Vertigo 42

by Martha Grimes

  “Veronica! What a thing to say!”

  Veronica smiled round at her mother. “Mum, don’t you think we should give Sergeant Wiggins some coffee? As we don’t have tea? Can’t you organize that?”

  Without a question, Colleen rose and said she’d see to coffee, yes.

  Again, Wiggins half-smiled at his notebook. He said, “What do you mean by that, miss, exactly? The ‘scapegoat’ business?”

  She thought rather seriously as she looked round the room, as if trying to fix on something. “Well, sometimes you can tell, say, if you’re amongst friends, if one of them is a little put-out by another, or angry—I mean on a deeper level, something not showing, like anger or envy on some level she doesn’t show. Johnny, say, mightn’t like something about Kenneth, but wouldn’t come out and say it. Or Mundy being irritated with Mrs. Williamson. We could turn the resentment onto Hilda.” She paused. “I’m not explaining this well, for it sounds mean. It was really very subtle. And Hilda more or less wanted it—”

  “The misdirected anger?”

  “Yes. Some people are like that. It makes them feel important. That’s not to say, though, that Hilda wasn’t awful. She was. She was a troublemaker, an insinuator, if you know what I mean. The person she hated most was Mundy Brewster. But Mundy’s looks kind of protected her—she was so beautiful. Arabella Hastings didn’t fare as well; she had a terrific crush on Kenneth Strachey, and Hilda was always embarrassing her in front of him. But the one she picked on the most was Johnny. John McAllister, because he was so defenseless. He had such an awful home life. Both his parents dead, living with guardians. He needed protection. Mrs. Williamson was his protector—”

  “Here we are,” said Colleen, surging back into the room with a silver-handled tray.

  Wiggins was sorry to see her; the last few minutes had been interesting.

  She set about pouring coffee. There were no biscuits. So he wouldn’t linger over coffee. Wiggins drank up, patted the cat, said he had to be going. With her mother present, Veronica probably wouldn’t be as forthcoming.

  But she insisted on seeing him to the door, and outside of it, to the top step.

  Wiggins said, “My notes tell me you’re an actress.”

  “Not much of a one. I’ve had just tiny parts in a couple of West End productions. I’m afraid I don’t have what it takes.”

  She set that out there, of course, to be told that she did. Wiggins said, “I wouldn’t agree to that at all. The way you hold yourself, the way you move—no, you’re an actress, all right. You’re a first-rate”—Wiggins almost said manipulator, but it sounded offensive—“organizer.”

  At first she seemed not to understand; then she said, “Oh, you mean . . . of Mum?”

  “And me.” He smiled. “Thanks for the coffee.” Down the steps, he turned. ”Next time, have tea.” He winked and waved and was gone.

  Hackney, Plaistow Street

  Saturday, 7:00 P.M.

  30

  * * *

  Jury hadn’t been in Hackney in some time. It appeared to be going through the process of gentrification that had overtaken other boroughs, only here Jury wondered at its chance for success. Bulldozers were plowing under eyesore council flats; one sat idle in an enormous vacant lot that would soon make way for a high-rise and probably smart little terraced houses to be sold or let to workers from the City.

  Hackney was always getting ripped off. There had been many instances of council corruption over the years. It would sell a street of little businesses to a developer or a private party with the assurance that everything would be rebuilt and restored to the owners. That, of course, never happened.

  Hackney was skirted by Newham and Tower Hamlets, a triple play in unemployment. To Jury, a London enigma. He lived in Islington, which had its own poor pockets. But he felt surprised by Plaistow Street, and naive in his surprise. He’d lived in London all of his life; he’d been with the Met for thirty years. He was used to the city’s differences. But he’d never felt as if he’d passed out of one century into another as he did turning the corner into Plaistow Street. It was like crossing over an unsealable crack in the city’s surface.

