"It looks stupid."
"Don't fight kiddies."
It was Jury's voice behind them.
"Make him get his own coloring book," said Jury, who sat down beside Emily and immediately had her undivided attention. "What've you got there?" Jury slid Melrose's brightly lined paper across the table. "Influence of Jackson Pollock, I'd say."
Emily shoved her barnyard scene in his face. "Isn't this nice?"
"Very nice. I had a purple dog once."
Wonder glowed on Emily's face. "You did?"
"It wasn't born purple, of course. But one day in the alley it liked to ramble in, someone had set out some tins of paint. My dog was always into things and he got it all over him. There was some green in one can, and that overturned and splattered him. Just on the tips of some of the hairs."
"He sounds lovely. Did he die from it?"
"No. But I could never get it out."
"When he did die, was he still purple and green?"
"Yes. Faded, but still rather colorful."
She had picked up a green crayon and was putting spots all over the purple dog.
Melrose shoved the map from Katie O'Brien's book toward Jury, frustrated that the answer he'd been hoping for hadn't flashed into his mind, dazzling him with its brilliance, like sun on the wings of gulls . . . there he was, back with the ornithological metaphors.
Jury studied the map for a few seconds, his face blank. "Where'd you get this?"
Emily told him about Katie.
"In case anything happens? That's what she said?"
Emily nodded and started to gather up her crayons and book. "I've got to be to the fête at ten-thirty." It was clear that, once having delivered her secret to the Yard, she wanted no more to do with it.
But Jury had hold of her wrist. "Is that all she told you?" Emily nodded. "Didn't you think it very strange?" Again, Emily nodded, her brow creased as she looked at Melrose, as if it were all his fault. Jury went on: "She didn't mention anything about London or her music teacher? Or a game called Wizards?"
"Once she did, but not then.
"Once she did what?" asked Jury, patiently. But he was not letting go of her wrist.
"Wizards. She said it was a game she saw in London and it seemed ever so much fun."
"Didn't she tell you anything else? About the pub in London where she saw it?"
Emily shook her head hard. Her little look was now piteous, and as contrived, Jury thought, as the frown. "Please, I've got to go see to the horses."
Jury released his grip. "Okay. Thanks."
In the light of Jury's smile she now seemed somewhat ambivalent about leaving. There was some scuffling of feet before she finally made for the low lintel of the door, brushing by Peter Gere, who was stooping under it.
"What's all this ‘Wizards' business?" asked Melrose.
Jury put the map in front of him. "This is the sort of map they do for a game-hullo, Peter."
Peter sat down with a sigh. "Thought I saw you come in here. The Bodenheims are driving me daft over this fête. They seem to think I'm at fault just because the carousel broke down. How d'ya do?" he said, when Jury introduced him to Melrose Plant.
"Have a look at this, Peter." Jury put the diagram before him. Gere studied it for a moment, frowned, turned it this way and that, finally said, "What's this in aid of?"
"Katie O'Brien for one thing. And for another, maybe, that necklace stolen from Lord Kennington a year ago."
Peter stared at him, disbelieving. "How?"
"You said you'd seen Trevor Tree and Derek Bodenheim in here a few times playing a game called Wizards." Peter nodded. "Doesn't this make you think of one of those diagrams?"
"It could be, yes. Where'd you find it, then?"
"I didn't. Katie O'Brien did. Whether she found it in London or Littlebourne, I don't know. Tell him, Mr. Plant." Melrose gave Peter Gere an account of that morning's activities.
"Are you really suggesting Tree hid that emerald somewhere in the Horndean wood?"
"I don't know. But it's a bit too much of a coincidence-Katie O'Brien, Cora Binns, Trevor Tree, the Anodyne Necklace-"
"What's the Anodyne Necklace when it's at home?"
"Pub in the East End where Tree was a regular. A place where they play Wizards."
Gere tried to get his pipe going, sucking in his cheeks, finally tossing the matches on the table and dropping the pipe back in his pocket, bowl upwards. "I guess he could have done. It looks like somebody meant to draw the Horndean wood. There's the stream, and the church. . . . " He pointed. "But what always puzzled us was how he nicked that emerald in the first place. There wouldn't have been time to get out and secrete it anywhere. And it wasn't on him. I searched the bastard. That could be Spoke Rock, right there." Again he pointed to the map, to the Black Bear's Cave.
