Jerusalem Inn (19 page)

“What did he look like?”

“Tall, less than you. Kinda light hair, green eyes. Good-looker,” She might have been going to add another “less than you,” but stopped herself.

“Who were the others?”

She shrugged. “Didn't see them meself. Joe said one looked like he might have been the other's valet. And an old lady. A young one, too. Good-looker, he said. Reminded him of that film star — what's her name?”

“Vanessa Redgrave,” said Jury, more to his glass than to her.

“That's it. You know them, then.”

Jury nodded. “They were going to the Seainghams'?”

“Aye.”

He couldn't imagine what Melrose Plant was doing at Spinney Abbey, but he was certainly glad he was there. Jury would be saved a lot of time and trouble. Plant had certainly helped him out before on cases.

Nell Hornsby drank her whisky and asked, “You like snooker? There's a match in the back room. Clive's there.”

“Thanks. Maybe I'll have a look.” Jury was delaying his visit to the abbey. The later, the more the element of surprise.

And the longer before he'd have to see Vivian Rivington again.

 • • • 

The back of the Jerusalem was one long room, stone-flagged and cold, except for the inadequate heater in the big, cold fireplace. The back was reserved largely for the snooker-matches, the lowlier pool table having been relegated to the front room. The players didn't seem bothered by the cold; neither did their audience, most of whom had moved from the game in progress on the first table to the new
frame about to begin. Clive, in tinted glasses, took a sort of boxer's stance for the break.

Jury wondered how he managed with those glasses. Although Jury's knowledge of snooker was about as heady as his knowledge of Italian opera, he still thought Clive's stance a little sloppy. His left hand made a very poor bridge for the cue. But then his fingers were stubby, which put him at a disadvantage anyway. Still, Clive appeared to be resident champion, if one could go by the way people gathered to watch him break. He took a long look at the pyramid of red balls, clipped the top outside red, sending the cue ball off the cushion to angle back above the blue and behind the other colors on the balk line. To Jury it looked like a damned good shot, setting up the yellow for a pot in the middle pocket. Clive potted three more reds and colors in turn before he miscued on a red pinched up against the cushion, the tip of his cue running off the top. But he'd built up enough of a break that he could look pretty smug about it.

Jury walked over to Clive, who was toasting himself with a pint, and showed him his warrant card. “Sorry to interrupt. Mrs. Hornsby told me you talked to this woman in here.”

Warily, Clive looked at the snap and shrugged. “Had a drink is all. She said nowt.” He looked toward the table. “My torn.” He looked a question at Jury, who nodded, and shoved past him to the table.

A voice at Jury's elbow said, “I got the clothes.”

It was Chrissie, carrying the big doll now wrapped round in strips of sheeting, looking like an accident victim or something ready for the morgue.

“Fine,” said Jury. “Looks much more like the baby Jesus.”

She seemed to be waiting for warmer congratulations than that. When none came, she turned to watch the game. “Do you play that?” Her small, bright voice pierced the thick smoke and the air heavy with the smells of different brews.

Clive was negotiating a difficult cushion shot and Chrissie was quickly shushed.

Just at that moment, the back door opened, blowing in wind, snow, and two figures who were stripping ski masks from their faces.

Clive miscued and swore.

Jury had the edge over Melrose Plant, who, seeing his friend Richard Jury standing there, could only stare, open-mouthed.

“What's this,” asked Jury, looking from Melrose to Tom. “The Spinneyton SWAT team?”

“I
T WOULD
probably be better if I just didn't ask,” said Jury.

“Probably,” said Melrose. “We left the skis outside.”

“Really?”

Melrose was watching Tommy talking to the other players as if he'd lived here all his life. “I, ah, suppose you drove?”

“It's the way I usually travel, myself. If you're one of Seaingham's guests, then you've probably met the person I'm looking for — Frederick Parmenger.”

“Parmenger?
What on earth do you want with him?”

“There was a woman found in the bedroom of Old Hall day before yesterday —”

“What old hall?”

