The Old Wine Shades E-Book

Martha Grimes

• Herausgeber: Grove Press UK
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Over the course of three nights, Harry - a stranger who sits down next to Jury one night in a London pub - spins a complicated story about a good friend of his whose wife, son and dog disappeared over nine-months ago during a house viewing in Surrey. There has been no trace of them and no clue as to what happened. But the dog has come back. Dumbfounded, Jury wonders if Harry Johnson is just winding him up. Or did it really happen? When Jury investigates, all seems to be just as Harry described it. Until he finds the body...

Leseprobe

Praise for the Novelsof Martha Grimes

The Old Wine Shades

“In this novelistic hall of mirrors, [Grimes] conjures dead people who turn up alive, live people who become unexpectedly dead, and reality that turns illusory until you fear that her mischievous mind truly has carried us into another dimension. . . . The Old Wine Shades is a delight, but—as Grimes fully understands—it’s genre fiction. She devises a puzzle that seems to have no logical explanation and then provides one that may leave the reader gasping. . . . If you enjoy wit, suspense, surprises, and the odd ways of our British cousins, she is a writer to know.”

—The Washington Post Book World

“A writer of courage, Martha Grimes has never been afraid to push the mystery genre beyond expectations. . . . Atmospheric and moody, funny and frightening, The Old Wine Shades finds Grimes as readable and as innovative as ever.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“No matter the libation being poured, The Old Wine Shades has on tap a story that won’t let you down.”

—Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“Martha Grimes is a consistently wonderful writer, and The Old Wine Shades doesn’t disappoint.”

—The Seattle Times

“Martha Grimes is a pro at the bloodless Brit mystery. . . . For those who love clever Brit whodunits, a new Richard Jury novel is an event to be savored.”

—The Palm Beach Post

“Throughout, The Old Wine Shades has a lyrical, haunting quality that echoes long after the final page is turned.”

—The Orlando Sentinel

“As usual with the Jury books, it is filled with wit, tension, excellent dialogue, and wonderfully sarcastic moments. . . . Another surprise ending awaits.”

—The Sacramento Bee

“The puzzle at the heart of The Old Wine Shades will no doubt please and perplex Grimes’s many readers, and Richard Jury’s fans will be glad to meet him again. Grimes remains an unusual mystery writer who tosses the genre’s hoary conventions aside in favor of inventive plots.”

—Rocky Mountain News

“Compelling. . . . The author’s gift at melding suspense, logical twists, and wry humor makes this one of the stronger entries in this deservedly popular series.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Even fans who can’t appreciate the passing strangeness of this truly special adventure will be won over by a precocious little girl and a dog of rare intelligence.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“One of the most complex and entertaining in the series . . . [a] multilayered psychological mystery . . . highly recommended.”

—Library Journal

The Winds of Change

“Grimes is a gorgeous writer whose lyrical evocation of the lost innocence of the past invests her strange stories with the aura of grown-up fairy tales.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“In this engaging and atmospheric mystery, [Grimes] gives her legion of readers renewed reasons to bless her.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“Martha Grimes . . . writes the British mystery better than most Brits.”

—The San Diego Union-Tribune

“[An] absorbing mystery.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The Grave Maurice

“Sure to please. . . . Grimes’s writing has rarely been more lovely.”

—Chicago Tribune

“Wickedly clever. . . . Fans will rejoice.”

—Chattanooga Times–Free Press

“Plenty of wit, danger, and fully rounded characters.”

—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Atmospheric and moody . . . a compelling story.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Blue Last

“[Grimes] excels at creating a haunting atmosphere and characters both poignant and preposterous.”

—USA Today

“A diverting, chilling mystery of the past. . . . [Grimes] is at the top of her form . . . profoundly affecting and hauntingly sad . . . [an] explosive cliff-hanger ending.”

—Richmond Times-Dispatch

“[Grimes’s] gift for evoking mood and emotion is as keen as her talent for inventing a demanding puzzle and solving it.”

—The Wall Street Journal

Also by Martha Grimes

Richard Jury series

The Man with a Load of Mischief

The Old Fox Deceiv’d

The Anodyne Necklace

The Dirty Duck

Jerusalem Inn

Help the Poor Struggler

The Deer Leap

I Am the Only Running Footman

The Five Bells and Bladebone

The Old Silent

The Old Contemptibles

The Horse You Came in On

Rainbow’s End

The Case Has Altered

The Stargazey

The Lamorna Wink

The Blue Last

The Grave Maurice

The Winds of Change

The Old Wine Shades

Dust

The Black Cat

Vertigo 42

The Knowledge

Andi Oliver series

Biting the Moon

Dakota

Emma Graham series

Hotel Paradise

Cold Flat Junction

Belle Ruin

Fadeaway Girl

Other novels, short stories, and poetry

Send Bygraves

The End of the Pier

The Train Now Departing

Foul Matter

The Way of All Fish

Memoir

Double Double

First published in the United States of America in 2006 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Inc.

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic Inc.

Copyright © Martha Grimes, 2006

The moral right of Martha Grimes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint an excerpt from ‘The Pauper Witch of Grafton’ from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright ©1928, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

E-book ISBN 978 1 61185 922 5

Grove Press, UK

Ormond House

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www.groveatlantic.com

To Vickiand in memory of Dodger

They don’t dispose me, either one of them,

To spare them any trouble. Double trouble’s

Always the witch’s motto anyway.

