The Five Bells and Bladebone

by Martha Grimes

  Looking bored — a look Jury questioned, in the circumstances — she stepped back from the doorway. Under the raincoat now discarded she wore a straight up-and-down cotton frock whose hem met the tops of her fashionable boots. At first he thought it shapeless; then he noticed the cut. Expensive. She was a little too thin, a little too tall, mouth a little too wide, but she was memorable. Her hair was dark gold and her eyes a smoky carnelian-brown that seemed to be looking at him from behind a curtain of fog.

  The room in which they stood was enormous, one of those converted lofts Krael had mentioned, the wide floor as burnished and seemingly endless as a ship’s deck. It did end, though, at a panoramic window that gave its tenant what must have been a pricey view of the Thames. Weak light fell across old lacquer, when she threw a switch that lit two black, needle-thin torchieres with flat, green bands of light like rings around planets. The fireplace itself was wide green-mottled marble, perfectly plain, the mantel without ornament, not even the usual vase of flowers. The only furniture was a rosewood sofa, on which she now sat, and two modern, Italian-looking chairs across from it, separated by a small lake of smoked glass. There was other light, soft and melting into shadows, but whose source Jury couldn’t discern. Hidden illuminations behind moldings, he supposed. She turned on the silk-shaded lamp beside the sofa, increasing the play of light and shadow that marbled the stark white walls. Jury had a weird sense of a Daliesque landscape of which she was the center, a study in contradictions and distorted realities.

  Disinterested, waiting for him to begin, get it over with, leave. That was the image she projected.

  “It’s about Simon Lean.”

  He had meant to shock her out of that bored pose. Yet her eyes, shrouded still, never left his. Her only movement was to open the clasp of the wicker workbasket and ask him if he wanted some tea or a drink. When he refused, she drew an uneven piece of watered silk from the basket, and asked, “What about Simon?”

  “He was murdered,” said Jury abruptly, wondering at the self-control of a woman who could sit there sticking pins in material and saying nothing. And then she reached toward a porcelain dish, plucked up two tortoiseshell combs, and pushed her hair back with them. Playing for time, he expected: she must have thought he’d come about Sadie Diver; she would not have expected Simon Lean’s name to come up. At least, that was what Jury had supposed. “You knew him.”

  “I did indeed.” Her hands finally dropped away and she settled back.

  Jury was a little astonished by the transformation. She no longer looked like a willowy country girl, but like an Edwardian lady about to collect her basket and shears for an hour in her garden. He was annoyed that he couldn’t tell whether the serious look she now turned on him was the real thing or the mere mask of seriousness. He could not make out how she felt about Simon Lean’s death, nor did she bother to pull from her wardrobe of looks a response to fit the occasion. “How well did you know him?”

  “Quite well. But that’s history,” she said. From somewhere on the other side of an arched doorway came a fluttery sound of music. Harmonica, Jury finally made out. Abruptly leaving her seat, she moved through the arch into deeper shadows.

  Jury went to the wide window. Not even two and twilight dark. Below him curved the dark Thames, past Wapping and the London Docks, and he could see Tower Bridge beyond. True enough, it was a fine view of river and city. Yet, he couldn’t help but feel, along with Jack Krael, that something was gone, the Thames diminished as the big ships had been replaced by pleasure-craft. That speedboat out there, cutting through the water even in the rain. It fretted the glass, as if uncertain of direction. Spring, yet through the window it looked like autumn’s dregs. In a scene in Jury’s mind, dateless, snow fell. Like the rain, he felt uncertain what direction to take.

  Then she was back. “Just checking on Tommy. He loves that harmonica. It wouldn’t be so bad if his repertoire included something except ‘Waltzing Matilda.’ If you were talking to the Thames police out there, you obviously know about his sister.” She threaded a needle, bit off the end of the thread.

  “Yes. I’m wondering about the connection.”

  “ ‘Connection’?”

