Vertigo 42

by Martha Grimes

  “Lacking a woman, how about a man of slight build and pretty looks? My first thought was Austin, a good Lady Bracknell, and then I realized you were an even better one. So why put yourself in the hands of anyone else when you could do the imposture yourself? You donned that sensational red dress and heels—killer shoes, I might add—made yourself up, pulled on a wig and went down to the bar of the Sun and Moon, making a point of talking to the bartender, who was also the owner. After that you made several stops around Sidbury, establishing the fact you were very much alive until after ten P.M. Then you recostumed the body, took Belle Syms up to the tower, and shoved her out of the window.

  “But at one point a problem came up that no one could have foreseen: a dog.”

  “A dog? Well, I’m sure you can weave a dog into this fanciful fabric.”

  “Thanks. I’m sure I can too. So can Sergeant Wiggins. When he finishes his tea.” Jury gestured from Wiggins to Strachey. “Go ahead.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Wiggins. “Exactly where you came in contact with this dog enough to make an enemy of him, we don’t know. However, the dog got away from his owner sometime Monday evening. He was seen by several people and seen on the grounds of Tower Cottage.” Wiggins did not even blink over this lie. “That was around midnight. The dog could have seen you with the body. Thing is, this dog once belonged in part to Arabella Hastings when she was married to Zack Syms. If the dog was close enough to see you carrying or dragging her, he’d have gone for you. Not only that, he’d remember you. His name is Stanley.”

  “Stanley.” Strachey tried on a condescending smile, but it didn’t work.

  “Stanley,” said Wiggins, “is a very protective dog. As you found out.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Strachey shook his head.

  “He won’t be of much help,” said Wiggins, quite seriously.

  “Is that all? Are you finished?”

  “By no means,” said Jury, holding his teacup out for a refill; Kenneth lifted the pot and poured the tea. Jury continued the story:

  “We’re still with Stanley, only now he’s back with his owner, and one or two things happened. We know the second did because we’ve got the body. That is, in Sidbury. The first, though, I’m speculating about. You were looking for Stanley because you thought Stanley’s owner might have been watching you at the tower. You didn’t know where he lived but assumed it was in Sidbury. Or Stanley might even have belonged to the owner of the cottage. So the dog and his master could be around if and when you had to return, either of your own volition, or were forced back by police. You couldn’t stay in Sidbury, of course, so you drove back and forth and on the last occasion, Saturday, you spotted Stanley somewhere around the village in the company of his owner. You followed them to that alley behind the shops and tried to shoot both Stanley and his owner and did manage to shoot Zack Syms. Killed him.”

  Kenneth Strachey seemed fascinated with this accounting despite himself. He said, “My God, Superintendent, that’s one of the most incredible reconstructions of a crime I’ve ever heard.” He got up and started collecting the teacups. “Sorry gentlemen, but I’m a little peckish, and I’m getting a few things to eat. Do you like caviar?” He looked from one to the other.

  Wiggins supplied an answer. “Tell the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever tasted caviar.”

  “Well, then you’re in for a treat, Sergeant.”

  “Oh, don’t get up, Mr. Strachey, the worst is yet to come.”

  Kenneth raised his well-groomed eyebrows. “Then I need sustenance to get through it, don’t I?” He paid no attention to Jury’s request; instead he went to the giant fridge, opened the door, and started whisking small plates out of it and lining the dishes up his arm.

  Fascinated by such self-possession, Jury watched him prepare all sorts of things: crushed ice filling a glass bowl and a smaller bowl set within the ice; bread sliced thinly; an arrangement of crackers circling a large platter, smoked salmon on a green glass plate set beside that; wineglasses brought down from a cupboard, three of them upended on the counter at which they were sitting, and a bottle of Chablis that he uncorked as smoothly as a sommelier and poured. “Sorry there’s no champagne.”

