The Dirty Duck (2 page)

It was an Arcadian idyll, a reverie, a dream . . .

 • • • 

Almost.

“You've fed my last fairy cake to the swans, Melrose,” said the lady who was not Rosalind, poking her face into a white paper bag.

“It was stale,” said the gentleman who, although melancholy, was not Jacques. Melrose Plant wondered if the Avon at this point was deep enough to drown in. But why bother? In another five minutes he'd be bored to death, anyway.

“I was saving them for my elevenses,” said Lady Agatha Ardry, grumpily.

Melrose looked out over the silver waters of the Avon and sighed. What a pastoral scene it was, fit for a shepherdess or a milkmaid. A shepherdess with violet eyes would suit him to perfection. His thoughts drifted like the crumbs on the water back to Littlebourne and Polly Praed. But he could not imagine Polly carrying a pail of milk.

“We're all having morning coffee at the Cobweb Tea Room. Surely, you'll come down off your high horse and join us,” she said, reproachfully.

“No. I thought I'd have my elevenses up on my high horse.”

“You really do put yourself forward, Plant, in the most annoying fashion—”

“Putting myself forward is precisely what I'm
not
doing. To wit, I am not having morning coffee at the Cobweb Tea Room.”

“You've not even met them yet.”

“That's right.”

 • • • 

They
were her cousins from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Thus far, Melrose had seen them only from a distance. He would go no nearer, no matter how she exhorted him. He had made his own accommodation at the Falstaff Hotel, a very small but charming place on the main street, thus forcing Agatha and the American cousins into other, more touristy quarters. He had seen them on the walk in front of the Hathaway's heavy-handed mock-Tudor, swarming all over the pavement: cousins, second cousins, cousins several-times-removed—a veritable flotilla of cousins had come here on one of those tour buses. Two weeks ago at Ardry End she had waved the letter in his face and insisted that he really
must
meet them. “Our American cousins, the Randolph Biggets.”

“Not mine, I assure you,” Melrose had replied from behind his morning paper.

“By marriage, my dear Plant,” Agatha said with a self-satisfied look, as if she'd got him there.

“Not by my marriage. That was my uncle Robert's responsibility, and he has passed on.”

“Do stop being difficult, Plant.”

“I am not being difficult. I did not marry the Randolph Biggets.”

“You don't want to meet your own
kin?”

“Less than kin and less than kind, to paraphrase Hamlet. Hamlet would have been ever so much happier had he hewn to that rule. But I suppose if Claudius had been named Randolph Bigget, Hamlet might not have had so much trouble killing him whilst he prayed.”

As Agatha counted over the various offerings on the tea trolley, she said smugly, “Well, then, the mountain will have to come to Mahomet.”

Melrose put down his paper. That sounded ominous. “What do you mean?”

Derobing a pink-frosted fairy cake, she said, “Only that if we can't go
there,
I shall just have to ask the Biggets to come
here.
Yes, a visit to the countryside . . . yes, I expect they would like that.”

Here?
Melrose knew blackmail when he heard it. But he feigned ignorance by saying, “You've only the two rooms in your cottage. I expect, though, that you could put them up at the Jack and Hammer. Dick Scroggs always has the spare room. Especially since that murder three years ago.” He filled in a few more blanks in his crossword puzzle.

“You really do have the
most
morbid sense of humor, Plant. And with all of these rooms at Ardry End, I should certainly think you could be a bit more hospitable.” When he did not reply, she added, “Then if you won't offer them a bed, you must have them round for one of Martha's cream teas.”

“They shouldn't be having cream teas. I'm sure they're quite stout enough.” Melrose entered
oaf
in the down line beginning with
L
.

“Stout? You've never even seen them.”

“They sound stout.”

Wild horses could not have dragged Melrose to Stratford-upon-Avon in the month of July. But the call from Richard Jury two days before could. Since it was not all that far from Long Piddleton, and since Jury would be there on some sort of routine police business, he had suggested that Plant, if he had no more pressing commitments, motor along.

And motor along he had, Agatha doing the driving from the passenger's seat, with a cold collation in a wicker basket held firmly on her lap.