I’ll double theirs for both of them—you watch me.

They’ll find they’ve got the whole thing to do over.

From “The Pauper Witch of Grafton” by Robert Frost

Man Walked into a Pub . . .

Prologue

(from The Winds of Change)

They sat in silence for a moment. Then Harry Johnson said, “If you want a story, I’ll tell you a story—though I can’t explain it, or tell you the end; there isn’t any end.”

“Sounds intriguing.”

“Oh, it’s intriguing, all right.”

“Go on.”

“It happened to a friend of mine. This person, who was the luckiest person I’ve ever known—you could almost say was hounded by good luck—lost everything overnight.”

“Bloody hell. You mean, in a market crash, something like that?”

“No, no. Not money. I mean he lost everything. He woke up one morning and found himself sans wife, son, even his dog. He did not know what had happened, and of course no one would believe him and he had no idea what to do. He considered going to the police, but what in hell would he say? They wouldn’t believe him, I mean wouldn’t believe the wife, the son, the dog had simply disappeared; well, you know how bloody-minded police can be—”

“I do indeed.” Jury smiled in a crazy kind of way.

“Right. Families don’t all of a sudden disappear—I mean, unless some psychopath walks in and murders them all. He told me he felt he was living in a parallel universe, that his wife and son were in one and he was in another.”

“Then what did he do?”

“He hired the best private detectives. They found nothing, not a trace. There was simply no trail.” Harry stopped, took out another cigarette, offered the case to Jury again, and Jury again refused. “That was a year ago.”

“And—?” It struck Jury suddenly, the answer to the question he had glumly posed to himself earlier: what kept him going? Here was the answer: curiosity. He waited for Harry Johnson to fill in the blank after “And—”

Harry lit his cigarette, blew out a stream of smoke and said, “The dog came back.”

Jury stared. “This is a joke, right?”

Unsmiling, Harry Johnson said, “No, it isn’t. The dog just came back.” They were both silent for a moment while Harry Johnson seemed to be collecting himself. “So do you want to hear the rest of it?” Dumbly, Jury nodded.

Man walked into a pub . . .

1

Harry Johnson lit another cigarette, flipped his lighter shut and said, “You’re not convinced, I can see. I’m not joking.”

Richard Jury just looked at him, and seeing the man was not about to back down from his improbable tale (for surely that’s what it was, a “tale”), Jury could only laugh, turn back to the bar and pick up his pint. “Come on. ‘The dog came back.’ ” He drank. “Wife, son, dog disappear, and the dog came back. After how long, did you say? A year?”

“Nearly. Nine, ten months, perhaps.” Harry Johnson blew a big smoke ring and then a little one straight through it.

That really rankled. The man was clearly well off if that cashmere coat, that gold ring bore testimony; handsome—just the sort who made other men feel tatty; intelligent and well spoken. And besides all that he could blow proper smoke rings.

Intriguing, too, don’t forget that. Even though Jury didn’t believe him. “The dog came back, sure.” Jury laughed again, a little too abruptly, perhaps, a little too indicative that Jury himself couldn’t take a joke. Well, but that was the point, wasn’t it? According to this Harry Johnson, it was no joke.

Harry Johnson smiled, set down his whiskey and got up. “Can you wait here a minute while I go to my car?”

“Me? Oh, sure, got all the time in the—” But Harry Johnson was gone before he finished. Jury looked down the bar, wishing the barman were up at this end so he could ask him about this fellow. The barman had called him by name, acted as if Johnson was often in here. But the barman was down there talking to a raucous couple with toothy smiles and hackers’ coughs. There were times Jury thought the entire world smoked except for him, Killjoy Jury.

He looked down at his empty glass. Had that been number two? Three? Was he getting drunk?

The door to the pub opened and Harry Johnson was back with a dog on a lead.

He sat down and smiled and so did the dog. Sat down, that is, not smiled. It was a medium-sized dog, nothing special, a hound of some sort, the kind you’d pick out at the shelter to adopt, flop-eared, tan and white coat, immediately likable, the kind of dog you itched to scratch between the ears. It was sitting in its lopsided way, the way dogs do, and Jury reached down and scratched his head.

“Are you telling me this is the dog, then?”

“He’s the one.”

Jury looked from Harry Johnson to the dog. “What’s his name?”

“Mungo.” Harry held up his empty glass, and Trevor, the barman, came along, smiling, and refilled it. Jury declined, thinking he had drunk a great deal in a short period of time. “We’ve an excellent Batard, ’85. Full and fat,” the barman said. “You’re drinking whiskey tonight?” There was the hint of a reproach in his voice.

“That’s pretty obvious, Trev.” Harry smiled, no slight intended. He said to Jury, “Trevor is the wine fellow. I mean the wine fellow. The expert. I’m not sure the others can tell the difference between a Pouilly-fussé and Pellegrino.”

“Then they’re the ones I should order from, not knowing myself,” said Jury.

Trevor said, “Come on, Mr. Johnson, we’re not that bad.”

“You’re not, no. Maybe we’ll switch in a minute.”

Trevor shook his head. “Not after that single malt you’re drinking.” He slid his look over to Jury’s glass. That wasn’t even worth evaluation. Trevor walked off.

