The Horse You Came in On Page 5

  The only thing that kept Diane Demorney from being a pathological liar (a role she would have relished), was that she didn’t need to be, since her particular cachet was marshalling esoteric and arcane bits of knowledge, just enough to make her look as though she really knew something. Which she didn’t.

  Ordinarily, Melrose Plant refused to rise to Diane’s bait, but now he couldn’t help himself. He squinted at her. “The what?”

  “The Stendhal syndrome.” She played her eyes round the table, resting her look upon the three of them in turn. She toyed with her ten-to-one dry martini and said, “Well, I assume you’ve heard of Stendhal? The Red and the Black, The Charnelhouse of Parma?”

  Joanna rolled her eyes heavenward; Melrose choked on his Old Peculier. Trueblood said, “So what’s this ‘syndrome’? You’re dying to tell us.”

  Diane sipped her martini, making them wait. “Stendhal, you see, was a passionate lover of art. He’d stand about for simply hours looking at it. But it had a strange effect on him. He was always fainting. In Florence, especially. Well, you know what the art there is like.” This was directed to Joanna. “It was too much for the poor man.”

  “No, I’ve never been to Florence,” said Joanna.

  “But one of your books was set there,” said Diane, smoke from her cigarette pluming delicately upwards.

  “So? You don’t think I actually have time to visit those places, do you? Are you telling us Stendhal collapsed whenever he looked at paintings?”

  Diane was pleased as punch that she’d bested them, one and all, yet again. “If he looked too long.”

  “Fainting in Florence and pegging out at the Tate don’t strike me as especially like,” said Melrose, adjusting himself on the window seat.

  “It’s looking at art that does it, whether it’s in Italy or London or wherever. Stendhal was such a marvellous writer, wasn’t he?—”

  As if Diane had ever read him, thought Melrose.

  “—that it makes me almost green I can’t do it, too. Doesn’t it you, Joanna?”

  Completely ignoring the taunt, Joanna said, “Any idiot can write a book. Not like Stendhal, of course, but a book. I should know.”

  “Yes, you should,” said Diane, sweetly agreeing.

  “You’re always selling yourself short,” said Melrose. “But it’s encouraging, what you say.” He shifted uncomfortably.

  Marshall Trueblood plucked a thread from his wool silk jacket sleeve. “Good heavens, dear Maddy, that’s too much self-denigration.”

  “Maddy” was Trueblood’s fond diminutive for Joanna Lewes, who was known as Joanna the Mad, a nickname that had nothing to do with her mental state, but with the coincidence of her dead husband having been named Philip. Joanna had found it rather jolly that King Philip I of Spain had driven his wife, Joanna, round the twist, and the benighted queen had come to be known as Joanna the Mad.

  Joanna Lewes had just been belittling her own writing (“romantic tripe”), which nonetheless enjoyed an enormous commercial success. This seemed to embarrass her. “Believe me, Marshall, if people will buy Petersburg Passion, they’ll buy any damned thing.” Joanna used place names as titles: London Love, Mexico Magic, Florentine Fancy, Rome Romance. Her latest place was St. Petersburg, and when asked about the setting, she said, “Russia, Florida—who cares?” Long ago she had discovered that all roads that lead to Rome (and Petersburg) lead farther and farther away from the Inland Revenue. Joanna never seemed to take advantage of travel tax deductions, though. She was too busy writing about foreign love-affairs to visit the places. Authentic background was never one of her strong points.

  “You two are collaborating or something? I thought I saw you writing.”

  “No—oh, no,” said Melrose.

  Trueblood sucked in his lower lip. “It’s just . . . my accounting book. You know, for the shop. Melrose was helping me with the entries.”

  “Cooking the VAT intakes, I hope.” Joanna sniggered.

  Since they did not want its existence bruited about, Melrose had immediately whisked the black notebook off the table and sat on it when they saw Joanna approaching. It was this little book that was causing him discomfort. He shifted his weight and rearranged the others in the stack; ordinarily he could sit in the Jack and Hammer for hours and read.

  It was these books that Joanna pulled over to inspect. She looked at the dust jackets, smiled kindly over Polly Praed’s latest effort, but seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the one called Windows. “This,” she said, tapping it with her fingers, “is fascinating. A good example of a minimalist novel.”

