Jerusalem Inn (33 page)

“They couldn't have poor Robin Lyte as the tenth Marquess
of Meares. One child — the mentally defective one—handed over to the marchionness's maidservant, Danielle. No wonder she could supply Isobel Dunsany with excellent references. Another child — Helen and Parmenger's son — handed over to Meares Hall. Edward Parmenger and Elizabeth St. Leger took care of that swap. And the go-betweens were Danny Lyte and Annie Brown.”

“You would have thought the headmistress of the Bonaventure School would have been the first one to be got rid of, if that's the case.”.

“But did she know where Helen Minton's child wound up? All she did was to take it into the Bonaventure School as a foundling. If Danny came along shortly thereafter with a large sum of money and an offer — well, what connection would Danny have had with the St. Legers, the Parmengers, the Meares? Miss Hargreaves-Brown had shown herself to be open to offers before,” Jury added dryly. “Oh, she knew all right that something was fishy — she knew damned well Robin Lyte was not Helen Minton's child, but years ago she'd reorganized her filing system, let's say. So it was Robin's file Helen found and took
him
to be her son. It was Robin she found at Jerusalem Inn. And the trusted servant, Danny Lyte, has a softer heart than her employers and goes back and adopts Robin. Like the good shepherd of Sophocles.”

“Hell, you'd think they were all shopping at Marks and Sparks, wouldn't you?” Melrose stretched out his legs and his whiskey glass. Jury topped it up. “And now what? I mean what about Tommy?”

“Nothing. He'll go on being the Marquess of Meares, as far as I'm concerned.”

Plant nearly choked on his drink. “Hold on for a bloody moment! What do you say to him when Great-Aunt Betsy gets led away by the Bobbsey Twins, Cullen and Trimm?”

Absently, Jury shuffled a deck of cards he'd picked up from
the table. “Well, you see, I don't think that's going to happen.” He turned up a card, a queen.

“Not going —? So that was what all of that letting her go back to Meares Hall was about.
‘I've no place to go from there, Superintendent.' ”

Jury said nothing, merely reshuffled the cards slowly and looked into the blue flames of the dying fire.

“But look here, I mean, isn't that awfully unethical, or unpolitical, or un-Yardish, or something?”

“Sure is,” said Jury. “Racer would have kittens. If he hadn't already got a cat.”

“But what about Tommy? He has to know.”

Jury looked up from his shuffling. “God, you're a stickler for the truth, aren't you? You think it would set him up, do you, knowing his aunt had murdered two women and tried to murder a third?”

Plant colored slightly. “Certainly not. But what's the way out? I mean, he
has
to know he's not the rightful heir.”

Tonelessly, Jury said, “I don't see why?”

“Well, damn it,
I
do. For one thing, he doesn't
want
to be the marquess. He doesn't
want
to carry on that noble line. He just wants to play snooker.”

“No reason he can't.”

“You think not? If something . . . happened to his Aunt Betsy he'd feel guilty as hell,” said Plant, growing more heated with both the conversation and the drink. “He'd probably hang up his guns — or rack up his cues — forever.”

Jury fanned the cards out on the table and took a drink.

“Don't be dramatic. He's just like Parmenger. Nothing'll stop him. Pick a card.”

“No.”

“Oh, go on. Make you feel better. It's a trick.” Jury's smile fled as he thought of the gates of the Bonaventure School. “Not a very good one, though.”

“I just don't see how you can lay that on Tom Whittaker —”

“He's not snookered, not him. Far from it.”

Plant was silent, hands wrapped round his glass, staring into the fire and frowning, as though searching for some other line of attack. “I'd think you'd want to see — these women avenged.”

Jury's drink stopped in mid-air.
“That
is the bloodiest, stuffiest thing I've ever heard you say. ‘Avenged.' From the look on Lady St. Leger's face, I'd say, if I wanted vengeance I'd got it.”

“I'm talking about justice.”

“With a capital
J
.” Jury snorted. He thought they were getting rather drunk. He'd better call Cullen. And Racer. That made him pour himself another drink and slide the bottle toward his friend.

