The Old Success

by Martha Grimes

  “Yes. Manon Vinet. It was Gerald who spent time with her.” Eleanor frowned. “I didn’t much care for her. She was a very plausible person.”

  A word that Jury knew was seldom a compliment. “She had the appearance of credibility, you mean?”

  “Oh, yes. The appearance of it. She was very good at putting herself in one’s way. Manipulative.”

  “She must have put herself in the way of the wrong person, then,” said Tom. “Her body was found on the sand at Bryher. She’d been shot.”

  “My God!” said Eleanor. “But who? Why? Have you any idea—”

  “No. We haven’t a clue as to why. I’m trying to build up a picture.”

  “I can help to fill it out: she was fond of men. I don’t think you ever met my ward, Hannah Lean—” Here she looked quickly at Jury. “I’m sorry, Superintendent, to bring all that up—”

  Jury was surprised that Lady Summerston had any idea that Hannah Lean’s death was a personal loss to him. “That’s all right, Lady Summerston.”

  Tom said, “I heard about her death, Eleanor. I’m very sorry.”

  “Yes, well, I bring it up because I suspected at one point there was something going on between this woman and Simon, Hannah’s husband.” She shrugged. “Simon was another man with an eye for women.”

  “By ‘another’ I assume you’re referring to Flora’s husband?”

  “Yes. Tony Servino was quite the lady’s man.”

  Flora said, “I think that’s overstating it, Aunt Eleanor.”

  Tom turned to Flora. “Miss Flood, I wonder if we could have a word in private?”

  Flora looked uncertain. “Why, yes, I suppose so.” She gave her aunt a puzzled look and was met by one of reassurance from Lady Summerston. “Go ahead, Flora. Tom’s a very fair person.”

  Jury wasn’t sure what “fairness” had to do with it.

  “And perhaps Superintendent Jury will join us.” Tom motioned to Jury, who together with Tom followed Flora into a small room to the left of the entrance where Jury remembered waiting, several years earlier, for Crick to lead him upstairs to Lady Summerston. The portrait of Hannah Lean still hung at the top of these stairs. Jury looked away. Then, once inside the library, his eye followed a chain that led from the chandelier, which was no longer hanging but pulled back toward the bannister of a little balcony.

  As they sat down, Tom said, “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind going over what happened here last night. I know it’s upsetting to have to keep repeating it, but I’d rather hear it from you than from the police. And incidentally, as I’m not currently with the police, you should feel under no obligation to talk to me at all. I’m merely helping out.”

  This little speech was delivered in Brownell’s quiet and even tone, one that seemed to file away the hard edges of the experience.

  Flora Flood told him. “It was just when we were starting dinner, around half past seven. Tony turned up and said he needed to talk to me and we went into the drawing room.” She nodded to indicate the room they had just left. “He was really angry; he’d just got the papers about the divorce. I said I couldn’t understand why he was so surprised as I’d told him I was filing for divorce. ‘Only, not so soon,’ he said. ‘We’ve been separated for nearly two years, Tony. It’s not soon.’ He was fuming. He was becoming increasingly upset and told me he wouldn’t sign any papers. When I told him he’d simply have to, he started toward me and I was scared. Tony could get very—physical. He was a threatening person to a lot of people. I backed away to the desk. My uncle keeps an automatic in the drawer. I took it out and aimed it at him. He kept coming toward me, so I pointed the gun at his leg and pulled the trigger. At the same time I heard something behind me and before I could look around, there was another shot and Tony crumpled to the floor. I went to him; I wasn’t sure whether he was dead or alive. I ran back to the French door, where I’d heard the sound but there was no one there. It all happened so fast. Then the cook came in and Bub, who lives here, came in and the room seemed full of people.” She looked away from him, into the drawing room and toward the French door, as if last night’s intruder might reappear there.

  Tom Brownell said nothing.

  “I know it looks bad; but I didn’t kill him. I wasn’t shooting to kill. I just meant to scare him. Uncle Frank has a gun case in the mudroom off the kitchen. But it’s always locked. Who on earth could have—?”

