The Dirty Duck

by Martha Grimes

  Before Lasko started going through the drawers, he said to Jury. “Why don’t you have a little talk with the landlady?” His eyes were imploring.

  “Sure,” said Jury. As long as he was here . . .

  • • •

  Mrs. Mayberry was fortifying herself with a cup of tea in the breakfast room-cum-parlor. One weak bulb glowed thriftily in the rose-shaded lamp on the sideboard. The sideboard told him he’d been right about breakfast: cereal boxes sat in a row beside a brace of tiny juice glasses that would provide one large swallow apiece. There were three round tables, each with its complement of mismatched chairs, and each with its centerpiece of mismatched condiments. Mustard for breakfast?

  “On the Saturday she came,” said Mrs. Mayberry. “Came at the same time as the man and wife in Number Ten. I don’t mean together; she didn’t know them.”

  “Did she get friendly with any of the others while she was here?”

  “Well, now, I don’t know, do I? I don’t mix with my guests. In the morning I’m in the kitchen. One’s got to look sharp these days to see breakfast’s done proper and the rooms cleaned and so forth. We’ve got to do the cooked breakfasts up in advance, the eggs and such, as they will all come in at the same time, won’t they? Even though we serve from seven-thirty. Spot on nine they all troop in—” She pushed her frizzy hair off her forehead and shook and shook her head. “My checkout time’s eleven and the linen’s got to be changed—”

  Feeling as if he were being interviewed for a job, Jury cut in on her: “I’m sure it’s very difficult. But there must have been someone here who passed the time of day with Miss Bracegirdle.”

  “Maybe she talked with my Patsy who waits at table and does some of the upstairs work. Called in sick today, she did, and I felt like sacking her.”

  Jury interrupted this recounting of domestic problems: “Did she take any phone calls while she was here?”

  “No, none I know of. You might ask Patsy that. She answers a lot of the time.”

  The guest register, which Mrs. Mayberry had been rather proud to bring in from the little hall table, was open in front of Jury. Looking down at the small but florid signature of Gwendolyn Bracegirdle, he said, “Sarasota, Florida.”

  “That’s right, Florida.” She fingered the bottle of catsup. “I get lots of them from Florida. Of course, lately there’ve been a lot of British going to Florida. It’s ever so cheap, they tell me. I wouldn’t mind a bit of a holiday myself, but as you can see, there’s so much business here that I never do get away—”

  “We’ll have to talk with the other guests here, Mrs. Mayberry. There’s evidence that Miss Bracegirdle was with someone when she met with her, ah, accident.”

  Her face was a sheet of horror. “Here? You’re not saying—”

  “Not saying anything. We’re just gathering information.”

  But the thought that she might be giving bed and breakfast to a murderer was, to her, not the issue: “The Diamond Hill Guest House isn’t going to be in the papers, now is it? Nothing’s ever happened here . . .”

  It brought back to Jury his own consoling words to Farraday that nothing ever happened in Stratford.

  “We try to keep things out of the papers.”

  “Well, I should certainly think the Diamond Hill Guest House shouldn’t have to have its good name besmirched . . . It certainly wouldn’t do my business any good. Even with travel so expensive these days, the Americans still come. Stratford’s just as popular, more popular, than ever. In tourist season, it’s—excuse my language, it’s hell.”

  Jury gave her a level look. “It certainly was for Miss Bracegirdle.”

  • • •

  “We’d like you to sign this, please, madam,” said Lasko, who came down a few minutes later. The Scene of Crimes man had left with a suitcase full, presumably, of the effects of Gwendolyn Bracegirdle. “We’ve sealed off her room, of course.”

  “Sealed!” Mrs. Mayberry was indignant. “But I’ve got people booked into that room.”

  Blood running in the streets of Stratford should not interfere with custom.

  “Not until we’ve had time to give that room a much more thorough going-over.” Lasko pocketed the pen with which she’d signed the release form.

  “Isn’t that a fine thing, then! What am I supposed to tell them, I’d like to know?”

