The Dirty Duck (14 page)

“Just like you. And the Biggets.”

The spoon that had been stirring her third cup of tea clattered to the saucer. “Good lord! Are you suggesting this person has a grudge against Americans?”

“Probably just some old Revolutionary War fanatic.”

“Who'd he kill and why?”

“I told you. A young girl, a tourist. I doubt the police know why.” She lowered her voice. “Sex crime, was it?”

“I've no idea.” He finished the crossword and thought it must be a new world's record—under fifteen minutes and talking to Agatha at the same time. Melrose prepared to leave and handed her the paper. “Read all about it.”

“Where're you going?”

“I told you. To London.”

“Well, the Biggets and I certainly shall not stay in Stratford another moment,” she said decidedly as she laid down her napkin.

Eyes narrowed, he regarded her. “And where are you going, then?”

“To Long Piddleton, I should think.”

Melrose leaned across the table and said in a level voice, “If I return to Ardry End and find even so much as
one
Bigget housed there, I shall personally escort him or her to the Piddle River.”

“Well, really! It is such a shame you haven't the hospitality of your dear, dead parents. Your dear mother, Lady Marjorie, the Countess of Caverness—”

He closed his eyes in pain. “Why is it, Agatha, you must always refer to my parents like a butler announcing the entrance of guests to a ball?” He rose and looked down at her. “Remember.
One
Bigget—” and he made a slashing motion beneath his chin.

Rather a grisly gesture, he thought, in the circumstances.

 • • • 

At nine forty-five that morning, Melrose was the only other reader in the Stratford library in addition to a palsied old man who slowly turned the pages of a magazine and coughed rhythmically. Otherwise, the place was quiet as a tomb, as Melrose sat writing, a book of Elizabethan poetry open before him.

Since the library had no copy machine, he was laboriously writing the
entire poem out in longhand. There were many stanzas. He supposed he could have approached the librarian about taking the book out, but he imagined his being a non-Stratfordian would result in reels of red tape.

He capped his pen, reread the poem, and closed the book. The ticking of a longcase clock, the rustle of the magazine, the occasional tapping of the librarian's heels were the only sounds, as he sat thinking over the events of the last twenty-four hours. He then rose, reshelved the book of poetry, went to the card catalogue, returned with a number to another shelf and took down another book.

This he sat reading for an hour. Then he closed that book also. His fingers drummed on the cover as he thought about it.

A minor point, perhaps (thought Melrose, frowning), but strange, nonetheless.

W
hen Jenny Kennington opened the door of the narrow little house in Ryland Street in the old part of Stratford, Jury felt a small jolt, not because she had changed but because she hadn't. Not only the same hair, but worn in the same way, pulled back and carelessly tied at the base of her neck by a small headscarf, the oak-colored ends curling up. It might not have been the same skirt—all good wool looked the same—but it was certainly the same sweater. He remembered how its silvery thread had caught the late sun as they stood in the great empty dining room of Stonington.

“Superintendent Jury!” The smile came quickly and was as quickly erased, as if she wasn't sure what her position with him was. But after her initial surprise, as she stepped aside to admit him, she seemed aware of a secret that neither of them knew they'd shared.

Jury found himself staring at a familiar scene: the room—a front parlor of sorts—was full of packing boxes, some full and strapped, others half-full or empty. She was not, he knew, moving in.

She followed the direction of his gaze and raised her arms and let them drop again in a gesture of helplessness. Her expression was not happy as she said, “I never seem to be able to offer you a chair. The furniture, except for a bed and a few other things, I've sold already. Well, there didn't seem much sense in moving all of those bulky things . . .”

“The chair doesn't matter. Is this sturdy enough to sit on?” He indicated one of the strapped boxes.

“Yes, of course.”

Gingerly, he sat on the edge of the packing case.

She sat down too, on the one facing him. “Do you have a cigarette?”

“Of course.” He brought out a pack. There was only one left. When he
saw her reach and then hesitate, he said, “Go on, take it. I'm trying to cut down anyway.” He would have given a month's pay for a cigarette and a bottle of whiskey at that moment to get him through this. Still she hesitated. “Go on,” he urged.

