“Why wouldn’t it be a stranger? Seems obvious.”
Jury could hear the belligerence, could feel the sergeant’s eyes boring into him. His answer was oblique: “The way the body was left. Why leave it in a secured boat? Why not let it slide into the water?”
When Marsh opened his mouth, probably to reject the theory that Sadie Diver was killed by someone who knew her, Jury went on: “Perhaps someone wanted her to come here, a half-hour walk from Limehouse —”
“Twenty minutes. You think they wanted to get her away from her own neighborhood because it would be harder to connect her up with that flat in Limehouse?”
Wiggins spoke from his stand on the stairs. “With identification on her?” He’d apparently been listening rather than simply inspecting the steps for slime. Now he said to Jury, “Can’t have it both ways, can you, sir?”
• • •
In the sanitized glare of the white-tiled room, the mortuary attendant pulled back the sheet from the corpse.
Jury stood, looking down at the face as still as garden statuary, for a long enough time that Wiggins frowned and said, “Something wrong, sir?”
He looked at Wiggins, then at the attendant, feeling he had to fix both of their faces in his mind. He felt as he had when he was a boy, when the carousel starts going fast and then faster and faces and forms stream together so that one has to watch closely to sort them out. Finally, the whole circle of faces might as well be one.
There was dead silence for one whole minute, in which the attendant wasn’t quite sure what to do, and in which Wiggins took the small photo Jury handed him and looked at it for a moment. “This is Simon Lean, right?”
Jury nodded.
Wiggins looked at it again, frowned, looked back at the dead face of the woman on the mortuary table. “And her?” He frowned. “Sadie Diver?”
“Hannah Lean. His wife. But she seems to be back in Northants, Wiggins, very much alive.” Jury nodded to the attendant to cover up the body.
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Neither do I.” He looked down at the snapshot, one of the two he’d taken from Watermeadows. “I wondered why Tommy Diver looked so familiar.”
• • •
He needed a place to think.
A church, he supposed, was as good a place as any for that, as he turned off the Commercial Road into Three Colt Street where the Five Bells was shut up tight in that blind way pubs have of looking in the few hours between the afternoon closing and the evening opening hours. He parked the car at the side of St. Anne’s and got out.
Both street and churchyard were deserted. He walked round to the western side, up the several flights of fanlike steps, across the vestibule, into the entryway. The body was a rectangle, the vestibules at the other end were rectangles within this larger one. The Ionic columns, the galleries surrounding the large hall were remarkable in their simplicity. He thought of the architect who had not been considered “correct” in the mind of the day. Simplicity where one would have expected the ornate. Jury knew nothing about church architecture. He knew only that he could use a little simplicity.
The moment the door closed behind him with a thud, the hollowness enveloped him. Not St. Anne’s, but his own. It was the reason he avoided churches.
He sat down in one of the pews at the rear, took a missal from the rack, opened it and closed it, put it back. He was unable to think of anything but the young woman at Watermeadows. Only now the face was superimposed over the one lying in the mortuary.
He looked down the nave toward the altar with a sense akin to fear, though it wasn’t that exactly, rising like bile in his throat. The wave of anxiety he felt seemed less related to the possible danger at Watermeadows than it did to the fact that such a deception could be practiced, and done so well, so convincingly. He looked down the nave into the deep pool of shadow that surrounded the altar.
For him to take it so personally was unprofessional, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He had been gulled, and perhaps he felt some special acrimony because to dupe a Scotland Yard superintendent might be considered as some sort of acid test. Yet there had been no reason, none whatever, for the suspicions he had right now to have entered his mind at Watermeadows yesterday.
The double, the doppelganger, except in this case it was not the ghostly presence of the dead haunting the living. He was afraid it was, in some strange sense, the other way round.
