The Corpse of St James's

by Jeanne M. Dams

  ‘Got it in one,’ he said, and sat down again. ‘Sorry.’

  I wasn’t sure whether he was apologizing for his tears, or his anger, or both. I shrugged a ‘doesn’t matter’.

  ‘So,’ he said, trying to establish an easy tone, ‘going back to the last remark but five, you said you wanted my help. About what?’

  ‘About the art world. Specifically, the Royal Collection and its minders.’

  ‘The curators, you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know enough about it to know what I mean. Anyone who has anything to do with the collection and works at the palace.’

  ‘At Buck House? Or the others? Windsor, Balmoral, and the rest,’ he added somewhat impatiently when I looked puzzled. ‘The Collection spreads out over quite a vast area, you know, all the royal residences.’

  ‘How stupid of me. I should have known. Just . . . Buck House.’ I was a little uncomfortable with the term, which smacked to me of lèse-majesté. Bert’s hint of a grin told me he was well aware of my reaction.

  ‘Term of affection, dear lady, I assure you. I do know a number of the staff who look after the Collection, as it happens. What do you want to know . . . and why, if I may ask?’

  I leaned forward. ‘This may seem as far-fetched to you as it does to Alan and Jonathan, but I’m convinced that art is somehow at the bottom of all this. It was your passion for art, yours and Jemima’s, that led you into this business and Jemima into her job at the palace. I don’t know if you know that she’s hoping desperately to change jobs and work with the Royal Collection in some capacity. It was, if you don’t mind my saying so, that same passion for art that led to . . . well, the fact of Melissa. Art keeps swirling around in my head. There’s some connection, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘It’s not too much of a stretch, I suppose. You’re right. Jemima was as mad about art as I was . . . as I am. And I suppose she could have passed her obsession on to her daughter. But what could that have to do with Melissa’s death?’

  ‘Just this.’ I told him about Melissa’s escapade at the palace. ‘She was roaming that treasure house, unsupervised, for perhaps two hours.’

  ‘You don’t think she stole something?’

  ‘No. She couldn’t have. Apart from anything else, there’s the security system.’

  Bert frowned. ‘The palace isn’t a museum, you know. It’s a home. A very posh home, with furnishings that would grace any museum in the world, but nevertheless a residence. The Queen would cast a cold eye, believe me, on any attempt at museum-style security; pressure pads, electronic eyes, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m told the treasures don’t actually belong to her, but to the Crown. I confess the distinction eludes me.’

  ‘They belong to the United Kingdom, under the guardianship of the current monarch. Under certain circumstances she could give something away, to a visiting head of state, for example, but she cannot sell or otherwise dispose of anything. They are hers to enjoy during her lifetime. If she wishes, for example, to move a vase from one room to another, or from one residence to another, for that matter, she is free to do so. She cannot, however, decide that several of the clocks are hideous – which, frankly, some of them are – and should be given to Oxfam, though she can banish them to the attics. And if she wants to walk round with a guest and pick up a piece of Sèvres to point out a detail, she certainly doesn’t want alarms to ring. So Melissa could, in theory, have made off with some small object, a snuff box, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Right. But they searched her when they found her, so that really isn’t a possibility. No, my idea is quite different. I think she met someone, someone who showed her around, was amused by her admiration and wonder, and thought she might be fun to know.’

  ‘And you want to know if I can think of any likely candidates.’ He reached for the glass holding the remains of his whisky. ‘Are you sure you won’t have some?’

  ‘I’m a bourbon girl. But as I’ve had no lunch, I’d say no in any case. The tea was ample.’

  He brooded, sipping. ‘No one comes to mind at the moment, but this has all come as a bit of a shock. I still can’t believe . . . I mean, I believe you, but the idea of my daughter . . . I know I abandoned her. I know I’ve had nothing to do with her life. At first I thought I had no choice. I was just a kid, with no job, nothing . . . and my father would have turned me out if he’d known. He hated his brother and that whole side of the family. And I hated him. He was a smooth, self-righteous prig. I liked Aunt Letty, though. Anyway . . . there wasn’t much I could do for Jemima and Melissa at first, and then . . . I don’t think she wanted anything to do with me, anyway, and she . . . a baby . . .’

