Jury returned the photos to the envelope and got up. The white cat coiled itself about his legs, purring.
• • •
It followed him down the path and across the little bridge, perhaps interested in this alteration to its daily round.
After London, Jury felt the need of hedges, gardens, air with the fresh scent of rain in it, and this clear-running stream. He welcomed the walk to the main house.
Yet he found himself searching the gardens and criss-crossed paths carefully, furtively, almost, and was mildly shocked to find himself stopping suddenly at the crunch of footsteps on the wider garden walk. Not only stopping but moving into the narrow opening between yew hedges. A man passed, the old gardener, moving arthritically along with his shears.
The cat darted between his feet and pounced upon the copper-leaved ground cover, on the trail, perhaps, of something elusive to the cat, invisible to Jury.
It had shaken him, that impulse to turn from the path, to avoid coming face-to-face with her. He sat down on a rough-hewn bench, one of several placed along the length of the pergola. It might have been a secret garden, the way it was enclosed by a long yew hedge down one side, a screen of trees and shrubs on the other, wisteria and some other with lacy mauve flowers. There must have been a dozen species of pink, copper, violet flowers that Jury could put no name to. The pergola dripped roses like rain.
The white cat dived into a cloud of tiny white flowers. A stone figure of a woman whose arms encircled a bowl or a basket was placed at the far end against the hedge. It was also doing service, in its hollowed-out center, as a birdbath. At the chirp of a finch, the cat slithered out of its camouflage toward the stone figure.
From his pocket he took out the Bedouin soldier, the crystal bird. How easy to transport a few objects from Watermeadows to Narrow Street to make sure the prints matched. How forward-looking of Simon Lean. Pratt could be right, of course; different killers, different motives. It was hard to imagine Diane Demorney in a jealous rage, or caring really enough about anyone to kill him. Theo Wrenn Browne? Nicking that book could have been just as much a camouflage for murder as the white flowers were for the cat. And the weapon was right there. But given what Willie Cooper had said, it was just possible that Sadie Diver had killed both of them. Now having taken on Mrs. Lean’s identity, she could take on the fortune that went with it. Far more money and far less danger. Simon Lean had little compunction when it came to removing wives. Ironic, that would be: Lean works out the plan meticulously, and Sadie takes advantage of it.
But it would have been madness, wouldn’t it, for Sadie Diver to kill Simon Lean that night in the summerhouse. Police would have been on her in a moment. Why not wait until later, until his death might appear an accident, or, better yet, say that he’d simply “gone off.” With part of the Lean fortune, perhaps. No one would have been surprised to find that Simon was simply acting true to his character. Any number of reasons could have been supplied for his leaving, since Simon wouldn’t have been round to deny them . . . .
He watched the white cat, waiting its chance at the bird, sitting stiff as the statue itself, wishing he could wait that patiently, see that clearly to the first flutter of movement that would point to a solution. So his theory that Sadie had killed Simon Lean was either totally off the mark, or something had gone terribly wrong.
The white cat tensed, jumped toward the stone bowl, missed. The bird flew away.
• • •
Crick opened the door for him, his thin hand going automatically to the back of his ear as soon as Jury asked him a question. No, he hadn’t seen Miss Hannah at all today, nor much during the last few days. And when he had it’d been at a distance. Miss Hannah was one who did for herself.
These questions were answered, answered in Crick’s oddly newsy way, as he preceded Jury up the high cliff of staircase.
Nothing had changed. It was the same thought he’d had in the summerhouse. His mind approached Watermeadows across a wide expanse of years as he himself had approached it across the wide lawns. Like something seen not two days ago, but two decades. And that in the twenty years of absence, he would expect to find a hostess grown gray, a girl grown up, a butler deaf. It was a realization that came to him in another small moment of panic — that’s all that he could call it — and it was because the central figure at Watermeadows was a fraud. He felt disoriented; time was a blur; it was as if he had known them all before and would now make comparisons. It was the real reason for that chill down his spine in the garden: that so ingrained in his memory was the woman of yesterday he would have to keep reminding himself that he might never have seen Hannah Lean.
