Jerusalem Inn (31 page)

N
ELL HORNSBY
was wiping down the optics when Jury walked in. She gave him a big smile, drew a pint of Newcastle for him, and said, “Happy Christmas.”

“Thanks, Nell. Not many people in here this evening. I'm surprised.”

“Oh, aye. We've only just opened. They'll be in later. Christmas Eve's a big night.”

There were only the elders on the bench. Marie and Frank nose to nose, and the chap in the anorak with his book and his nervous whippet. “Where's Robin?” asked Jury.

“Robbie? Last I saw him he was in the back room.” As she gestured with the hand that held the bar towel, Jury saw a flash of skirt disappear through the door to the living quarters upstairs.

“Chrissie!” called Nell. No answer. She sighed. “The bairn just
won't
leave that doll alone.”

Jury smiled. “She'll bring it back. Probably gone to give it a wash.”

Nell shook her head and turned to wipe the beer pulls, and
Jury took his glass over to the table near the fireplace. All he wanted, for the moment, was to think.

 • • • 

He didn't know how long she'd been standing there with Alice all wrapped up in a blanket to which bits of hay were still stuck. “After tomorrow, I can have her back, Mam said.”

“That's good. Are you glad to see Christmas come, then?”

“Aye. I'm getting Smurfs and a Barbie Doll and coloring books and a new dress.” She sat down and adjusted the blanket more firmly around Alice.

“You know everything you're getting, then?”

She nodded. “I looked. It's all upstairs in the closet. I wrapped them back up again.” Her gaze at Jury was clear and straight. “You going to tell?”

“Do I look like somebody who'd tell?”

She shrugged. “Maybe not.” She looked him over carefully. “Mam said you was police.”

“True. We've all been taught to keep secrets. People don't get things out of us easily.”

Her hair, recently washed, matted damply about her small face like dark leaves. Her brown eyes stared into Jury's. “I took off the swaddling clothes. They got dirty. And I pinned him into this blanket. Do you think that's okay?”

Chrissie took these sudden sex changes in stride. “I'm sure it is,” said Jury. “I don't think Mary and Joseph will mind, as long as the baby's put back.”

She cocked her head. “Are they so dumb they don't know it's Alice?”

And with that sacrilege, she slipped off the chair and hunkered under the rope to stuff the doll in the crib.

Jury sat there for a moment looking at the creche. He wondered how it was he could have heard the same thing over and over and paid no attention —

Melrose Plant put his hand on Jury's shoulder, shaking it. “Where've you been? Tommy's back there” — Melrose nodded
toward the back room — “beating them all blind in less time than it takes me to do a crossword. He just laid several snookers on Tattoo that you wouldn't believe. I'm thinking of being his manager. You're not listening. . . . Why are you staring at the Nativity scene?”

“Am I so dumb I didn't know it was Alice?” He got up and started for the telephone beside the bar.

“What are you talking about?”

Jury turned back. “I'm going to call Grace Seaingham. I'm going to ask her to invite me to dinner. I shall, of course, be careful what I eat.”

 • • • 

Having finished his telephone call over which Plant thought he had taken an inordinately long time, Jury came back to the table with the remainder of his own drink and a pint of Old Peculier.

“Thank God they've got Old Peculier on draught,” said Melrose. “Much stronger. What're you drinking? Lye?”

Jury smiled. “Newcastle Brown Ale. Same thing in strength.”

“I did as you said, and had a little chat with Susan Assington. I've been reading up on poisons.”

Jury still stared at the shabby little Christmas scene, thinking of skis and priests and paintbrushes, and said, “What did you find out?”

“I was thinking of this business of being snowed in: you know, that the Minton woman's murderer couldn't have been one of
our
happy band. Then I hit on cross-country skiing. MacQuade. Who could live in the wilds for weeks with a rifle —”

“You mean his hero could.”

Melrose shrugged and raised his glass. “Here's to life: it's only a story.” He went on. “But after reading up on the properties of aconitine, it was pretty clear that whoever poisoned her, number one, could have been doing it over a period of
time, and, number two, didn't have to be there when she took the lethal dose.”