  ‘A baby would have been a terrible embarrassment to you in your new way of life.’

  ‘That makes me sound like a selfish prat.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He sighed. ‘Oh, all right, so I was a selfish prat. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but looking at it now . . . OK, I could have done a lot more. I should have done a lot more. I was getting along all right. I’m not exactly rich, but I suppose I’m not far from it. And here’s Jemima working some nothing job just to make ends meet, and Melissa . . .’ He finished his whisky at a gulp, stood, and looked me straight in the eye. ‘I’ll make out a list of anyone I can think of at the palace who might have caught Melissa’s fancy, and I’ll get it to you as soon as I can. But I’ll tell you this. If you, or the police, or whoever, catch up with the bastard who messed my daughter about and then killed her, you’d better have him safe behind bars before I know who it is. I may not have been much of a father, but I’ll kill the bleeder if I find him.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Lynn came back and bought her paintings and then took me back to the house. We sat around having a late snack lunch and a post-mortem. Jonathan had gone home to brood, and I assumed Letty was either with him or back in Bramber. I was glad they weren’t there; it made the discussion easier.

  ‘Did he mean it, the threat?’ asked Alan.

  ‘Oh, he meant it. At the time, anyway. Now once he’s over his first shock, he may cool down. I don’t know, though. He struck me as genuinely contrite about his shabby treatment of Jemima and Melissa in the past, and deeply distressed about the child’s death. I may have set the cat among the pigeons.’

  ‘Would it do any good if I were to speak to him? Along the lines of letting the police do their job, two wrongs don’t make a right, and so on?’

  ‘I doubt it. He’d be very polite and agree with all you said, and go ahead and do what he thought he had to. He seems quite a nice young man. I liked him. But there’s a core of steel, it seems to me. I doubt he’s easily swayed.’

  ‘Well, then, we just have to make sure the police get to our villain before Bert does.’

  ‘Yes, well, as Mrs Beeton is reputed to have said, first you have to catch your hare.’

  The next few days were tedious in the extreme. Oh, they should have been interesting. Alan and I, sometimes in company with Watson, interviewed the palace footmen on the list Jemima had supplied, and then other men from Bert’s list. My taste for beer was sated to the point that I took to ordering tonic instead. Some of the men admitted to seeing Melissa as she stormed through the palace. One of the footmen even said he had talked to her briefly, telling her she’d better get back to her mum in a hurry or be in real trouble. None admitted to any further relationship with her. Well, they wouldn’t have, but it seemed to both Alan and me that they were telling the truth.

  So there set in a period of waiting, something I’m never very good at. Alan and I went home to Sherebury, where we were greeted with varying degrees of indifference by the cats. Watson was happy to be home, but then Watson is nearly always happy. As long as Alan and I are around, his paradise is complete.

  I was fidgety. I wanted to be doing something, but there seemed to be nothing to do. I had run out of ideas. So I puttered around the house, driving Alan and myself to distraction. Occasionally, I varied the programme b
y going into the garden to drive Bob crazy. He was busy setting out annuals and trying to deal with the yellowing foliage of the daffodils.

  ‘Why don’t you just cut it off? It’s really ugly now that it’s not nice and green.’

  ‘You don’t want to cut it off. Has to stay till it’s brown. Feeds the bulbs. You could braid it if you want. Some people do.’

  His tone of voice told me exactly what he thought of people who wasted their time braiding daffodils, and incidentally of people who wasted their gardeners’ time with silly questions.

  I went back to annoying Alan.

