The Case Has Altered (48 page)

Browne sputtered. “Well . . . well . . . what earthly difference does it make? Perhaps it was earlier, later . . . I don't know.”

“But it couldn't have been either earlier or later, for you said she passed by immediately before she had the accident.”

Theo Wrenn Browne scratched his head, looked around almost wildly. Melrose was enthralled.

Then Trueblood stood silent for a few moments, smiling all the while, and said, “What drew you from your shop, Mr. Browne, were the cries and yelps coming from Lady Ardry and the dog—”

Melrose loved that coupling.

“—and, quite naturally, you dashed outside to see what all the fuss was about—”

“All right, perhaps—”

“And that being the case, you didn't see what happened at all. You saw only its aftermath.”

Yes!
Melrose shoved his fists slightly into the air.
Bravo, Marshall!

Browne simply blinked, as if Trueblood's smile were a little too bright for him. Then he began blustering again. “Well, the dog was running about, barking dementedly—”

“Oh, I've no doubt. But who is to say the little dog wasn't acting
defensively?
Who is to say Lady Ardry didn't go for the poor creature with a walking stick?”

Bryce-Pink shot like a missile from his seat, only seconds after Agatha was up from hers.
“Liar! Liar!”
came from Agatha.
“Objection! Objection!”
came from her solicitor. The courtroom was noisy with small cheers and laughter.

Eustace-Hobson banged his gavel. “Madam, take your seat! The objection is sustained, Mr. Trueblood. You're
speculating!”

Brightly, Trueblood said, “No more than was the witness, Your Worship.”

More noise, more gavel-banging.

“I have no more questions.” Trueblood bowed.

Browne's face was mottled with anger. He'd been caught out.

There, thought Melrose, was the prosecution's chief witness gone. The only other witness was he himself. And he himself wouldn't be much help.

Would Trueblood move to dismiss?

No. He was calling Melrose to the witness box.

“Lord Ardry,” said Marshall Trueblood, wanting to imprint the title on the magistrate's mind, and then catching himself, followed up with, “Do pardon me. You prefer ‘Mr. Plant,' don't you?”

“I do, as it happens to be my name.”

“At the time that this incident occurred, you were on the opposite side of the street?”

“That's right.”

Marshall dipped his head in a little bowing way. “And we—you and I—were having, as I remember, a rather lively discussion about the All Blacks, the New Zealand rugby team.”

Melrose thought a bit. Yes, there had been a few comments about the team, but he hardly thought that constituted a “lively discussion.” Still, it was close enough so that Melrose didn't have to perjure himself. “Yes, that's true.”

“Mr. Plant, you've quite a solid knowledge of antiques, haven't you?”

Melrose jumped. Oh, surely
this
wasn't to come up again! “Oh, I wouldn't say ‘solid.' I know a thing or two. . . . ” That was indeed all he did know. His expression, he hoped, was properly modest.

“Let's for example take . . . oh, something like a
bonheur-du-jour
. Could you tell the court what that is?”

Naturally, Bryce-Pink was on his feet asking what the relevance of this
was. Trueblood explained that its relevance would soon be apparent. The magistrate quite happily came down on the defendant's side because the plaintiff's had bored him to death. Mr. Trueblood could proceed. And so could Mr. Plant, who described, in relentless detail a
bonheur-du-jour
.

“Quite right. And what about . . . ” Trueblood crossed his arms, resting his chin in his hand, a study in thought. “A . . .
secretaire à abbatant?”

Oh, that what we found the dead body in, mate?
Melrose smiled and, again, described it. Trueblood took him through his paces with two other pieces, one being the Ispahan rug Melrose had become achingly familiar with at Fengate. Bryce-Pink and his client sat at their table and smoldered. Agatha was, of course, completely furious at the loss of Theo Wrenn Browne, her partner in crime.

Trueblood, having established the witness's authority to speak on the matter of antiques, held up a book and asked him if he was familiar with it.

Melrose's eyebrows shot up when he saw on the back of this book the Nuttings' photograph in all its toothsome glory. But who was Melrose to question
Helluva Deal!?
Socrates here was on a roll, might as well play along. “I certainly am. Dipped in it more than once.”

