The Dirty Duck

by Martha Grimes

  “Anything for you. Fire away!” She put her knobbled hand over Jury’s.

  “Where were you last night?”

  “Where—?” For some reason, the implication of her being a suspect seemed to delight her; she laughed and slapped her thigh. “Wish I’d been out on the town, but there it is. I was all by my lonesome. In my room here.”

  “With Cyclamen?”

  “No. Cyclamen went to the play with Farraday and the girl. All by myself, like I said. No witnesses. Just up there whacking away at my razor-strap.”

  “It’s no joking matter. Aren’t you at all afraid?”

  “Would you be afraid if you’d just had three gins? And why would you think I’m afraid if you think I’m the guilty party? ‘Where were you last night?’ ” She parodied Jury’s low voice and intonation.

  “Assuming you aren’t, I should think you might feel queasy about three women on your tour having been murdered. Only the women, it seems.”

  “What about the boy, James Carlton? Do you think he’s another victim? Only the body’s not been found yet? Of course I’m afraid, you idiot. Why do think I’m down here drinking myself blind?” She motioned to the waiter for another cup.

  “You say your niece went to the theatre?”

  “Yes. Got back around eleven-thirty or midnight, so I can’t give her an alibi. Maybe the others can—Farraday and the girl, Penny.”

  “Would she be capable of crimes like these?”

  “Probably not. But I’d say the same about any of the others. There’s Farraday and Schoenberg and Cholmondeley. I couldn’t take odds on any of them. You don’t really think a woman did them, do you? It’s sex, take my word.”

  “There’s no evidence of that. And if there were—it could still be a woman, couldn’t it?”

  “Odd sort of woman.”

  “Decidedly odd. Tell me about your niece, Lady Dew.”

  At that, she let go of the hand she had reclaimed, let it drop with a thud on the table. “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “Sure you do.” She wouldn’t have made a good poker-player. Were it not for her stiffening defensiveness, Jury wouldn’t have had any particular reason for believing that Cholmondeley was right about Cyclamen Dew.

  When she said nothing, Jury prompted: “Gwendolyn Bracegirdle and Cyclamen were very friendly, according to some reports—”

  “A damned lie!”

  “What is?”

  “That Cyclamen’s—well, perverse.”

  “What about Miss Bracegirdle?”

  “I don’t speak ill of the dead,” she said with questionable self-righteousness.

  Jury smiled. Lady Dew would speak ill of anyone if it damned well suited her. All she needed was a little pushing. Although it was clear she wasn’t all that fond of her niece, still she would probably think it a blot on her own sexuality if a female Dew were queer. Jury pulled the roll of magazines from his pocket.

  “What’s that?”

  “Just some mags I was taking to a friend. The Dirty Squad cleaned up yesterday.”

  “ ‘Dirty Squad’? What’s that?”

  “Drugs and Pornography . . . Ah, ah!” Jury jerked them away as she outreached her arm. “Police evidence.”

  “Said you were taking them to a friend.”

  “Well, he’s another policeman.”

  “Two of you going to sit and drool over them, that it? Disgusting, I call it.”

  “We all have to relax sometime.” Flicking through the magazine, Jury let out a long, low whistle.

  She was trying to twist around to have a look over his shoulder. He slapped the magazine shut. “Sorry.”

  “Damned bloody blackmail, that’s what it is!” She snapped her mouth shut as the waiter set the fresh teapot down with Jury’s cup. “All right, what if Cyclamen does like her bit of fun that way? Who’m I to look down my nose, though it beats me how she could—and with that Bracegirdle person. So dull. I wonder which of them was the, you know, and which . . . ? Well, that sort of thing goes on all the time and no one thinks anything of it. Look at the Honeycutt person. Idiot. To each his own.”

  Jury handed over the magazines. “Your niece and Miss Bracegirdle used to ‘go off’ for periods of time. Did they go to the plays together in Stratford at all?”

  “Not to my knowledge. That night I thought Cyclamen went to bed with a sick headache, but of course I don’t know. Here now, what are you suggesting?”

