The Black Cat

by Martha Grimes

  It was too short a ride for a tea trolley, which he missed, and surprised himself in that. The little clatter of its approach down the aisle was somehow consoling. It spoke of ritual. People needed that, we need grounding, he thought. We’re like tents that have to be pegged to keep from blowing off. Rituals, and the things that spoke of rituals. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be phasing out the double-deckers; it would soon be good-bye to the cranky conductors with their ticket rolls. Black cabs. It was okay to see the odd silver or blue or patchwork one, but not the lot, please. Not the lot of them. Instead of the absent tea trolley, he should be thinking about Lu in hospital—

  Don’t go there.

  He went.

  5

  St. Bart’s Hospital was in the City, near Smithfield Market and next to the beautiful St. Bartholomew’s Church. When he’d mentioned the hospital’s proximity to Smithfield Market to his upstairs neighbor, Carole-anne Palutski, she’d told him to stop in and get some decent sausages for a fry-up. Good, he’d said, I’ll back the truck in.

  That made for about as much humor as he could muster.

  The last time he’d seen Lu Aguilar, she’d told him that when she was released from hospital she was going back to Brazil. Her family, she said, were there, not here.

  She said the same thing now she’d said then: “I don’t think you can use a detective in a wheelchair.”

  Jury bent over the bed. “I’ll take the detective any way I can get her.” He was holding her hand, rubbing his thumb along the sheer bone that was left of her. Lu had lost weight she didn’t need to lose. Because of the damage the accident had done, she wouldn’t be walking again, not for a long time, and more likely never. It had been a simple traffic accident, two cars trying to make it through a yellow light, one straight on, one turning. The driver of the other car had died at the scene. In the short while since the crash on Upper Street—three weeks ago? four?—she must have lost twenty pounds, but none of her acerbity. To his compliment a moment ago, she said with a laugh, “Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”

  Jury sat back. “Why? Do you think I’m so shallow?”

  “Of course.”

  He knew she didn’t think he was shallow; that was the easiest way of telling him he wasn’t being truthful.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “Police work has been done before from a wheelchair. We don’t prize you for your ability to hop in and out of zed-cars. It isn’t a cross-country race you’re doing; it’s investigation.”

  “Oh, please.”

  She turned away, and Jury felt as if she’d slapped him. At that moment, he hated her. But the feeling washed over him and washed away, a wave receding in a moment.

  But not her hatred of her condition. The air crackled with it. Along with the weight, Lu had lost the edge that had made her such a dominant force. So much of Lu was presentation. She was, certainly, not your classic introvert.

  The neurosurgeon who’d done the procedure had unquestionably saved Lu’s life. Phyllis Nancy had told him that. She herself had been the doctor at the scene of the accident. The imperturbable Phyllis Nancy. He wondered how she’d gotten through school with two first names. He could never think of Phyllis without smiling.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  Jury flinched. “What? Nothing.” He felt ashamed.

  “That wasn’t a nothing smile and it wasn’t about me.”

  “You’ve gotten a lot better at reading minds, Lu.” He smiled again, a reprehensible, lying smile.

  “Oh, I could always do that. Especially yours.”

  He felt her gaze.

  “You’re off the hook, Richard.”

  He wanted to feel that as another slap in the face, something he didn’t deserve. It made him a little sick to think that he did.

  She caught the look, not able to read it precisely but seeing uncertainty and ambivalence. “Come on,” she said. “We didn‘t—we don’t—love each other, for Christ’s sake.” She tried to sit up, and it looked to him as if her fragile spine exploded in pain. “Jesus! Doesn’t anybody have a drink or at least a goddamned cigarette?”

  Jury felt his walk down the white corridor must be almost as painful as hers, lying in that bed.

  You’re off the hook.

  He did not want to explore that rush of feeling, distinctly like relief. He had been on the hook all right. He realized now that the hook had been sexual. If she’d intended to stay here, maybe even go back to her job with the Islington CID, he honestly didn’t know what he’d have done. Marry her? Insist on taking care of her somehow? He couldn’t imagine Lu Aguilar accepting either of those proposals. She’d know that they were offered out of guilt or pity or obligation.

