Dust

by Martha Grimes

  “That’s very sad, but what’s this got to do with—”

  Wiggins wasn’t listening to his superior, he was carrying on with his own story. “And there were quite awful stories, too, about kids’ being pushed from lifeboats by others—there were adults, too, with their children, who’d paid for the passage. But the bodies of these children floating in the ocean. God, it’s a terrible story.”

  “Yes it is, Wiggins; it’s terrible. And I don’t mean to sound hard-hearted about it, but aren’t you missing the point?”

  Wiggins looked surprised. “Am I?”

  “Yes. The point being not the evacuation of children itself, but that the brother of this boy who was shot in cold blood in front of him and his parents could be Kurt Brunner? And that Kurt Brunner could in turn have murdered Billy Maples in revenge? It’s like a bloody Greek tragedy.”

  Wiggins sat back. “It doesn’t seem likely, though. I mean, what’s the connection? We’ve got”—Wiggins began ticking points off on his fingers—“that confession, or report, or whatever it was from this German officer—”

  “General Röhm.”

  “—and you don’t know really what that is. Its source is questionable.”

  Jury leaned forward. “You’re suggesting Röhm didn’t write it?”

  “Mostly whether it was what it appeared to be. He could have been writing a book, for all you know.” Wiggins gave a snuffling little laugh and drank his tea.

  Jury ignored the laugh. “Let’s assume for the moment it was what Oswald Maples took it to be.”

  But Wiggins, caught up in his own little schema, folded down another finger. “Ah, but it could even not have said what Sir Oswald Maples said it said. You don’t know German.”

  “Oh, please. Maples is trying to trap me or lure me into doing something?”

  Wiggins’s smile was razor thin. “Let’s not forget Harry Johnson, sir.”

  Harry Johnson. Jury wondered if Harry Johnson had channeled his cleverness to Wiggins by way of Jury, the empty vessel. “I haven’t forgotten Harry Johnson. I’m still on his case. But you’re not really suggesting Oswald Maples is concocting this story?”

  Wiggins, quite full of his own interpretation of these events, events he had not witnessed, leaned back and studied the ceiling, although there was nothing up there to look at. Up came his hand again, third finger folded down. “What if it was Sir Oswald himself?”

  “What?”

  “Who’s to say he didn’t shoot Billy Maples himself?” Wiggins held both hands palms out to stave off Jury’s objections. “Just another point to consider. We should explore all avenues.”

  “Don’t be a horse’s arse. Your avenue is about as likely as a moon-beam to Mars. Come down to Earth.”

  Wiggins sighed. “If I may say so, sir, you’ve only one fault in this job: you empathize too much with witnesses—”

  “I do? I do? And I hear this coming from you? Anytime a suspect so much as sneezes, you bring out your roots and herbs and black biscuits. You practically go to bed for them.”

  Unoffended, seeing he was sitting in the catbird seat above Jury, the emotional moron, Wiggins continued: “The thing is, why would Brunner go to such elaborate lengths to murder the Maples lad?”

  Billy wasn’t a lad, though; he was thirty-two. And it occurred to Jury that he struck everybody as being a youngster. “I don’t know.”

  Sucking thoughtfully on his teeth, Wiggins said, “Still, the connection seems awfully weak. The SS officer shoots a boy right in front of his family.” Wiggins came down from the ceiling and looked at Jury. “You said Brunner said he and Billy went to that church near Lamb House.”

  “They did a couple of times.”

  “But he’s a Jew, isn’t he?”

  “There are any number of reasons one might jettison the faith of one’s family or simply go with a friend to a different church. Still…it’s a point, Wiggins.” He thought for a moment, then rose, unhooked his coat from the ancient rack, and said, “Let’s ask him.”

  Wiggins’s eyebrows raised in question.

  “Brunner. I want to talk to him again. And perhaps you could have another heart-to-heart with the cook. She might have some insight into Brunner and Billy’s relationship. Don’t spell it out for her, though.”

