The door opened and Emily Croft walked in. She was wearing yellow, which made him smile. One so seldom saw it in clothes, not a pale, liquid yellow, but a sunny yellow dress and cardigan. She was thin and a little angular, but still, at seventy-three, in possession of skin and cheekbones a model would kill for. She did not look the least bit infirm, nor did she move as if she were ill. He wondered if this iron stamina which both Emily Croft and Oliver Tynedale had in abundance was characteristic of the rest of the families.
“Miss Croft.” He held out his hand. He had called from London and arranged to see her. “First, I’m very sorry about your brother.”
It was obvious she had been crying, but the Tynedales and Crofts were a resilient sort and he knew there would be little breaking down here.
She smiled. “Superintendent Jury,” she said, taking his hand.
“I really like your dress.” He rather blurted this out, realizing its in-aptness after he’d said it.
She laughed as if the compliment were unexpected. “Thank you. Let’s go out here to the sunporch.” She extended her arm to indicate a glassed-in sunporch and led the way. “Please sit down.”
The furniture was white wicker, the carpet sisal. It was more relaxed out here, and with the sun slanting in, far more cheerful. A better background for a yellow dress.
“You came about Simon’s death.”
“I’m very sorry about your brother, I truly am.”
“So am I, so am I.” Her voice wavered and she looked out to the sea, which the sun brightened momentarily. She cleared her throat. “Simon was a stolid person, but a good one. And very, very smart. The idea that anyone would want him dead is so alien to me-” She stopped again and looked out. “I’ve thought of little else since it happened. I’ve tried to come up with some reason or other. I can’t.”
“When did you last see him?”
“About three weeks ago. Simon tried to come every week. Sometimes he didn’t make it, but usually he did. Both he and Marie-France, though she doesn’t come as often. Ian, too, visits me once in a while, and I know Oliver would if the doctor hadn’t offered to chop off his feet.” She laughed, but the laugh broke in two. “Let me tell you what happened, since you must be wondering why I’m here and not in London. About five years ago I lived by myself in Knightsbridge. When I developed this heart problem, my doctor advised me to get someone in. People advise you to do that as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, when it’s really one of the hardest. Living in a two-bedroom flat with a stranger? Please. Oliver asked me to come to the Lodge where there were people around but where there was also privacy. I could have gone to Simon or Marie-France, but there goes the privacy for all of us. The Lodge was ideal; it was perfect. You could walk around for days without running into anyone if you chose.” She stopped and reached in the pocket of her dress for cigarettes. She turned the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign backward. “That always makes me want to light up.”
Jury laughed and took the lighter from her and lit her cigarette. Lighters had such a satisfying little rasp and snap to them.
“You must have been a smoker once, Superintendent, the way you’re looking so covetously at this.”
“You’re right.”
“Well, be proud of yourself, though I doubt virtue is much of a reward for you. I’ve tried several times to give them up and can’t.”
“And did you choose not to?”
She was puzzled. “Not to what… oh! You mean to bump into people at the Lodge?” She laughed again. “If you mean Kitty Riordin, yes. I’m not terribly fond of Maisie either, if it comes to that.” She looked at Jury, as if perplexed by his question. “I expect that’s why I’m here and not there.”
“You didn’t get along with Mrs. Riordin.”
“I’ve always thought her a cold fish. I’m rather surprised that Oliver didn’t finally get tired of her.” She shrugged. “I expect having her there got to be a habit with him. He’s a very good judge of character, Oliver. So was my father. He had presence; so does Oliver. But I don’t think it comes from wealth and power-and believe me, Oliver has both in abundance. I think, rather, it comes from honesty. Both of them were-are-fueled by honesty. And perhaps we all inherited something of that. I hope so.”
“You did.”
Emily Croft smoked and rocked. Peacefully, Jury thought. He doubted she would put up with any constant irritation in her life; she would do something about it. “But if it was a choice between you and Kitty Riordin, he wouldn’t choose her, would he?”
