The Old Fox Deceived

by Martha Grimes

  Adrian sighed, drank round the spoon in his cup of coffee. “You keep asking me that. Yes, yes, and, again, yes.”

  “It wasn’t Gemma Temple.”

  Jury turned and walked downstairs, leaving Adrian to stare openmouthed at the empty stairwell, then back at the picture.

  • • •

  Jury pulled the Irish walking cap from his pocket and shoved it on his head. The snow wasn’t sticking; he wished it were. He wished, as he walked down the High, that there were great heaps of it — dry, white, untrammeled . . .

  From behind him came a voice calling his name. He turned to see Wiggins running to catch up.

  “What happened with Adrian Rees?” The sergeant was breathing hard and getting out his inhaler as they walked side by side.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to see that painting.”

  “Painting? Which painting? I thought you were setting off to arrest him. You looked so — ” Wiggins could not find words. He applied the inhaler to his nostril.

  “One he did of Gemma Temple. Or, rather, thought he did. I’ll explain—” They had turned into Bridge Walk, gone up the narrow little stairs when Jury stopped short, looking towards the bridge itself. “Who the hell’s that?”

  Wiggins squinted through the snow, which was getting heavier. “Looks to me like Mr. Plant. And Arnold.”

  5

  Melrose Plant was leaning against the wall of the Bridge Walk Café, smoking. He pointed to the tiny sign in the glass. CLOSED. “It opens at ten. We’ve a few minutes to go.”

  In a not unfriendly tone, Jury said, “What the hell are you doing here? And with Arnold?” Arnold on a leash? He couldn’t believe it.

  “Thought you’d never ask. Oh, it’s so nice to get someplace before you do. Cigarette?” Jury shook his head. “Shall I launch into a long, tedious, though somewhat brilliant explanation now, or shouldn’t we wait for a demonstration? But I see by the stony look on your face it should be now. Very well. Arnold —”

  The windowshade in the door snapped up. The small sign was turned to OPEN and Lily peered out, smiling. She opened the door and said, “Sorry, I didn’t know —” and then her eye fell on Arnold.

  Arnold’s eye fell, too, on Lily. Arnold growled.

  It was not loud, but the growl through an almost-closed mouth seemed rooted in his stomach. It was steady and dangerous.

  Lily took a step backward. She tried to laugh. “What on earth? Whatever’s the matter with Arnold?”

  Melrose looked at Jury and Jury nodded. Melrose tugged a little at the leash but Arnold stood, square, adamantine, unyielding. Now Jury knew the reason for the leash, which Melrose had wound several times around his wrist. He tugged at it. “Come along, old bean.” At first there was no movement from Arnold, and then the terrier, with more self-control than Jury had ever witnessed in a human being, turned at Melrose’s next tug and trotted off beside him down Bridge Walk.

  A gentleman and his dog out for a morning stroll.

  Lily had started to close the door but Wiggins put his foot in it, his thin hand splayed against the molding. “We’d like some morning coffee, Miss.”

  Jury nearly laughed. It was so seldom he heard something like humor from Sergeant Wiggins. And Wiggins must have been very surprised at this visit.

  Halfway across the room, Lily stood stalk-straight, her face chalky.

  “Your name is Lily Siddons,” said Jury with chilly formality. There was, of course, no answer. “We’re here to arrest you for the murders of Gemma Temple, Olive Manning, and the attempted murder of Bertie Makepiece. I must warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you in a court of law.”

  For a moment the whole room seemed white with her silence. Only the hiss of snow against glass broke it. Wiggins had his notebook out.

  Then she laughed. It was unnerving. She seemed to collapse with laughter, falling into a straight-backed chair. “And who’s going to be your chief witness, Inspector?” She gulped down air. “That dog?”

  The laugh seemed real, which was what struck Jury as awful. “No. Though he’d make a better one than most I’ve seen.”

  When she started out of her chair, Jury said, “Sit down.”

  “I need some water.”

  “Sergeant Wiggins will get it.” On a refectory table near the side window were water and glasses. Wiggins poured her out a glass, brought it over.

