The Old Fox Deceived

by Martha Grimes

  “I think I’ll question Julian Crael myself.”

  “I’d prefer to be there.”

  “Why don’t you talk to him later. Just give me a few minutes—”

  “Look, Jury, this is my bailiwick, after all—”

  “Your bailiwick!” Jury forgot his vow never to tell off the men on provincial police forces. “You people call up London and ask for help. Okay, what you get is me. Bloody tough. But as long as I’m here it’s my bailiwick. I say how this investigation is conducted.”

  Smoothly, Harkins said, “Calm down, calm down, Inspector Jury.” His smile was irritatingly superior, and he touched his pigskin-gloved finger to his satiny mustache as if to erase the smile. “I’ll see you later.” Harkins turned and walked off down the gallery.

  5

  In the Bracewood Room, Julian sat on the couch opposite Jury. He was leaning forward, hands clasped tightly, looking at the floor so that Jury could see only the crown of pale hair. It seemed vulnerable, the head of a young boy. “Cigarette?”

  Julian shook his head, got up. “I could use a drink, though. You?”

  “Why not? Just a small one, though.” Considering the loneliness which Julian must have been living with all these years and the pain he was about to endure, Jury couldn’t quite stick at making him drink alone, too.

  Julian splashed whisky in two glasses, adding soda to his. “I feel sorry about Olive, knew her most of my life.” He went to stand by the mantel. “Though you might not believe that.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I rather have the impression that, in spite of my alibi, you still think I killed this Temple woman.” His arm lay across the mantel and the dark material of the blazer he was wearing made him seem to match the pose of his mother in the portrait above him. He looked so very young. Though he was not that much younger than Jury, still Julian looked untouched.

  Jury did not remark on his last statement. “Where were you during the morning?”

  “Out for a ride. I came back about nine. And, no, I was not riding out on Howl Moor. That spot where the wall is is a bit distant for my before-breakfast ride.”

  “By yourself?”

  Julian glared. “No, I had my horse with me.”

  “Did you see Olive Manning this morning?”

  “No.”

  “I wanted to ask you about Dillys March.”

  “For the hundredth time, that woman was not Dillys March.”

  “I know.” Jury took a sip of his whisky; it bit his tongue. “She was brought here to masquerade as Dillys by Olive Manning.”

  He seemed as baffled by this news as the Colonel had been. He had to retreat from his position by the mantel so as to sit down. “Olive? My God, but why—?”

  “Money and revenge, presumably. She felt the Craels were responsible for what happened to Leo.”

  “I find it hard to believe she’d deceive my father in that way. How did you find out?”

  “I went to the Sawry Hotel.” Julian turned white. “Perhaps it was Miss Temple who left the matches, after all. Quite deliberately.”

  There was a long silence, broken only by a log disinte-grating and sparking in the fireplace. “So you know about it,” Julian said.

  Out of his pocket, Jury took the picture which Melrose had found, outreached it to the small table beside Julian’s chair. Julian looked at it for a long while, and then murmured, “Stupid of me.” Wearily, he leaned his head back against the chair and said, “Stupid to keep the pictures. I won’t bother asking how you came by it. It’s an academic question, anyway. I suppose that ties it all up for you, doesn’t it?”

  “No. Was it in London you met her?”

  “Victoria Station. I’d taken the train down . . . last year, it was. I went into the café for a cup of coffee and there she was, eating a bun, drinking a cup of tea. I couldn’t believe it. To see this girl sitting there who could have been Dillys. One allows of course for the ravages of Time, as they say. But she was hardly ravaged.” His smile was thin, quirky. “I’m not used to approaching women, really, but I screwed up my nerve and managed it. Inane conversation about the trains and the weather. I found her very friendly.”

  “Prostitutes have been known to be.”

  Julian flushed. “But she wasn’t. I mean, not really.”

  Jury smiled. “Just a little round the edges?”

  “Oh, have it your own way. She was really an out-of-work actress. And we’ve some proof of that, isn’t that so?”

