Melrose slammed the car door, stood with his arms on top of the car and his head bent, hoping to come up with some clever approach to Cambridge police. When he stopped banging his head and looked over the top of the car, he saw two children standing on the pavement licking iced lollies and staring at him. What were they doing out after dark? They were apparently waiting for him to do his next number.
“Just look at yourselves. Are you auditioning for Cirque du Soleil?”
They neither spoke nor gave up their places on the pavement. They waited. The inherent pleasure of watching a grown-up being a total idiot seemingly had a stronger pull than running from that grown-up idiot. Melrose walked around to the pavement. “You haven’t seen Cats, have you? And then planted the evidence in my car?” He produced the program.
But they just went on looking and licking. What was it about him that made children look at him as if their dog had suddenly started talking? Melrose threw up his hands, turned away and started toward the pub down the street. The need to look back was too strong and he did. Now they were leaning, backs against his car, licking their ices and staring at the park.
The Cricketer’s Arms was the familiar world of smoke and beer. He told the bartender he’d have a pint of whatever was on tap and went to the telephone. He pinged coins into the slots, thinking he should probably get one of those cell phones, but he despised them. The whole earth had turned into a public call box.
Hannibal answered.
Melrose couldn’t believe she was actually screening Jury’s calls. He put on his best North London voice and said, “Is Mr. Joo-ry there, love?”
When she said the superintendent wasn’t to be disturbed, Melrose raised his voice a disturbed notch. “It’s his auntie Agatha; I’m ever so worried since I found out about that ’orrible business. Can’t I just speak to ’im fer a moment?”
Melrose could hear Jury arguing with her in the background. Then finally his voice came over the line, “Aunt Agatha!”
“Has she gone?” Melrose asked on his end.
“No,” Jury answered.
“Well, can’t you get her out of your room?”
“You’re kidding. Aunt Agatha,” he quickly added.
Jury enjoyed this sort of thing, Melrose was sure; it must have been similar to the intractability of witnesses and to intractable circumstance. “Listen. I need you to do something. I’m in Cambridge. I’ve driven Vernon Rice here because the police wanted him to have a look at the body, see if he knows-or knew-her. I imagine they also wanted to ask him more questions since he’s still there and it’s been forty-five minutes. I want to see the body myself. Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
“So how can I? I’m not family or friend or anything that would get me a ticket in.”
“Simple. I’ll just tell them you might have recognized her. Okay, Hannibal’s gone, so I can speak freely.”
“Thank God. Only I didn’t see the woman. How could I recognize her?”
“You said you were very near the stretcher as they brought it by, moving it toward the ambulance.”
“Yes, I was, but-”
“That’s good enough.”
“How can it be?”
A huge sigh from Jury. “I’m not helping you out in a criminal act, for God’s sake. All you want is to view a dead body. Where are you?”
“Pub down the street.”
“Go back to the station. I’ll call Cambridge right away. I’ve a good friend there. Greene’s his name in case someone asks. Detective chief inspector, he is.”
Melrose drank off most of the pint waiting for him at the bar, bought a packet of vinegar crisps and ate them while walking back down the road. He had nearly finished them when he realized a dead body might best be seen on an empty stomach.
Nothing of that nature occurred, however. As a young woman police constable led him on and off the elevator and down a corridor to the morgue, his stomach was perfectly fine. And it wasn’t as if he’d never seen a body before. Last year in Cornwall, for instance. But that was a case of the very recently dead, when they looked exactly the same as they always had. Except for the blood and the bullet holes. But the blood had been hidden by the thick dark rug, and the bullet wounds were invisible, at least from where he stood.
In the long corridor, he hung back. This episode had turned suddenly serious on him. In his mind’s eye he saw the face of Nell Ryder and marveled at Vernon Rice’s conviction that she could not be dead. And he had this irrational fear that he would look down at this dead woman and he would see Nell Ryder. It was as if the others who had seen this woman-her grandfather, Maurice, even the trainer, Davison-had blinded themselves to the face they saw.
Why was he doing this? Why? The photograph had looked alive, as if it had captured Nell, and the old superstition was true about the camera’s catching the soul of its subject.
He had been walking slowly, and now stopped dead. With a conviction to rival Rice’s own, he was sure that she was dead. His throat felt constricted.
“Coming, sir?” The pleasant WPC turned toward him and smiled.
Melrose picked up his pace. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right. Most people walk more slowly here. Is it a family member you’ve come to-sorry, you don’t know yet, do you?”
“No.”
They had stopped for a moment. They started walking again.
“It’s right here, sir. See, there’s a panel they’ll slide back, and you just look through that pane of glass.”
Melrose did not respond; he merely waited. The panel slid back and he was looking at the woman lying on the gurney. His eyes widened in astonishment.
“Is it who you thought?”
“No.”
“You don’t recognize her, then?”
“Yes. I do.”
Sitting in one of the interview rooms, he had told the detective inspector working the case as much as he could about the woman at the bar in the Grave Maurice.
Unfortunately (Melrose told the detective), he hadn’t paid much attention to the other woman, so couldn’t help them there.
“Did she appear to know Dr. Ryder personally?”
“It’s hard to say. She certainly knew about him. She knew about his niece, Nell Ryder.”
“You think, then, this woman knew the family, or at least one of them intimately.”
“I rather doubt the intimacy since none of them even knows this woman.” Or say they don’t, Melrose didn’t add.
“Or say they don’t,” the detective did add.
“They wanted to know if I owned a weapon. A.22, to be more precise. I told them no, but they wanted permission to search my flat, anyway.” Vernon told Melrose this on the way back to London. “Who the hell is she?”
Melrose was watching the rain-slick road, now dark. “When did Dan Ryder die?”
“A little over two years ago.”
“Before Nell disappeared.”
Vernon turned in his seat to stare. “You think that comes into it?”
“Merely a thought. It’s just that you’ve now had three terrible events occur in a short time. It’s possible all three are connected, don’t you think?”
Vernon shook his head. “Possible, but unlikely.”