The Horse You Came in On (10 page)

Jury was looked upon as the repository for Wiggins's medical history. Am I allergic to aubergines? Does rue make me break out in a rash? “No,” said Jury, opening Ellen's book. “And you're not going to find a cure for claustrophobia in that bag, anyway.”

“Best cure for that, Sergeant, is walking round the plane,” Melrose said. “But you've got to do it . . . well, ritualistically.” Wiggins loved ritual. “You've got to make a circuit—down, over, up the other aisle, through the seats and back. Do that twice. Or three times. Works every time. I used to be violently claustrophobic.”

“Really, sir?” Wiggins was already getting up again.

Melrose nodded, still puzzling over the Bury St. Edmunds trip. Had he been writing in his sleep?

And that reminded him. He'd forgotten to ask Marshall Trueblood if he'd rescued their notebook from Mrs. Withersby's bucket. Melrose started biting the flesh round his thumb. Surely, Trueblood had. If the Withersby person found it, though, she'd ransom it off. Oh, well, nothing to be done from up here.

Had they been, perhaps, a bit too theatrical?

Ellen Taylor hadn't changed by a day, by an hour. She might even have been wearing the same clothes: jeans and a black leather jacket; her chain mail jewelry; a white T-shirt sporting a cartoon child with a square head topped with a spiky blond haircut, saying, “Yo Dude.” The leather jacket was tucked under one arm; in her mingled nervousness and excitement, she kept switching it from one arm to the other as the three of them approached.

For she was excited, that was clear, she was also trying to disguise it by assuming an abstracted air, looking far and wide round the terminal, as if Melrose, Jury, and Wiggins were only three of many she'd come here to meet.

As Melrose dragged his calfskin case from the carousel, she said, “Well, at least you didn't come loaded down with luggage.”

At least? Of what breach of traveller's etiquette
had
he been guilty, then?

She seemed pleased as punch to have Sergeant Wiggins, whom she'd never met, and Richard Jury, whom she had, but briefly, to lavish a bit of attention on, so as not to appear ungrateful for or unmindful of the trouble others were putting themselves to for her sake. Melrose was a different kettle of fish altogether.
He
(she appeared to like to pretend) was an old friend like an old sock, to be pulled on or cast aside till the next wash came around.

Thus, she was all the more flustered when Melrose set down his case and swiftly put his arms around her and gave her a big, warm hug and a kiss he let linger on her cheek before he stepped back to watch the color wash across her face. To avoid his eyes she looked down at their suitcases and asked if this wine-colored calfskin and the dark blue canvas one were theirs in much the same way airport security had scrutinized them at Heathrow.

“They have not been out of our sight; we packed them ourselves; no one's passed us any parcels to take out of the country,” said Melrose.

Jury laughed. “More or less.”

“Say again?” Ellen's face was still blotchy with receding blushes. She wore no makeup except for several shades of eye shadow running from dark brown through khaki to champagne. None of this eye art did a thing to enhance the large brown eyes beneath the lids, though. Melrose had always liked Ellen's face, its triangular shape, pert chin, clear skin. Her hair was oat-colored and long enough to half-cover the shoulder-length metal earrings that swayed and clicked when she moved her head.

“Are we riding on your motorcycle?”

She did not appear to see the joke in this. “It's in the shop. We're taking a cab.”

“Oh, I'll do that, miss,” said Wiggins, seeing her about to shoulder his backpack.

“That's okay; I like to carry things.”

Melrose doubted this, and put her wrestling her shoulders into the backpack down to the same nervous excitement. Anything for a distraction.

As they made their way towards the exit, she asked them about their flight, and Wiggins obliged by telling her the details. He told her all the way across the lakelike lobby, down the ramp, and out the door into the cold wind of a Maryland afternoon.

 • • • 

Jury sat in front beside the driver, the other three in back. Ellen sat between Plant and Wiggins, paying far more attention to Wiggins than to Melrose, which he took to mean that she needed him more than she cared to show and was unnerved by this fact. She had stuck a book in his hands as a rather grudging welcome-to-Baltimore gift, saying he might need it for getting around.

