Rainbow's End (40 page)

After dinner at Ardry End—wait just a tick, now. . . . He paused and studied the paving stones. The French for after dinner—?
Après diner
? This had a definite ring to it! “
Après Diner
at Ardry End.” Could he turn this into a book, a series of anecdotes about country life, along the lines of A
Year in Provence
? Why, Mr. Momaday was certainly a match for any of those Provençal eccentrics; after all, Melrose must have talent, too, what with all of these writers—Polly, Ellen, Joanna—treating him as if he were Maxwell Perkins—

Oh
, do
shut up
! cried his other, sensible, sterner self, glaring over the top of gold-rimmed spectacles.
Bad as Sergeant Wiggins
, his other self muttered.

Melrose sighed and walked on, past W. H. Smith's, past Boots (were there a Smith's and a Boots on Venus, he wondered?) and on down the High Street. He abandoned his nonfiction writing career, but
not
his fiction, not
Gin Lane
. And, of course, all of this talk with Polly, all of this thinking about writing, brought to mind Ellen Taylor and that trilogy of
Windows, Doors
, and the untitled third. It brought to mind his promise to help her draw a bead on that absurd woman who was stealing Ellen's stuff. Melrose chuckled. His plan was brilliant! Ellen would love it. But he had to work out some of the details first.

Strange how his feet had carried him smack-up to the stone steps of the Dirty Duck. Save that for later. He crossed the road and found the path that led round beside the theatre and on into the graceful, grassy expanse of trees flanked by the River Avon.

It was a lovely night, but misty, and the ghostly columns of the little brass-rubbing center rose before him like blanched bones. He struck out from the gravelled path across the grass to the river, where he stood on the bank and looked out at the sinuous light the moon cast on the gently moving Avon. All was silent. How silent the nights could be, even in London, in pockets such as that part of Bethnal Green through which he'd taken his short walk after the meal with Bea. What had she said . . . ? That the fondling and kissing in the Tate had been merely a put-on, that Gabe liked to see other people's reactions. And Bea had had her eyes open, sitting there, out of boredom. If that were the case, though, had Gabe also let
his
eyes flutter open?

Checking reactions of the gallery-goers? And
his
eyes were looking across at Frances Hamilton. Well, it was a small thing but worth asking about.

Melrose looked down at the undulating, marshy grasses serving as a sort of soggy mattress for a circle of sleeping, bobbing ducks, several with their heads beneath their wings. He took the bread roll from his pocket and began tearing it up. A platoon of other ducks—the Avon Night Patrol—rowed over in military formation upon seeing this bit of action. Out of seeming nowhere, as if floating on air, an illusion caused by the mist across the river, came two swans, one black, one white, moving in for a share of the spoils.

Melrose tossed out crumbs as he wondered if Jury had yet received his fax. Ten o'clock here. . . . That would make it five over there, wouldn't it? No. There was another time change between the coasts—one hour? Two? Three? Where was New Mexico? Probably somewhere around California, in that area. Melrose ran a couple of blanked-out maps of the United States through his mind but could only fill in Baltimore, which was near New York City. And California. He knew where that was, naturally. With his hand full of unshed crumbs (which the swans were busily demanding) he tried to fix New Mexico on his mental map. In the manner of a blindfolded child trying to pin the tail on a donkey, he made a mental stab.
THERE
!

Where had that homeless chap been from? Baton Rouge, that was it. Where was it? Baton Rouge, what an exquisite name. . . . It was Jury's fault, of course, this blank map. If Jury had had him come along, he'd know where the damned place was.

He chucked the remaining breadcrumbs across the river's surface and dusted his hands. The bossy swans made mince of the ducks' efforts to capture this treat. Bullies, thought Melrose, who decided to stop feeling sorry for himself. Jury was probably right: Melrose would be of more help going back over the ground that Jury had already trod, talking to the same people and forming his own impressions. Viewpoints were important. He continued to stand on the cold, damp riverbank and consider those impressions.

But all he could think of was Miss Fludd.

And Turner's black dog.

