The Man with a Load of Mischief (36 page)

“What's that?” His voice sounded strange to him.

“Simon and Isabel.” She had her hands stuffed in the big pockets of her coat now, and her head was bent so low all he could see was the knitted crown of her cap. “Were they lovers?” She raised her head and looked directly at him. “Did they plan on rather unceremoniously disposing of me and then making off — as they say — with the swag?”

She was smiling slightly, but the pain in her eyes went through Jury. It was precisely what Matchett had planned, Jury was certain. He had needed Isabel to push Vivian toward him. The idea of her fiancé and her sister making love and laughing about it behind her back — that must be something of the image she was carrying about in her mind.

“Was that the way it was?” she asked.

“No. You — and the money, I guess — would have satisfied Matchett.”

Vivian expelled a long breath, as if she'd been holding it. “I don't know why that would have bothered me so much, now he's been taken in. But it would have.” She sighed. “Awful to
say, perhaps, but I'm relieved, I think. I mean, at not having to marry him.”

“ ‘Having to'? You never had to.”

“Yes. I know.”

“I don't think he was the man for you, in any event.” Jury looked up at the clouds scudding across the watery blue of the winter sky. “Not your type.” He stood there, waiting for God to solve his problem.

“What type, then?”

“Oh, someone more reflective, maybe.”

She was silent. Then she asked, “What was that line, the one you quoted?
Agnosco
 . . . something?”

“That? ‘
Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae:
I recognize the vestiges of an old flame.' ”

“He must have been something.”

“Who? Aeneas?”

“No. The old flame. If not even Aeneas could take his place.”

“I think the thing is, maybe he could.”

“I wonder.” She too turned to look up at the weak blue of the sky. “I think I shall go to France or, better yet, Italy.”

Or Mars.

She stood there for a moment longer, looking at him, and then turned back toward her house. “Goodbye. And thank you. How inadequate that sounds.” Her hand merely grazed his.

As he watched her walk away, making another neat line of tracks across the unbroken snow, he thought,
You're a real devil with the women, Jury. It's no wonder they all come screaming out of the bushes and tear at your clothes every time you happen to walk by
. From this distance, it was like watching a doll go into a dollhouse and shut the door behind her.

 • • • 

How long he sat there, staring at the ducks, he didn't know. They were bobbing in the warmer water beneath the brown rushes, some of them in pairs, as if even they were better at this sort of thing than was Jury. He was supposed to be at Melrose Plant's for lunch. As he was dragging himself off the bench, he heard a rustle in the bushes behind him and turned just in
time to see the top of a mousy brown head disappear below the line of shrubbery.

“All right. Out of there, straight away.” Jury used as sinister a tone as possible. “If I once use my trusty Magnum forty-five on you, you'll go round with your stomachs looking like doughnuts.”

Giggles. Then slowly the Doubles came forward. The little girl turned her face down to the ground, circumscribing a circle in it with the toe of her old boot.

“Well, James. And James. And why are you on my trail today? Come on — out with it!”

A bird-titter from the girl as she dipped her face as if she meant to wash it in the snow. The boy said, “We heard you was leaving sir. We come to give you this.” He pulled from his sagging coat pocket a rather dirty package, wrapped in leftover Christmas paper. It was flat, and tied with a bit of heavily handled ribbon, which once had been white.

“A present? I certainly do thank you.” He undid the package and found a piece of cardboard, cut to serve as a kind of crude frame, and against this was glued a picture. It showed a mountainlike projection, covered in deep snow, and off in the distance a dark, amorphous creature, like a poorly focused King Kong. It had come from a magazine. Jury scratched his head.

“It's that Abominable Snow Man,” said James, his tongue sticking on
abominable
. “Lives in — what's the name of that place — ?” and he looked to his sister for information, but got only a furious shaking of her head. Her lips were, as always, sealed.

“The Himalayas?”

“That's it, sir. Don't it look like him, though?”