  Apparently satisfied that she was finished with her account, Tom said, “Your husband, given your description of him, must have had enemies, or at least been much-disliked.”

  She nodded. “But not that much.”

  “So how would you explain this?”

  “I can’t, can—” Suddenly she looked up, toward the little balcony. She yelled, “Bub! Stop that!”

  But Bub didn’t stop, and the ones below ducked as if the chandelier were coming close to their heads, which it wasn’t. Bub sailed above them but quickly lost momentum and he dropped down on the big sofa.

  The chandelier was narrowed at each end and, with wires attached to the chain like rigging, looked more like a boat than a lighting device, oddly modern for a house of this age. Jury could see the temptation for a little kid.

  “If it needs dusting or the lights need to be changed, the housekeeper pulls it in with a pole and ties it by its chain. I’ve told her not to leave it hooked to the bannister because Bub loves to take rides on it. I had the beam reinforced, but one day the ceiling will come down in bits and pieces.”

  “And who’s this, then?” said Tom, looking at Bub.

  “This is Bub, my husband’s—” Her cough was tight, choked. “—little nephew.” She reached out, shook him by the shoulder. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Bub stood there looking shaken, until Tom Brownell said, “Come on over here, Bug; maybe you can help out.”

  “My name’s not Bug, it’s Bub.” He seemed to think this error was rich with humor. But he went over to Tom.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “Are you a policeman?”

  “No.”

  “Are you a detective?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I’m not anything.”

  Bub appeared delighted that a grown person wasn’t anything. “What do you do, then?”

  “Ask little boys questions.”

  Bub liked that too.

  Jury said, “Mr. Brownell was with Scotland Yard for many years.”

  “Did you catch bad people?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Did you ever shoot anyone?”

  “Sure. Did you?”

  “Me? I don’t have a gun!”

  “Were you upstairs last night when all of this happened?”

  Bub nodded vigorously. “Me and Chester.”

  Tom looked around. “Where’s Chester? Maybe he has a gun.”

  “Chester’s my dog.”

  “Oh. And did you and Chester hear noises in the drawing room?”

  “No.” Bub shook his head hard.

  Tom turned again to Flora. “Has your husband come here before?”

  “No. We don’t—didn’t—really communicate. Which is what surprised me so much when he did come.”

  “Although it would seem to me not so surprising given he’d just been served divorce papers.”

  “But he knew they were coming.”

  “Perhaps he should’ve, only it sounds as if he didn’t.” Tom smiled to counteract this seeming contradiction of her account of her husband’s state of mind. “Was there any particular reason why you did have these papers served now?”

  “Well, no. I just thought it time, that’s all. After all, we’d been apart for two years.”

  “I guess that’s what I’m asking. Why did you wait so long? Did you just want to give the marriage more of a chance?” He was giving her the benefit of answering his own question.

  “Another chance, yes.”

  Though that, thought Jury, would be diffi
cult if they’d stopped talking to each other.

  “Well, we won’t bother you any longer, Flora. Bub.”

  “You’re not bothering!” said Bub. But Tom was up by now.

  Flora Flood said, “You hardly asked me any questions.”

  Tom smiled. “I might think of some more.”

  She seemed as reluctant as Bub to see him go.

  “What did you think?” said Jury as they were getting into the car. He was surprised to discover Tom had walked from Ardry End. “Was she telling the truth?”

  “I don’t know. But he wasn’t.”

  “He? You mean Bub?”

  “He said he hadn’t heard any noises coming from below. Yet he heard us talking at considerably less volume than she and her husband would have been.”

  “Why wouldn’t he say so, then?”

  “Because he’s a kid, I expect. Kids always seem to think they’re going to be in trouble if they admit to anything. The possibilities are endless when it comes to making mistakes that way.”

  It had started to rain and the defogger wasn’t doing much to defog. Tom wiped the mist from inside the windscreen.

  Jury said, “You don’t think these cases are connected, do you? The one on Bryher and Flora Flood?”

