Keeler! Was he in town? Was it possible that club was open on Christmas Day? Melrose motioned Higgins to come over, which the old porter did, if slowly. “Higgins, would you please get a number for a club called the Nine-One-Nine, ring it and see if it’s open and ask if a Mr. Keeler is doing his gig there? Thanks.”
Young Higgins frowned. “Gig, sir?”
“Ah… never mind, Higgins, just ask if the club is open tonight.”
The old porter shuffled off, leaving Melrose to drum his fingers on the arm of his chair. Young Higgins was back in record time telling Melrose that yes, the club was open.
“Get me a cab, now!”
The Nine-One-Nine was a place he’d never have found unless he’d known exactly where it was, a half dozen steps down and bearing no identification except for its street number. He had been here years before, after that rock concert and just before seeing Vivian off on the Orient Express.
There was an air of smoke and languor about the club that put Melrose in mind of those 1930s prewar Berlin clubs that exist only in films and imagination. He stood at the bar and ordered another whiskey (his fourth tonight? fifth?). As he glanced at the other patrons, he thought he detected a few approving glances from the women and put this down to his black clothes. He was still wearing them.
When the group (what was its name?) broke, Melrose immediately pushed his way up to the small stage area and cut in front of the two girls hanging on Stan’s leather jacket and every word. “Mr. Keeler? You don’t remember me, but-”
“Hey! Your earlship, sure I remember. What’s up?”
“I’ve got to find Richard Jury and don’t even know his address and as you live in the same house-”
“Haven’t seen him today, but I know he was having Christms dinner with Carole-anne and Mrs. Wasserman.”
(Wasserman, of course!)
“What’s going on? Is something wrong?… Later,” he said to a girl with a helmet of slick black hair who was trying to engage his attention.
“I can’t get him on the phone.”
“That’s probably from Carole-anne messing with that answering machine. You got a car? I’d drive you, man, except I’m locked in here for another couple hours.” Stan was writing the address on a paper napkin. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
“Listen, come back and let me know if anything’s wrong. Please.” Stan looked worried.
For an icon, thought Melrose, he was way cool. Melrose sketched a salute and left.
Outside, Jury had stopped on his way to his car to thank Mrs. Wasserman again for the dinner, when he heard the phone ring, thought it was his again, but knew it would stop before he could get up there to answer. Let the answering machine do what it’s paid for, for once.
“I’ll come back for that in a while,” he said to Mrs. Wasserman, with a nod at the dessert.
She was holding a green glass plate on which was a portion of pudding. “I’ll keep it for you and when you come back-” Suddenly, she stopped, as if the words had stuck in her throat.
“Mrs. Wasserman?” Jury put his hands on her shoulders. “Mrs. Wasserman?” He tilted his head, trying to see her face. It was bent over the plate of pudding. Then she raised her face and her look was so sorrowful, Jury was alarmed. “What is it?”
“Nothing, nothing. It was just for a moment I had this-”
“Yes?” Jury’s tone was encouraging. When she didn’t go on, he said, “You look so awfully worried.”
“It was-” She shook her head. “Where are you going?”
Jury was so surprised by her questioning him he took a step back. Mrs. Wasserman never asked questions that might be construed as prying. So scrupulous was she and with so strong a sense of privacy that a question like this one would be considered an invasion of it.
He said, “Just to meet someone. The case we’re working on.”
She kept looking at him, hard, when upstairs a window flew up and Carole-anne leaned out of it. It was Jury’s window, not Carole-anne’s. “Super! There’s a message on your machine!” She seemed proud that the machine was functioning.
“Who?” The light in the flat behind her flooded her hair and made her dress glisten. What a sight.
“Well, I don’t know, do I? He never said his name. What I think was he got cut off in the middle of talking. It was a peculiar message anyway.”
Jury was looking up, waiting. Carole-anne seemed to be thinking, if one could judge thought from down here on the pavement. “What did he say?”
“It was something like, you could only trust your greengrocer. No, don’t trust your greengrocer. Something like that.”
Knowing Carole-anne’s penchant for messing up messages, Jury bet it was “something like that.” For a weird moment all he could think of was Mr. Steptoe. Jury told Mrs. Wasserman he was going back to his flat and for her not to worry. “It’s too cold for being out here without a coat. Go back inside and I’ll see you later.” He knew he sounded impossibly condescending, which he hated.
Shimmering, silver-dust fingernails on shimmering turquoise hip, Carole-anne punched the replay button. Melrose Plant’s voice, sounding surprisingly untaped, said, “Don’t trust your grocer, like Masaccio, and don’t-” End of message.
“He got cut off,” said Carole-anne, reproachfully. “It’s something wrong with the machine.”
Jury found the number for Ardry End and dialed. Carole-anne was looking so troubled, he winked at her, then said, “Ruthven, this is Richard Jury. Is Mr. Plant there?”
“No, sir. But he wanted me to give you a message-”
(Jury hoped it wasn’t the one about the grocer.)
“-that he’d be at his club and for you to ring him there. And you weren’t to talk to anyone until you’d talked to him. He was most emphatic on that point, sir.”
Jury frowned. “But-what’s he doing at Boring’s? I thought he drove back to Northamptonshire this morning.”
“He did, sir. But this afternoon he turned right around and returned to London. I should say that he did so in an enormous hurry and in a highly agitated state.”
Jury smiled fractionally. He wondered if he’d ever seen Melrose Plant in a “highly agitated state.” He rang off and saw that Carole-anne was herself looking agitated and put his arm around her shoulders. Then he thumbed his small telephone index and came up with Boring’s number. Carole-anne seemed to be settling in, head against his chest. Everyone was acting queerly tonight, including, he supposed, himself. When the porter answered (not Young Higgins, but the ginger-haired lad) Jury asked for Mr. Plant. After some asking around had been done, the young porter returned and said that Mr. Plant had just left.
“Not more’n five minutes ago, sir. Is there a message?”
The night seemed made of nothing but messages. “Just tell him Superintendent Jury called, will you?”
His arm still around Carole-anne, he frowned, wondering what was going on. Obviously, Plant knew something, or had come up with something, but… Masaccio’s grocer? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“Super?”
“Huh?”
“What’s going on? And where are you off to?”
He looked down at her. “Just to meet someone. Another copper.”
“But it’s Christmas.”
“Yep. And we haven’t had our Christmas kiss.”
Intake of breath on her part. “What Christmas-?”
“This one.” He kissed her.
The kiss was not terribly long, or terribly hard. There have been longer, harder kisses in this world, but it was longer, perhaps, and harder than need be.