  Mildly, Lasko said, “Why not tell them the last roomer got herself sliced up with a razor?”

  • • •

  The broad steps and the lobby of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre were packed so tightly with playgoers, Jury bet there wasn’t an empty seat in the house and that some of the Standing-Room-Onlys had already ferreted out his empty seat and were making for it right now.

  Melrose Plant was squashed into a corner of the bar that catered to the Dress Circle crowd.

  He handed Jury a cognac and said, “I had the foresight to order the drinks before the curtain went up.”

  Jury drank the small portion in one or two swallows. “Curtain’s going down. Come on.”

  Despite Plant’s mumbled complaints about missing the second half of a very good Hamlet, it was clear he was only too happy to thread his way through the crowd after Jury, even though he didn’t know where they were going, or to whom.

  The Where, he discovered, was straight Stratford-upon-Avon stuff: the Arden Hotel.

  The Whom was something else again.

  10

  “My friends,” said Valentine Honeycutt, his intense look suggesting he would love to number Jury and Plant among them, “call me Val.”

  “Mine,” said Melrose, “call me Plant.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Honeycutt, with a small shiver of excitement. “You go by just a last name? You must be hideously important!”

  “Hideously,” said Melrose, as he put his silver-knobbed stick across the table by his chair.

  Valentine Honeycutt redistributed the folds of the daffodil ascot that bloomed in the V of his candy-striped shirt done in pencil-thin lines of green and yellow. His blue linen jacket must have been chosen to complement his sky-blue eyes. All in all, looking at him was like taking a stroll through an Elizabethan knott garden. He crossed one perfectly creased trouser leg over the other in the way of one given to conversing largely through body language. “What can I do for you gentlemen? Care for a smoke?” His hand made an arc with his silver case.

  “Mr. Honeycutt,” said Jury, “we’ve come to inquire about this tour you manage—”

  “Honeysuckle Tours, that’s right. Sort of a play on my own name and also because our office is in Atlanta, Georgia. Honeysuckle vines and all that. Every June for six weeks it’s London, Amsterdam, the English countryside and London again. Stratford’s always on the agenda. Americans dote on it. The theatre and all.”

  “Six weeks. Sounds expensive.”

  “It is.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve some rather bad news for you.”

  Honeycutt’s whitish-blond eyebrows arched over his innocent blue eyes as he reared back slightly. He looked a little like an angel who’d stumbled on a hole in his cloud. “Has something happened?”

  “Afraid so. To one of your group. A Miss Bracegirdle—”

  “Gwendolyn?”

  “Yes. A rather serious accident. Miss Bracegirdle’s dead.”

  “Dead! Dear God! I know she was complaining about pains in—but you said ‘accident.’ ”

  “She was murdered.”

  Honeycutt seemed pulled by invisible hands from the chintzy chair in which he had arranged himself like a bouquet. “What? I don’t understand—”

  It seemed easy enough to understand to Jury. “What were you doing last night, Mr. Honeycutt?”

  Honeycutt was looking from one of them to the other with such seeming lack of comprehension that Jury wondered how the man ever managed a railway guide. “Me? Well, I was at the theatre. Like everyone else, I imagine.”

  “With anyone?”

  “No. No, I went by myself. As You
Like It. It was . . .” The voice trailed off.

  Jury was afraid for a moment he was going to tell them the story by way of establishing an alibi. “We thought perhaps you might be able to throw some light on Miss Bracegirdle’s friends—anyone in Stratford she knew, that sort of thing.”

  He found his voice long enough to say, “No. No.”

  “How about on the tour itself?”

  Honeycutt was smoking with quick little jabs. “Oh, God, this is going to be hell for the tour. Wait until Donnie finds out—that’s my partner. In Atlanta.”

  Jury wished people would leave off thinking about business. “Whom was she especially friendly with on your tour? Did you know her well yourself?”

  That brought a very quick response. “No! I mean, no better than the others.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  Regaining a bit of his composure, he said, “Well . . . yesterday, I think.”

  “You don’t keep close tabs on your clientele.”

