Jerusalem Inn (12 page)

All he could come up with was, “Get a cat, Jury.” There was some mumbled by-play as Racer turned from the receiver. Jury thought he heard a small, but very throaty, growl. “No good, a man living alone. You can have this ball of mange of Fiona's.”

“Cyril is much too attached to you. Is that why you called me? To discuss Cyril's and my welfare?” Jury's head was in his hand. Why did he feel like he had a hangover? He hadn't even had a pint at the local. Maybe that's what going to
church did to you. Brought all the bile up, all the poison that had dissipated through your system. . . . Racer was letting fly with a few invectives of his own.

“Beg your pardon?”

“I
said
— if you could keep your mind on the business to hand, lad! — this swede from the Northumberland police —”

“Northumbria,” corrected Jury. “It takes in Northumberland, Sunderland —”

“I don't need a geography lesson! Ever since you made Superintendent —”

This went on for about a minute, Jury's superintendency lying in the chief's stomach like an indigestible meal. Jury finally cut in: “You were saying about the Northumbria police. Sir.”

Racer inspected that ‘sir' for gnats, and then said, “Name's . . . wait a minute.” Shuffling of papers. “Colin something . . . ” More shuffling.

Jury stopped yawning and got his feet on the floor. His head felt like it was down there with them. “Was it Cullen? Sergeant Roy Cullen?”

“Yes, yes, that's it,” said Racer, impatiently. “What the hell does he think I am? Your personal answering service?”

Jury was already struggling into his shirt, the phone cord getting in his way. “Would you please tell me what he said, sir?”

“Here it is: something about a woman named Minton.”

Racer knew perfectly well what the name was. Because Racer hadn't found her first, he was going to be doubly difficult. “Helen Minton. Autopsy report. He said you'd want to know it. She was poisoned.”

And Jury was left staring at a dead receiver.

I
T WAS
the snow that stopped them, flying straight into the windscreen like tracer bullets.

“We're lost,” said Lady Ardry, who had taken charge of the map and the pen-sized little torch when the first few flakes had appeared. In the rear seat of the Flying Spur, Ruthven was huddled beside her beneath his lap rug.

“Don't be silly, Agatha,” said Vivian. “We're not lost at all; we're just slowed down a bit. Charles told us to turn off on this road.”

“You can't drive in this blizzard, Plant. You must stop.”

Where, Melrose couldn't imagine. It was dead dark at only five-thirty and he couldn't see more than two feet in front of the car. “Are you talking about that place back there with all the picnicking caravaners?” Melrose wiped the misty windscreen with his leather glove.

“There was a place you could have pulled off the road — what's that sign say?” She wiped a circle clear on her side and peered out into deep darkness. “Spinney Moor.” With the penlight she traced their progress on the map. “Good
God, Plant, you've landed us slapbang in the middle of a moor.”

“Then we're not far from the Seainghams' place. He said it was just north of Spinneyton,” said Vivian.

“I loathe moors and bogs,” said Agatha, shuddering.

Negotiating a narrow curve, Melrose said, “It's quite interesting, really. You've heard the story of the Spinneyton Slasher? No? Well, the Slasher hacked people to death and sunk the remains in the bogs just around here.”

Except for Vivian's
“Melrose!”
and Ruthven's mumbled
“Really, my lord,
” there was dead silence in the back seat, perhaps for the first time since they'd got on the A-1.

“You're only trying to give us all a fright,” said Agatha. But her tone was uncertain.

“No, really, The Slasher had a hatchet fetish —”

“Oh, for heaven's sake, Melrose,” said Vivian, wiping away the mist that kept re-forming on the windscreen.

Melrose thought of variations upon this theme:
The Spinney Moor Murders, The Spinney Moor Stalker
 . . . He might submit these titles to Polly Praed for her delectation.

“We just passed a sign that said ‘Spinneyton.' ” Vivian sighed with relief. “There must be a pub somewhere. Let's stop and call Charles Seaingham.”

“Vivian's right,” said Agatha. “Stop at the first place.”

“I daresay the first place will be the last. Spinneyton doesn't look as if it could sustain the life of the Dun Cow, if this was where it got lost — much less a public house.”

“What's a dun cow?” asked his aunt. There was the sound of paper rattling. Mention of even meat on the hoof must have her rooting out another of Martha's sandwiches.