"There must have been someone, an accomplice, or at least someone who knew Tree had that emerald."
Peter Gere looked upset at Jury's implicating one of the villagers. "That's eyewash. Although Derek Bodenheim might just be low enough-"
"I don't think it's eyewash, Peter. Katie's in hospital and Cora Binns is dead."
EIGHTEEN
I
THE graveyard looked very gay. Balloons had loosened from their moorings in the field beyond to float and bob in the breeze across the old graves. A gentleman in a clerical collar, whom Melrose presumed to be the Reverend Finsbury, was standing with his hands behind his back looking pleased with himself. Sylvia Bodenheim, who had come along a while ago to argue with Emily about the horse, was now arguing with a young man, one of the workers with uprolled shirt-sleeves, about the setting up of the coconut shy.
The fête was scheduled to begin at noon, and Melrose saw off to his left that the fun-seekers were already paying their fifty-pence admittance fee to Sir Miles, who then herded them through the gate with full instructions as to how they were to disport themselves. His other aim was to make sure they did not stray from the public path and onto the adjoining grounds of Rookswood.
Melrose could not actually hear whatever exchanges he was having with those whose fun he sought to spoil even before they started having it; he merely deduced this from the elder Bodenheim's waving about of his walking stick. Still they paid up and were allowed to enter the grounds made more holy by virtue of his standing in them.
Already the spirited cries of what Melrose knew would be entirely too many children were reaching his ears, children who would soon be advancing upon the small plot Emily had staked out for horse and carriage, the side just at the edge of the Horndean wood. Melrose was here supplying unasked-for (and, she had made it crystal clear, undesired) aid to Emily Louise, who was readying horse and carriage for what Sylvia Bodenheim insisted on calling the "phaeton ride," although it was a closed carriage. Some few minutes had already been given over to haggling between Emily Louise and Sylvia over the loss of the ribbon from the mare's golden mane. Emily denied ever having such a ribbon. After Sylvia beat a retreat up the grass, Emily and Melrose continued their job of decorating the phaeton, Emily losing no opportunity to tell him he was getting all the bows and loops wrong. The carriage was an impressive, if funereal ebony, its high doors outlined in gilt and looped about with golden ribbon. All in all, it was quite a sight, fit for a royal wedding or funeral. The golden ribbon almost matched the elegant horse that had been entrusted into Emily's hands by the farmer whose pride and joy it was.
This had become another sore point. Emily had insisted the horse have its rest periods. She would ride the children round for no longer than twenty minutes at a time, and then horse and phaeton were to be parked here by this stand of ash on the edge of the wood where it could crop grass. All of that the Bodenheims insisted was nonsense: the phaeton ride was the most popular item every year at the fête and the biggest fund-raiser. To have it going only two-thirds of the time meant a loss to church funds.
To appeal to Emily Louise Perk's religious instincts was about as effective as requesting the dead to rise and have a go at the coconut shy. Naturally, she won the day. She always did, so far as Melrose could see. (He wondered how her mother stood her.) No rest, no ride, she had said stoutly. She had them by the throats, and she knew it, for the owner of the horse would allow no one to touch it but Emily Louise.
She had picked out this pleasant, shady spot for the horse and carriage and had managed to erect a sort of crude barricade of logs and boards on which she had hammered a sign: Nobody Beyond This Point. Melrose, having finished with his rococo decoration, turned away from her discourse-not one she was holding with him, but with the horse, some tedious longueur about barley and blowflies.
He looked off into the Horndean wood and thought about Ernestine Craigie and her field glasses. Ernestine knew every inch of that wood-every leaf, feather, marsh, pebble in the stream in which the body of Cora Binns had been lying, face down. He wondered about that stream: How far did it go and in what direction? The River of Blood? He frowned.
The trouble with the map, which Jury had taken off to London, was that it made no sense in terms of simple logistics: even in terms of fantastic and imaginary treasure maps there was some sort of sense in the relationship between details. Even the gnome, after all, had some sensible relationship to the princess . . .