  Meanwhile, the police machine had been grinding on, putting out public appeals, trying to find evidence that Jonathan had been in or near St James’s Park at the relevant times on Tuesday, the eighth of May. They had found a number of witnesses who claimed they had seen a man of Jonathan’s description ‘acting very strange’ that evening. None of those strange men had been limping, however, or carrying a cane, so Jonathan had not yet had to appear in a line-up, or ‘identification parade’ as they rather grandly call the procedure in England. Carstairs et al knew that something like ninety-nine percent of the responses they got from the general public were so much eyewash, but they had to go through the drill, if for no other reason than that the media, predictably, were giving them hell. ‘NO LEADS YET IN ST JAMES’S MURDER!’ screamed the headlines in the tabloids. The respectable papers, The Times and Telegraph and Guardian, were more discreet but equally censorious, along the lines of ‘It has now been nearly two weeks since the discovery of the body of a young woman in St James’s Park, and the police appear no nearer . . .’ Under the circumstances, I thought Carstairs was to be commended for not clapping Jonathan straight into jail and having done with it.

  I said as much to Alan, who grunted and retreated deeper into the crossword puzzle. He was hating this, I knew; hating having to be sidelined, exasperated with Jonathan for putting him in this position, and annoyed with me for my relative freedom to poke my nose in.

  The trouble was, I could think of no useful venue for said poking. If only some new information would surface! Surely the police, with all their resources, ought to come up with something. Then I reminded myself that even if they did, I would be told nothing about it. We were well and truly stuck.

  We tended, during those days, to talk a lot about the weather.

  It was a Sunday afternoon when a new idea finally emerged. Alan and I had been to church at the Cathedral, had lunched at the Rose and Crown, our favourite pub, and were back home pretending to enjoy the lovely weather and our garden, now that Bob had worked his miracles and it was in full bloom. The phone rang.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ we said in unison, trying to spring to our feet. At our age, springing is not our best act. Alan, leaner and fitter, beat me by a length, but then held the phone out to me. ‘For you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t know. He didn’t say.’

  I took the phone. ‘Robert Hathaway here. Or Bert Higgins, if you prefer.’

  ‘Yes, Bert. I’m very glad to hear from you. I’ve been hoping you might think of someone else to question. We don’t seem to be getting anywhere.’

  ‘No. And you may be disappointed in this idea, as well. I’ve not come up with any more names, only the faintest hint of an idea.’

  ‘That’s a great deal more than we have here. Tell me.’

  ‘I found this out quite by accident. And it may have nothing to do with Melissa, but I thought perhaps I should pass it along.’

  I was gripping the phone so hard my hand threatened to lock up. ‘Bert.’ I tried hard to keep my impatience out of my voice.

  ‘All right, yes, I’m getting to it. You see, I happen to know one of the chaps who deal with the palace tours. That is, he isn’t a guide, you understand, but he helps deal with the punters, especially the group tours, which can get a trifle unruly, especially when children are involved.’

  Children. Might there eventually be a point to this rambling discourse?

  ‘He gets especially nervous when school groups visit, as I’m sure you can imagine. All those fragile treasures . . . well, you can see what even one careless or exuberant child might do.’

  I didn’t trust myself to speak. I was near meltdown point.

  ‘So there’s a chap he brings in to help the regular guides with the children.’

  ‘A teacher?’

  ‘No. Well, that is, I suppose he teaches some art classes, but he’s actually a sort of consultant. An artist himself, you know.’

  ‘Bert, I don’t know, and I wish you’d tell me what this person has to do with anything!’

  ‘I’m trying to. He – his name is Anthony Jarvis – makes part of his living by supervising school groups on palace tours. He knows a lot about the Royal Collection. I think he’d like to be a curator, but there hasn’t been an opening. He’s an artist, as I said, a painter, but quite frankly he’s better at talking about art than doing it, if you know what I mean.’

  He stopped. I gripped the phone even harder. ‘What do you mean, Bert?’

  ‘Oh, haven’t I said? It’s a bit tricky, you see, because the chap, not the one who works at the palace, but the other one, Jarvis, is someone I used to know rather well, and even though . . . well, I still wouldn’t want to embarrass him, or make his life difficult, or anything of that sort.’

  ‘Robert Higgins Hathaway, if you don’t tell me immediately what you’re stalling about, I’m going to make your life difficult!’

