Vertigo 42

by Martha Grimes

  He would not indulge himself by pressing the inlaid button. He got out of bed (reluctantly), pulled on some clothes. When he raised the window, a little rush of morning air came in fairly glittering with clarity. He wanted to be out in it.

  He left the room and padded down the tall staircase in his socks. No one was about that he could see, not even the cook Martha (who Melrose liked to say never went to bed). But he felt no need for fortification, so he didn’t go into the kitchen.

  In the octagon-shaped foyer, Jury looked for boots in the cupboard near the staircase. He found several pairs. The ground had looked wet and misty from the window, so boots would be better than his own shoes. He chose the suede ones, lined with some sort of shearling, and pulled them on. A perfect fit. Then he grabbed his anorak from another cupboard and went through to the living room.

  On the table beside Plant’s wing chair lay a battered copy of Thomas Hardy’s poems. He must have sat up reading last night. Jury was impressed that Melrose was so engaged by Tess Williamson’s story that he would immediately look into Hardy. There was a marker at the poem Tom had told Jury about.

  Stretching eyes west

  Over the sea,

  Wind foul or fair,

  Always stood she

  Prospect-impressed.

  The book was small; Jury put it in his pocket and left the house through the French door near the fireplace.

  In this early light, the dew turned the grass stretching from house to hermitage to barn almost sea gray. He started toward the barn from which morning noises were coming—scuffling, a whinny, a bark. Joey out there managing things, he supposed. No, there was Mr. Blodgett, a bucket in each hand, doing something indeterminate.

  His eye caught the hermitage (Melrose’s name for the little stone structure), which, in this light, was showing its Cotswold origins, the stone suffused with a lemony glow. The Florida room was outlined in the pale sun. Full of wicker furniture and fake palms and a poster of Key West, the look of it made Jury smile.

  He did not think Mr. Blodgett would mind, so he walked toward it, opened the screen door, and went in. He sat down on the wicker settee and outstretched his arms across the back. He raised his face to the ceiling, as if he were indeed soaking up the Florida sun. He discovered the settee was a glider. He glided and looked through the screen, taking in the scene in the distance.

  Aggrieved was out of the barn, shaking his head so that his mane caught the light just prowling over the barn’s roof. Then the horse lowered his head to nibble at the grass. The goat Aghast was next to stop in the doorway of the barn and look around, as if the world had just been invented. He wandered out and over to a tree to rub his head against it. Then came Joey, whose main purpose was to run circles around Aghast and the tree.

  Jury shifted his gaze to the dark trees beyond the barn, thick woodland that was also part of the estate. He could almost feel the presence of Tess and Tom Williamson, as if they had sat themselves down on either side of him on the glider. We’ve done all we could; now it’s up to you. They sat, the three of them, looking out over the distant line of dark trees. Prospect-impressed.

  ____

  Jury heard the sound of someone approaching on his right and saw Melrose Plant bearing down.

  “Hey,” said Plant. “I’m making my rounds.” He was wearing another pair of old boots Jury had seen in the cloakroom, along with a tweed jacket over a black cable-knit sweater. He did not seem to think it odd that Jury was in Mr. Blodgett’s Florida room. He stood outside, his gloved hands clapped behind his back.

  “Well, are you going to see to them?”

  “I am.” Melrose nodded toward the barn. “There they are. Aggro isn’t doing his level best.”

  “I can’t imagine what that would be.”

  “Well, I’m hungry. Let’s have breakfast.”

  “You’ve finished your rounds?”

  “I just did. Come on.” He turned toward the house, waved his hand over his shoulder, bidding Jury to follow.

  Jury left the screened porch reluctantly, although he too was hungry and Martha made fabulous breakfasts. Lots of things in silver dishes.

  They tramped across the now green grass. Melrose, still in the lead, threw the words back over his shoulder. “I think I’ll go to Borings for a couple of days. I’m tired of here.”

