Jury looked at her. She was certainly nobody’s fool. “I only meant that everyone has a pressure point. Push it hard enough, who knows what might happen?”
She simply didn’t comment.
“What were MacQuade’s relations with Beatrice Sleight?”
“Relations? He didn’t have any. I mean, I don’t believe he’d ever met her before this week. Bill’s very —” she seemed to be having difficulty finding words to describe him “ — withdrawn.”
“Um. And the Assingtons? Did they know her at all?”
“Very slightly. I think at one of her book signings they might have met her. But then anyone who keeps up with the literary scene — if you could call Bea ‘literary’ —” she added wryly, and let it go. “Sir George is rather a well-known doctor, and Susan is his third wife.”
“The others — except for Mr. Plant and his party — I take it are good friends?”
“Yes. Vivian Rivington’s poetry impressed Charles. He was at a small party her publisher gave. He was delighted to have her bring the others. Charles thinks the more people, the better. Lady Ardry, I understand, is an old friend of Betsy — Lady St. Leger.”
Jury smiled. He seriously doubted it. “Go on.”
“We’ve known Betsy for years. She’s taken over Meares Hall.”
“Taken over?”
“I mean that after Tommy’s parents — Irene and Richard — died, Betsy was really the only one who seemed to care enough to keep him. Believe me, she doesn’t need either the money or the privilege. The St. Legers have a pedigree as long as your arm. Betsy was sister to Tommy’s grandfather. He was the eleventh Marquess of Meares.”
“An old family.”
She nodded. “And Betsy simply dotes on Tommy. She has no children of her own. Her husband Rudy died a few years ago. He was a painter, too. Though Freddie wouldn’t agree.” She smiled.
“How long’s Parmenger been here?”
“Several weeks. Doing my portrait.” She colored a little, as if Jury might think this a self-indulgence. “Charles insisted.”
“I’ve seen it. It’s wonderful.”
“Freddie’s got quite a reputation.”
“Do you know any of his family?”
Puzzled, she shook her head. “He never speaks of them.”
“Not of his cousin? Her name was Helen Minton.”
It was clear Grace Seaingham thought it decidedly odd Jury would know Parmenger’s cousin. “No, never. And you said ‘was.’ Is she dead, then?”
Jury found he had been drawing Father Rourke’s square on the pad. He threw it down. “Yes. Northumbria police found her in Washington Old Hall just two days ago. She’d been poisoned.”
Grace Seaingham’s skin was as white as her gown. She rose slowly from her chair, seemingly more disturbed by this death of a stranger than by the implied threat to her own life. “But that’s dreadful. Poor Freddie . . . does he know?”
“Yes. I told him. Since you’ve been snowed in here, you hadn’t got the newspapers. Until the autopsy was done, it was just put down to accidental death.” Jury paused. “Has Mr. Parmenger not been away from Spinney Abbey, then, in all the time he’s been here?”
Even the small frown did not seem to disturb the placidity of that expression. “Yes, of course he has. We all have. Into Durham, to Newcastle. Why?”
“I just wondered if he’d been to Washington. Seeing that it’s so close. And of such historical interest.”
“You mean — to see his cousin. I would certainly think he’d have mentioned it, if he had. As you say, it’s so close. I’d have been delighted to have had her here.”
But perhaps Frederick Parmenger wouldn’t have, thought Jury.
2
“IT’S taken you long enough, Inspector, to get around to us,” said Lady Ardry, nodding her head in the direction of Lady St. Leger and Vivian, who pulled her robe more tightly about her and looked everywhere but at Jury. “I’d be glad to give you my impressions —”
“Thank you, Lady Ardry. I’m sure you’ve kept your eyes and ears open. But at the moment, I’d like to talk with Lady St. Leger.”
Agatha had started to rise and sat down, plump, again, obviously unhappy at playing second fiddle to her friend.
