Jerusalem Inn (4 page)

“Helen Minton,” said Father Rourke unhappily, when Jury told him why he'd come. “Yes, I heard. News travels fast in a village. Come in, come in.” He led the way to his door.

The cottage was comfortable enough, if somewhat overstuffed. After the priest went in search of the housekeeper to get them some tea, Jury sat down in a lumpy chair whose cretonned roses had faded into its dull background. On the table beside him lay a stack of journals. He picked one up:
Semiotique et Bible.
He looked inside, felt intimidated, returned it to its place.

Father Rourke had returned as Jury put it down and said, “You're interested in the structuralists, Superintendent?”

Jury smiled. “I don't even know what they are.”

“Aye. Well, it's just another way of interpreting the Gospels. They're more concerned about the way in which the mind finds meaning there than in calling them ‘true.' If you know what I mean.”

Jury smiled. “Haven't a clue. What does it mean, exactly?”

The priest pursed his lips in a smile. “Perhaps that nothing means much, ‘exactly.' ” He pointed to the journal Jury had leafed through. “Semiology is more or less the study of signs.” He searched through some pamphlets, causing a small landslide of papers, found a pen, and proceeded to draw on the back of one of his journals. He held up his drawing, nothing more than a square, with crossbars like a large
X
joining the corners. “The semiotic square. We live by contraries, don't we? Life, death. Thought, nonthought. We
think
by contraries.”
To each corner he added a letter, the same letter — M. “I'd say you, of all people, might be able to appreciate the notion.” Again, that small purse of a smile, that cut-glass gaze. “One might finally arrive at some paradigmatic model which would be universal enough to take in all possibilities.” Father Rourke tore off the back cover of the periodical, handed it to Jury. “A structure that might simplify thought.”

Jury laughed, folded the thick paper in quarters, and put it in his back pocket. “Father Rourke, you're doing anything but simplifying
my
thoughts. And what's the
M
stand for?”

The priest looked amused. “Really, Superintendent.
Mystery,
of course. Fill it in. It's but an interpretation of signs.” He shrugged. Simple.

“This is the way of interpreting the Gospels you favor, then?”

The priest folded his hands over his stomach and seemed to search the room for approaches. “No, for me, it's the psychological. Dreams, visions — are not they like miracles and parables? And so much that is Freudian. One only has to read some of the chapters of Paul's Letter to the Romans. And the Prodigal Son, now isn't that ever a working out of the Oedipal myth? If one studies the text, notices the omissions, the slips, the gaps —” His old eyes sparkled like Waterford glass as he smiled at Jury. “ — a policeman should appreciate that. You're used to it — the little discordancies in suspects' statements, that sort of thing. Why if I hadn't been a priest a tall, I'd have been a cop, now wouldn't I? Not a very good one; you've been letting me ramble and I'm sure you didn't come for a lecture on biblical methodology. You want to know about Helen Minton.”

“Yes.”

The tea had been brought in by a dour housekeeper who now stood frowningly with her hands folded beneath her big white apron, perhaps to see if the scones (small flat ones like
pancakes) met with the Father's approval. Jury guessed he was used to this ubiquitous watching at the porch, for he merely thanked her and waved her away, and she too slunk off like the mangy cat.

“Helen Minton,” he said again. The priest put jam on a scone. The wash-blue eyes were still shrewd as they looked at Jury. “It was her heart, I heard. You don't think so.”

“No, I don't think so.” He looked at the pale violet pattern, nearly faded away, inside his teacup. Like the priest's eyes and the violets, the whole room bore signs of fading — the flowered cretonne, the curtains with their sprays of brown ferns which did not match the slipcovers — the room a busy, untended garden going to seed. And outside, Jury had seen the moss that clung to the stones of the cottage creeping up the sides and mixing with the ivy, unrestrained. Something seemed, like the cat, to creep and hover and wait. It reminded him of the headstones that Helen had been so intently examining when he first saw her.

He told Father Rourke how he had met her (but not that it had been only yesterday, feeling that might disqualify him as “friend”).