As she chatted nineteen-to-the-dozen with Wiggins, pointing out nothing of interest that Melrose could see in the flying landscape, he perused his book. It was a narrow but thickish volume bearing the title
Strangers' Guide to Baltimore
. Each corner of the patent-shiny red cover was adorned with a little drawing of one of Baltimore's historic sites. Trails of tiny black footprints wandered from one of these corners to another, looping from corner to corner as on a children's game board.

Melrose was suspicious. He glanced over at Ellen, but she was busy plying Wiggins with crystal mints and pointing out the window at God only knew what, since there was nothing much to see in this typical airport-to-center-city trip, which could have been in London, Baltimore, New York, or anywhere except possibly Calcutta. A huge hoarding advertising Black Label beer that looked overambitiously frothy; another shouting the pleasures of Johnnie Walker Red; another of a huge bucket
of chicken. Dirt shoulders, concrete pilings, building equipment. Could have been anywhere serviced by an airport.

His suspicions about Ellen's gift were confirmed when he looked inside the red book. A family of four, the “Stranger” family, were about to set off on a junket (“junket” being the word chosen by the Bessie sisters, guide writers Lizzie and Lucie) to the Inner Harbor, a place of bright lights, little shops, and eating establishments—a place of glory to the Stranger children, apparently, given their exaggerated smiles. The trail looping around had a definite yellow-brick-road-ish tint to it. Thus the reader was to be treated to a footstep-by-footstep ramble with the Strangers, past monuments and stadiums, through parks and gridlocked streets, quite often taking time out for various treats, such as ice-cream cones and cappuccino or lunches and dinners involving a lot of ocean-catch food. Here was what looked like a platter of starfish. He looked closer at the illustration; no, they were not starfish—tiny crabs, maybe. Then came illustrations of oysters or clams with happy faces, dancing about a big serving platter; here was a rockfish frisking and grinning on a fisherman's line and dangling above a creel; then there were lobsters merrily waving their claws above huge pots. Maryland seafood had a decided we-who-are-about-to-die-salute-you attitude. Probably why they won the Revolutionary War, thought Melrose. He'd never known Dover soles or kippers to act so cavalierly before the firing line.

“What are you
doing?
” asked Ellen, as if she herself hadn't been the instrument of his present occupation.

“Reading, obviously.” Melrose turned a page. Washington Monument? He thought that was in Washington, D.C.

Ellen mumbled something about not reading guidebooks, and answered Jury's question about the structure on their right.

“Camden Yards, the Orioles' stadium. It's brand new. The Orioles played their opener there.”

Melrose closed the
Strangers' Guide
and drummed his fingers on it. He could just picture Ellen in the children's section of some bookshop, leafing through this book and chortling. He refused to react and stared straight ahead as the mute cab driver delivered them into the city of Baltimore. “Deliverance” it could very well be for Sergeant Wiggins.

For the tallest building in the cluster that had come into view before they turned right on Pratt Street was a Florentine clock tower around the face of which was spelled out the words “Bromo-Seltzer.”

 • • • 

The cab pulled to the curb in front of a handsome brick structure in Fells Point called the Admiral Fell Inn. The Admiral Fell had not been ignored by the Bessie sisters; the
Strangers' Guide
pointed out that it had
once been a vinegar factory. “And a lodging house for seamen,” added Melrose, looking studiously at the book.

“It's a hotel, but it's like a bed-and-breakfast. I thought you'd like that. I thought it would make you feel at home.”

“Ardry End isn't a bed-and-breakfast,” said Melrose.

“It's fine,” said Jury.

“I'll get it,” said Ellen, yanking bills from a worn wallet. “Until you learn to count,” she added, extinguishing the spark of generosity. This was, naturally, directed at Melrose alone, Jury and Wiggins being credited with enough intelligence to sort out another country's decimal system without a lot of practice. Ellen reached in with the money to pay the driver.

As they walked up the steps of the inn, she asked (again of Melrose alone, it seemed), “Well, what do you want to do? Take a nap?”

Melrose ignored this. “What I want to do is find out what the hell's going on so that I can get back to Ardry End.”

Wiggins was concentrating on a large dog that lay beside the desk. It began to get to its feet, apparently thought the better of that move, and returned its head to its paws, looking up at them out of baleful eyes.