Harry laughed. “Wine is not something you fool around with, not where Trevor’s concerned.”

“So Mungo—”

Here the dog sat up a bit, alert.

“Showed up at your friend’s place—wait a minute—the ‘friend’ isn’t going to turn out to be you yourself, is he?”

“Good Lord, no.”

“All right, but remember, it’s you who has the dog.”

“I found Mungo sitting outside Hugh’s front door. That’s the friend’s name, Hugh Gault. This was their home, in Chelsea, not far from mine, in Belgravia. He’s a good friend of mine, Hugh, so I expect that’s why Mungo was willing to come with me. I’d gone to the house to pick up a few books and things. Hugh is seriously thinking about putting the house on the market, but somehow I doubt he will. I think he’s afraid that as soon as he’s done it, his wife and son would turn up with no place to go.”

“But he doesn’t live there?”

“No. The whole thing nearly sent him over the edge. He’s in a private clinic in Fulham.”

“Psychiatric, you mean?”

Harry nodded. “All of this drove him into a deep depression. He’s much better now.”

Jury felt the dog edge under his bar chair.

“Anyway, Mungo was waiting there at the door, I don’t know for how long. He looked worn out and hungry and after I let him in I went to fetch food for him. But what he did instead of eating was to go from room to room, sniffing, investigating, taking a long time at it. Then he attacked his bowl of food as if he meant to eat right through it and the floor. I gave him more, and he ate that, too. He drank a bucketful of water. Then I took him home with me. I live in Belgravia, or did I mention that?”

Not a shabby address, thought Jury, but then there was that black cashmere coat Jury couldn’t stop coveting. “Is it possible your friend Hugh fantasized all of this?”

Harry Johnson just looked at him. It was a disappointed look. “And I did too? Fantasized Hugh and family? Don’t be ridiculous. Is that the best you can do?”

Jury laughed. He was glad he hadn’t told Johnson he was a detective with the Met. A detective superintendent, no less. And he certainly wasn’t going to tell him now. Jury’s question had been incredibly lame. “I take it that’s a no?”

“Unless you think I’m fantasizing it too.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Oh, please.”

“You could be winding me up.”

“Why? Why would I walk into a pub and start telling a perfect stranger a story that isn’t true?”

“I don’t know. I expect I’ll find out at some point. But go on.” Jury looked down at Mungo, who’d crawled back out from under the chair and who raised his eyes when he sensed Jury’s own on him. “How do you explain Mungo?”

“Coming back? Well, there’ve always been tales of animals finding their way home from long distances, these miraculous treks to find their homes. What was that book that was so popular when I was a teenager? The Incredible Journey, wasn’t it?”

“But it took Mungo nine months?” He looked down; the dog was looking up at him in what Jury would describe as a beseeching manner.

“I still detect an edge of sarcasm. I doubt Mungo was traveling for nine or ten months, but as I don’t know what had transpired in those months, I don’t know how even to guess. But maybe they don’t forget the way we do. There are times I can’t even remember what street I live on.”

Jury smiled. “Sorry about the sarcasm. Did the husband report this to the police?”

“Of course. You can imagine how Surrey police reacted to all of this: if the wife and boy were truly missing, then the prime suspect would be Hugh himself. But that’s England’s finest. No imagination, none at all.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Jury held up his glass, and Trevor came down the bar. “Hugh went to Surrey?” His curiosity deepened with everything Harry told him. He watched Trevor fill his glass.

“Hugh? Not initially. I went for him. He got stuck on the idea that Glynnis and Robbie would be back and he wouldn’t be there to see them.” Harry went on. “They might have been murdered, they might have been kidnapped, or—as was the popular theory at the outset—unhappy wife leaves husband and takes the child with her. That was so ridiculous I couldn’t understand how police held on to it.”

“But it was a likely explanation. After all, the police didn’t know the wife as well as you do.” Jury had been about to say It’s the one I would have gone for before he stopped himself. Instead he said, looking down at the dog, “So only Mungo knows.”

“Whatever is known, right.”

“You said at the outset you’d tell me the rest of it.”

Harry Johnson nodded. “It was last year, in the summer, in July, I think. That morning Glynn—that’s Glynnis—with Robbie and Mungo in tow, Glynnis set out for a look round the countryside in Surrey. She was viewing houses. They wanted a house outside of London.”

“Second home? Weekend cottage sort of thing?”

“Not exactly—I’ll get around to that later. Anyway, Glynn was to meet up with an estate agent who had a couple of listings she thought were worth seeing. They were about a half mile apart near a village called Lark Rise. She had appointments to see both houses, one still occupied and one empty. One she thought a complete toss, said it was too quaint and whimsical. She called the agent and told her what she thought and that she was then going to drive to the second house. The agent’s name is Marjorie Bathous, and she’s with a firm called Forester and Flynn. They’re located in Lark Rise.

“But Glynn didn’t call a second time. The agent calculated it would take only a few minutes to get to the second house, but was allowing time for Glynn to look around. That was a generous allowance, she said, since Glynnis was the type who knew what she liked immediately, at first glance. Well, when she hadn’t heard from her after an hour, she began to get concerned, thinking perhaps she’d lost her way, or was having car trouble or something. When she didn’t hear after an hour and a half, she really got anxious.”