 • • • 

“Dear old Stratford,” said Agatha now, arms outspread as if she meant to take the town to her bosom.

Melrose watched her cross the street, heading for the Cobweb, where she was to meet her cousins for morning coffee in the darkness of sturdy beams and tilting floors. The less light, the wobblier the tiny tables, the more the tourists approved. Agatha certainly did, though the state of the table was less important to her than the state of the cake plate. Had she known he was supposed to meet Richard Jury for dinner, Melrose would never have been rid of her.

For not only would she be missing out on Jury, she would be missing out on a free meal.

 • • • 

Stratford's Church of the Holy Trinity lay at the end of an avenue of limes. William Shakespeare was buried there, and Melrose wanted to see its chancel. The heavy door closed softly behind him, as if more conscious of genius than of the knot of pilgrims at the souvenir counter buying up
anything stamped with the playwright's image—bookmarks, keyrings, address books. No one was visible in the church proper, other than an elderly man at a collection box stationed at the foot of the nave. Melrose fished out the ten pence it would cost him to have a look at Shakespeare's resting place. Rather like being admitted to a ride in an amusement park, he thought. It made him feel a bit ghoulish: apparently, the guardian of the grave was not of the same mind, for he smiled broadly at Melrose and lifted the red velvet rope.

William Shakespeare must have been a man of taste. If there were ever anyone more deserving of a full-length effigy in marble, a little dog at his feet, sarcophagus set back in its own velvet-draped chapel—surely it was Shakespeare. Instead, there was only this small bronze plaque bearing his name, one name among others in his family, buried beside him. Melrose felt an uncustomary surge of near-religious respect for such genius, so lacking in ostentation.

 • • • 

Before he left the nave, Melrose examined the choir and the unusual carvings of small gargoyle-like faces on the arms of the seats. As he took a step backward he found his leg had struck something, which turned out to be the hindquarters of someone stooping down between the tiered benches.

“Oh, sorry,” said the youngish man, scrambling to his feet and adjusting a strap over his shoulder, which was attached to a rather large square case. At first Melrose thought it must be some elaborate camera equipment, except that the case was metal. A Geiger counter, perhaps? Was the chap looking for some radioactive material in the choir? “Did you lose something?” Melrose asked, politely.

“Oh, no. Just looking underneath the seats.” The wooden benches folded up against the backs when not in use. Not all of them had been returned to their upright position. “At the carvings. They've even got them underneath,” he explained.

“The misericords, you mean?”

“That what they're called? Funny things. Whyever'd anyone carve them there?”

“I don't know.”

 • • • 

Melrose decided that he was somewhere in his late thirties, not quite so young as he'd supposed; it was that fresh-faced look, as if he'd been scrubbed by a hard-bristled brush, that was deceptive. He was fairly tall, brown-haired, and undistinguished-looking in his seersucker suit and perfectly hideous polka-dotted bow tie. He ran his finger around his collar in
the manner of a man who disliked ties. His accent was either American or Canadian; Melrose had never tuned his ear to the difference. Most likely American.

“You from around here?” the man asked, as he followed Melrose up the nave and past the guardian of the red velvet cord.

“No, just visiting.”

“Yeah, me too.” His tone suggested that he had finally found a comrade in this vast wasteland of Stratford, as if all of the visitors here were wandering in the desert. “Neat church, isn't it?”

“Neat, yes.”

The American stopped among the chairs and prayer cushions and shot out a blunt, spatulate-fingered hand. “Harvey L. Schoenberg from D.C.”

“I'm Melrose Plant.” He shook the other man's hand.

“Where from?”

“Northants. That is, Northamptonshire. It's about sixty or seventy miles from here.”

“Never been there.”

“Most visitors haven't. Nothing there especially interesting except rather pretty villages in rather pretty country.”

“Listen,” said Harvey Schoenberg, shouldering open the heavy door of the church, “don't knock it.” He said it as if Melrose had been discrediting his homeland. “I only wish July was like this in D.C.”

