Help the Poor Struggler

by Martha Grimes

  But Macalvie, who had seemed determined not to temper bad humor with good, was actually smiling. It was probably a relief to him to find somebody who wasn’t afraid of him, even if she was only a skinny young kid.

  “And then she stormed out. I never saw her again.” The look he gave Jury was woeful. “It was the only case I never solved.”

  He wanted Jury to think that was the source of the unhappy look. Jury didn’t.

  II

  They had been sitting there for a couple of minutes, in a small pocket of silence not shared by the regulars who were being treated to the wonderful voice of Loretta Lynn. Unfortunately, the coalminer’s daughter had to make way to the voice-over of Freddie, behind the bar wiping glasses and singing about how she too once had to go to the well to draw water.

  Macalvie yelled at her, “The last time you ever drank anything but booze was when they tossed you in Cranmere Bog.”

  “What about the little one, Teresa?”

  “What about her?”

  “If you’re right —”

  Raised eyebrows. If?

  “Then why in hell did the killer leave a witness behind?”

  That this could be a hole in his theory did not seem to bother Macalvie at all. He could, apparently, plug it up like a finger in a dike. “Say because the guy was sure Teresa couldn’t tie him to her mother. Maybe Teresa didn’t see him, or at least didn’t know his name, or for a dozen reasons she simply wouldn’t be able to point a finger at him. And if it were a crime of passion, it’s possible that he couldn’t see his way to killing a five-year-old, too.”

  “And the five-year-old? Could she have gone after her mum with a knife? Did you ever suspect her?”

  The look Macalvie gave Jury could have carved him in pieces. “No, I always do thing by halves, Jury. I’m a sloppy cop. I didn’t even notice the trail of blood she left all the way from the kitchen to the phone and all the blood over her nightie and on the phone —” He waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t be an asshole, will you? Of course, little kids can wig out. She didn’t do it.” He was silent for a while. Then he said, “I went to the hospital. It was obvious, at least in the mumbo-jumbo land of shrinkdom, that she didn’t stand much chance of getting well. Her mind seemed to have split. Catatonic and curled up like a fetus. Anyway, they finally moved Teresa to Harbrick Hall. Ever heard of it? They call it ‘Heartbreak Hall.”

  Jury had heard of it. It was one of those places he wished he hadn’t. “I was there once.”

  “And you’re almost cured?”

  Jury ignored the sarcasm, thinking of Harbrick Hall. One of those cozy, innocent-sounding names that in no way reflected its huge, understaffed, overfull hospital. Endless corridors, bolted doors, grilles. The sickly, sour smell of urine and ammonia, and the gray-garbed janitor with mop and pail in a corridor awash in hopelessness.

  Macalvie went on: “The place is so big you could get lost just trying to find your way out. Anyway, Teresa Mulvanney supposedly had got a little better. No, she wasn’t talking. She never talked. But at least she wasn’t lying curled up like a baby. The Paki attendant ‘very proud’ of Teresa’s ‘progress.’ Progress. You know what her progress was?”

  From Macalvie’s tone, Jury didn’t think he wanted to know. Right now, he couldn’t get the faces of Simon Riley and Davy White out of his mind. They seemed to merge and separate and break apart, like little faces behind mullioned and rained-on windowpanes.

  “Fingerpainting,” said Macalvie. “The Paki couldn’t understand why ‘she only like the red pot.’ ”

  “Drop it.” He blotted out the image of fingerpaints by trying to concentrate on the Irish singer someone had mercifully found on the jukebox. Jury was sure his display of weakness would earn him a surly answer.

  But all Macalvie said was, “I did.” He looked at his watch. “But Mary, the sister, couldn’t, could she?” He turned to look at the jukebox from which came the lovely and mournful dirge:

  I love you as I never loved before,

  Since first I met you on the village green . . .

  Macalvie was taking money out of his wallet and was out of his chair as quick as a cat. In one long movement, he tossed the money on the table of the man who’d slotted the ten p in the box and then he walked over and pulled the plug before the singer could finish “as I loved you, when . . .”