  Windows was Ellen Taylor’s new book—new in England, that is, for it had been published in the United States two years before. It was by no means that Brontëesque extravaganza Melrose had feared would come out of Ellen’s acquaintanceship with the North York moors; nor was it like her earlier Sauvage Savant, which had threatened to be the first in a quintet about the New York boroughs. Windows was entirely different. It was also entirely opaque—to Melrose, at least.

  “Minimalist?” said Melrose.

  “Minimalist?” repeated Marshall Trueblood, who was anything but, at least in dress. Beneath the Armani jacket was a shocking-pink shirt with an iridescent shell-pink stripe and a tie that looked as if it had wiped a painter’s easel clean.

  “You know.” Joanna’s attention was caught by the two women in the back of the pub, Lavinia Vine and Alice Broadstairs.

  Actually, Melrose didn’t. He could not make head or tale out of Ellen’s story, and he hadn’t been able to think of a single intelligent thing to say about it when he’d talked to her only that very afternoon, an hour or two ago.

  Lavinia and Alice were waving at their table. They were Long Piddleton’s avid gardeners, who got together only for their pub port and biscuits. Otherwise, they were generally warring. Always, they were the first to purchase “the latest Lewes,” and Lavinia was now holding up Petersburg Passion, waving it like a hand. They wanted it signed.

  “I’m not surprised,” said Joanna, speaking of Ellen Taylor’s book, “that it won that literary prize.”

  The nice thing about Joanna Lewes was not only her realistic assessment of her own talent but her utter lack of professional jealousy. She was the sort who would cast blurbs upon the water, encouraging for first-time-around novelists. She would read tattered manuscripts, answer letters, and so forth.

  Such generosity of spirit could not be claimed for the next person who came through the Jack and Hammer’s door, Melrose’s aunt.

  Whenever she saw Joanna Lewes, she bridled. And never failed to mention that she, too, had a book in the works. “The world is full, Miss Lewes, of unsung writers.”

  “Yes, and too damned many sung ones, too. Pardon me.” Joanna left to join her book-buying fans, a subspecies to which Lady Ardry had never belonged, finding her nephew’s library sufficient, if she ever got round to actually reading a book.

  “Conceited,” murmured Agatha, with a sniff. “That’s the trouble with all this celebrity. What are you two doing? Ah, here’s Theo,” she added with evident displeasure.

  Actually, Theo Wrenn Browne was only winning by default with Agatha. He disliked the same people she did, with the exception of Diane, over whom he fawned. Theo owned the village’s only bookshop and had refused until just lately to stock the novels of Joanna Lewes.

  Diane Demorney, hardly a charitable person, looked like Mother Teresa when put side-by-side with Theo Wrenn Browne. She had stopped by the bar to instruct Dick Scroggs as to the precise ration of vodka to vermouth in her martini. She supplied him with her own brand of vodka—some unpronounceable mouthful of consonants, “Wybrvka” or “Zrbrikov,” that she swore by, and that nobody stocked. She said it was buffalo grass vodka, and it did indeed have a long plume of stuff stuck in it. Trueblood claimed she made it in her bathtub and pulled up weeds from her back garden.

  Theo Wrenn Browne glanced at Windows, dismissed it as pretentious, and shoved it aside. If there was
anything Theo Wrenn Browne hated more than a writer’s commercial success, it was a writer’s literary prize. Owner of the Wrenn’s Nest bookshop, he was in constant danger of apoplexy, since he was surrounded on all sides by evidence of both—and in the case of writers such as Updike, Brookner, Byatt, Ishiguro, of both together. The dilemma was that he had to sell the stuff; it was his livelihood. Thus he could only solace himself with the fates of benighted writers who during their own lifetimes had found neither—the Melvilles, the Hart Cranes, the Chattertons. Theo had himself written one astonishingly bad book years before, called The Last Race, about guerrilla warfare at Doncaster (which made his disdain of Ellen Taylor as “experimental,” “avant garde,” “minimalist,” or anything else just a little hypocritical). He had tried to get Joanna the Mad to send this to her own editor and she had refused. With his own book unpublished, he had aligned himself with the unappreciated, maligned, betrayed, and even suicidal. Theo Wrenn Browne was a connoisseur of failure.