  “Come on, Miss Firth.” Even if Simon Lean was, as his family said, a “bounder,” he thought the man at least merited some mild display of bereavement, even a feigned display. He lit a cigarette, tossed the match in a fragile ashtray. “The body of Simon Lean was found yesterday midday in a village near the Summerston estate. The body of Sadie Diver was found this morning around five by Wapping Old Stairs. But they both appeared to have been murdered within hours of one another. She lived in Narrow Street, was seen in the same pub as you’ve gone to. You’ve just been back from helping to identify the body, haven’t you?” The question was rhetorical. “I’d have to be pretty dim not to think those two killings were connected.”

  Ruby inclined her head slightly, as if memorizing his face. “You don’t look dim at all, Superintendent. But I’m not the connection.”

  “What were you doing two nights ago?”

  She looked round the loft as if some reminder might be written on its wall. “Out. Doing my own little pub crawl.”

  “Where’d you crawl?”

  Again, the pause. “Prospect of Whitby, for one.”

  There was a silence. Jury said, “The Prospect of Whitby is pretty near Wapping Old Stairs. Where else?”

  Ruby set down the black obelisk of table lighter with which she’d quickly lit a cigarette. She gave Jury a long look over a long stream of smoke. “Town of Ramsgate.”

  Another silence. “That’s even closer, wouldn’t you say?”

  She didn’t say.

  “And you were alone?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Puts you in a bit of a spot.”

  When she refused to respond, Jury asked, “When did you last see Simon Lean?”

  She shrugged. “About two months ago.”

  “Where?”

  There was a pause as she frowned slightly. “The Five Bells, I expect. It’s in Three Colt — ”

  “I’ve been there. How did you meet?”

  “In my shop. I’ve a decorating business in South Kensington. Walk-down basement type, but I’ve a reputation. I’m the citified Laura Ashley, for one thing.” Her smile was sardonic as she held up the silk. “Interior decoration is my real line. I did this flat.” There was humor in her glance. “Which you don’t care for.” She tilted her head, regarding him. “I’m sure your own house is quite nice. Suburbs or rhuburbs, Amersham, Chalfont St. Giles. Chintz and huge leafy trees. Pastel woodwork and sprigged wallpaper. Neat as a pin.”

  “I live in a flat and it looks like hell. How often did you see him?”

  “Mmm. Once a week, perhaps. Whenever he was in London.” Her voice was flat, expressionless.

  “Hard to believe you were in love with him. You seem totally unmoved by his death.”

  “I wasn’t in love with him. And I’ve been jarred enough in the last twenty-four hours that I feel a little dead.”

  “Did Simon Lean know Sadie Diver?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Mightn’t they have met? Perhaps in the Five Bells? It would certainly have been possible.”

  She shrugged. “Not that I know of. I’ve already told you — ”

  “What about Roy Marsh?”

  That did unnerve her, enough so that she rose from the sofa and started messing about in a drinks cabinet, rattling bottles. Behind him, her voice said, “I could use a drink. Sure you won’t join me, Superintendent?”

  “No.”

  Now with her customary composure and a balloon glass with a tot of brandy, she reseated herself. “You’re talking about the sergeant?”

  “About him and with him. I get the feeling you know him well.”

  “Yes. Dead bodies aren’t all that common in Limehouse Causeway. Or Wapping, to be more exact.”

  “And did Sergeant Marsh know Simon Lean?”
<
br />   The whole of her drink went down in one gulp. “They’d met.”

  Jury smiled. She didn’t. The look she flashed him was the first real glint of feeling he’d seen.

  “How long had Sadie had that flat?”

  “I’ve no idea. I didn’t know her, except to see — or could have done, I should say.”

  “Then why would Sergeant Marsh ask you to help in the identification? You didn’t know her.”

  “He didn’t ask. I thought Tommy should have someone along.”

  “What do you know about Mrs. Lean? Meaning, what did he tell you?”

  “Very little; I don’t like men talking about their wives. Simon apparently doesn’t mind talking. Did his wife tell you about me?”

  “Not really.” From his pocket Jury took the copy of the charred letter. “This did, such as it is.”

  Ruby glanced at the pieced-up bits. “I didn’t write Simon letters.”

  “Mrs. Lean remembered the postmark as E-one or E-fourteen.”

  Her tone was dry, but her expression more relaxed as she said, “Now that’s interesting. Does she do number plates, too?” She handed the letter back to Jury.

  “Tell me about the brother.”