“Washington Old Hall. It's owned by the National Trust . . . don't you read the papers?”

“Papers? Delivered how? Look, you don't know how isolated this Spinney Abbey
is.
They've been snowed in there for three days.” Melrose held up his ski mask. “You don't think I get kitted out like this every day, do you?”

“I hope not. Parmenger's the cousin of the woman who was found. Her name was Helen Minton.”

“Found how?”

“Dead.”

Melrose lit a cigar. “Well, I
assumed
that. I meant, how did she die, obviously? Who found her? The National Trust?”

“Tourists,” said Jury, shortly.

“She was murdered, then. Why else would they have got you up here?”

“They didn't, I was up here anyway.”

“In this wasteland? Whatever for?

Jury told him about his aborted visit to Newcastle and his meeting with Helen Minton.

Melrose was silent for a moment. He blew on the coal-end of his cigar and said, “I'm sorry.”

Jury shrugged and drank his beer. “Nothing to be sorry about. I hardly knew her.” A terrible feeling, almost of betrayal, stabbed him as he looked absently at the frame just ending. Clive had won every frame; apparently his opponent merely gave up, good-naturedly.

“What about Parmenger?”

“He's — he was — Helen Minton's cousin. It took two days to find him. He keeps himself to himself, apparently.”

“Ha! I'll drink to that if you'll buy. Frankly, he's the only one with any sense: he's not at the abbey for pleasure, but for business. He's done Grace Seaingham's portrait. Though I'm very much surprised he'd put himself to the trouble of traveling all the way up here to the frozen North to do it. Parmenger's definitely not the type to put himself out for anybody. And you wouldn't be going to Spinney Abbey in this beastly weather just to tell Parmenger to go and identify the body of his cousin. So what's going on?”

Jury watched as Clive racked the balls for another game. “She was poisoned.” He stared blindly at the three balls Clive was placing on the balk line — yellow, brown, green. “What'll you have to drink?”

Melrose just looked at him for a moment. “The usual.”

 • • • 

As Hornsby drew the Old Peculier and the Newcastle ale, Jury looked over to see that the doll, wrapped in its bandages, had been returned to the manger. It made him feel inexpressibly sad; he thought of Mrs. Wasserman and Father Rourke.

“Is the only way to Spinney Abbey on skis?” he asked, handing Melrose his drink.

“Very funny. No, but it's the quickest. And the only means of escape, if one” — Melrose indicated Tommy Whittaker — “is not supposed to be engaging in such frivolous pursuits as pool.”

“Snooker,” said Jury.

“It's all one to me.”

“Much more complicated.” He watched Clive chalking his cue. Unless Jury was mistaken, Clive was going to play this lad who had come in with Melrose Plant. He turned to ask about Whittaker, when he heard Plant saying:

“ . . . road by now is clear, so I intend to pack up myself, Agatha, and Viv —” Melrose stopped and studied the tip of his cigar again.

“What's she doing here? I thought she married that Italian duke, or whatever.”

“Count. No. He's floating in Venice. I suspect she's got cold feet. Wet feet, rather.”

“Oh,” was all Jury said. The last time he had seen Vivian had been for those brief moments in Stratford-upon-Avon. She had been with him, the Italian. Now, this new knowledge washed over him with an intensity that surprised him. Damnit, why couldn't he go about his business and stop stumbling into people who appeared and disappeared? He stopped thinking about it, pointed his pint toward the second table. “Is he going to play Clive?”

“Clive who?”

“The last winner. What are you doing, anyway, skiing
about the countryside with him? And what was all of that ‘marquess' business before he kicked you in the shins?”

“Don't miss anything, do you? I'm humoring him.” Melrose's sigh was sacrificial. “I feel sorry for him, though I should really feel sorry for
me,
being stuck in that great, cold abbey, treated to amateur piano-and-oboe recitals. But it's not really his fault. He's got this aunt —”

“Now I understand.”