“Didn’t she try Glynnis’s mobile phone?”

“She hadn’t got the number. She said if there’d been trouble, well, Mrs. Gault would have called her. So then this Marjorie Bathous got in her car and drove to house number one. It took her about twenty minutes from Forester and Flynn. When she got to the first house, she called in. The couple there told the agent that yes, they’d been there, even had had a cup of tea, but had left some time ago. So the agent drove to the second house. What she thought she might find was that their car had broken down, but if there had been that kind of trouble, she thought Glynnis would have called her. When she got to house number two there was no sign of anyone.

“That house was listed as available on a long lease, not for sale. Anyway, there was no use asking at the door as the place was vacant. Still, she looked around the house and grounds for some clue but found nothing.

“All this Mrs. Bathous could assume at that point was that there’d been some emergency back in London; perhaps Mrs. Gault had some sudden onset of illness, or her Chelsea house caught on fire, then apologized for being so melodramatic, but none of that could measure up, for melodrama, to the disappearance of a man’s family. She hadn’t come to thinking in those terms because it was utterly impossible. People don’t disappear like—”

“People disappear all the time,” said Jury, “although not wife, child and dog all at once, I agree. Go on.”

“The agent had been delaying a call to Hugh Gault, but now she did call, thinking, as I said, there had been an emergency in London. When she called him he was dumbfounded. Hugh called Surrey police. Can you imagine telling police your family has disappeared? Just suddenly gone up in smoke? They quite naturally took the position that the missus had done a runner, not that anything had befallen her and her boy.”

“And Mungo.”

The dog came out from under Jury’s tall bar chair and raised his eyes to look from one to the other.

Harry smiled. “Right. I keep forgetting Mungo.”

Now the dog turned to Harry Johnson.

“Never mind,” said Harry, roughing up the top of his head.

Jury hoped he hadn’t really drunk up this last drink. Well, he forgave himself for this apparent alcoholic thirst; after all he’d just put one hell of a case behind him that had left him really knackered, among other things. He frankly didn’t know if he’d find the energy to get home. Take a cab, he’d have to. “Go on,” he said to Harry.

“The Surrey police came up empty, not surprisingly. But considering there was a nine-year-old child missing, they did make an effort. Their forensics found evidence of tire tracks that matched the brand of tire on Glynnis’s car, but that did no good since the agent knew Glynn had been at the house, the first house, anyway.”

“What did they find at the second house?”

“Nothing. The ground was so hard where the car might have pulled up that they couldn’t get an impression of any tires at all, not just Glynn’s. Hugh was beside himself, of course, and convinced it could only have been a kidnapping. I thought so too, except there was no ransom demand.”

Jury thought of the Flora Scott case, so recently resolved. “Is there some reason there might have been one? I mean, are the Gaults wealthy?”

“Not wealthy, but very comfortable. She inherited a little when her mother died. Hugh’s a professor at London University. Physics.”

“So your friend Hugh would not appear to have a motive?”

“Of course not.” Harry sounded irritated. “Anyway, he was in London; any number of people could testify to that.”

“Yes, but that wouldn’t necessarily stop him paying someone to do it. And if so, you bet he’d have witnesses, a raft of witnesses.”

“That’s exactly what the police said.” Harry looked at Jury.

Jury laughed. “I’m a big fan of the Bill and—what’s that other one?—anyway, I watch them all the time on the telly.”

“But you don’t know Hugh.”

“You’re quite right. What happened then?”

“Then came the private investigator.”

“Who found nothing?”

Harry nodded. “And during this time, we drove to Lark Rise, to Forester and Flynn, where we picked up the keys to the empty house. They do that, these agents in the country, since the listings are some distance from each other. I’d say that’s just asking for trouble.”

For Glynnis Gault, it had been, Jury didn’t say. “Then Mrs. Gault did go in the house?”

“The agent didn’t know. If she didn’t like the exterior, she probably didn’t bother with the inside.”

“Then your Glynnis is one woman in a million.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Would any woman with a key to a strange house in her hand not use it? I’m sorry if that sounds patronizing. Perhaps I should say ‘anyone.’ It’s just that I’ve found houses and what they contain to be far more interesting to women than to men.”

“You think she went inside?”

Jury nodded. “Go on.”

“The rooms were large, with very high ceilings, and the drawing room or living room was furnished with what looked like quite valuable antiques. There was a Russian bureau inlaid with silver, a Turkish rug of huge proportions and deep reds and blues. There were tea things set out, a silver tea service and cups and saucers and so forth.”

“You mean, in the way of Miss Havisham in Dickens? Didn’t she keep everything regarding her near wedding exactly as it had been for years?”

Harry had lit a cigarette and was now exhaling. “No, I don’t mean that.” He seemed mildly annoyed that Jury was using fictional metaphor. He went on:

“The house sits about two hundred feet from the road. All of the front was overgrown—grass, hedgerow, shrubberies, very large trees front and back—a wood, actually at the edge of the gardens behind the house, all of it almost luxurious in its wildness. But it certainly wasn’t anyone’s idea of a country cottage. Hugh said he couldn’t understand why the agent had even had it on her list of possible properties for Glynnis to see or that Glynnis would even bother going inside. It was quite an imposing place, but much too large.”