  “He just came for a visit. Her flat was locked, and it was strange, since she was expecting him. So I helped him get in.”

  In the distance, Jury heard the tread of feet. “How’d you do that, then?”

  “With a credit card.”

  His smile broadened. “My, my.” Jury looked up then to see the boy hesitating in the shadowed archway.

  • • •

  His eyes were the shade of brown of the tea packets that lined the rear room of the Five Bells, looked old like them, and worn, and at the moment, the skin beneath was puffed. His lusterless brown hair was uncombed, his shirt wrinkled, shoved carelessly into the jeans. Whatever sense of loss was missing in Ruby Firth was present in Tommy Diver.

  Ruby told him to come in. She introduced Jury, picked up her workbasket, and left the room. Tommy’s face, which had looked indecisive and antique, the face of an old person who was unsure of his welcome and made fragile with the knowledge of it, took on a momentary liveliness; it was, despite everything, a handsome face. And it could reflect even now that youthful excitement Jury had seen before in kids that they were being taken notice of by Scotland Yard. Maybe their mums and dads wouldn’t spare them a tuppence worth of time, but Scotland Yard could actually sit and talk.

  When Jury rose and shook his hand, Tommy seemed to search about for a response more sophisticated than the hello he came up with before he stumbled a bit, moving backwards to one of the sleekly modern chairs.

  “That must not have been fun this morning,” said Jury.

  His answer to this was oblique and defensive. “Look, I’d know my own sister, wouldn’t I? You don’t forget your own sister.” He pulled the harmonica from his pocket, started fooling with it, apparently embarrassed by this answer to an unasked question. “The police said Aunt Glad and Uncle John are coming up from Gravesend. I expect I’ll catch it, now.”

  “Aunts aren’t much for listening. I had one, too.” It was true; she’d never been one for listening to troubles, either, which was what Tommy Diver meant. “I can always come back; we can always talk later. Do you play that?” Jury nodded at the harmonica.

  Tommy’s eyes grew brighter. They no longer had the dull look of the tea packets, but the patina of antique brass. “Too much, Ruby says. Want me to play something?”

  Jury felt again that queer sense of déjà vu. He’d seen the boy somewhere before. “Of course. I haven’t heard one in years.”

  He ran up and down the instrument, an old one and without much nuance, and then played “Waltzing Matilda” like a dirge. It was beautiful.

  • • •

  Not only could he talk about his sister, he could talk at great length: he’d been waiting for someone to talk to since Marsh and Ballinger had picked him up that morning. Ruby? Oh, Ruby was all right, but it wasn’t the same thing, was it?

  Inwardly, Jury smiled, since he wasn’t exactly sure how he himself fit into the category of “same things.” But he was more than willing to sit there for over a half an hour and listen to Tommy talk about Sadie. They’d been very close, the boy had said. That’s what surprised Jury about the last five years. “You haven’t seen her, Tommy. Why?”

  For a while, he was silent, watching the painted coals in the hearth lick upward through the imitation logs. He sighed. “It’s Uncle John. Mulholland’s their name. He never did much like Sadie, thought she was a bad lot, and when she just packed up and left, you’d’ve thought she’d made a pact with the devil, or something. She went to London. They didn’t even like me getting her phone calls.” Nodding toward the packet of cigarettes, he said, “Mind?”

  Jury took one for himself and put the packet on the table by Tommy’s chair. “Did you ever try and talk to them about her?”

  “No. He wouldn’t’ve, anyway.” Tommy looked at Jury bleakly. “When you’re eleven, you don’t ask a lot of questions. Not if there’s no place else to go.”

  “I know,” said Jury.

  Tommy Diver looked at him with just the ghost of a smile. “Sounds like maybe you had an uncle, too.”

  “But not a sister . . . .”. He wished he hadn’t said that when the smile disappeared. Quickly, Jury asked, “How was it, then, they let you come to London?”

  “They didn’t. Said I was just going to spend a couple of nights with my friend, Sid. He works one of the tugs. He’s great, Sid is. Sadie sent me some money. Told me I was to buy a fine suit of clothes to wear to Sunday mass, or wherever. Well, I hadn’t much use for Sunday clothes; I bought this.” He pulled a leather jacket from the back of the chair, handling it as if it were made of beaten gold. “Always wanted one.”