  Jury found Strachey’s capacity for suppressing emotion unnerving. But he waited until the plates had been brought to the table and Strachey reseated. “Now, the worst?”

  Jury nodded. “Much the worst: the murder of Tess Williamson.”

  Strachey this time did register alarm. “Again, the court’s ruling was an open verdict. Probably, it was an accident. Everybody knew she had vertigo.”

  “Vertigo isn’t what killed her. And an accidental fall down those steps wouldn’t have done it, either.”

  “Why not, if her head struck that pedestal at the bottom?”

  “She never reached the bottom. Her head was struck, all right, but a hand was holding the piece of marble.”

  “You make it sound as if you were there.”

  “I wasn’t. You were.”

  “What?” For the first time, the sangfroid slipped a little. “What about Tom Williamson? I passed him—” He stopped, realizing his error.

  “You passed him? And where was that?”

  “All right, I was there. I passed Williamson on the road, the old one that led to the house.”

  Jury was taken aback. “No you didn’t. Tom Williamson was in London that afternoon, visiting a friend.”

  Strachey’s smile was tight. “Well, there’s an alibi worth checking.”

  “That’s a very weak defense, Mr. Strachey.” When Kenneth didn’t answer that charge, Jury said, “Now, Arabella Hastings . . . Somehow threatened to use the knowledge unless you saw her, went out with her, or who knows what? Remember, you told Sergeant Wiggins she was ‘always turning up’ in unlikely places. I’m saying Arabella followed you all the way to Laburnum that day. But it was years before she played that card. Perhaps because she married Zack Syms. It must have come as a very nasty shock that she knew about Tess’s death. So you dated her a few times, and when she said she was going to Northamptonshire to visit her aunt, you saw an opportunity.

  “The impostor-thing was quite a clever idea, Mr. Strachey. Chancy, but not as chancy as it would have been to have someone else put on that dress. This way, there’s only you, no one else to witness it—”

  “Except a dog,” said Wiggins, interrupting as he popped a biscuit laden with caviar into his mouth.

  “Except a dog,” said Jury, smiling.

  Knightsbridge

  Saturday, 11:00 A.M.

  58

  * * *

  Tom Williamson heard the brief rap of his front door knocker, which stopped as suddenly as it started, as if the visitor wanted to take it back.

  Rarely did Tom get surprise visitors; he thought it must be the postman wanting something signed or one of the delivery services—UPS, FedEx. These thoughts occurred as he walked to the door, opened it, and saw a complete stranger with nothing in his hands.

  “Mr. Williamson,” he said.

  “Yes? May I help you?”

  “I expect you wouldn’t remember me; it’s been so long. John McAllister.” John smiled.

  Tom was utterly taken aback. He stood for some time looking at him. “McAllister. Wait, you were one of the children at Laburnum . . . You’re Mackey?

  “Mackey, yes.”

  Tom found the man’s smile absolutely heart-melting. No wonder Tess had adored him. “But . . . come on in, please.”

  John McAllister entered rooms he had seen once or twice as a little boy but remembered nothing of.

  Tom said, “Look, would you like something? Tea? Coffee? I could use something stronger, myself.” He didn’t doubt that McAllister could too. “Whiskey? Vodka?”

  “A whiskey would do well, thanks.”

  “Just have a seat anywhere; I’ll be right back.”


  After he walked out of the room, John looked around it, avoiding the mantelpiece, since he’d noticed pictures lining it and didn’t think he could take looking at them too closely.

  Tom was back with the Macallans and two cut glass tumblers. “Water? Soda?”

  John shook his head. “Just plain, thanks. I’m sorry to barge in like this, but it’s important. It’s about Tess.”

  Tom handed him a tumbler holding two fingers of whiskey. “Tess? But she’s been dead for seventeen years, John.”

  John nodded. “This is something I just found out and that you probably don’t know yet. There’s a letter—”

  “What letter?”

  “From Tess.”

  Tom frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t. You’ve never seen it.”