“Well, I imagine she’s not the first agent to show a client unsuitable property. Could it be someone was waiting for Mrs. Gault? What about the boy? And Mungo, here—”

They both looked down. Mungo looked up, again eying one and then the other. The look, thought Jury, did not appear to be yearning, but more bafflement or at least puzzlement.

“Had he or she or they really planned on taking all three?”

“Perhaps they had to; they could hardly let the boy go,” said Harry.

“But they did Mungo.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I expect they thought Mungo wasn’t about to write up a report on what happened.”

“But an abduction doesn’t seem very likely with whatever was going on in the house, anyway. So you don’t know that there’s any connection between the house and Glynnis and Robbie Gault’s disappearance. It could be simply a coincidence.”

Harry studied his drink.

“Who owns the house?”

“A man named Ben Torres. Benjamin della Torres, actually.”

“Sounds aristocratic.”

Harry shook his head, picked up his glass.

“Also sounds Spanish.”

“Italian. He lives near Florence.”

“You know a lot about this.”

Harry nodded. “I had to, given everything that happened.”

“Everything?”

“What I’m telling you.” Harry smiled and looked at his watch. “Look, it’s nearly nine. Would you like to get a meal? I know a terrific restaurant.”

Jury looked at his own watch, astonished that he’d been talking to Harry Johnson for upward of two hours. “Why not? It’s a good idea. What about Mungo?”

They both rose to put on their coats (Harry, cashmere; Jury, anything but). When Mungo saw this, he too got to his feet, tail wagging.

“Oh, Mungo’s welcome to join us. I’ll just ring the place to tell them we’re coming.” He pulled a cell phone from his coat pocket and turned away from Jury to make the call.

Jury knelt down and scratched around Mungo’s ears. He wondered what the poor dog had been through. He wondered how an animal could have such a sense of direction to make a trip from God knows where back home. He wondered if “home” meant more to animals than it did to humans.

Harry flipped his cell phone closed. “Done. You’ll like this place.” Then he smiled down at Mungo. “Incredible dog. I just don’t know what to make of him.” He paused. “I don’t know what to make of any of this, actually.”

2

“The house itself—it’s named Winterhaus, incidentally—I don’t know where that German bit came from. I wanted to know more about the house itself. It struck me as a place that would serve as a setting for something.”

They were seated now in one of those pleasant restaurants where the food and the service clearly took precedence over the packaging: no terribly modern blue Lucite or smoked-glass room dividers or etched wall sconces; no sumptuous, sinuous leather and bright white linens. Just a comfortable arrangement of tables far enough apart that you didn’t feel the people at the next table were elbowing in on your conversation. Harry Johnson was obviously a long-standing diner here, for the maître d’ knew him by name and treated him as a valued customer.

They had ordered, or, rather, Harry had suggested the waiter order for them, just as he had told the sommelier to choose the wine.

“ ‘Something’?”

Harry shrugged. “I’m not sure what I mean. Melodramatic. An old man was passing in the road as we left the drive, a villager I supposed. We stopped to ask about the Swan, the nearby pub, and he told us it was down the road, then offered a bit of advice at the same time. His name was Jessup, he said, and he lived around there. He gave us a warning about ‘that house’ and said we should avoid the woods. If you can imagine.” Harry laughed.

“Did you find anything dire in the woods?”

“No.”

“What about the owner? What did he have to say?”

“He lives in San Gimignano, one of those little hill towns in Tuscany, one of the casa torre. It’s full of towers.”

“You’ve seen the town, then?”

“Yes. Well, we were looking for any clue at all. Hugh clearly wasn’t up to it and so I undertook to go. The man wouldn’t come to England—why should he? He’d put the house in the hands of an agent, so let her damned well deal with it.”

“But couldn’t this have been handled by telephone? Going to Italy seems a little extreme.”

“Is going to Italy ever really extreme? And I’d never been there.”

Jury laughed. “I see what you mean. Go on.”

“The thing, the interesting thing, regarding your point about the telephone, is that he didn’t want to discuss it over the phone. If I wanted to come to him, I was welcome.”

The waiter was there with their salads, mostly new and trendy greens and Stilton cheese and walnuts in a citrusy dressing.

Harry went on. “Two days later I turned up on his doorstep. We had drinks, we had dinner at a little trattoria. I’d never eaten a cappesante like that before.”

“I’ve never eaten it at all. Go on.”

Harry smiled. “His story—and, incidentally, he didn’t know my reason for wanting to hear it; all he knew was that I was interested in the house and wanted to know its history, as the estate agent knew sod-all about it. She didn’t know much, Ben Torres told me, because he hadn’t told her much; it didn’t strike him as necessary to do so. But if I wanted to know before I leased the property, he was happy to tell me. I was presenting myself, of course, as a prospective tenant, or, rather, not presenting myself as anything else. I think he enjoyed the fact that I’d come all the way to Italy just to talk about this house. Torres’s father was Italian; mother, British. He was raised in England and lived there until he was in his twenties. Hated it—so drab, wet and cold, and the people not especially warmhearted.

“His parents were divorced, his father in Italy, and that meant excursions to Italy a number of times to see his father, who lived in Siena. Winterhaus, the one that Glynnis Gault went to see, was in his mother’s family.