His arms hanging over the wheel, his eyes squinting through a snowblind windscreen, he asked, “You haven't heard of the Dun Cow Creeper —?”

“Lights! Lights!” shouted Agatha.

“You sound like Othello. I see them.”

In the distance, what looked like cottage windows shone like dim stars through the snow. “Seaingham's place is only a mile or two north of the village. If Byrd of the Antarctic could make it, we can.” This set up a chorus of complaints, even a mild recrimination from Ruthven, who was more afraid his lordship would catch pneumonia than that they would end up in the squelchy undertow of some Spinney Moor bog.

“If this is a village,” said Agatha, her mouth full of sandwich from the picnic basket she had had Martha do up, “bound to be a pub. There always is.”

There was indeed, for the lights belonged to a square, squat building, marooned out here in the snow, the cars in its little lot shrouded in snow. As they were getting out of the Spur, the door to the pub opened and someone, with imprecations borne off by the wind, threw someone else out. The one thrown rose, dusted snow from his shirt and boots, and marched back inside.

“Good God!” said Agatha. “What sort of rough place is this?”

Melrose looked up at the blank side of the building where a dull lamp cast a halo of light around the name. “How perfect,” he said. “Jerusalem Inn.”

 • • • 

“Now
this
is what I'd call a right old rave-up.” Melrose lit a cigar and watched the brawl previewed outside continuing inside. It gave the impression of a fight fueled by nothing more than its own violence, a sort of internal-combustion machine that would stop as quick as a car the minute someone took his foot off the gas.

Agatha was clutching her nephew's arm and insisting they must leave; Vivian was open-mouthed; Ruthven's head was shrinking into his collar as a chair flew past him. He seemed to be grappling with the empty space it had flown threw.

Someone was scouting the doorway for the local bobby — what
could he do in this storm, anyway? — as the one black-haired bloke with a ring in one ear picked up a table and made to crash it over the head of a fat man in leather and tattoos before being restrained by a chap in dark glasses and nail-studded waistcoat.

“Ah'll clash yer face, clot-heed,” was the thanks the second chap got for this as the one with the ring in his ear broke away.

“Ah, clap yersel doon, Nutter, ya fool,” yelled an old man, tapping his cane on the floor three times as if this magical incantation were all that was needed to bring a halt to the affair.

Far from clapping himself down, Nutter was spun around by a big fellow with ginger hair, and bashed in the face. Nutter grabbed this interloper by his red locks and crashed his skull against the bloke's nose. Blood gushed as the big fellow slumped across a bench.

“Git up, git up, ah'll nut yer fuckin' heed off,” yelled the one known as Nutter — apparently for good reason.

The man behind the horseshoe bar, whom Melrose took to be the publican, was like a general whose troops had gone wild. Another table toppled to the tinkle of breaking glass from the efforts of two men who were crashing skulls together in what appeared to be a popular local pastime.

There were several nonparticipants, men and a sprinkling of women, enjoying the whole thing from hard wooden benches against the wall as if it were a spectator sport, which Melrose rather supposed it was. The one he had seen in the doorway had wrenched a leg from a table and seemed to be coming in their direction. Melrose clicked a button on his silver-knobbed cane, drew the shaft from the swordstick, and the one coming on seemed to realize his error and turned his attention elsewhere to club a companion with the chair leg.

The melee ended abruptly, as Melrose supposed it would.
Chairs and tables were uprighted, broken glass magically cleared, bottles restored and everyone sitting down to the casual evening of drink.

Several eyes turned toward the interlopers standing in the doorway and Melrose wondered what a sight the four of
them
must have made in this workingman's pub. Vivian in mink (a gift from the Italian count); Agatha in her black cape; Ruthven with his bowler still tucked in the crook of his arm; Melrose in a chesterfield and with that walking stick. They fit in here about as well as a string quartet.

“Have you a telephone?” asked Melrose of the publican. “And a bottle of Remy?”

The publican, a bit pale but none the worse for wear — he was used to it, probably — said, “Phone's just round the bar, mate, on that wall.” Vivian went to call Charles Seaingham.

“Well, Melrose, here's a fine place you've fetched us up to,” said his aunt, taking her balloon glass over to an empty table by a fireplace. Ruthven accepted a mite of cognac and went to sit on a hard bench, as if that should be the lot of servants. He was soon in desultory conversation with another bench-sitter, refighting the fight.

