“If Gerald mentioned every woman who was attracted to him, you’d have been talking about hardly anything else, I expect.” Jury tried a winning smile.
It won. “How true.” She laughed.
“Going back to your niece, though—” Had they been there before?
She was relieved to do this. “Ah, yes. Poor Flora. But of course she didn’t kill him, Mr. Jury. You can be sure of that.”
“I’d like to be, Lady Summerston, but as we were saying at Watermeadows, it’s difficult.”
“Tony Servino was not a nice man. I can’t understand how my husband put up with him.”
“He liked him, though.”
She both shook and nodded her head, a difficult denial of the truth for her. “It’s true that Gerald invited him here. Said after all he was Flora’s husband. A few times, he even brought a friend with him.”
“What friend?”
“Oh, someone Gerald thought entertaining.”
Jury didn’t prompt her.
“What was his name?” Her fist gently hit her forehead as if the mind could take the beating. “Scruffy little man … another Italian.”
Jury smiled. Scruffiness foretold. “Another besides Tony Servino, you mean? But he was English, Lady Summerston.”
“Not truly English, Superintendent, though. Italian heritage, certainly.” She returned to the friend’s identity. “Vincent—They called him ‘Vince’ … Morini? No, Mori. That was it: Vincent Mori. As I said, Tony occasionally brought him here to dinner. For some reason, Gerald took to him. But Gerald was quite egalitarian.”
Jury put the egalitarianism down to the Gerald-myth. “Would you happen to know where he lives?”
She raised an eyebrow. “No, I don’t. I seem to recall references to Limehouse. Yes, I think that was where he lived.”
“You really didn’t like him, did you?”
“This Mori person? Of course not—”
“No. I mean Tony Servino.”
“No, I didn’t. I’ve said before that he was a real scoundrel. He had other women. He cheated people, including his partner, as I recall. And he victimized Flora both physically and verbally. He certainly wasn’t worthy of her.”
“How would you assess Flora’s worthiness?”
Eleanor frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Just that. What has your niece done or been that would raise her so far above her husband?”
“Breeding, for one thing. Her father was a respected barrister. Tony’s father owned a fish and chips shop.”
“Well, that would certainly earn him my sergeant’s respect.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sorry. What else about Flora?”
“She’s highly educated: Oxford.”
“And her husband lacked education?”
She sighed with impatience. “Mr. Jury, I’ve told you about Tony Servino, how he victimized her.”
“Yes, you have; only in this case, the victim was Tony.” Jury took a last, cold sip of tea and rose. “Thank you for your time, Lady Summerston.”
At the bottom of the steps, he pulled out his phone. “Wiggins, there’s someone I want you to find. Get his address, if possible: Vincent Mori. He might have lived at one time in Limehouse.”
“Who is this, boss?”
“Good friend of Tony Servino. And possibly partner.”
“One he ripped off?”
“To hear Lady Summerston tell it, Tony ripped off everybody. A ‘real scoundrel,’ she said. Still, Gerald Summerston seemed to like him.”
“Maybe they were scoundrels together.”
Jury liked that. “The virtuous Gerald Summerston?”
“Sounds a little too virtuous for my tastes.”
“I’ll wait in the car. Call me back when you have something.”
“Knightsbridge, not Limehouse,” said Wiggins. “Moved up a bit, looks like.” He gave Jury an address.
“That’s not far. Just around the corner. Thanks, Wiggins.”
No one answered the bell in the little house in the Brompton Road, but as Jury turned away, a man who’d come out of the house next door said, “You looking for Vince?”
“I am, yes.”
“Try the Grapes. He’s usually over there around this time. You know, it’s just down the road.” He nodded his head to the right.
Jury thanked him and returned to his car.
24
Jury had drunk in the Bunch of Grapes a number of times; since the last time there had been some refurbishment. Unnecessary refurbishment. Some things are best left alone.