“I know. I've been talking to Cullen.”

“A nonlethal dose passes out of the system very quickly. Maybe that's what was giving her those side effects. It could, couldn't it, have been in the medicine?”

“That's the way a chap named Lamson disposed of his victim. It's what I thought too, at first. Go on.”

Melrose drew damp rings on the table with his mug. “So scratch MacQuade. No more opportunity than anyone else, no motive.” Turning ash from his cigar, Melrose said, “Now there's Grace Seaingham. According to her, you say, someone's trying to poison her.”

“You think she's lying?”

“She won't let Assington do any tests, will she?”

“A good point. But she
is
ill.”

“People have been known to administer little doses to themselves — God knows it would divert suspicion. But let me go on —” Melrose shoved his cigar in his mouth, put the book on the table, opened to a page that he had marked with a little pinkish-white flower. “As the American poet Frost might say, ‘What has this flower to do with being white?'
Helleborus niger,
the black hellebore. The Christmas rose with the fatal root. Extremely poisonous. A whole houseful supplied by Susan Assington, how about that? Our little Mary-Quite-Contrary gardener.”

“And you're saying that since the source of aconite is also a flower —?”

“Well, I'm only saying what I'm
saying.
Sir George and Beatrice Sleight. Sir George and, possibly, Grace Seaingham? Or, at least, in little Mary's book. Or garden, perhaps.”

“But what have you decided Susan Assington's connection is with Helen Minton?

“I haven't. But she's exactly the sort Polly Praed would
have chosen. All of that featherbrained, dopey little shopgirl act hiding an absolutely pathological personality.”

Jury smiled. “I'll reserve judgment, for Polly's sake.” He picked up his glass and said, “Let's go back and see how Whirlwind Whittaker's doing.”

 • • • 

“I had a long talk with Father Rourke,” said Jury, watching the player with Tommy address the ball with a dithering style that wasn't going anywhere. “He's the priest in Washington Village and he knew Helen Minton. Rourke is a structuralist —”

“Really? I'd rather be a manager.”

“ — and he was going over various interpretations of the Gospels. Fascinating. I wish I'd paid more attention.”

Plant lit a cigar. “I'm glad you didn't or we might be here till the snows come up to the sills. But go on.”

“What I remembered later was what he'd said about the ‘psychological' interpretation: he was talking about the story of the Prodigal Son and its Oedipal implications.” Tommy's opponent made a traditional break on the reds, but didn't place the cue ball near a color.

“The Prodigal Son. Ah, yes. The tale that always makes you think you'd be better off leaving home.”

“It's not that so much as his mention of Oedipus.”

“Oedipus was definitely
not
better off leaving home, poor fellow. He should have stuck around.”

“Didn't have much choice in the matter, did he?” said Jury watching Robin Lyte, who was hanging about the table with a cue stick, a look of anticipation on his face.

Looking at Robin, Plant said, “That's a very sad case. It's hell she had to find out — Helen Minton, I mean.”

They were silent for a moment as they watched Tommy pot one of the reds and stop the green dead with a stun shot, putting it just where he wanted it. “Imagine how devious
that kid had to be to get in the practice he's done,” said Jury.

“Devious? I wouldn't call him devious,” said Plant defensively.

Jury smiled. “I didn't mean it that way. He's a very clever lad, though. I should have seen it straightaway.”

“Seen what?”

“I was thinking again of Oedipus: they had to get rid of him, didn't they? The King of Thebes could hardly keep somebody around who was going to wind up murdering him.”

“First it's Alice, now it's Oedipus. I'm confused.”

“Save it for now. I've got myself and Wiggins invited to dinner this evening.” Jury looked at his watch.

“You
were
having an ungodly long conversation with Grace. I think you know, don't you?”

Jury stubbed out his cigarette in an old tin ashtray. By now, the table was cleared of reds. “I think our murderer is going to try to lay, as Tommy would say,” — Jury nodded at the table —“a dirty snooker on someone.”

“Who?”