  The long white corridor seemed endless, the bank of elevators, the bright red “Exit” sign never getting any closer.

  The way out never did.

  6

  He had left the flat the next morning for a mere twenty minutes, to get milk for his tea. Upon his return, when he went to put the milk in his refrigerator, he found a message affixed to the fridge door with a little magnet in the shape of a banana.

  In his absence, Carole-anne had answered his phone. Probably on her way to work this morning she had heard the ring and had just popped in to answer it. Jury rarely locked his door.

  The message was written in Carole-anne’s inimitable style; if the angel Gabriel had delivered messages like Carole-anne, Christianity might never have gotten a toehold:

  “S.W. c’d sed high w. ds rep. w’mn mss in Chess. Thought U should know.”

  Jury pondered. Maybe “S.W.” had also called his mobile. He checked it to find the battery dead. He cursed himself for forgetting to charge it and pondered the message again. He left it to make his tea and look at the paper he had bought along with the milk.

  The murder in Chesham should have been getting minor treatment at this point. But, no, the London paper even revved it up a little. Wasn’t there enough going on in EC3 to make some murder in a Buckinghamshire village pale by comparison?

  Apparently not. Jury supposed there was an element of fascination not only in the victim’s being beautiful and Jimmy-Choo-Saint-Laurent-clad, but also in being unidentified. His name in there, too; they were still milking it for all it was worth, once again going over the suspension because of the Hester Street affair a couple of months back, a boomerang effect, that had been. There had been a bit of a public outcry at this detective’s being punished for saving the lives of the little girls. So Jury was being fashioned the Met police paladin, champion of the unfortunate.

  Christ. Jury tossed the paper on his coffee table, took a pull on his mug of tea as if it were a pint, and regarded the message again. “S.W. c’d . . .” Sergeant Wiggins called. That must be it. Well, he would see this Sergeant Wiggins in a few minutes, if he was the caller.

  Jury finished his tea, collected his coat and keys, and left the flat.

  Sergeant Wiggins, stirring his own tea with a licorice root, raised his eyebrows in question when Jury walked into the office. “Did you get my message?”

  “Ah, yes. I got a message, or what passes for one, from Carole-anne.” He pulled it out and read, as phonetically as he could, “ ‘S.W. c’d sed high w. ds rep. w‘mn mss in Chess. Thought U should know.’ ” He looked up to see Wiggins’s deep frown. “I finally worked out that S.W. meant you.”

  “Yes, but what—” Light broke. “Of course. That ‘w’mn mss in Chess’: that’s telling you a DS called from their High Wycombe HQ to let you know there’s a woman been reported missing.”

  “Do they know who?”

  “No. It was reported by an aunt who hasn’t seen the niece for three days, nearly four if you count this morning—”

  Jury frowned. “That’s a bit of a wait.”

  “Thing is, the niece that’s missing often goes into London for weekends, so the aunt thought that’s where she was. Anyway, this niece of hers wasn’t the victim. She’s a local.”

  “And so might th
e victim be.”

  “Not in this case.” Wiggins tapped the root against the tip of his mug. “The aunt—her name’s Cox, Edna Cox—called police yesterday and said her niece should’ve been home by Sunday night, that she’d never miss work on Monday, that she hadn’t rung. Then the Cox woman went to the morgue and said, no, it wasn’t her, and anyway, her Mariah—Mariah Cox being the niece—Mariah would never wear clothes like that. Police are using her costume to help with the ID. I mean, how many women round that area would be wearing that dress and those narrow-toed shoes by ...”

  “Jimmy Choo. And when did Mariah Cox disappear?”

  “Well, she first missed her on the Saturday—but remember, she thought Mariah was in London for the weekend. It was on Sundays that Mariah usually came back, but she didn’t. Nor on the Monday—”

  Jury was out of his chair. “I want to talk to the aunt.”

  “But she said it wasn’t her niece, guv.”

  “I don’t give a toss for that. One woman goes missing and a dead one turns up—what a bloody coincidence.” He pulled on his coat.