  ‘He was there that day, the day that Melissa did her little walkabout in the palace. There was a school group doing the tour, and Jarvis was with them. The chap at the palace happened to mention it to me, and I just thought—’

  ‘And you say you know this guide – assistant – whatever he is?’ I interrupted.

  ‘Used to. He lived in Brighton when I did. That’s how I got to know him.’

  ‘I . . . see.’ I didn’t, actually, or not very clearly. ‘Then he’s roughly your age?’

  ‘Roughly. Looks quite a lot younger, though.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Bert,’ I said, my voice weary, ‘you’re going to either have to tell me the story or forget about it. Half-hints are no use at all.’

  A gusty sigh came down the line. ‘You’re right. I had hoped . . . but you’re right.’ Another sigh. ‘This is difficult for me.’

  I waited. I found I was clenching my teeth. I unclenched them.

  ‘You see, I fancied him. He has a baby-face, and he’s so . . . or at least he was, a few years ago. We used to see each other now and again, just casually, and I had high hopes that one day . . . but I haven’t seen him since . . .’ Pause. I thought I heard Bert swallow.

  ‘I had moved to London by then, but I still went to Brighton now and then. The antiques trade had pretty well dried up there by that time, but I still had some connections, and I could sometimes pick up a good deal. So this one evening I popped into a pub, one of my old haunts, and there he was.’

  ‘A gay pub?’ I thought I saw where this was going.

  ‘Well, it was when I lived there. So when I saw him, as beautiful as ever, sitting alone at the bar, I was sure this was my chance. I sat down beside him and began to . . . try to renew the acquaintance.’

  ‘And then he broke your heart, and now you’re trying to get revenge. Really, Bert!’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that way at all. The fact is, I’d made a mistake. He wasn’t interested. The pub had changed ownership, and character, since the last time I’d been in and . . . he was very nice about telling me he didn’t play on my team. I . . . I found the whole experience humiliating.’

  ‘I can see how you might. But, Bert, what possible connection might this have to Melissa’s murder?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just that I used to know him, and he’s from the same part of the world as our family, and . . . well . . . he was there on the day Melissa was roaming about the palace, and he is, or at least was, extr
emely nice-looking, and . . . oh, I said it was only the tiniest of possibilities. Forget it.’

  ‘You’re right. It’s a slim lead. But as it’s the only one we have, or the only one I have, I’ll see if it goes anywhere. What was his name, again?’

  ‘Anthony Jarvis.’

  ‘Why does no one ever have a peculiar name? I could probably find an Aloysius Jacobowicz, but Anthony Jarvis! Do you have an address or phone number?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. But I can find out the name of the school he was shepherding. I don’t think he’s in Brighton any more. I haven’t kept track of him, for obvious reasons.’

  ‘Yes. Well, I’ll follow up, and let you know.’ I clicked off the phone.

  ‘Anything?’ Alan asked, eyebrows raised.

  ‘Probably not. Just Bert’s attempt to salve his conscience about Melissa, along with a little spite about a guy who rejected him.’ I gave him the details. ‘There’s not much we can do about it until Bert gets back with the name of the school, or we can figure out some other way to trace this person.’

  ‘Not much you can do,’ Alan corrected. ‘I can turn the name over to Carstairs. He can track the fellow down in the blink of an eye.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, yes, I suppose you have to do that.’

  ‘You know perfectly well I have to do that.’

  I bit my lip. ‘What will he do with it?’

  ‘Put it into the hopper along with everything else. Solving a case is like making sausages, Dorothy. You collect all the information you can, sort it out, grind it up, and hope it comes out in some recognizable form.’

  ‘But it’s such a tenuous connection. Will he even think it worth pursuing? Especially since he thinks Jonathan did it.’

  ‘You’re not thinking, Dorothy. What he does with the information is his business. It need have no effect on what you do with it. True, if there’s anything to be learned from this Jarvis fellow, Carstairs and Co may get there first. But you may ask questions that don’t occur to the official investigators. You almost always do.’