Elizabeth St. Leger apparently felt more like getting the business over with than in the protocol of police interrogation. “If you have some questions to put to me, Superintendent, I’d be happy to answer them. Though I’m afraid I haven’t much to tell you.” As she started to rise, Agatha laid a plump hand on her arm. “No reason Mr. Jury can’t take us both together. After all, we’ve known one another for years. He’s well aware I’ve no part in the beastly business.”
Lady St. Leger smiled and rose. “That might be true for you, Agatha. Unfortunately, I can’t offer a long-standing acquaintance with Scotland Yard as a defense.” Her eyes actually twinkled.
• • •
“I’m sorry if I seem to be making light of this — business,” said Lady St. Leger, once settled across from Jury in Seaingham’s study. “To be honest, I’m more concerned, I think, about Tom’s — my nephew’s — involvement than about Beatrice Sleight’s death. I’m not sorry she’s dead, and, as they say up here, that’s the top and bottom of it.” Elizabeth St. Leger smiled slightly and tapped her stick on the floor. It was silver-knobbed and resembled Melrose Plant’s, though Jury doubted it was a sword-stick.
“You didn’t much like Miss Sleight.”
Elizabeth St. Leger seemed to want to choose her words carefully. “I couldn’t stand her.” A brief smile accompanied this. “So if you’re looking for a motive” — she tapped the stick — “look no further.”
Jury smiled too. “If ‘dislike’ were enough of a motive, we’d be picking up dead bodies on every corner. No, you’ll have to do better than that.”
He was amused at Lady St. Leger’s slight frown, as if she were, indeed, trying to do better by way of convincing Jury. And then it occurred to him that that might indeed be the case. How far would she go to protect her nephew, who had been found on the spot? He broke into his own reflections. “If you’re worried about your nephew, it doesn’t appear he could have had much opportunity. For one thing, he was with Mr. Plant. And I know Mr. Plant. Have done for years.”
She looked him up and down as if reevaluating his credentials for the job, given his admitted friendship with this rather trying guest who seemed to be causing nothing but trouble, what with turning up dead bodies and, as if it might be the source of the trouble, giving up his title: “Mr. Plant is a pleasant, but distinctly iconoclastic, young man.”
“Oh, he’s that, I suppose. But he’s also an alibi for Tom. So don’t be too tough on him.”
She smiled. “Yes, he is that. Well, as for me: I went up with the others not long after dinner.”
Jury had his notebook out. “What time would you say?”
“Um. Ten, ten-thirty. Ten-thirty, yes. I remember hearing the clock chime the half-hour. We none of us wanted to linger too long, and I myself am really supposed to be in bed earlier.” She tapped her breast. “Touch of angina. The doctors want me to have my rest. Or I might not be lingering too long myself,” she added, with a somewhat macabre touch. “My bedroom’s at the other end of the house. All the bedrooms are.”
“You didn’t hear anyone moving about? I mean, doors opening, closing, that sort of thing.”
“Yes, of course. We don’t all of us have private baths. The abbey isn’t completely modernized. So I did hear footsteps, yes. But paid no attention. As a matter of fact, I myself came downstairs to get a book. Shouldn’t have done. My doctors don’t like me using the stairs too much. I came in here.”
The library was across the large entrance room, next to the dining room.
“What time was that?”
“A bit after I went up.” She seemed to be counting on her fingertips. “Fifteen minutes later, perhaps.”
“See anyone? Any servants, even?”
“Narry a soul, Superintendent.” She spread her arms. “So there you are — no alibi. Tom —” She stopped, her look worried.
“But he has one.”
“I would like to know what on earth he was doing out on skis — with your friend, Mr. Plant.” Again, that seeming reassessment of Jury.
Jury smiled. “Winter sports. I couldn’t say. How long have you known the Seainghams?”
“Ages. Since before the marquess — Tom’s father and mother died. The Seainghams were friends of theirs; they — I mean Charles and Richard — did a lot of shooting together.”
“And you, did you join them?”
“How very astute. If you want to know whether I can shoot, yes, I can.”
Jury noticed she seemed trying to grip her walking stick in such a way as to hide the arthritic twist of one or two of the fingers.