“Yes. Only I must say that
his
aunt is genuinely fond of him. Her trouble is, she can't let him be: she's afraid he's going to turn out like his parents — that he'll be the playboy type and start up another Happy Valley in Kenya and engage in wife-swapping and sodomy and whatever those types do. He's the Marquess of Meares, and she wants him to uphold the family honor.”

“Good lord, he's so young to be a marquess.”

“Not in here,” whispered Melrose, watching Tommy take a drink from his pint. The table was set up, the pyramid of balls in place. “The trouble is, great-auntie is going too far in putting up with the piano- and oboe-playing. He's absolutely dreadful — what's he doing with his damned oboe case, for God's sakes? That must have been what he had strapped over his shoulder.”

It was true that Tommy Whittaker had brought his oboe case, from which he removed two wooden cylinders. He screwed them together with a practiced quickness and chalked the tip.

“It's a cue! You're carrying a
cue
in your oboe case,” Melrose said to Tom.

Tommy looked from Plant to Jury. Without the hint of a smile he said, “You ever try playing snooker with an oboe?”

H
E
certainly didn't play snooker the way he played the oboe.

He was playing against Clive, who was obviously unnerved before Tommy even got to the table. Clive missed an easy pot after running up a break of twenty-four. Now, with the reds positioned around the black, Tommy built his break up to forty on the black-ball game alone. It took an amazing repertoire of strokes to do it. Clive sat down and watched with the others. On the last red, Tommy brought the cue ball down the table to the balk line in position for the colors. He pocketed the yellow with enough screw to bring the white back in position for the green, did the same thing to take the brown, then sent the white up the table with a cannon off two of the cushions, but was snookered on the blue because of a red just barely touching it. He played a safety shot.

By the time Clive got up to the table Tommy's score on the break was 54, the sort of score even a professional would be happy about. But it wasn't the accuracy that amazed Jury; it was the speed. Tom didn't appear to stop and think, yet it was clear he played with a diagram in his mind, seeing several
shots ahead, as a chess player can see plays beyond plays. Except that Tom moved more like a tornado than a chess player.

“Where did you learn to play like
that?”
Melrose offered him his cigar case.

“Practice,” said Tommy simply, thanking Melrose for the cigar, and going back to the table. Clive had glued the cue ball to the cushion and couldn't get at his color. He tried to lay a snooker on Tommy, which Tommy quickly got out of at the same time he used a stun shot to pocket the remaining red and bring the white back to pocket the pink. That left only the black, and the frame was over.

“Practice! You must have started when you were one.”

Tommy smiled. “Five, actually. See, my father liked billiards. I used to have to move a packing case round the table to stand on.”

“I've never seen anyone so fast,” said Jury.

“Then you've never seen Hurricane Higgins, have you?”

“W
HAT
do you mean, no ride?” Melrose thought with dread of the skis.

Hornsby had begun calling Time a half-hour ago and was barking it now to get a few of the rock-hard regulars out.

“It would be better if we didn't turn up at Spinney Abbey together.” He nodded toward Tommy, talking to Clive, who was being a sport about having lost miserably to this boy. “Besides you should see he gets back —”

“He
could get to the Antarctic if there were a snooker table there. Anyway, you certainly don't have any hopes that our friendship is going to remain a secret once Agatha sees you, do you? She'll have our long-standing acquaintance chronicled like Euryalus and Nisus.” He knew Jury's fondness for Virgil.

“I know it won't be a secret. But you'll still be more of a help if we don't appear to be working on this case together.”

“Well, what case
are
we working on, then? What do you expect to find?”

“Frederick Parmenger, for one thing. So get your skis on. You'll probably get there before I do. Through Spinneyton, turn right, is that it?”

“Believe me, once you're on that road you can't miss the abbey. It's the only thing with lights for miles around. But isn't it a bit late for Scotland Yard to be knocking up people?”

“Yes. But I do it occasionally. Takes them by surprise.” Jury smiled and pocketed his cigarettes. “They'll all be tucked up in bed.”

“Probably. Nothing ever happens in the country.”

“Don't count on it,” said Jury.