  Freddie tossed down her bar-towel and started over; the man who’d played the song was bigger than Macalvie and getting out of his chair. Knowing that Macalvie — outsized, outweighed, or outnumbered — wouldn’t hesitate to shove the man right back down again, Jury started to get up. Damned idiot. Couldn’t he remember he was a cop?

  Apparently, he could. The jukebox was in the public bar and so were Macalvie and his newfound friends; Jury couldn’t hear what he said, but Macalvie was shoving his wallet in the big one’s face and smiling. Freddie was standing with her hands on her skinny hips. The party at the table got their coats together pretty quickly, and Macalvie turned to Freddie, who gave him a bar-towel in the face.

  At least that pleased the regulars who were on their way out. Macalvie just shrugged and came back to sit down.

  “Pulling rank? That could be dangerous down at headquarters,” said Jury.

  That earned him an uncomprehending stare. Dangerous for Macalvie? “I don’t pull rank, buddy.” His elbow on the table, he turned his watch so Jury could see it. “You never heard of the licensing laws? I just told them Freddie had to close early and asked if anyone was in a condition to drive, seeing all the cider they’d put down.” He picked up his and Jury’s pints and strolled across the pub, which they now had to themselves.”

  • • •

  Except, of course, for Freddie, who was filling the pints and Macalvie’s ear with her opinion of him. It followed him across the room, silenced only by his turning and saying — Elvis done with, he didn’t have to yell — “I’d of run you into Princetown years ago, Freddie, except I’ve got a certain respect for the murderers and psychos there.”

  He slammed down the pints, waterfalling the cider down the glasses as Freddie went to answer the telephone. “Christ, what a stupid old broad. That ‘Freddie’ doesn’t stand for ‘Frederika,’ or any girl’s name. Stands for ‘Fred.’ The mum and dad must’ve wanted a boy; they’d have settled for a girl; they got a mineral.” He drank his cider.

  “Telephone, me anzum,” fluted Freddie.

  “She must mean you, Jury. She’d never call me that.”

  It was Inspector Neal, who had tracked him down through Kendall. What he had to report about his end of the investigation was very little. But a Chief Superintendent Racer had called and asked — well, demanded was a better word — that Jury report to him. And how was he getting on with Divisional Commander Macalvie?

  “Swell,” said Jury. “Friendly guy.”

  “That’s a first,” said Neal, and hung up.

  Jury went back to the table and started to collect his coat. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy sitting around with you, but we’ve got two murders on our hands.”

  “One’s mine. Don’t be greedy, Jury.”

  “One’s yours. I’d never know it. You can sit here and drink the night away and yell at Freddie. I’m going back to Dorchester.”

  “Can you just sit down a minute and shut up. Do you think I’m relaxing in the Victorian splendor of this roach-ridden flashhouse because I want to? Why in hell do you think I’ve been talking about the Mulvanney murder?”

  “Because you’re obsessed with it, maybe?”

  Macalvie didn’t rise to the bait. “Because in my gut, I know there’s a connection.”

  As Jury asked him what, the door of the Help the Poor Struggler opened and shut behind them.

  “I think it just walked in.”

  He sounded sad.

  FIVE

  JURY would have recognized the prison pallor anywhere; he’d seen it often enough. It wasn’t the pale skin of a man who’d not seen enough of the sun. It was m
ore as if one had put a paintbrush to an emotion — despair, desolation, whatever — and tinged it in that sickly whitish-gray. The pallor was accentuated by the black clothes: chinos, roll-neck sweater, parka. Accentuated too by the dark hair and eyes. He was tall, understandably thin, handsome, and maybe in mourning for nineteen lost years.

  “Hullo, Sam,” said Macalvie.

  “I wondered who the car belonged to. I should’ve known.”

  Freddie came out from some inner room as if her antennae had at last picked up a welcome presence. “Sammy!” She flung herself against him so hard that Jury was surprised he didn’t hear bones breaking. She stepped back and gave Macalvie an evil look. Then to Sam, she said, “How are yuh, me dear?”