Not the crack shot she once was, perhaps. But Jury was impressed, not only by lady St. Leger’s self-possession and — élan was perhaps the word — but by her determination that, if the Marquess of Meares’s alibi fell through, she was going to be there to catch it.
Her gray eyes glittered back at him; they reminded him a little of Helen Minton. Jury wondered if he would ever inspire the sort of love in a woman that Tommy Whittaker obviously did in Lady St. Leger.
“I wonder if you’d ask Miss Rivington to step in on your way to bed?”
3
BUT for the fact that she was sporting a flannel dressing gown several sizes too big for her, and that her hair was uncombed, Vivian Rivington looked exactly as she had the first time he had met her, years ago and in similar circumstances. And seeing her now in her unflattering getup, their last meeting (more of a collison than an accident, with Vivian on the arm of her Italian fiancé) might never have happened. Then she had walked in looking like something turned out by de la Renta. Right now, in her drab bathrobe, she looked more like something turned out of the house.
A log in the fireplace split and spilled sparks. For some unaccountable reason, he was taken back years and years to his childhood and his favorite book, where Mole and Badger sat together in a hollowed-out tree. What an unattractive image for the two of them, he thought, smiling — add Melrose Plant as Ratty, and he’d have the three of them. He stabbed an arrow through a heart on his pad and then stopped smiling. Instead, he felt an unbearable longing for something he had never had — unsure, even, what it was.
She looked so damned human standing there in that bathrobe and those old carpet slippers he wanted to reach out and hug her. And, he suspected, rather more.
“Hullo, Vivian.”
“Hello. It’s Agatha’s, in case you’re wondering.”
Confused, but laughably confused, he smiled and said, “What?” It was wonderful, in a way. It was as if they’d met, not once in the last several years, but every day on the corner, with only the immediate to talk about, having told one another everything else.
“This bathrobe,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You’re staring at it. I forgot mine so I borrowed one of Agatha’s. She always brings enough in her cases for three.” She smiled briefly, warmly, and then apparently thinking smiles not suited to the occasion, frowned.
“It suits you. Sit down.”
Again, he wanted to laugh, she looked so cross. She sat perched on the edge of the chair Grace Seaingham had recently left. This the two women seemed to have in common, some desire to punish themselves for as yet uncommitted sins. There were many more chairs in the room and more comfortable ones. But Vivian had never been one to make a pleasure-trip out of anything, not even Italy (he bet), and certainly not murder.
As he pulled his notebook toward him he saw her surreptitiously try to comb her hair with her hands. When he looked up, she stopped. Her principal vanity was worry over whether she might appear vain. “I don’t know why you want to talk to me about all this. It’s awful, of course. But you know perfectly well I didn’t have anything to do with it.” Although she extended her own arm along the beautifully carved arm of the chair in what was meant to be a graceful gesture, the grace was lost in the shortness of the sleeve. Agatha’s arms were quite stubby.
“You sound doubtful.” Jury drew another fat heart and was now stabbing it with another arrow.
“Oh, don’t be silly. We only just got here yesterday — I mean, now it would be day-before — we none of us knew anyone here until then. Except I knew Charles Seaingham.” He leveled a look at her and she added quickly, “But only a little. I only saw him the one time.”
“Um. Okay. What I want is your impression of these people. Such as: who do you think did it?”
She scratched her head, which didn’t help her hair, and said, “I’m absolutely — I can’t get over it. She was sitting across from me at dinner. Now she’s dead.”
The sad and lingering look of the old Vivian seemed to etch itself on his face, as if she were drawing her own likeness there. Jury looked back at the fresh page of his notebook. “It’s rotten, I know. I’m sorry.” He put the notebook down. “Maybe it’s just as well your not knowing them. At least you can be objective.”
Relaxing a little — but not overly — she sat back in the chair and crossed her ankles. Her carpet slippers were also several sizes too large. “She wasn’t very nice. Well, why not say it? She was pretty awful.”
“Beatrice Sleight?”
“Of course. She was the one that got murdered.”