Twenty-two
HE MADE A NOTE of the estate agent’s name beneath the “For Sale, Freehold” sign. The house was probably advertised as an extremely desirable waterfront property; Sadie Diver’s flat, however, was nothing more than a glorified bed-sitting-room, its glory emanating largely from its having an actual kitchen. In this case, the kitchen was little more than an alcove with a heavy curtain on rungs in lieu of a door. A narrow window looked out on cracked earth and building lots. At a considerable distance and with no way to get to it was the Thames. The advert, Jury imagined, would contain the usual hyperbole — “enchanting view of the Thames,” “recently renovated,” and so forth.
A fridge, a cooker, a white enamel sink and drainboard constituted the fixtures. Above the sink was a hanging dishrack that held three plates of varying sizes, two cups, three glasses, and some cutlery. Even though forensics had given the place a complete turnout, Jury still took the precaution of touching no more than he had to. He opened the cupboard door by wedging his penknife under the chrome knob and pulling. What was on the shelves was sparse: more plates, cups, glasses. In one corner were several plates that matched, all with a fine gold band. The good stuff, presumably, for entertaining.
Jury walked through the sitting room, where the only thing that was out of place was the pulled-out sofa bed and crumpled covers, and into the bathroom. It was small but quite modern, with yellow and white tiles, their monotony broken by the occasional one with a painted bird. Yellow fittings, low W.C., stall shower. There was even a small airing cupboard. Again with his knife he pried open the medicine cabinet above the sink to find the few bottles there very neatly arranged on a single glass shelf. He looked at the drain in the sink, then in the shower. The one in the shower was covered with a removable aluminum trap to catch hair. With the tip of thumb and forefinger he carefully removed it, looked at it closely, returned it. He shook his head.
He stood now in the center of the sitting room and looked around slowly: the rumpled bedclothes, the pillows on the floor beside Tommy’s small suitcase. A set of bookshelves stood against the wall across from the sofa. The few books were thrillers and picture books of London. Magazines were neatly stacked on another shelf. The two issues of Country Life were months old, gathering dust in this otherwise spotless room.
A glass-fronted curio cabinet stood against the opposite wall. In it were a blue crystal bird, a brass box that looked Indian, a white-robed Bedouin warrior on a horse that reared on its hind legs. Brandishing a rifle with a bayonet, he was a perfect metal miniature. Jury opened the glass door, reached in, and then drew his hand back. Remembering the Safe-T-Loc bags he’d seen in the kitchen, he went to get one, came back, and picked up the horse by hooking his knife beneath the legs. He dropped it into the plastic bag, pinched it together, put it in his pocket. He peeled off another from the container and carefully dropped in the crystal bird.
Jury rang Wapping headquarters and got their print expert. Yes, they’d lifted the victim’s prints from the crockery, a few from the woodwork. There were elimination prints —
“Whose?”
“Delivery boy’s, neighbor down the street, brother’s.” There were others they hadn’t matched up, quite a few. Latents, partials —
“Did you dust the stuff in the cabinet? An Arab soldier on a horse and a couple editions of Country Life?”
The print man was alternately whistling between his teeth and repeating “Arab, Arab,” and then said, “Two partials, not the victim’s. Magazines . . . several. Not the victim’s.”
There was a si
lence, and Jury said: “Just how many prints of the victim did you find?”
“Take a little research. But, as I remember, damned few. To tell the truth, the place might almost have been unlived in.”
“That’s what I thought. Did you lift any from the bottles in the medicine cabinet? Also, there was a small stack of gold-rimmed plates in the kitchen cupboard. Were the partials good enough to get a make?”
“Yes and no.”
“Meaning?” Jury could almost visualize the man’s grin, having his little joke.
“Nothing. Isn’t it always yes and no?”
Jury hung up, but not before telling the print expert that forensics needed to go over the place again.
He sat down on the edge of the bed for a moment, opened his notebook, closed it. Sadie Diver seemed to be passing before Jury’s line of vision much like a figure at the end of a long passageway between buildings, someone who had suddenly appeared from nowhere and gone back to it. The notion, he tried to tell himself, was absurd. She had a history: a brother, an aunt and uncle, a flat, a job. He checked his notebook again. Place called Streaks in Tottenham Court Road.
He took the package from his pocket, held it up to the light and looked at the robed figure, the flashing legs of the horse. Hannah Lean’s favorite.