  Jury looked at the “here” they were approaching, its gabled and crenellated roof, its high windows, its wide paths and long beech-lined drive that made its winding way down where the small traffic moved on the Northampton Road.

  What a place.

  “If a man is tired of here, he’s tired of life.”

  Melrose turned. “Oh, for God’s sakes, don’t say it.”

  “I just did. What’s for breakfast?”

  ____

  After the scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and the featherweight biscuits and quince jam, they put on their coats again and walked the short distance from the house to Long Piddleton.

  “I need to talk to DCI Brierly; I expect he’s at the Northampton station. I’ll go back and pick up the car.”

  “That old wreck?” Melrose pulled some keys from his pocket. “Here, take the Bentley.”

  “I’m not taking your car. I’ll drive the Ford.”

  “Don’t be dumb; take the Bentley.” Melrose pushed the keys in Jury’s pocket as they came to the library.

  Melrose had said he needed to drop off some books and it was there they were headed. Actually, to be headed anywhere doing business in the village would take them along the same road, past the post office, the one-room police substation, seldom used. There had been no actual police presence in Long Piddleton for years.

  Melrose stopped as they came to the library and checked over his books, one of which (Jury noticed) was You and Your Goat. “Was it helpful, that?” Jury touched the jacket before Melrose could yank it away. “Not to me. Aghast had a go at it, though.”

  As they had drawn closer to the library, Jury noticed the bench on the edge of the duck pond was occupied. The occupant was tossing out bread to the languid family of ducks. Jury smiled.

  “Are you coming?” asked Melrose.

  “No. I’ll wait at the duck pond.”

  Still eyeing his books, Melrose walked through the library door. Jury noticed a “Coffee Morning” was announced and thought it wonderful that that little scheme had worked out so much to the librarian’s advantage.

  “It’s been a long time,” said Jury to the back of the woman on the bench.

  Vivian Rivington turned, surprised by the voice. “Hasn’t it? Three days, I think.”

  “I mean, since we sat here. Remember?” Jury sat down.

  Vivian looked at him with point-blank directness. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I remember.” Her smile was very warm. It was directed toward the ducks.

  A fact that annoyed Jury. He didn’t know why. He wasn’t in love with Vivian. Only once he had been, and it had been love at first sight. “I remember the first time I saw you. It was back there—” He looked over his shoulder at the white lantern with the large blue P on it above the station door.

  “I remember, I certainly do. I thought you were . . . really something. A Scotland Yard DCI. Handsome, to boot. Tall, really nice.” She smiled. This time at him.

  Jury took the bag from her and pulled out some bread pieces and threw them in the direction of the lazy ducks. “The ginger hair, the green eyes, and especially the blush—”

  “I wasn’t blushing, for heaven’s sakes.” Blushing, she turned away.

  “Then it was the reflection of the sun. What I thought of was a Santa Fe sunset.”

  “No, you didn’t. You hadn’t been to Santa Fe yet. That was years later.” She retrieved the bag. When the duck spread his wings light glanced off the water onto them.

  Suddenly, Jury missed it, Sant
a Fe. Hadn’t thought about that evening sitting on the top of the La Fonda Hotel in a long while. But he thought of it now, the deep sunset, the light reflecting off the Sangre de Cristo mountains. “I think I’ll go back.”

  She turned, surprised. “To New Mexico? Why?”

  “If you’d been there, you’d know.” Then he frowned, saying, “Tell me something: were you really serious about Franco Giopinno?” The Italian known to them more handily as Count Dracula. Vivian hadn’t appreciated that sobriquet. “Would you have married him in the end?”

  “Was I serious? Yes, at first. It was Venice. Dreamy, misty, romantic. Franco was the very embodiment of that part of Italy. He was like Venice distilled.”

  But Venice distilled was, after all, only water, thought Jury.

  She went on. “I grew tired of it and him. I was looking for a way out . . .”