“And how, Mr. Plant, would you characterize this book? That is, if you had to describe it in a sentence or two?”

Melrose thought of a few sentences he probably couldn't repeat in public, and then said, “It's about auctions, primarily; secondarily, it's about scams.”

“ ‘Scams'?”

“Well, yes, I'd say—”
Good God
, thought Melrose,
he isn't going to be so brazen as to suggest . . . ?
Melrose let the thought trail away, then said, with inward glee, “Scams, yes. The authors describe”—
and participate in, most likely
, he didn't add—“the various tricks people and dealers use—I shouldn't say dealers, really, most of whom tend to be at least moderately honest”—here he tilted his head toward Trueblood who gave him a razor-blade smile—“individuals who manage to flummox dealers, or auctioneers, let's say. Or simple, unsuspecting buyers. For example, there's the old ‘bait-and-switch' technique.”

“Ah, and would you tell the court what that is?”

Bryce-Pink was on his feet again, protesting loudly. Agatha managed to keep herself in her chair and fume. Eustace-Hobson didn't even bother to respond verbally; he merely waved Bryce-Pink down, looking irritated he'd interrupted what might be a promisingly sprightly tale.

Melrose picked a bit of lint from his jacket and continued. “It's basically an American term”—which was hardly surprising, he thought of adding—“wherein the owners of, let's say, some antique silver get swindled. There's the case of the Dewitt brothers of Kentucky, for instance.” Melrose nodded toward the book. “The Dewitt brothers possessed a quite beautiful and valuable Georgian punch bowl. They'd take it in to some dealer—avoiding any real specialist—plop it on the counter, and say they wanted to sell it and an accompanying coffee service and a few other silver items. The shop owner would inspect the punch bowl, pronounce it fine indeed, and make a fair offer. The Dewitts would then bring in a box of other so-called Georgian silver, and, since the shop owner or jeweler or pawnbroker or whoever had inspected the punch bowl was certain of its value, he'd only do a cursory check of the other items. They, on the surface were quite resplendently polished up and looked the ticket. Turned out, of course, to be a mixture of odd bits and bobs—and of course, the Dewitts would beg off selling the Georgian punch bowl with some story it belonged ‘to me old gramps,' or something like that, and they'd just sell the box of bogus stuff.” Melrose smiled broadly. “I thought them rather jolly, really, especially since they were in their nineties.”

So did Eustace-Hobson think them “jolly,” apparently, for Melrose was actually managing to keep him awake. He gave a gruff chortle and looked pointedly at Agatha, who, Melrose thought, looked like her blood pressure had risen enough to have her pegging out right here in court. Wages of sin.

Trueblood leafed through
Helluva Deal!
and stopped at a certain page, then asked, “Mr. Plant, do you remember the bit about ‘Piggy' Arbuckle?”

“Piggy? Oh, yes. Now, his favorite scam was what the Nuttings christened the ‘fist-in-the-vase' scam. Mr. Arbuckle—whose name was ‘Peregrine' actually, but he was called ‘Piggy' even though he was thin as a rail and nearly ninety himself—anyway, Piggy would stop in some antiques shop or other, for a look round. He'd be in company with a lad, who
would, upon a sign from Piggy, put his hand down inside some valuable piece and then not be able to get it out. Hysteria reigned. It just so happened there'd be a doctor in the shop, a ‘Dr. Todd' who would proclaim they could either smash whatever it was or he could take the lad to his surgery and apply some ointment, some grease or other, and get the arm out with no damage to the Meissen, or whatever. The shopkeeper would yield to this plan. Well, they were a troupe, weren't they? I mean, they were all Arbuckles, the lad being a great-grand-nephew and ‘Dr. Todd' some sort of cousin, and they traveled about like a little circus. The poor antiques dealer would understandably be so flustered and afraid for his Meissen or whatever, he'd go along with it.”

Melrose was delighted. It wouldn't have taken an Einstein to see that the “fist-in-the-vase” trick could rather quickly be supplanted with the “foot-in-the-chamber-pot” trick—even though that was the only similarity in the two stories.

Marshall Trueblood said, “Where did you find this wonderful little book, Mr. Plant?”