  The coming of darkness didn’t help, as it was a street of lamps that didn’t work. No leafy trees, no front gardens. It was a street of small, profitless shops; lock-up garages; gray, Soviet-style council flats; and red brick low-rise ones, narrow houses in a street already almost claustrophobic in its narrowness.

  On the corner was a pub whose name he couldn’t make out because the sign had been virtually rubbed out by wind and weather, and the light above it broken. “Three”-something was what he made out. Three globes or three bells, possibly. It must be fairly popular, given the buried laughter that dug its way to the surface whenever a customer went in or out the door. The few people he saw were mostly going in and mostly by themselves. Not a pub for the owners of the condos and flashy flats in Canary Wharf or the other refurbished haunts of Docklands.

  On an impulse, Jury walked in, and silence dropped like a blanket of fog. The pub was not overflowing with custom, but it was a comfortable and wieldy crowd of under two dozen. Some looked at him with faces as bland as a custard; others glanced around and looked away. He sensed something other going on than the usual Saturday-night revel; they were here for something that made him, for some reason, uncomfortable.

  A lightweight conversation resumed after Jury had made his way to the bar, but he knew from the few words floating past him that it was meaningless. The barman raised his eyebrows in question rather than asking Jury aloud what he’d have. Jury ordered a whiskey, as it would be quicker to drink than a pint, and stopping here longer would make him that much later in seeing Dr. McAllister.

  But he did find out the name of the pub: THE THREE TUNS was carved into a long piece of wood that hung above the bar mirror.

  As he paid for the drink, he wondered what a man with John McAllister’s qualifications was doing living in Plaistow Street. Perhaps he lived at the other end of it, and the other end would bring Jury to a pleasanter world of trees and gardens.

  But 31 Plaistow Street was not far from The Three Tuns. It was not one of the council flats, but still a red brick block of flats, probably on the Social’s list of low-rent living space.

  The big glass door in front looked thick enough to be bulletproof, but wasn’t. The rows of metal letterboxes were well worn, largely from fingers working hard to pry them open. MCALLISTER was 31B, the number the same as the building number. Not a terraced house with a garden flat, then. Far from it.

  Inside was a lift on the right. Jury was surprised to see one, and this one was presently serving as a lounge area for a group of five kids dressed largely in baggy pants, ink, and bits of metal randomly stuck into eyebrows, earlobes, noses, and lips. Even the one girl in the group hewed to that dress code, except for the baggy pants. Hers were tight jeans. She wore a great deal of makeup, purple lipstick being the most pronounced.

  When Jury paused for a second, looking at the lift, one said, “Broken, mate” and pointed to the OUT OF ORDER sign taped to the door. Jury was looking at the old-fashioned floor indicator, the metal arrow on the slate that jerked from one number to another. It was now on the top floor, number six. Jury nodded toward the arrow.

  “Stuck, in’t?” said the girl.

  “Then why are you waiting?”

  “Us? No. Just talking.”

  Jury nodded and proceeded up the stairs. He was surprised the dun-colored paint wasn’t graffitied over and that the iron railing was secure in its sockets. Someone was taking decent care, he thought, although there was still that stairwell smell of beer, chips, and the dole.

  He reached the third floor and found 31B. A howling fight was going on between the occupants of the flat directly across from McAllister. He was tempted to break it up when McAllister’s door opened.

  “Superintendent
Jury? Hello.” McAllister put out his hand.

  If John McAllister had been a funny little kid back in the days of Laburnum, he was no longer. He was well over six feet, nearly as tall as Jury, and handsomer. He still wore black-framed glasses, but instead of hiding his eyes they served to enhance them. Eyes and hair were a brown the color of cognac, the hair, lit from behind, especially beautiful, as it had been in the snapshot Jury had right now in his pocket, the one taken at Laburnum.

  The flat’s door led onto a narrow hallway, which in its turn led on to what would have served as a living room if the flat were used in the ordinary manner. But any comfort that might have been in the living room had been dispatched. In its place stood a long counter where microscopes were positioned among other instruments Jury was unable to identify. There were also piles of plain folders and stacks of books. Most of the books, though, were shelved, and there were two walls full of shelves. The only concession to comfort was one overstuffed chair in a corner, a lamp, a side table, and more books. Otherwise, seating took place on one of the tall metal stools lined up at the counter.