  As she sipped it, she looked at Jury over the rim. He had never known eyes to change as hers did. Pale, from the color of moonlight, to the Clouded Yellow of the butterfly, to cornelian. “You seem to forget,” she said, “that someone’s been trying to kill me.” Her voice was soft; her lips toyed with a smile.

  “That was the cleverest part. To put yourself in the position of intended victim. Whoever would think of the victim as the murderer? But we only had your word for it, didn’t we?”

  Lily smiled with unnerving serenity. “I had no motive, did I? To say nothing of opportunity.” She was up now, and Jury let her walk, wending her way through the tables, straightening a glass here, some cutlery there, as if Jury and Wiggins really had only stopped in for coffee. He could not have drunk it, in any case; his throat was tight, his mouth dry.

  “You had the best motive of all. As Colonel Crael’s granddaughter, you’d have got millions.”

  She looked up from a napkin she was refolding with perfect equanimity. “That’s absurd.”

  He had to hand it to her. She didn’t even flinch. “How long have you known it? Not long, I’d say. And Olive Manning knew it; she was Lady Margaret’s confidante. Your mother killed herself over Rolfe Crael, didn’t she? Rolfe going off like that, letting himself be spirited away. And the theft of that jewelry—”

  So quickly and furiously did she yank the ring from her finger and throw it at him that Jury only knew it when it pinged on the floor. “He gave it to her! Gave it! It’s got their initials and a date. Mummy’s and — Rolfe Crael’s! Damn them to hell, they drove her to kill herself. And I’ve as much right as anyone to the money, the house, the position, the name. I’m Lily Crael!”

  Jury grabbed her by the shoulders. She stood stock still beneath his hands and he thought she’d got back her control until the hand flew up and came down and the nails ripped like tiny knives across his face. He could feel the welling of blood. Wordlessly, he pushed her into a chair as Wiggins overturned his own chair in an effort to reach Jury. “It’s okay.” He took the handkerchief Wiggins held out.

  She sat there silently. On the table, in the center, was the crystal which she brought here to amuse her customers, like a gypsy fortune-teller. It sat on its little ebony pedestal in a drapery of black velvet. She looked at it as if it could tell her her future.

  Jury wadded the handkerchief against his face and went on. Wiggins retreated to the table next to them, his notebook open, watchful. “It was easy for you to get the thatching tool from Percy Blythe’s cottage; you’re friends.”

  She plucked a cigarette from a small china holder and held it to her lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. I’ll light that cigarette if you think you can keep it away from my face.” He half-smiled, struck a match.

  “You’re a very clever policeman.” She let her eyes trail over his face and said, “I’m sorry about that. Really sorry.” Putting her chin in her cupped hand, she cried silently, tears rolling down her pale cheek. “It’s true. I knew when I found a box of her things. The ring, that picture you took away with you. I’d cut his face out of it — Rolfe’s. He was with her.” She reached down and picked the ring up from the floor, sat looking at it, dropped it on the table. “I didn’t wear it around the Colonel. My God! I even look like them! Why has no one ever seen it?” Her voice was high and wretched.

  “You got Olive Manning to meet you by that wall. And you thought Bertie’d seen you take the swallowtail, didn’t you?” She said nothing. “You must have sent Gemma Temple a note — something to get her
to the Angel steps. Did you pretend it was Julian who wanted to meet her? Or Adrian Rees? My guess is, Adrian. That’s why Les Aird saw her coming along the High. She didn’t know Adrian was in the Fox because she didn’t go through the bar. I imagine Maud Brixenham dropped a hint or two about their relationship.” Lily’s persistent silence was as much of an admission that he was not far off the mark as if she’d agreed to every word he’d said. “You might as well tell me, Lily. It’s all over, you know.”

  “There’s no way I could’ve got from my cottage and to the Angel steps in just a few minutes. Even you said that.”

  “You weren’t in your cottage when she was killed. It wasn’t Gemma Temple that Adrian saw in Grape Lane. It was you. Gemma Temple was already dead. You’d killed her between the time Les saw her and the time Adrian saw you walking along Grape Lane.

