The Horse You Came in On Page 20

  The curator was a tall man with a pleasant manner who let him in and had to go off and speak to the workmen, the painter and carpenter, he said. The room in which Melrose stood, a room which must have been used as a front parlor, was very small and made smaller by its present disarray, for they were (the curator had told him over the telephone) in the process of repainting and repairing. They did this every year. The house was closed to the public now. He had made an exception for Melrose.

  Furniture was covered against the threat of paint splatter; some chairs had been upended on a large table; portraits had been removed from walls and propped against another table. The naked squares in which they had hung looked to Melrose like pale reproaches, as if secrets were being unmasked.

  It was this transient aspect of the room, this look of things on the move, that filled Melrose with an odd poignance. The older he got, the more he guarded against change. Any change to him boded a flaking away, a crumbling of the existing order, and he strongly resisted it: he even got annoyed when Dick Scroggs started slathering his aquamarine paint on the Jack and Hammer’s wood trim.

  He looked at the famous portrait of Poe, the face saved from fragility by the dark mustache, the expression of the eyes (those eyes!) called back to earth by the overcast brow. As he was studying it, the curator returned with a mug of coffee and led him away to see the other rooms.

  The rooms were all tiny; it was amazing to Melrose that Poe, his wife, Virginia, and Mrs. Clemm could have lived here so amicably. But that attested to their devotion to one another, for devoted they certainly seemed to have been. The curator told him of all of this in a tone of affection for the absent family.

  In the little room that housed the glass cases and pictures and prints, the curator stood with his coffee mug hooked between thumb and forefinger, forgetting to sip, instead gesturing with the cup as he talked about Poe’s life. An appalling life in most ways. Poverty, abject poverty, lay almost permanently across the man’s path like his own black shadow. They looked into the case, at the obituaries clipped from old newspapers, and the curator talked about Poe’s detractors with a bitterness that Melrose found rather poignant. This Griswold, he said, tapping the glass, managed even to turn Dickens against Poe, to say nothing of hundreds of others. He hated to hear people accuse Poe of drunken debauchery when the man could barely drink at all, he was probably allergic to the stuff; or people excoriate him for marrying his fourteen-year-old cousin, forgetting that the marrying at a very young age and the marrying of cousins was common practice at that time; a bushman (said the curator) would probably think we were uncivilized fools because we couldn’t throw a proper boomerang, wouldn’t he? Other cultures, other times.

  Yes, he said, the police had talked to him at length, of course, as he and “his people” had kept watch the night of Poe’s birthday, as they did every year, a ritual, a ritual watch in the churchyard, waiting for the gent to bring his roses and brandy. He had, they had, been questioned closely, uncomfortably closely. The curator smiled. After all, he shrugged. But it was his view that she, this Brown woman, was aware, was familiar with, the habit of imposture—an imposture carried out by one of “his people” dressing up as the flower bearer in order to fool whatever little crowd would collect on the pavement near the church. After they thought they’d seen the man in the cloak with the flowers and the bottle, they’d go away. They did. Why she (the Brown woman) had not left too . . . He shrugged. Don’t know.

  They stood one on each side of the glass case holding the clipings and letters as the curator brandished his coffee mug and spoke of the absurdity of the claim this girl had made regarding the manuscript. Poe was never coy about his work, didn’t secrete it in drawers, didn’t hide it in trunks; for God’s sake, he needed the money. That an entire, a whole, or nearly whole, story would come to light—well, it was too preposterous to consider. He had not seen the manuscript, no. He would not be objective—no hope there (he laughed).

  He was a nice fellow, a friendly fellow, and he laughed at his own involvement here. But it was obvious that he was disturbed by this manuscript, this so-called “find,” this “coup.” He took it, Melrose thought, very personally. Poe was, after all, his charge. And the curator said nearly as much: an artist has his detractors and needs, consequently, his protectors. And the nature of genius, and especially fame, is that the detractors become more numerous and the protectors fewer.

  Poe, Melrose suggested, would probably have laughed it off.