A lot of smoke from a lot of cigarettes obscured faces. He figured Mori would be one for standing at the bar. Jury looked down its length as he pulled out his phone and found the picture Wiggins had sent. A slightly pudgy face topped by curly dark-brown hair. The face was sitting or standing at the end of the bar and Jury made his way to it.
“Are you Mr. Mori?”
Vincent Mori looked over his shoulder. “Who?”
Jury had his warrant card out and held it up to Mori’s eyes.
“I didn’t do it,” said Vincent Mori and returned to his pint.
“Nobody says you did.”
“Well, good. So what is it?”
Jury signaled the barman for two drinks.
“The Met is buying these days?”
“Yep.”
“If I didn’t do it, why are you here?”
“Somehow I get the impression maybe you did.”
“Don’t push your luck—oh, Christ. How could I be so dumb? It’s about Tony, isn’t it?”
“It’s about Tony.”
Mori lowered his head and half-framed it with one of his hands. “Bloody hell.”
It was the first sign of emotion Jury had seen, and it looked like strong emotion. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mori.”
“Yeah. Me too. Tony was supposed to be invincible. But why would his goddamned wife shoot him?”
“Self-defense.”
“Ridiculous. Tony didn’t do guns, didn’t beat up women. Never.”
“Apparently, he got to the house in a rage.”
Mori snorted a laugh. “Tony didn’t do rages, either. If she shot him, she meant to shoot him going in.”
“Why?”
Vincent shrugged. “You think I know?”
“Probably …”
Mori only looked at him.
“What I’m here for is your opinion, your ideas about Tony Servino. You’re the only person I know so far who’s defending him, who thinks pretty highly of him.”
Vincent laughed again. “I can believe that.”
“What I’ve heard about Servino is that he was a womanizing alcoholic, a man who would sell out anybody, including his partners—of which you’re one—a gambler who cheated all the time, a rotter, a scoundrel, a man who very possibly tried to kill his wife by means of a car accident.”
Mori started laughing softly halfway through this description, and by the time Jury got to the attempt on Flora’s life, he was laughing so hard people were staring.
“What’s so funny, Mr. Mori?”
In the middle of a choked laugh, Mori said, “Sorry, what was your name?”
“Richard Jury. CID superintendent.”
“Mr. Jury, people just didn’t get it. I don’t deny a lot of your description—he drank, he gambled—but won. What I do deny is the out-of-control implication. Tony was never out of control. He had control of everything he did. Tony was a fixer. You didn’t get that? A fixer.”
Jury frowned. “What?”
“You want an example? Buy me another drink and I’ll tell you.” As if he were literally waiting for the fresh drink before he gave out any information, Vincent leaned against the bar, arms out, hands folded. When the drinks came, he turned back to Jury. “You remember that Cholmondeley thing several years back. A decade back. Never ended up coming out. This British peer, Earl of I think Harwood, the younger brother of the Marquess of Cholmondeley, got caught in a call b
ox out on an A road near a Little Chef. He was in the box with a young guy named Billie Whitelaw—
“Going at it. Someone took a picture, Harwood was still holding the telephone receiver.” Vincent laughed. Then he went on. “You imagine how Cholmondeley would have liked the family name dragged through the press and the courts if it came to that. He gets his bank of solicitors on it. They try to buy off Billie Whitelaw, but Billie refuses to be bought. My guess is he likes the publicity, likes the idea of a trial because he pretty much holds the winning hand. So the legals get Tony Servino to buy the kid off. No way.
“Tony finds out everything he can about Billie, looking for arrests, citations, anything he can use. Kid is clean as a whistle. Nothing. Nil. But in the course of looking at Billie’s life—what he hated, what he loved—Tony sees what he wanted was Africa. Apparently the kid’s dream is to be a safari guide. Safari guide, for God’s sake. Tony searches out the businesses that use them—the luxury camps, the ones in the bush and so forth. He looks for the ones less solvent, those in financial trouble. He finds a tented camp, a really pricey one in Kenya on the edge of bankruptcy, contacts the owner and tells him he can take care of the financial problem if he’ll get his guides to take on this kid as an intern. Well, that deal is easy to do; the camp has nothing to lose and a lot to gain.