  “I’m fine, Freddie. Just waiting for the place to clear.”

  Macalvie, who always knew what everyone else was thinking, smiled. “I know. I cleared it. So sit down, Sammy.” With his foot, he shoved out a chair. And, as if they were on the best of terms, he said to her, “Freddie, bring the man some cider and go play Elvis. Just don’t play ‘Jailhouse Rock,’ okay? Or I’ll break your knees. Where’ve you been, Sam? You got out four days ago.”

  “You keeping track, Inspector? But it couldn’t be inspector now. You must be chief constable.”

  “I will be. Right now it’s commander. Or chief superintendent.”

  “Where’d you trip up?” asked Sam, as Freddie put down his pint. “Not over me, I hope.” But his smile was hopeless.

  “Who tripped up? You think I’m ambitious?”

  Sam Waterhouse’s laugh was so hearty that Freddie came out to check on things. She disappeared again.

  “What’ve you been doing?”

  “Seeing Dartmoor. Sleeping in an old tin-working or on the rocks. I like the moor. The way the mist comes up, the whole damned world disappears. Ever been up on Hound Tor? Nice. On a clear day you can see Exeter and police headquarters forever. Why don’t you forget it, Macalvie?”

  “Read any papers lately, Sam?”

  Sam Waterhouse shifted uncomfortably in his chair and drank off nearly half of his pint. “Sure. The newsboy was flogging the Telegraph all over Dartmoor.”

  “Meaning you have,” said Macalvie. “Meet any other tourists?”

  Jury both could and couldn’t understand Sam Waterhouse’s anger. If you’d been in a high-security lockup on a trumped-up charge. Except Macalvie was the one who’d always believed in Sam’s innocence and who’d worked like hell to prove it.

  “I saw the papers. A boy was killed in Dorchester. What’s it to do with me?”

  “And another kid was killed in Wynchcoombe. You wouldn’t have read about that yet. Look. I’m not asking you for alibis.”

  “What are you asking for then?”

  Macalvie shook his head. “Not sure.”

  Jury was surprised Macalvie could say it.

  Sam Waterhouse took one of Jury’s cigarettes. He had the hoarse voice of a heavy smoker. Jury didn’t imagine nineteen years in Princetown would make a voice mellifluous.

  “You’re still trying to solve that case.” Sam shook his head.

  “It’s a blot on my career.” Macalvie’s smile did its quick little disappearing act. “Incidentally, you’re sitting next to a CID man from Scotland Yard.”

  “Richard Jury,” said Jury, embellishing upon Macalvie’s gracious introduction. He shook hands with Sam Waterhouse.

  “You can’t be working our mutual friend Macalvie’s manor? It’s mined.”

  “Jury’s working on the Dorchester case. It just happened to spill over into Devon.”

  “Too bad. But neither of them has sod-all to do with me.”

  “Has anyone accused you of anything?”

  “Where would I get that idea? I walk into Freddie’s, and who do I find but you, lying in wait.” He leaned closer. “Macalvie, doesn’t it occur to you that I want to forget about Rose Mulvanney?”

  “It had crossed my mind. That ‘other boyfriend’ she had —”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “She never mentioned any names?”

  Sam Waterhouse closed his eyes in pain. “Don’t you think I’d have damned well said if I knew of anyone else? I looked at her diary; I went through her desk. All that got me was a shadowy snapshot of some man. I asked her who it was and she said her uncle.” Sam shrugged.

  “Well, we didn’t find anything like that. Uncle must have taken diary, photos, and papers.”

  Sam’s eyes glittered with anger. “Look, all of this has been said and said again.” His face took on the look of the chronic loser. “For God’s sakes, haven’t you had any murders in Devon in the last nineteen years so you want to hook these up with the Mulvanney case?” Macalvie shook his head. “Then why here and why now?”

  “Revenge, Sam. At least, that’s what the papers —”

  Sam Waterhouse shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got a psychopath on your hands —”

  “I don’t think so. At least not in the sense you mean — that there’s no connection between the kids’ murders.”