He heard, in the distance off to his left, muted voices—the audience leaving the theatre, fanning out across the car park, the pavements, the several pathways to their numerous destinations. Flooding
the Dirty Duck, undoubtedly, so he'd just as well skip that and go on back to the hotel.

One route was to walk along Ryland Street and then to cut over, and he did so. As he passed Jenny Kennington's little house, he stopped and inspected its windows. Dark.

The abysmal pressure of time seemed to weigh on him. He turned up his coat collar against the foggy night and wondered again about New Mexico, about the sun going down, or the sun coming up.

Movie sun.

What would they have done, Jury wondered, looking down towards the road, if the light hadn't cooperated? For it certainly was doing so. Far away, but seeming close, were the Sangre de Cristos where light spread in a wash of watercolors across the sky, turning the underneath side of the clouds to gold.

He had this fanciful thought while standing on the wide stone steps of the Rancho del Reposo lodge, watching the progress of the film crew in the distance. Voices, tiny and unintelligible, carried weakly through the cold air as if blown back from the narrow highway down there where several of them were waving their arms or using bullhorns to reroute traffic. This consisted of sending the occasional car from the narrow paved road into the oblivion of an even narrower dirt road. But the drivers didn't seem to mind; most of them had pulled over and up on a shoulder to rubberneck the film folk.

The Rancho del Reposo was, in the words of those old film westerns, a “spread.” It was a rich (though not necessarily tasteful) mixture of architectures—Moorish, western, Spanish, the glassily American. Red pantiled roofs, adobe walls inset with hand-painted Spanish tiles, the glass excrescence of what could have been an arboretum off to one side but which appeared to be a dining room or else an informal cafe. It was linked to the main structure by a portico lined with cacti and desert grasses. The spread of the ranch's many buildings—low, discreet adobe casitas sheltered by piñons and juniper—stretched away for acres from the main building. All of it looked incredibly pricey. Inside, several fires burned brightly, Saltillo tiles shone beneath long, colorful rugs, guests sat about having coffee,
most of them with camera equipment or walkie-talkies or other filmmaking paraphernalia hanging from leather straps or wound somehow about their persons.

The two women behind the desk just inside the entrance were what Jury had come to think of as Santa Fe cheerful; in addition to the goodwill they exuded for the sake of the Rancho del Reposo's PR, was also that extra something, that dollop of aren't-we-all-lucky-to-live-here? air.

Jury returned the smile of the hearty receptionist and asked (by way of breaking the ice), “What's going on down on the road? Filming something, are they?” He looked through a wide glass door out to a patio, where more people were sitting at tables than he would have expected outside in February. Still, it was warm in the sunlight.

“Oh, yes. We're used to it, aren't we, Patsy?” This was directed to the other woman, a rather heavy, horsy type, who smiled and nodded and went back to sorting registration cards. “There's usually some film or TV company around. It's the scenery, you see.”

Jury wondered if perhaps she thought he'd missed it. “I've noticed.” He was pulling out his police identification.

“You're registering, Mr.—?” Her well-tended eyebrows rose in a question.

“Jury. It's Superintendent Jury, actually. Scotland Yard CID.”
Here
was something new! He was rather pleased when the woman looked startled; he held up the warrant card so that both of them could see it, flashy as a press pass. The first woman seemed to be primping her hair as she looked, as if the little square of plastic were a pocket mirror. “I'm making some inquiries,” he explained.

The second woman, Patsy, was a bit quicker off the mark than the first. “Angela Hope. You're here about Angela Hope, aren't you?”

“Did you know her, then?”

Patsy shook her head. “Not really. I mean, yes, I'd seen her. In that shop she had on Canyon Road. Didn't really know her, though.”

“I was here, actually, about these two women. They stayed, we think, at the La Fonda. At least for a day or two.” Jury lined up the two photos of Fanny Hamilton and Nell Hawes. “It's possible, though, one or the other might have stopped somewhere else, too.” The Rancho del Reposo would have been way beyond Nell Hawes's means, but not Frances Hamilton's. “Do you recognize either of them?”