  “Nothing, really.” Perhaps he oughtn’t to have handed over the magazines before he got her answers; she was trying to look at the centerfold, forgetting Jury. “In other words, she might have been out on the night Gwendolyn Bracegirdle was murdered, and also out last night. Lady Dew?”

  “Eh? Oh. Yes, I suppose so. None of us have alibis.” She seemed to think this rather rich. “Never been married. Um. How old are you, lad?”

  “Forty-three. Not so young, after all.”

  “Ha! Just you wait’ll you get to be sixty-two like me. Then you’ll think it’s young.”

  Even if he hadn’t seen all of their passports, Jury would have known she was in her eighties.

  But at the moment, he felt very old.

  • • •

  Penny Farraday pushed her shirttail into her jeans and smoothed down her hair.

  “This is Detective Sergeant Wiggins, Penny. C.I.D.”

  She held out her hand. “I’m pleased.”

  “How do you do, miss?” said Wiggins.

  “I’m sorry, Penny. But we need to ask you some questions. You went to the theatre last night with Mr. Farraday and Cyclamen Dew?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” she said in a lackluster voice. Picking up a magazine, she absently thumbed through its pages.

  “What time did you get back here?”

  “Ten-thirty, maybe eleven. Amelia”—her hand froze in the act of turning a page and then went on—“was supposed to go too, only she changed her mind when we got to the theatre and said she was just going to walk around. I think He was pretty mad. Can’t say I blame Him.” Nervously, she tossed the magazine on the table. “It was The Changeling. It was good. You know what a changeling is?” Despite Jury’s nod, she went on to explain: “A changeling’s when you put the wrong little kid secretly in place of another one.” She frowned and continued her explanation by means of extrapolation: “It’s like stealing kids and pretending they’re your own. It’s not quite the same thing as adopting—”

  Jury could see where this sort of thing was leading. He had to interrupt. “Mr. Farraday did go out last night, then?”

  She was still frowning, probably over awful thoughts of changelings. “Yeah. But if you’re looking to make Him out to be guilty, well, you’re just crazy. He’d never do nothing like that. Never.”

  “You seem quite certain.”

  “I am. That’s not to say I hold with everything He does—” she added quickly.

  “What about Miss Dew?”

  Penny shrugged. “I reckon she went to bed.”

  “Did you see her aunt? Or any of the others? Cholmondeley? Schoenberg?”

  Penny looked up, studying the ceiling, hands clasped behind her head. “Nope. That dumb Harvey was over across the river . . . said he was going to see Southwark Cathedral.”

  “But that would have been earlier.”

  “I guess.” Penny put her head in her hand. Whether she was upset about Amelia or merely bored with the questioning was difficult to say. But when she finally looked up at Jury, the cause of the anxious look in her eye was plain: “What about Jimmy? There ain’t no one looking for Jimmy, not with all this other going on.” And in a small voice she said, “Jimmy’s dead, ain’t he?”

  “No,” said Jury. “If he were, we’d know by now. And don’t think we’ve stopped looking. The Warwickshire police are combing the county.”

  Jury only hoped, looking down at the girl, his instincts were right.

  27

  The books were stacked on the floor in a heap.

&nb
sp; James Carlton had taken the top board—about five feet long—and shoved it up onto the top of the bureau. After he got up there himself, he turned it and slid it through the opening made when the bar had finally given way. Since the opening wasn’t as wide as the board, he had to angle it, which made manuevering the far end across to the branch very hard work. He was sweating and at one point was certain he’d lost his grip and that the board would fall and that would be the end of things. But it didn’t; he managed to balance the opposite end on the straight branch to form a walkway. The end he had hold of he positioned on the several inches of thick stone that protruded out from the wall of the house. It seemed steady enough. He inched through the opening and leaned on it as well as he could, and it still seemed quite stout and steady. Of course, it wasn’t much of a test; it was hardly the same as putting his entire weight on it. He looked up at the sky; he was glad it was nearly pitch-black. There was only that little bit of chill moonlight which iced the upper branches of the tree opposite.

  The gray cat, sitting on the bureau beside him, apparently thought all of this work was being done for its personal amusement. It slipped through the opening and promenaded back and forth across the board, from sill to branch, ending up on the heavy branch and starting to claw away at the tree trunk.