“Grace Seaingham.”

Plant said, watching Tommy negotiate an incredibly difficult massé shot, “I rather thought that.”

Jury looked at him. “Why?”

“Because of the method.”

“Which method do you mean?” asked Jury. “Poison or shotgun?”

“I supposed that
poison
was the chosen method, and the gun only used because Beatrice Sleight had to be shut up immediately. Poisons are a bit chancy, unless you use cyanide or another one that's calculated to put your victim out of business rather quickly.” Plant opened the book to another page marked with a match and pointed to a small picture. “Such as this.”

Jury stared at it. “I'll be damned. With
that
you don't have
to worry about poisoning the whole casserole and littering the house with bodies. How damned clever.” Jury read the two paragraphs beneath the picture and shook his head before handing the book back to Plant.

Tommy Whittaker pocketed the last ball, the black, and stood back, tugging down his waistcoat.

“He's cleared the table; you've cleared my mind. Thanks,” said Jury.

“Aren't you going to return the favor? Who's killing these women? Helen Minton, Beatrice Sleight, and now, you say, Grace Seaingham. Some rabid misogynist? My bet would be Parmenger, if that's the case.”

“Do you mind if I don't say at the moment?”

“Yes, but I won't argue.” Plant inclined his head toward Tommy. “I've arranged a Christmas present for him. It was almost as difficult as my dear aunt's embroidered coat of arms.”

Jury was silent for a moment. “That's good. He's going to need it.”

G
RACE SEAINGHAM'S
sudden announcement as the cocktail tray was being passed that Scotland Yard would be dining with them prompted Vivian Rivington to spill half her martini down the front of a high-necked, jade-green gown that made her look more like a Geisha girl than a candidate for the Italian nobility.

The others were equally dressed up, it being Christmas Eve: Lady St. Leger in lace, Lady Ardry in a length of unidentifiable cloth, Susan Assington worrying the uneven hemline of some brown, feathery material that put Melrose in mind of a dry wheatfield, perhaps in contrast to Grace Seaingham's newly found color. Indeed, Susan seemed to wither while Grace bloomed.

Upon their hostess's news, they all shifted expressions and positions as if they were being rearranged by a photographer. MacQuade looked quizzical, Parmenger bored. Tommy might have been trying out a massé shot in his mind, he looked so intensely upon Grace.

Charles Seaingham himself was definitely put out by this announcement. “You didn't tell me, my dear.”

“No, I told Cook,” said Grace, sweetly. She smiled at him, as if making a point of what took precedence. Grace was dressed tonight not in white but in a soft and flattering shade of tea-rose, which Parmenger had gone on about, saying it brought out her color, suited her hair, and walking round her as if he'd like to go back now and do the whole portrait all over again. Grace had thanked him, noticed that her gown just matched the Christmas roses, plucked one from a wide, shallow crystal vase, and stuck it in the neck of her dress. She smiled brightly at Susan Assington, who looked quickly away.

Grace Seaingham seemed to be the only person there who did not display a case of the jitters, except for Frederick Parmenger and the Ladies St. Leger and Ardry. Those two sat solid as rocks on either side of the fireplace with their embroidery hoops.

Melrose was even more certain Grace was up to something when she said, in response to the several
you're looking ever so much better, Grace, dear's,
“I feel ever so much better. It must have been that marvelous luncheon I had with Superintendent Jury in Durham this afternoon.”

“That marvelous luncheon” was described in absolutely sensuous detail: they'd lunched on, of all things, an Old Peculier casserole and soused mushrooms. None of this one-way conversation was going down a treat with her guests, Melrose saw. There were more refillings of glasses than usual, which, with this crowd, was like giving a Rolls-Royce an oil and lube job.

“Nonetheless, my dear,” said Charles. “I feel we've all seen enough of police. They're still out tonight with their damned lanterns and torches. I've lived with them long enough. I don't care to sit down to dine with them.”

As Marchbanks slid open the large double door, Grace rose with a smile, and said, “Sitting down to dine in this house is no problem; it's getting up that worries me. Shall we go in?”