The Man with a Load of Mischief

by Martha Grimes

  “You mean because they direct our attention to the method, and away from something else — such as the motive? Window-dressing, that sort of thing?”

  “Or could one murder have been done to draw your attention from the other?” suggested Melrose. “Ainsley might have been killed to divert attention from Small, or vice versa.”

  “Something done so the police end up not being able to see the forest for the trees?” Jury accepted another cup of coffee from the silver pot, thinking that Plant was an exceptionally clever man. He only hoped he wasn’t the murderer.

  “Funny,” said Melrose. “Small and Ainsley appeared to be total strangers. No one knew them, and they didn’t know one another — or so it would seem. Dear me. Well, Inspector, you’re faced with everyone there having an opportunity, but no one seeming to have a motive. It would be so much easier if the victim had been one of us.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because there are so many motives. Had it been Willie Bicester-Strachan, for example, there’s Lorraine to pin it on. Had it been me killed, good heavens, the possibilities are endless — beginning with my aunt. Had it been Sheila Hogg as victim, there’s Oliver Darrington —”

  “Darrington wanting to murder Miss Hogg? Why?”

  “Because then he’d be free to marry Vivian Rivington. The money, you see. And Sheila no doubt has her blackmail all ready in case Oliver strays too far from her side. Had it been Aunt Agatha murdered, the entire village would be under suspicion.”

  “And had it been Vivian Rivington?”

  Melrose gave him a long look. “What about Vivian?”

  “Isn’t it rather significant that Miss Rivington will inherit a good deal of money in six months’ time? Who will lose and gain thereby?”

  “Look, I’m playing games. What has Viv’s fortune to do with Ainsley and Small?”

  “Nothing I know of. Only it wouldn’t be the first time several people were killed in order to mask the real motive.”

  “I don’t understand, Inspector.”

  Jury dropped it. “Mrs. Bicester-Strachan tells me she shared your table for part of the evening. The night Small was murdered.”

  “Not ‘shared’ exactly. I managed to hold on to my half through strategy that would have been the envy of Rommel.” Melrose, helped himself to a piece of toast from the silver rack, bit into it, and said, “Why do the English have a reputation for enjoying cold toast?” He put the remainder on his plate.

  “Mrs. Bicester-Strachan seemed to have ambivalent feelings toward you.”

  “What a very polite way of putting it.” Then Melrose sighed, and added, “No, Inspector. There has never been anything on between Lorraine and me.”

  “Nor Miss Rivington and you?”

  “You’re beginning to sound like my aunt. I don’t see what connection there is between my private life and the business at hand.”

  “Oh, come on, now, Mr. Plant. If we ignored private lives we’d never be catching criminals, would we?”

  Plant held up his hand. “All right, all right. Look, Inspector, contrary to my aunt’s belief that half the women in the county want to marry me and thereby deprive her of her ‘rightful inheritance,’ let me assure you that very few women have ever had designs on me. I have had my perfectly ordinary attachments with ordinarily beautiful women. I have been engaged, broken off by the lady in question because she thought me a snob and lazy, both of which I probably am. My aunt is terrified that some woman is going to ‘land’ me (to use her quaint Americanism). No one, however, is really interested.”

  Jury seriously doubted that, but changed the subject again. “According to Mr. Scroggs, several of you came to the Jack and Hammer the next evening, Friday, when Ainsley was murdered.”

  “Yes. I was there about eight or eight-thirty. Most of the rest of them were there, too. Vivian was sitting with me; Matchett came in for a bar meal. Even he couldn’t stomach his own place, I suppose. Anyway, there’s Scroggs’s back door. Anyone in Long Piddleton could have come and gone that way —”

  “You know about that, then?”

  “Of course; everyone does. So it doesn’t pin things down much for you to know who was inside.”

  “What about this rumor of an engagement between Mr. Matchett and Vivian Rivington?”

  “I can’t say. But I hope it’s not true.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t like Matchett. She’s too good for him. You said something about masking the ‘real’ motive. You don’t think there’ll be more murders?”