  It was 4 A.M. James Carlton had timed his escape for long enough before it got light so that he could get away in the dark, but close enough to first light so that he would not have to walk too far in the dark. Also, it was an hour when people—he didn’t know how many—would be bound to be asleep.

  James Carlton crouched down and thrust his legs through the opening first; then, using the bars for leverage, he wiggled and pushed until the rest of him was through, half on and half off the sill and board. He went very slowly so as not to jostle the board from its position. Finally, he was all the way out, his legs dangling over the edge of the sill. He did not look down as he carefully hoisted his weight up until he could stand on the ledge, holding fast to the bars behind him.

  The board had moved only a fraction of an inch. After all (he told himself), it was only a few feet over there to that branch. Two long strides and he’d be in the tree with the cat. But still he gripped the bars, looking up at the dark sky and the cold stars, feeling the terrible void of the night all around him.

  On the branch, the gray cat sat, ghostly in the moonlight. It seemed to think this nocturnal start on a tree house decidedly more of a lark than lying curled up on James Carlton’s bed. Get on with it, it urged.

  But James Carlton’s fingers were frozen around the bars, as the stars, when he looked up, seemed frozen in place. He wondered if God had shut down the universe. Was his watch still going? Was his heart? Or had everything that ticked stopped?

  Maybe he should pray, he thought, looking at the board spanning a space wide as the universe he had just looked up at. He didn’t have to empty his mind—it seemed part of the void. But he didn’t know what prayer to say. And then his mind started to fill up with images. His father, the war correspondent-flying ace-baseball player. Undoubtedly, his father had been a crack parachutist too . . . His father wouldn’t be proud of him . . . nor would the Man in the Iron Mask, who probably wouldn’t even need a board. He’d jump.

  One finger unfroze and stuck itself in his back. The tip of a sword. In his mind he heard a band of voices singing “Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum . . .” And then one voice—cruel, salty, rum-soaked,—yelling, “Well, me hearty! You’ll be dinner for the fishes tonight!”

  The finger punched him harder in the back. There was nothing he could do. He had no choice. Either be run through or take his chances with the sharks. . . . Beneath him the dark water churned and foamed and the fins circled and he could see his own blood rise to the surface. . . .

  He was in the tree almost before he knew he’d let go of the bars.

  Now there was getting down the tree, no trick at all for James Carlton, who’d climbed most of the trees in West Virginia and Maryland.

  But for the gray cat, it was something else again. Walking the plank was one thing; going down a tree was another.

  If James Carlton hadn’t yanked and tugged, he figured the cat would have sat up there all night, howling at the moon.

  They both landed in a heap on the soft earth at the base of the trunk.

  • • •

  The house was as dark as the night beyond the trees. James Carlton, the cat padding at his heels, backed off first to get a good look. The house rose tall, cold, and heavy as the prison it had felt like inside. Nothing moved; no lights shone. And then he saw, around the back of the house, a pale wash of light. He crept quietly. Standing back, he could see into the lighted window. There was a man’s figure moving about in there.

  James Carlton didn’t hang around to introduce himself. He picked up the cat and ran.

  28

  Melrose Plant settled himself in the lounge in roughly the same spot that Lady Violet Dew had recently vacated, and in roughly the same shape as Jury, who sat next to him.

  “Where’s Schoenberg?” asked Jury, without preamble.

  “Dear God, will you just let me take the weight off my abused, if well-shod feet before you start in?”

  “No,” said Jury, motioning to the waiter, who must have been preparing himself for an endless stream of tea-drinkers on this particular sofa.

  “He’s still out running around Pepys Park, I expect. That’s a nice-looking display of sandwiches. Agatha would die—” He outreached his hand for a triangle of watercress.

  “What’s Pepys Park?”

  Melrose sighed. “It is the development put up some few years ago by our city fathers on the site, presumably, of Marlowe’s old Deptford Strand. Harvey wept, of course. But that’s the way it goes. Progress, progress.” Melrose took another triangle, this one of fishy-stuff, from the tiered plate.

  “What time did you leave?”

  “I’d say around 1586—why?”