The envelope grew damp in his hand. At the top of the stairs, he paused to look at the portrait of Hannah Lean. It could not have been removed without making someone wonder, and that and the sketch and some snaps in Eleanor Summerston’s album were all that remained here if one wished to make comparisons.
Standing a little to his right and behind him, Crick only added to Jury’s feeling of anxiety by saying: “Doesn’t much favor her, does it, sir? Oh, very fine that artist is, but I always thought him a bit modish. It’s Mr. Sargent I’ve always liked. No, this doesn’t really quite catch Miss Hannah’s look.”
In the moving fingers of light, the oils rippled, and Jury felt he was looking at a face in water.
• • •
Without looking round from her table on the balcony, she said, “You’re back. Well, better you than that dreadful man from Northampton. Some Scottish sort of name. That will be all, Crick.”
The ritual dismissal done, Crick bowed to Lady Summerston’s back and left. The formality, Jury was sure, benefited both of them, made them think that the passing years, age, death had not subverted the relationship into one of mutual decrepitude and neglect of form.
“MacAllister, I think you mean,” said Jury, taking the same unyielding chair he had sat in before.
Her fist smacked a stamp into line and she closed the album. She had of course buried her spectacles inside the front of what appeared to be a sari of jewellike turquoise over which she wore a quilted jacket and the same handsome shawl as before.
“London doesn’t suit you, Superintendent. You look pale. Have you had your luncheon?” When Jury nodded she still ran the gamut of possible refreshments and they settled on tea. That pleased her, because it meant that Crick could once again ascend the stairs with the silver service. She blew into the old-fashioned mouthpiece, announced her wishes to the butler, and told him that, as long as he was making the trip, he might as well bring some bread and butter, very thin, and some of those citron cakes.
“So do you, Lady Summerston. Look pale, I mean.”
“I happen to be extremely upset, although I hide it well — don’t I? — and it’s that MacAllison of yours who’s done it.”
“Not my MacAllister, Lady Summerston.” Jury smiled.
“Well, I shouldn’t like to say you’re both tarred with the same brush, but as far as I am concerned, police are police. I make no distinction. You can all” — she inclined her head and smiled a little too sweetly — “go to hell in a handbasket.” Now she had taken the cards out of the ivory box and was shuffling them furiously.
“I’m sorry. What’d he say?”
“Say? He as much as demanded I produce an — alibi.” The word was clearly distasteful. She took a drink of water as if to wash it out of her mouth.
“And did you?”
Her fingers arched around the two parts of the split deck, she looked at him with astonishment. “Et tu, Brute?”
Jury wanted to laugh. “I am, as you said, just another cop. Could you account for your time?”
With practiced thumbs, she riffled the pack, evened it, split it again. “ ‘Time’? Time means nothing to me. I leave Time to Crick. You know perfectly well I do not leave my rooms unless I absolutely must. There is the odd dinner party, but that happens no more than once or twice a year.”
“When was th
e last one, Lady Summerston?”
“When? God, I don’t know. Ask Crick.”
“Who were your guests?”
Impatiently, she said, “Oh, the usual lot.”
“I’m not sure what that lot is.”
“The Burnett-Hills, the Chiddingtons, a few others. They were Gerry’s friends; I cling to them, I suppose, like Gerry’s medals.”
“Crick would, of course, have the entire guest list.”
She looked up from her game of solitaire. “Naturally. But what on earth is all this in aid of? You think they all gathered at the summerhouse and ran him through like that Orient Express business. I’ve always thought it a marvelous idea.”
“Presumably, they knew Simon Lean. And Hannah.”
“Certainly they did. Are you going to subpoena them all?”
“No. I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”
She had swept up the rows of cards, shuffled them, and was now slapping them down again in much the same way she stuck stamps and snaps in an album — intractable things that needed teaching a lesson.
Jury picked up the photograph album, lying on top of a James novel, The Golden Bowl. A small photo of her husband was propped against a Herman Melville. He wondered if books largely did service as weights and props. “Do you like that?” He nodded toward The Golden Bowl.