  “The way out is: ‘Sorry, good-bye.’ ”

  Vivian’s face reddened up slightly. “I didn’t find it that easy. Fortunately, Melrose, Diane, and Marshall got rid of him for me.”

  Jury remembered they had told Count Dracula some involved story about Vivian’s fortune, or lack of it. The count had taken off hastily.

  “Just as well, as he was only after my money.”

  “No, he wasn’t.” Jury had taken the brown bag again and was throwing out crumbs.

  She laughed. “How do you know?”

  “Because no one who knows you would be after only your money.”

  Her smile was broader now. “Thanks.”

  He crumpled up the empty bag. “It would be interesting to see Plant fall in love.”

  “Oh, but he wouldn’t. He’s much too pleased with his life and himself. He’s extremely pleased with himself.”

  “He never struck me as vain.”

  “I don’t mean vain. No, he’s more like a child who’s just found he actually could rule the Wild Things.” She tossed a bit of bread to the duck who’d cruised to the edge.

  Jury thought that was one of the strangest estimations of Melrose Plant he could imagine. He said so. “Or under-estimation, to be more precise.” He wondered then just how well Vivian knew him.

  “Is it? And you a detective.” She pinched up his coat sleeve as she rose and bent down to whisper, “He doesn’t love me.”

  “He’s thick as two planks.” Jury got up. “Well, there’s always me.”

  “Neither do you.”

  And that was true now, of course, and she knew that he knew it. She had refused to marry him years before, but it was somehow hard for him to let go, if not of the feeling itself, then of the memory of the feeling. He wondered how much of love was actually nostalgia. He thought about Jenny Kennington, someone he’d been certain of, only to find that the certainty was, if not misplaced, simply for another kind of woman . . .

  “Hey!”

  Melrose was coming across the green, new books in hand.

  Vivian looked ruefully at Jury, smiled slightly, and looked away.

  ____

  DCI Ian Brierly was tilted back in his chair in the Northampton station, considering Jury’s theory. “Two of them. An imposter. Interesting.” He was quiet, thinking. “So the killer could have murdered Belle Syms before he took off for—allegedly—London, perhaps even at the Sun and Moon Hotel, come back, taken the body to the tower.”

  “Or,” said Jury, “gone to the tower with her—Blanche Vesta said Belle got a kick out of heights—killed her there, then come back, had the accomplice switch clothes, and pushed her out of the tower.”

  “We’re assuming the killer was the man she was with at the hotel?”

  Jury shrugged. “What about the husband? The aunt said they were separated.”

  “Haven’t found him either. Got some information from Blanche Vesta, went to Syms’s flat in Wembley, no sign of him. My men made dozens of inquiries—the neighbors, at some shops, no one knew his whereabouts. All they found out was that Zachariah Syms was a nice guy, good with both people and animals, really loved his dog. Took him everywhere.”

  “Where’s the dog, then?”

  “Took him everywhere, as they said. So they’ve both gone off into the wild blue, and if it was in a car, he must’ve hired one, because he doesn’t have a car himself.” Brierly leaned forward. “Now this second woman of yours. When and where does she enter the scene?”

  “Right after Belle Syms dies—unless of course she helped to kill her—when she dons the flashy red dress and later, presumably at the tower, when she strips it off and they redress the victim.”

  Brierly frowned. “Why? I mean why put this diabolical scheme into action? It’s so damned much trouble. Why not shoot Belle Syms or put a knife in her or one of a hundred other more familiar ways of disposing of someone?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s nice to avoid a weapon that might then be discovered; but for another, maybe because those ways are familiar. Off a tower in the middle of the night—that has us sitting here talking about it. The method rather than the motive.”

  “True.”

  “I’ll say this, though,” said Jury, who was rising to leave, “if we discovered there was an imposture, it would certainly make mincemeat of an alibi dependent on that eight-to-early-A.M. time frame for the murder.”

  “It would. Problem is—” Brierly paused.

  Jury stood, waiting. “What?”

  “I haven’t got an alibi to make mincemeat of.”