Jury scarcely knew how to answer. But he said, “That's quite wonderful, James. Really, it looks exactly like him.”

“And just look at them
tracks
, Mr. Jury. That's what I thought you'd like — them tracks. Just think what he could do round here!” And James spread his arms to take in the village green. Then observing the neat lines which Vivian had made coming and going, he said, “Who's been muckin' it up?”

Jury smiled and folded the wrapping paper back round the picture and said. “Your other present just about saved my life.” And he related a blow-by-blow account of the confrontation in the church.

Their large eyes nearly swam in their faces at the telling of this marvel.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” said the girl, and quickly clapped her hand to her mouth.

Jury said, “So one good turn deserves another. I thought perhaps you two would like to take a little ride with me —” He pointed to the police car.

“Crikey!” said James “You mean in that there
police
car?” Totally awed, they looked at one another, and then nodded their heads firmly. Confirmation and reconfirmation.

As Jury bundled them into the car, he noticed how much better he felt. He envisioned the sweeping, untrammeled vistas of Ardry End, glistening, snow-crusted, smoothly white and gently curving.

As the High Street became the Dorking Dean Road, Jury thought,
Oh, what the hell?

And turned on the siren.

Dear Jury,

You have been gone for three months now and, with only Agatha to keep me company, it seems like three years. Her visits are, however, considerably reduced, owing to her belief we are in a mad race to see which of us will finish his book first. I simply tell her I've done another chapter, and that sends her scurrying home.

Speaking of writers, Darrington has gone off to America to set the course of the American novel back a few hundred years. I was not really surprised when I learned of his plagiarism — you didn't think Pluck's lips would stay sealed on that one, did you? Sheila was glad to be rid of him. She's talking about writing up the whole business of their fraud for the newspapers, even if it means going to gaol herself. The girl has a conscience.

Lorraine ages monthly from her frequent trips to London and mentions dropping in on you. Lock your doors, old chap. Willie has found another companion in the new vicar,
a much younger man, but still, vicars always look as if they need to be dusted daily.

Isabel has gone and so has Vivian, but definitely not together. Vivian settled a bit of money on her with the understanding she'd stay out of her life. Vivian has got herself a villa in Naples. Aren't you due for a holiday?

I have a dog. I was thinking of getting one, anyway — one of those sleek ones, like a whippet, the sort that turns up in drawing-room pictures of country gentlemen. However, I had cycled out to the Man with a Load of Mischief one wet afternoon (for sentimental reasons, perhaps — or does that sound too macabre?) and walked about. The stables, the eaves, the old sign raining rain, and I wandered back behind the stables to find — guess who? — Mindy. Matchett's dog, which he had made no provision for. I can fancy a man killing five people, but to leave one's dog stranded is really beneath contempt. At any rate, I allowed the brute to follow me home, a lengthy procedure, since Mindy is not very quick, as you may remember.

Those peculiar children — the Doubles? — visit me now and again. Heads pop up in the shrubbery at odd moments. The girl I especially admire for her having learnt so young the secret of truly good conversation: silence. She makes so few demands on one to sparkle with wit, and so forth, and we have many an interesting, if one-sided talk.

May I ask you a favor? If ever you come across another case — really, I am not particular — and if you would permit me to be of any help to you,
do
. My life here offers little challenge to the imagination.

There is no more snow.

The heavy embossed stationery was signed, in thick, black ink, with the one word: PLANT.

 • • • 

Jury bundled the letter back into its envelope and stuck it up on his mantel like a message left for him by someone who had come and gone. Looking at the little white square of Plant's letter, with the address in small, black figures brought back to
him great expanses of crystallized snow, with tracks running through it. Well, as Plant said, there was no more snow. He looked out of his window, gray and dismal with rain.

He plucked his raincoat from its peg behind the door and walked out the door.

Jury also loved the rain.

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Copyright C 1981 by Martha Grimes

Originally published in 1981 by Little, Brown & Company.

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