Dust

by Martha Grimes

  “The Zetter. The big Z. I’ve eaten in their restaurant. It’s quite fabulous.” He checked his watch. “Care to go?”

  “No, thanks. I’ve got a mountain of paperwork I’d much rather do. You’re trying to pick up where we left off?”

  Harry smiled. “Hardly. Where we left off was my being a psychopathic killer. Which I’m not. No, I was just thinking of a good spot for dinner.”

  Mungo slipped out from under the bar chair and looked up at Jury. Had he not known that dogs really couldn’t roll their eyes, he’d have sworn Mungo just did. The dog slid back under the chair.

  “That’s where the murder took place, the Zetter.”

  “Shooting?”

  “Right.” Jury, in spite of himself, told him the story. It was as if he was compelled to. Harry was one of those people who enticed others into telling stories, though no one was as good a storyteller as Harry himself. Harry was about stories.

  Harry watched the long mirror behind the bar and blew smoke rings throughout Jury’s tale. Harry was also about smoke and mirrors.

  Then he asked, “The grandfather, Maples, was in codes and ciphers, you said?”

  “Bletchley Park.”

  “How can you be sure he’s telling the truth?”

  Jury laughed. “Because not everyone’s like you, Harry.”

  “Seriously,” as if Jury couldn’t have been, not with that response, “how can you be sure this is a crime en famille, so to speak? Perhaps there’s another agenda. It sounds as if there is.”

  “Harry, if there’s anyone who can turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, it’s you.”

  “I’m merely saying there might be broader ramifications.”

  “Such as?” He signed to Trevor.

  Trevor came down the bar, picking up Harry’s bottle on the way.

  “The code and cipher branch is a function of MI, isn’t it? There could be something going on—”

  “There’s always something going on, Harry.” Jury watched Trevor pour the wine, the last of it to Harry. “And how in hell do you know about GC and CS?”

  Harry didn’t bother answering that. He said, “You should talk to him again, keeping that in mind.”

  Jury was getting irrationally angry. “With what in mind?”

  This earned him a condescending look and a head shake. “Are you having trouble following? Bad for a copper.” Harry lit another cigar. They were small and lasted not much longer than cigarettes. “Keeping in mind that you might have made up your mind too soon; that you’re focusing on the wrong thing. There may be another agenda.”

  Jury set down his glass and stared at Harry. “That’s more up your street, Harry. As it’s exactly what you did. You got me focused on the wrong thing.”

  Harry smiled. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Bollocks. You know exactly what I mean. Come on, it’s just us.”

  “It’s never just us.”

  “If you mean the wire—” Jury opened his jacket wide. “I told you I’m not fitted out with anything.”

  “I don’t trust you, sport. I’d sooner trust Mungo.”

  “Hell, so would I.”

  Mungo eased himself out from under the chair and sat looking at Jury. Looking at Harry. Looking from one to the other.

  “Let’s get out of here and take a walk. Trev?” Harry held up a ten-pound note like a little flag. Trevor nodded. Harry dropped it on the bar.

  Jury checked his watch. It would be an hour until he had to meet Phyllis at Ruiyi.

  “Then come on.” Harry was up and shrugging into his coat, the black cashmere. The ten pounds was clearly for Trevor’s tip. The bottle would be added to his account. Jury imagined he must have one. He must spend thousands in this place, considering the price of the wine Trevor usually chose. The pub was apparently Harry’s regular, even though it was a distance from his home in Belgravia.

  Jury pulled his coat on, definitely not cashmere, just his old Bur-berry with a lining against the cold. It was still chilly for April.

  Mungo followed them out.

  They walked along Cannon Street, which seemed harshly modern and modish after the smoky ambience of the Old Wine Shades and the old-world character of Martin’s Lane.

  “So what are we doing, walking around out here?”

  “Walking around out here.”

  “How illuminating. Why are we?”

  “Walking is a good way to talk.”

  “I think sitting on a bar chair is a better way.”

  Harry shook his head, seemingly at Jury’s own thickheadedness. “That depends on who’s in the bar chair next to you.”

