Jerusalem Inn

by Martha Grimes

  “Lord. Does this kind of thing always happen when you walk in?”

  “I didn’t shoot her.”

  There was the briefest of pauses while Cullen seemed to be debating this possibility, and then he said, “Aye. I’ll call Durham and have them send their crew; they’ll get there faster than I can. Is the bloody road to that godforsaken place plowed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hell.” Cullen hung up.

  • • •

  When Jury told Melrose Plant that they’d have to wait for Cullen, Plant said, “Why? We’ve got a perfectly good policeman right here.”

  “Nobody asked for my help. We’ll wait for Cullen. In the meantime — which one’s Parmenger?”

  • • •

  In the course of the introductions, Susan Assington managed to place herself dead center in Jury’s line of vision and instead of merely putting out her hand, put it out with a snifter of brandy. The little-girl timbre of her voice dropped a throaty notch or two as she said, “You need this. It’s so beastly, what’s happened.” Her delicious little shiver rippled the satin dressing gown and sent its delicate sleeve a bit farther off her shoulder. Susan had taken over the spot near the fire which Vivian had lately vacated.

  But Jury only smiled vaguely, overlooking gown and gleaming hair, to where Vivian was standing. She was looking down at her own tatty robe sadly, like a child who’d got mud all over itself.

  “Miss Rivington, how are you? It’s been a long time.”

  Melrose sighed. Miss Rivington, for God’s sakes. And, he suspected, it would be Superintendent . . .

  “Superintendent Jury,” she said, her voice small and tight, as she tried to shove her hair around into some place other than where it was. “It’s been years. Well, a year. Though you can hardly count that . . . I mean, it was only for a moment. . . . ”

  Melrose slugged back some brandy. They would go on this way in their dotage, he supposed. They were an equation he had never been able to figure. What clichés could they come up with now? Oh, yes.

  “ . . . it is still Miss . . . ?”

  Agatha answered for Vivian. “Yes, it is. It certainly is. She’s not married that odious Italian yet.”

  Melrose removed Jury from Agatha’s grasp and took him to where Frederick Parmenger was leaning gloomily against the bookshelves, communing with his usual whiskey and soda.

  “Could I have a word with you, Mr. Parmenger?” asked Jury.

  “Me? Why? Am I wearing more of a murderous look than usual? Granted, I couldn’t stand the woman, but —”

  “It’s not about Miss Sleight.”

  Even Parmenger couldn’t hide his surprise at this: “What else, in heavens name, could there be?”

  • • •

  When they were alone in Seaingham’s study, Jury found himself loath to tell Frederick Parmenger about Helen. It was partly because he did not want to face the facts yet again. It was a small room, a sanctuary cozier than Grace’s chapel. The wood was dark and burnished; the bookshelves held rare bindings protected behind glass; the desk was covered with news-clippings, magazines, a ship’s decanter full of whiskey, a pharmacy lamp; the surround of the small fireplace was inlaid with beautiful tiles; the couch was tan leather, the easy chair dark-brown velvet with a well-worn nap. There were no ornaments but for some hand-carved ducks and pheasant. There was no artful arrangement of anything, just everything falling into perfect place — furnishings, books, paintings — as things probably fell into place in Charles Seaingham’s mind.

  The paintings were a small fortune in themselves. One Manet, one Picasso print, one Munch. And one Parmenger. That sat on the easel nearly in the middle of the room. Apparently Parmenger had been working on it in this room, which told Jury a lot about Seaingham’s relations with his wife.

  “It’s about Helen Minton,” said Jury, finally.

  “Helen? What about her?”

  Whether the catch in his voice was real or feigned, Jury wasn’t sure. Still, he disliked breaking the news and stalled with, “Haven’t you read the papers?”

  “What papers? We’ve been snowed in here. What about Helen?”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you, Mr. Parmenger. There was an accident. Helen’s dead.” Parmenger sank farther into his chair. He made Jury think of someone trapped inside a bell, descending deeper into the sea. For a moment, Jury thought he literally did need oxygen, that he was going to pass out.