  Tom tossed the cloth on the floor of the car. “I don’t know. Probably not. Though I do wonder at the Summerston connection. Do you mind?” he said as he took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. When Jury shook his head, he lit one.

  Tom said, “Did Brian exact a promise from you to go back?”

  “Exact a promise? Macalvie doesn’t do that. He just beats the living hell out of you if you don’t.”

  Tom gave a snort of laughter. “He could be right.”

  “You’re telling me to go back there?”

  “I thought Brian Macalvie already did.”

  13

  At breakfast the next morning, Jury asked Melrose if he wanted to accompany him to Bryher, to which Melrose responded that no, he didn’t, as he needed to stay with Aggrieved.

  “Why? Aggrieved has Sydney; he doesn’t need you.”

  “You have Macalvie; you don’t need me, either.”

  “Macalvie isn’t going to Bryher; I’m doing it on my own.”

  “It’s pretty unreasonable to expect you to go there all the way from Northamptonshire when he’s right there in Exeter.”

  “Exeter isn’t exactly ‘right there.’ It’s a ninety-minute helicopter ride away.”

  “Well, it’s a damned sight nearer the Scillies than Northants is.”

  “Do you two,” said Tom Brownell, who’d stayed overnight along with his granddaughter, “usually argue like a couple of teenagers?”

  “Pretty much,” said Melrose. “Maybe you’d like to go with him to Bryher.”

  Tom looked out on the early day. “No. I’m going home with Sydney.” He turned to Jury. “You going to do this all in one day?”

  “Hope so. At least, I intend to.”

  The intention was fairly well borne out by the swiftness of his getting to Bryher that morning, first by plane from Heathrow to St. Mary’s, via Cornwall Newquay, thence by the same boat that had ferried him and Macalvie two nights before to Bryher, where he was met once again by DCI Whitten.

  “Actually, I think Commander Macalvie and his team pretty nearly bled them dry,” said Whitten in answer to Jury’s asking who he should interview at the Hell Bay Hotel, toward which they were headed in the jeep. “With the exception of this one waitress, Amy Dudgeon.”

  “Amy Dudgeon? Why wouldn’t she have been bled along with the others?” Jury laughed.

  “I got the impression that although she hadn’t talked much to the victim, she knew something of a relationship between Manon Vinet and Dan Cooke.”

  “Daisy Cooke’s husband?”

  “Yes. We don’t know there was one, of course. That’s the point of the questions.”

  Except for a couple at one other table, the dining room at this time was empty, given it was well after lunch hour. Jury wasn’t much of a lunch person anyway, but he was having a sandwich merely to employ the time of the waitress, Amy Dudgeon.

  He made a few general comments to her about the peculiarity of what had happened on the beach two days before and, these not doing much to exact anything from her, turned to more specific comments, beginning with who he was. Backed up by his warrant card, that got her to sit down and look anxious.

  “I hardly spoke to her at all,” said Amy Dudgeon. “Hardly beyond taking her order and asking her if she wanted, like, coffee or tea. You know.”

  “I don’t, Amy; that’s why I’m asking. About Daisy Cooke’s husband: I understand he left her.”

  “I don’t know about him leaving her. What I heard was she told him to leave. Packed up his wheel and clay and took off suddenly.”

  “Wheel?”

  “He was a potter.” She picked up a small, swirly-colored vase. “His. He was good, I thought. He made these for all the tables.” She studied it for a few moments, then returned it to the center of the table. “They were in here a few times for meals. He argued a lot. She didn’t join in much. Argued mostly about here. I mean Bryher, not the hotel. He only wanted to leave. Well, it’s not hard to understand. This place has nothing going on. Peace and quiet.”

  For which she seemed to have a burning contempt. Jury said, “But if you were a Londoner—”

  “Don’t I wish?” She laughed a little. “Funny he was the one wanted to travel, but she was the one always in Bewley’s.”

  “Bewley’s?”

  “Little travel agency down there.” She nodded toward the window. “Sorry, someone needs me.” She got up and started toward the only other occupied table. A man had raised his hand to beckon her.