  On the way out of the building, down the hall, in the elevator, and through the front doors of New Scotland Yard, Wiggins kept on about the desperate accounts of the City of Benares, of incidents of adults and children pushing children out of a lifeboat back into the water.

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you, sir, it would always be women and children first? And the good old British sense of fair play?”

  “No, Wiggins, I’d think it would be every man for himself and the hell with fair play.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  They found an illegal parking spot just below Market Road and Jury told Wiggins to take it. He didn’t feel like searching for a place where parking was at a premium, or negotiating the narrow and hilly streets of Rye with Wiggins at the wheel. They left the car and hiked up the hill of Market Road.

  “Very nice. Very quaint,” said Wiggins, swiveling his head back and forth until Jury expected it to go all the way round.

  “You’ve got an amazing range of motion. Maybe I should call an exorcist.”

  “Funny. But it might be you who needs one, sir. Spooked, you are.”

  Jury stopped. “What in hell are you talking about?”

  Wiggins looked enigmatic and walked on.

  “He’s not here at the moment, Superintendent; he’s gone for a walk with Mr. Brunner. But please, do come in.” Mrs. Jessup stepped back from the door.

  He thanked her as she took their coats and then ushered them into the little room on the right, a modest repository of Jamesian memorabilia. It was scarcely large enough to serve as a waiting room. There were but two chairs.

  “Lord Ardry’s keeping you on then, Mrs. Jessup?” said Jury, rather stating the obvious.

  “He is, which is very kind of him, indeed.”

  “Oh, I doubt kindness has much to do with it. He wants a good cook is my guess.”

  “Well, I hope he’s satisfied.”

  Wiggins was checking out the framed pictures, one of which was a caricature of the great man himself.

  “Lord Ardry likes to have his guests shown in here; it gives them something to look at.”

  They were interrupted by the opening of the front door.

  “That’ll be him now.” She went into the hall, spoke a few words, and then took herself off to her kitchen.

  He heard Plant’s voice and then he himself stood in the doorway. “Well! This is a pleasant surprise!”

  Although spoken for the benefit of Mrs. Jessup, who retreated to the back of the house, it still sounded too banal a comment to be coming from Melrose Plant.

  “Kurt Brunner isn’t with you?”

  “No. He’s gone back to the lodge—that’s over on the cliff road—where he’s staying at the moment. I expect he’ll be back in London in a day or two.” Melrose still stood, clasping the book he’d been carrying to his chest. His other hand grasped his tweed jacket at a point between buttons one and two. What did this pose remind Jury of? Oh, yes: the portrait of Henry James, the famous one done by John Singer Sargent where James seemed to have a thumb hooked into his waistcoat pocket. A reproduction of the painting hung out there in the entryway.

  “What are you reading?”

  “James. A volume of his short stories.”

  “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “Right-o.”

  “Right-o?” Jury cocked his head and looked at his friend, about to become his former friend if he didn’t cut it out. He was still holding on to his jacket. Jury was positive Plant would’ve been wearing a striped waistcoat if he’d had one.

  Wiggins was still floating about the room, looking at the stuff on the walls.

  “A wonderful room, eh, Sergeant Wiggins? I come in here often just to sit.” />
  “Oh?” said Jury. “I thought perhaps you’d given up sitting, seeing as how you’re still standing there.”

  “Droll, very droll.” Melrose lowered himself onto a stool. “Do you know what I’m wondering?”

  “I’ve no idea. Whether to invite your publisher down for the day?”

  “What I’m wondering is whether the National Trust would be willing to sell this place. I’ve really become quite attached to it.”

  “You’ve been here how long now?”

  “Four days.”

  “Four days, and you think you’re him, don’t you?”

  Wiggins gave one of his snuffle laughs and said, or read from the notebook on a small desk, “‘Why use one word when five will do?’”