“The last time he said he’d been at this property in Surrey was when he gave the listing to an agency two years before. Ben Torres said to me, ‘Let me tell you a story. The place belonged to my mother’s family. My mother died when she was barely forty, in London. It was completely unexpected. She hadn’t been at all ill. I was sixteen. My father was living here at the time. They were divorced, had been for years. It surprised me they’d ever come together—they were so different. Sometimes I think that’s what marriage is: a reconciliation of differences, and sometimes it succeeds. Not a grand vision, is it?

“ ‘At any rate, my mother—her name was Nina—had always liked that house in Surrey; she’d been a child there and found it mysterious. But then most children find mystery in things adults wouldn’t give a toss for. More than once someone had made my mother an offer for the house—and if you saw it, you’d know it’s quite a lovely site, even if it hasn’t been properly kept up. But my mother wouldn’t sell it, and not because she’d lived there as a child but because of something that had happened there and that she felt responsible for. I mean not that she’d done anything but that she didn’t want to subject some stranger to the unhappy aspect of the house.’ ”

Jury lowered his fork. “ ‘Unhappy aspect’?”

But Harry Johnson merely raised his hand to ward off questions.

“Torres went on: ‘I myself was eight years old when she told me about it. Well, I’d kept after her and after her to explain what she meant. Finally one night, as she was tucking me into bed and was about to read me a story. She had the most beautiful voice. But I didn’t want to be read a story, I wanted her to tell me one.

“ ‘ “All right, Benjy, I’ll tell you a story.” She closed the book and set it aside. And she told me this story then and Lord knows how many times since, as I was always asking for it.

“ ‘ “A stranger was standing out there at the bottom of the garden. At first I thought he must be making a delivery or was perhaps an acquaintance of your father’s. But he did not move from the end of the path. He was not a vagrant, that was clear from his overcoat and his bat.”

“ ‘ “And his bowler hat.” I said, “You left it out.” I would often interrupt in this way to ensure all of the details were included and even such commonplaces as weather and light, the slant of the sun, the turning leaves—all of these details had to be absolutely accurate, by that I mean always the same, before I would allow her to proceed.’ ”

Harry Johnson paused to have a sip of wine. Their dinners appeared as if by magic. Jury had ordered his dish because he wondered if its stunningly complicated name would turn out to be a simple dish. Whatever it was, it was good.

This “stranger” (Jury thought) would be the harbinger of bad news or would himself be the bad news. He would die, Jury was sure. “He was murdered, right?”

Harry opened his eyes wide with astonishment. “You’re jumping the gun. Ben Torres would have your head on a platter for that.” Harry laughed.

“Go on with the story. The stranger.” (Who will, he added to himself, be murdered.)

“Ben Torres said, ‘My mother made the correction about the hat. Then she continued:

“ ‘ “He stopped there at the end of the path for some time. I don’t know why I didn’t go out and ask him who he was and what he wanted. I was afraid, a little afraid. I tried to read my book—I’d been sitting in the window seat reading, but I couldn’t and when a slant of sun fell across the page, I looked again and he was gone. It was close to dusk. I was so relieved not to have to wonder if he would be there after dark and if he was going to try to get in the house. He was gone, thank heaven. But three days later he appeared again. At the end of the path in the same spot. I—” Then she stopped and I said, “You told yourself you had to do something.”

“ ‘ “Yes. The thing is, we were there by ourselves. You were only eight.” ’

“Then Ben Torres, in telling me, became agitated, as if he still felt his mother’s uncertainty and fear. ‘So my mother did call the police station.

“ ‘ “But what am I to tell them? Simply that a man had on two occasions stood just at the end of the garden path? Why would the police bother to investigate that? Still, I made the call, Benjy, and was surprised that they were so polite.” ’ ”

“England’s finest,” put in Jury and received a withering look from Harry Johnson.

“Ben Torres went on: ‘The mystery of the stranger captivated more than frightened me, but, then, I was not easily frightened. My mother knew this. Still, she did not tell me the rest of it.’ ” Harry stopped to take another drink of wine.

Jury said, “Stop long enough to eat. This meal is definitely worth it.”

“Oh, I’ve eaten it many times. It’s delicious.”

Jury liked that filling up on memory. His thoughts turned to that painting, The Butterfly Eaters, that he’d seen in Newcastle at the Baltic. Dining on illusion.

Harry continued. “He said: ‘It was my father who told me the rest, years later. The house, my father said, had a sad history, a dismal history.

“ ‘ “This is what that detective told your mother: There was a family who lived there, who had leased it, named Overdean. They lived there with their son, seven-year-old Basil. The boy and his mother were murdered in their beds one night. The father himself wasn’t touched.” ’

“In such cases as this,” Harry went on to say, “the crime always points first to a family member—in this case the father, who hadn’t been touched despite the viciousness of the attack. There was no motive anyone knew of and his fingerprints were not on the knife; they’d been stabbed repeatedly. The knife appeared not to belong to the house. But all of that could be explained by the prosecution. Well, you know what police and lawyers are like—”

“I do indeed.”

“—in the absence of any counterevidence, they could just say the father had wiped the knife clean of his finger-prints and could easily have brought another knife into the house—”

Jury interrupted again. “And then hung around in bed while his wife was being murdered. Please.” The waiter had come to clear away their dishes. Jury’s plate was wiped clean.

“That’s exactly what I thought.”

