The Black Cat

by Martha Grimes

  Jury said, “Have a look at this, will you, David?” He’d pulled out the copy of the receipt and placed it before Cummins.

  “Yeah. For that book I bought Chris the other day. About shoes—but why . . . ?”

  “Police found this yesterday at the crime scene, on the pavement where Kate’s body was found.”

  The head that had been lowered to look at the bit of paper didn’t rise. Jury left it for several seconds. He knew it was the mention of Kate. Cummins wasn’t a controlled-enough actor to put on a blank face at that.

  Finally, Cummins picked up the receipt again, as if it would change by alchemy into a thing that would explain all of this. He just shook his head. “You lost me; you’ve completely lost me. But the receipt, I didn’t lose that. It’s at home. There’s a box Chris keeps receipts in.”

  “No, I don’t think it’s there, David.”

  There was a silence except for Wiggins’s pen scratching on paper.

  David looked up at Jury. “You think I was there—where Kate was . . .” But he didn’t seem able to say “murdered.”

  “How could this receipt have got there?”

  David made the same point that Wiggins had earlier. “It belonged to somebody else who bought the book. That’s obvious. At least to me.”

  “You were in Waterstone’s, weren’t you, on the Friday? You went to London on Fridays.”

  He nodded. He was too much a detective not to see where this was going. Where, he knew, it had already gone.

  “Two other copies of the book were sold that day, later in the afternoon. Of the three of you, how many would happen to be at the spot where Kate Banks was murdered?”

  Cummins shook his head. “No matter how improbable, it must have been one of the others because I know I wasn’t there.” He became agitated, running his hands through his hair, down his tie, fiddling with a pencil.

  Jury leaned across the table and put his hand around David’s arm. “David, you knew Kate Banks when she was Kate Muldar; you knew her much better than you’ve led us to believe. And Chris knew her, too.” He leaned back. “Why don’t you tell me about back then?”

  David nodded. “The truth—”

  That would be nice, thought Jury. But he didn’t say it. Cummins was having a bad time, and it was soon to get worse.

  “It was in Brighton. Chris and I were going together, more or less. But when I saw Kate”—his smile said he was seeing her again—“I forgot everything else. I forgot I was just a grocer’s son; I forgot I had no career and no prospects. I forgot I had no money. I forgot Chris. That sounds impossibly exaggerated, I know, but it’s literally true. Nothing I did could set Kate aside. It wasn’t her looks, though God knows they were grand. Kate was the nicest person I ever knew.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard from her godmother. She was a very good person.”

  David nodded. “I can’t explain except to say I was dazzled, if you know what I mean.”

  Jury knew about dazzle. The first time he’d seen Phyllis Nancy, that night of the Odeon shooting, coming toward him holding a black case, wearing a long green gown and diamond earrings that hung beneath her dark red hair. That was dazzle.

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “I was working for my dad, filling bags with onions, lettuces, potatoes. I can’t imagine a job less . . . sexy. I can still remember wishing I were a copper, a CID man.” He laughed. “God. Has anybody got a cigarette?” He looked at Jury, then around at Wiggins.

  Jury said, “Wiggins, go out there and see if you can scare up some smokes. And matches.” As Wiggins left, Jury said, “How did Chris react to this? To Kate and you in Brighton?”

  “You can imagine. We broke up. They—Kate and Chris—were in school; it was their last year at Roedean. I didn’t see Kate after that. I think Chris got rid of her. I think she told her something that really put her off. I don’t know. Kate just seemed to dissolve into the past.”

  “And then she was back in the present. Maybe sitting in that coffee bar in Waterstone’s.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “You liked books. She liked books and the coffee bar there. Her godmother, Myra Brewer, told us.”

  “I thought I was seeing things. Nearly twenty years and Kate Muldar hadn’t changed, not by ...” He looked round as if searching for some measuring device to explain to Jury how much she had not changed by.

  There was gut-wrenching pathos in it.

  “Not by a hairsbreadth.” He settled on a cliché. Sometimes starved language was all you had.

