The Old Wine Shades by Martha Grimes

marked a stage in his own increase of years.
    ‘He’s not getting any older, either. He was probably an eighty year-old teenager.’ Melrose opened the carte du vin. ‘The wine, the wine, the wine... Now what goes with portabello mushrooms?’ He ran his eye down the list. ‘How about a nice little Merlot?’
    ‘How about a nice big Merlot? Or maybe a Montrachet ‘66. All of the other ‘66s are over the hill. Undrinkable. But what I’d really like is a Bordeaux, say a Chateau Petrus? It’s pretty pricey, but you can afford it.’
    Melrose shut his eyes. ‘Now, we’ve become a wine enthusiast?’
    ‘I don’t know about you, but I have. The bottle shouldn’t be much over a couple hundred pounds.’
    ‘Really? Well, let’s have a case if that’s all!’
    ‘Okay.’
    Melrose sought out one of the waiters, his eyes connecting with those of the (really) young ginger-haired one who came over snappily. Melrose gave him the wine order–the nice little Merlot–and the waiter sailed off.
    This done, Melrose rested the wine list against the marble column by which the table sat. The columns were fixed at strategic places around the room, which was a handsome one, with its dark wood and vaulted ceiling and snow-white tablecloths. ‘Okay,’ he said again. ‘You have a story to tell me, you said.’
    Jury thought for a moment, but not about Harry Johnson.
    ‘Maybe that’s what we live for, why we go on.’
    Melrose gave him a look. ‘You never got over the Henry James contest, did you? ‘Why we go on,’ indeed. Are you saying we live for stories?’
    ‘Children do, don’t they? Isn’t that their favorite thing?’
    ‘After beating each other up and tying firecrackers to their dogs’ tails, yes, I imagine they like to relax over a good story. I expect you’re making a point, but I don’t know what it is.’
    ‘I’m not sure I do, either. The Henry James competition, remember: ‘Man walked into a pub,’ et cetera,’ Jury said.
    ‘Ah. The master himself would put it perhaps as ‘After a grave exchange with his interlocutor, Lord Joyner made his way to his dear old Pot and Pickle,’ blah blah blah.’
    ‘Off the top of your head, damned good James.’
    ‘It’s not easy being Henry James.’
    ‘No. Well, that’s the point about this story. It begins in just that way. A man walked into a pub and told me this story.’
    ‘You’re kidding.’
    ‘That’s exactly what I said to him. Told him he was winding me up. Anyway, the pub’s in the City. It’s called the Old Wine Shades.
    I was there, sitting at the bar, glooming away, nothing special–’
    ‘Special what?’
    ‘For a gloom.’
    ‘Ah. Go on.’
    ‘A man walked in, clearly well off, clothes like yours–’
    ‘This rag of a jacket?’ Melrose pulled the collar down for a better look.
    ‘–and sat down beside me. Somehow that sounds ominous.’
    ‘Yes, like Little Miss Muffet. Go on.’
    ‘He told me this story.’ Here Jury related the story to Melrose in great detail. Gödel. Niels Bohr. Wave function. It took him through the salad, the portobello mushroom, the pudding and now through brandy and coffee. ‘His name is Harry Johnson, did I mention that?’
    ‘Yes. That’s the strangest story I’ve ever heard,’ said Melrose, as he returned to the lighting of a cigar. ‘Not only because of the initial situation, but because it’s a story within a story within a story.’
    Jury frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘It’s four stories. Didn’t you notice?’ Melrose shoved his cup and glass aside and leaned toward Jury. ‘One’–he folded down his index finger–’is Johnson himself; he’s the frame of the story.
    Two’–the second finger bent inward–’is the story of the disappearance of the Gault woman’–third finger ticked this off–’three is Ben Torres’s story, and four’–fourth finger down–’is the story his mother told him.’
    Jury reflected. ‘I guess you’re right.’
    ‘And in a way,