  Laughed it off? No, he wouldn’t have laughed it off. And he shouldn’t have. Why should a writer have to pay the double price of watching some hack steal his work and then pretend it isn’t important? It was bad enough to do such a thing to a living writer, but this girl—well, it’s like grave robbing; it’s like pulling old delicate patterns of bone, lacelike patterns, from the earth and rearranging them into some clumsy and unwieldy shape. Worse than murder, really. Anyone who would thieve another’s work and pass it off as her own wouldn’t think twice about murder.

  And things took on, as they talked, a proportionately allegorical nature. The Girl, the Public, the Detractors. Proportionate to the curator’s anger at this senseless intrusion of a base and vulgar mind into the life given over (in a sense) into his charge. He did not say any of this; Melrose felt it. Melrose also felt that it was proper for the curator to feel this way. It was refreshing to hear an artist so defended.

  Poor Poe, poor Ellen. He felt ashamed of having treated her problem so cavalierly, so lightly. At the door now, Melrose turned up the collar of his overcoat, looked up at the sky, whose threat of snow seemed to have vanished and the opaque, oysterish color changed to a milky blue. He pointed this out as the two of them stood there, hands dug down in their pockets. The weather had changed; the sky, said Melrose, was blue.

  “Ah, yes,” the curator said, looking skyward, “ ‘the cloud that took the form, when the rest of Heaven was blue, of a demon in my view.’ ” He smiled ambiguously and shut the door.

  24

  The office looked like one that might belong to a grammar-school rugby coach. A glass-fronted bookcase containing football memorabilia partially blocked the long, narrow window in the side wall. Other artifacts and football souvenirs lined the shelves of the bookcase and the back of the desk of the tiny office. It was more of a book-lined cupboard: walls of books, left and right, and between them, a desk, a swivel chair, and a couple of side chairs hugging the walls. That was all the furniture. Close beside the desk was a large Chinese vase that strongly resembled in its antique and chipped elegance the one Jury had seen at the doorway between the Pre-Raphaelites and another gallery in the Tate. Into the mouth of this one, though, a football had been stuffed.

  Muldare took Jury’s explanation of his presence in the office—the connection between the murders of Beverly Brown and a man in Philadelphia—with obvious disbelief. “That sounds pretty far out, if you don’t mind my saying it.”

  “I know. Still, it doesn’t hurt to ask a few questions.” And Jury went on to ask them.

  Patrick Muldare endured the questions and comments with good grace, sitting back with his arms hugging the book he’d been reading to his chest, one foot up on one of the folding chairs. He was a man who would always appear younger than his chronological age, which Jury put in the mid-thirties, the image of youth helped along by his corduroy jacket (expensive, Jury could tell), his loafers, his wheat-colored hair cut untidily long and which he kept scraping away from his forehead. Tinted glasses, metal-framed, could not disguise eyes that seemed to express constant surprise or astonishment, or even childlike wonder.

  Jury started with a subject he thought might not be quite so volatile: the manuscript.

  “Do I think it’s a fake?”

  “Do you think it was her fake, more particularly?”

  “Knowing her, yes, probably. Can I have one of those cigarettes? I’m trying to quit.”

  Jury handed Muldare the pack. “Sounds as though you didn’t much lik
e her.”

  Muldare struck a match, inhaled deeply and with evident relief. “I didn’t. But . . . well . . . you know.”

  But. Well. Shrug. That was Muldare’s explanation of his affair with Beverly Brown. Probably didn’t have to like a woman to go to bed with her. Jury thought he was oversimplifying the matter. “Trouble with her?”

  “Beverly was trouble for anyone, in a way. She wanted too much.”

  “Marriage?”

  “To me?”

  Jury had to smile at Muldare’s genuine surprise at this suggestion, the expression of his eyes growing in astonishment, as if he couldn’t believe anyone would want to marry him. “Well, Mr. Muldare, pardon the cliché, but you strike me as quite a catch.”

  “Hmm. Yeah, I’m rich, that’s for sure. But I don’t know. Beverly had ambitions that didn’t include a husband.”

  “Did she talk to you about this alleged Poe manuscript?”

