Rainbow's End (39 page)

That brought back the Tate Gallery and the Pre-Raphaelites, the Millais portrait of the poor misbegotten girl, and then his mind's eye travelled straight around the gallery—Chatterton. Burne-Jones. Rossetti. He closed his eyes and clamped his head between his hands, gripping his hair and even pulling on it slightly, caught his reflection in a mirrored advertisement for malt whisky, decided he looked demented, and sat up straight.

Still, his mind swam with images. He wondered if a case had ever been solved by free association. Why not? Right now, something was floating gently just out of his mental periphery, something sailing there like an offshore bird, black wing darting. . . .

The voice of Sam Lasko broke into his reflections as the inspector resat himself with a heavy sigh and picked up his pint. “Your pal called you.”

“I have so many.”

“Sergeant Wiggins. What's he in hospital for?”

“I'm not sure, precisely.”

“How'd he find you here?” Lasko had brought back a fresh lager, another bottle of Old Peculier. He drank from his pint, thumb tightly clamped on the top of the handle.

Melrose shrugged, wishing the black-winged bird would fly into his field of vision. He frowned, thinking of it. “Oh. My butler probably told him.” He regretted the words almost before they were out of his mouth.

Lasko grunted and leered at him. Butlers (his expression suggested) might have been wandering halls and crypts of stately homes and crumbling castles, but Lasko had never befriended anyone who actually
owned
one.

“Ruthven's practically one of the family. Been around since before I was born—” How stupid. Why was he being defensive? Because Lasko was sitting there glaring at Melrose in the way of a serf at a feudal baron. This really annoyed Melrose. A butler did not a baron make, for God's sake. “Look: remember me? We worked on that American tour-group murder. I'm just plain old me; stop giving me that workingman's leer, that revolutionary glare as if you were going to have me trampled to death by the cast of
Les Miz.
”

Sammy Lasko merely grunted again. Then he said, “You got a bunch of titles. Or am I a monkey's?”

“Had a bunch, Inspector. Had. Stop draping me in purple and ermine. You might well be a monkey's.”

“You know this Jennifer Kennington's got one.”

“A monkey?”

“A
title.
Lady Kennington. Probably married it—the title. Nice woman, she is. . . . ” Lasko seemed to be contemplating Jenny Kennington's “niceness.”

Glad to be off his titles and onto hers, Melrose asked, “Jury didn't tell me what was going on. Why do you want her?”

“She's a witness.”

“That's vague enough. So are we all, to something or other.”

“So what is it with Jury and this lady?”

“I don't know.”

“He seems to think she couldn't possibly have done a flit. What's she like, then?”

“I don't know,” said Melrose again. “Never met the lady.”

Lasko was taken aback. “Then why's he send
you
? At least
I've
talked to her.” But his hurt silence relaxed.

“Because, my dear Inspector, I'm an idler; I have time to waste on pub lunches and crossword puzzles. You're a policeman; you don't.” Mention of the crossword puzzle called up the folded newspaper on the chair. He frowned. Why
had
she stopped in the middle of pencilling in a word? “But you haven't answered my question. What's this all about?”

“Just another case,” said Lasko, mysteriously.

“You mean you aren't going to tell me?”

“No.”

“I've been told to try and find Lady Kennington and you aren't going to tell me
why
?”

“No.” Feudalism long forgotten, Lasko pulled rank. “Mr. Plant, it's official business, isn't it? I can't go discussing it with the public, now can I?” He whipped out a smile as if he were a waiter snapping a napkin onto a lap.

“Well, good God, I'm not exactly the
public.
And I'm doing you a favor. Trying to, at least.”

Lasko smiled. “Him. You're doing
him
a favor.”

“I know professional jealousy when I see it. Sure you don't want to have dinner with me? Food's good here; I've eaten it before.”

“Thanks very much, I appreciate it, but I better get back.” Lasko reached for money, but Melrose waved him off. “You're my guest. Oh . . . incidentally, I was wondering . . . I don't expect we might just have another look round that house?”

“I don't expect so, no, sir.”

