The Dirty Duck

by Martha Grimes

  “I don’t know,” said Jury. “I only know that the two who were murdered in Stratford and the missing boy were all on this same tour.”

  Racer snorted. “And did you tell the press that, Jury? They’ve been running up and down the M-40 like lemmings.”

  “I don’t talk to the press. I leave that to you.”

  “Well, somebody damn well talked! Probably those bloody swedes in Stratford.”

  Jury shifted impatiently in his chair, reaching down to pet the cat, who apparently shared their feelings about Racer. “I think it would be best if Sergeant Wiggins and I were permitted to get on with it before there’s another murder,” he said calmly.

  “Another murder? What do you mean by that?”

  “That the murderer isn’t through yet. The message hasn’t been fully delivered.”

  Racer’s eyebrows knotted. “Explain that, will you?”

  “Well, you’ve seen those lines of poetry. Two lines left with the Bracegirdle woman’s body; two with the Farraday girl’s. In that one stanza he’s got three lines to go.” And to send Racer’s blood pressure up a bit, Jury added, “Then he can start a new stanza, of course.”

  The idea of a string of murders as long as a string of pearls or a twelve-stanza poem apparently could even make Racer see reason.

  “You think there’s going to be another murder.” He looked from Jury to Wiggins and back again. “Then why the hell are you two sitting here wasting my time? Get the lead out.”

  22

  Thought I didn’t know what she was doing, didn’t she? Amelia Blue Farraday stood outside one of Soho’s more popular strip joints, looking at the lifesized posters. It’s where she’d of wound up, place like this, thought Amelia, looking perhaps longer than she actually needed to in order to placate the devils of lust and degradation walking the streets—

  “ ’Ello, love.”

  “Just lookin’?”

  The questions came from a lanky fellow with slicked-back hair and his chunky friend standing next to him cracking his knuckles. “Show you a good time, we could.”

  Amelia looked them over. Back in Georgia you stepped on this kind when it slithered across your shoe. Amelia did not bother to answer. Nor did she bother to try and walk around them; that would be like giving place. She simply reached out, pushed the two apart, and walked on down Soho Street.

  Just as well she’s dead, thought Amelia. Just as well. She’d’ve let those two crumbs take her for all she was worth. And with that unrepentant and unremorseful thought, Amelia stopped before another giant hoarding outside a cheap movie house. I’d of seen her plastered on posters all up and down Second Avenue. Good God, that child would stop at nothing. . . .

  Bored with lemonade and beer on the veranda, bored with James C.’s clumsy lovemaking, Amelia had taken up with what she called “casuals”—just the first man who came along. But she’d done it for pleasure, not money—though of course there’d been the little gift here and there—not like Honey Belle, out there selling herself, no better’n a common whore. Honey Belle’d turned out just like her old man, that no-good, two-timing bastard that thought he was God’s gift.

  The seedy-looking crowd flowed around her as she did her drumroll walk on through Soho, and she knew some of the jostling wasn’t accidental. She tossed her yellow hair—she still wore it long, no matter that little runt of a beautician told her, Sweetie, it adds years to you. Her hair’d always been white-blond and her crowning glory. No little London fag hairdresser was going to fool with it. Toss it up on top of her head and put combs in it and she looked like a queen.

  Amelia was bored with the strip joints and the blue-movie houses and the cheap Chink restaurants. It was just that she was damned if she’d sit through even one more play with those fools on Honeysuckle Tours and equally damned if she’d be chained to her room at that snooty hotel. White gloves and bowing and scraping. She was glad James C. had money but she was no snob. Glad he had money, but oh, the dear lord, if only he hadn’t got those two kids. Not even his kids, that’s what Amelia couldn’t understand. Vaguely, she wondered where the boy had gone off to. Wished he’d stay away. She knew they both hated her guts but she could care less. She had James C. and the money and if they thought they could do her out of that, they were crazy. . . .