  Naturally, he despised Joanna Lewes. But although he had refused to carry her last several novels, he was now forced to bow to the pressure exerted by her local fans to stock “the new Lewes.” And having failed to expunge the blot of its success from his shop, he had turned to far easier game: Miss Ada Crisp, whose secondhand furniture shop was just one door away from the Wrenn’s Nest. Inspired by Lady Ardry’s legal battle with Jurvis, the butcher, he had hired a Sidbury solicitor. It was Theo’s notes, his documentation of the hazards Miss Crisp (and her Jack Russell dog) held for the village, that he now dropped into Melrose’s hands.

  Melrose dropped them back. “Are you kidding?”

  Theo Wrenn Browne was hardly pleased with this assessment of his case against Ada Crisp. “I don’t see why. Her shop is a danger to the community. All of that rubbish out on the pavements, and that rat terrier of hers grabbing at anything that moves!” He ran his finger round his high starched collar and sat there envying Trueblood’s expensively turned-out nonchalance.

  “Oh, come on, old sweat,” said Trueblood. “Ada’s shop’s been just that for forty years, and no one’s fallen into one of the chamber pots.”

  They were interrupted by the appearance of Vivian Rivington, wearing her rose wool and her woebegone look. She plunked down her sherry and herself and sighed and said she’d been packing. Vivian was always packing, either in England or in Italy. She’d been back now for just three months and was being kept here by the wiliness of Marshall Trueblood and the cunning of Melrose Plant and her own unconscious—or even conscious—inclination. They were certain she did not want to marry the odious Italian count, but after all of these years of engagement, they supposed she couldn’t think of an honorable way of ending it.

  “Vivian,” said Diane, her smile as dry as her martini, “you should know about all that drop-dead art, having spent so much time in Venice and Florence.”

  Melrose and Trueblood exchanged a glance. Diane would lose no opportunity to remind Vivian of the fiancé lurking in Venice, not having slipped and drowned as yet during acqua alta. Vivian was scheduled to return to Venice next month.

  “I don’t know what you mean. And I don’t spend all that much time—not that much,” said Vivian, as if the expenditure of time were somehow a reflection of the strength of the attachment.

  Diane hated it. She hated that Vivian would be a countess, and also lost no opportunity to decry it as an all-too-ordinary little title. “Aren’t counts rather thick on the ground in Italy?” she said ruminatively.

  Said Marshall Trueblood, “Thick under it, Vivian’s sort.”

  “Oh, shut up!” Vivian’s shell-like complexion turned the color of her rose wool frock.

  “Titles—how do they signify, anyway?” offered Agatha, making Melrose look up in astonishment.

  Getting no mileage out of his proposed suit against poor Ada Crisp, Theo Wrenn Browne went back to opining the total lack of merit of Ellen Taylor’s book, while Diane took to opining the lack of merit of Ellen Taylor’s face. That face was on the back of the dust jacket, and Diane was scrutinizing it as closely as if the cops had asked her to pick one out of a lineup.

  “She looks,” said Diane, “as if she’s just got squashed in a revolving door.”

  Melrose looked at the picture. Ellen’s face did have a bit of the Silly Putty look to it, true, together with the wide-open, astonished eyes. “Well, she doesn’t look like that. She’s quite pretty.”

  “She is; I remember,” said Trueblood.

  Diane tapped the little biographical paragraph. “She’s from Baltimore.” She paused a bit dramatically. “E. A. Poe and Johnny U.”

  Everyone turned to stare at her, which was what she wanted. She was as pleased over this coupling as ever she had been over herself and any of her lovers.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She raised a feathery black eyebrow. Diane was quite beautiful, with her perfect skin, marble white against the satiny black fall of her hair. But despite the inclinations of Nature, nothing seemed to have rushed in to fill the vacuum: Diane’s mind was hermetically sealed. That was why it was always mildly astonishing when she came up with some esoteric fact that no one else knew. That, of course, was the idea. She was a gatherer of esoteric facts. Trivial Pursuits had been invented for the likes of Diane Demorney. “I assume you’ve heard of Edgar Allan Poe.”

  “Oh, don’t be daft, Diane,” said Trueblood irritably. “We’re talking about Johnny whoever.”

  “Good lord.” She heaved a sigh and lifted her giant martini glass. “Johnny Unitas. You’ve never heard of the Baltimore Colts? God! I assumed everyone had heard of them.”

