I Am the Only Running Footman

by Martha Grimes

  “So do you, Phyllis.” He smiled at her. Jury had come upon Dr. Nancy once, window-shopping on New Bond Street, standing outside Dickins and Jones, ogling the elaborate display of bridal and bridesmaids’ gowns. He had waited until she’d walked on to catch her up and invite her for a drink. Phyllis Nancy would hate to have been caught mooning over the Dickins and Jones window-wedding: bride, groom, lace, flowers. He turned from her to give directions to a police inspector. The street would have to be covered inch by inch. Then he turned back to Dr. Nancy. “Whenever you can, Phyllis. Thanks.”

  She turned away to hide a smile. The whole thing was a little ritual. If he patronized her, man to woman, he knew she got a kick out of it. Under all of that expertise and armor was a very nice person who liked to have lunches out, go to movies, buy nice clothes. She collected her bag and her assistant, said she’d get round to the autopsy as soon as she could, got in a car, streaked away through the rain.

  3

  IT was a well-tended terraced house on a residential street dotted with estate agents’ signs and a depressing similarity of facades that was not at its best in the early morning light. Next door was one of the houses for sale, unlived in from the condition of the garden, where a small climbing rose struggled for position between clumps of weeds and rusted bicycle wheels. The porches and doorframes of several of the houses had been painted in strong, riotous colors, but the dull light returned them to anonymity again, reds and blues barely distinguishable, looking caked and dried to the color of old blood.

  The Childess house had kept to a bottle-brown for the small fence and the door, which looked the color originally chosen, one more in keeping with what the street was originally intended for — a sensible lower-middle-class bastion of British sobriety.

  The woman who opened the door at Jury’s knock wore a flannel bathrobe the color of the trim and a piece of toweling round her head either to hide the curlers there or to ease the strain when she slept. Her look at him was as taut as the door-chain.

  “Mrs. Childess?” He brought his warrant card near the inch of open space. “Could we speak to you, please?”

  He had seen that look many times, confusion outstripped by fear. It astonished him sometimes, the way in which otherwise imperceptive and even dull minds could in some circumstances make a leap of certainty to the worst possible conclusion. The woman knew that he had come about the girl, but had immediately buried that knowledge.

  Behind her a voice full of sleep said, “Who is it, Irene?”

  Into that uncertain silence between the question put by the thin-faced husband and her reply to it, Jury dropped his request to come in. The door closed and the latch scraped back.

  As they entered, Wiggins touched his fingers to his hat. That part of Jury’s mind that permitted escape into minutiae reminded him to buy a hat; he hated hats. He introduced himself and his sergeant to the couple, and the man, whom she had addressed as Trevor, blinked and started apologizing for the lapsed road tax sticker.

  “It’s not about that, Mr. Childess. I’m afraid that something’s happened to your daughter. She was found in Berkeley Square. She was dead.” There was no way to prepare anyone for this, no way to soften the blow; Jury had always felt stretching it out with words like “accident” only added to the agony. If you saw the crash was inevitable, if the lorry was bearing down on you, you shouldn’t have to stare at the headlamps too long. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  Neither the mother nor the father said, That’s impossible, or That couldn’t have happened, or otherwise tried to hold the knowledge at bay. Maybe it was the heavy note of finality in his voice; maybe it was the empathy. Mrs. Childess’s veined hands flew to her mouth, and she shook her head, tears spattering like rain. Her husband stared; his arm came up automatically to fall across her shoulders.

  When finally they had sat down in a small parlor too full of Ivy Childess for much comfort, Jury waited for a few moments while she tried to combat another rush of tears. Wiggins, who always had a fresh supply of handkerchiefs somewhere about him, pushed one into her hands. Jury asked a few routine questions about Ivy in as dry a tone as possible without being curt. Too much sympathy was often worse than none at all. When the father finally asked what had happened and where, Jury put it as briefly and kindly as possible. “There didn’t seem to have been much of a struggle and she must have died very quickly.”