  It looked like a whole wall of males walking toward her now—four of them, leering already, even before they got a good look. One big collective leer, and an assortment of obscenities, uttered in that guttural Cockney or whatever it was, that made them swallow their syllables (“. . . look a’ the knobs o’ tha’ ’un, Jake. . . . Ooooo . . .”). They hardly had the time to get even this much out before Amelia’s bosom plowed right through them, with a little help from an elbow in the ribs. She didn’t bother to look back when the tone of the remarks changed; she was used to it. The whole exchange barely registered; she went on with her interior monologue regarding Honey Belle. . . .

  When that awful little man who claimed he was a detective had tried to blackmail her, Amelia had paid him off, read the report on Honey Belle, and burned it. She never did know who put the man on the girl’s trail, but God help her if James C. ever got wind of what that girl was up to: dirty pictures, dirty movies, the works. Though James C. hadn’t much room to talk, that was for sure: not after she’d caught him nearly with his pants down, and Honey Belle right there in the bedroom. Alley cat, that’s what the girl was. All her daddy’s fault; she was—had been—just like him.

  Amelia wasn’t looking for action in Soho; she just felt like slumming for a bit before going to meet George. A private club off Berkeley Square. That sounded more like her class of place, from the little she knew of the different London areas. Near the hotel.

  Tired of walking, she hailed a cab, collapsed into the seat and tossed her shoes off. God, but walking in this city was hard on the arches. She massaged her feet. He let her out on the square, grumbled at her tip—Up yours, fella—and sped off into the night.

  Christ, no manners, these Brits. Think just because you’re American you can pick it off trees. . . .

  Amelia started across the square, humming. Of course it was before her time, but hadn’t there been an old song about a nightingale singing in Berkeley Square? Must’ve been First World War. Didn’t her pa used to sing it, sometimes? Amelia heard bird-twitter and stopped to look up at the inky lace of the trees. On a bench by the walk, a drunk snored, huddled under his coat as if it were January instead of July. It had been a long time since she’d thought of her folks, thought of Pa. He was up in heaven somewhere, sleeping it off, like the drunk back there. Nothing but itinerant farmhands they’d been, though of course she’d made up a more suitable background when she’d met James C. Had to hand it to him, though; he wasn’t a snob. But even James C. might stick at marrying what a lot of folks still called white trash. Amelia’s chin went up. You had to survive in this world. And you had to have some fun while doing it. She swung along, the huge bag she’d got in Nassau last year slung over her shoulder. Fun was what life was all about, wasn’t it? Was it her fault if she couldn’t feel sadder over Honey Belle’s death? It was the hand of Fate, that’s all. You die like you live, that’s all. So some sex maniac got loose in that twirpy little town and happened to pick on two females from the same tour—Amelia’s skin went a little clammy. If her husband, if James C. had happened to find out about Honey Belle, or for that matter, Amelia—that was ridiculous. She walked on, more slowly. Still, how did she know she could trust that detective not to go to him and offer to sell the information? As a matter of fact, she thought, how do I know James C. didn’t hire that man? . . . and maybe did the same to me? Once again, she stopped dead in her tracks. She took herself firmly in hand: Amelia Blue Farraday, you just got chiggers up your li’l ol’ ass, honey. Ridiculous. Her life force once more restored and flowing, she resumed her stroll through Berkeley Square.

  Or started to. The square was deathly still, there was no one else taking the air this night, and th
at birdsong halted, started, halted again, almost as if it were noting her progress.

  The arm that suddenly came round her throat and dragged her neck back was clothed in old wool. Before she felt something bite into her neck, she had time for one vagrant thought: You die like you live.

  • • •

  A small clutch of police officers stood in Berkeley Square.

  Access to the park was cut off by barricades at the entrances and police constables directing the foot traffic. Told to move it along, passersby naturally stayed. Within ten minutes, a necklace of the curious surrounded the square. In another fifteen minutes, they were six deep. Motorists were driving by slowly enough to create a hell of a snarl; many were parking and getting out to rubberneck. Within twenty minutes after the police arrived, it looked as if half of London had descended upon Berkeley Square.