  Bloomsbury

  Saturday, Noon

  59

  * * *

  Jury and Wiggins had run through two possible scenarios as to the way Kenneth Strachey had managed to get Tess Williamson from the top of that set of stone stairs to the bottom.

  “Maybe with a gun pointed at her, she was trying to get away and took a running leap, which is about the only way she could have propelled herself down those steps by herself,” said Wiggins.

  “But perhaps you actually picked her up and threw her down. Forensic had a set of figures to determine the varying distances: the depth of the patio would show how much of a run she could manage in order to throw herself down; the distance of the time the person would be in the air; the landing distance. What we’re thinking is that you must have read the letter she wrote to Tom and were infuriated by her words about John McAllister: ‘Mackey, the love of my life.’ ”

  Kenneth smiled sourly as he poured another glass of the Chablis—two glasses. Wiggins cupped the top of his glass with his hand. “Yes, I was furious. She had written this note and left it under a glass heart paperweight. I thought that glass heart a nice touch. It says so much about the human heart, doesn’t it? Heavy, brittle, breakable, weighted, transparent, cold—one could go on for a long time reflecting on that symbolism.

  “And you’re right. I did go looking for my biological mother when I turned eighteen. I never forgot what that beastly little Hilda Palmer told me. That Tess had a baby several years before she’d married Tom Williamson and had put it up for adoption.

  “ ‘And how do you know this, brat?’ I asked her.

  “ ‘My mother heard it.’

  “ ‘Why do you think this is such exciting news? It wouldn’t hurt Tess if it were known.’

  “ ‘Maybe not hurt her. But what about one of you?’ ”

  Jury said, “How did she know that? It wasn’t common knowledge at all; I imagine your father went to some pains to hide the fact that you were adopted.”

  “He did. Hilda? How did she know anything? But she did; she found out things that astonished people.”

  “The search for your mother led you to the Camden Gardens Adoption Agency.”

  “And I did discover there was a woman named Tessa Durban who’d put a child up for adoption. Tess just made that name up. She was my mother.”

  Jury and Wiggins exchanged a look. “Didn’t it occur to you that Hilda Palmer was lying to you, Kenneth?”

  “Of course it did. But it turned out she wasn’t. It was the brightest moment of my life, finding that out. And Tess didn’t know; at least I don’t think she did. How could she have? I found out she was going to Laburnum that week; I went too. I drove up out front and went in. I called her name, but nobody answered. I went into the library, her favorite room in the house, but she wasn’t there. That’s where I found the letter. Of course, I shouldn’t have read it, but I felt I had earned the right now. When I found that she’d been protecting John and that he’d been the one to push Hilda, I didn’t know what to think. ‘The love of my life’? For the first time I wondered if I’d made a mistake, or the agency had—

  “I went looking for her. You think I killed her? Don’t be ridiculous; I could never have done that. She was dead when I got there.”

  Bloomsbury

  Saturday, 12:30 P.M.

  60

  * * *

  Jury snapped out of his self-satisfied summing-up, stunned. “What are you talking about?”

  “I went out to the patio and saw Tess lying at the bottom of those stone stairs. I ran down to help her, thinking she must be unconscious and she . . . was dead.”

  He looked genuinely grief stricken.

  Wiggins said, “Were you absolutely sure? Didn’t you call police? Or a hospital for an ambulance?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “But you didn’t wait?”

  “No. Caught in those circumstances? Alone with a dead body? I don’t think so.” He shook his head. Then he added, “So that probably was Tom Williamson I passed on the road.”

  Jury shook his head. “He was in London with a friend, a mutual friend. He couldn’t have been there.”

  “But he was. At least he was on the road, and where else would he have been going?”

  Jury made a few swift calculations in his mind. “London is two hours—” Then he stopped. No sense telling Kenneth Strachey what he thought. He said, “Why haven’t you said anything in all of this time, for God’s sakes?”