“I? Heavens no. It’s quite heavy, though. I can press things with it, stamps and so forth. Do you read?”
Jury hid a smile, opened the album. “Well, that one I did, twice.”
“Like your punishment don’t you? It’s Hannah’s favorite. She was just looking it over yesterday.”
“Was she, then?” He continued leafing through the album. “I read it twice because I couldn’t understand it the first time. I still don’t think I do.”
“Ask Hannah, then.”
“Oh, I shall.” His head bent over the album, he said, “You’ve stalked Time here, Lady Summerston, year after year.” He turned the pages, found himself looking at picture after picture of Hannah Lean as a child, as an adolescent, as a teenager. That he found in these younger faces traces of the one of the woman he’d met hardly surprised him. Two much larger portraits had been removed. He closed it, upended it on his knee, and rested his chin on the hands that overlapped across its top.
At the sound beyond the door, she said, “Thank heavens, here’s our tea. You are in need of something, that’s certain.”
Crick had brought a cloth and cleared the table so that he could lay it and set out the silver teapot, the succulent sandwiches and cakes. “Excellent, Crick,” she told him, munching a watercress round. “Mr. Jury here would like the guest list for the dinner party we had in —” The pleated silk of her frock waved as she motioned with her arm. “— last month. Or whenever.”
“That’d be nearer six months ago, my lady. Time does fly.”
“Not past me, I assure you. Who was here?”
Crick rattled off the names and Jury took them down. Addresses? Well, certainly he could provide them from his book in the butler’s pantry. “Now Mrs. Geeson, I recall, has moved to Henley-on-Thames—”
“Oh, who cares, Crick? They could all move to Mars and never be missed. I’d like junket for my dinner, please. Vanilla.”
“Madam.” Crick bowed and withdrew.
She looked over her shoulder to see he was gone, reached down into the voluminous bag at her feet, and drew out a pint bottle of rum. “This might get the tea up on its feet.” She poured a tot into Jury’s cup.
“Tell me: have you seen much of your granddaughter in the last two days?”
She frowned. “I seldom see much of her. We had a game of gin yesterday and she brought up my Horlick’s at night. Why?”
Jury looked at the brown envelope propped against the table leg, unopened. It was a natural question: “I wondered if you found her much changed, Lady Summerston.”
“Changed? Well, of course she’s changed! Considering her husband has just been stabbed to death — would one expect her to be chirpy and cheerful?”
He smiled slightly. “She was never really that, was she?”
“No.” Perhaps the mention of stabbing had her plunging the tines of a fork into a citron cake and transporting it to her plate. “Hannah’s been extremely quiet for the last several years. Ever since she married the man. Never one for talking much. Well, you know that. You interrogated her.” The emphasis on interrogation was not lost on Jury.
And it had been so far from that. She had talked a great deal — more than his questions warranted, really. He frowned at that. “When was the last time you played cards with her before yesterday?” Jury picked up a small sandwich, put it down without appetite.
“When, when, when . . . How tiresome. A week ago, possibly two. Crick would know.”
Crick was apparently the repository of the family memory, the archives of the house. With his indefatigable memory and meticulous attention to detail, Crick was in a class with Wiggins. Jury would like to see them together: who could talk, who could take notes the quicker? That reminded him that his sergeant should be turning up soon with Tommy Diver.
“Was it the usual game?”
Now she had shoved the tea things back so that she could continue with her cards. “Of course. No.”
He looked at her looking down at the deck. “No?”
Eleanor Summerston shrugged. “She won. What I mean is, Hannah always loses. At first I thought it was to mollify these old bones. Then I saw she was just a rotten card player. You’d think she’d been taking lessons.”
Lady Summerston frowned as Jury moved into the sitting room. “You are being a bore. I don’t know how you manage to connive at confidences.”
He stood, as he had done before, looking at the metal soldiers. “You said she was fond of these soldiers, especially the Bedouin.”
There was a long sigh. “You people do jump about so. I have no idea what I said.”
“One’s missing. Come see.”
“You expect me to move from my favorite spot . . . ? Oh, very well.”