“Perhaps not the Sleight woman. But what about Helen Minton? Will her death go unnoted? I rather thought you . . . well, nothing.”

Jury looked down into his whiskey and rolled his glass, making tiny, amber waves. He thought of Isobel Dunsany, living on memories of faded elegance there by the North Sea.

“Her death hasn't gone unnoted. I only knew her for a few hours.” Jury felt defensive, as if that should excuse him from any strong feeling. He avoided Melrose Plant's speculative look.

All Plant said, mildly, was, “You were fond of her, nonetheless.”

“I've been fond of a lot of women,” said Jury, carelessly, hoping that would convey the image of the tough detective plowing his way through bevies of beauties. Of course, it didn't. “Haven't we all?” He looked at Melrose.

“Don't change the subject.”

But Jury did, not caring for the subject they were on.
“What puzzled me for a moment was why the marquess and marchioness didn't simply
adopt
an heir — instead of stealing one, you might say.”

“Because nobilary entitlement does not work that way. No adoptions, no suspect parentage.” Melrose stared at the coalend of his cigar as if he were the fabled bird hypnotized by a snake. “Ever hear of old Needwood, Viscount Dearing? Tried to claim the child born to the viscountess was not his own. Tried to prove about three dozen corespondents in the case, but since the viscountess was as taut as a telephone wire and had a mouth like a sticking plaster when it came to matters of the bedchamber, the court ruled the issue was either the viscount's or a Virgin Birth.” Melrose tossed his cigar into the fireplace grate, and lay one arm across the mantel. “So you see, old boy, one's got to be the real thing, the right stuff, or it's no go.” He smiled slightly. “I can't imagine dragging someone's name through the dirt that way, especially one's family, can you?”

Jury looked at him for a moment. “No. I suppose it works the other way round, doesn't it? Where there is adultery, and the family just keeps it quiet.”

“I suppose it could do, yes.” Plant sat down again, poured himself another drink. “I believe we're getting drunk.”

“I believe we are too.”

Plant looked at his watch. “Well, we'll have to continue our libations at the pub, because I've got something on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. You call Cullen; I'll collect Tommy. I don't think,” he said rather sadly, “there'll be much problem in his aunt's letting him out for one last fling at Jerusalem Inn.” Melrose raised his glass. “Happy Christmas, Superintendent.”

The glasses clicked and Plant's slid and spilled a little whiskey on his tie. “Worse than Vivian.” He brushed at the droplets. “Wonder what that woman — old Viv, I mean —
ever intends to do about Count Dracula.” He slid down in his chair. “Now Polly Praed —”

“You're a fool, you know that?”

Plant frowned. “Meaning? Anyway, Happy Christmas once again.”

“Happy Christmas, my friend.” The glasses clicked.

“W
HAT
the devil's
that?”
asked Melrose Plant, when the three of them were crowding into Jury's police car, already occupied by a very large and a somewhat smaller package.

“Present for the Hornsbys,” said Jury. “Something I picked up today in Durham.” He heard paper rattling in the back seat. “It's not for you; don't go opening it.”

Tommy Whittaker's excitement at being allowed “on” — he had to use his snooker terminology — for the evening was somewhat tempered by concern for Lady St. Leger. “What's wrong with Aunt Betsy, anyway? She looked bad when she went upstairs.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Jury said, “She's an old woman, Tommy. You know she's been having troubles with her health. And after everything that's happened —”

“I suppose so. You any closer to finding out what
did
happen? Does that Sergeant Cullen still suspect
me?”

“You're not a suspect.”

Tommy breathed a sigh of relief.

“Maybe,” said Jury. “it's going to be one of those cases we just don't crack.”

“Are you kidding?” said Tommy, still enough of the little boy to believe that the Yard always cracks its cases.

“It happens. At the moment what I'm wondering is whether Mr. Plant will get that package open,” he said to the small rustling sounds coming from the back seat.

T
HE
package had been opened, and the single Wise Man it contained, somewhat faded from years of wear, had been stood beside the other two. And the smaller package, given over to Chrissie, and holding a similarly faded Christ child, placed in the straw.

