Read Online The Horse You Came in On by Martha Grimes - Free Book Online Page B

“If you’re going to Baltimore, Melrose, you’d better read up on baseball and football. The 1969 game between the Jets and the Colts, for instance.” She directed her seductive curl of a smile towards Melrose as she drew the vodka-pickled olive from her glass. It was her own thin-stemmed, broad-brimmed glass, and she had brought it to use in the pub. Melrose calculated the circumference of its bowl; frozen over, it would have accommodated the skaters at Rockefeller Center. That brought America back to mind, and he looked again at the picture of Ellen on the back of the dust jacket. He smiled. That affrighted look, as if the photographer had been holding a gun on her instead of a camera, made him want to laugh.
    â€œVictoria!” Agatha banged her fist on the table, jumping her glass ofsherry. “That’s where I saw her!” Agatha’s eyes were riveted on the picture. “You saw her, too, Vivian.”
    â€œSaw who?”
    â€œThis Taylor woman. Strange-looking person. When we were at Victoria Station seeing you off. You remember.”
    Vivian looked as if she’d prefer not to. “No.” Vivian did not want to travel backward in time to Victoria any more than she wanted to travel forward in time to Venice.
    Diane was clearly annoyed that the spotlight, something she was sure God had given into her own white hands for safekeeping, was capriciously moving around the table. She snatched it back with her next obscure reference:
    â€œNickel City.”
    They all looked at her again.
    â€œWell, that’s what they used to call Baltimore. Nickel City.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œThey made nickels there.” She went on: “The Colts and the Jets . . . Joe Namath. One of the most famous games ever played—Supper Bowl III.”
IV
    â€œÂ â€˜Supper Bowl.’ Do you believe that?” said Melrose Plant to Marshall Trueblood after the others had finally cleared out of the Jack and Hammer and he was able to retrieve the notebook.
    â€œAnyone who’d call Kuwait ‘Kumquat’ can make me believe that, yes. Now, I’ll dictate, you write.”
    â€œ I’ll dictate, you write. I wrote earlier.”
    Trueblood sounded exasperated. “I was right in the middle of a thought, old sweat, when everybody trooped in.”
    â€œYour thoughts have no middles. Beginnings, endings, no middles.” Melrose uncapped his pen and smoothed down the page.
    â€œNow: she’d been put in the crypt. The crypt . . . hmm.”
    â€œÂ â€˜Dank vault,’ ” quoted Melrose.
    Trueblood pursed his lips, said, “ ‘ The poor monk, Franciscus, standing at the opening of the dank vault with his stick and bowl —’ ”
    â€œWho’s Franciscus?”
    â€œThe monk .”
    â€œThere was never any monk.” Melrose was thumbing back through the pages to see if he’d missed the monk.
    â€œHe’s new. Believe me, the monk is necessary for the poor girl’s spiritual comfort.”
    â€œWhat the hell for? She’s dead, isn’t she?”
    â€œJust write, will you?”
    Melrose shrugged. “Okay.”
    Trueblood repeated: “ ‘ Franciscus, standing there with his bowl and stick’ —no, ‘his stick and bowl.’ That’s rather poetic— ‘standing there with his stick and bowl ’ ”
    Melrose mouthed the words slowly: “Standing—there—with—his—stick—and—sup-per—bowl—”
    â€œNot ‘ supper bowl,’ damn it!”
V
    When Richard Jury, directed to the Jack and Hammer by Ruthven, was passing the pub’s casement window, he saw Ruthven’s master, head bent over a book or a notebook, seated just inside the window tête-à-tête with Marshall Trueblood. They were sitting, backs to the window, at the table that looked out over the High Street. Trueblood’s