  “But who could possibly have wanted to — do that to our Ivy?” Mrs. Childess said, addressing her husband as if he might have some secret store of knowledge about Ivy. “I don’t understand. I just don’t understand.” She leaned her face against her husband’s thin chest.

  “That’s why we’re here, Mrs. Childess; that’s what we want to find out. If you could bear with us a bit . . .” He nodded to Wiggins, who sat back and opened his notebook. “Could you tell us anything about her friends? Men, especially.”

  Trevor Childess looked startled. “Well, yes. There was one named Marr. Ivy said as how she was kind of engaged to him. Marr. Yes, I’m sure that’s the name, wasn’t it, Irene? David Marr, she said. Bit of a catch that was—” And he smiled briefly before he realized that the catch would never be landed.

  “How long had your daughter known him?”

  The question seemed to make Childess uncomfortable; he shifted in his chair and studied his hands when he answered. “Well, we didn’t really know him, I suppose.” That apparently sounded very odd even to his own ears, and he looked at the drawn face of his wife for direction.

  Jury didn’t think she’d heard her husband. The flow of tears had stopped, but the handkerchief was still wadded against her mouth and her arm was across her stomach, holding herself like something broken.

  “Never did get round to coming here,” said the father, “though Ivy kept saying she’d bring him to tea one day.”

  The father glanced quickly around the room and Jury saw what he saw: a parlor, well tended like the yard, neat and orderly, but plain if not actually shabby. The suite of furniture, probably purchased on hire-purchase, armchairs and a sofa covered with an afghan probably crocheted by his wife or a relative in colors that should brighten the place but only increased its anonymity.

  To avoid heaping even more distress on the man’s platter — inconsequential but still humiliating — Jury offered him a cigarette, lit one himself, and got up to walk about the parlor. He nodded to Wiggins to continue the questioning.

  Several of his colleagues at headquarters had asked Jury why, given his position, he did not avail himself of a detective inspector for an assistant. Jury asked them why he should, told them the sergeant had saved his life at least twice. That was the truth, but it wasn’t the reason. Jury respected Wiggins, for Wiggins felt a strong bond with those who were often labeled as underdogs. Sergeant Wiggins’s presence was soothing; he gave witnesses the impression somehow that he was one of them, had come amongst them with his notebook and pen; his economical, even parsimonious gestures; his long silences and sympathetic stares (often not related to the problem at hand); not to mention his roster of maledictions that nudged awake the sleeping hypochondria in everyone; his ability to scale the Metropolitan Police down to the pleasant bobby on the corner. In an old morality play, Wiggins would have been the shepherd come to bear witness. And he always had a spare handkerchief.

  Which he was using now, blowing his nose in the cold, dawn-lit parlor, along with Mrs. Childess, whose most recent bout with tears appeared to be, at least temporarily, under control. She held the handkerchief wadded in her lap; Wiggins stuffed his back in his pocket and went on with his routine questions in his nice, monotonous voice.

  Given the photographs on the mantel, it seemed that Ivy had been the only child. Several snapshots were set round two studio portraits; one of the portraits was probably taken when she was eighteen or nineteen, a full-length photo in which she was holding a few drooping roses. The end of school term, perhaps, or of childhood. Her expression was rather smug and knowing, as if she’d p
assed through a bothersome phase of her life. The second might have been taken yesterday. Her hair spread like clear water over the shoulders of a jumper that he recognized as the one she’d been wearing when she was murdered, blue, scoop-necked, full-sleeved. He returned the photo to its place on the mantel and picked up its mate — a small one, unframed, also recent. Jury went back to the others and sat down a short distance away so that Wiggins could continue.

  The mother looked completely spent; she rested her head, eyes closed, against the button-tufted back of the chair. The father had been talking about his daughter’s job at Boots. “Makeup consultant, she was.”

  For this, Jury read sales assistant.

  “Did you know any of her other friends, aside from what you’d heard of the fiancé?”

  Again, Trevor Childess looked a little shamefaced as he shook his head. “Ivy never did go out much when she lived with us. She wasn’t one for pubs and the like. She was more a homebody, like her mother.”

