Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (6 page)

Dick Scroggs rolled his toothpick and said, "You read about this
latest case up in the West Riding, miss . . . ?"

Melrose was indeed reading about it; he was reading about the crime
that very evening while Agatha was at Ar-dry End, seated on his Queen
Anne sofa, stuffing herself with potted tongue and gobbet cakes, and
talking about Harrogate.

"I don't see why you won't book a room at the Old Swan where Teddy
and I are staying. Teddy would love to have you come, I know; she's
said several times how much she'd like to see you."

Melrose's thirst to see Teddy again in Harrogate had been
considerably slaked by his having seen her in York. He had agreed,
finally, to play chauffeur and drive Agatha there; it would be worth it
just to give the Georgian tea service a brief rest. He continued
reading the item in the
Times
.

"Melrose, would you
kindly
put down that paper and have
Ruthven bring some more maids-of-honor. And why are there no fairy
cakes? Didn't Martha know I was coming?"

Melrose refolded the paper. He considered ringing his friend Jury,
but thought he probably had enough on his platter. His aunt certainly
had enough on hers. A jam heart, a gobbet cake, and a brandy snap. He
put the paper aside and retrieved the latest thriller by his friend
Polly Praed from where he had stuffed it between the cushion and the
chair arm.
Die Like a Doge
had begun life as ...
Like a
Dog
(so she had told him) with the central character a See-ing-Eye
German shepherd until her editor had insisted there were entirely too
many mysteries written these days with dogs and cats as characters. It
was becoming a cliche. Polly had told Melrose all this, in a rancorous
tone as if he were partially responsible, since he himself had
suggested a church fete as a setting with some sort of situation
involving a terrier chasing after the sack-racers. Perhaps it was his
reference to Vivian Rivington and Venice that had suddenly changed
dog
to
doge
and
fete
to
Carnivale
. Thus far
ten people in an English touring group had snuffed it in nearly as few
pages, falling one against another like a line of dominoes. Polly got
more bloodthirsty with every book. Things must be hideously boring in
Littlebourne, but he still could not budge her from the place.

"You are being excessively rude, Melrose."

"Hmm?" He looked up from the plight of Aubrey Ad-derly, dressed as a
harlequin and dashing down some waterlogged alleyway. "Sorry, but I
did promise Polly I'd finish this manuscript to let her know my
opinion."

Agatha mumbled something about "cheap thrillers" and said,
"Honestly, you have, over these last months, become wretched company."

"Then why do you desire my wretched company for a week in
Harrogate?" He sipped his sherry and resettled himself in the crusty
brown wing chair he favored for cold winter afternoons by the
fireplace. His dog Mindy slept on a small prayer rug she had dragged in
from another room.

In his mind's eye, Melrose enjoyed envisioning this scene when he
was shoving his bicycle along in the bitter cold, or standing sodden in
rain on the railway platform in Sidbury, or fighting his way through a
blinding snowstorm. . . . Actually, he couldn't remember doing any of
these things. Still, he liked thinking of himself in these surroundings
of Adam ceilings, Georgian silver, crystal chandeliers, and the long
vista of the drawing room in which they now were seated, as the rain
lashed the casement windows, lightning seared the privet hedges—

He really must stop reading Polly Praed's mysteries. The elements
were always in league with the blackguard criminal, huge ghostly faces
appearing suddenly on rain-drenched fens, hands scrabbling about in
bogs—

"Teddy and I shall need an escort."

Naturally, his purpose was utilitarian. "Whatever for? Nothing goes
on in Harrogate except conventions. Large groups of people are always
convening there. I don't know what about."

"Nonsense. Harrogate is a perfectly charming place with lots to do:
there're the gardens, the Stray, the Baths. You're such a
stick-in-the-mud, Melrose. Never used to be."

He didn't? He would have thought, over the years, to hear her talk,
the mud was up to his eyeballs.

". . . rather dull. You know, I almost preferred you when you were
going through that stage of thinking about marriage." <

Knowing he should have resisted any temptation to respond, still
Melrose lowered the manuscript and glared at her. If his aunt said
things like this merely to get a reaction, he wouldn't have answered.
But she was entirely too complacent to bother about baiting him.