“Exactly where is Deezey?” asked Melrose, puzzled.

Schoenberg laughed.
“You
know. Washington, D.C.”

“Ah. Your capital city.”

“Yeah. Of the good old U.S. of A. Hell of a climate, though, let me tell you.”

Melrose had just decided to leave the church walk for the riverbank when Schoenberg, walking beside him, said, “Who's Lucy?”

“What?”

“Lucy.” Schoenberg pointed down at the stone walk. The inscription lay carved in the stone at their feet. “She a friend of Shakespeare's or something?”

“I think it's probably a family name, the Lucys.” With his silver-knobbed walking stick, Melrose pointed to the left and right, to the ground beneath the lime trees. “Buried there or here, I imagine.”

“Weird. We walking on graves?”

“Um. Well, I thought I'd walk by the river, Mr. Schoenberg. Nice meeting—”

“Okay.” He hitched the strap of the big metal box farther up on his
shoulder and continued with Melrose across the grass. He was rather like a lost dog whose head one had patted in the park and who wasn't about to let one off so easily.

“I notice things,” said Schoenberg, folding a stick of gum into his mouth, “because I'm collecting information for a book.”

It would, Melrose thought, be ungentlemanly of him not to inquire into its nature, and so he did.

“It's on Shakespeare,” said Schoenberg, chomping away happily.

Inwardly, Melrose heaved a sigh. Oh, dear. Why in heaven's name would this American, his face as freshly scrubbed as a new potato, want to go wading into the shoals of
those
dangerous waters?

“There must be a whole sea of books on Shakespeare, Mr. Schoenberg; aren't you afraid you'll drown?”

“Harve. Drown? Hell, no. What I've got is something completely new. It's really more on Kit Marlowe than Shakespeare.”

Melrose was almost afraid to ask: “Exactly what is your subject? I hope it hasn't to do with establishing authenticity.”

“Authenticity? Meaning who wrote them?” Schoenberg shook his head. “I'm writing about life more than literature. It's really Marlowe I'm interested in, anyway.”

“I see. As a scholar? Are you affiliated with some institution?”

“Never even got my master's. I leave the egghead crap to my brother. He's chairman of English at this college in Virginia. I'm meeting him in London in a few days. Me, I'm a computer programmer.” He patted the metal box and hitched the strap up on his shoulder.

“Really? I have always felt there were far too many department chairmen in the world and far too few computer programmers.”

Harvey Schoenberg's smile was wide. “Well, there's going to be a lot more, Mel. The computer is going to change the world. Like this little baby, here.” And he tapped the box as if it were a bundle of literal baby.

Melrose stopped in his tracks, and some hungry swans, hoping for action, rowed over. “You don't mean to tell me, Mr. Schoenberg—”

“Harve.”

“—that
that
is a
computer?”

Harvey Schoenberg's dark eyes glittered through the cobweb of shadows the willows cast across his face. “You bet your little booties, Mel. Want to see it? On second thought, let me buy you a beer and I'll tell you all about it. Okay?”

Not staying for an answer, Harvey started walking away.

“Well, I—” Melrose was not sure he wanted to know all about it.

“Come on, come on,” motioned Harvey Schoenberg, as if they were about to miss a bus. “The Dirty Duck's just across the street. Or the Black Swan, whichever. How come it's got two names?”

“The Black Swan section is their restaurant, I believe.”

Schoenberg looked over his shoulder at the river. “Where do they get the swans? Just for fun I checked them out and ran a little program on them to see which time of day was the least likely for them to crowd up at the bank for crumbs. The Ishi figured it all out for me.”

Melrose was not quite sure from which end to approach this information. “I suppose they get the swans from a swannery.”

“No kidding. Kind of like a chicken farm, or something?”

The Black Swan was just ahead. Melrose felt the need of a drink. “Not exactly.” He gazed up at the bright blue sky and wondered if he had a touch of sun-madness. “What,” he asked, “is an Ishi?”

“Ishikabi. This little baby. Japanese, converted by yours very truly.”

Harvey Schoenberg was clearly on a nickname basis with everything in the world, including his computer.