The Blue Last

“Two whiskeys, Higgins, please.”

“And a hair shirt,” said Jury.

Higgins left without questioning either request.

“He’ll probably bring one, too. What’s it for? Haven’t you done your share of suffering today?” said Melrose.

“It’s for you. The martyrdom of St. Jerome can’t hold a candle.”

Melrose slid down in his chair. “My god, don’t tell me you’re a Masaccio fan.”

“Sunderland, actually.” Jury heaped his coat across the armchair nearest the fire and sat down again. “You’re planning on staying here at Boring’s for a while, then?”

“I’m too tired to go home. Anyway, I have to wait for Trueblood.”

“You know, you’re not really all that well traveled for one of your money and leisure.”

“I’ve been to Baltimore.”

“Are you telling me that you didn’t enjoy Florence?”

“Oh, I enjoyed it. One enjoys Florence, after all.”

“One hopes one does.”

Melrose continued. “And one can’t help but have tender feelings toward a place like San Gimignano and those spires. Or Siena, that looks as if some spellbinder put it to sleep and it’s only partially awoken. Everything is narrow there-streets, houses-everything echoes.” He sighed. “It was just this race Trueblood had me doing, running from one expert in Renaissance art to another-authorities on Masaccio. Imagine devoting your entire life to just one thing.”

“Given one or two of my cases, I probably can.”

Melrose lit up a cigarette, blew the smoke away from Jury and tilted his head to look at the books. “What are those?”

Jury looked at them. “Couple of books on gardening.”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered. Are you retiring to till your own pea patch?”

“Not I.”

Melrose picked up the larger book and riffled the pages. “A Fool and His Garden.” He smiled. “Now there’s a fresh approach to gardening.”

“It’s the acerbic approach. I thought it suited you better than Sweet Sue’s Sweetpeas, or Lazy Days with Lobelias.”

Melrose took the book and opened it. “I like the little drawings.” He turned the book, showing Jury an unhappy gardener trampling the petunia patch.

Young Higgins was back with the drinks, setting a glass at each man’s elbow, taking up Melrose’s old one.

“Bets are off with you,” Melrose said to Jury. “Higgins, what have we to dine on tonight?”

Holding his small silver tray to his chest and coughing gently into one fisted hand, Young Higgins said, “We’ve steak and kidney pudding and roast pork. Both quite delicious.”

“No Portobello mushrooms?”

Young Higgins gave him a blank look. “Sir?”

“Never mind. Thanks, Higgins.” When the ancient porter had crept off, Melrose sniggered. “See why I come here? What more could one ask of a place that’s never heard of Portobello mushrooms?”

“It hasn’t heard of much of anything since the Great War, has it?”

“Let’s hope they keep it that way.” Melrose returned to A Fool and His Garden. “Listen to this.” He laughed. “‘There is something homicidal about he who would prick and prune and plunder thick hedges into the abysmal shape of swan and urn, a man so dangerous he needs stabbing with a sharp-pointed trowel.’ Indeed, I like that.” He set aside the larger book and picked up the smaller: Gardening Primer.

“That one’s more or less a grounding in gardening skills.”

“Pretty basic, isn’t it?” He turned it so that Jury could see the climbing rose. “Maybe I should try my hand at soil tilling. Enter big turnips in the annual Sidbury garden show. Wait a minute: you said these books were ‘for you,’ meaning me. Why are these books for me?”

Jury shrugged. “Thought they might be helpful.” Jury took a drink of whiskey. God, it was good here; they must keep the stuff in a vault. He ignored Melrose’s squint. “So, what did you and Trueblood do?”

“What’d we do? I just told you. We ran all over looking up experts. Count me the leading expert in Renaissance art in Long Piddleton-no, correction-in the Long Pidd area- which takes in Sidbury, Watermeadows and the Blue Parrot. Everything up to Northampton. Perhaps even Northampton!”

“What was the result of all of this expert consultation? Did they agree that the painting could be an authentic- what’s his name?”

“Masaccio. No, they didn’t. Just a bunch of wall-sitters, all of them.”

They sat at Melrose’s favorite table, a small one in the middle of the room and next to one of the oak pillars. When they’d polished off their artichokes with lemon, Jury asked, “You were saying you were expert. On what?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention? Masaccio and Renaissance art. I want another drink-oh, I’ll just order a bottle of wine.” He gestured to the sommelier, who came to take Melrose’s order.

“So, go on.” Jury watched with sad longing as two old geezers lit up cigars. He had never smoked cigars, but that made no difference. After all this time without a smoke he would have lit up a cat. He would have dropped a match on Young Higgins, coming now with their steak and kidney pudding, negotiating his way through space and time, unimpeded, but as if he had chosen to cross Piccadilly Circus blindfolded.

Melrose continued, back on Masaccio, “I have quietly extended my knowledge of the twenties-” The sommelier brought the wine for Melrose’s inspection, uncorked it and poured.

The scent of steak and kidney pudding wafting around them, Jury said, “Prohibition in the States, I seem to recall. Ah, thanks,” he added to Higgins.

“Not the 1920s in New York, the 1420s in Florence.” To Young Higgins, he said, “Looks marvelous.” He went on. “I also know something of Masolino, Donatello and Brunelleschi. The perspectival illusion.”

“Sounds like a magic act.” Jury cut off a big forkful of steak and kidney pudding.

“It was an invention of Giotto, or at least he discovered it. Perspective can’t really be invented, can it? Brunelleschi and Donatello extended it to architecture. Perspective in a painting. You know what that is, of course.

The art of making an object appear as three dimensional. It’s not an easy thing to do, actually, applying mathematics to space. Like the barrel vaulting in the Trinity. The ribs diminish in mathematical foreshortening.” Melrose held out his arms and brought the tips of his fingers together, whoosh whoosh. “The art of the vanishing point. The centric point, the vanishing point, this is the point at which all lines meet in the distance. Where it all comes together, where the pattern’s exposed.”

“It sounds like the solution to one of my cases. The only thing is, by the time you get to it, the vanishing point, it’s gone.”

“Yes, I expect it is.”

“There’s a paradox for you.”

Melrose nodded. “Anyway, Trueblood just stopped listening when the subject veered away from Masaccio and his own painting. I could tell; his eyes filmed over. As are yours, right now.”

“They are not. I’m extremely interested.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Who’d be interested except someone nutty about Italian art?”

Jury smiled. “Actually, I do know such a nut.”

Melrose stopped in the act of eating and looked at Jury for a long moment and then resumed. After concentrating on his glass of wine, he said, “You’re fitting me up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on. First it’s the gardening stuff, then you’ve had me going on about fifteenth-century Florentine