"And just what makes you think I've stopped considering it?"

"Don't be silly. With Vivian gone, there's no one about to marry."
Now she was up and yanking at the bellpull. "What in heaven's name is
keeping Ruthven?"

Anything Ruthven can think of, Melrose supposed. Vivian Rivington
had always been the principal threat to his aunt's "expectations" and
Agatha, despite her references to the "odious Italian," must have
breathed a sigh of relief when the wedding date was set.

"Especially since you ruined your chances," she continued, letting
the statement hang in the air much like the silver pot she held while
inspecting the last morsels on the cake plate.

Completely disoriented—not an unusual state of mind when Agatha was
hard by—he said, "What? What chances?"

"With Lady Jane Hay-Hurt. At the Simpsons' garden party."

"I don't even remember
speaking
to Jane Hay-Hurt. Indeed,
I don't even remember the Simpsons' garden party."

"Ha! That doesn't surprise me. You were in one of your churlish
moods. Refusing to speak to people, off by yourself, brooding and
feeding the ducks."

All he remembered was a garden, colorful frocks, and aimless
chatter. That was all. Perhaps he was given to blackouts. Or
brownouts. He wished he were in the middle of one right now.

As if Polly Praed's setting had come suddenly to life, curtains of
rain lifted and fell across the french windows. His aunt was going on
with evident satisfaction about Vivian's forthcoming marriage and the
opportunities she seemed to think this event allowed for foreign
travel. "Oh, it will be so pleasant to get out of Northants for a
while." She leaned back with her teacup and the last of the muffins and
rattled on about palazzos and palaces, doges and loggias, canals and
campaniles. (She must really have been rooting in her Italian
guidebook, he thought.) "So pleasant to be in a place cool, and tiled,
and watery."

"If that's all you want, go back to Plague Alley and take a shower."

He returned to the plight of Aubrey Adderly, who apparently thought
his thin disguise impenetrable. How many mysteries, Melrose wondered,
had been set in Venice during Carnivale? How many bodies went floating
down the Grand

Canal? It was all the fault of Edgar Allan Poe and his godforsaken
"Cask of Amontillado."

"There isn't a shred of romance in you, my dear Plant. It's no
wonder you've had so little success with women." Now that Vivian had
finally decided to marry the "dissolute Italian," the count's prospects
had risen considerably in Agatha's eyes. He was no longer "that
impoverished fortune-hunter," but "the Count Franco Giopinno of some
prominence in Italian politics" (a contradiction in terms, Melrose
thought). That was now her report to her acquaintances, her char (Mrs.
Oilings), and the seamstress who was whipping up a dress for the great
event. That the event was near to hand and Vivian had as yet to issue
invitations made no odds to Agatha.

"Oh, I don't know," said Melrose, studying his empty sherry glass
and reaching for the bellpull. "I wouldn't mind bobbing around in a
canal with Ortina Luna, she of the liquid eyes."

Munching the end of the brandy snap, she looked at him narrowly.
"Who're you talking about?"

Melrose didn't answer. Unable to induce in himself a fugue state or
go into a coma, he dipped once again into the pages of
Die Like a
Doge
, marveling at Polly Praed's ability to accommodate her plot,
which originally took place amid the narrow streets and chimney pots of
Biddingstone-on-Water, to the waterier byways of Venice. The original
denouement that saw a blind man and his Seeing-Eye dog chased over the
old stone bridge of Biddingstone had translated itself into the
protagonist's fleeing his pursuers across the Accademia Bridge.

Melrose was fascinated, not by the book (which could only be
appreciated by a blind man), but by its intrepid author and her
prodigious imagination: it did not take wings and soar; it just
bulldozed everything in its path, spewing up concrete and gravel and
clumps of hard earth with no regard at all for the willing suspension
of disbelief. Willing or not, Polly couldn't seem to care less:

Misfortune had been Aubrey's lot ever since the moment in the
Gritti Palace when he had first set eyes on the mysterious Orsina Luna.
. . .

Melrose kept his finger as a marker in the manuscript and looked up.
The voice-over of his aunt had been sounding all along, rabbiting on
about the trip to Harrogate.