Chrissie stood, holding Alice, surveying the Nativity scene, its ranks swollen now by two. Her small brows met in a frown. “Yours is smaller than the other two men. And its carrying gold, like him.” Alice back in her dress again, Chrissie pointed to the Wise Man next to Jury's smaller one. “I think they're both the same. And we don't have a black one.” She looked up at Jury rather critically, as if perhaps he were not as familiar with the Christmas story as he should have been.

Over the voices of the some two dozen denizens of the Jerusalem, who had been revving up for action all the late afternoon, Jury said, “You're right. But he was the only one they had. I found him and the baby in an old shop. I guess they were just the odd lot from someone else's creche.” Jury felt he was being very unsuccessful in his attempts to flesh out the scene. He smiled. “Hard to come by a Wise Man —”

Chrissie smoothed Alice's dress down and said, “I suppose so. It was nice of you.” This compliment was somewhat grudging. “Only . . . it hasn't got swaddling clothes.” Amid the noise around them — the carol-singing, the shouts for
drinks — theirs was a little pocket of silence, standing there, looking over the scene. “Do you think Mary and Joseph mind that he was gone?”

“Yes. But now he's back. Maybe that's what counts.”

Her small chest rose and fell in a deep sigh of resignation. “I guess I'll just have to
make
some more swaddling clothes.”

 • • • 

Melrose and Tommy had worked their way up to the bar, wedging between Nutter and a stranger with blond ringlets, also with a ring in his ear, but in the one which suggested he was definitely not Nutter's type. Had Tommy not just then come between them, the crackle in the air might have charged up considerably.

Tommy shouted their orders to Hornsby, down at the other end, and smiled at Dickie, whose giant leek was tied up with a red ribbon. Dickie grinned and said something incomprehensible. The room was full of people who might have been regulars, casuals, or just the odd Christmas celebrant.

The dark-haired stranger beside him in a storm gray shirt and black waistcoat was smoking a cigarette and drinking lager. The man looked, somehow, like Tommy — or Tommy twenty years hence. He nodded in a friendly way; Melrose nodded back.

“Spirited place,” he said, scraping his straight black hair away from a high forehead.

“It is indeed. Buy you a drink?”

“Well, I don't mind now. Thanks.” He shoved his glass across the bar, pointed his cigarette at the oboe case stuck between Tom and the bar, and asked, “And what might you have in there? You're clutching it like the devil himself would jump across the bar and snatch it away.”

“This? Oh, it's my cue case.” Tom looked harder at the man. “You've been here before — haven't you?”

“No. It's a bit out of my way.” The man laughed. “You play pool? I wouldn't mind a game.”

“Snooker.”

“Ah, well. That's my game, too.” The stranger put out his hand. “My name's Alex. How about a game, then?”

Tommy, who never dropped anything, dropped his cue case, then quickly retrieved it. He shook his head.

Nutter, always ready to exacerbate any difficulty, gave Tommy a light punch on the shoulder and said, “Go on, then, lad. We don't want any strangers showing us up — and off,” he added for good measure, pushing his face a bit closer to Alex's, and obviously irritated that the man just stood there drinking his beer.

“No, thanks,” said Tommy, hugging his cue case to his chest and shoving back through the Christmas crowd with his pint. For the first time, Jury thought he looked frightened, sixteen, and alone.

“Anyone care for a frame, then? Say fifty quid a game?”

Nutter's interest in bashing the one with the earring vanished completely at the prospect of managing something profitable.

“Clive. For fifty quid Clive might have a go.”

Alex smiled. “Well, now: you don't look like you've got fifty-p between the lot of you.”

Dickie seriously started searching his pockets, as Melrose took out his money clip. “We'll let Dickie hold it.” He handed some notes to Dickie.

Clive laughed: “I don't care who holds it as long as I get it.”

Clive didn't get it.

Clive barely got to the table.

After the toss all he accomplished was to break up the reds, leaving them so widely spaced that Alex made a break of 81 and took fifteen minutes to clear the table.