  “But surely the woman would know her own—” The phone rang and Wiggins snapped it up, gave his name, and listened. After five seconds of listening, he held up a finger to Jury. “It’s DS Cummins again, guv, here—” He held out the phone.

  Jury took it and sat on the edge of Wiggins’s desk. He listened, said he’d be there inside of an hour, and handed the receiver back to Wiggins.

  “Apparently, they got someone else to identify the body, the librarian the niece worked for. According to her, the dead woman’s Mariah Cox.”

  7

  He spent some time in High Wycombe gathering what forensic evidence was available and being treated with remarkable amiability by Thames Valley police, given he was hardly a necessary adjunct to their deliberations. He said as much to the DCI to whom David Cummins had introduced him.

  DCI Stevens only laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. We’re not all Morse here.”

  Jury frowned, puzzled. “Morse?”

  “My God, man, you don’t know Morse? Thames Valley police? Oxford?”

  “Oh, that Morse. The TV one. Well, you can take it to the bank that I’m not him either. But I would like to talk to the aunt, this Edna Cox.”

  “Sure. DS Cummins can take you. It’s rather odd, but what made me wonder about the Cox woman’s failure to identify the victim was that she was too abrupt in her denial. It was the way of someone who was refusing to face something unpleasant. Ordinarily, you’d register a huge relief, finding the body you’re looking at isn’t someone you love. That’s why we got the librarian in, the one who runs the place, name of Mary”—he looked down at a paper—“Chivers. She identified her. Of course, she said too that it hardly looked like Mariah, and no wonder the aunt didn’t recognize her: the ginger hair, the look of her, the clothes. D’you think Mariah was going off to London to work as a pro, weekends?”

  “Could be. I want to talk to both of these women, if you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? No. We’re always happy to have someone from the Met come round.”

  Jury smiled. “No, you’re not.”

  “Sorry,” said David Cummins as they piled into the car. “I tried your cell but got no answer. Then I tried the Yard, got your sergeant.”

  “And he called my flat. The message was taken by a friend from upstairs. I’ve an answer machine that hasn’t worked since the day I got it, so if she’s passing and hears my phone, she goes in and answers.” Jury saw a red light coming up and pulled out the scrap of paper. When Cummins braked, Jury handed it to him.

  The DS read it, frowned, laughed. The light changed. “My God. How did you sort that out?”

  Jury pocketed the message. “She spends most of her time reading runes and translating from Old English. Never quite got the hang of it myself.” He looked out at the passing scenery. “You say the victim’s with the local library. So how would a librarian’s pay run to Yves Saint Laurent?”

  “Wouldn’t.” Cummins laughed. “Nor the shoes.” They were approaching a roundabout. “Not unless she got a pair from my wife.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Chris has the lot: Jimmy Choo, Prada, Gucci, Tod’s, Blahnik, you name it.”

  Jury couldn’t. He was simply surprised, given he imagined a policeman’s pay here might be only slightly higher than a librarian’s.

  “Chris knew straightaway whose shoes they were. From the photo—” Realizing he’d said too much, Cummins cut it off.

  Jury looked over at him. “Police photos?”

  “Look. I just showed her the one of the shoes. I know I’m not supposed to—”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “It’s just . . . it’s just Chris . . .” Negotiating the roundabout, he stopped talking again.

  The DS’s obvious embarrassment made Jury sympathetic. “So Chris has a shoe hang-up.” He laughed.

  Relieved now, Cummins laughed. “God, yes. You’ve got to meet her.”

  “I’d like to. She sounds fascinating. In the meantime, let’s stop by the library.”

  Mary Chivers was one of those people who called all detectives “Inspector,” no matter what their rank: constable, sergeant, superintendent. Detective Sergeant Cummins was anointed with the same inspectorhood as Superintendent Jury.

  Mary Chivers had been holding a book, blowing dust off its spine, when they walked in. Jury liked the act of blowing dust from a book, he could not say why. Miss Chivers was a little bundle of a woman with whom one could tell books would be safe. Indeed, the whole little library felt like a safe house or sanctuary in its whispery silence. The whispers were supplied by three women at a reading table sharing news or secrets.

  DS Cummins, who had been one of those to question her before, introduced Jury.