  Her face was white, her voice raspy. “What do you mean?”

  “What I said. She was killed before eleven fifteen. Not after, as we all were led to believe.” Jury leaned toward her, unmindful of the lashing she had just given him. In her face he thought he saw the remnants of Lady Margaret’s beauty slipping away. “Lily —”

  It happened even more quickly than the lash of her nails. The upraised arm, the crystal within an inch of his head and the flying foot of Wiggins, who overturned every thing — table, chairs, glasses, cutlery, and Jury himself — in an effort to keen her hand away from Jury’s head.

  “My God!” said Jury, pulling himself off the floor. “Where’d you learn that?”

  “Karate, sir.” Wiggins was breathing hard. “Good for the sinuses, I’ve found.”

  Jury was down on his knee beside Lily, who was lying unconscious on the stone floor. “She must have hit her head. Is there a doctor at all in Rackmoor? See if you can scare one up. I’ll stay with her.” Jury took his anorak and stuffed it under her head. “Have you got an aspirin, Wiggins? My head’s killing me.”

  It was one thing he knew he could always count on. That Sergeant Wiggins would have aspirin.

  • • •

  From the window he watched Wiggins bolt up the street through a day steadily darkening, and looked through the gathering snow toward the little bridge across the stream. Its balustrades were mounded with snow.

  Jury went back to the table, sat down, watched her face in the gloom. Pale as marble, as ashes. She moved slightly, made a small moaning sound. He wondered if he should give her brandy. Was there any? Better wait for the doctor He sat there studying her face, in which he could see the traces, like smoke, of the face of Lady Margaret.

  Jury put his head in his hands. What a waste, he thought.

  6

  “Lily?” said Colonel Crael. “Lily? Of all people — you can’t be serious!” He looked up at Jury standing in the center of the Bracewood Room as if Jury surely must have misunderstood, as if he’d mixed Lily up with someone else.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel Crael.”

  There was a silence. “I’d like to see her, if I may.”

  “No. Not now, at least.” Not ever, if Jury had anything to do with it. Maybe it would all come out, her relationship to the family. But Jury certainly wasn’t going to bring it out now. For the Colonel to discover now, when there wasn’t an earthly thing he could do about it, that Lily was his granddaughter — after all the losses the old man had suffered, it was just too much.

  At least he could take some refuge in the knowledge that Julian was innocent. “Then Julian — well, thank God he’s no longer in danger.”

  Julian, who was leaning against the mantel, looked at Jury, gave him a weird little smile.

  • • •

  When the Colonel had left, fortified by some whisky and the company of Melrose Plant, Julian said to Jury, “Unfortunately, I’m not out of danger, am I? But then I never was. I’m glad it’s over.”

  Jury wondered how Julian himself would respond to the news that Lily Siddons was a Crael, was Rolfe’s child. It would be for him an added burden of the blood ties from which Julian seemed to have suffered all of his life. Jury hoped he would never find out. “You know, Mr. Crael, I don’t think the courts are going to be all that hard on you. A fifteen-year-old —” Jury shrugged. He didn’t want to say murder. “And you did save Bertie’s life.”

  “You sound almost apologetic, Inspector. Bertie’s rather a brave lad, isn’t he? It’s too bad about his mother going off like that. I’ll look in on him. Sometime. If I’m free.”

  He had added that out of his store of irony and in an attempt to recapture his old indifference, a habit of mind which had broken during the last twenty-four hours.

  Julian tossed his cigarette in the fire and, wordlessly, put out his hand. Jury shook it.

  At the door of the Bracewood Room, Julian turned and said, “I’ve decided not to register that complaint with Scotland Yard.”

  “What complaint’s that?”

  “Police brutality.”

  With the first genuine smile Jury had seen from him, Julian quietly shut the door.

  • • •

  “I don’t know what to say, sir . . . my God . . . ” Wiggins’s voice came over the telephone, high-pitched and tight with anxiety.

  Jury shut his eyes against the news. “How’d it happen?”

  “She said she wanted tea and I said yes, but I’d have to go with her. Watching her like a hawk, I was — really. I didn’t take my eyes off her —”

  “Go on. What happened?”