With many a grope and grumble, she was beside him, and with surprising agility. She squinted, finally had to resort to taking out her glasses. “So there is. Crick must have taken it. Perhaps it needed mending. Are you suggesting it was nicked? It wasn’t worth anything.”
“And did she collect glass figures?” He drew the blue bird from his pocket. “Like this?”
“I’ve seen one like it, yes. Where did you get it? Do you catch stuff that falls off the backs of vans, too?” She turned toward the balcony.
Back at the table, Jury fingered the envelope. He should have opened it, taken out the photographs. He knew he wouldn’t; and, after all, it would be premature. Premature and dreadful, if he was wrong.
“Pick a card.” She held out the spread cards.
Jury put aside the envelope, drew from the fan. Queen of spades. He looked from the queen up to her woebegone eyes, her ring-heavy fingers, dragon-encrusted shawl. And he thought of Carole-anne, Meg and Joy. “I didn’t know you were a cardsharp, Lady Summerston,” he said, replacing the card as directed. Meg and Joy: they weren’t twins; put them side by side and it was clear, if one were searching their faces to find out the differences. But people saw what they expected to see. He’d had enough experience of witnesses to know that. No one saw with a completely clear, objective eye.
Evidence of this was that not even he had seen precisely what she was doing in her great fuss at reshuffling the deck. A simple trick he’d probably seen dozens of times before and still couldn’t remember its solution.
She held up the queen of spades.
“Very good.” He smiled. “How well do you really know your granddaughter, Lady Summerston?”
She glanced at the book propping up the picture of Gerald Summerston. “I believe I agree with Mr. Melville,” she said, tapping the spine of The Confidence Man. “Nobody knows who anybody is. I believe that’s the way he put it.” She gave him a shre
wd, ice-blue glance. “I’d think you, of all people, could appreciate that.”
He looked at the deck of cards and saw instead the deck on the coffee table in Sadie Diver’s room. “Life is full of parlor tricks, Lady Summerston.”
Thirty
“AFRAID I’VE COME at a bad time,” said Melrose, as Diane Demorney divested him of his coat. “You appear to be about to go out.” A linen coat and a handbag were lying across the arm of the sofa.
“Only to Sidbury.” She immediately went about getting them drinks, wheeling over a chrome-and-glass silent butler.
He supposed he couldn’t say, “Bit early in the day for me,” since she’d just seen him at the Jack and Hammer. “Thank you. Some of that Cockburn’s sherry, please.” Then he watched as it gurgled its way into a whiskey tumbler.
The room didn’t help. There were times when he thought that the best way to furnish a room was simply to throw in chairs, sofas, tables and see where they landed. Diane Demorney’s studied attempt to make a statement with her decor had set this fancy in motion. How white could clash on white, Melrose couldn’t imagine, but here it did. The only touch of color in the room, except for Diane herself, was an arrangement of copper-colored tea roses that blazed against a white painting, just as Diane, wearing a frock of exactly the same shade, flared up like a flame against her wintry landscape. He was sitting in some sort of white leather thing like a hollowed-out igloo that seemed to have no manageable parts, such as simple arms one could clutch or a straight back one could feel securely behind one. For a moment he was afraid she would join him there, but she sat instead at that end of the sofa nearest him.
“Have you lunched, then? We could go to Jean-Michael’s. It’s the only place in the county that has cuisine minuet.”
“Another time, perhaps. I have an engagement.” That sounded dreadfully stuffy, so he added, “With my aunt.” He smiled and then said, “I understand Simon Lean liked to go there.”
If he meant to catch her out, he could have saved his breath to cool his porridge. “Yes. More sherry?” She lifted the bottle, looked at his glass. “You’ve scarcely touched it.” She sighed. “How disappointing. I can’t get you drunk.” Swinging her patent pump from the end of her toes, she said, “I wonder if any woman could.” Cocking her head to one side, as if taking her measure, she shook her head and said, “What you really mean is, Did we go to Jean-Michael’s together? Yes.”
The Five Bells and Bladebone Page 22