“No. But I certainly wasn’t going to bother him with all of this. He’s ninety-six or seven, you know. He’s remarkable. As much as I love the Lodge and always have, I decided I’d give this place a try.” She looked around, walls and ceiling, as if assessing it for the first time. “You want to know about Simon, I expect.”
“I want to know about everybody.”
“Yes, of course. You know, I always got along with Simon. Remember, I was years older than Simon and Marie-France; I was eighteen, nearly Alexandra’s age. We were fairly close, Alex and I. I expect that’s why she confided in me. Did you know she had another child? I don’t know if she told anyone else; perhaps she told Kitty, since she was close to Kitty because she took care of Maisie. But I know she told Oliver she’d decided to take a trip to the Continent.” Emily laughed. “I wonder how many trips to the Continent could be blamed on illegitimate babies.”
“Not Ralph Herrick’s?”
“Oh, no. It was just before Ralph came along; they were married that Christmas and Alexandra got pregnant soon after. I’ve always thought that her sadness at having to give up that first child made her immediately want another.”
“She didn’t tell you who the father was of that first baby?”
Emily shook her head.
“Tell me about Ralph Herrick.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Ah, Ralph. Yes, I wondered if anyone was going to get around to him. Simon and Ian idolized him, and no wonder. A handsome flier, a hero. Made to order for hero worship. Well, Simon was, what? Ten or eleven? I suppose it’s understandable.”
“You didn’t admire Ralph Herrick as much as the others?”
“Not even with the help of the Victoria Cross, Superintendent. Admittedly, he was daring, though ‘audacious’ might be a better word. Ralph was an opportunist. I’ve always been a matter-of-fact person, not very imaginative. As I said, I admired Oliver Tynedale and my father because they’re fueled by honesty. Ralph was running on empty.” She stubbed out her cigarette in a thin, aluminum ashtray and went on. “I really tried to warn Alex, but she wouldn’t pay any attention. Neither would I had the situations been reversed.” She sighed. “Poor Alexandra. I don’t think in the year they were married he turned up more than half a dozen times. If he had been present more, I think she would have discovered he was bad news. He was too plausible. I’m always suspicious of overly credible people. What surprises me is that Oliver and Dad were taken in. They were such cool characters themselves, I’d think they’d be alert to someone who reminds one of those old 1920s Chicago gangsters, one of those smooth racketeers one sees in old American films.” She shrugged. “Ralph would’ve made a wretched father. He hadn’t it in him to be anything but.”
“What about Maisie?”
“I’m none too fond of her, obviously, since she engineered my leaving. Helped to, I mean. I think she’s completely deluded when it comes to Kitty Riordin.”
Jury did not want to put words in her mouth. He sat back. “If you’ll excuse the curiosity-and there is a reason for it-by the terms of Mr. Croft’s will, was anything settled on Kitty Riordin?”
“No. There were no surprises in his will, Superintendent. The bulk of his money and his property come to my sister and me. There were bequests made to Ian and Maisie and-I thought this rather sweet-to Mrs. MacLeish. I understand it was she who found Simon’s body, poor woman. You know she came to cook for him, of course. Oh, yes, and Simon left some money in t
rust for little Gemma Trimm. That was nice of him, I thought, as he had no reason to do it, especially in light of what I expect Gemma will inherit from Oliver. Simon was just a very generous man. Well, so was my father, so is Oliver. But regarding the will, no, as I said, there were no surprises.”
Actually, he did know because Mickey had found out. Jury simply wanted to hear what Emily Croft said about the will. He waited. When there was nothing else, he said, “You go up to London occasionally, I understand.”
“I do. It’s one of the nice things about having money, Mr. Jury. You don’t have to constantly disrupt your life. I didn’t have to sell my flat in order to live at this place. Oh-is this by way of asking me if I was in London the day that Simon was shot?” Her smile was sad.