  “Melrose has been rattling on about going to Baltimore,” said Agatha.

  II

  The rattle had taken place at Ardry End accompanied by the dire rhythm of Lou Reed strong-arming his guitar. Melrose loved Lou Reed. Lou Reed (“the Maniac”) drove Agatha crazy, but, unfortunately, not away.

  At the time he got Ellen’s call, this eschewer of titles was sitting upon his hearth (metaphorically speaking) pawing over Debrett’s in search of one. She had been zipping through the pages with the speed of a centipede for the last hour, trying to track down her heritage. Spurious heritage, Melrose imagined. It had been pointed out to her in a letter from one of her Wisconsin relations that her paternal great-uncle (or great-great-) had been a certain Baron Fust—Fust being Agatha’s maiden name before she had married Melrose’s uncle. That entitlement might actually be something that ran in her veins (well, in the veins of the male descendants) and not something to be caught on the fly (“Lady” Ardry indeed!) had her slavering even more than did the jam-laden scone in her hand. Titles before tea, Melrose supposed.

  “Baron Fust! Imagine!”

  “Everyone will be a baron for fifteen minutes,” said Melrose.

  At that moment Ruthven brought in the telephone extension. “Long distance, sir, from America.”

  “Ellen!” Melrose straightened suddenly and came out of the somnolent state the presence of his aunt usually induced. “Where the hell are you? . . . Baltimore?”

  Agatha relaxed her ear a bit. Whoever Ellen was, she was far enough away to present no immediate problem.

  “Your book? Yes, yes, I did. Thank you.” Pained, Melrose’s eye strayed to the end table where Ellen’s book had been lying, unfinished. “I know it won that award, yes, I know. That’s wonder— . . . like it?” Since he hadn’t read all of it, his answer would be qualified a bit. “Naturally. Yes . . . Oh, quite, well, different.”

  The book in question was now in Agatha’s hands. Hand—in the other was a brandy snap. Ellen’s book had been stacked atop Polly Praed’s newest which she had sent to Melrose in the form of galleys. Perhaps he should become an editor?

  “Come to Baltimore?” Oh, Christ, why had he said it aloud? Agatha was staring over the top of the book. She had even stopped chewing. “I’ll see. . . . Well, yes, I know I said I would . . .”

  What Ellen told him next wa
s rather surprising, and he only barely missed echoing it when he saw Agatha’s eyes riveted on him. So he registered no emotion, no interest, just kept saying “umm” and “ohmm” like a mantra, as Ellen related her little tale.

  It was so difficult for him to make a trip, to bestir himself, to drag himself away from hearth and home and the Jack and Hammer. He sighed. He would like to see Ellen, though. “Policeman? . . . Are you talking about Richard Jury?” Pretending not to remember his name! “He’s going to be visiting me, as a matter of fact. . . . Yes, but, Ellen, Scotland Yard CID men cannot simply throw up everything and go racing off to the States.” Actually, Jury could drop anything he damn pleased, given he was on leave. “. . . In another day or two. Yes.” That was when Jury was supposed to come. He wanted to see Pratt in Northampton, for some reason.

  Agatha was all ears. She was even forgetting to eat her brandy snap. He really should have taken this call out of Agatha’s earshot—if there was such a place. Saddam Hussein’s bunker, perhaps. Melrose sipped his sherry, said, “I absolutely promise, Ellen. . . . Yes. I’ll call. . . . Yes. . . . No. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . No. . . . No. . . . Goodbye.”

  “I know that name—I’m sure of it. Ellen, Ellen. Haven’t I met this person?” Actually, she had. At Victoria Station when Vivian had been leaving that time for Italy.

  “No.”

  “You’re not considering going to the States, my dear Plant?”

  “No.” Yes, he was. Not only was he very fond of Ellen, but he knew she would have slashed her wrists before calling him if she hadn’t been in dire straits. He frowned. He had no doubt about the “dire,” but he wondered if the “straits” were what she’d said they were.

  “I should think not. However, if you do, let me know, of course, and I’ll go along, as I haven’t seen the Fusts in years and I would like to have a chat with them over Debrett’s. Now here’s a Life Baroness. ‘Dixie Bellows . . .’ ”