  “What? There was no one next to me.”

  “There was next to me.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, for God’s sakes, I have no idea. That’s the point.”

  Jury stopped. So did Harry then. So did Mungo.

  “Harry, you’re the most paranoid person I’ve ever known.”

  Harry didn’t bother denying the charge. He said, “You wondered how it was I was familiar with codes and ciphers—GC and CS. It’s because my father worked there.”

  They had come by now to St. Paul’s churchyard and Jury stopped cold. “What? Your father was at Bletchley? Don’t make me laugh!”

  “Why is that so impossible? He was a friend of Alan Turing—”

  Jury picked up the pace and was walking again. Harry and Mungo followed. “Harry, is there anything you don’t connect up with? Is my life in your com pany to be spent in a vast sea of coincidence? When it isn’t a pack of lies.”

  “Don’t you get bored,” said Harry, “with people always telling you the truth?”

  “I’m CID. Nobody tells me the truth.” They were walking up Ludgate Hill. “Least of all you.”

  This earned a belabored sigh. “You’re such a cynic. That’s not good in a detective. It’s true, though, my father was at Bletchley Park. You know what the Poles said about the Enigma?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “To defeat the Enigma code, you need a counter-Enigma.”

  “Your point being?”

  “I’d say you need me.”

  Again, Jury stopped dead. Near Ludgate Circus, he did a 180-degree turn, as if inviting someone, anyone, some thing to explain such double-dyed duplicity as was vested in that suggestion.

  “Oh, come on,” said Harry. “You know I’m exceedingly smart.”

  “Yes, Harry, believe me I know you’re smart. Now if you were only sane I’d say you have a bright future.” They were the same height, more than six feet, and Jury got right up in Harry’s face. “You know that I know that you know that whole story was a pack of lies. It was all diabolically clever.”

  Harry yawned. “You have a rich fantasy life, Richard, and you’re making the same mistake you made before.”

  Jury started walking again. How in hell had they gotten to Farringdon Road? “What mistake?”

  “You’ve forgotten your Gödel.”

  “I never remembered Gödel. I couldn’t understand him.”

  “Of course you did. You’re one of the quickest studies I’ve ever known. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem: you can’t formally prove the consistency of a system of arithmetic within the system.”

  “What in hell are you talking about? This isn’t arithmetic.”

  Another deep sigh from Harry. “Yes, it is. Look: you’ve got the victim, the villain, for once not me, at least not yet, the suspects, the innocent, you, me, your sergeant, and so forth, you know, people on the fringe, such as Trevor back there—and whichever suspects prove to be innocent.” Harry smiled. “Which is the problem, isn’t it? Remember Schrödinger’s cat.”

  That set Mungo to pacing back and forth along the pavement as if he were trying to work something out.

  Jury looked up at a tilting moon. Was this how the world would end for him? Him listening to Harry Johnson? Yet knowing he was allowing himself to be sucked in, he couldn’t resist asking, “How does Schrödinger�
��s cat come into it?”

  “Obviously: the cat’s dead, the cat’s alive. Simultaneously. Your man is guilty, your man is innocent. Simultaneously. And you—the detective—wander in on this conundrum—”

  “Do me a favor and shut up, Harry.”

  “—and you change things. The players are not what they were before.”

  “All you’re saying is I’m not objective.”

  Harry mashed his hand against his forehead. “No, no, no, no! That’s not what I’m saying. You impose yourself upon the scene. Say, the crime scene. And you change it. It isn’t what it was before. The incompleteness theorem.”

  “Harry, this is the most arrant nonsense I’ve heard. Gödel would kick you all the way to Clerk—” Jury stood looking around. “How in hell did we get to Clerkenwell Road?”

  Harry pointed. “There’s the big Z. Dinner?”

  Jurry stepped out into the Clerkenwell Road. “And here’s a cab. Good night.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  Late again.