  “Same reason. Police would have been all over me and they’d manage to supply a motive, wouldn’t they, in my discovery she was my mother? She abandoned me and I was furious . . . something like that.”

  “You didn’t know how long she’d been dead?”

  “I could take a guess that it wasn’t long. Her body was still warm. I don’t know much, but doesn’t it take at least a couple of hours for rigor mortis to set in?”

  Strachey was a little too nimble with words for Jury’s taste. He looked at Wiggins, who appeared to be thinking something of the same thing. “About that. I can’t get over the fact you just left her there,” said Jury.

  “Self-preservation, Superintendent.”

  Jury narrowed his eyes. “Let’s go back to Belle Syms’s death.”

  “Now, that’s really a facer, isn’t it? What possible reason would I have for doing away with Arabella Hastings-Syms if she wasn’t a danger to me? And if I hadn’t killed Tess, Arabella wouldn’t be a danger, right? And of course if I didn’t dump Belle from that tower, neither the dog and nor the husband would have seen me. Which means I’d have no reason to kill them, correct? It’s like dominoes, isn’t it, Superintendent? The first one falls, then they all do.” Kenneth smiled brightly. “So I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong”—he bit into one of the biscuits—“except to put too much salt in these clotted cream biscuits.” He frowned.

  “Very neat, Mr. Strachey, but I don’t believe it for a moment.”

  “No? Then why don’t you check Williamson’s alibi?” He took a drink of wine. “Because the thing is, you don’t have any evidence that I’m guilty of any of these murders, do you?”

  ____

  “Get a warrant, Wiggins. Bloody hell.”

  “We’ve still no concrete evidence, sir. Just theories,” Wiggins said, uncertainly. “Is it possible Tom Williamson was there?”

  “How can it be? He was with Sir Oswald that afternoon. And if Tom killed Tess what about the others? Arabella Hastings and Zack Syms. You don’t think he did those murders too?” Jury wiped his hands over his face. “No, it couldn’t have been Tom. He loved her too much.”

  Wiggins gave Jury a look.

  “Well, what?”

  “It’s just that you’re so emotionally involved in this case.”

  “Okay. Then you check his alibi. Go to Knightsbridge, talk to him.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to talk to her?”

  “Her? Who?”

  “The nurse, or housekeeper back then? Zillah Peabo
dy. I saw her name in the file. Sir Oswald was waiting for her, couldn’t understand why she didn’t show up because it was Monday, and she regularly came on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But Williamson told him, no, today was Tuesday.”

  Jury, whose hand was reaching for the phone, stopped in midair. “Surely, all of that was checked out seventeen years ago? Tom would have been the prime suspect. Police surely would have picked over that alibi like searching for fleas on a dog.”

  “That’s Williamson’s alibi. It isn’t Sir Oswald Maples’s. I mean, Maples established Tom Williamson’s alibi. Did anyone think to wonder if Sir Oswald was lying to protect him?”

  “Oswald Maples wouldn’t have done that.”

  “But think about this: Tom Williamson could have been establishing an alibi. He had to be with someone on Tuesday at least late enough into the afternoon that it would have made it impossible to get to Devon by the time Tess died. But, of course, he wouldn’t know that, would he, unless he’d killed her?”

  “Then go to Chelsea instead of Knightsbridge and see Oswald Maples.”

  “Right.”

  Chelsea

  Saturday, 2:00 P.M.

  61

  * * *

  Sir Oswald Maples? I’m Detective Sergeant Wiggins. May I come in?” Wiggins had his warrant card out and Sir Oswald was adjusting his glasses the better to see it.

  “Wiggins? I know that name from somewhere.”

  “Superintendent Jury’s my boss. Maybe he mentioned me.”

  Sir Oswald broke out a big smile. “Of course! Yes, come on in. I was just having a hot drink. Care to join me? Toss your coat over a chair, why don’t you?”