Patsy tapped the photo of Fanny Hamilton. “This one, yes. She stayed here. You remember her, Em? American but with an English accent?”

Em squinted at the photos. Needed glasses, probably, and probably too conscious of her looks to wear them all the time. She slipped a pair out of a cowhide case and put them on. Then she nodded. “Yes. She was here—let's see—October? November? Yes, it was before Thanksgiving. Had one of the casitas. Don't recall offhand which. But I can get that for you—” She turned around to the shelves where Patsy had been dealing with the registration cards.

Jury asked Patsy, “Did she have any visitors you remember?”

“Oh, well, that's a tall order. My memory's good, but not that good. Let me think . . . ” She seemed sincerely to be doing so, her eye straying again to the snapshots. “Wait a minute—yes! It was this other woman who came here; they had lunch or dinner together. I remember because they both sounded English.”

Em held up a large white card, waved it like a handkerchief. “I've got it here. Mrs. Frances Hamilton, Belgravia, London SW1.” She placed it before Jury.

“You remember this other lady, Em? The two of them dined here.”

“Um. No, I don't think I was on duty.” She shrugged.

Jury was writing on the back of one of his cards. “If you should remember anything about either of them, would you get in touch with me? I'm staying at the La Fonda.” Em took the card and nodded. Jury thanked them, turned away, turned back. “Could you give me the hotel's phone and fax numbers? Probably you've more than one of each.”

Patsy plucked one of the hotel's cards from a holder, turned it, and wrote a couple of numbers on the back. “The main number's printed here—” she indicated the face of the card—“with the fax number. I put the others on the back.”

Again, Jury thanked them, gave the card a look. Not the number in the address book, but he hadn't thought it would be. “I wonder, if they had a meal here, could I talk to your dining-room staff. Perhaps I can find the person who might have served them.”

Patsy looked again at one of the slips stapled to the card. “It was a Friday night, so it could have been . . . let's see, table thirteen, that'd be either Johnny or Sally. I think they're both here if you want to
check with Chris. She's the hostess.” Patsy nodded toward a wide arch across the tiled hallway.

Chris—who was extremely attractive, probably a needful thing in a dining-room hostess—was bent slightly over the lectern-like post that held her reservations book. The bottom of her face was bathed in the light from the small lamp that arched over her book. At Jury's request, she seemed fairly thrilled. “Sally Weeks? She's here, somewhere.” Chris peered into the soft, dark depths of the dining room and finally pointed toward a girl at the far side wiping off a table. “That's Sally, there. Yes, she might have been working that Friday night. I mean, that's her schedule, unless she was sick or something.”

Sally Weeks was on the thin side and quite young. Brown hair, brown eyes, brown uniform—like a dry leaf. But this desiccated, autumnal look was quickly dispelled by the energy of her expression. She had a boyish torso and Jury thought that might be the reason she held the small tray close over her chest, arms crossed on the tray's back, hiding her own flatness in this relative sea of actressy bosoms.

Since the lunch service hadn't yet started, and the dining room was empty, she said it was all right for her to sit down (in the smoking section, for she was dying for a cigarette). And as Jury lit it for her, she said that that was one of the reasons she remembered them—the two women—because they were the only smokers, the only ones sitting in the smoking section here.

“But mostly,” she added, thoughtfully, “it's because they'd been travelling around, and
not
with a tour group, and
not
with a man. It was because they really seemed to be enjoying themselves.” She made a comment about there being more smokers in England and asked Jury if he didn't smoke. He told her he was trying to quit.

Immediately, she stubbed out what was left of her cigarette. “I'm really sorry, you should have said.” Jury was startled by such consideration. Now she was looking around the room. “You want to sit somewhere else?” It was as if the whole area might be contaminated for him.

He laughed. “No, Sally, this is fine. Go on with what you were saying.”

“Well, it's not often you see two ladies, almost elderly—I think they were in their sixties, at least—travelling around on the loose that way. If you'd been working here as long as I've been, you'd know what I mean.”