“Were you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I was. I got there in the early afternoon; I wanted to do my Christmas shopping. I stayed overnight, but I didn’t get word about Simon’s death until the next evening, after I’d returned here. I was simply too exhausted to turn around and go back. My doctor didn’t want me going to London in the first place.”
Jury nodded. That was no alibi, at least not so far. “What about your brother’s house, Miss Croft? You and your sister have inherited it, I expect.”
She turned her head to gaze out of the window to the sea, and said, mournfully, “Yes. But I doubt either of us will live there. When you get old, Superintendent, you don’t feel much like turning your life over yet once again.”
“You’ll sell it?”
She gave him a long look, a head-to-feet look. “Are you considering real estate as a night job?”
Jury burst out laughing. He thought it was the first good laugh he’d had since the case started. “Would I make a good one?”
“Oh, probably not. You just seem to worry about the disposal of flats and houses, as if that’s a sideline with you.” She laughed herself. “No, we won’t sell it. I don’t want to lose Simon altogether. As I said, it’s the nice thing about money. You can keep things as they were.”
“Not really, though.”
She gave him another long look, this one full of empathy. “Death is always with us, Mr. Jury. Always.” She smiled. “ ‘The fellow in the bright nightgown,’ is what W. C. Fields called it. I love that image, but I don’t agree with it. There is no bright raiment. Death comes along in the same old clothes, nothing new, nothing different from what we’re used to seeing. And we do see him, all the time, and know it, and try not to. I find it comforting that death holds no surprises.” She looked at him, kindly. “Hold on to that notion, Superintendent. In your line of work, you’d do well to hold on.”
Her expression was inscrutable. He felt the need to counter it, he didn’t know why.
“‘Death is always with us’-that’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?” He smiled.
“No.” She smiled, too.
Twenty-seven
The Tynedale maid, Rachael, opened the door to admit Jury and a white cat who’d been looking squarely up at him. Jury told the maid he had an appointment to speak to Oliver Tynedale. He was twenty minutes early, he knew. “I’d also like to see Miss Tynedale, if that’s possible.” Jury looked down. “I can’t answer for the cat.” Rachael giggled and led him down the hall. The cat followed.
She was writing at a desk in a bow window and rose to greet him. “Superintendent Jury.” Her tone was as level as her eyes, neither welcoming; she softened up a little when she saw the cat. “I see you’ve brought Snowball. She belongs to Mrs. Riordin; she’s a strange animal.”
The cat resumed its glaring at Jury. “I know all about strange when it comes to cats, believe me. May I sit down?” He detected a hesitation before Maisie held out her arm to indicate the chair he stood by. The cat saw this and walked back to the door.
“Has something else come up?”
“No.” He did not elaborate, wanting her to do the talking.
“You upset Kitty Riordin, you know.”
“Police have a way of doing that.”
“You wanted to talk about the war and about what happened.”
“Isn’t that what police do? Talk about what happened?”
Maisie seemed to be looking at everything in the room except him. Now, she seemed to be studying whatever document was on her desk blotter. “ ‘What happened,’ ” she responded to his question, “was Simon being murdered. Not the war, not the Blue Last.” She was trying not to show the extent of her anger.
Jury looked at her speculatively. “How do you know that, Miss Tynedale?”
She looked around the desk as if she couldn’t lay her hands on what she wanted. “What happened was an air raid, and the Blue Last took a direct hit. This was fifty-five years ago, right after Christmas, December twenty-ninth. East London was devastated. It was the heaviest raid of the war, some seven hundred bombers. My mother’s-Alexandra-and Francis Croft’s deaths. That’s what happened.”
Half a century ago and she still felt the emotional devastation? Jury didn’t think so. “You have all of those details right. They must have been told to you time and again. I was a tiny kid then and I remember nothing; at least, nothing right. And as for your mother’s death being so long ago, you know perfectly well one death can affect another, no matter how far apart in time.”