  “Lord, no! Sometimes I don’t see them for days at a time. Honeysuckle is not at all the usual sort of tour. For one thing, a person must, quite honestly, be just this side of filthy rich to take it—”

  Jury interrupted. “Including Miss Bracegirdle?”

  Honeycutt had revived enough to give a little snort of laughter. “Of course Miss Bracegirdle.”

  “But she was staying at a B-and-B. The Diamond Hill Guest House.”

  “Oh, that makes no odds. She chose to. That, you see, is another unusual thing about our tour. One thing we do not do is book the whole lot into some perfectly dreadful hotel months and months in advance. Our clientele choose their own place, with guidance from us. And we, of course, do the scullery-girl drudge-work” (he began to twinkle again) “and arrange the bookings. Old Gwen wanted to get down to the rough-and-tumble, wanted to think she was staying with the plain folks . . . well, you know what I mean. In other words, she didn’t want the Hilton—much too American, she said. So we fixed her up at that rather seedy little Bed-and-Breakfast.” He shrugged. “Yet she was quite rich. Millionairess, unless I miss my guess. Oh. Is that too hideously sexist?” He turned the twinkle on Melrose Plant.

  “Hideously.”

  “Well, all I can say is Gwen had lolly up to her earlobes. One must, as I said. Honeysuckle’s nearly as expensive as the QE-Two, believe it or not. We advertise only in quality magazines. Country Life over here. In the States, The New Yorker. Believe me, we’re not one of those tarted-up tours where they shove twenty or thirty on a broken-down bus. We have a coach, of course, but a very new one, wide seats and a bar for food and drinks. We offer all sorts of options if one gets tired of being bused about. For example, if one wants to motor from London (or anywhere else) I see to a car rental and make sure the little dear is properly stuffed behind the wheel and point him in the right direction. We have a very personal approach, and I think more of my fellowman than to pretend an hotel that has tinned tomato soup for starters is serving haute cuisine. We’re strictly five-star Michelin when it comes to food.”

  Jury smiled. “Because you think more of your fellowman, Mr. Honeycutt?”

  “More of four thousand quid, then,” said Honeycutt, returning Jury’s smile with a glowing one of his own. “And more of myself than to be always herding this lot on and off old bangers of buses and leading them in and out of museums and galleries, installing them—and me—in roach-ridden hotels where fish and chips constitute the comestibles, or one of those absolutely ghastly islands in the Caribbean where the flies revolve but the fans don’t and the only palms are the ones stuck out for tips—no, no, my dear, no thank you. We strive for some balance between dependence and independence for our customers. They are free to spend their time as they like, buying out the shops or spending ten hours over dinner or whatever. The Farradays, for instance—the lovely man is loaded—wouldn’t be caught dead without their mod cons and pools and bars—”

  “That’s another thing. When did you last see the Farraday boy?”

  “James Carlton? Umm.” Honeycutt studied Melrose Plant as he set his mind to this problem. “I believe it must have been Sunday or Monday. Monday, yes. Why? Little beggar scarper again?”

  “You’re not surprised?”

  He hooted. “He’s always wandering off and coming back with his clothes torn as if he’d been doing battle with a school of sharks. He’d win hands down. The daughter, Honey, she’s rather a deluxe little piece . . . Farraday hasn’t got the police looking for James Carlton?”

  Jury nodded. “Last time they saw him was at breakfast on Monday morning.”

  “It was Monday morning, I think. Early on Sheep Street. Well, I didn’t take any special note of him; he’s always round and about. Ask his sister, Penny. She’s the only one he really talks to. In some language of their own,” he added without much interest.

  “Had you seen Miss Bracegirdle with anyone, then? What about this George Cholmondeley? As he was unattached—”

  “Well, he certainly wasn’t attached to Old Gwen, my dears.” He bridled at the suggestion. And then added with a bit of a pout, “Amelia Farraday might have been a bit more his type.”

  “Harvey Schoenberg?”

  “My, you have got us all dead to rights, haven’t you?”

  Jury smiled. “Just asking. How about Schoenberg? He’s also got money, I take it?”