Exasperated, Melrose said, “I merely want to check and see if that news—” Melrose shut up. For if there was something to be found, if that newspaper offered up some clue that might lead him to Jenny
Kennington, would he want Lasko to know right away? “Oh, very well I'm going back to my hotel, then. Uh, is there a newsagent's still open?—it's after six,” he added, checking his watch.

“Right down there, round the corner. Or if that's not open, W. H. Smith's might still be.” Lasko gulped the last of his pint. “Thanks for the drink, Mr. Plant. Mind you call your pal.”

Melrose gave his departing back a sour smile.

 • • • 

MELROSE CALLED
his pal.

Back in his pleasantly Tudorish suite at the Shakespeare Hotel, and with his two local and one regional newspaper, Melrose put in a call to the Fulham Road Hospital. It was nearly seven-thirty and he had not yet had his dinner, but he felt a little sorry for Wiggins, knocked up there in a hospital bed, and he felt obliged to return his call. He would just chat briefly and then have a bath.

As the call was put through the various switchboards, he hummed to himself and mentally reviewed the restaurants he thought were possibilities. He had stopped at several points throughout his return walk to check menus, and had also studied the one outside of the Shakespeare's dining room.
Blinis
, to begin, and then either the
queues de boeuf
or perhaps the
langoustines crème glacée
and a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape or a Pouilly-Fumé. His mouth watered; he was starving; perhaps he wouldn't bother with a bath.

“Sergeant Wiggins!” He feigned a bit more enthusiasm than he actually felt. After all, he'd seen him only yesterday. “How are you coming along?” He asked this routinely as he shook open one of the newspapers and searched through the pages. No crossword.

“The treatment here is really quite wonderful, Mr. Plant. I'd no idea being in hospital could be such a relaxing experience. It's hot and cold running nurses, it is—” Wiggins came close to giggling—“at my beck and call. Tea whenever I fancy, properly done, too. Pot and china cup, none of your polyethylene cups. And this one nurse, Lillywhite, her name is, is ever so accommodating.”

Melrose, who was lying full-length on his comfortable queen-sized bed, opened the other paper, and turned the pages. No crossword. His eyelids were growing heavy as the sergeant rattled on about the hospital “amenities.” The third newspaper revealed a crossword puzzle,
true, but it was clearly not the one Jenny Kennington had been working on. He sighed and tossed it aside and listened to Wiggins go on about the “cuisine.” This brought back oxtails and wine, perhaps that delicious-sounding iced nougat for dessert. He shut his eyes, but briefly, snapping fully awake at Wiggins's puzzling reference to the rondels.

“What about them? What sort of clue?”

“This Helen Hawes was one of the tapisters. And she died while she was studying the rondels, as I understand it. If you're on your way to Exeter, I'd give those cushions a serious look, I would.”

What was he talking about? Melrose was afraid he knew. “Sergeant Wiggins, you're not seriously suggesting something was
embroidered
into one of the cushions?”

“A threat of some sort. Stranger things have happened.”

No, they haven't. The hand not holding the receiver made a crablike crawl across his scalp, massaging his hair up into licks.

“And whatever documents you've come up with, I'd appreciate seeing.” His tone was slightly condescending.

“Don't know what you're talking about.” Melrose switched the receiver to his other ear. “I saw you just yesterday, remember; I showed you the only ‘documents' I've seen. I told you everything I know.”

Was that a patronizing sniff that came down the wire? “Mr. Plant, there's always things that go missing—”

“Damned right. And they've gone.”

“I was thinking you might just fax me whatever you've come up with since. I've a few ideas—”

“Nothing since.”

“
Nothing
, Mr. Plant?”

Wiggins said this ever so gently, the insinuation clear: without Superintendent Jury (and, by extension, Sergeant Wiggins) to shore him up, Melrose Plant might as well skip off with his hoop and stick, for all the good he was doing.

Melrose held the thin receiver away from his ear, above him, as if it were a Slim-line human face, and stuck his tongue out at it. When he returned it to his ear he heard:

“. . . mander Macalvie. I've already got a call into Exeter HQ for him. I'm sure he'll fax me the documents his end, and if you could do the same
your
end—that is, when you've got something—it would be a big help. Now, as I said, I've some theories, based on reading I've been doing. They might have been drugged.”