"... a cold luncheon. I think we might take what's left of the
Chicken Kiev we're to have for dinner tonight, and perhaps a bottle of
muscadet."

Blackly, Melrose regarded her. "Crubeens, marrow pie, and tripe and
onions is what we're having. The chicken's off."

The last of the maids-of-honor stopped halfway to her mouth. "What
are crubeens? Never heard of them."

"Pig's trotters. Martha does them with an excellent sauce—"

"Oh, be serious."

That, unfortunately, was what he was being. The coppery-haired
Orsina Luna on the vaporetto had turned his mind quite seriously to
thoughts of the coppery-haired Vivian Rivington who soon might be.

Melrose looked off down the vista. "Let me remind you, Agatha,
Vivian isn't married yet." A clap of thunder, a dagger of accompanying
lightning obliged Melrose by underscoring this (to Agatha) sinister
announcement.

She fairly jumped, either at the onslaught of noise or the implied
threat.
^/

Melrose went back to Aubrey, not so easily intimidated.

. . .
Aubrey had thought that his harlequin disguise would have
helped him to elude his shadowy pursuers, but he realized, as he neared
the Rialto Bridge, that this was not the case. The bell in the
campanile sounded its ominous gong. . .
.

Why was it, wondered Melrose, that the bells of St. Rules just made
their dissonant metallic clatter rather than bong-ing ominously?
Probably because St. Rules overlooked Betty Ball's bakery instead of
Saint Mark's Square. As he diligently returned to this dismal chase,
the voice of his aunt seeped through:

". . . and we decided that the Old Swan is more convenient to the
center of things. Besides, it's much nearer the Stray. . . ."

"Charming place," said Melrose, who didn't know what she was talking
about.

Suppressing the rising feeling of terror, Aubrey pushed his way
through the crowd . . .

"What is keeping Ruthven? Must I sit here all afternoon just to get
one or two brandy snaps?"

"I hope not."

. . .
pushed his way through the Crowd flowing across the
bridge. Grotesque masks, powdered and painted faces, costumes of
scarlet, orange, blue-licked about like tongues of flame and were
reflected grotesquely in the black water of the canal below like some
vision of hell. . .
.

"It's so wonderful to have all of those acres of green parkland
right in the center of the city; Teddy and I shall be able to walk and
talk for hours."

Talk about a vision of hell, thought Melrose.

Finally, when they reached the palazzo facing the Grand Canal,
the revellers dispersed, flying off in small groups, the trains of the
gowns streaming, the capes flowing out. . . .

Melrose yawned. If he himself felt exhausted from all of this hectic
running about and suffocating crush, what must old Aubrey feel? He
certainly must be thinking about a place to put his feet up. . . . Ah,
there it was, of course. The Gritti Palace. Everyone finally fetched up
at the Gritti Palace. He decided to make it a point, if Vivian were
really determined to go through with this harebrained marriage and he
were invited to the festivities, to look out some ratty old pension and
leave the Gritti Palace to Aubrey, who had already passed and made a
tortuous journey through "nightmarishly twisting streets" to the
Accademia. Here he was in another crush of carnival-revellers.

He had, thank God, finally escaped. Aubrey ran down the steps
where he saw a vaporetto marked for the Lido. It was about to shove
off, and he jumped aboard just as the attendant swung the rope to the
dock and pushed away.

Safe.'

Making his way to the stern, he stopped dead.

Orsina Luna
—
mask or no
—
he was sure it was she
whom he had left behind in the palace of the doge
.

As the vaporetto picked up speed, the wind tangled her coppery
hair and he looked away. The Grand Canal was a tunnel of darkness. . . .

Melrose looked up from the page, glad that Agatha had taken herself
off in search of cakes and cucumbers. He could not understand how such
drivel (pardon me, dear Polly) could touch something in himself. His
eye traveled the length of his drawing room, dim and shadowy in the
last of the sun, as if it were that Venetian canal that bore Polly's
hero along with the copper-haired woman who was going to end up killing
the doge in self-defense and marrying Aubrey.

Well, he was so bored he read the last few pages so that he could
give Polly the advantage of some varnished lie about