Lady Summerston had said something like that.
Twenty-three
“I THOUGHT YOU WORKED in pairs,” said Ruby Firth, as she opened the door to him for the second time that day. “Proper police procedure isn’t being observed,” she added wryly, taking up her same position on the sofa, where she must have been working under the dim light of the table lamp. The loft was even more shadowy now at dusk. The planet-ringed top of the torchieres gave off their unearthly, green glow. Beside the basket of material samples, bindings, and braid, lay her outsized horn-rimmed glasses.
Given the velvet gown, the three-inch heels, it was hard to believe that the “citified Laura Ashley” had really been plying her needle when he knocked. “Are you used to police, then?”
Ruby had picked up a small silk shade that she was in the process of mending. Her expression didn’t change as she regarded him over the tops of the horn-rims. At the moment she looked like an inquisitive teacher. “I have a feeling that question is double-edged.” With her teeth, she snapped a thread, then picked up a bit of apricot braid. “I’ve had police for breakfast, lunch, and now apparently for the evening meal. Sorry, but I’ve a gallery opening to go to. Champagne and nibbles. I don’t know about the quality of the paintings, but I do know the quality of the decor. I did it.”
“Sorry. It’s necessary. Where’s Tom?”
“Gone over to Pennyfields to eat Chinese. I thought perhaps getting out would cheer him up; to tell the truth, if I’d had to listen to that harmonica much longer I’d’ve screamed. Does he have to play such doleful music?”
“Just having his sister murdered, I expect he’d feel doleful.”
She said nothing to that except, “Well, at least ‘Waltzing Matilda’ has stopped for a while. I was getting pretty tired of it.” Her look was the usual uncompromising stare. “Tired of police, too. I’ve told everything I know twice over.”
Jury shrugged. “You may think so, but things sometimes go missing. It’s hard to remember every detail first time around. I want to talk with Tommy, too.”
“Then you can just catch him up. I gave him some money to go to the Ruby Dragon. At least it’s brighter than most.” Her eyes were still on the shade, as she drew up a bit of the braid to make a kind of pleat.
Jury couldn’t put his finger on it, what he didn’t like about Ruby Firth. She had held out a hand to Tommy Diver, true, but he wondered how long it would be before the hand would drop away and close on something she fancied more at the moment, the way it reached for the gin and tonic now. Was it a mask of irony she wore, or would the mask drop away like the hand to reveal beneath it another mask? Something cold touched him, the spread of the shadow he had felt in the church, perhaps.
He wondered if Ruby Firth were capable of commitment. He wondered about her casual response to the death of Simon Lean. Almost impossible to tell if it was real or faked. Roy Marsh, on the other hand, couldn’t conceal his feelings about her. Now, as she held the shade at arm’s length, considering her handiwork, he might as well not have been in the room.
Her look at him, when he mentioned Roy Marsh’s name, was defensive. Impatiently, she said, “I’ve known him for years. What on earth does that have to do with the case?”
It was as if knowing him for years dismissed Marsh from notice as a man. “Did he know Sadie Diver?”
“He could have done.” She shrugged. “Ask him.”
“I’m asking you. I think you know.”
She had taken an oblong of puce satin from the box. Jury doubted this needlework had to be done then and there. Ruby Firth would have to be a cold woman indeed if a bit of satin and braid could take her mind off murder, especially a murder in which two men with whom she’d been intimate were involved. “I expect he could have seen her. After all, Narrow Street’s only just down from here a bit. And we did go into the Five Bells.”
“Men apparently liked her, at least that’s the impression I got in the pub.”
Her eyes came up to meet his, looking mildly amused. “If you’re suggesting he threw me over, well, men don’t usually do that, Superintendent.” This was punctuated by the sound of satin ripping. Yet he heard in that defiant statement some other emotion, something edgy, nerves frayed like the length of cloth she’d just torn and now folded into the workbasket.
“I must get to the opening.” She shoved the basket aside and rose. In that sculptured black-and-green gown she looked slim as the torchiere before which she stood.