What
? What in hell was the man talking about? Melrose switched the receiver again, rolled over onto his side. “Sergeant Wiggins, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You haven't been doing your research, is why,” said Wiggins, in a tone of remonstrance better suited to third form. Pages and papers riffled and rattled. “First of all, there's plenty of poisonous plants in the American Southwest. . . . ”

“For heaven's sake, Sergeant, if they'd been poisoned, the police would know it, wouldn't they?”

One could almost see the satisfied little crimping of the sergeant's lips. “If you'd my experience of poisons, sir, you'd know that it's not that easy to detect. For one thing, you have to
know
what you're looking for.
Now
, if these two Englishwomen had come across a peyotist—”

“A what?”

“Peyotist. It's a religion, really, of the native American Indians. Peyote is used in their rituals.”

Melrose yawned. “Is Carlos Castaneda in this story?” He closed his eyes.

Wiggins ignored this and started in—grindingly “in”—telling Melrose all about peyote and other hallucinogenic drugs. “See, I've had this Nurse Lillywhite getting reading material for me. It's incredible how kind and helpful these nurses here are. Lillywhite's run out to Dillon's for me several times, and once even went all the way to Tottenham Court Road to get some obscure book at Foyle's—”

Thank you, Nurse Lillywhite. Your next check will not be in the mail.
Melrose's stomach rumbled as he pulled one of the pillows from underneath his head and put it over his face, wondering if anyone had ever managed to suffocate himself.

The sergeant droned on, finishing with an account of poisonous plants and turning to other matters. “Now this turquoise stone. You might be ignoring something important there—”

Melrose only wanted to ignore everything except the oxtails and
blinis
as he blew hot breath back on his nose.

“You've heard of the Ojibwa—”

Pause. “Tu whu?”

Pause. “Are you all right, Mr. Plant? Not coming down with this virus going round, I hope?” Wiggins lost interest in Plant's health, and went on. “The Ojibwa actually believe that stones have the ability to
respond—that's putting it much too simplistically. Let's just say, some stones are animated. Not all stones, of course . . . ”

Perhaps if he rolled over on his stomach. The receiver slipped away as he now pushed his face down into the pillows and total blackness. He would lose consciousness either way, what did it matter, but he did give a passing thought to how the Ojibwa knew
which
stones were animated. Not the ones within listening distance of Wiggins's hospital bed, he bet.

The peroration of the sergeant, desperate sounding, staticky, came from the receiver as Melrose decided against the iced nougat in favor of a rhubarb coulis. When the sound stopped altogether, he rolled over again, yanked up the receiver, and said, “Fascinating, Sergeant Wiggins.”

“Thank you. You've no idea how much I appreciate your bringing me this Josephine Tey mystery—”

Oh,
that
had been a brilliant idea, thank you very much! Melrose checked his watch. Wiggins had been going on for a goodish twenty or thirty minutes, nonstop.

“—and it's amazing what a person can do even bunged up in hospital. Well, her detective solved the case.” There was a small commotion somewhere in the room, female laughter, comings and goings, to-ings and fro-ings.

“This is something! I've just received more flowers, Mr. Plant! I'd no idea I was so popular.” And then a brief, weighted silence. Wiggins added mournfully, “I expect you haven't had time, yourself. To stop by a florist, I mean. Never mind.” His sigh was grandly forgiving.

Wishing he had a few dozen peyote buttons to toss around, Melrose said he would be sure to send some,
tout de suite
, said he had to ring off, said goodbye, slammed down the receiver.

FURNISH THE DOCUMENTS! FIND JENNY! SEND FLOWERS
!

HAVING NOW
fully enjoyed his
langoustines crème glacée
topped off with the iced nougat (with Armagnac!), every bit as delicious as its name, and having put one of the bread rolls in his pocket, Melrose was taking a walk before retiring, a rare after-dinner ramble. The after-dinner pursuits at Ardry End were more along the lines of port and a
book by the fire, with his dog, Mindy, asleep (or possibly dead, he was never sure which) at his feet.