  • • •

  Jury looked down at the red pantsuit that had once been white. A proper job The Slasher had done of her, he thought. There wasn’t much left that was recognizable except for that mop of pale yellow hair, which had, amazingly enough, escaped soaking, perhaps because of the slant of the head after the throat had been cut. The grass around was rusty-brown and still tacky. A long vertical slash ran from shoulder blade down the length of the torso exposing the stomach wall and organs.

  Wiggins looked at Jury. “Same as the ones in Stratford, sir?”

  Jury nodded. To the Scene of Crimes officer he said, “What have you found so far?”

  The man turned to Jury, looking at him over the top of his notebook.

  “Guts,” he said calmly. He looked almost spiffy in a well-tailored, appropriately funereal dark suit.

  “I can see that. The blood must have gone everywhere—”

  The Scene of Crimes man nodded. “Including all over the killer.” He nodded over his shoulder. “We found an old coat in the dustbin over there.”

  “Anything else? Some sort of message, maybe?”

  “Good guessing, Superintendent. There was part of a theatre program. As You Like It. Give me a moment and you and the doc can have the lot.” He finished up his note-taking and the photographer his pictures.

  The pathologist was kneeling beside the body; he handed up a page torn from the front of the program, blood-smeared.

  “What is it?” asked Wiggins.

  Jury read the single line: “ ‘Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.’ ”

  “Is it the end of that poem?” asked Wiggins.

  “No. There are two more lines.”

  Farraday managed to stand on his feet when Jury told him. He reminded Jury of a cliff’s edge eroded again and again by an onslaught of seawater. One wondered when it would crumble. Not yet, apparently.

  Penny Farraday walked backward into the shadows and then turned and ran to the bathroom. Jury could hear the sounds of retching. He wished he could help her; he was too busy trying to deal with Farraday.

  Farraday, his face as drained as if a knife had let his own blood, managed to bring the brandy snifter Jury had handed him up to his lips. His hand was shaking violently. His mouth worked a little; he finally said, “When did it happen?”

  “The doctor says last night, early this morning. Sometime about midnight, probably.”

  “Why’d it take so long—?” The voice sounded strangled.

  Jury finished the question for him. “So long for the body to be found? Whoever did it hid the body pretty well, under a clump of shrubbery. It was a woman out walking her two dogs who found her. She wouldn’t have, except the dogs were snuffling the bushes. We didn’t get there until nearly ten this morning.”

  Farraday seemed to have lost interest in the explanation halfway through. He ran his hand down over his face like a man whose eyes had been hurt from staring too long into the sun.

  Jury disliked thinking that if Farraday were putting on an act, it was a damned convincing one. Whoever was doing this was certainly narrowing the suspects. A grim thought. But who else could it be except someone in this tour group? Unless it was a person completely unknown to Jury who had followed Honeysuckle Tours.

  “Do you think you can talk about it? Or do you want me to come back?”

  In answer, Farraday turned his head, looking back to the doorway through which Penny had gone. “How’s Penny?”

  “I’ll get her, if you want—”

  “No, no. Listen. You might as well know it, you’d find it out anyway. Things between me and Amelia, they weren’t all that hot.”

  Meaning absolutely rotten. He refilled the brandy glass from an assortment of bottles on the table beside the couch and handed it to Farraday.

  “Thanks.” He drank some more and a little blood suffused his gray face. “I wanted her to stay in last night. Go to dinner with me, Simpson’s maybe, and then just stay in. But she wouldn’t.” He cleared his throat.

  “Why?”

  “Amelia don’t like just to sit around . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Jury didn’t want to say what he was thinking: Not even after the murder of her own daughter?

  Farraday said it for him. “My God, wouldn’t you’d’ve thought that after Honey Belle—?” He shook his head and whispered it: “As God is my witness, I don’t think she gave much of a damn. Oh, I know it don’t—didn’t—bother her that Jimmy’s missing. She never made no bones about him and Penny, the way she felt about them. But Honey Belle—that’s her own flesh. I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

  “Do you think she had a more particular reason for wanting to go out than plain boredom?”

  Farraday looked up at him. “A man, you mean?”