“Not in this case. No.”
“You’re certainly sure about that. Why?”
She merely shook her head.
She wasn’t going to answer, so he said, “You didn’t mention the Riordin baby.”
“Erin, too, of course.” Maisie studied her hands. The disjointed fingers seemed still to shame her a little. “I know those bones were discovered.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see what they tell you. I don’t see how you’d know they were my mother and Erin Riordin.”
“Many ways. The sex is fairly easy, certainly in the case of the adult. A child that young, well, perhaps not so easy. One has to guess on the basis of other things. The child’s skeleton was so near the adult’s and there were apparently no other children in the pub…” Jury shrugged. “They can go by the composition of the soil, the vegetation-a number of things besides the condition of the bones themselves. Teeth, for instance. Even in infants; the teeth might not have broken through yet but there’s maturation below the gum. In the case of your mother and Erin Riordin, there’s the bombing itself. Fragments of shells, that sort of thing. Forensic anthropology is quite amazing. You know what can be done with reconstructing a face from the skull, the bone structure.”
She studied her hands, then looked, again, around the desk as if searching for something. She was searching, Jury thought, simply for time.
“I’d like to know more about Mrs. Riordin. You’re very fond of her.”
“Certainly. I hate clichés, but she’s been like a mother to me.”
Jury wondered why Maisie didn’t see the other side, the corollary to that. “How did she come to be employed?”
Maisie reflected. “Well, she had just come over from Dublin-like any number of Irish girls. She was quite young, just a little younger than my mother, Alexandra. My mother went to an agency and found her. Of course, Kitty hadn’t told them she had a baby because she knew the agency wouldn’t put her on their list. Kitty just hoped whoever interviewed her would be understanding. She was lucky it was Alexandra, who was, from what I’ve been told, the most understanding person in the world.”
“She was with you for how long before that December raid?” He noted the way in which she referred to “my mother” and “Alexandra,” and not “mum” or “mummy.” Of course, Maisie hadn’t really known her mother, but, still…
“A little over a year. I guess it was right after I’d been born.”
“Your grandfather liked her?”
“Oh, yes. If it hadn’t been for Kitty, I’d be dead.”
“And she more or less lived with and for the family after that.”
“That’s so. I’ve wondered why she didn
’t marry again. I’m pretty certain she had opportunities.”
“Is the family-are the families-so close it might have been, well, consuming?”
She thought about this. “I think not in a bad way. We’re very tightly knit, yes.”
“The trouble with that is, you pull one strand loose and the piece unravels.”
“That metaphor’s a bit strained, isn’t it? If one of us falls on his face that doesn’t mean all of us will.”
“It might. Especially since you don’t know which one fell.”
Maisie ran her hand through her black hair, and it dropped back in place just as neatly as it had been. He imagined this to be like the disturbance of the past, as if the placid surface of a lake had been raked by wind and rain, and then returned to glassy smoothness.
He wondered if this was why she hadn’t married, because of her ties to the past and the families who constituted it, or for some other, perhaps more mundane reason. Certainly it couldn’t be because she hadn’t the opportunity. She was too attractive, too intelligent and too rich. The money alone would be an inducement.
She had risen and was leaning against the desk, her ankles crossed, her face turned down. “My father was in the RAF; he was decorated. The Victoria Cross.”
Jury felt himself once again pulled back into something he did not understand. “So was mine. I mean, in the RAF. He was shot down over Dunkirk.”
“I’m sorry.”
It rather surprised Jury that she seemed to mean it. “It was a long time ago.”
She nodded. “I don’t like sounding sorry for myself, but I feel really cheated, not only having lost both my mother and father, but having no memories of them either.”
“It would be just another version.”
“ ‘Version’?”
“Of what really happened. Of reality, I suppose I mean. How well do we remember anything? How well do we remember yesterday?”
The Blue Last Page 18
