The Anodyne Necklace(38)

Only White Ellie remained unmoved. She dropped her cigarette on the floor, stepped on it like a bug, and picked up the swordstick. "Ain't that quaint. Wish't I 'ad me one. You ready then? I'll just slip off me strides and we'll go t' the Necklace."

While he waited, Melrose inspected the wallpaper.

He decided he had lived too long with his aunt Agatha to quail before any malfunction of the universe. Given a millennia or two, he could sort out this little lot.

II

If Jury had kept a memory book, the first entry would be the sight of White Ellie on the arm of Melrose Plant, outlined in the murky light of the door of the Anodyne Necklace.

He had just hung up the telephone as they entered and then separated, White Ellie to join the benchsitters (and upsetting a pint as she squeezed between tables); Plant to join Jury at the bar.

"Buy you a drink, Superintendent?" He nodded toward the phone. "I take it you've heard about Ramona Wey."

Jury nodded. "That was Wiggins. They called the hospital. What in hell happened?"

Melrose told Jury about the circuit around the fête grounds. "She didn't seem to be the most popular woman in town, from what I could observe." Plant put a note on the bar and beckoned to Harry Biggins. "I've been wondering about the connection. If Ramona Wey sold Lord Kennington that jewelry-is it possible she might have recognized a ring Cora Binns was wearing? Assuming she'd seen her, of course, in Littlebourne." Harry Biggins came down the bar and Melrose directed that Mrs. Cripps was to be kept happy with whatever kept her happy for the remainder of the evening. He was a bit surprised that the publican took in his stride Melrose's request for a bottle of Old Peculier and moved off to get it.

"That mention of Ramona Wey and Cora Binns reminds me of something. While you buy me a pint of mild and bitter, I'm going to use the telephone again."

"All right. But while you're making your call, I'd like to have a try at the game. Is that the table, over there?"

Jury smiled. "It's a very complicated game, Mr. Plant. The fat one is called Dr. Chamberlen. That's what he calls himself. He's Wizard-Master and he calls the shots. Or, to be more literal, throws the dice. I don't think you're going to get much out of him, or any of them, for that matter."

"We'll see. May I borrow your copy of Emily's map, Superintendent?"

"Be my guest."

Melrose ordered Jury's pint and then gathered up his gloves, his stick, and his glass of Old Peculier.



These he deposited on the large, round table. All of them looked up at him with, he was sure, feigned surprise, as if they had not been keeping track of his every movement.

All of them except for Dr. Chamberlen, who was either too smart or too vain to bother with this pretense.

"Which of you gentlemen is Wizard-Master?" asked Melrose.

Dr. Chamberlen held up a plump, pink forefinger, and said, with a certain amount of irony, "And I have the honor of addressing who, sir?" The glance that grazed Melrose's cashmere coat made it clear that the honor was questionable in the Anodyne Necklace.

From his inside coat pocket Melrose took a visiting-card case which he kept for emergencies. On the table he dropped his card.

Dr. Chamberlen stuck his pince-nez on his nose, leaned over and read it, and then sat back, having difficulty in effecting the same indifferent manner.

The rest of them were not at all indifferent. "A bleedin' earl? In the Necklace?" said Ash Cripps. "And where'd you meet up with Elephant?"

It took Melrose a moment or two to realize he was talking about Mrs. Cripps. "At your house. She was kind enough to direct me here."

"And Superintendent Jury," said Dr. Chamberlen, "appears to be a friend of yours."

"True. But I'm not the police masquerading as the peerage, if that's what you think."

Chamberlen picked up a single die, shook it in his hand. "What's your concern with us?"

"Wizards," said Plant, smiling. As they all looked at one another, Melrose poked his stick among the scattered pages of graph paper. "I'm a thirteenth-degree Wizard-Master myself."

The rest of them all turned to Chamberlen, who looked rather unhappy. "Cor!" said Keith. "They only go up to fifteen, Doc."

Melrose was glad he hadn't succumbed to the temptation to say twentieth.

"That's very interesting," said Chamberlen, who was now concentrating-or pretending to-on a plate of jellied eel set before him by Biggins. He tucked his napkin in his collar. "But I repeat: what's it to do with us?"

"I'm interested in this." Melrose put the map on the table.