  But he didn’t. He rose and refilled his glass from the decanter on the desk, downing that drink and pouring another. The knuckles that gripped the glass were white.

  “Impossible. How could she be dead?”

  Jury took the question to be rhetorical. “When did you last see her?”

  “Two months ago.” Parmenger looked at Jury out of drowned eyes. “How can she be dead?”

  “She was your cousin?”

  As if the wider communion with his work would release him from the narrower vision of death and police, Parmenger had risen from his chair and was standing before his painting of Grace Seaingham. “Yes,” was all he said.

  Jury waited for more.

  Finally, Parmenger turned and said, “What the devil is all this? How is it some Scotland Yard policeman would be coming here telling me about Helen?”

  “I knew her, very briefly. Quite by accident. She was — a charming woman.” He watched Parmenger’s face as if he expected it to splinter, sending out finer and yet finer cracks like a shattered windscreen.

  He seemed to rock back on his heels, but beyond that, there was no more display of feeling. “Charming. Absolutely.” He glared at Jury like a Roman who wanted to kill the messenger who’d brought the bad news. Indeed, an old coin might have borne the stamp of his handsome, chiseled face.

  There was a silence as they studied one another. Finally, Jury said, “You haven’t asked me how she died.”

  “Her heart?”

  “No. She was poisoned.”

  Frederick Parmenger’s response to this was to wheel about and once again take up his study of his own painting. After a few moments he said, “I don’t believe it.”

  Jury looked at his watch. Twenty minutes since he’d called Cullen. It would take Cullen another twenty to get here, probably. He had plenty of time to wait out Parmenger, so he waited.

  • • •

  The portrait of Grace Seaingham showed her in a long-sleeved, ivory gown — quite plain — taking all of its richness from the material itself. Parmenger had done a wonderful job of rendering the texture of watered silk, as he had of winter light pouring through the window and striping the Chinese rug beneath her feet. The light made her look ghostly. Jury half-expected to see the dim outlines of the glass-fronted bookcases through her figure.

  Parmenger stood, smoking a cigar, gazing at the portrait as if that was the only business they had between them. Finally he said, “My last duchess. Robert Browning? Well, it will damned well be my last portrait, I hope.”

  “You see yourself as the Duke of Ferrara, then?” Jury smiled.

  Parmenger seemed surprised a policeman would know Browning. “No. More as Duke Ferdinand, I think. Duchess of Malfi. The one who went mad with lycanthropy. Thought he was turning into a wolf. Strange play.” The look Parmenger had given Jury was almost as dangerous as a maddened animal, but it was a challenge withdrawn as he turned back to the portrait and frowned, seeing, perhaps, some imperfection.

  “You don’t appear unduly upset about Beatrice Sleight, Mr. Parmenger.”

  “I’m not. Indeed, I was incredibly relieved that it wasn’t, after all, Grace. Grace is a truly good woman, tiresomely pious, but nobody’s perfect.” He tossed off a good half of his drink. “Beatrice Sleight was, on the other hand, a bitch. To be closeted with that woman for an hour would be enough to make you want to tear her to pieces — like a wolf, perhaps. To be snowed in with her for three days — my God, I’m surprised she lived as long as she did.”

  “Who had a real motive, do you think?
”

  “Everyone.” He drank off the rest of the whiskey, poured himself another.

  “One person in particular.”

  “Well, not I. Where was I at the time, et cetera? Is that next?” He relaxed in his chair, tilting his head as if to get a better line on his portrait, and answered his own question. “I was in my room,” he said, still looking at the painting through narrowed eyes, critically. “There’s something wrong with the damned thing.” He was clearly more concerned with paint than dead bodies, unless it was an act. “In my room, like everyone else; we went up early. Couldn’t stick one another for one more evening round the fire.”

  “You didn’t hear anything? No shot, nothing?” asked Jury. Parmenger shook his head, got up, still with his whiskey in his hand, plucked a brush from a glass jar, mixed a little ocher with a bit of flake white, and drew a line so faint that Jury couldn’t even see it. Parmenger dropped the brush back into the jar and returned to his chair.