  Brierly got up and walked with Jury to the front door of the station. “That’s some car you’ve got there.” He nodded toward the Bentley parked by the curb. “That’s police issue, is it?”

  “My other car’s a Jaguar XKB.” Jury took out the keys and twirled them round his finger. “See you.”

  Ardry End

  Friday, 6:00 P.M.

  25

  * * *

  Chief Inspector Brierly hasn’t got an alibi because he hasn’t found a suspect,” said Melrose Plant.

  “Right. They haven’t located the man she was with. He doesn’t have form; any fresh prints found in the room didn’t turn up anyone with a record; the hotel people didn’t get a registration plate number, and nor could anyone identify the car itself.”

  “What about her husband?”

  “The husband might be a suspect, although I got the impression from Blanche Vesta he really loved Belle.”

  “And she left him. Rage is always a good motive.”

  “Yes, but why would he choose that peculiar way of killing her?”

  “Why would anybody?”

  Jury had returned to Ardry End after leaving the Northampton station. They had wandered around the grounds, visited the barn and its occupants, argued yet again about Aggro/Joey, and were now sitting in the living room, having a drink before dinner.

  In answer to Plant’s question, he could only repeat what he had said to Brierly.

  “A distraction you’re suggesting?”

  “Yes. It’s possible. Or maybe the killer is playing games, or has a flair for the dramatic . . . who knows?”

  “If Belle Syms was being impersonated, police are looking for not one but two people. This other woman might have furnished an alibi, but she adds a danger.”

  “What?”

  “When you include someone in your plan, you’d better be able to trust that person. And if it’s murder, well . . .”

  “Anyway, it’s not my case.”

  “You keep saying that, but you keep doing things about it.”

  “I’m thinking more about Tess Williamson.”

  “I wondered if it could have been suicide.”

  “Possibly,” said Jury. “It certainly wasn’t an accident.”

  “You don’t think she killed that child, do you?”

  “No. She didn’t do it. But I’m betting she knew who did.”

/>   “And she told no one, not even her husband?”

  Jury frowned. “That was what finally got to her, I think: that she’d let Tom Williamson suffer. That she’d let him down.”

  Melrose gave him a look of disbelief. “You don’t kill yourself because you’ve let somebody down.”

  “Maybe you’ve never been let down.”

  Melrose reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Mind if I mind?”

  “Not at all.” He removed a cigarette, lit up.

  Jury’s eyes followed the smoke scrim as Melrose exhaled.

  “You know,” Melrose, unbothered by Jury’s longtime smoke-yearnings, worse than any alcoholic’s need of a drink, said, “there’s another side to her wanting to make her death appear accidental. I’m assuming, of course, she did this so that her husband wouldn’t have to go through the shock of his wife’s suicide. If that’s what it was. Now, she’s tried to save him from one thing only to drop him into another; and that is, he would never ever know what happened to Hilda Palmer. And now look what’s happened: Tom Williamson wants her case reopened. He’s never put any of it to rest. And sounds like he never will, unless you do something.”

  “It’s down to me, is it?” Jury felt a little resentful.

  “Well, it certainly doesn’t seem to be down to Brian Macalvie. Macalvie, who’s the only one with the kind of imagination to get beneath all of this, appears to be hung up on the woman.”

  Jury looked at Melrose, disturbed by what he said. He rose, went to the fireplace, kicked back a bit of sparking wood that had gotten free. He stood there. “I guess you’re right. She should have told Tom what she knew.”

  Melrose leaned forward, elbows on knees. “So here she is, Tess Williamson, in a dilemma: not to tell her husband is to leave him forever wondering. At the same time, she’s too ashamed to tell him because she’s kept quiet about it for years. We look at this dilemma from our vantage point and it seems easily solved. Just tell him—”

  “So we’re back again to the question of who Tess Williamson was protecting. Assuming you’re right. There were eight people at Laburnum on that occasion, two adults and six children.”