  “Yes. So you knew Gemma Temple for upwards of a year. All of those trips to London . . . ”

  “An unwise, a dangerous liaison obviously. But I couldn’t help myself. How many men have said that, I wonder? But it was like — getting something back. When Mother and Rolfe and then even Dillys went, I felt robbed. Not only desolate but, well, robbed, violated. As if this house had been ransacked and everything taken. I can’t explain it. But seeing her, it was like . . . having things in the right place again.” He fell silent.

  It was really Julian, rar more than his father, who was trapped back there in the past. “You must have felt very deeply about Dillys to think you could resurrect her somehow in the person of Gemma Temple.”

  Julian shot him a glance. “The idée fixe, is that what you mean? A kind of madness?” He turned to stare up at the portrait of Lady Margaret. “I was her pet. Pet, objet d’art —she flashed me about like a perfectly cut gem. I was beautiful.” There was contempt and bitterness rather than vanity and pride in the tone. “I was something to be pampered and polished and returned to the tissue-lined box when she was done with me, a flaxen-haired, sapphire-eyed doll. I don’t think she thought, when I wasn’t on public display, that I was there. It was as if I simply disappeared when there wasn’t anyone around to see me. But I worshipped her, adored her. I’d lie awake at night waiting for her to come in, come back from a party. I’d steal over to the window to look down when I heard the car come in. If it was too dark to see, I’d listen. She wore dresses that rustled. Odd, how other women’s dresses simply hung on them, silently. But I always knew it was she, because of the rustle.” He leaned his head against the chair, shut his eyes. “Why did she have to die with Rolfe? It should have been me.”

  “But Dillys March. We were talking about her. Was she so much like your mother?”

  “Not in looks, no. But in every other way, she reminded me of mother. She was my mother’s protégée, her alter ego, almost.”

  “Your earlier statement — that you disliked Dillys—I take it was not precisely true.”

  Julian turned his head and smiled slightly. “And not precisely a lie, either.” The firelight caught at a glaze in his eyes which might have been tears or a sabre’s flash. “She was fascinating, Dillys was, but not nice at all. She would have loved today; she would have loved the hunt and the kill at the end, if I might speak metaphorically. Death fascinated her. I think she’s the type who would have loved a suicide pact. Even at sixteen, even at fourteen, she had men and plenty of them.”

  “You told Gemma Temple a great deal about yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. A great deal.”

  “Even about Olive Manning and her son.”

  “That got into the conversation at some point, yes. The story of my life. I don’t often tell it.”

  “What about marriage, Mr. Crael?”

  “Out of the question.” He said it like the lid snapping shut on the box from which he took a cigarette.

  “But Gemma Temple mightn’t have thought so. She must have thought she’d landed a very big fish indeed.”

  “I think I can follow your line of thought, Inspector. Gemma Temple, knowing what she knew from me and with all the other details filled in by Olive Manning — Gemma came here with the notion of passing herself off as Dillys. And out of rage or vengeance or whatever, I killed her. Simple as that.”

  “No, sir. Not so simple. There’s Olive Manning’s death. Why would you kill Olive Manning when she would be the next
best bet for the murderer of Gemma Temple? Thieves falling out?”

  “My God, Inspector. Are you going to save me from the dock after all?”

  “Please don’t try that tone on me, as if you didn’t care. You care about a lot of things, and more than’s good for you, I think. Tell me what happened after the Temple woman got here.”

  “First I knew of it was when I walked in here — they were in this room— my father, Gemma, Olive Manning. Wood had just served sherry. I opened the door and found myself staring straight into her eyes.” He looked at Jury. “This woman I had left — for the last time, I thought, amidst rather much tears and yelling because I wouldn’t marry her—here she was. And she smiled,” Julian said, conveying somehow that her smile had carried with it all the malice of the universe. “I think every word spoken that afternoon is etched into my mind with acid. ‘Hello, Julian,’ she said. She held her hands out to me. ‘What in the hell are you doing here?’ I said.