“Why would she do that, Father? She said she was interested in the Washington family.”

“Well, I doubt that, you know.” The priest buttered another scone and munched it thoughtfully. “She said that to me, too. But I didn't believe it.”

“Why?”

He sat back and scanned the inner air as he had the outer. He did not answer the question directly. “She never came to the services, you know, though she came often to the church. That old cat out there . . . Now, it'll not have much to do with me, the way it slinks away like a snake. Yet it followed Helen everywhere. You can tell a lot that way. But who am I talking to someone like you about people? You know more than I ever will.”

Jury smiled. “I doubt that. Then what was she looking for?”

“It's records, you see, those headstones. And she asked to see the parish register. She was looking for someone but probably it hadn't anything to do with the antecedents of George Washington.” Father Rourke folded the last bit of jammed scone into his mouth. “Would you be caring to have a look round the churchyard? Perhaps there might be something —”

“I think I would, yes.”

 • • • 

He was sure it would be fruitless, one of those tasks that the policeman in Jury felt addicted to performing. Still, he went back to the small headstone with the weathered angels with the crumbling wings. “She wrote this down, Father. I noticed she had a small notebook.”

In his clumsy boots — the snow was thick here — the priest knelt down and wiped his glasses. “ ‘Lyte. Robert.' It's near worn away, the dates.” He stood up. “I do remember, somewhere in the whole Washington chain, there were some Lytes.” He shrugged. “Well, perhaps she was doing just what she said.”

“Was she Catholic?”

“No. Not anything, she said.” He sighed and looked up at the darkening sky. “Be dead dark in a bit. More snow coming, they say. 'Twas even worse near Durham, and that's but a few miles or so away.”

“She never mentioned a cousin?”

The priest shook his head. “No one, no. But I didn't know her, you see. I wonder if anyone did. She'd only been here a short while. Well, I hope you find what you're looking for, Superintendent.” He paused and held out his hand. “Might I have my drawing back for just a moment?”

“Sure.” Jury reached in his pocket, handed it over.

Father Rourke took out a stubby pencil, did some erasing,
and then made a brief mark on the page. He handed it back. “An
H,
Mr. Jury. At one corner. Now all you need to do is fill in the other three. Think of the mystery in its simplest terms.”

Jury looked up at the spire of St. Timothy's. He didn't want to comment on mystery. He said, “I wish we had you on the force, Father.”

The priest's faded eyes clouded over as he too looked at the spire. “I wish He did too. Good-bye, Mr. Jury.”

Father Rourke walked away.

As Jury started toward the gate, the last of the sun sent a dazzling stripe across the snow, elongating his shadow. Two shadows. Jury looked back to find that the white cat was following him.

He was glad Father Rourke hadn't turned to look back.

“He's an artist, a very good one.”

Those had been Helen Minton's words about her cousin. A constable positioned outside told him the lab crew had come and gone.

 • • • 

Without removing his coat, Jury started going through drawers, searching for anything — the small, gold notebook, letters, anything. But there was nothing in the desk except for a few bills and a checkbook, some scattered pictures, some writing paper. One of the snaps looked fairly recent — at least good enough to use for identification — and he pocketed it.

He went through the cottage that way, finding that she was a neat person, without being oppressively tidy. A sweater slung over a chair; a few dishes unshelved . . .

Jury went back into the sitting room. Under the staircase
was a storage space with a little door. He opened it. In the dim light from the parlor lamp, he saw among the Wellingtons, gardening tools and old paint cans, a portrait. He took it out, sat down, and studied it.

It was of a much younger Helen Minton. In it, she was sitting on a trunk beneath the eaves of an attic, staring out of a tiny window through which the sunlight flooded, illuminating only the figure, keeping the rest of the room in shadows. It was a beautiful painting. Jury took it over to the fireplace, positioned it in front of the one of Washington Old Hall. The borders of Helen's portrait exactly fit the empty square.