  “Yep; this little morsel was going to make her career. It sure as hell would be a coup. Beverly had a coup mentality, if you know what I mean. In other circumstances, she’d’ve made one hell of a guerrilla.”

  His smile was quick, here and gone, darting like a swallow into the sun. His head turned toward the window and its line of light around the bookcase. “Maybe that’s too tough an analogy. I sound pretty coldblooded. It’s just that Beverly had a way of going after what she wanted.” He plucked the football from the mouth of the Chinese vase and turned it in his fingertips and grew, as he did this, more studious, more serious. “She was damned smart. Ellen can tell you that; she had Bev in a few classes. You know, even if this story isn’t authentic, if it’s a forgery, well, what a sweet subject for a doctoral thesis, right? Beverly panted to get into an Ivy League school. Our version, I guess, of Oxbridge.”

  “That’s what she wanted? Doesn’t strike me as especially exciting for a woman of her apparent ambitions.”

  Muldare laughed. “Well, you ain’t a woman, and you sure as hell ain’t a black woman. And it’s a hell of a lot better if you can sail into a job like that on your merits rather than as an ad for affirmative action.”

  “Do you think it’s the real thing?”

  “The Poe story? Naw. Just based on the odds, how could it be?”

  “I don’t know the odds. But what about her finding it?”

  “You mean, did she?”

  “I mean, did she have the ability to forge such a manuscript?”

  “Ability?” Muldare shrugged. “Nerve?” He smiled. “Yeah. Bev was never short on nerve. But something like that takes more than nerve. You’d have to be goddamned brilliant to pull something like that off.”

  “I wonder. You’d have to be clever, yes. But ‘brilliant’ . . . ?”

  Patrick Muldare laughed again. “You sure as hell don’t give much credit, do you? I could never have done it.”

  “You’re not a Poe specialist. You’re not an ambitious young black student. And I wonder if the sheer audacity of such a forgery wouldn’t tend to make us think that simply because it’s so audacious and seemingly unthinkable someone could forge an entire story that way—that maybe it’s genuine. Assuming it passes a few tests. Stringent tests, I expect. Still . . .”

  “You’ve lost me. What’s this got to do with the case Scotland Yard’s investigating?”

  “Maybe nothing, insofar as the manuscript itself goes. But wasn’t she herself making a connection between the murder of this homeless man who was knifed in Baltimore and Philip Calvert in Philadelphia? She thought these people were linked.”

  Muldare, who seemed to want to be in constant motion, tossed the football up, caught it, snapped it back. “You’re talking about those initials. Including, maybe, mine?”

  Jury nodded. When Muldare said nothing more and just kept spinning the ball, Jury asked, “Do you think your brother would know anything about her movements on that night? I know he’s talked to police, but—”

  “Stepbrother. Alan’s my stepbrother. I don’t know about that night, but he certainly knew her.” He turned his head, rubbed at his neck. “His mother married my father. It was—difficult. Hard for Alan, I mean. Everyone else got on like a house afire. Not Alan. He doesn’t like me much, see. For one thing, I have the money.”

  “I see.”

  “No, you don’t. I mean money money. Old money. Very old money. Well-used money. A lot of—” He sketched a dollar sign in the air. He seemed defensive, slightly guilty.

  “Yet, you teach.”

  “Well, that’s because I like it. And I don’t do much.” He grinned. “Ask my students, they’ll tell you.” The grin vanished. “There was a trust fund for Alan, but that soon went. And he hasn’t got a head for business. He’s clever, that’s for certain. Nouveau Pauvre was his idea. But he can’t seem to channel the cleverness into anything lasting. What he needs is an endless waterfall of money to indulge his fantasies. Trouble is, he hasn’t got it, and I have, which doesn’t endear me to him.”

  “What about Beverly Brown?”

  “What about her?”

  “Did your relationship with her make him jealous?”

  “Yes.” The syllable was curt. He offered no assistance.

  The silence lengthened. Jury waited.

  Muldare studied the football, then said, “I can’t really say I blame Alan. After all, he saw her first.”