  It was on these that they sat, elbow to elbow, leaning on the counter.

  “My sergeant tells me you’ve a boatload of degrees.”

  John McAllister laughed. “He exaggerates. I have a couple.”

  “An M.D.?”

  “Not much of one.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  He smiled. “Oh, the where was all right. Cambridge. I meant that I don’t practice in the U.K.”

  “Why did you get an M.D. then?”

  McAllister looked at his hands, as if they’d failed him.

  Surgeon’s hands, Jury thought, practicing his stereotyping. But they were, either a surgeon’s or a pianist’s.

  “I expect I wanted to do some good.”

  “Did you?”

  “Some.”

  “You’re modest, Dr. McAllister. According to someone who thinks a great deal of you, you’ve done much more than a little.”

  “Who could that be?”

  The look was genuine puzzlement, as if he couldn’t imagine anyone thinking a great deal of him.

  “Madeline Brewster.”

  “Mundy? My God, how is she?”

  “Fine. Wondering how you are.”

  Again, he looked down at his hands. “I should keep more in touch with her.”

  “Yes, you should.” Jury pulled the snapshot from an inside pocket, placed it on the counter, turned to face McAllister. The children were lined up, the large sarsen stone and one end of the front of Laburnum as backdrop.

  John McAllister picked it up, adjusted his glasses, and started to say something, but didn’t. He shook his head. “Twenty-two years ago this was. And yet it was yesterday.”

  “Is it that clearly printed on your mind?”

  He nodded. “I’ll never forget it.”

  “Describe it, then. What happened.”

  His thumb and index finger went to his glasses again. Jury wondered if this gesture was what a gambler would call a “tell.”

  “I’m going to disappoint you, I fear, because I can’t describe much. When the game got going, we took off on our separate ways. I ran around the side of the house to the woods. I do recall Mrs. Davies peering at us or me from the bench where she was sitting when I passed. Then I climbed one of the laburnum trees.”

  “If you were up a tree, you’d have had an excellent perch for viewing what happened.”

  “Sorry. You see the branches hanging over that section of the garden veiled part of the terrace steps and the pool where Hilda went in. I didn’t see it happen; I didn’t see her.”

  “You didn’t like her, did you?”

  McAllister’s smile was thin. “I couldn’t stand her. I probably hated her more than the others did. I expect I was a target for her because I was the smallest. I just looked like a little kid.” His voice was very sad.

  “You were a little kid, John.”

  He nodded. “I was, yes.”

  “You chewed some of the laburnum seeds and got sick, right?”

  “Yes. It was a pretty stupid thing to do. Cytosine is an alkaloid.”

  Jury smiled. “A little too stupid.”

  McAllister looked at him.

  “What I hear about you is that you were extremely sharp and very knowledgeable in science and maths. Anything that had to do with flora and fauna, you knew. So you obviously knew about the toxic properties of the laburnum—seeds, bark, all of it toxic.”

  “Everybody knows that. I wanted to see how toxic.”

  “Why would you decide during a game of hide-and-seek you needed to know the toxicity?”

  McAllister shrugged. “I don’t know, other than curiosity.”

  Jury didn’t believe him. “Were you trying to make yourself sick so you’d be noticed?”

  The look was unwavering. “To get attention?”

  Jury nodded. “Until something far more attention-getting happened.”

  John McAllister looked away. “If I hadn’t been thinking only of myself I might have prevented it.” He turned back. “Charging Tess Williamson with Hilda’s death was unthinkable.” He was fiddling with the microscope, as if he wanted to escape into its complex properties. Then he shoved it aside. Silence.

  “Why are you living in Hackney, Dr. McAllister? Why in Plaistow Street?”

  That took him by surprise. “Why?”