Melrose waited for Vivian and looked around the Jerusalem Inn. Despite the fight, the spartan fixtures, the plain deal furniture, in its Christmasy decor, the pub was trying to live up to its name.

“What are you drinking?” Melrose asked the publican as he placed a large note on the bar. “And what was that all about?”

The publican, who introduced himself as Hornsby, thanked Melrose for the drink and shrugged his shoulders. “Don't know, man. Happens all the time. Someone got pissed, and let Nutter have it. Nutter'll be on with his blether and then the stupid bugger's that surprised when someone else gives him one.” The publican shrugged philosophically, then, looking at Melrose's stick, asked, “Is that thing legal?”

“Not really. Do you know a Charles Seaingham? It's his place we're heading for.”

“Mr. Seaingham. Oh, aye. You go through Spinneyton — not much of a trip, it isn't — and take the first road off to the right. But I don't think you'll be getting far in this muck.” He went down the bar to draw a couple of beers for the fellow with the tattoos and a tiny man who reminded Melrose of an asp. Soon Hornsby was back. “Bad night. You from the South?”

“Northants.”

Definitely “South” from the look on Hornsby's face. Despite the recent doings, there was an air of weary festivity. Dusty decorations had been dragged from boxes. Sellotaped across the big mirror behind the bar were big cardboard letters in alternate green and red saying
Happy Christmas.
Strings of colored lights were hung along the ceiling beams, which were draped with little waterfalls of tinsel.

Melrose saw, however, as he went to join Agatha and Vivian, that the most eye-catching decoration was a large creche, almost life-sized, in the corner beside the fireplace. Cheap plaster of paris and chipped paint, a forlorn display: there were a goat with its ears broken, a lamb with its front leg off, so that it did appear to be trying to kneel. As if to make up for the poor representation of the animal world, a dog of uncertain breed slept between the lamb and the goat. It looked as if it had jumped down from the painting above the fireplace, which announced that Poor Trust Was Dead, killed off by those who did not pay their debts. Mary and Joseph, both with benign smiles, leaned over a boxlike thing filled with straw and empty but for a kitten who had seen its chance and taken it. The kitten had ugly checkerboard markings, which gave its face a gargoyle-like lopsidedness.

He was suddenly flooded with sadness that Mary and Joseph did not know their child was missing. And where was the third of the Three Kings?

“Stop lollygagging about, Melrose, and sit down. Vivian's just rung up Charles Seaingham —”

“He's coming to fetch us,” said Vivian. “In this snow, he thought it would be best.”

“We shouldn't put him to the trouble. We could probably get rooms here, and go along in the morning.”

“Rooms?”
said Agatha, with her usual perfect timing. “At an
inn
?”

 • • • 

While they waited, Melrose took his glass into the back room where a couple of pool tables — or were they snooker? — had drawn a variety of talents in various stages of drunkenness. The only sober ones seemed to be a handsome young man in a dark shirt and a leather waistcoat who was chalking the tip of his cue and talking to another young man, brown-haired, tall, and with the dazed and slack-mouthed look of the very dim or the retarded.

Melrose watched a player rack up the balls and deliberate for a moment before a break shot that sent the cue ball off the table. He also managed to dribble some beer on the green. An argument started, and before it could gain the momentum of the one in the front room, Melrose left the boozy game in favor of the warmer climate of the front room. There, he was very glad to see the door open, admitting a cloud of snow and a gentleman who must be Charles Seaingham. There was a brief consultation with Hornsby, who pointed to their fireside table.

Charles Seaingham apologized profusely, as if taking on all responsibility for the weather and complimenting them upon their forbearance. He was a tall, iron-haired man in his late sixties, who would take over, Melrose thought, where the world left off. Although he seemed almost folksy in person, Melrose knew the man was urbane and sophisticated, one whose critical insight was so respected it could blow away reputations like old news clippings. Vivian, thought Melrose,
should certainly be flattered that Seaingham not only admired her poetry, but apparently herself enough to invite her to his house. Introductions were handed around, Agatha quick to get in the Earl-of-Caverness stuff, which Melrose scotched, to Charles Seaingham's confusion.