  “We were in the kitchen. She didn’t plug in the kettle; I suppose I should have known from that. She put a pan of water on to boil. I was standing near her, by the stove. And before I knew it, she’d flung it at me — pan, water, the lot.”

  “Are you okay? Did it burn you badly?”

  “No. It was painful at the time and of course I flung up my arms and it gave her just long enough to bolt. She got out the door and latched it. It was five minutes before I could break it open, but by then —”

  She was gone. “Harkins there yet?”

  “They came just before I rang you. I believe he’s going to kill me sir.” This was delivered in such a matter-of-fact tone that Jury nearly laughed.

  “Well, he’ll probably need more men. And straightaway, tell someone to get up to the parking lot at the top of the village. See if her car’s there.”

  “It’s the first thing I did, sir. I figured that’s what she’d make for, but apparently not. The car’s there. There’s only the one road out, and Harkins has that blocked off.”

  “There are plenty of ways out on foot. We’ll have to cordon off the whole village.” Jury said good-bye and started to hang up when the voice of Wiggins said, “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not trying to excuse myself. But she was so quick, sir. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone move so quick.”

  “It’s okay, Wiggins. Could have happened to anyone. I know she’s quick. I’ve watched her wield, a knife.”

  Wiggins tried to laugh. “Better boiling water than a knife.”

  7

  All afternoon they combed the village, paying special attention to the empty warehouse beside the Bell and all of the cottages left vacant by the summer people. Jury recalled the words of Maud Brixenham: Used to be a smugglers’ haunt. Easy to hide in, these twisting little streets.

  Nothing, could have been truer. Streets, alleys, cul-desacs, winding up and down and across like fretwork. A dozen or more men, including Melrose and Bertie, had been wandering in and around Rackmoor, questioning, looking.

  It was Jury’s opinion that Lily Siddons was in York by now or on her way to London.

  It was nearly dark, now. Jury and Harkins were sitting in the Fox Deceiv’d bolting their food, their first since early morning. In a state of shock, Kity had still managed to put together two plates of cheese and bread and pickled onions.

  “Rees and I made the same mistake,” said Jury. “That picture he did showed the left side of her face as white. Of course it was, if you wer
e looking at her. But Les Aird must have indicated the right side, because he saw Gemma Temple, not Lily. The police report said, ‘the left side.’ But you were looking at it, as I should have, as the victim’s left side. So it was Lily Siddons that Adrian Rees passed in Grape Lane. She made sure someone saw her she wanted to be certain we thought Gemma Temple was still alive when she knew Kitty would be around to supply her with an alibi.”

  “Mirror image,” said Harkins, clearly pleased the police report had been accurate when no one else had. “Did she take the canvas to get Rees in trouble?”

  “Maybe; I’m not sure. But I should have noticed the white paint on the left wall of the Angel steps. Gemma Temple had caused that smear when she’d sprawled upside-down. It was the left side of her face made that mark.”

  Harkins clipped the end of a cigar. “I must say Miss Siddons deserves points for pure damned nerve. Turning suspicion away from herself by inventing this mythical killer out to murder her.”

  “The brakes on the car, the hay rake. It was only her word, wasn’t it? She made up two identical costumes. The only thing she couldn’t know in advance was which side of her face Gemma Temple would put the white greasepaint on and which side the black. I wouldn’t be surprised, even, if it never registered with her — that she made the same mistake I did. I guess we all do it. Although I don’t think you’d have made that mistake. I think you’d have known immediately, had you seen that portrait of Adrian’s.”

  Harkins was silent, studying the pigskin cigar case as if it were new to him. “I had the advantage though, didn’t I? I saw the body; I saw the face; you didn’t.” He held out the case. “Cigar?”

  Jury smiled. They seemed to have come full circle.

  They were standing up to leave when Wiggins rushed into the Fox Deceiv’d to tell them Lily Siddons had been found.

  8

  At least two dozen people — some police, a few villagers including Bertie, and Melrose Plant — were standing near the cliff’s edge, at almost the exact spot were Bertie had gone over the night before. All were looking down.