  “A man like you, a distinguished career, superintelligent, degrees in two disciplines, why would you choose one of the most impoverished and violent boroughs in London?”

  McAllister thought for a moment. “I’m a research scientist. My surroundings don’t mean much to me, so here is as good as there. And I spend a lot of time in Kenya. I’m not here that much.”

  “That you’re here at all surprises me.”

  McAllister laughed. “Does ambiance matter all that much to a policeman?”

  “We’re not talking about ambiance. All of that shouting across the hall. Doors slamming. The neo-Nazi group downstairs, the general racket?”

  John McAllister’s tone was slightly exasperated, but he didn’t want to show it. “I’m not sure what this has to do with Hilda Palmer’s death—would you care for a coffee?”

  “Thanks, yes. I’m not sure either. That’s why I’m asking.”

  McAllister had walked back to the small kitchen area and was taking out a large tin of Kona coffee and a Jura coffeemaker. Obviously, Dr. McAllister was not living in Hackney out of need. He measured some beans into the machine’s grinder. It was quite loud, but it then went about its work without further help.

  “You’re talking in circles, Superintendent Jury; my point is why would you be asking me questions about my flat, and your point is pretty much the same. Why would you?”

  Jury smiled and watched the expensive machine quietly dispense two cups of coffee.

  McAllister said, “Let me tell you something about myself.”

  “I wish you would.”

  John poured coffee into two cups, took one to Jury, asked if he wanted cream and sugar.

  “No, thanks.”

  After John reseated himself, he said, “The people I lived with when I was a kid: they were, or she was a distant relation of my mother. Of course you know my parents both died in a motor accident. One moment, they were there; the next moment they were gone. In an eye blink. I was six. Both of them just gone. It’s hard to understand what that feels like to a six-year-old.”

  Jury said. “I do. I lost both of my parents during the war. Not at the same moment, but not far apart.” He did not add that he’d been a baby, remembering nothing of his father and with false memories of his mother. He’d fantasized years of his life with her.

  “Then you can understand that I was not at all fond of my guardians or grate
ful to them or anything. Our house was cleared out and sold. I was taken with my suitcase to the house of these people in St. John’s Wood. I don’t know who delivered me there, like a package, and then went off.

  “These people, my guardians the Lewises, were polite. They showed me my room, which was much bigger than my old room. The house itself was much bigger, grander, I suppose. We had dinner. I think mine was minced beef and chips. I sat and looked at it without eating. Would that upset them so they’d offer something else? ‘Come on love, there’s tart and custard for pudding.’ They didn’t say that; I just made it up. They didn’t say anything about me not eating.” He looked up at Jury. “Do you think they were being diplomatic, then? Not insisting?”

  “No. It sounds more like they were uninvolved.”

  Jury had apparently said exactly what John had believed, and he seemed to relax a little. “It would have made no difference if they’d offered me a dish of Smartees or a chocolate soda or anything at all. I don’t think there was a taste in the world I could have tolerated sitting there where my mum and dad weren’t.

  “The grounds behind the house were large. There was a stream; there was a pond. The pond was quite deep, or looked so to me. Dark and deep. I must have visited it a hundred times, each time thinking I’d just throw myself in. I expect it would have been a nice place for swimming, but I couldn’t swim. I drowned in it a hundred times.

  “One day I was standing, looking down at that pond, at its dark depths, into which I had jumped so many times in my mind’s eye, when she came up behind me and I heard her say,

  ‘Hello, Mackey.’

  I turned, and there she was, Tess Williamson, with that smile. It was so welcoming that it literally made up for all of the lack of welcome over the past months. What a smile.”

  He smiled himself, and every trace of disappointment vanished. “And that ‘Hello, Mackey.’ I said, ‘My name’s John’ and would have felt utterly stupid and awkward except Tess Williamson took all the awkwardness away. She could do that; she could neutralize bad feelings. She took every trace of failure I’d ever felt and blew it off the way you blow filaments from puffballs.