  Melrose laughed and then returned to his topic. “I’d think the Trust would be happy to get the property off its hands.”

  “That rather subverts the whole idea of the National Trust, doesn’t it?”

  Melrose’s brow clouded over again. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, in your former life as a fairly intelligent grown man, I think you would have known what I meant. Think about it: ‘trust’ is the key word here.”

  “Anyway, James paid two thousand pounds for the house. Can you believe it?”

  “That’s probably what you spend for a stay at Boring’s.”

  Melrose had taken the other chair by now, and sat forward and tapped the book he’d been holding. “Have you read ‘The Real Thing’?”

  “No, I don’t have much time for reading what with the mystery of who shot Billy Maples on my hands. Supposed to be on your hands, too, but I expect I can kiss that idea good-bye.”

  Melrose went on, inching forward in his seat. “In this story, a smart, prosperous-looking couple—who are actually destitute—prevail upon the artist to have them sit for him. For pay, of course. They’re impoverished gentility. Quite smart, or did I say that? He draws them again and again, the woman and then her husband. And he finds they’re impossible as sitters because they are what they are. The artist says of the woman, ‘She was the real thing, but she was always the same thing.’ I think that’s a corker!”

  “I don’t get it,” said Wiggins, turning from one of the pictures on the wall.

  “There’s nothing really to get.”

  “Well, not for you and Henry James, maybe, but Wiggins here and I are just a couple of mugs.”

  “An artist has no scope if what he’s looking at is exactly what he’s attempting to paint. For instance, if I were to paint a cook, I wouldn’t have Mrs. Jessup sit for me because she’s too much of a cook. My mind would have no place to go beyond ‘cook.’”

  “But that’s what you’d be painting,” said Wiggins. “A cook.” He went back to the pictures.

  “When you come back from Henry James land,” said Jury to Melrose, who had crossed his legs and returned his hand to dragging down his lapel, “perhaps you could help me with this investigation.”

  “Watch for signs.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “James said, ‘Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!’”

  “I’ve been trying to be one of them most of my working life.”

  As if Jury hadn’t spoken, Melrose went on: “Small things, what a gambler would call ‘tells.’ You see, people can give themselves away in the tiniest gesture.”

  “Like you’re giving away you’re the poor man’s Henry James? Wait a tick; I’ve got it! If I were an artist and I wanted to do a book illustration of Henry, I would not want him, I’d want you! Henry is too much the real bloody thing!”

  Melrose sighed hugely, as if every separate sigh in the town of Rye had collected here and Melrose were heaving it. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know, for a detective, you can be pretty silly.”

  Wiggins snickered.

  Jury smiled and crossed his arms across his chest. “At least I’m not morphing into Sherlock Holmes.”

  “What I mean by small signs is this: remember in Portrait of a Lady, Osmond and Madame Merle are in the living room of Osmond’s house? When Isabel walks into the room where Osmond is seated and Madame Merle is standing, she knows immediately that something is going on between them. She knows they’ve been intimate.”

  “You mean Osmond’s been fucking the lady in question.”

  “Very funny. Do you know why James didn’t use language like that? Do you? Not because it’s vulgar, not because he was prissy, but because it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “How dense can you be?”

  “Try me.”

  “I’m just making a point: that the whole show is given away in nothing more than Osmond’s remaining seated. That’s what I mean by watching for signs.”

  “You seem to forget, my friend, I get paid to watch for signs. What I’d like to know is if you, who are not being paid, and no wonder, if you’ve discovered anything related to this case.”

  “I’ve only been here four days.”

  “Oh, now your brief tenure is being used to excuse you. It’s been time enough to turn into Henry James.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve done no such thing. Although I will admit this house is somewhat overwhelming. There’s a pronounced aura of habitation.”

  Jury made a sound through his nose.

  “So it wouldn’t surprise you,” said Wiggins, come around again from his tour of the pictures, “if you stumbled on his ghost whilst you were going upstairs?”