  “I couldn’t believe it at first,” she said in answer to Jury’s question. “I could not believe this dead woman was Mariah Cox. I don’t mean I didn’t recognize her, I did, despite that ginger hair—but I certainly had to look twice, let me tell you. It was the situation, where she was found, the way she’d been dressed, why it’s perfectly understandable that Edna would have made that mistake. Poor Edna.” Here Mary Chivers ran her hand over the cover of the book she still held, and her eyes over the high stacks of books, as if assuring herself they hadn’t run away.

  She went on. “Mariah was plain, but she had good bones. Yes, with the right makeup, and a bit of artistry, she could make herself another face. Yes, I can see that. . . .”

  Jury said, “She got on well with your staff?”

  “Of course.”

  “No one appeared to dislike her or be jealous of her or have any reason you know of to harm her?”

  Mary Chivers shook her head slowly, decidedly. “Understand, Inspector, that Mariah Coxwas as nice aperson as couldbe—completely dependable, conscientious, kind. She was quiet, retiring, one of those women, you know, who would more or less fade into the background. Mariah was not one to stand out.”

  Not one to stand out. Mariah had scarcely disturbed the air around her and yet had morphed into a lovely, sophisticated, and—Jury was beginning to suspect—sex-for-sale woman. For Jury, it was not so much that she had done it, but why.

  Edna Cox lived in the end one of a terraced row of houses, with lace curtains at the front window. The place was dispiriting enough on its own; with the additional blow of a death in the family, it was bleak as the North York moors.

  Edna Cox still appeared to be denying the knowledge that the dead woman in the police photograph could possibly be her niece. “You know my Mariah, Mr. Cummins,” she said, as if that took care of it.

  DS Cummins said, “It wasn’t like her, I agree, but . . .”

  Edna Cox was having no buts about it. Given the way she was perched on an overstuffed chair edge, it wasn’t like sitting at all. If she moved half an inch forward, she’d be on the hooked rug.

  “I said it once and I’ll say it again: Mariah does not
own clothes like that. And her hair—it was never that color. Have you talked to Bobby? They got engaged hardly two weeks ago.”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Jury. “Bobby—?”

  Edna Cox looked away, apparently done with answering.

  “That’d be Bobby Devlin,” said Cummins. “Bobby has the flower stall next the station. Nice fellow.”

  Edna Cox blurted out: “Mariah wouldn’t be caught dead in those pointy-toed sandals.”

  Unfortunate choice of words, thought Jury.

  “And she didn’t have the money for them, neither. Shoes like that or that dress. That lot’d cost her half a year’s wages.”

  Jury had picked up a framed photo of Mariah Cox and sat now looking at it. Here was a plain girl with straight dark hair to her shoulders, untidy bangs nearly eclipsing her eyes. But Mary Chivers was right: you could still see the bones, and they were very good. It was exactly the kind of face that someone trained in the art of makeup could do marvels with. Perhaps Mariah herself had the talent; perhaps there’d been a lot of practice in putting on another face. He set the photo on a glass-topped coffee table that didn’t fit the rest of the furnishings and said, “She’d been gone before, hadn’t she?”

  “Well, yes, most weekends, and sometimes she’d stay over in London with this friend of hers she knew at school . . .” She looked down at the rug at her feet as her voice trailed away.

  “Mrs. Cox, has it ever occurred to you your niece was leading a double life?” Jury was leaning forward, trying to make that sound the most natural thing in the world, a double life.

  Her head came up smartly. “Whatever are you talking about?” Clearly unconvinced of her own judgment, she sounded like a person desperately wanting to avoid something.

  “Maybe you simply didn’t want this woman to be Mariah.”

  Her shoulders went back as if about to take Jury on. “So you’re saying I lied.”

  “Not at all. I believe you made a mistake, that’s all.” He picked up the picture he’d set on the table. “Straight brown hair and a fringe almost covering her eyes. No makeup. The exact opposite of the young woman who was murdered. It’s what I mean by a double life. They look like two different women. The doctor, who’s a local, thought the dead woman looked familiar. So did another witness. You understand what I’m saying.”