  Ruiyi was crowded, as usual. He could see Phyllis sitting at a table in the back of the room, not looking at all as if she were waiting for someone. She was reading a book and eating. Jury had wedged himself through the door, where a number of people in the closely packed and highly concentrated line gave him killing looks.

  “Phyllis, I’m so sorry. How long have you been here?”

  “Hours!” She looked at her watch. “Actually, twenty minutes.” She laughed and pointed her fork at her plate. “Delicious. I was starved, so I ordered. I hope you don’t mind.”

  He did and wondered why in the hell he had the right to mind. Absurdly, he felt as if he himself were an afterthought. He’d rather she’d been cooling her heels and tapping her fingers on the tabletop. How ridiculous.

  “Of course not,” he said as he draped his coat over the back of his chair.

  “Then why do you look so gloomy?”

  “I do? Well, I don’t feel gloomy.” His smile did not light up his eyes. Nor hers. He gave a cursory look at the menu, knowing he’d order the Peking duck. He was almost as bad as Wiggins, who studied the Ruiyi menu every time they came and then always ordered the crispy fish.

  “At least you’re smiling now.”

  “Oh. I was just thinking of Wiggins. This is his favorite restaurant.”

  “By the look of it, Sergeant Wiggins is not alone.” She inclined her head toward the line. “It’s always like that, isn’t it? You’d think that after a couple of times, they’d wise up.”

  “And make reservations? Danny doesn’t take them. Or get here earlier? Not unless they came at eight a.m. It’s like a U2 concert.”

  “No. I was thinking more along the lines of joining the Metropolitan Police.” She rooted her ID out of a carryall. “I elbowed my way straight to a table. It’s really thrilling to be able to do that.”

  The little waitress, as big as a thimble, bowed slightly to Jury and his menu. “Suh?”

  Either sir? Or so? Jury smiled at her and ordered the Peking duck and another pot of tea.

  “Here,” said Phyllis. “Have some of mine.” There was a second little stoneware cup; Phyllis had asked for two. Now she poured out tea for Jury, and now he wasn’t an afterthought.

  He watched her do this and felt the tea already warming his insides, and hers, too. “Thank you.”

  Phyllis was one of those attentive persons who seemed to know you needed something before you were aware of it, from a tissue for an incipient sneeze to the path of a bullet. To a cup for your tea. He smiled. It was a better smile.

  “What’s going on with Billy Maples?”

  “I talked to Oswald Maples today. I think I understand at least Billy’s contributions to art and artists.” He told her about the paintings.

  “Who is this Riffley woman? There seem to be so many women tied up in this case.” Her eyebrows did a little dance.

  And Jury noted that she didn’t mention one particular woman. “Melrose Plant calls her the talented Mrs. Ripley.”

  Phyllis burst out in laughter.

  “None of this helps much with relation to Billy’s killer, though.” He looked at Phyllis’s fortune cookie sitting on a tiny plate and decided not to break it. “I’m almost certain this killing was for revenge.”

  “Revenge? What could he have done?”

  “Not Billy. Billy was the surrogate. Revenge against Sir Oswald Maples is a strong possibility.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s where I’m not sure. It’s just that this crime seems to stretch so far back. The motive isn’t money, that’s pretty clear.”

  “How about love? How about a crime passionnel?”

  Jury would rather not go into that. He cleared his throat, shook his head. “I don’t see it that way.”

  “What about Kurt Brunner?”

  “He wasn’t involved in the Kindertransport; I mean other than being in the station on that day. He was too little. No, he met Billy when he was in Berlin. Says they hit it off so well that Billy offered him this job. Kurt said he hated teaching, and was going to retire any way. I don’t know. I don’t know how much of what he told me I believe.”

  “But if you’re going to accept one history—that is, what Sir Oswald told you about Roderick’s history—wouldn’t you have to accept Brunner’s?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s more logical; they reinforce each other.”

  The little waitress was at his elbow, having crept up without his noticing. She placed his duck before him. He thanked her. “You’re saying that because Roderick was the SS general’s son and Kurt was the Brunners’ son, they must be connected by the shooting in the train station. I don’t think one follows from the other. There’s a logical flaw, isn’t there? It’s like saying ‘all women are beautiful; Phyllis is beautiful; therefore Phyllis is a woman.’”