“I know. But she was wearing Grace Seaingham’s cape.”
Vivian lurched forward in her chair. “You’re not saying someone wanted to kill Grace Seaingham?”
“It would appear so. Beatrice Sleight was shot in the back wearing that ermine cape and on the walk leading to the chapel.”
“My God,” said Vivian, weakly. “But Grace is so . . . good. Almost saintly.”
“Maybe. You didn’t hear anything, then? No pistol shot? No commotion, no scream, no anything?”
Vivian shook her head. “The bedrooms are way away from that end of the house. I can’t imagine Beatrice outside the house in the snow. Definitely a comfort-loving type.”
“You all went to bed at about the same time?”
“Yes.” She was silent for a while, twisting the tasseled belt of the robe. Then she shrugged. “It’s too much to take in, really. I didn’t get any vibrations at all about Grace Seaingham. I mean, that anyone disliked her. I’d have thought the opposite to be true. She really is the perfect hostess. When Beatrice Sleight was going on and on about titles, and especially Melrose’s — these are his slippers,” she added inconsequentially, “ — it was Grace who simply put a stop to it. I’m stumped. But, of course, it’s Melrose you should be talking to. He notices things. Well, you know that. He’s helped out before.”
“To say the least. Thanks, Vivian. You should get some sleep.”
But she sat there, clearing her throat. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”
“What?” He stabbed a new heart with a new arrow.
The single, unconcerned syllable irritated her to death. “Why I’m not married.” She blinked and returned her attention to the tasseled cord.
Innocently, Jury asked, “Is it germane to the murder?” Though why he had this urge to pay her back for untold injuries which she had, actually, never done him, he didn’t know. Sadist, he thought. But he still wanted to laugh when she rose and tried to make a queenly exit in her outsized robe and slippers. “Seemed like a nice bloke to me. Of course I only met him the one time.”
He was delivering the last of this little speech to the door which had nearly, if not quite, slammed.
3
THE others were off to bed, Cullen having finished his questioning and the team from Durham having taken the body away. “I’m knackered, man.” He yawned and sank into a chair in Seaingham’s study. “Trashed. So what’ve we got, Trimm?” He looked halfway over his shoulder at his constable.
Trimm was examining the shotgun taken from the little room next to the solarium that was the ab
bey’s storage space for sporting equipment.
“This.” He broke the single-barreled shotgun, peered inside as if the barrel might offer up some new clue, snapped it shut again, and laid it on the desk.
“Run it through ballistics.”
“Got to be it,” said Trimm. “No other .410 in there. Only a couple of ten bores and some rifles —”
“Nothing’s got to be anything, Trimm. Run it through ballistics.”
“They’ve nowt —”
“Hell,” said Cullen, staring at the ceiling. “Run it —”
Jury broke into the family squabble. “What did the scene of crimes man figure was the range?”
“From the way the pellets scattered, over two feet at least.” Cullen picked up the report. “Maybe four, five feet. Wound was pretty big. There was some tattooing. Of course, the cape was thick.” Cullen shrugged.
“Straight shot?”
“As a dye.”
“The killer could have stood inside the door of the solarium. But no one heard the shot. Even with the rooms being way on the other side, still —”
“Silencer,” said Trimm, not offering more than he had to.
“What? Why the hell would there be a silencer for a rifle lying about?”
“This Seaingham said he was having trouble with poachers. Said his gamekeeper found it” — Cullen indicated the short cylinder lying on the table — “where the bloke must have dropped it.” Cullen sighed and chewed his gum. “None of ’em really got alibis. Motives are fuzzy. . . . ” Cullen closed his eyes sleepily.
“Anyway, we can discount Plant, Lady Ardry and Vivian Rivington —”
Cullen’s eyes opened. “Oh, aye? And why’s that, man?”
“Because I know them, have done for years.” He didn’t add that Plant had helped him out with several cases. Jury didn’t imagine amateur sleuths went down a treat with Cullen.
“So maybe they’ve changed.” He closed his eyes again.
Jerusalem Inn Page 18