“Tony goes to Billie Whitelaw and lays this out. His dream will come true if he forgets about the phone booth and the Little Chef and hands over the photo. And the scandal died on its feet.”
Jury was fascinated, listened, gave it some thought. “One thing I find strange, is a man like Servino would marry at all, much less marry a woman like Flora Flood.”
Vincent shrugged. “I don’t know, except it wasn’t her money.”
“And what about this car accident?”
“What about it?”
“There seems to be a question of whether it was really an accident.”
“Look, I think you got the whole relationship backward. She says she wanted out; he didn’t. It was the other way around. Tony wanted the divorce. She was crazy about him. Women usually were. I think he loved her, would have kept going except she was so jealous, always questioning, always suspicious. He couldn’t stand being watched. Yeah, he had a bit on the side. Sure. But if Tony had wanted in or out of that marriage, he could have done it; he could have walked away. Tony could always walk away. Except—” Vincent stopped, looked down at the bar.
Jury leaned closer. He could have sworn the man was near tears. “Except for what, Vincent?”
“His little kid. Except for when he died. Tony’s baby.”
“My God, how awful.”
“It was awful, all right. I never saw a man so grief-stricken. Never. It was like, five, six years ago. They lived in Mayfair. He went home one night …”
25
Six years before
That night, Tony Servino walked through the front door of his Mayfair house and called out to his wife, who didn’t answer. He did not stop to wonder where she was, but immediately made for the nursery upstairs and the baby he liked to call “the little guy.” Sammy was only ten months old, but they had been the best ten months of Tony Servino’s life. Sometimes he thought they’d been the only ten months of his life.
He heard Flora on the phone in the parlor as he made his way upstairs and into the room where the crib was, one of the three rooms that comprised the nursery. The one to the left was the bath, where he went next, and where he heard sounds of water splashing, coming from the bathinette. He didn’t get this, for the room was both dark and empty.
Or so it seemed. He went to the baby’s bath and then knew the splashing sounds were being made by water dripping slowly from the whale-covered faucet into the little blue whale-shaped bath that Sammy could sit up in. But to Tony’s horror, Sammy was—under the water. The little arms that had been flailing and the legs that had been pushing stopped. In another second, Tony had pulled him out, Tony yelling for help, seeing the crumpled face smooth out into nothing and the mouth that had been trying to take in air and taken in only water close. Tony put the baby facedown on a folded towel, still yelling for help and pushing on Sammy’s back, not knowing how to give artificial respiration to a baby.
“Sammy!” Tony screamed.
Sammy couldn’t cry.
He yelled for help again, but neither voice nor footstep came rushing up the stairs. Where were they all?
Tony thought ambulance, and then that he could get to the hospital faster in his Alfa Romeo than any ambulance. The hospital was only five minutes and three stoplights away. He wrapped the baby in a blanket, pushed him under his overcoated right arm, ran down and out without shutting the door and jumped into his car, glad he’d left it by the curb and not in the driveway. He streaked off, horning through two red lights, knowing and not-knowing the little guy was dead, weeping all the way to the hospital.
He left the car directly outside the ER, ran inside, gave Sammy over to a nurse, who gave him to a doctor, and stood staring after them down the long, empty corridor.
It was less than two minutes before the doctor came out and towards Tony. The doctor was a kindly looking man, who said in low tones how sorry he was, but that the baby was dead.
Tony clutched at the doctor’s arms, then gave up and put his head on his shoulder and wept even more.
“His mother?” The doctor put his arm around the father and asked the only question he could think to ask.
Tony shook his head.
The doctor knew questions were pointless, anyway. Every answer would be a headshake. Nothing to convey.
He could only watch as Tony moved to a place in the waiting room, walking like a young man old.