“We'll share it.”

“Okay,” he said, smiling, and lighting it for her. “Where're you going?”

“There's an aunt of mine, elderly and rather ill. She wants to go on a sea voyage and needs someone to go with her. I'm the only family she's got left. And she's all of mine. The rest are dead.” She exhaled and passed the cigarette to Jury. “It's funny. Other people seem to keep adding to their lives—you know, husbands, children, grandchildren—; I seem to keep diminishing.”

There was no self-pity in the words, which were more highly charged simply because she said them so flatly.

Jury took a drag on the cigarette, tasting her mouth like a memory, and handed it back. “It doesn't have to be that way.”

Her gaze seemed fixed on a point in air over his shoulder. “I wonder.” Her eyes rested on his, then.

He tried on a smile; it didn't seem to work very well. “If it's just a voyage you're going on—” He looked round the room. “Then why all this?”

“It's going to be a long voyage, I'm afraid.”

The cigarette she had handed back to him was nearly spent. He did not smoke it. He was afraid of its going out. “But when you get back . . . I mean, you've got to settle somewhere. Don't you know where?”

Shaking her head, she said, “Not really. It might be that I'll live with Aunt Jane for a while. Though, really, I don't think she's got that long in her condition—”

“You don't have to go,” he said suddenly.

“I wish you'd come before,” she said.

Jury watched the ash inch microscopically down the white cylinder and remembered the last time he'd seen her. Dust and ashes seemed to come between them. He wondered if he were growing fatalistic. “You can't just drift about for the rest of your life.”

“We used to live—my family, I mean—here. Not in Stratford. A ways outside of it. The place was much too large just for me to come back to. Anyway, it's completely run down now, the wings are mostly rubble; the gate house is a sort of mound—”

It was as though she were picking up the thread of a conversation after an interruption of minutes rather than months.

“. . . When I went out there I realized you can't get the past back again.”

“ ‘Of course you can.' ” The cigarette was burning his fingers. He had to let it drop on the bare floor. She put her foot over it, ground it out.

When he looked up at her she was smiling bleakly. “I've never heard anyone say that. Do you really believe it?”

“It was Gatsby who said it. You know. Fitzgerald's Gatsby. About Daisy.”

She seemed to be looking everywhere in the room except at him. “Daisy. Yes.”

Jury stood up. “I've got to be going. I'm going to London inside of an hour. Look. You'll still be here, won't you, for a few days? Or could you call me before you leave?” He gave her one of his cards, writing his home number on the back.

“I'll be here for another week, I expect.” She looked down at the card. “And, yes, I'll call.”

At the door, she said sadly, “But it didn't work for him, did it? Gatsby, I mean.”

Jury smiled. “I guess it depends how you read it.”

 • • • 

As he walked back down Ryland Street, he realized that not once had the subject of murder come up between them.

H
aving had Agatha for breakfast, Melrose was now having Harvey Schoenberg for lunch. There he sat, his arm draped over his computer, drinking stout, when Melrose entered the Dirty Duck fifteen minutes later.

“Hey, Mel!” he called above the voices of a rather thinner lunch-crowd than usual. The tourists must have scattered like buckshot following the discoveries of the last two days.

“Good morning,” said Melrose, depositing his stick on the table. “I thought Honeysuckle Tours would be on its way to London by now.”

“It's J.C. that's holding us up. You know, Farraday. Your friend Rick's trying to talk him into going. Says he won't budge—”

“ ‘Rick'?”

“Yeah. The Scotland Yard guy.” Harvey raised his glass. “Want one?”

“Sherry, if you don't mind. Tio Pepe, dry.”

“Tio. Got it. Guard this, okay?” he nodded to the Ishi computer.

“With my life.”

Harvey went off to the bar and Melrose drew the folded sheet of paper from his pocket. He reread it, especially the stanza the murderer had appropriated for his own macabre use.

