The Old Wine Shades by Martha Grimes Page B

dog came back.’ Jury smiled.
    ‘‘The dog came back.’ Crazy. The dog was brought back, don’t you imagine?’
    ‘Yes, probably. But I like to think of Mungo’s making this arduous journey back to London.’
    ‘Sentimentalist. But if the story is really a lot of codswallop, then why drag the dog into it? That the dog was with them and managed to get back from wherever they were is pretty fantastic.’
    ‘The whole damned thing’s fantastic.’
    ‘Maybe your first instinct was right and he’s just winding you up. But why?’
    Jury shrugged. ‘Because he could?’
    Melrose gave a short burst of laughter. ‘Yes, there’s always that.
    Because he could.’’

13
    It would hardly be called lively, but there were a few more customers in the Old Wine Shades the following night. Jury supposed lunchtime was when the pub did most of its business. The City was not a residential area, but a region of office blocks, financial institutions, the Corn Exchange, Leadenhall Market, Monument and St. Paul’s. Although there were a few private residences, the heart of the City beat in time to the making of money.
    Jury posted himself in the same chair at the bar and ordered a glass of Beaujolais (paying no attention to year or provenance, whieh earned him no points with Trevor). He hoped that long talk the night before with Plant hadn’t tainted his ability to listen to the rest of the story–the third installment–without prejudice.
    Did Harry Johnson know who Jury was? Had he read about the CID cock-up in the papers? It was interesting to speculate. And while Jury was speculating, Harry walked in with Mungo on the lead. Mungo was a dog who seemed to like routine; he sat looking up at Jury until Jury reached down and rubbed his head. Then the dog settled under his chair.
    ‘I’m beginning to feel,’ said Harry Johnson, as he tapped a cigarette on his silver ease, ‘a sense of déja vu–a kind of traneelike state. Are you?’
    Jury smiled. ‘How many people have you told this story to?’
    ‘No one.’ Harry’s lighter clicked open, spurted flame, shut. He examined Jury-
    (Or so it felt to Jury.)
    –through a brief scrim of smoke rising upward from his cigarette. ‘You’re wondering why I’m telling you this, right?’
    ‘I am, yes, seeing that I’m a perfect stranger.’
    ‘I suppose I wanted to tell someone who didn’t know the people involved. You’d get a clearer picture, maybe.’
    ‘I don’t know why you’d think that.’
    Harry Johnson smiled
    ‘You still think I’m winding you up?’ He ordered a glass of Pinot Gris Grand Cru (‘89, if you have it, Trev’) and Trevor went off, smiling.
    ‘Not that, necessarily, but whether you have some ulterior motive.’ That sounded like worn-out dialogue in a bad film.
    ‘It’d be easy enough to check up on what I’ve told you. Call the agent; better yet, go to Lark Rise and see the agent and go to this Winterhaus and have a look round.’
    ‘But Gauh’s agent knows nothing of the history of the house.’
    ‘She knows Ben Torres.’
    ‘She knew only that he wanted to rent it, didn’t she? At least that’s what I gather from what you’ve told me.’
    Trevor set Harry’s glass before him, poured a small amount of Pinot Gris into it. Harry thanked him and lifted the glass, sniffed it and rolled it around, making little waves. He sipped it. ‘Good. Excellent.’
    Trevor filled the glass, asked Jury if he cared for another drink, and, when Jury nodded, picked up the bottle of Beaujolais, which he clearly regarded as plonk, and poured some more, then walked away.
    Harry didn’t answer Jury’s question about what the agent knew, but said, instead, ‘Shall I tell you the rest, though? I mean, do you want to hear it?’
    Jury smiled. ‘Absolutely.’
    Harry drank the wine. ‘Then Hugh went to the house.’
    ‘To Winterhaus?
    ‘Yes. And the wood. The police had looked round, but after all it wasn’t a crime scene, so they weren’t about to spend