Ah,
that
was it! Oh, how marvelous! Guilt by association! Melrose had a hard time keeping his countenance so that he could lend to his answer the gravitas it demanded. “Actually, I found it in the Wrenn's Nest, Mr. Browne's bookshop.”

The courtroom broke into gales of laughter. Theo Wrenn Browne was out of his chair in a shot; Agatha was up and yelling; Bryce-Pink was screaming objections. And Miss Crisp, for the first time in weeks, was smiling. Not only smiling, but had her arms upraised, hands together in the “victory” gesture of a prizefighter.

Melrose was dismissed, smiling, too.

Eustace-Hobson made a great display of pounding his gavel.

When everything had quieted down again, Trueblood went to the table of “exhibits” where the chamber pot sat in lonely splendor, if one could call the rather mundane bowl with a greenish hue “splendid.” Trueblood had mended it to near-seamless perfection. He passed it to Melrose. “Mr. Plant, would you turn this over and look at the marking, please.”

Melrose did so. There was a rough, raised spot, but no name. He said this.

Trueblood said: “This particular mark places this piece in the Ch'ein lung period. It's one of the ‘famille verte' pieces—hence its faint greenish cast—and quite valuable—”

Yes!
thought Melrose, watching Trueblood open a price guide. Even Eustace-Hobson was looking eagerly at the two of them, having forgotten entirely that it was Plant in this instance who was supposed to be the expert.

“—nine hundred pounds for this bowl. Or, I should say, was
once
worth nine hundred.” He fixed Agatha with a dire look. “I've had it authenticated. It isn't a chamber pot; it's a large bowl, possibly meant for fruit.” Trueblood turned to look over his audience. “But quite definitely
not
intended for—” He paused. Everyone seemed to be hovering on the edge of a legal epiphany. “—not intended for anything else, if you take my meaning.” He bowed.

The courtroom went wild; Agatha and Theo Wrenn Browne looked as if they might need the ministrations of “Dr. Todd”; and even old Eustace-Hobson was clearly delighted. He banged his gavel (more for appearances than any real desire to call for order) and motioned for Bryce-Pink and Trueblood to approach. He said a few well-tuned words to them, and when they'd returned to their respective places, he announced the case against Miss Crisp was dismissed. “Ridiculous business!” he said, forgetting for the moment his office. “Waste of the taxpayers' money! Shouldn't be surprised if there were a countersuit, Mr. Bryce-Pink, your client getting sued for slander! Either that or collusion or both!” And he humphed and grumphed his way out of the room.

Ada Crisp embraced Trueblood and did a little dance past the plaintiff's table, gave Agatha a little wave, and fairly skipped up the aisle toward her bridge club.

“Bloody
brilliant!”
said Melrose, clapping his arm across Trueblood's shoulder. “This calls for a Cairo Flame!”

I
n the Case Has Altered, Jury asked Julie Rough for the telephone tucked beneath the bar and dragged it and its long cord over to a table isolated from the rest of them so he wouldn't be overheard. Dutifully, he dialed Lincoln HQ. When Bannen came on the line, Jury said, speaking of Dorcas's moodiness, “I think this is important: something significant happened to cause it.” Bannen was silent long enough to make Jury wonder if the connection had been broken. “Hello . . . you there?”

Bannen said, “We know ‘something significant happened.' She thought she was pregnant.”

“Besides that, I mean.
What
shouldn't she have listened to? What shouldn't she have done?”

“I'd say shouldn't have dropped her knickers for him. It would account for the change, wouldn't it, if he left her high and dry?”

Jury had to admit that was the case, only . . . It was his turn to be silent as the door opened and the woman he had seen here before walked in and took a seat at the bar. Madeline Reese, Trevor's sister and the person Dorcas had confided in. She looked so much like Dorcas that Jury wondered if their mutual lack of beauty might have created a strong enough bond between them to make Dorcas's confiding in the aunt even more understandable. Jury said to Bannen, “I don't get it, though. What we've been hearing all along is how unattractive Dorcas was. The mere
fact
of her ‘pregnancy' surprised people. Who would find Dorcas attractive enough to go to bed with her?”

“Sorry, but I never heard a pretty face was absolutely
de rigueur
for that.”