Surely, she wasn’t so naïve as to think she could dismiss him as she had his questions about Roy Marsh. But Jury let it go, and let her go, too. “Sorry to have kept you. You will, of course, make yourself available. Wapping police will want to talk further with you.” He rose to go. “Where’s that restaurant, then?”
“In Pennyfields. Turn right and it’s just at the bottom . . . . Superintendent?”
Jury had his hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”
“Will he be going back to Gravesend tonight? Or tomorrow?”
“Tommy? I expect his aunt and uncle will collect him quite soon. I’m not sure precisely when. Can’t you —” Jury then felt in her an unease, a posture, much like the one she’d taken before the thin floorlamp, that threatened to crumble. The rest of his reply — stand it for one more night? — stuck in his throat, as his anger started to crumble, too. He managed a smile that he didn’t feel. “On the Beach,” he said. She looked puzzled. “ ‘Waltzing Matilda’ was the theme song. That might be why you think it’s so unhappy.” She didn’t understand, apparently. “But I expect you’re too young to remember that. Thirty years ago, that must be. Ava Gardner was in it.” Jury didn’t know why he was standing in this doorway, rattling on about an antique film, except that he sensed that she needed support. Almost as if she had met his thought, taken it literally, she swayed slightly, clumsily, as if the high heel of her shoe had caught on an invisible rug.
He went on, for he knew she was leaning on the sound of his voice. “It was just that the nuclear cloud hadn’t reached Australia yet. It was the last safe place on earth — for a while.” He could sense the conflict. If he had pressed his question about Roy Marsh, he might have discharged the tension and gotten an answer. Or it might have worked the other way; he might have tossed away any chance he had of gaining her confidence. He felt, though both of them stood on the firm polished planks of the floor, that they were like voyagers on a pitching vessel.
“I always thought it was a hell of a sad song, too, since they all had to die in the end. Good-night, Ruby.”
When he glanced back through the door he was closing behind him, she had not moved an inch. She still stood as elegantly stiff and dark as the dim lamp that cast its faint
green shadow across her hair.
• • •
Jury found him behind a mountain of chicken fried rice.
Pennyfields was strung with Chinese restaurants, as was much of Limehouse, most of them very good, none of them fancy. The Ruby Dragon was the most ornate of the lot. A few gold-and-red-trimmed paper palaces and pagodas hung from the ceiling, turning gently in the small breeze stirred by the door’s opening; a mural depicting a slant-eyed and strangely bearded dragon was painted a gummy red that reminded Jury of dried blood; there were rice-paper partitions and black lacquered screens. Still, he could judge from the clientele that the Ruby Dragon was a family restaurant, catering for the locals just like the others in Limehouse. The menu dependable, the service unsmiling, the food good.
Tommy had, apparently, already eaten his way through a phalanx of appetizers; there were the remains of spring rolls, wonton soup, and shrimp balls. Jury asked for tea.
“Here, eat some of this,” said Tommy, shoving the dish toward him.
“Thanks, no.” Jury smiled as Tommy looked round him at this banquet rather guiltily. “There’s no Chinese places near where we live. Not even a take-away.” Unhappily, he shoved his rice about. “I guess you came to take me back.”
“ ‘Back’? You sound like an escapee. No, I just wanted to talk with you some more. Ruby told me you were here.”
“She gave me the money. It was nice of her; I guess she got tired of me hanging round.” Apologetically, he touched the harmonica sticking out of his shirt pocket. “I don’t know that many songs. My favorite’s ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and one I wrote myself. It gets on people’s nerves.” He sighed. Then he smiled. “It sure gets on Sid’s nerves. He’s always on about me playing it down in the engine room.” His head leaning against his fisted hand and turning the fork over and over in the other, he seemed to forget about the rare treat of Chinese food. “But they — Aunt Glad and Uncle John — say I got to take at least two ‘O’ levels. What good’s that stuff if you just want to work on boats? They keep telling me how Sadie got this real good education at the Little Sisters of Charity; what good’s that ever done her —?”
The Five Bells and Bladebone Page 17