  “I wouldn’t want to make such a prediction. You yourself suggested there were several motives for murder in Long Piddleton.”

  “Ah, but I wasn’t really serious.” Melrose swung around toward the dining room door, on the other side of which was a great clattering and raising of voices.

  Ruthven entered. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s Lady Ardry. Insists —”

  “My aunt? Twice in one day — ?”

  But before he could finish, or Ruthven get out of her way, Agatha pushed through the door, shoving Ruthven with it, and sailed in, cape flying. “Well! I see you two are sitting here calmly eating kidney and bacon with the whole village in an uproar!”

  “The village has been in an uproar for days, Agatha. Whatever brings you back?”

  Lady Ardry planted her cane squarely in front of her and could not have kept the triumph from her voice had she wanted to. “What brings me back? To see if I can drag Chief Inspector Jury from his lunch. There’s been another!”

  “Another?”

  “Murder. At the Swan.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “The moment I heard I came straight away!” said Lady Ardry from the back seat of Plant’s Bentley. It had taken Melrose five minutes to warm up the cold engine, and the three of them were now speeding along the main road, which connected Sidbury on the one end with Dorking Dean on the other.

  Jury was trying to keep his temper under control. “Why didn’t Wiggins simply call me? It would have saved the half hour it must have taken you on your bike.”

  She was humming and staring out as the fields of melting snow flew by. “I expect he didn’t know where you were.”

  Jury turned in his seat and, with iron self-control, said, “You did, Lady Ardry.”

  She smoothed her ample skirts. “I’d no idea you were still at Plant’s, lingering over your coffee.”

  • • •

  The Swan was a country inn less than a mile from Ardry End and several miles from Dorking Dean. When they got there, three police cars were drawn up in the small parking lot that fronted the inn. A number of thrill seekers were also parked higgledy-piggledy along the road. As soon as Plant’s Bentley pulled up, spitting slush, Wiggins ran over.

  “I’m most dreadfully sorry, sir. I called all round, I did—”

  Jury assured him it was not his fault. “I was at Ardry End —”

  “Having breakfast,” put in Agatha, heaving herself from the car.

  Pratt came up. “The crew’s been over the place, so you can move about freely. I’ve got to get to Northampton. The Chief Constable is . . . well, you can imagine. Wiggins here can fill you in.” Pratt sketched a salute as he got into the car which had pulled up.

  Melrose Plant had melted into the small crowd, dragging an irate Lady Ardry with him. The investigation, she seemed to think, had been hampered by her absence, and could now proceed.

  “Pluck,” Jury called, “get those people back. The police surgeon will have to get his car in here.” There were quite a few children there, too, waiting for blood and gore. He recognized the Doubles among them and waved. They waved back, hectically.

  “Where’s the body, Wiggins? And who found it?”

  “In the garden, sir. It was Mrs. Willypoole, the owner, found him.”

  Several reporters pushed their way in. “Is it a psychopath, Inspector?”

  “I don’t know. That is apparently what you think, from what I read in the papers.”
r />   “But it’s a pattern. Another murder done at an inn, Inspector.”

  “Yes, well, let me know what the pattern means when you find out.” Jury shoved past them.

  Before he went in the door, Jury paused to look up at the inn sign, creaking slightly on its ironwork rod. The sign was faded, but it was still clearly a painting of a double-necked swan, each head gaggling off in a different direction. The swan was floating serenely down what was once a green river, and seemed altogether unaware of its strange deformity. Across the top of the sign in graceful cursive lettering was the legend Swan with Two Necks.

  “How on earth do they ever think of them?” Jury said to Wiggins.

  “Ah wha, sah?” asked Wiggins, his voice lost in the folds of his handkerchief.

  “The names, Wiggins, the names.”

  • • •

  Jury shoved open the inner frosted-glass door to the saloon bar. A woman (whom he presumed to be Mrs. Willypoole) was downing a shot glass of gin at the bar. When she saw Jury, she smiled tightly and brandished the gin bottle like a victory sign.

  “This is Mrs. Willypoole,” said Wiggins. “She’s the one who found him.”