  “You know, there’s another story where the narrator—in this one it’s probably James himself—does exactly that: he meets his own ghost on the stair. Or the ghost of what he might have been had he chosen a direction other than the one he did—”

  “‘The Jolly Corner,’” said Jury.

  “You’ve a good memory!”

  “That’s another thing I get paid to do: remember things. Could we set aside the haunting of Lamb House and talk about Brunner? The one I really came to see.”

  “I thought I told you—”

  “You’ve told me sod-all. You’ve been too busy reimagining yourself.”

  Melrose gave him a dismissive wave. “All right, but let’s get out of here; I’m feeling claustrophobic.”

  “Yes, with all four of us in this small room, I can see why.”

  Wiggins was quick to remind everyone that he suffered from claustrophobia occasionally, but he’d found a good remedy for it, which he’d share with Mr. Plant if he desired.

  Melrose thanked him and suggested they go into the garden, at which point Mrs. Jessup appeared and asked them if they would like coffee or tea.

  Wiggins stayed in the kitchen with Mrs. Jessup and some fresh scones.

  They sat themselves on a Victorian iron bench in the garden. It was a large and well-kept area surrounded by a high stone wall. It put Jury in mind of the wall he’d climbed with Malcolm. “How did you get on with Malcolm?” he asked.

  “You could have told me he was ten.”

  “Oh, didn’t I?”

  “‘Oh, didn’t I?’” Melrose fluted. “You know how anyone under twenty usually relates to me. They always take that lofty tone, as if they’d got so much better sense than I.” He kicked a pebble onto the lawn.

  Jury tried to hold back a smile. Then he asked, “What about Billy’s parents?”

  “Roderick is certainly taking it harder than Olivia. But Billy wasn’t her son, so that’s to be expected. Except, no, wait a moment—it really isn’t to be expected. Billy was murdered, for heaven’s sakes, and murdered in very mysterious circumstances. That should give anyone who knew him, and certainly family, a terrible jolt. She strikes me as being awfully casual. She isn’t there—I mean, with the event.”

  Jury said, “She’s easily distracted by any new man is what I’d say. She’s a strange woman, hot for sex but cold at heart. I’ve wondered about her and Billy. More than the Maples family, though, what about Kurt Brunner? Give me your impression and I’ll
tell you a story. He is, indeed, the reason we came.”

  “He’s an extremely accommodating chap. Knows a lot about Rye. He’s my historian. And he’s a huge Henry James fan. I think he’s read everything, including The Sacred Fount, which, as a matter of fact he finds overwrought. I argued that James might be a lot of things, but overwrought isn’t one of them.” Melrose slid down a little on the bench, hands now clasped behind his head. It was a cool, bright day. “Yes, we’ve had some jolly arguments about James.”

  “I’m glad they’ve been jolly. But leaving aside the jolliness of the talk, I’m especially interested in him—Brunner—because I think there’s a good chance he’s the shooter.”

  Melrose sat up with a jerk. “You can’t be serious!”

  “I am.”

  “Oh, Richard, come on! No, you’re wrong, that’s all. Brunner couldn’t have done it. Wasn’t he in Berlin?”

  “Not on the day, or rather the night, of Billy’s shooting. He was back that evening.” Jury looked at Melrose and shook his head. “You’re not even asking me how I came to this conclusion.”

  “All right. How did you?”

  Jury told him the story of the Kindertransport and of the little boy shot dead at the station in front of his parents. “Lieutenant-General Werner Röhm.”

  “My God! But the parents—and clearly the boy—had done nothing at all. They were innocent.”

  Jury looked at the high wall of the garden and thought of the Polish ghetto. He said, “Multiply that child’s shooting by around six million of those others who had done nothing wrong. You’re right. Now, mum and dad and little brother. They could only get space on the train for one of the children and thought the three-year-old was just too young to be sent away all alone.”

  “When was this?”