  The door opened then, and Wiggins came through with the smokes, a half-pack of Rothmans. He set this on the table, a book of matches on top.

  David thanked him, shook out a cigarette, and sat smoking.

  “Not all of these London trips were undertaken to visit the shoe emporiums of Upper Sloane Street, were they?”

  David was silent, flicking ash from his cigarette into a dented metal tray with “Bass” written across it. He looked at Jury. The look was the answer.

  “How many times did you meet with Kate Banks?”

  “I can’t say exactly, a dozen, maybe.”

  Jury smiled. “You can say exactly, David. You could recite it as surely as a prisoner of war giving name, rank, serial number.”

  Weakly, David smiled. “I expect so. We met a dozen times in the last four months.”

  “And before that? In London? Three years ago?”

  His head went down again, as if dodging a blow. “What makes you think I was seeing her then?”

  “Because of the way you’re acting right now. I was merely guessing before. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason you left London.”

  He said hastily, “Chris didn’t know. . . .”

  Jury just looked at him. “Yet Chris insisted you leave, didn’t she?”

  The nod was the barest movement of his head.

  “Did Kate know you were married?”

  The nod was more emphatic. “But not to Chris. I didn’t tell Kate that.”

  “Why not?”

  David blew out his cheeks. “Kate would think it was happening all over again, and she wouldn’t’ve let it.”

  “It was happening all over again.” Jury leaned closer to him across the table, so close they might have breathed each other’s breath. “And Chris knew it.”

  His alarm all too evident, Cummins looked at Jury and then past him, as if his wife might be waiting there in the shadows. Then he was consumed with panic-anger: “That’s ridiculous! Where do you get that idea, for God’s sake?”

  “For one thing, to state what’s a cliché, wives seem to sense these things; they know if their husbands are straying. But more than that: you were careless. Which isn’t surprising, given your feelings for Kate. You said it earlier: she shut everything else out. Nothing else mattered. If she could do that to you at age eighteen, how much more could she at age thirty-seven?”

  “But what do you mean by ‘careless’?”

  “You’d have to have been; you were besotted. You’d have come home with perfume on your coat, lipstick on your shirt—”

  “Of course I didn’t—”

  “Not that precisely, maybe, but you were so preoccupied, you couldn’t have taken great care in rubbing out all of the signs of another woman. Kate Banks was lovely. And other things. I saw her. Dead, there was still something ineffable. I wished when I saw her I’d known her.”

  David Cummins sat looking at his hands, fingers laced on the table.

  “How did you feel when you found out she was working for an escort service?”

  “It wouldn’t’ve made any difference; nothing made any difference except being with her. This one service wasn’t really a sex thing. There are men who really do want companionship. But, still, it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “You were going to leave Chris, weren’t you?”

  He nodded, wiping the wetness from his face with the heel of his hand. He sniffed. “But I didn’t kno
w what to do. I mean, with Chris in that wheelchair.”

  Wiggins heard the tears even though he didn’t see them. He was on his feet in an instant with a fresh handkerchief, which he laid on the table before Cummins, who picked it up, shook it open, and held it like a flag of truce.

  Wiggins sat down again, tilted his chair against the wall, and reclaimed his notebook and pen.

  Cummins picked up the copy of the receipt, tossed it down. Jury scraped back his chair. Wiggins rose, too, but David still sat. “Next you’re going to tell me Chris killed her.”

  “No, I’m not going to tell you that. She could hardly have managed to get herself to the city, could she? Though God only knows she’d have wanted to.”

  “She didn’t know it was Kate.”

  Poor sod, thought Jury. “Yes.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “And you’re wrong. Bring the crime scene photos of that shoe impression.” Jury got up. “Come on.”

  “What?”

  Jury knew Cummins had heard him, but probably any answer he gave at this point would be “What?”

  “I want to talk to your wife. Bring the photos. Chris might recognize something.”

  David nodded. “The photos are in the incident room.” He went off.

  Wiggins watched Jury. “It really looks as if you think—”

  Jury cut him off. “I do.”