“He was convicted?”

Harry nodded. “The judge in this case seemed dubious about his guilt. He sentenced him not to life but to twenty years. He only had to serve ten; his behavior in prison was perfect. I think it was very flimsy evidence.”

“It was certainly circumstantial. I’m surprised the defense wasn’t able to drive a wedge of doubt into it.”

The waiter returned with the dessert, a crème brûlée infused with lavender and glazed on top. “And what about the stranger? Mr. Torres hasn’t explained him yet.”

“Listen first to what his mother said about the house: ‘She told me once, “Benjy, houses are more than wood and stone and plaster. Houses breathe, too. I think they bear the imprint of all the people who’ve lived in them.” ’ ”

“Including Mrs. Overdean and her son? That doesn’t strike me as very good storytelling, not to a little kid.”

“I’m only repeating what Ben Torres told me. ‘ “And the silent stranger in the bowler hat?” I asked my father.

“ ‘ “Your mother didn’t know. Perhaps it was the father come back.” ’ ”

“Dead or alive?” asked Jury.

Harry laughed. “Alive, I believe he said. It wouldn’t be so surprising for him to come back to the house where everything had gone wrong, where he’d lost—” Suddenly, Harry stopped.

“Where he’d lost everything, you were about to say. Like your friend Hugh Gault. Except in his case, there seems no rational explanation for his wife and son’s disappearance.” Jury looked down when Mungo stuck his head out from the curtain of the tablecloth. “And his dog’s.”

Harry signaled to the waiter for coffee. “I asked Ben Torres, ‘What about the stranger? Did your mother think he must be Overdean?’ Ben laughed. ‘I hardly think so. He would have been a bit too old, wouldn’t you say? Overdean would have been long dead. No, that’s quite impossible unless, of course, one believes in ghosts.’ ”

“And do you? Did Nina Torres?” Jury asked.

Their waiter filled their cups with coffee and set the silver-plated pot on the table. Harry shook his head. “I can speak with certainty only for myself. No, not for a minute. Mrs. Torres, though, sounded as if she might have. Hugh? Before this happened, I would say definitely not. But now he’s searching for any explanation at all. It’s all too depressing.” He paused. “One thing that Ben Torres felt important: that I should stay away from the wood behind the house.”

“Stay away how?”

“Literally. And this is interesting. He repeated the warning given us by this Mr. Jessup: to stay away from the wood.”

“Why?”

“Torres didn’t say why. He just waved the question away as if, you know, I were crazy for even asking it.”

“And did you stay away?”

“It was the first place I went after I got back from Florence. Look, if someone pointed to a spot and told you to stay away, you wouldn’t, would you? It’s a challenge to one’s curiosity.”

“And what did you find? What danger lurked there?”

“None. Surrey police had combed that wood looking, I expect, for . . . remains.” Harry picked up his cup of coffee and swallowed as if he swallowed the word with it.

Remains. A word that Jury had always hated—it was so distant, so clinical. “What about house number one? Wouldn’t that be a likely place to search? No one even knows if Glynnis and her son ever got to the second house.”

“No, you’re quite right.” Harry leaned back in his chair, his cup and saucer in his hands.

“It strikes me, you know, as a hell of an odd pattern.”

Harry’s frown deepened. “What pattern?”

“Well, surely you saw it. The Overdean woman, Nina Torres, Glynnis Gault. All were alone with their eight- or nine-year-old sons.”

Harry leaned forward in his chair. “No, I didn’t see it. I must be blind.”

Mungo slid his muzzle out from under the table and rested it on Jury’s shoe. Lazily, he blinked when Jury looked down at him. As if he couldn’t be bothered. As if he thought the conversation was ludicrous. As if Jury were the biggest kind of fool.

Mungo yawned.

The wood’s not it.

3

That’s what it would be, a slap on the wrist delivered by an assistant commissioner or even the commissioner himself, for going into that Hester Street house without a warrant. Jury was surprised he hadn’t been suspended as yet.

“I’ll try talking them down, lad. You’ll have me to thank for saving your job.”

Was Racer kidding? Jury knew about how much the man would stand up for him.

“Thanks.” He’d been sitting across from Chief Superintendent Racer (his boss, guv’nor, supervisor) trying to think of something nice to add to the “thanks” and coming up empty. He was more interested in the cat Cyril, who had flattened himself pancakelike to the floor and was snaking along to Racer’s big desk while Racer babbled on, unaware. There was just enough room if Cyril could maneuver his body, all of it, to rug level and slip through the three-or four-inch space. Cyril liked occasionally to get his teeth around Racer’s ankle and pull. When Racer yelled, Cyril would slip back through the opening and make for the door, trailing Racer’s sputtered imprecations like a row of cans tied to his tail.

It was just something to do. Jury smiled.

As Racer’s taking advantage of the present situation to lecture Jury was just something to do. In the pause while Racer was thinking up more things to say, Jury rose, asked, “Will that be all?” and started for the door. Behind him, CS Racer gave voice to either a yelp or a screech, and right away, Cyril shot out from under the desk to the door that Jury was holding open for him. They both missed the heavy paperweight that bounced off the rug behind them.

That night, after leaving the restaurant, Jury agreed to meet Harry Johnson the next evening at the Old Wine Shades and pick up the story where Harry had left it.