  There was a silence, during which Mrs. Childess roused herself and left the room. Then Jury rose and Wiggins pocketed his notebook. He told Childess he would have to be called on to identify his daughter’s body. The man’s face was blank and ashen.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Childess. It has to be you or your wife and I wanted to wait until she was safely tucked in before even bringing it up.” Jury knew that the appeal to a greater strength than his wife could call on would help to give the man some purpose. “It can wait, at least until later today. We’ll send a car round.”

  Childess murmured something that might have been unfelt thanks and then said to Wiggins, “You won’t be coming yourself, then?”

  “Sorry, sir. We’ll be getting on immediately to whoever might have been with Ivy.” From his coat pocket he pulled the packet of lozenges. “You don’t want to let that cough go. Take these.”

  Whatever it was — amulet or anodyne — Trevor Childess took the packet gratefully.

  • • •

  “Terrible thing,” said Wiggins, slamming the door shut on the driver’s side. “And Ivy being the only one.” Wiggins always got on a first-name basis with the victims quickly. It was part of his charm.

  “Yes. Only, I wonder. If there were five or six or ten, would it be much comfort? If you lose one, don’t you suppose it’s like losing them all?”

  The engine turned over, coughed asthmatically, and went dead. Wiggins tried again, mumbling. Death and weather had a way of knitting themselves together in his mind. “You’d think they’d give us something better than this ten-year-old Cortina,” he said darkly as he tried to nurse the engine and hit the heater into action.

  “What about Marr?”

  “David L. Ex-directory and I thought for a moment I was going to have to call headquarters to get the address. Bloody operator gave it to me finally.” The engine turned over and he pulled away from the curb. “It’s Mayfair, all right. I didn’t call him; didn’t think you’d want to alert him.”

  “Good. Where in Mayfair?”

  “Shepherd Market.” He took his hands from the steering wheel and blew on them. “Not far from the Running Footman, is it?”

  “No. Walking, how long?”

  Wiggins thought for a moment. “Ten minutes, maybe. But I don’t suppose he’d be walking in all this muck.”

  Despite the errand and the cold, Jury smiled. The new snow furred the rusted car parts and rimmed the garishly painted porches and woodwork, blanketed the shabbiness of the street ahead. It lay blue and untrammeled in the morning light. Undisturbed, it seemed to bond the houses and fences together.

  4

  DAVID Marr fit his surroundings. He looked elegant and neglected. The knap of his dressing gown was as badly rubbed as the Axminster carpet, and the cord as frayed as the tasseled one that held back the Chinese silk curtain. The one on the robe hung at approximately the same angle as Marr’s head. At six A.M. he was probably in the grip of a whale of a hangover.

  Hangover or not, the man was handsome. Jury thought there was something vaguely familiar about the high cheekbones and dark hair, or perhaps it was the sort of face that might have belonged to some dissolute peer, one often served up by the seamier tabloids along with sex, drugs and girls.

  Right now David Marr was sprawled in a worn-leather wing chair. His first reaction to the murder of Ivy Childess had been bafflement more than grief. His second, third, and fourth, Jury had been unable to see, since a cold flannel completely covered Marr’s face, and had done during Jury’s questions so far. Probably he could have used one or the other of Sergeant Wiggins’s remedies, but Jury had sent Wiggins to the Bayswater flat.

  “Go on, then.” The muffled voice came from under the cloth.

  “Mr. Marr, do you think perhaps we can talk face-to-face? It would be a help.”

  Sighing, he said, “So you can see the subtle change of expression that will testify to my guilt?” His breath sucked in and puffed out the cloth that he now withdrew reluctantly. “It’s not that I drank so much, it’s that I stupidly drank the Dogbolter at the Ferret and Firkin. Bruce’s Brewery, my friend. I was doing a bit of a pub-crawl before I met Ivy.” He dropped the flannel on a small table, and took the last cigarette from a black enamel case. “I’m being an insensitive boor, right?”

