The Man with a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes

wouldn’t, I guess, Mr. Scroggs. Except all the world didn’t see Ainsley for some time, did they?”

CHAPTER 7
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23
    W hen Richard Jury awoke next morning in his comfortable four-poster, it was to the sight of new-falling snow. The latticed window was the first thing he saw as he propped himself up in bed to fumble for his alarm and note the time: 8:15. He lay back against the pillows and watched the snow drifting past in wet, fat flakes, and closed his eyes again, feeling rather sanguine. Anyone else, he supposed, would be thinking, What a hell of a way to spend my Christmas holiday. But Jury thought it rather perfect: a postcard village filling up with snow.
    He got out of bed and walked over to the casement window, which he threw open and gave himself a rousing chill. He thought of Keats in the inn at Burford Bridge, writing: “Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.” And Jury was hit with a wave of nostalgia. Before it could overcome him, he dressed quickly and went down the hall to Sergeant Wiggins’s room.
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    Unlike Jury, Wiggins did not seem at all eager to be pulling on macintosh and Wellingtons for a tramp around the village.
    â€œI feel awful feverish, sir. I was just wondering, sir, if perhaps I could lie in a bit and join you later, maybe?”
    Jury sighed. Poor Wiggins. But since he was a hindrance knocking about with his pockets full of drops and pills, Jury readily agreed. “Of course. You do that. Maybe a hot buttered rum would fix you up.” Piteously grateful, Wiggins sighed his relief, looking a bit like a snowman under his mound of white sheets and counterpane.
    It might stave off some terminal respiratory ailment if Wiggins could be made to concentrate on the case instead of the bottles on the nightstand, so Jury drew over a chair, straddled it, and said, “What do you think, Wiggins?”
    Wiggins’s handkerchief was up to his nose. “Bah wha sah?”
    â€œThe case, Wiggins. The condition of the cellar.”
    Wiggins looked thoughtful and swiped the handkerchief under his nose once or twice. Then he carefully folded it and held it in an almost holy way, as if it were a fragment of Veronica’s veil. “The lock being broken? Is that what you mean?”
    Jury nodded, waiting patiently. When Wiggins did not continue, Jury said, “It’s not likely anyone came in that way, is it? Pratt said there’d been a heavy rain the night of the seventeenth.”
    Wiggins brightened and sat up a bit. “And the stairs looked like they’d got years of dirt and muck on them. But the inside was clean.”
    â€œPrecisely,” said Jury, smiling. Wiggins looked pleased. “Besides, think a moment.” Jury lit up a cigarette. “Why in God’s name would anyone coming from outside want to meet Small in the cellar? And then have to break down the door? It won’t do, will it?”
    â€œBut if they didn’t come from outside, they must’ve come from inside.” He pointed ceilingward. “It must’ve been one of them upstairs.”
    Jury swung his legs off the chair. “Dead right, Wiggins. Get better now, for I’ll need your help.”
    Wiggins was already looking better as Jury turned at the door to say good-bye.
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    After breakfast — an ample one of eggs, sausages, and kippers, served up by Daphne Murch — Jury crossed the courtyard to the police car parked there. The snow layered the thatch and the cobbled yard, rimmed the bird bath in which wrens were even now leaving their tiny prints. He would first have to deliver Pluck’s precious Morris to him; then he could have his tramp in the snow while making his official inquiries. Leaning against the car, he let the wet snow fly in his face while the engine warmed, and he studied the small map Pluck