  Jury laughed; he couldn’t help himself—the statement was so reminiscent of arguments he remembered having in his adolescence, maybe earlier, with some other boy, school chum. Hey! I saw her first!

  Patrick Muldare grinned, as if he, too, remembered, and as if he, too, heard in his own words an echo of adolescence, the teenager still trapped inside the man. And he didn’t seem to mind the joke being on him. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  Jury nodded. “I get the impression the jealousy was rather violent?”

  “Not that violent, Superintendent,” Muldare said, now very serious. “Alan’s not the type.”

  “I don’t know if there is or isn’t a type.”

  “You see, the jealousy wouldn’t have been just over a woman, a girl. It would have been another loss to me in what Alan must have thought a long line of losses. Even his mother seemed to like me more. He’s not a happy person. It’s too bad.”

  There was another long silence. Jury looked at the bookcase. “You like football?”

  Patrick Muldare threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “How’d you ever guess? Thought I’d covered my tracks pretty well.” The change in his expression was remarkable.

  “Ellen Taylor was talking about you. Then I kind of worked it out for myself. I am a detective.”

  “Brilliant.” He tossed the ball to Jury, who nearly fumbled it before tossing it back. Muldare grinned. “I like Ellen. She’s not full of bullshit, like a few others. Have you read her book?” In an awkward acrobatic motion, rather like a man reaching back to catch a pass, he plucked a book down from a shelf behind him. “Windows, it’s called.” He held up the cover for Jury’s inspection, then opened it, grunted, snapped it shut, and held it against his chest, together with the ball, a kid with two teddy bears, as he studied the ceiling. “Weirdly compelling.”

  “I don’t think I understood it, exactly.”

  “Aah, ‘understand’ . . . Me either, but I kept on reading it, and that’s the whole point, isn’t it?” His look at Jury was wide-eyed and innocent. “Don’t tell her I didn’t understand it, will you?”

  How Jury had come to know Ellen, Muldare didn’t ask. Indeed, he didn’t seem to question much, simply accepted things as they entered his life, as if life were just one long forward pass.

  “Hardly,” said Jury, smiling. “I didn’t tell her I didn’t understand it. So I’ll just say you kept on reading.” From his pocket he drew the catalog and opened it to the page he’d marked, reading, “ ‘The Psycho-socio Impact of the NFL in the Late Twentieth Century.’ Speaking of not understanding—what does that mean?”

  Patrick Mu
ldare looked up at the ceiling and then around the office, lips moving slightly as if he were searching for laymen’s language. “Nothing.” He flashed Jury another grin.

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s supposed to sound academic and at the same time be a turn-off for guys who think I’m just going to talk about football.”

  “So what do you talk about?”

  “Football.” Now the grin split his face and stretched ear to ear.

  “It must be popular, once word gets around.”

  “Oh, you bet.” Happily, he spun the ball on the tip of his index finger, let it fall in his palm. “We’re hoping Baltimore’s getting the franchise.”

  “Your stepbrother mentioned that.”

  “For an expansion team.”

  Jury nodded toward the glass-fronted case. “You had one—”

  Swiftly, Muldare shot his arms in the air, hands fisted. “Yes!” He might have been sitting in the bleachers. “The Colts.”

  “Then the city’s got to go through some kind of red tape to get another one?”

  “It’s more than red tape. The NFL only awards a certain number of franchises; we’ve got to prove we deserve one. That we had the Colts helps. But St. Louis had the Cardinals, too. The NFL hasn’t expanded since ’ 76. Now they appear to be willing to give out two franchises. Only two. But they could even call that off any time they want, because they left themselves legal loopholes. Say they do award them, though—in a couple of months, March, there’ll be a short list. And that will cite three—” this time it was three fingers in the air—“three possibles. In October, they’ll let us know the two out of three.” He shut his eyes tightly, looking pained, as if already seeing Baltimore in third place. “This expansion team thing has been going on for seven, eight years, ever since Isray—the Colts’ owner—tossed the helmets and jerseys in a bunch of moving vans back in ’84 and did what I think you guys call a ‘moonlight flit.’ He was afraid the city would get an injunction to keep the team here. Bastard.”