26
He had sat in the hospital waiting room for a time he couldn’t measure, calling no one, doing nothing, staring. Finally, he had driven himself back to the house, trudged up the stair he had rushed down with Sammy, up to the front door and inside to be confronted by all of those faces absent—how long? Thirty, forty minutes ago? An hour? Two?
Suddenly, as if called back from an anywhere Tony couldn’t envision, they stood, rigid and heard the news: Sammy was dead.
He did not take off his coat. He would never take it off again in this house. He went to the drinks table and poured himself half a tumbler of whisky and waited. He did not try to make sense of the senseless, or to comprehend the incomprehensible. He did not even ask it aloud—Where were you?
There was first the disbelief, the cobwebby explanations that meant to excuse each of them from guilt, no one admitting she was supposed to have been there, supposed to have stayed in, supposed to have had the charge of Sammy. “It was my night off …” “I wasn’t told to watch the baby …” “Mrs. Servino knew I was going to …”
It went on and on, the appropriately horrified responses all tempered by the accusations flying back and forth among these women—nurse, nanny, au pair, mother—none of them claiming one iota of responsibility.
Tony did not even try to follow the drift of the argument. Tony Servino, a master at getting to the bottom of things, would never get to the bottom of this.
Only the old cook, Rebecca, responded in the right way. She rushed to him, weeping his name: “Mister Tony, Mister Tony, Mister—”
He put his arms around her. “It’s all right, Reba; it’s all right.”
And he was gone.
The Mayfair was the first hotel he came to and he pulled up in front and left his car for the valet and went in.
It made no sense to call her because there was no way she could get to him, no way. It was by now midnight.
But he called her anyway.
On the other end of the line she picked up the telephone and heard silence.
She knew him even by his silences. “Tony! Tony, what is it? What’s wrong?”
More silence that she didn’t break into. She waited.
“Sammy.” And then sobbing.
No, she thought. Something’s happened to t
he baby. No. “Tony, sweetheart. What?”
“He’s—”
Sick? Dying?
“Dead.”
Dear God, no. “Are you at home? Where are you?”
“Not home. The Mayfair.”
“Stay.” She was already out of her nightdress, into her clothes. “I’ll be there.”
“There’s no way from there. There’s no way for you to come tonight.”
“I’ll be there. I’ll come.”
She rang another number. “I’ve got to get to London. Now. Right now.”
“What? That’s impossible, honey. It’s the middle of the night. The ferry’s schedule—”
“I don’t care about the ferry’s schedule. I don’t want the ferry. I need a plane.”
An even more frenzied “What? But one can’t land—”
“Something can. Something. Come on. You know there’s some stretch, of land or water. Get Enrique.”
“He’s a stunt pilot, honey. Why? For God’s sakes!”
“I need a stunt. You can do anything, Daddy, anything. And please don’t waste time asking questions.”
“But—”
“Or arguing. If you don’t get someone, I will, it’ll just take a lot longer. So please.”
Half an hour later the little seaplane came down on a stretch of moonlit water not far from the sand. She paid a fisherman a huge sum to take her out in his boat to the plane, he saying what she was paying was much too much, and she saying nothing is too much.
She felt she was being blown into the plane more than just heaving herself up and in with the help of the pilot’s outstretched arm. The plane took her to the mainland and a small airport and a jet. Thence to London City Airport and a helicopter to London’s center and the hotel, where the helicopter hovered above the roof. The pilot yelling over the noise about the rope ladder, not substantial but not too long and that would get her to within a couple of feet of the roof, and for God’s sakes to be careful.
She reached over, planted a kiss on his cheek, gave him a smile and a thumbs-up. She twirled more than climbed down the ladder and dropped to where two hotel valets stood, arms up to grab at her. Then running to the roof door, hauling it open, down one flight, then two, three, to the corridor and the door of the room, where she stopped to draw in breath and thank them.
The Old Success Page 11
