The Old Success

by Martha Grimes

  Josephine interrupted. “Don’t be silly, Matthew. You look ten years younger than you are.”

  “But that depends on what I am.” He smiled at Jury. “I’d never seen either of them before, so I can’t help you out much. He was tallish, dark, not very handsome. Good clothes, though. He kept his coat on …” Matthew looked puzzled, as if he were trying to work this out. “I got the impression he was not there to meet this woman, but had happened on her by chance, if you know what I mean.”

  Jury nodded, as Josephine interrupted: “How did you ever come by that notion? Just seeing them for a moment or two?”

  Matthew Bewley didn’t bother answering, but asked his own question of Jury: “What’s your interest in her, Superintendent? Has it got to do with this dead woman on the beach?”

  “Very possibly.” Jury paused. “I was wondering about Daisy Cooke’s death. There seems to be some question as to whether it was suicide or accidental.”

  After a few moments of contemplation, Matthew said, “I know one shouldn’t speak of a suicidal ‘type,’ as there is no type.”

  “You’re suggesting Daisy Cooke would not be the type, if there were one.”

  “Absolutely. Daisy, although in what I thought to be a despairing situation, would never have acceded to it. She’d switch her beleaguered hand to something else.”

  “Beleaguered hand? Mr. Bewley, you’ve lost me.”

  “Like a poker player: ‘I’ll play you another hand, but only with a fresh deck.’”

  “The fresh deck being—?”

  “Another way of looking at the situation.”

  Jury smiled. “I like your cryptic language, but I’m having trouble with this metaphor.”

  Matthew tch-tch’d. “And you a CID superintendent. What I mean is that Daisy Cooke wasn’t the type either to give in or to get out without a fight. And by ‘fight’ I mean some tough thinking. Daisy thought things through. Ouch! Th, th, th. Three th sounds in a row. I’d make a lousy poet.”

  Jury smiled. “Or a really good one. So what was her despairing situation, the one she wouldn’t give in to?”

  “Dan Cooke, is what I’d say,” offered Josephine, who, having put by her ledger, was now typing up something on the ancient machine and not stopping in order to comment.

  The interruption didn’t throw off her brother, who was probably used to her answering his questions for him. “Her marriage. Not that there was anything wrong with Dan as such, but he hated living on Bryher, and Daisy loved it. Temperamentally, they were worlds apart. She liked solitude, silence, nature—and, of course, her mother was here.”

  “Real sick was Mrs. Brownell. Cancer, I think,” said Josephine. “Poor woman.”

  “So Daisy wouldn’t leave her mother, that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “But couldn’t she have left after her mother died?”

  “Daisy felt tied to the place after that. She wouldn’t have left Bryher.”

  “If her husband hated living here, why didn’t they just separate?”

  Matthew shrugged. “I imagine they would’ve eventually. For all of that, it would never, never have driven Daisy Cooke to kill herself.”

  “But perhaps there was something else, something people didn’t know about that had trapped her.”

  Matthew smiled and nodded toward the wall of art: “See that picture of Hever Castle? That’s the water maze. Daisy loved to look at that. I said, ‘You’d get damned wet, wouldn’t you, working your way out? If you could get out.’

  “‘There’s always a way out,’ she said. That was Daisy. She’d’ve found a way.”

  “Did you know the Summerstons, Mr. Bewley? They spent a number of holidays here, I understand.”

  “Saw them. I didn’t know them, no. But you might want to have a word with Jack Couch. I’m pretty sure he knew Mr. Summerston. Sir Gerald, was he?”

  “Yes. Where would I find Mr. Couch?”

  “Right along there.” Matthew Bewley was at the door now, pointing off to his right. “Just past the Bryher shop. Before the quay. Anyone can tell you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jury tapped at the glass door, which was open a couple of inches. “Mr. Couch?” he called out.

  A thin, wiry man came through from another room, opened the door and said, “That’s me. What can I do for you?”

  Jury had his ID out and brought it up to eye level. “Sorry to bother you, but—”

  “Scotland Yard? Who was this woman, anyway, that had them sending in the big guns?”