  When he stopped in at Bewley Travel Lettings, Jury found a late-middle-aged woman behind a large wooden desk that held an old typewriter, on which she was typing at terrific speed. How long had it been since he had seen a typewriter being used at all, much less, speedily? Josephine Bewley (the name on a small brass plaque) did not even glance up when he entered, although he thought Bewley’s might be grateful for the custom, as there was no one else in the place. Eventually, she raised her head, nodded and gestured for him to sit down in one of the two saddle-backed chairs arranged before her desk. She had sparse grey hair and was dressed in Liberty lawn.

  Finally, she halted her fingers and said, “I’ll be with you as soon as I’m free.”

  Free? Jury looked about him to see if he’d missed a few patrons eagerly awaiting her attention. But no. “Freedom” seemed to be part and parcel of the Bewley life. He sat and looked around the room. On the walls hung two or three obligatory views of the Scillies and one surprising shot of a maze, apparently at Hever Castle. But there one’s travel plans would have to end. The rest of the area was hung with truly awful artwork, paintings whose subjects—owl, hare, human—shared expressions of surprise, their looks in a kind of stasis as if needing to react but hesitating, as if the paintings were about to sneeze.

  Having placed her pen in its wooden holder, and letting her rimless glasses dangle on the black cord round her neck, the woman said, “Now, what can I do for you?”

  Jury rose, took a step toward her desk and held out his warrant card.

  She looked at it and said, “I’ve just had police round this morning. One visit should be sufficient.”

  He produced the photo of Flora Flood. “Have you ever seen this woman?”

  “This is not the dead woman found on the beach.” Her tone was accusing.

  “No, it isn’t. This woman is very much alive. But she’s of interest in this case. We wonder if she was here.”

  “Here?” She actually pointed to the floor at their feet.

  “No, I mean on Bryher.”

  Ms. Bewley, still a mite put out by this turn of events, said, “Only one time.”

  To which she added nothing as she opened a black ledger on the desk. The drama of but one sighting was
lost on her.

  Caught between surprise at this answer and the desire to throttle her, Jury said, “Where was ‘one time’?”

  Running her finger down the ledger columns she said, “At the Hell Bay.” That was all.

  “Ms. Bewley, could you tell me the exact circumstances?”

  “Oh. Well, my brother and I were having dinner in the Hell Bay’s dining room, the night’s special being their excellent John Dory with shrimp.” Her eyes caught his as if she were about to reveal something important. “And roasted squash.”

  Jury hoped the entire list of ingredients was not to follow.

  “We were talking about the lack of custom of late. Surprising for this time of year …” On she went.

  You asked for it, mate, thought Jury, as he sat down.

  “… sitting at a table alone.”

  His mind was so inhabited by the Bewley voice that he didn’t even notice this was the period. End of account. Good-bye to the woman in the picture.

  “Then?”

  Blank look. “Ate her food, I expect. I wasn’t waiting tables.” She smirked, enjoying her little foray into humor.

  “Of course not, but this woman at some point must have moved.”

  “Not until the man sat down.” Eyes dropped to the ledger again.

  Silence. Jury did not know where he came by the control that held him to his chair. “The man?”

  “I’ve no idea who he was.”

  “No, but perhaps you could describe him?”

  “Describe?”

  This novel idea held her attention until someone walked into the room, not from outside but from a door at the back, nodded pleasantly to Jury and said, “Hullo, I’m the other half of the Bewley business.” He extended his hand. “Matthew Bewley, Josephine’s brother.”

  Jury shook the hand as he produced his warrant card and the picture of Flora Flood once again. “I understand from your sister here that you saw her at the Hell Bay, in the dining room.”

  Matthew was as direct as she was indirect, as full of detail about the right things as she was about the wrong, as willing to accede as she was to obstruct.

  “Indeed. We were there for dinner and sat at a table not far from hers. She was joined as she was eating by a youngish man—well, youngish to me, as I’m now oldish—”