  “Nothing. The bedrooms are on the other side of the house altogether from the Lady Chapel. Hell of a wind, too. Don’t think you’d have heard a cannon.”

  “You hadn’t gone to bed yet, though,” said Jury, looking at Parmenger’s suit.

  “No. I had to stay dressed in order to go outside and shoot Bea Sleight.” He looked at Jury with the same impatience he had looked at his portrait.

  “Can you think of anyone here who might have wished Helen Minton dead?”

  “Here?” His laugh was a snort. “Good God, no. No one here knew her.”

  “Anywhere, then?”

  Slowly, Parmenger shook his head. “Helen was too decent; she couldn’t have had any enemies.”

  “Except for one,” said Jury, getting up when he heard the sound of a car in the snow-muffled distance.

  EIGHTEEN

  1

  DETECTIVE Sergeant Roy Cullen was Sunderland born and bred. As a consequence, although he did not welcome violence, he was not theoretically opposed to it. He preferred, however, to work this out of his system by dealing with disturbances at Newcastle football matches rather than by involving himself in alleged murders involving members of the upper classes. It was Cullen’s opinion that most of the people collected here in Spinney Abbey might be considered as unemployed (or unemployable, according to the South of England) as the rest of the Newcastle-Sunderland area, and had got their money (and plenty of it) in ways that Cullen likened to finding stuff that dropped off the backs of vans. Making money by writing books was something Cullen couldn’t quite square with his own thankless job and the salary it brought him.

  There was the goddamned snow that he’d just waded through; put that together with the body of the woman lying in it he’d just had a look at and the football match that would probably be called this Saturday because of weather, and the murder up at Old Hall, and Sergeant Cullen might be excused for being in less than a good mood. He was seldom in a good mood, but he hadn’t been put in a better one, what with that butler, whose nose hung on an invisible wire in air, taking hats and coats as if he meant to delice them.

  As for the houseguests collected here in the drawing room: he felt all the friendliness for them he usually reserved for the Newcastle front line. Charles Seaingham made more writing for the papers in a year, he supposed, than Cullen would see in a lifetime; even the nightclothes of the women looked rich; the doctor — Harley Street probably — wore a silk dressing gown; the younger one, middle-aged and sharp-looking, was probably landed gentry with a string of racehorses; the intellectual (he identified anyone with hornrims that way) probably wrote smash-hit sexy plays or wasted his time in some equally well-paying pursuit. There was a kid, too. He looked okay, but definitely not the football type and probably spoiled rotten. And the coup de grace was Scotland Yard. It was not that Cullen was protecting his manor; it was just annoying as hell that Scotland Yard had got here first, almost as if people like the ones he was playing his eyes over now thought they had to have the top of the line: Fortnum’s for their groceries; Scotland Yard for their murders.

  Thus went Roy Cullen’s reflections as his eyes canceled out each of them in turn. He offered them his version of a smile, which didn’t make anyone happier, including Cullen, and said, “This is Constable Trimm.”

  Cullen liked Trimm. He liked him for his small stature, for his innocent and fresh-faced look — deceptive, of course; Cullen liked to carry Trimm around like a baby in a basket to make the unsuspecting subject of interrogation think nothing really horrid would happen, not with Trimm there. Trimm was worse than Cullen when it came to dealing with the Lumpenproletariat (the “lumps,” as they called the backstreet Sunderland scum and the Newcastle supporters — not much difference there) in ways that were not always totally ethical but which got hellish quick results. More subtle methods would have to be used with this abbey lot, the niceties of police ritual somewhat more strenuously observed.

  “Sorry we’ve got to keep you up.” Cullen’s tone was as scorched as burnt toast. He couldn’t help it; they looked so damned . . . privileged. “Durham police are going over the grounds. Who found her?”

  “I — or, rather we — did.”

  The racehorse owner. And the kid. The kid would be easy enough, but he wasn’t sure about the other one. “Your name, sir?” asked Cullen, elaborately polite.

  “Melrose Plant.”