There was more, Harry Johnson had said, to come.

Jury had to admit he was curious about the Gaults and Ben Torres and their exceedingly strange tales.

Right now, late as it was, he thought he’d walk down to Lower Thames Street and then along the Embankment as far as Waterloo Bridge. Jury wanted to see how Benny Keegan was keeping. It was well after ten o’clock, but Benny did not exactly keep regular hours. His dog, Sparky, had probably saved Jury’s life because he had led the others to him.

Sparky. Now, if it had been Sparky sniffing round that house in Surrey, he’d have turned up something. But he shouldn’t be hard on Mungo; no, Mungo was far from dumb.

He watched the Thames and the glitter of lights reflected along its surface, cast by the National Theater and the South Bank.

Jury walked down the stone steps to the wide space under the bridge where several of the London homeless had set up house. Of course they had to take it all down in the morning and leave or the police would be all over them. But that didn’t cramp their style; Jury got the idea they considered themselves quite fortunate to have this area under the bridge for their own, nights.

“Oh, Christ,” said Mags (the first one he came to), “if it ain’t the Filth again. I calls it police harassment.”

Jury said, “Last time I was here was in January, Mags. Does that seem very harassing? It’s March now.”

“The Ides of.” Her tone was churlish. “That fookin’ Caesar ’ad ’is work cut out for ’im, din’t ’e?”

“Well, I lay no claim to being Caesar.”

“Good thing.” Mags’s laugh came from some deep and abiding resource within her body. It was hard to make the body out, given layers of skirts and shawls. She had made a fire in a big tin canister and was stirring something in a pot.

“So, it’s gonna be onct every couple mumfs you come down ’ere? I’ll go get me ’air done next time.”

“You were never lovelier. Where are Benny and Sparky?”

“Up to no good, unlike the rest o’ us law-abidin’ cit’zens.”

“When did you last see him?”

“ ’Bout fifteen minutes ago. Said he was goin’ up t’ that McDonald’s near Charing Cross. He did good today wi’f his route.”

Jury looked around. “Where is everyone?”

“Dunno.”

There were ordinarily at least a half dozen here with bedrolls and blankets, and upward of a dozen who came and went at one time or another. It was (Jury had said) an “accommodation address,” the accommodation being supplied by police who turned a blind eye as long as they were out of here the next morning with their blankets and bedrolls and pots and pans.

“Has Benny still got his same delivery jobs over in Southwark?” He nodded toward the South Bank.

“ ’Course. That lad don’t know how lucky ’e is ’avin’ a steady job.”

“Oh, I think he knows.” Jury turned at the sound of a bark, cut off as if the dog had sucked it back into his throat. A dead white blur ran down the steps. Sparky. He was followed by Benny, the second half of the team who had saved Jury’s life.

“Hey, Mr. Jury!”

“Hi, Benny. How are you keeping?”

“Same old, same old,” said Benny, hooking his thumbs in his jeans pockets. Benny liked American banalities.

Jury smiled. Bernard Keegan, boy of the world. Well, the boy was, actually. Benny had been on his own and on the streets for years; even now he was only eleven or twelve. “You deliver for the same people, like Gyp?”

“Tell the truth, old Gyp don’t, doesn’t, talk to me and Sparky like he used to do. He kinda keeps his distance. But he still gives out evil looks.”

“You don’t have to work for him, you know.”

“Yeah, well, t’ way I see it, if you give up because someone’s mean to you, a person wouldn’t get very far, and always would be subservant.”

Jury knew Benny was especially pleased with “subservant.” He liked new words (even if he didn’t get them right), long ones you could “really get your mouth around” was the way he’d put it. It made a person sound more “edge-ecated.”

They were sitting side by side on one of the cold stone steps. Sparky went around in circles.

“Why does he do that?”

“Oh, that’s just when he gets excited. It’s because you’re here. Sparky always liked you.”

Jury studied Sparky, who now had stopped circling and was sitting watching the two of them. “Tell me, Benny, when Sparky goes off on his own, do you think he takes in what he experiences?”

“ ‘Takes in’?”

“Understands, takes the meaning of?”

Benny looked at Jury as if the detective were loopy. “A course.”

“Can he tell you?”

“Depends what you mean by ‘tell,’ don’t it? He can bark, he can use his eyes, his tail, his whole self. Like that circlin’ he was doin’. And you oughta remember it was Sparky got me out to that dock. It’s a good thing I were lookin’ for him, weren’t it? He did that by runnin’ back and forth on the dock and by barkin’. Sparky’s got different barks, see. Mad, happy, dangerous—all different.”

“You think all dogs are the same?”

“No. Just the smart ones.”

“If Sparky’d been gone for a year, what would he do?”

“I’d never hear the end of it, would I?”

Jury laughed. “No, I guess you wouldn’t.” Jury got up. “I’ll be going now. How’s Gemma?”

“She’s thinkin’ of changin’ that Richard doll’s name. You know, the one dressed all in black.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause you come to see me and not her, I expect.”

“Tell her I’ll see her soon.”

“Oh, I can tell her, but she won’t believe me.” This was uttered in a sort of Best tell her yourself, mate, tone.

“ ’Bye, Benny.”

As he walked up the stairs, Mags’s voice followed. “Back in two mumfs, you’ll be.”