  Freddie stomped in with a steaming plate of mutton, boiled potatoes and vegetables. She plunked it down in front of Sam and gave Macalvie an evil look as if he’d been the prison cook. Sam went at the food with a vengeance.

  Macalvie went on: “You’ve been out walking the moor for four days? Why?”

  “Because I’ve been in the nick for nineteen years and wanted to see a little open space. As soon I’m finished with this meal, you can slap the cuffs on me. I’ll go quietly, Commander.”

  “Well, arresting you’s not what I had in mind. You staying here?”

  “Probably. Freddie’s been like a mother to me.”

  Macalvie feigned surprise. “A mother? She’s not even female. What I was really waiting for was to talk to you. You could be helpful.”

  Waterhouse leaned back in his chair and laughed: it was a transforming laugh; Jury could see in his face the nineteen-year-old student of medicine. “Help the Devon-Cornwall constabulary? I think I’d go back to Princetown first.” That incandescent look of youth fell away like a falling star. “Even if I would ‘help,’ I couldn’t. I don’t know any more now than I did then. And I didn’t know anything then.”

  “How do you know?”

  Sam looked up from his plate. “Meaning what?”

  “You might know something that you didn’t connect with Rose’s murder, or you might know something you don’t know —”

  “I had nineteen years to think it over. Case closed.”

  “Let’s say I just reopened it.”

  III

  The Marine Parade

  SIX

  ANGELA Thorne had been told by her parents never to stay out after dark, never to miss her tea, never to walk along the Cobb, never to play along the shingle beach when the tide was coming in. Angela Thorne was presently engaged in doing them all, attended only by her dog, Mickey.

  Dark had come by five o’clock, and she was still out in it two hours later. Some of that time had been spent wandering aimlessly in the well-tended gardens above the Marine Parade. A further half-hour she’d spent going up and down several little flights of steps along the Parade and moving backward toward the stone wall to beat the running tide.

  She was presently breaking another injunction by walking along the dark arm of the Cobb that made a safe harbor for the little fishing boats, creaking out there in the wind and the water.

  Mickey puffed along behind her. He was a terrier and too fat because Angela kept feeding him scraps of food from her plate, disgusting things like mashed swede or blood pudding or skate that always looked to her like the clipped wing of some big bird. All Mickey was supposed to eat was dried dog food. He was old, and her parents were afraid he’d have a heart attack.

  She was tired of her parents and she hated her school. She hated nearly everything. Probably, it was because she wasn’t pretty, and having to wear this long braid and
hard shells of glasses. No one else at school had to wear thick glasses. Her classmates teased her constantly.

  Angela stopped far out on the Cobb to look back at the lights of Lyme Regis along the Marine Parade. She had never seen Lyme at night from this distance. She liked that unearthly glow of the lamps. The little town seemed light-lifted above the black sea.

  She wished it would fall in and drown. Angela didn’t like Lyme, either.

  The tattoo of Mickey’s paws scraping stone continued as Angela walked on. Mickey loved the sea. When the tide was out, he’d tear away from her like a bit of white cloth in the wind and chase the ruffs of waves as if he’d never felt freedom before, as if he were having the time of his life.

  II

  She took off her cape and threw it over the little girl. Better to freeze than have to look at the blood-soaked dress of the body on the black rocks. The small dog was hysterical — running to nose at the cape, then back to Molly, going dog-crazy.

  Standing on the high-piled rocks at the end of the Cobb, Molly Singer felt removed from the scene, a dream figure, looking down; a nonparticipant, the prying eye of some god.

  In the seamless merging of sea and sky she could find no horizon. There was a chalky moon, and the sky was hammered with stars. And a distance off were the lights along the Parade.

  Back and forth ran the dog. She would have to do something about the dog. Molly had a vision of the little girl and her dog, walking out along the Cobb, two dark silhouettes against the darker outline of the seawall.

  She would have to get the dog back to shore. She was freezing, but at least she couldn’t see the body now, which was the important thing.

  Holding on to the dog, which struggled in her arms, she picked her way over the rocks and back to the seawall. On one of the dogtags was the name of its cottage.