doesn't make any difference.”

Linda sighed as if adults didn't know what was important and what not. “What happened to her?”

He was angry with himself for letting the Sophie predicament leak out; it had shown very poor judgment and he knew Linda would be relentless in her demand to know what happened. “Well, she got taken while she was putting potatoes in a bag.”

Linda was dumbfounded. Not because Sophie was taken, but because of what had occupied her at the time. “Why would she put potatoes in a bag?”

There was nothing for it, he guessed, but to tell her at least the beginning of the Sophie tale. His story was interrupted more than once by demands to know more about the organ grinder's cat and dog and baby carriage. That Sophie had met such a dire fate didn't appear to concern her. It was all the violence on television, he supposed. Desensitization, that was it.

Linda's one hundredth (and, prayerfully, final) question was not about Sophie's lost mother, not about the kidnappers, not about the imagined dangers of the child's plight, but about the potatoes.

“What kind were they?”

“What earthly difference does it make? Must you know every single detail? Good God, it's like talking to Proust.
N'allez pas trop vite.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means . . . they were Rose Clouds and Yukon Golds.” He was pleased with himself; he had pulled
those
potatoes out of a hat!

“I never heard of them. Where'd they take Sophie when they kidnapped her?”

Melrose was now concerned that perhaps she
was
worried. “To a film.”

Linda licked the candy stick she had held him up for again and seemed to be thinking. “Well, I'm glad Sophie doesn't live around me.”

What an odd thing to say. “Why?”

“Because she sounds so boring.”

“Boring? What do you mean?”

“Well, if you were Sophie, would you pick out potatoes when there was an organ grinder and a trick cat and dog right outside?”

Melrose frowned and stopped as they rounded the wall on which wisteria would grow in rich profusion in the spring. As Linda raced to the herb garden, his frown deepened.

He stood looking down at the triangular patch identified as lad's-love and the one across from it marked lavender. He asked Linda again if she was certain the body had lain here—he pointed to the lad's-love.

“I've told everybody a thousand times, yes.”

“Perhaps, but you haven't told me a thousand.”

“I guess you want me to lie down in it again.”

“Certainly not. I didn't want you to lie down in it in the first place.” Children were such ghouls.

Two things, he decided, had gone wrong for the killer: Jury should not have been on that bus, and Linda should not have been in this garden. He pondered this while watching her go into the ruined greenhouse.

If the body had been hidden in there, why?

To delay discovery. But he kept coming up with
why?
no matter which road he took.

He sat down on a small stone bench in front of the wisteria vines, thinking about Kate McBride and Sophie and, most of all, Simeon Pitt. Melrose leaned over, arms on knees, and looked at the dark earth at his feet. Under which Simeon Pitt would soon be buried. Melrose truly mourned him. It was so rare to find someone who didn't talk balderdash or berate your ears with inconsequential conversation.

He looked up, didn't see Linda, and rose quickly. He called her. “Linda!”

No answer.
“Linda!”

An answer came back.
“Wha-at?”

“Nothing.” He sat again and continued to think about Pitt. Artists whose armor he'd put a dent in, columnists not so successful as he—but surely not possessed of the large-scale passion it would take to kill a man.

“Linda!” he shouted again.

“What?”
came the reply again.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

Had he expected any other answer? Did he think she was in there translating
Paradise Lost
into Slovakian or discovering a billfold full of identification left by the killer?

Pitt had come to some conclusion about the Fabricant Gallery and was about to do something—it must have to do with a future act and not a past one. At least, Melrose was working under that assumption. It must be those damned white paintings of Rees's.

“Linda!”

“Whaaaaat?”

“I
think you should come out of there now.” He searched his mind for some greenhouse horror. “There might be snakes. And spiders.”

“Okay.”

He watched the door. Did he really think she'd appear?

“Linda!” He got up.

“What?”

Oh, for pity's sake! He went to the ruined glass house and through the door, or what was left of it. She was just standing there, looking at something she held that she quickly made a fist around when she saw him.

“What's that?”

“What?”

“That.” He nodded towards her closed hand.

“Nothing.”

“No, it isn't.”

“It's a
secret.
Have you got to know
everything?”
She turned away, but not before looking at him as if he'd gone loopy.

Well, he knew better than to push her for information. “If you found something related to this crime, you realize you're obstructing justice and the police will have you for it,” he said, testily and stuffily. “I'll wait for you outside.”

In another breathless moment she was out the door, walking right past him. When he just stood there, she turned and said, “Well, come
on,”
as if justice-obstructing were all on his side and the police would know where to look.

W
hen she came to the door of the Redcliffe Gardens flat, Kate looked different, a little younger, more relaxed, and, if possible, more vulnerable. Of course she would be more relaxed, probably relieved as hell to be shut of Chilten and the Fulham police station. That would bring the color back to her cheeks, or perhaps it was the rose of the silk blouse she was wearing.

When she had hung up Jury's coat, she led him into her sitting room, which was suffused with the warmth of the fire. The room was pleasantly furnished, very English with its floral prints in slipcovers and curtains. It was on the small side, but generous for one person. There was only one bedroom.

She offered him coffee. “With a shot of brandy, how's that sound?”

“You must be reading my mind.”

She hesitated in the doorway. “I doubt that I could.”

While she went off to fetch the brandy, Jury stood and looked around. Framed posters in German and French. Jury didn't know if this reflected taste or travel. No photographs, a couple of shelves of books. Quite a CD collection, one of which was already playing. Mozart, he thought, reminding himself for the hundredth time he should know, not guess. He sat down in an armchair, felt the relief in his back. He hadn't known how tired he was until he sat down. He looked across the room at a large
painting, some forest scene, he thought, and got up to view it more closely. It was actually of a house. Only part of the house could be seen; the rest was obscured by the woodland in front and mountains rising behind. But what woods and what mountains! The light coming through the trees might have been the painter's idealization of the scene, but perhaps not.
Blaen-y-glyn
was written on a small brass plaque at the bottom.