  Jury eyed the shotgun mounted on the wall. “That a Winchester, Mr. Couch?”

  He smiled. “It is indeed, only this didn’t shoot her.”

  Jury returned the smile. “And that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Good. Come on back with me, will you, I want to finish cleaning a rifle back here.”

  He led Jury through a small dining room into a smaller room that was lined with cabinets and had in its center a table with a gun clamp that held a rifle. Jury looked around at the cabinets. “Guns?”

  “I collect them. Believe me, they’re all registered. And I keep it locked up in here tight as a drum. Kids love the place, so I have to be doubly careful.”

  “You have children here?”

  “Not to worry, they never get their hands on any of them. And to make up for it, I give gun talks. I tell them, if they want to visit the house, they have to come to the talks.”

  Jury smiled. “Lectures?”

  “You bet: the danger of guns. They have to memorize a few rules, too.”

  “You must be popular with the kids around here. Do you know Zoe and Zillah Noyes?”

  “Zoe? My Lord, yes. She’s one of the best listeners. Always in the audience. Also, she’s got a gun I wouldn’t mind owning. Oh, don’t look like that. Zoe hasn’t got it in her sock drawer. Her aunt keeps it locked up. It’s an old SIG Sauer P226. Wouldn’t shoot outside of the box, anyway. Doubt it’s been cleaned in years.” Jack pushed a white plastic tube into the barrel of his rifle. “So what do you want to know, Superintendent?”

  “Are you familiar with the Summerstons, who sometimes visited Bryher, specifically Gerald Summerston? Matthew Bewley said he thought you knew him.”

  Jack looked up, drawing the long rod out of the bore guide. “Not very well, but we did talk some, yeah. Korean War. He got a Queen’s award for bravery, he told me.”

  “Conspicuous Gallantry award. Korea. You’re interested in the Korean War?”

  “Interested in all of them. But especially that one.”

  “You’re familiar with the Battle of the Imjin River?”

  “Who isn’t?” Jack Couch laughed. “It was huge. I wasn’t in it, I mean, I wasn’t in Korea. I was in the Falklands. Had a lot of friends in the service. My dad was at Imjin. I more or less grew up in the service. My dad—now there was a hero! Dad got the Military Cross. A real bona fide hero.” He looked away from the rifle, out through the window. “He told me not to brag about it. Poor form.” Jack smiled.

  “As opposed, perhaps, to Gerald Summerston?”

  Jack turned back to the gun barrel. He drew the cleaning rod back and forth. “You could say that. Thing is, my dad never talked about the medal. Never. Neither did the men who’d been with him. But Summerston brought up that battle a lot in conversation. Pretended sometimes to play it down.”

  “Did you have any thoughts about his part in it? The award?”

  Jack shrugged. “I questioned what the man said, that’s all. Probably because of my own father being the sort of man he was.”

  Jury got up. “Well, I won’t bother you further, Mr. Couch.”

  “Jack, please. And it’s no bother. You haven’t said if police have solved this one, though.”

  Jury shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Leaving Hell Bay to its frenzied waters, Jury sat in the bar of the Old Success talking on his mobile to Brian Macalvie.

  “Did you work Daisy Cooke’s death?” asked Jury.

>   “Me? No. Brownell did most of the work.”

  “But he was the Met. And she was his daughter. He wouldn’t have been the principal here.”

  “No. The case actually belonged to a Superintendent—Smithson, as I recall.”

  “Everyone saw it as a suicide?”

  “Everybody except Brownell himself, even though the medical examiner found enough prescription drugs in her system to kill her.”

  “What about you? You agreed with that verdict?”

  “No. Daisy Brownell was the most together person I ever met in my life, I mean like a rock. I can understand why Tom couldn’t believe suicide. And frankly, I couldn’t imagine Daisy being blindsided—which is kind of what suicide is, don’t you think?” said Macalvie.

  “Not really. It’s too complex to be a sudden, event-altering thing. And in her case, what was the blind side?”