  “Inspector Jury, madam, New Scotland Yard.” He showed her his ID, on which she had trouble focusing. A ginger cat, curled up on the bar, opened one untroubled eye. Apparently satisfied with Jury’s credentials, it yawned and went back to sleep.

  “A drink, then, love?” Jury shook his head. “Well, you’ll have to excuse me, love. It’s not often I get a shock like this. Let me tell you, when I went out there —” and her head fell in her hands.

  “Of course. I understand, Mrs. Willypoole. I’d like a look first at the garden, and then to ask you a few questions.” She didn’t seem to hear him, and he decided that unless he wanted an unconscious witness, he’d better not come on quite so pompously with her. He leaned on the bar and tried to match her tone. “Can’t say I blame you. But listen, love, go easy on that,” and he flicked his nail against the bottle. “I’m going to need your help.” He winked.

  She looked up at him and set down the glass. “Hetta’s the name.” Although in the very stronghold of middle age, there still clung to Hetta remnants of an old glamour. Plump now, and hennaed, it was clear it wasn’t always so. Even now there were ripples of posture and rustles of unseen silk, which suggested better days. She corked up the bottle and said, “Garden’s just through that door.”

  • • •

  And it was very cold.

  “Why’d he come out here in the cold to have his pint?” asked Wiggins as they stood looking down at the body sprawled across the white metal table. Beside the body was a half-drunk pint of lager.

  “Because he was supposed to meet someone, I imagine.”

  “Oh. Who, sir?”

  Jury just looked at Wiggins, who seemed to be expecting an answer. “I wish I knew, Sergeant. Look at this.” Jury pointed to a book lying beneath the hand of the murdered man. Since Pratt said the lab crew had been over the place, he didn’t have to worry about prints, and he gently pulled the book away. “Well, well. Bent on Murder. By our own Mr. Darrington.”

  Wiggins said, “That’s something, that is. A red herring, do you think, sir?”

  Sometimes Wiggins amazed Jury. He could ask perfectly inane questions, as he had done a minute ago, and at other times he could do a fair job of deduction. Perhaps it had something to do with his nose being stuffed or unstuffed. “I wouldn’t be surprised, Sergeant. Now, fill me in.”

  Wiggins took out his cellophane-wrapped box of drops, and Jury waited patiently while he undid them and popped one in his mouth. “Name’s Jubal Creed, sir. From his driver’s license we got that he lives in a town in East Anglia called Wigglesworth. That’s in Cambridgeshire. The Weatherington men are trying to get hold of his family. We found his car parked out in the lot. They’ve driven that along to Weatherington, too. He stopped here last night, had his evening meal and then breakfast this morning, and Mrs. Willypoole said he came out here around ten-thirty, or a bit later.”

  Jury nodded and went down on one knee to examine Creed further. A red indentation around his neck, the slightly blued complexion, and the eyes told the story. Wiggins had closed them, but they bulged beneath the lids. The mark around the neck had probably been made with a wire, as in the case of Small. It had cut into the skin. There could not have been much of a struggle.

  “Neat, clean, and quiet. Just get behind your victim for a few seconds and —” Jury rose.

  “I called Superintendent Racer, sir. Hope that was right.”

  “Thank you. I’m sure he was thrilled.”

  Wiggins allowed himself a smile. “He wondered why it wasn’t you making the call. I told him you were busy, sir.”

  “If Lady Ardry had not been so eager to tell me about this herself, you would have got hold of me earlier. Perhaps we should reinstitute the policy of killing the messenger who brings the bad news.”

  “She was on the road, bicycling, and some passing motorist told her about the murder. That’s what she said, anyway.”

  Jury snorted. “We can break that alibi, Wiggins.”

  Wiggins actually laughed so that he had to get out his inhaler. He was a martyr to asthma.

  “Find out when and why Creed left Cambridgeshire —”

  Jury looked closer at Creed, whose face was turned a fraction upward from his arm, on which the head was lying. “Wiggins, what the devil’s this?” Jury pointed to what appeared to be a cut on the nose. It had recently bled. Jury reached down and pulled the man’s face around. Not one cut, two. As if a hand holding a razor had whipped twice across the bridge of the nose. Most of the blood had drained down the other side. The cuts were not deep, but still they sent a chill up Jury’s spine. The practical joker, again? But what was the joke?