“Grumpy, aren't you?” said Jury, smiling at Melrose. “I have to make some phone calls.”

“I have to teach a class,” said Ellen. “It'll just be an hour, an hour and a half. Maybe we can meet around five?”

“Fine. Where?”

“We can go to the Horse. It's just down the street. Thames Street.” She pointed out the window.

“What's the Horse?”

“A local dive. I always go there. But you probably won't like the beer. They do have Bass, though.”

“Okay by me,” said Jury. To Melrose he said, “Are you going to have that nap?”

Oh, ha, thought Melrose. “I'm taking a walk.”

Fells Point (Ellen had told him, as he'd set off with his
Strangers' Guide)
was the oldest part of Baltimore, was indeed what Baltimore had really grown out of, and was probably the last working waterfront left in the country.

Despite the obvious quaintness in danger of sliding into chic, Fells Point was a genuine period piece. Left to itself for over two hundred years, it was evidently becoming trendy, but it still kept the appearance of its eighteenth-century origins. It had about it a pleasant sort of scruffiness that the galleries and shops hadn't managed to glamorize or suppress. Narrow row houses faced narrow strips of sidewalk on narrow streets. Slate roofs crowned them and sally ports divided them, walkways with painted iron gates that Melrose assumed had once been used for the passage of livestock.

Melrose walked around the streets and along the waterfront for an hour before turning back, once again passing the Admiral Fell Inn in search of the pub where they were to meet and found it within perhaps a hundred feet of the inn.

The flaking white paint on the sign made the swayback horse look even more like an old nag pressed into servitude by a bunch of Irish tinkers. Its expression was rather stupidly pleased, as if glad it had finally been put out to pasture. The sign of The Horse You Came In On hung above a door that probably hadn't been painted in this century. It was a door one would pause at before opening if he didn't know what lay behind it. It looked sly, that door.

Melrose liked both the sign and the street. It was called Thames Street, and with its warehouses facing the water, its Belgian block, and its brick pavements, its cobbles, it reminded him a little of Whitechapel and Docklands. It was black night along the London river now, he knew, and even here a late-afternoon darkness seemed to be settling in. It had started to drizzle as he was walking, and out across the Patapsco River fog was rolling in, and the smaller craft that were moored along here would soon be enveloped in it.

It was a low-key, no-frills little pub, narrow, with a bar along the left wall and tables and chairs along the right. He could barely see the ceiling for the substructure of smoke that clung to it, effluvium of cigarettes and cigars; and the humidity level must have risen thirty percent from the flow of beer—pitchers, bottles, cans. Still, it was a relief after the plummy Victorian accents of London's West End. The place was packed with people, many of whom were in a state of frenzy, standing two and three deep at the bar, all of them watching the screen of a big television. A swell of voice had hit him when he'd opened the door, and he felt himself awash in a sea of color. Melrose wedged his way in and joined the telly viewers, whose eyes were riveted on the football pile-up now in progress.

American football was as far beyond his ken as a moon landing. Melrose knew nothing about competitive diversions except for snooker, and he liked that because it was slow and silent—in other words, civilized. Pool was too easy and billiards too stuffy. Snooker was perfect. One heard nothing other than the occasional click and rattle of balls and the odd rousing ripple of applause, unsustained. He despised cricket, polo, and tennis. Once he had gone to Wimbledon, but got no enjoyment out of watching a couple of Slavs thrashing about with rackets, expending more energy in one backhand shot than Melrose used up in a week of sitting around in the Jack and Hammer.

He took over a cramped stool between a burly man in a paint-smeared blue shirt and white painter's cap turned backward and a tall black in leather and dreadlocks. “
POUND IT INTO THE FUCKING END ZONE
!” yelled the painter, standing up at his stool like a jockey in stirrups. The woman coming down the bar (whom Melrose assumed to be the bartender) gave him a playful punch on the shoulder and called him “Elroy.” A heavyset man and woman (man and wife, surely) dressed head to foot in football togs (red and gold), even to the woman's earrings (miniature ballcarriers), were trying to grab her attention, but she ignored them.