  “ ‘I don’t wonder you’re shocked,’ my father said. ‘I couldn’t believe it either.’ He was so overjoyed he could hardly contain himself. ‘She’s come back — Dillys has.’ ”

  Julian closed his eyes. “I almost blurted it out, then and there. But something in her eyes stopped me. The whole ruddy situation was so impossible, I had to laugh. The idea she could pass herself off as Dillys . . . ”

  “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  Wearily, Julian turned his head to regard Jury. “No. But I know you won’t believe—”

  Jury was shaking his head. “Not Gemma Temple. Dillys March.”

  Almost as suddenly as if fingers had pinched out a candle flame, daylight had faded from the room. Beyond their immediate half-circle of firelight, the room was dark. The dim outlines of chairs and tables seemed left over from some other life. For a long time Julian was silent, then he said, “How in hell did you figure that out?”

  “I suspected it for some time. She didn’t sound like the sort of person to walk away from a lot of money. But you just told me, yourself, really, a few minutes ago.”

  “How?”

  “That account of your meeting at Victoria. After all, Dillys was supposed to have run away to London. That’s where her car was found. Why didn’t you assume this young lady, this ‘dead ringer,’ was Dillys? Because you knew she was dead.”

  “Christ,” breathed Julian, closing his eyes again.

  Jury picked up his glass, mixed him another whisky and soda, and brought the drink back. He stood over him for a moment. “Go on, tell me. Cigarette?” Absently, Julian accepted both cigarette and drink and then said:

  “When we were younger, Dillys and I, we made a pact we’d never keep secrets from one another. We even sealed it in blood, by cutting our fingers — that was Dillys’s idea; she was so very dramatic. She wanted us to mingle our blood. I nearly fainted. Literally. I’ve never been able to stand the sight of blood and Dillys thought that was terribly funny. . . . But I guess you don’t want to hear all that—”

  “Yes, I do. Go on.”

  He leaned back, the drink encircled by his fingers, like a psalm book pressed to his chest. “Dillys was jealous of Lily, that was perfectly clear, only she would rather die than admit it. The Colonel was very fond of Lily and Lily was really prettier than Dillys; but Dillys was beyond ‘pretty,’ if you know what I mean. In that way, she was like my mother. They both had a kind of — fire, I suppose you’d say. And not always an attractive one, either. Fiendish, sometimes. Mummy had the most terrible temper. Smashed things, screamed like a fishwife. Poor father, I used to think. Only it was exciting, in a way. . . .

  “Dillys was clever, very convincing — she could make you believe almost anything. That story of Mary Siddons taking the jewelry, some ring or other, was an absolute falsehood. Mary would never have done anything like that. If anything was taken, Dillys took it, believe me. That business with Leo Manning is what brought it all to a head. He was a proper mess, poor fellow. Olive was either straight out lying or deluding herself when she said Dillys was responsible for his breakdown. Not that she wasn’t capable of driving someone to the brink. And lord knows she didn’t do him any good. But Leo was in awful shape when he came here. He seemed at times a mealymouthed sycophant, a modern Uriah Heep; other times I’d look at that smile and think it was sharp as a blade. He made me think of that fellow in the play who went about with a head in a hatbox. Just the sort of psyche Dillys would consider a challenge and love to mess about with, like sculptor’s clay. Punch it this way, punch it that. Well, they were lovers. There was a summerhouse near the cliffs where they used to meet . . . that’s where they were that night.

  “I was taking a walk. No, I was looking for her. I saw a dim light in the summerhouse so I went a bit farther along the cliff path and looked in. There she was, stark. It all came at me in a rush then. I thought she’d been only teasing him; I didn’t really think . . . You can’t imagine what it did to me. That expression ‘seeing red’ is absolutely true. I felt as if I were staring into that window through a pane of blood. So I waited. I don’t know how long I waited out there in the cold. I’ll never forget the way the wind sounded coming off the sea and rattling the branches like sabres. The hatred simply washed over me like the sea, but not cold—more like a molten wave.

  “Finally, she came out of the summerhouse, walking along the path to the main house. I can still hear her foot-steps coming up the gravel, and she humming some stupid song as if nothing had happened when for me everything had. I stepped across her path, started screaming at her. Dillys only laughed.