A few minutes later, Harvey was back, putting down the sherry and picking up the conversation as if he hadn't been gone. “After all, you can hardly blame the poor bastard, since Jimmy hasn't come back yet.” He lowered his voice. “You don't think something's happened to the kid, do you?” When Melrose didn't answer immediately, he nudged him. “You know what I mean.”

“I know. But it doesn't quite fit the pattern, does it?”

“Pattern? What pattern?”

“Both victims have been women. You knew the Farraday boy pretty well, didn't you? That is, he talked to you more than anyone else on the tour.”

“Could be. About computers. I never saw anyone catch on so quick to computers. I was trying to set his sights toward the future. You know—career-wise. Kid's a real brain. Well, I better be going.” He drained his glass, stood up, and slung the strap of the case over his arm. “Man, I can hardly wait to get to London. Can you feature it? Deptford, that's the first place I'm hitting. Southwark, and maybe Greenwich. Listen, you should let me show you around.” He held out his hand, palm up, and tapped it. “I know the other side of the Thames like the palm of my hand, at least the way it was. It's all those maps I read. Of course, I guess it's different now.” He sighed, and was off, managing to raise some indignant eyebrows as the computer hammered at a few elbows on the way out.

Jury was just coming in as Schoenberg was going out. They exchanged a few words and Harvey nodded, cuffed Jury on the shoulder, and went on.

“Hello, Rick,” said Melrose, pushing out a chair. “Sit down and take the weight off.”

“Thanks. Honeysuckle Tours is booked into Brown's Hotel. Let's hope they stay put.”

“I can guarantee Harvey won't. He's got a brother coming to London, for one thing; not that I think brother Jonathan will be much of a companion in Harvey's rambles. He's already wandering mentally all over Southwark and Deptford. He has invited me along.”

“He told me. About the brother, I mean. Apparently stays at Brown's, too, when he's in town. Honeycutt wasn't kidding about his little group. The check we've run on them certainly shows they're none of them hurting for cash.” Jury sighed. “No way to stop them leaving their hotel. Amelia Farraday's ready to take the first plane back to the States; I'm not sure whether it's to put distance between her and bad memories or between her and the Metropolitan Police. But I imagine we can find some way to block
that
move. Are you ready to leave? I'm having a drink first and something to eat. Incidentally, I got you digs at Brown's, too. You can keep an eye on them. Let Harvey show you round Southwark. What the hell's he expect to find?”

“The inn where Old Kit Marlowe was killed raise its ghostly rafters over the Thames, I expect. I've done your homework for you. The poem—I wrote it down.”

As Melrose took some legal-length foolscap from his pocket, Jury said,
“How the hell did you find it when we've had every man in the department scouring books of poetry—?”

“Simple. I assumed it was Elizabethan and fairly well anthologized and just got the fattest collection I could lay hands on in the library. I looked in the index of first lines.”

“But I thought we said it wasn't a first line.”

“It isn't. I used metrics.” Melrose adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles. “I eliminated at least three-fourths of the poems in the book that way. Perhaps more. It's very regular rhythm, and it's
also
iambic trimeter. Had it been pentameter, or something, it would have been harder. I just ticked off every first line in trimeter.”

“Hell,” said Jury, smiling.

“Yes. Irritatingly clever of me, wasn't it?” He cleared his throat and read:

“Beauty is but a flower

Which wrinkles will devour;

Brightness falls from the air,

Queens have died young and fair;

Dust—”

At that moment, the door to the Dirty Duck opened.
Oh, God!
Melrose thought. He had forgotten completely about Vivian Rivington, and there she stood.

He shoved the paper in Jury's face. “Here, read it.”

“For Christ's sakes, I'm not blind!” Jury said, lowering the paper and his head with it.

They were sitting back in a corner. It was quite possible she would move on with her companion—a slim, dark fellow, no doubt the fiancé. Wonderful. Now, if only she didn't turn and look round the room—

She turned.

And, of course, just then Jury, having read through the poem, raised his head to say something to Melrose.