  In another moment, David was back. He held up the photos. “I still say she didn’t know.”

  “The moment you made the mistake of bringing home the despised shoes by Kate Spade, I’ll bet she knew. My guess is she hated Kate Spade just because of the name. You must have been out of your bloody mind, David.”

  61

  Chris Cummins wheeled herself to the door in what Jury thought was record time. Her husband had called her in that moment he’d gone for the photos. Jury knew he would; he wanted to see what his wife would betray if she thought her husband was in big trouble.

  His guess was, nothing.

  “Three more somber faces I’ve never seen. Be sure you leave your shoes at the door.” Chris Cummins’s laugh was just this side of combative.

  Wiggins smiled. Neither of the other men did.

  “Come on, I’m making tea. The kettle’s about to go.”

  They followed her, even David, as if this were no longer his house, his wife. As if he were merely stopping by like the others.

  In the kitchen, the tray was ready with cups and saucers, milk and sugar. So she’d been expecting company. Jury didn’t comment.

  The kettle screamed and she reached for it, but Wiggins got there first. Wiggins would always get there first, thought Jury. And he was always undervaluing Wiggins. He felt ashamed about that, about a lot of things. Perhaps he was sharing in the general shame.

  “Thank you, Sergeant Wiggins,” said Chris.

  “My pleasure, ma’am.”

  They moved into the room she called the old parlor, the “shoe room.” Glinting like jewelry, the shoes in their miraculous flashes of turquoise, rose, amber, red, made him see why women were seduced by them. One couldn’t have found a more alluring arrangement of jewels in all of Hatton Garden.

  And Chris Cummins couldn’t walk in any of them.

  They sat around the table in the comfortable floral armchairs. Chris poured the tea, Wiggins helped. David waded right in: “Police found the receipt for your book, the one I bought in Waterstone’s. It was found at the scene where Kate Banks was murdered.”

  About to pick up her teacup, she frowned, looking from her husband to Jury to Wiggins. “What are you talking about? The receipt—”

  Jury knew she would use the same argument her husband had, and she did.

  “—must be someone else’s.”

  And Jury made the same objection to this theory.

  She stared at him. “This is ridiculous. It was in the book and I put it in the box where I keep receipts. That inlaid box, David. Go look.”

  David got up and went to the heavy piece of furniture, pulled out a wooden box, inlaid, fancy for a receipt receptacle. He was riffling through the bits of paper. “It’s not here.”

  “Here, give me it.” Impatiently, she had her hand out for the box.

  Jury said, “He’s right. It’s not there.”

  “How do you know that?” At Jury, she leveled a disdainful expression. It wasn’t very convincing. “Look. Look. If you’re . . . Look. David scarcely knew her, and nor did I. I’d—we’d forgotten all about her. The name really didn’t register.”

  Wiggins spoke: “It registered a bit more than that, didn’t it?” Chris looked again at Wiggins, Jury, and came to rest on her husband. “David? What’s going on?”

  The alarm, thought Jury, was pretty convincing.

  “Kate and I met again. We met a number of times.” David had turned to gaze out the window.

  From Chris came the standard proofs of surprise, thought Jury. He said, “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I didn’t.” Her voice caught on the tightness in her throat, the unshed tears.

  “That’s why you wanted her dead. It had already happened once before, when the three of you were young. In Brighton. To have it happen again would be unbearable.”

  “Are you trying to say I killed her? I got myself to London, to that street she died on, and then back? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a wheelchair.” She slapped the arm of it, almost as if to show it was solid and she was in it.

  “I’m not saying you murdered her. You had her murdered.”

  Chris’s face was set in a convincing semblance of shock. “What? I paid someone—?”

  “No. You’re too smart not to realize that if you hire a shooter, blackmail might soon follow; you’d be forever in the grip of a hired killer.”

  “Well, then, I obviously didn’t do it myself, and I didn’t pay anyone to do it. How did I manage it? A curse?” She laughed.

  It was the most unpleasant laugh Jury had ever heard. “You did the only thing that would secure the killer’s silence: you traded murders.”