At first he thought there was no signature, but then he saw it in the corner, buried in the shadows along the attic floor, and faded as the name on any tombstone. The name had been dashed on like an afterthought, and was little more than a straight line. The first letter might have been a
P.

He looked at the abstract painting on the other wall and found the same signature, also unreadable.

Jury took the slip of paper from his pocket on which he'd written down the information from the tube of pills that had sat on Cullen's desk. The chemist was in Sloane Square. Presumably the doctor was somewhere near there, too. He wished they'd put doctors' names on bottles; it would make things easier. But Cullen would have all of that information soon enough, either from the estate agent who'd rented her the house or the chemist in Sloane Square.

Jury looked again at the portrait, at the
P
in the corner.

It made him think of Father Rourke's paradigmatic square.

The tiny village library was located between the two pubs, the Cross Keys on the corner, and the Washington Arms. The wind had finally died down and the snow had stopped.

Overcome suddenly by a sense of lethargy, Jury had sat down on a bench supplied for bus passengers and was looking across the Green. He lit a fresh cigarette from the coal of the old one. He would have to take a real vacation in the summer; he hadn't had one in years. Visit his friend Melrose Plant at Ardry End, maybe. He wondered if Plant fished. They could go up to Scotland, maybe do some fishing. He studied the coal of his cigarette.
You don't know how to fish, you clot-heed,
as Trimm would tell him. Jury got his exercise flatfooting it all over London, and his fun dropping by the occasional pub with the occasional woman. The pubs he visited with greater frequency, the women with less. Those casual affairs that everyone else had, where nobody's heart ever broke, seemed to have eluded him. He was always picking up pieces. So he had better not dwell on that subject, or he'd be stopping here all day.

He dropped his cigarette in the snow and tramped across the Green to the library.

 • • • 

It was the sort of room that made you want to stand around in it and read for the rest of your life — stand, because the library was too small for strategically placed chairs and tables. All of the living space was taken up by the shelves of books, the books on trolleys, the books tilting in stacks on the floor. There were browsers aplenty, old people and schoolchildren, and none (one suspected) strangers. As Jury approached the half-circle of desk directly inside the front door, two very small children whose chins barely reached the counter were settling their books there. They crossed their arms over them as if someone might snatch them. The little girl was giving Jury an appraising look. He winked. She hid a smile by ducking her head below the edge of the counter.

When one of the librarians turned to him, he said, “I wondered if I could see Miss Pond.” He handed her his card,
startling her into upsetting a little pile of book tokens before she answered.

“She's reshelving some books. I'll get her.” She made a quick escape, letting the hinged countertop drop behind her.

Presumably it was Nellie Pond with whom she returned. She was very pretty. She had incandescent red hair, a bright sheet of it around her shoulders. Her skin was pale and so clear he almost expected to see his reflection there.

Jury introduced himself. “I'd like to talk with you, if you have a moment. As a matter of fact, if you have several moments, I'd like to take you for a drink. The pubs are just opening.”

After she had retired behind the counter, he noticed there were one or two surreptitious glances in a cracked mirror under it. Jury had that effect on women — they went quickly for combs and lipstick. Nellie Pond wore only a dab of pink, which didn't go with the flaming hair she couldn't keep her hand from smoothing. “Well, I . . . well, that'd be nice. I was about to leave, anyway.” From a peg she plucked an old, brown coat and he helped her on with it.

 • • • 

“It's about Helen Minton. The Northumbria police were asking you, I believe.” He put down a half-pint of lager and lime for Nell and a pint of McGowan's for himself. The sandwiches looked a bit dry around the edges, but she devoured hers almost immediately.

“Aye. Poor Helen. Canny lass, she was.”

They were sitting by a small hearth in which a fire blazed, which enhanced the general air of conflagration about Nellie Pond's person. Her hair absorbed the firelight, and it sparked her amber eyes. The flames cast shadows and lights upon her high-cheekboned face.

“Did she ever talk about anyone round here? Or anyone at all, for that matter. She seems to have been something of a loner.”