  Unhappily, Jury nodded.

  • • •

  “Mr. Plant?” said the young woman at Brown’s reception desk. “I believe he went out with the gentleman in—” Her eyes drifted so imperceptibly over the cards that Jury had the feeling they never left his face. “—Room 106. Mr. Schoenberg.” She smiled. She was a very pretty woman.

  “What time did they leave, do you know?” Jury returned the smile.

  “Well, I’d say somewhere near nine o’clock.”

  Jury wished that all of the staff at Brown’s could pinpoint the comings and goings of its clientele with such accuracy. “You may have heard. There’s been an unfortunate—accident—”

  That she had heard was clear from the brief nod, the more sober arrangement of features. A remarkably well-trained staff, thought Jury. Whatever their private amazements, excitements, or thrills, they’d keep themselves to themselves. “This Mrs. Farraday left the hotel last night, latish. Were you here?”

  The young woman shook her head, perhaps more saddened that she hadn’t been there to supply the Superintendent with more information than by the thought of a guest’s untimely demise. “That would have been the night receptionist—” She made as if to pick up the telephone. “—Would you like me to call her?”

  Jury shook his head. “Just ask her to call me if she remembers anything about Mrs. Farraday.” He dropped a card on the desk. “This Mr. Schoenberg. Harvey. Do you have a booking for his brother?”

  Again the discreet eyes flicked through some cards. “We do, yes. There’s a Mr. Jonathan Schoenberg expected this afternoon.” The light green eyes regarded him hopefully, as if she had finally given up some information he could use.

  “Thanks. You’ve been most kind.” Jury smiled again.

  The eyes became slightly less discreet.

  23

  A trip through history with Harvey L. Schoenberg was like following a horse with blinders on. The horse could see everything straight ahead, and as long as it did not have to interpret its position by putting it in the context of views to the left and right, it did its job. Indeed, it did wonderfully well—knew every cobble in the street, every turn of the road, every lamppost.

  “Traitors’ Gate,” said Harvey, rapturously, still talking about the view they had had of it, looking across the massive arches of Tower Bridge. They were now standing on the Southwark s
ide of the River Thames, having been deposited, at Harvey’s insistence, right on the other end of the new London Bridge. “Imagine the heads that were stuck up there!”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d sooner not. Public executions and the like never appealed to me. Neither did bear-baiting.”

  “Oh, come on, Mel! Where’s your sense of history?”

  “In my stomach.”

  But Harvey refused to allow any dampening of the spirit, although he was not averse to a dampening of thirst. “Let’s find a pub. Right here, nearly where we’re standing, was the Bear Tavern, a very popular place.” Harvey had faced round, and was pointing off. “Over there was Tooley Street—”

  “Over there is still Tooley Street, unless my eyes deceive me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but I’m trying to tell you how it was, back when Marlowe walked these streets. There were a bunch of pubs up this way—”

  “I’m sure there still are.”

  “—There was even a Black Swan here; north of St. Thomas’s Hospital—”

  “There is always a Black Swan. There are Black Swans the entire length and breadth of the British Isles.”

  Harvey sighed and folded the old map of Southwark he’d been consulting. They commenced walking up Southwark Street. Harvey shook his head, a man who cannot understand other men. “You’re just not into the spirit of this little pilgrimage, Mel.”

  “I thought we were going to Deptford. To Mistress Bull’s tavern, where this iniquitous murder took place.”

  “We are, we are. But we’ve got to have a walk around Southwark. Think of all the time Marlowe spent here.” They had walked down a flight of stone steps and now stood looking up at the imposing facade of Southwark Cathedral. Schoenberg consulted his map, hitching the Ishi farther up on his shoulder. “This was the Church of St. Mary Overies. You know that story? Real sad. Over there was the Stews.”

  “Stews?”

  “Red light district. Southwark was a real cesspool. Criminals used to run over here from the City so they wouldn’t be prosecuted—kind of like someone in the U.S. running from one state to another. I wonder where Hog Lane is. That’s the place where Kit had the duel with Bill Bradley.”