  Jury smiled. “If you say so. You think I’m presuming you’re guilty?” Jury lit up one of his own cigarettes.

  Marr looked at Jury with a grim smile. “Your questions suggest that you’ve ruled out the most obvious answer: that poor Ivy was set upon by some mugger.” He looked away, toward the window where the pre-dawn darkness was as black as the enamel on the lighter he fingered. “Was she raped?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Jury pictured the body, a pale blue heap in the middle of the wet street. “I don’t think so. Would you mind telling me what happened at the pub?”

  Marr scrubbed at his hair with the cloth, then studied the end of his cigarette with an indifference that Jury suspected was feigned.

  “We had an argument. She was angry and refused to let me take her home to Bayswater.” He looked at Jury. “I don’t usually leave women standing in pub doorways.” He shrugged. “Ivy can be extremely stubborn. Doesn’t look it, really, all that soft blue look and gorgeous hair. Well, I don’t really care for confrontations with women. Not worth it.”

  “What was the argument about, Mr. Marr?”

  “Money, marriage, you know. For some reason Ivy wanted to marry me, poor girl.”

  “I’d think one reason might be pretty obvious — you move in a much headier social circle, I imagine.”

  David Marr opened one eye. “How can you tell that?”

  The question was rather innocent. Jury smiled. “I’ve been to the Childess house.”

  “Bayswater?”

  “Mile End. The parents’ house. They were the ones who gave me your name.”

  He frowned. “She hardly ever spoke of them. Hadn’t much family feeling, had Ivy.”

  “But you were engaged.”

  Marr paused, his eyes shielded by his hand, in lookout fashion, as if he were tracking the progress of the morning light at the window. “That what the parents told you?”

  “That’s what the daughter told them.”

  The hand now pressed to his head, as if he were holding it on, Marr pushed himself out of the wing chair and moved toward a rosewood table. He held a bottle of Remy to his ear like a huge shell, shook it and put it down, frowning. Then he studied the remaining inch or two in a Glenfiddich bottle, looked over at Jury, and held it up by way of not very enthusiastic invitation.

  “Too early for me, thanks, or too late, depending how you look at it.”

  Marr poured the inch and a half into a tumbler. “I try not to look at it at all. If you’re going to swallow a frog, better not stare at it too long, as they say. My head is killing me.” He drank it down and retied the robe. “A boor I may be — desolute, depraved, whatever. But engaged I was not. Whether that particular bit of informa
tion is important to your investigations, I don’t know; you’ve only my word for it. Whatever she told friends, family, co-workers, I didn’t mean to marry Ivy.” He fell into the chair again and relit his cigarette.

  “What was your relationship with her?”

  “Um. Intimate, or at least sexual. There’s probably a difference.”

  Jury was mildly surprised he’d make the distinction. Marr looked quite human with some of the cool hauteur missing from his voice and eyes. “Then the ‘engagement’ was a fiction invented by her?” Marr nodded. “Then she was simply trying to convince herself?”

  “Trying to convince me is more like it.” He closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. “On several occasions she definitely talked of marriage. Such as last night.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I didn’t answer. Have another fag on you, Superintendent?”

  Jury handed him the packet and leaned back. “Are you sure you did nothing to encourage her?”

  Marr eased himself down in the chair, crossed his long legs, and shook his head in wonder. “For heaven’s sakes. A few nights in bed over a period of several months would hardly give anyone but the most naïve of women that sort of encouragement, would it? I did not absolutely say, No, we are not going to be married, but I do think I showed a certain amount of hesitancy over it. . . .”

  “You left the pub around closing time?”

  “About ten-forty-five or -fifty. When last drinks were called.”

  “Did Ivy stay on or did she leave?”

  “The last I saw of her she was standing in the doorway, hand on hip, coat collar pulled up, looking extremely determined.” He sighed and rubbed his head again. “Shouldn’t have had the last of the Remy, I expect. She told me to more or less bugger off and I did. That’s the last I saw of her, Superintendent.”