  Before Wiggins could comment on the cuts, the door to the garden was opened by a brisk little man who introduced himself as Dr. Appleby, and apologized for not getting there sooner. He had had, he said, rather waspishly, the living to see to, also. After examining the victim quickly and efficiently, he said, “Well, there it is again. Strangulation by someone standing behind him. It’s the larynx got most of the pressure. The skin’s cut up a bit. Probably some sort of wire — like the others. Quick, neat, and, I might add” — and Appleby observed Jury over rimless spectacles, brows raised — “the third one around here.”

  “Is that a fact, then?” said Jury. “Why doesn’t London tell me these things?”

  Appleby grunted. “After the postmortem I may be able to say more, but not much. Not if it’s like the other two. Can place the time of death right now at, say, between nine and whenever the body was discovered — noon, was it?”

  “We can narrow it more than that. He was still alive at ten-thirty.” Jury offered Appleby a cigarette, which the doctor accepted. “I assume there’s no reason to believe this couldn’t have been done by a woman as well as a man.”

  “None. They’ve all been very small men — lightweights. And anyway, haven’t we got over the idea that women are weaklings? It’s certainly not a woman’s method, though: poisons, pistols, that sort of thing — they’re more what women choose.”

  “How chauvinistic of you, Dr. Appleby.” said Jury, with a smile. “What do you make of the cuts across the bridge of the nose?”

  “That is odd.” Appleby raised the face to take another look, then let it loll back again on the arm. “I honestly can’t say. Certainly recent. The murderer?”

  “Not while shaving, that’s for sure.”

  “Well, I’ll be off, then.” Appleby looked down at the corpse and said, “Rubber sheet and stretcher’ll be coming for that in a bit. See you, Inspector.” And he was gone.

  Jury turned up his coat collar and shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked at the scene of the crime. It was a walled-in garden, a courtyard perhaps about fifty feet square, partly cobbled where the tables were set up, with the rest laid to lawn. To the left was an old stable blo
ck, part of which had been modernized and converted to the inn’s toilets. The wall on the other three sides was very high. “Any outlets in that wall, Wiggins?”

  “No, sir.”

  Jury turned and looked at the rear of The Swan. Inside the wall were two truncated wings that enclosed part of the cobbled terrace, that part where the tables were spotted here and there, and where Creed had been sitting. At ground level were two windows, one in each end of these wings, but even if someone had been looking out, he could not have seen the murdered man, since the table was in the nook made by the wings. There were no windows in the midsection, and over the terraced section was one of those cheap plexiglass roofs that kept off the elements. Handy for the murderer, who would leave no tracks in snow. Also, the roof effectively cut off the vision of anyone looking out the rear windows above, on the first or second levels. In such a public place it was an oddly secluded spot. The rear door was the only danger point, since someone might have opened it.

  “Have the men been over the outside of the wall, Wiggins?”

  “Yes, sir. Pratt had his men go over the ground. No tracks, though. Anyway, no one could have climbed that wall in a hurry. It’s too high.”

  “Hmm,” said Jury. “Well, let’s talk with Mrs. Willypoole. Were there any other guests?”

  “Not overnight, sir. But there were two from Long Piddleton stopped in around eleven when the bar opened. Miss Rivington and Mr. Matchett.”

  Jury raised his eyebrows. “Did they now? And which Rivington?”

  “Vivian Rivington.”

  “Why?”

  “She says they had lunch.”

  “Have you talked with them?”

  “No sir. They were gone when we got here.”

  “Did you get hold of them?”

  “I sent Pluck to have them stand by for questioning. He says they’re in Long Piddleton, sir.”

  Jury was silent for a moment, still studying the garden.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, sir?”

  Jury was a bit surprised to hear that Wiggins had been thinking at all. He usually left that to Jury. “What’s that, Sergeant?”