  David, if it was possible, went even paler, more drawn. His skin looked stretched. “What?”

  Jury did not look at him; he kept his eyes on Chris, who lost, with this last statement, her careless laughter. “Your victim pretty much came to you; I mean, you didn’t have to go all the way to London. She was your half of the bargain: Mariah Cox. Stacy Storm.”

  Her mouth worked, but she said nothing for a moment. Then, “What earthly reason . . . ? I had no reason to murder Mariah Cox. The librarian?”

  “I know you didn’t have a reason. That’s the point. There would be no motive. But the irony is, you thought you’d be killing a complete stranger. You didn’t know Stacy Storm would wind up being someone from Chesham whom you knew. You didn’t recognize her at first. But she recognized you. But at that point, facing her there in the Black Cat’s patio, you couldn’t think quick enough to rationalize the meeting. You didn’t have much choice, so you shot her anyway.

  “Neither did Rose Moss have a motive for killing Kate Banks. But you did. Just as Rose Moss did have a motive for murdering Mariah Cox. For what I imagine was a very brief time, they were lovers, until Mariah called it off. Yes, it was all about to change, and not in Rose’s favor. And that, she couldn’t stand.”

  The silence in the room was so dense, it was like a heavy material, weighted as the velvet curtains in Simon Santos’s living room. He stopped. No one spoke. Chris’s look of deep concentration told him her mind was working furiously to counter what he’d said.

  So he said more. “That Waterstone’s receipt. You managed to get it to Rose Moss. What you were thinking was that David was the only person who could possibly have dropped it. You worked out the same thing I did: that probably no more copies of that book would be sold at that time on that day. But what you seemed to forget was that you were the only other person who possessed that receipt. You overcorrected,
Chris. You tried to frame David, forgetting that you could also be pointing to yourself—”

  “Chris.” David still stood, his head against the cold glass of the windowpane. He was not really speaking to her; the name came out as a breath, a sigh.

  Jury went on. “But that was an easy mistake to make, since who would suspect you of murdering Kate Banks?”

  Chris said, “This is all highly imaginative, but I don’t see any evidence at all.” As if to mock him, she made an elaborate survey of the room. She smiled.

  Jury ignored the comment. “The Manolo Blahnik heel print was especially inventive.”

  Her smile widened. She seemed to be enjoying herself now. “Then whose, if not his?”

  “Well, it wasn’t a heel print, was it.” Jury walked over to the corner of the wall of shoes. “It was this.” He pulled out one of the crutches. “You could hardly ride your wheelchair to the spot where you killed Mariah Cox. So you had to use crutches—”

  “What do you mean? I can’t manage on crutches!”

  “Of course you can. Given your well-muscled arms, I’d say you’d gotten in a lot of practice. At first I assumed that came from getting the wheelchair about; stupid of me, as it’s electric, isn’t it? It was the one detail you didn’t think through. Strange the way the mind works: in solving one problem, we create another. You solved the problem of going to Lycrome Road in a wheelchair. If you used crutches, under that long black coat”—here Jury turned to the coatrack—“probably no one driving in a car would notice. And of course you had the advantage of the roadworks, didn’t you? Hardly anyone in the pub and no cars in the car park. But the crutches created a problem. You did a pretty good job of staying on the hard surface—the car park, the patio—but there was that one deep little print left in the earth.” Jury paused. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Chris. If anyone did think that print wasn’t the heel of a shoe, you’d be sunk, wouldn’t you? You think fast. Manolo Blahnik!

  “That was the very thing that put me onto Rose Moss as the other party in this whole thing. It’s funny, or vain, but I thought Rose Moss rather fancied me. Wrong. She went out with me to find out how much I knew. She wasn’t turned on to me at all. Rose isn’t interested in men; she’s a lesbian. She thought Mariah was, too. And she isn’t like you, Chris. She hasn’t your nerve; she hasn’t your acting ability; she’ll cave in an eyeblink; she’ll give you up in a second if it means saving herself.