  When Jury told him what had happened to Amelia Farraday, Melrose stopped eating, was silent for some moments, and then answered Jury’s question more seriously: “We left the hotel about nine. We had breakfast together.”

  Jury thought for a moment. “Whoever murdered Amelia Farraday was taking a chance, coming back to the hotel in the early hours. Wiggins says that none of the staff saw any of our little tour group come in after midnight. Except Cholmondeley. But we knew that, anyway.”

  “I don’t know. The place has entrances on two streets. I’ve walked in the other one and I don’t think anyone’s noticed me. Or at least until I was well inside.”

  “But you couldn’t depend on that. It’s taking a chance.”

  Plant looked at him. “It’s taking a chance to murder someone, old chap.”

  Jury smiled slightly. “True.” He fell silent and then said, tiredly, “We haven’t talked with Harvey yet. When’s he coming back?”

  “Fairly soon, I expect. He’s supposed to meet his brother Jonathan for dinner. The brother’s getting in sometime this afternoon. Concorde, he said.”

  “Expensive,” said Jury. “He must not be hurting for money.”

  “Well, as I take it, he got what there was of the family graft. I’m invited to dine, incidentally, but I—”

  “Terrific,” said Jury, rising. “You can ask Harvey the right questions. And to make sure you’re up to the mark, I’ll just have Wiggins stop along for coffee. Schoenberg shouldn’t be too laid up with jet-lag.”

  Melrose’s smile was sour. “Thanks awfully. You don’t suppose they’re alike, do you? Can you imagine talking with two of them?” Melrose replaced his teacup. “You know there’s something I’ve been wanting to mention—” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It can wait.”

  “I’m going back to the Yard. I want to talk to Lasko, among other things.”

  Jury left.

  Melrose sat there wondering if perhaps he should have, indeed, mentioned it after all. But it seemed a bit frivolous to be talking about
the relationship between Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe at this point; Jury would think Plant had been driven slowly mad by Harvey Schoenberg. Perhaps, thought Melrose, I have.

  • • •

  “Nothing,” said Lasko, talking to Jury from Stratford-upon-Avon. “We’ve been over this whole area ten times, checked all the buses, trains—everything we could think of. No sign of the kid.”

  Even over the telephone, the hangdog look of Lasko was visible. Jury told him what had happened to Amelia Farraday. There was something slightly less-than-sincere in Lasko’s reactions. Jury still thought Sammy was glad it hadn’t happened in Stratford. He could hardly blame him. “Keep checking on Jimmy Farraday.” It was all Jury could think to say before he replaced the receiver. Racer’s cat (they had all come to think of the cat that patrolled the halls that way) had narrowed a passage through Jury’s office door and around Jury’s spartan furnishings and between his legs and, finally, streaked up to his desk as if it were following a beam of light.

  Perhaps they took one another’s measure until midnight. The documents in the case he had already sifted over and sifted over and come up with nothing new—there was nothing new.

  Unless one could count the dispatch sent that afternoon from Chief Superintendent Racer with its usual perfunctory address:

  “Jury. Although I haven’t heard from you in the last several hours, it has come to my attention that another murder has taken place and that you have not seen fit to report to me immediately. Why I find this unusual is, perhaps, due to my own thwarted idea of—”

  And there followed—fortunately, Jury thought, not in Racer’s actual person—the usual castigations, imprecations, and variations upon the theme of Jury’s fallibility, ending with a command to report in at dawn. The firing squad will have loaded up by then, he supposed, tossing the paper aside.

  The cat, finished washing, cast its eyes on the memo and yawned.

  Jury read the poem and reread it. That he could not make out its connection to these murders made him feel an utter fool. Nothing beyond the fact that they had all been women, and the pertinent stanza certainly dealt with that sad knowledge. But he could add to that something else: the stanza dealt with the passing of Beauty. Fair queens. Helen of Troy. The dying flower. The death of beautiful women. Jury looked up from the poem to the blank wall. Gwendolyn Bracegirdle had not been beautiful at all—well padded and permed, middle-aged at thirty-five. Had it not been for Gwendolyn, Jury would have been certain someone had it in for the Farraday family.