  “I’m glad you got one. Your sister must have been doing pretty well to send you that.”

  “Not until a couple of months ago. It was then she came into some money. Won the pools, she said.” He cleared his throat, bent his head over his jacket, which he smoothed as a woman might have an ermine coat.

  And he didn’t believe his sister had won the pools, either. “Go on.”

  “The idea was, I was to come to London someday. Leave Gravesend and see what I could do for myself here in London. I said, ‘Why not now?’ and she said no, I was to come after she’d found a larger place. Said things were looking very good —” He stopped and ran his hand over the jacket, as if in its feel and scent there were something of Sadie.

  But things hadn’t looked good at all for Sadie Diver. “So you came anyway?”

  He nodded. “But this was just for the two days. And it took some talking to get her to agree.” The flickering smile appeared again. “I could always talk Sadie round. Even if she was too clever by half.”

  “And she said she’d meet you at her flat.”

  “That’s right.” He sat back with a lurch, as if the cold fingers of death had pushed him.

  Jury got out of his chair, left the cigarettes on the table by Tommy, and said, “We can talk again.” He disliked bringing it up, but he had to: “A person can change a lot in five years, Tommy.”

  There was a long pause. Tommy shifted uncomfortably, frowned, shrugged, shook his head a little, as if in these sudden and jittery little movements he could find what he was looking for. “Sadie was a flashy dresser, she wouldn’t have been caught dead in that old coat —”

  He lowered his head over the new jacket; he shoved it from him in the way of the guilty man who’s made someone pay very dear for him to have it.

  “Don’t even think it,” said Jury, his tone as hard as he could make it.

  Twenty-one

  WAPPING OLD STAIRS was a double set of steps, the ancient part now little more than a downward slope of lichen-green, mossy stone, through which one could just make out the outlines of steps going down. The other set was newer and usable. The slipway lay in the cavernous declivit
y formed by the two high walls, one of them the high side of a waterfront pub called the Town of Ramsgate. The manager of the pub wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about the street’s being cordoned off by police; yet, he might have been enthusiastic about the murder, since there wouldn’t be standing room inside once the curious were permitted to shoulder up to the bar and ask questions.

  Unfortunately, few questions could be answered, since the pub had closed at eleven and no one had seen or heard anything that was very helpful to the Thames police, over a dozen of whom were now fanning out up and down Wapping High Street. Several hours previously, there had been several dozen.

  From his vantage point on Wapping Old Stairs, Wiggins was looking over at the water-markings left on the side of the pub. He asked Roy Marsh a question about the tides. Jury was standing beside Marsh, both of them trying to keep their purchase on the slanting slipway between the steps and the tall side of the Town of Ramsgate. There wasn’t much room here, barely enough for the dinghy in which the corpse had been found.

  “If it hadn’t been moored, the tide would have dragged it out.”

  Wiggins turned an anxious face in the direction of the water nearly close enough to seep into his shoes. He took three steps back and up the stairs.

  “Where’d the boat come from?”

  “Don’t know. It’s in bad shape; someone could simply have left it here just to get rid of it. It’s moored at the launch at headquarters. We’re checking, but I have an idea we won’t be getting far on that one. She was under a tarp. She died from the stab wounds.”

  Jury was hunched down looking at the chalked outline of the boat, the chalk itself partially washed away, the pinioned string loosened slightly from the wet.

  Roy Marsh looked up the narrow conduit of stairsteps to the street. “In dead dark, and with the pub closed, it would be a secluded place, wouldn’t it? If she’d been walking along up there” — he nodded toward the street — “anyone could have dragged her down these steps.”

  “Do you really think it was a stranger?” Jury was looking out across the Thames, watching a speedboat zip by, leaving smaller, quieter craft bobbing in its wake, people out after the rain, enjoying the mild weather. Small pleasure-craft dotted the water. Again he thought of what it must have been once — the black hulls of ships, the russet sails nearly blocking out the sight of Southwark. Now, on the other side of the river, the dark horizon of the Surrey docks rose against an orange-streaked sky.