  “Earl of Caverness,” snapped out the old one in the mob-cap.

  An earl. Cullen was probably right about the horses.

  “Melrose Plant.” Correction.

  Cullen folded a stick of gum into his mouth and asked with a pleasantness he damned well didn’t feel, “Which is it? You don’t seem to agree.”

  “Take my word for it, will you?” said the horse owner.

  Cullen shrugged. If titles were so thick on the ground they could pick them up and put them down at will, why the hell should he care? “You and the lad found her, that right?”

  “That’s right,” said Tommy Whittaker, spelling his last name for the benefit of Trimm.

  And here, the other old lady — more stately-looking than the first — put in, “He’s the Marquess of Meares.”

  My God, thought Cullen. Still wet behind the ears and a marquess, yet.

  • • •

  “Skis?” Cullen leaned across the papers brought into Charles Seaingham’s study by the Scene of Crimes man and stared at Melrose. He shook his head, smiled his unenergetic smile. “Are you telling me, Mr. Plant, that you and this —” He looked at Trimm, who supplied the name. “ — young Whittaker were out there skiing to a pub?”

  Plant offered his cigar case around, got two turndowns, lit up himself. “That’s what I’m telling you. We were coming back from the local — Jerusalem Inn, it’s called —”

  “Aye. Outskirts of Spinneyton. But could we please get straight just why you felt compelled to go there in the first place?”

  “It was the snooker match, you see — so we made for Jerusalem Inn. It was on our way back we stumbled over her.” Cullen stared at him, eyes narrowed. “Well, she wasn’t there before, Sergeant.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “We took the same route. Tommy had it down —” Melrose stopped. No sense in telling them more than he had to.

  But neither of these policemen were fools. Constable Trimm looked up, his cherubic face bright in the lamplight and asked, “ ‘Had it doon’? What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing, really. He’d marked the route carefully so we wouldn’t get lost on the way back.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “Nineish. After dinner.”

  “And what time back?” asked Cullen.

  “When the pub closed. Time was called at eleven, and we might have hung on for another ten minutes. Twenty minutes to get back, that made it —”

  “Eleven-thirty,” said Trimm, as if Plant couldn’t add.

  “That’s it, yes.”

  “Then what happened?” asked Cullen.

&nbs
p; “The tips of the Whittaker lad’s skis caught on the body and he went over. I helped to pull him off.”

  Cullen shook his head, almost sadly, as if they had been listening to an amateur practitioner of the lying arts fail miserably once more. “Could we back up? You say you and Whittaker just suddenly decided to put on skis” (another headshake) “and go cross-country to the Jerusalem. Why did you get this sudden impulse on this night?”

  “It seemed a good idea. Something of an adventure, you know.”

  “An adventure.” Cullen looked up from the papers on the desk and said, “It puts you and the Whittaker boy right in the thick of it, doesn’t it? More opportunity than anyone else had. The rest of them weren’t out skiing.” He aimed a quick little dart of a smile at Melrose.

  “I couldn’t say, Sergeant. Not having had a report from the doctor on the time of death. And what was Beatrice Sleight doing out on the chapel walk at that time —?”

  “I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind.”

  Just what the inspector in The Third Pigeon would say. Melrose sighed.

  “She was shot in the back with a .041, smallbore shotgun. The gun wasn’t found in the snow. And where would you suppose it was?”

  The question was no doubt rhetorical. “In the gun room.”

  “Which you had to pass on the way out and on the way in.”

  “You don’t think we skied to the Jerusalem carrying a shotgun, do you?”

  “Well, I don’t know, do I?” Cullen folded another stick of gum into his mouth, smiling thinly. He looked back at the papers on the desk. “You’re the Earl of Caverness?”

  “No more. Plant’s the family name.”

  “Why don’t you use your title?”

  “Because I don’t want to.”

  Plant was obviously not conforming to the rules these non-lovers of the aristocracy had laid down for aristocratic behavior. Either that or they might have thought they had stumbled on some dark secret in Plant’s past which would illuminate the present proceedings. “Sorry you don’t approve.”