  “Sounds perfectly logical to me.”

  He laughed.

  “Still, it’s quite a coincidence.”

  “Yes, it would be.”

  “So these paintings,” said Phyllis, “were part of the Nazi plunder and General Röhm got them and stashed them someplace and Roderick only recently got possession of them again.”

  “I’m going to tell Lu to get a warrant to inspect them.”

  “Lu?”

  “Aguilar. Islington police? You met her.”

  “Oh. Yes. The beautiful woman. I mean, if your syllogism holds up, she would be a woman.”

  Jury felt her gaze and concentrated on inspecting the old familiar duck.

  “What do you want most, Richard?”

  Quickly, he looked up. Was this some pointed time-to-choose remark? “What do you mean?”

  “Just—what most do you want in life?”

  He smiled a little and reached over and took her fortune cookie. He broke it open. “Solace.”

  She frowned. “It doesn’t say that.”

  “No. Remember that great film with Bette Davis, All About Eve? There’s a scene after the scheming Eve steals Margo’s role through trickery and then gets this magnificent review. Margo of course is effing and blinding all over the place. And crying. Her director rushes into her house, puts his arms around her, and says, ‘I ran all the way.’” Jury smiled. “That’s what I want.”

  She sat there just looking at him and saying nothing.

  He said, “Life is just too bloody hard. You lose too many things. ‘I ran all the way.’” Jury smiled bleakly. “Solace.”

  FORTY-SIX

  “Ah! Superintendent Jury,” said Colonel Joss Neame, looking up from his Telegraph and repositioning his whiskey glass. He was always made buoyant by the presence of Jury. “Come for your friend, have you?”

  “That’s right.” Jury looked around. “Where’s Major Champs?” They were ordinarily in tandem, like an old vaudeville act. Jury smiled, contemplating this.

  “Said he felt a bit queasy.” Colonel Neame shielded his mouth with his hand. “Don’t have the fish pie for lunch
eon if you’re planning on eating here.”

  “What else is on offer?” asked Jury. His eyes were heavy and the soft leather chair in which he sank nestled around him, held him in its dark bloodred embrace. He tried not to think of Lu, and thought of Lu.

  “The portobello mushroom is quite good.”

  “But not the fish, right?”

  “No, and it’s a stargazey pie, too, always been one of my favorites.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, it’s a cleverly made pie: several of the little fishes’ heads are fixed to poke up through the top crust, looking at the stars, I assume. It’s quite the thing in Cornwall.”

  “Most things are. Listen: I had another meeting with your friend, Sir Oswald Maples, just a few days ago. You remember, you told me about him.”

  “Maples, yes, brilliant man, brilliant. Got an OBE, didn’t he?”

  “Apparently.”

  “What are you—wait, wait just a tick.” Colonel Neame rescued his paper from in front of the fireplace. “I was just reading…here, on the inside. A Billy Maples was shot in a hotel in Clerkenwell. You don’t mean to tell me—”

  “Yes. Billy Maples was his grandson.”

  “Dear God.” The colonel looked from the item in the paper up to Jury’s face as if trying to reconcile the two pieces of information. “Dear God,” he said again. Then, shunning sympathy for curiosity, he asked, “But is this a case you’re working on, Superintendent?”

  “Yes. Did you know any of Sir Oswald’s family?”

  Colonel Neame shook his head. “No. You pretty much parked your private life at the door. Private lives and Station X didn’t mix.”

  “Station X?”

  “Bletchley Park. That’s what we called it.”

  “Tell me, since it must have been a very stressful, very competitive, and highly charged environment, could he—Sir Oswald—have made any enemies there?”

  “Could he have? I expect so.” Colonel Neame frowned and hunched over in his chair.

  “What did you know about Oswald Maples?”

  Joss Neame frowned. “Well, he was regarded as quite brilliant.”

  “You said you left your personal lives at the door. Was that true of all of you?”