  “No one knew for sure, but the guess was it was Dan Cooke, her husband.”

  “But she solved that problem, in the sense she took action. Apparently, she told him to leave. Another woman might have just wrung her hands and hung on. But Daisy took action. She just doesn’t sound the sort to see herself as a victim, or see a situation as hopeless.” Jury took a drink of his Adnams, and repeated what Matthew Bewley had told him about Daisy’s verdict on Hever Castle’s maze: “‘There’s always a way out.’ That doesn’t sound like a woman who’d kill herself.”

  On his way to the airport, Jury got a call from DCI Brierly.

  “We may have turned up a motive in the Servino case.”

  “What?”

  “That the car crash that left her partly paralyzed wasn’t really an accident.”

  “If that were true—that she hated him enough to shoot him—would she have waited five years?”

  “No, unless she found out something new about it. Tony Servino loved cars. He was always taking the Alfa Romeo out over different kinds of roads at different speeds. And he liked tinkering with them.”

  “And this particular tinker was what?”

  “Removing one of the supports from under the bonnet. Which would make the car even more vulnerable in any kind of collision.”

  “But for the driver too, surely. You’re saying Servino would risk his own life to kill her?”

  “He risked getting hurt, yes. But he knew all the roads and every obstacle along them. The guy could have practiced for a long time. He knew how hard to hit that barrier. If it didn’t work, he could always try again. And don’t forget, no one would think it was attempted murder, not certainly by the driver of the car.”

  “So how did this come to light recently?”

  “The mechanic at an auto repair shop that specializes in foreign cars. Italian, mostly: Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Ferrari. You know.”

  “No, I don’t. So what did he—who was this, anyway?”

  “Name’s Crenshaw. He owns the place—Crenshaw’s Foreign Cars—just off the North Circular Road. It’s where Tony Servino bought the car. Crenshaw sells used cars—but only the ones in top condition—”

  “Of course. Go on.”

  “He didn’t think anything of it at the time—this was years ago, they bought the car—but then when he happened to read about the accident—it got some play in the London papers—he started to wonder a little. There’s record that he called police about it a month or so after the accident.”

  “About what?”

  “All of the interest in this car and what would happen in a collision. Maybe you should talk to him. He was kind of vague, trying to remember the details.”

  “You got a number for this Crenshaw?”

  “Sure. Alex Crenshaw.” Brierly gave Jury the number and repeated the location.

  “Thanks, Ian. Hold it. Hasn’t Flora Flood been charged yet?”

  “No. She’s got one hell of a legal team. Treadwell—”

  “That’s Melrose Plant’s firm, I think. Best in London.”

  “She’ll need the best,” said Brierly, ringing off.

  When he was some ten miles from Long Piddleton, Jury called Ardry End and asked Ruthven if Melrose was there, or—

  “At the Jack and Hammer, Superintendent, although he should be back shortly.”

  Knowing “shortly” could mean a lot of things, Jury thanked Ruthven and told him he’d be at Ardry End “shortly” but that he thought he’d check the Jack and Hammer first.

  14

  Which Jury was now entering—or trying to, as the door was blocked by Dick Scroggs, whose broad back Jury was trying to maneuver around, and Mrs. Withersby, standing in front of Dick, holding something.

  “Shoot, Withers!”

  The voice was Trueblood’s and the “something” looked like a kid’s water gun. Jury got a small spray on his neck. “What the hell’s going on?” He edged past the two and saw Trueblood some ten feet away, also holding some gun-like thing that delivered its peanut-bullet to Scroggs’s shoulder—or slightly past it—and then another to the molding of the door.

  Behind Trueblood was a large cardboard cutout, roughly drawn as a double door. Joanna Lewes was holding it steady.

  “Richard!” called Vivian Rivington, who, along with Diane Demorney, served as audience.

  “What’s going on?” Jury asked again.

  Trueblood answered: “A reenactment of the crime scene. Clever, isn’t it?”

  “No,” said Jury, taking the chair beside Vivian. “What’s that alleged gun you’re using?”