  “ ‘How long’s it been going on?’ I asked her.

  “ ‘If it’s any of your business — nearly as long as Leo’s been here.’

  “ ‘He won’t be here much longer then. Not when I tell Father. And you might not either. He won’t put up with this sort of thing.’

  “And she really laughed at that. ‘So tell, like some tittle-tattling schoolboy. But he’ll believe me more than you. I’ll just say it was Leo made all the advances. And he did, too. Very experienced along those lines, he is.’

  “And then she told me in the most graphic detail possible everything they’d done over the year in all of their meetings. I was transfixed with rage. The ironic thing was that she was wearing this cloak that reached to the ground, hooded, and it gave her the look of a religious. I picked up a rock, the nearest thing to hand and crushed her skull with it. She crumpled. I stood there looking down at her for the longest time. I think I expected her to get up, just get up and dust herself off and laugh. Somehow I don’t think I let it really seep in that she was truly dead.” Julian sat forward, looking hard at Jury as if explaining a very complex legal point. “I felt I had to get her out of there. It wasn’t fear, at least not then; that came later. It was that I had to get her out of my sight, out of my mind. Cancel the act, wipe it out. It was from myself I wanted to hide her more than from anyone else, more even than from the police. I wasn’t even thinking of police.

  “Below the cliff path at one point there was a place sort of back beneath the rocks with a hell of an undertow. Not even a diver would go down there, it was so dangerous. She’d disappear, the body would never be found. I was standing right above it. I just shoved her over. . . .

  “I ran back to the house, went up to her room, threw some of her clothes in a suitcase and grabbed another one of those capes she liked so much. It covered me completely. When Olive looked out of her window, of course she thought it was Dillys getting into the car. I drove the car to that lot above Rackmoor, parked it there, one car among many. Then I walked back. No one saw me. No one missed me.” He said it as if no one ever would again. “The next day, naturally, there was some upset about Dillys tearing off, but then Dillys did it often. I said I thought I’d motor to York for the day. I drove my car to the parking lot, picked up Dillys’s, drove it to London and left it there, abandoned it. And took the train back to York and a bus to Pitlochary and walked back to Rackmoor that night and pi
cked up my car.” He looked up at Jury. “Believe me, I know how it sounds. Very cold-blooded, all planned out. The cloak, the car, the trip — but it wasn’t then. It was frenetic; it felt completely haphazard. What feeling there was at all. I might have been moving under water, it was all so leaden. Only part of my mind was functioning. The rest felt . . . asleep. For a week after that I was sick, I mean, literally. It was like my whole system rejected what had happened like a transplanted heart. I just couldn’t assimilate it. That night was something that shouldn’t have been there, like a tree suddenly crashing across one’s path, like — oh, Christ, I don’t know how to explain it.”

  Jury got up again, took his empty glass, splashed whisky in it. “You did a pretty good job, I’d say.” He lit a cigarette and sat down. “And, of course, after the furor died down, Leo seemed the best suspect. Had they found a body.”

  “I never even thought of it. You’re wondering would I have let him swing for it, if it came to that?”

  “I don’t wonder much.”

  “I bet you don’t.”

  “Only now about Gemma Temple.”

  “Whom I didn’t kill.”

  “You had one hell of a motive. She knew about Dillys, didn’t she?” The ashen look of Julian’s face told him the answer to that. “That’s why you didn’t come right out and denounce her, wasn’t it?”

  “I would have. I was on the verge of telling the Colonel the whole rotten story—”

  “Only you didn’t have to, as it turned out.”

  There was another long silence, and in the dim light Jury could make out the tear tracing its slow way down Julian’s face. He looked up at the portrait of his mother. “She was trapped in that car, they told me. And Rolfe, God damn him, was drunk when they left. I always keep wondering. If I had been there, could I have saved her?”

  Jury looked away from Julian. But not up at the picture. He looked toward the fog, implacable beyond the windows, moving and shifting as if it might find its proper form and give some ghostly knock.