"You mean the same map Superintendent Jury is interested in?" Chamberlen squeezed a triangle of lemon over the dish of eel and peppered it. "It's of no interest to me."

From his wallet Melrose took some notes and spread them on the table. "Five hundred pounds. Will that get me in the game?"

Except for Chamberlen's, whose own mouth was busy with eel, all of the others' fell open.

There was a moment's reflection, a quick look at the money, and then Chamberlen said, "We don't play for money."

A man of principle, thought Melrose, knowing how fragile were such principles. "We don't play for anything else. What I propose is that if you can work out what this map means before I do, you keep the five hundred. All of you, of course."

"That's not much of a bargain for you, is it? I'm afraid you have caught us at a moment of financial embarrassment. We none of us can cover five hundred pounds."

Melrose shrugged. "That makes no odds. If I win, you'll count me in on the game whenever I'm in town." To keep Melrose out of the game would be more attractive to Chamberlen than the money, he imagined.

"I'm not sure I understand: if you're a friend of the Superintendent, why didn't he come to you in the first place?"

"Oh, he did." Melrose picked up the map. "I don't know what it means."

That obviously made Dr. Chamberlen happy. "I would have to make one stipulation."

"Go ahead."

"This place"-Chamberlen stubbed his finger at the map-"is probably imaginary. And you can't expect me to read Trevor Tree's mind. Therefore, I think we would have to let the wager stand on breaking the key."

What the hell was the key? wondered Melrose. "Very well, I accept."



For the next fifteen minutes, Melrose, seated with his piece of graph paper and his pencil, and not knowing what to do with either, was subjected to the most inane or bizarre or mysterious conversation he had ever heard. Occasionally, he doodled something on his paper, since he noted the others were all going at theirs hammer and tongs. Money on the table had attracted most of the customers in the Anodyne Necklace.

" . . . pick up twelve pieces of gold from Black Bear's Cave."

At this point Jury had come to stand behind him. Melrose looked at the message he had written: Ramona Wey worked at S.G.S.S.
 
 

 

When Keith and Nollie found themselves stuck in the Black Bear's cave, Chamberlen put down his pencil and looked across at Plant. "You surely must see it by now." His perky little smile told Melrose that Chamberlen had won, or thought he had. When Melrose said nothing, he went on, pleased with himself. "The key: the repetition-usually names, places, numbers. You're a thirteenth-degree Master. I surely don't have to tell you that elementary rule. The key here is obviously colors."

"Perhaps you'd like to explain that," said Melrose, laying his stick across the five notes toward which a hand was moving.

Dr. Chamberlen folded his hands on his stomach. "The River of Blood would obviously be red. Hardly a startling deduction. The Black Bear is rather clearly named, as are the Yellow Brick Road and the Blue Grotto. The footpath I'm uncertain about-brown, perhaps? The moat would be green or blue, probably water-green."

"What about the King's Road?"

"Surely, purple." Chamberlen shrugged, looking from Plant to Jury. "Really, gentlemen, if I knew more I'd tell you. But that's the key. I'm quite sure of it."

Melrose removed his silver-knobbed stick from the bills which Chamberlen collected and, with surprising generosity, divided among the players.



Catchcoach Street was not often enough visited by peers and police superintendents that the patrons of the Anodyne Necklace cold allow them to leave so easily. Especially after Melrose Plant had stood drinks all around. It was difficult to watch such a benefactor go, and for White Ellie, who had been more than the rest at the receiving end of such largesse, it was to be met with an equal show of hospitality. " 'Ere now, 'ow's about you two comin' back to the 'ouse for a nice fry-up?"

III

They stood beneath the sign of the Anodyne Necklace looking down Catchcoach Street. In the blue evening light, the lamps had come on and the narrow houses cast tall shadows across the pavements. A band of children up the street were playing some rough game.

"Colors," said Melrose Plant, lighting a small cigar. "What in the hell does that mean? If we only had Emily and her crayons. . . . Anyway. Was your telephone call fruitful?"

"Yes. What I remembered was, Ramona Wey had been described to me by Sylvia Bodenheim as a ‘jumped-up little secretary from London.' Granted, there are plenty of little secretaries in London, But it would appear that only a few of them work, or worked, for the Smart Girls Secretarial Service in King's Cross. According to its manager, Ramona Wey was one of them, until she left over a year ago when an old auntie died and Ramona was able to chuck the typewriter."