  “Has his own computer business. Have you any idea how much money there is in computers? Of course, Gwen knew him, but I can’t tell you if she was with—” Suddenly he seemed to have twigged it: “Look here, Superintendent. You’re not suggesting Gwen was done in by one of our—?” Immediately he dismissed the notion. “Preposterous.”

  “No, I wasn’t suggesting anything. Just casting about.” Jury stood, and Melrose Plant gathered up his stick. “But Honeysuckle Tours has some stiff competition.”

  With that comment, Honeycutt pretty much wilted on the vine. The yellow ascot withered, the linen jacket drooped. “Oh, dear.”

  “Hideous,” said Melrose Plant, when they were on the sidewalk again.

  “I agree,” said Jury. “How would you like to go along tomorrow and see the Dews? They’re staying at the Hathaway. I want to talk to this George Cholmondeley.”

  “Lady Dew,” said Melrose Plant. “Why is it I get stuck with the titled ones?”

  Jury smiled. “No less than you deserve. That Honeycutt. Wonder what his partner in Atlanta is like?”

  Melrose stopped in the dark street where the little sign of the Falstaff was just visible. “Don’t know. But I imagine you could lay them end to end.”

  11

  Chief Superintendent Sir George Flanders, one of Warwickshire’s Division Commanders, was a tall man who towered over Lasko, but not over Jury, although he tried. Sir George refused to sit down, refused even to remove his raincoat, as if these indications of impatience might stir his police forces to taking stronger action, might hurry them along toward a solution, even a spurious one. At least that’s the impression he gave, standing there glaring at the huge map of Stratford in the incidents room and talking about the American Embassy. He had made it quite clear that nearly twenty-four hours had passed without Lasko’s coming up with a solution. It was not a matter he wanted to have to report back to the American consul.

  Two matters. “A murder and a missing child,” said the Chief Superintendent for the umpteenth time, as if he might, like Macbeth’s witches, exorcise these dreadful occurrences through constant repetition. “A murder and a—”

  “There’s no reason to think the boy won’t turn up. He’s run off before. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he didn’t walk into the Hilton in the next few hours.” Lasko checked his digital watch as if to make them all stop here until his prediction proved true. “No reason to connect up the two—”

  “Of course not,” said Sir George, with a rather dreadful smile at his detective sergeant: “What it might be is two murders.” His look was lethal.

  Lasko, pe
rhaps in some attempt to match Sir George’s own disinclination to undress, was still wearing his bowler hat. It was pushed down over his forehead. “Now it’s certainly early days to be—”

  “Early days? Tell that to the American Embassy. These are Americans, man,” he repeated, as if Lasko hadn’t got nationalities sorted out. “It is only by the grace of God and the British press that we’ve kept the damned thing quiet this long. I shudder to think how the American tourists in this town would react—” And he shuddered, as if a demonstration might spur everyone on.

  Jury refrained from suggesting that English blood ran just as red and that Americans were no strangers to rape, assault, murder, and kidnapping, although he had to agree that the American press was spot on and fulsomely reporting these events almost before they happened.

  As if reading Jury’s mind, Sir George swiveled his head—a very handsome gray-haired and -moustached one—around to Jury. “And after I finished with the consul, I was on the phone a goodish time talking to your chief . . . what’s his name?”

  “Racer.”

  “Yes, Racer. You know, we didn’t call on your CID for assistance, Mr. Jury.”

  “I know,” said Jury, smiling. Lasko would have to explain his recent attachment to the Stratford CID.

  From under his hat, Lasko said, “I asked Superintendent Jury to go talk to the Farradays because Farraday was raising such hell about country cops and where in the bloody hell was Scotland Yard? They think the only police force in the world outside the FBI is Scotland Yard. They never heard of the French Sûreté, or the—”

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” said Sir George, his palms raised to ward off a journey round the world’s police forces. “Mr. Jury’s kindly lending a hand. However—” Again he turned to Jury. “—your chief’s a bit upset you’re involving yourself unofficially—”