  “It fires peanuts. Picked it up at Windsor from a lad who was on a tour who held me up for ten quid.”

  “I’m done. Where’s my gin?” Mrs. Withersby moved toward the public bar where Dick Scroggs was shoving a glass under one of the optics.

  “You wasn’t supposed to wet me, Withersby.”

  “Where’s Plant? Ruthven told me he was here. I’m amazed he isn’t part of this tableau.”

  “Just left ten minutes before you came,” said Trueblood.

  “I think Marshall’s been rather clever,” said Diane, who then called to Dick for another drink. “Really, drinks all around,” she added.

  “I hate to say it,” said Marshall Trueblood, who didn’t hate to say it at all, “but that ‘intruder’ business is a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?”

  “Cliché?” said Joanna Lewes, who had stopped being the French door to come and sit down.

  “There’s always an intruder. You should know that; you’ve written enough books.”

  Joanna said, “It isn’t a story, Marshall; someone was shot to death. That really happened.”

  “But the rest of it could be exactly that: a story, like the intruder bit,” said Trueblood, wiping a spot from his gun.

  “You think she was lying?” said Vivian. “And she killed him?”

  “That’s the alternative to the intruder story, isn’t it?”

  Vivian said, “We don’t have enough facts to draw a conclusion. What would her motive have been, for instance?”

  “He was her husband,” said Diane Demorney.

  “Her husband? That’s a motive in and of itself?”

  “Considering the ones I’ve had, I’d say so.”

  Trueblood said, “Look, Dick Scroggs is two heads at least taller than Withersby. Tony Servino was tall. Flora Flood is rather short. Now, if you’re trying to shoot Servino and she’s standing in front of him, why not go for a head shot? Much easier target for this alleged intruder. He aimed for the torso, the chest, supposedly. Aiming at the chest, he would have had to go through Miss Flood.” He looked around the table. “If you take my meaning, for God’s sakes.”

  Jury said, “I take it. Flora Flood was the target, not her husband.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Well, I am with the Met. And where’d you get the details of this crime?”

  “From Melrose, who got them from you and DCI Brierly.”

  “Brierly wouldn’t be giving out—”

  The crime scene charade was followed by Jury’s mobile vibrating
in his pocket. It was Macalvie.

  “You’re in Northants already? Come to Exeter.”

  “Macalvie, I just left.”

  “So? Come back. There’s a cathedral here.”

  “Northampton has one too.”

  “Not with a murder in it.”

  Jury was silent.

  “You still there?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on. You must be curious. Young woman found shot in Exeter Cathedral.”

  “In the cathedral? Where?”

  “In the nave. If you can beat that—”

  “I can’t. But why call me?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “What will I see?”

  “It’s the third one.”

  Jury frowned. “You’re not making sense. third one what?”

  “Don’t be dense. Murder. Shooting.”

  Jury thought for a moment. “If you’re referring to Bryher and Manon Vinet, I believe I count one shooting.”

  Trueblood seemed to have heard enough to raise his perfect eyebrows.

  As if defending himself against the eyebrows rather than Macalvie’s theory, Jury said, “That’s ridiculously tenuous, Macalvie—”

  “God, but I hate that word.”

  “There’s nothing to connect the three, Macalvie, certainly not geography: Bryher, Northampton, Exeter. And if you check around, I bet you find a few more shootings in the same time frame.”

  “I did. Six. Five men and an old gran shot in a break-in.”

  “And?”

  “Just grab Tom Brownell and get over here.”

  “Why in hell would he want to go to all the way to Exeter?”

  “Because he’s Tom Brownell.” Macalvie rang off.

  Jury stared at the dead mobile and looked up.

  Only to be targeted by four pairs of eyes around the window-seat table. Staring.

  “What?” he said.

  15

  “You just missed him,” said Melrose in answer to Jury’s question about the whereabouts of Tom Brownell. “He left for the farm not ten minutes ago.”

  “Hell,” said Jury. “Did he go with Sydney?”

  “No. She’s still here.”

  “Why weren’t you in your usual chair at the Jack and Hammer?”