* * *
That was before Marguerite Banado was pouring out “everything” into the ear of DS Wiggins. But not the “everything” Claire Howard was spilling to Superintendent Jury.
Jury took a moment from the spillage to leave the interview room and go into the one next door, where he heard, “… never been to Reno. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Wiggins broke in to tell the machine that Superintendent Richard Jury had just entered the room. Hearing the disavowal of Reno, Jury said, as he sat, “Don’t go down that road, Ms. Banado; it’s a dead end. And the police hate having their time wasted.”
Her laugh was cold-blooded. “For one thing, my name is Benn, Maggie Benn. Two, forgive me for wasting Scotland Yard’s time. And, three, you clearly have me confused with someone else. Light?”
She wobbled a Silk Cut in her fingers. No one lit it.
Wiggins started to rise, presumably to get matches, but Jury pulled him down. “Sorry, but there’s not much smoking here these days; Sergeant Wiggins hasn’t time to search for a match. Perhaps you could enlighten us as to your friendship with Claire Howard.”
Maggie Benn raised an eyebrow. “Claire?”
Jury crossed his arms on the table and leaned toward her. “Let me explain something: We have a lorry-load of evidence, Ms. Banado—or Benn, if you think that helps—to tie you to attempts on the life of David Moffit; witnesses to your having been in Reno working at the Metropole Hotel under the name of Marguerite Banado—even your boss will testify that you’re both Banado and Benn; strong motive for shooting David Moffit in Reno—”
“He wasn’t—” That had taken her so much by surprise that she momentarily forgot why she was sitting in this room with two detectives.
“Wasn’t there? It was Danny Morrissey who was shot? No. That was David Moffit, as you well know, because you were obsessed with him. That’s your motive for making two attempts on his life. If you couldn’t have him, nobody would.”
“This is absurd! You know who the shooter was.”
“I told you: do not go down that road. I’ll bury you.” Jury rose. “Wiggins.” Jury nodded his head for Wiggins to continue, before he treated Maggie Benn to a cold, hard stare and left the room.
In a way, Jury preferred the icy temper of Maggie Benn to the weepy one of Claire Howard, who claimed she’d been overwhelmed by Marguerite Banado—her intensity, her beauty, her complete command of Claire’s “situation.” It was Marguerite who’d come up with the plan and Claire was (weepily) ashamed of not having blown it to bits.
Claire’s solicitor was largely silent, following a few mumbled attempts to get her to desist from answering questions. There was simply no shutting her up. Why had she bothered calling him in if she wasn’t going to listen to him?
“Ashamed? I should think you would be. Your daughter and her husband. Those were the victims.”
It was Wiggins’s turn to interrupt this time and Jury announced his entrance to the recorder.
“Mrs. Howard,” said Wiggins, as he pulled the passport from his pocket, “we found this in your home in High Wycombe. You have a visa stamped for Kenya.”
“I was passing through, that’s all.”
“To go to where?”
“Johannesburg.”
Wiggins snorted quietly. “Sorry, no one ‘passes through’ Kenya to go to Johannesburg. Johannesburg has the largest airport in Africa and scores of direct flights from London.” He pushed the passport closer to her across the table.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” said Jury as Wiggins left.
An hour later, they were accusing each other so vigorously that Jury knew the accusations would meld together somewhere down the road.
* * *
It was after six P.M. when Jury was leaving the building. He fished out his mobile and punched in Melrose Plant’s number at Ardry End.
When Melrose came on the line, Jury said, “Could you possibly delay dinner for an hour or two so that I could join you? That’s about how long the drive will take to Northants.”
“Good God! That would mean extending the drinks hour until eight. Well, I’ll brace myself.”
“Eight thirty. I’m going to need a drink, too. Drinks, I should say.”
Ardry End, Northamptonshire
Nov. 11, Monday night
50
At 8:00, Jury pulled up in front of Ardry End and was met by Melrose Plant, who’d heard the car approach and had come to the top of his steps.
“Still standing, I see,” said Jury.
“Leaning. So tell me what happened. Which one grassed on the other first and most fulsomely?”
As they walked into Plant’s marble foyer, Jury said, “Well, Claire Howard had the more convincing ‘I ain’t done nuffin” story, given that Maggie Benn was also Marguerite Banado and is Benjamin Buhari’s daughter. The Banerjees—the ones you saw in Riverside—had been keeping her since Marguerite’s own mother did a flit and Buhari couldn’t manage by himself.”
“I’ve never understood that,” said Melrose as they took their seats in the beautiful living room. “Society readily accepts that a father can’t be expected to raise a child alone, without help; yet a mother is completely different. For a mother to claim she couldn’t do it, well, that’s unacceptable.”
Ruthven came in with a tray of canapés and a bottle of Laphroaig, and poured generous measures into two cut-glass tumblers.
“Would you be able to care for a kid if your wife walked out?” said Jury.
“My wife wouldn’t walk out.”
“You’re sure?”
“Are you kidding? Walk out on this?” Melrose swept his arm round the room. He sighed. “I’d never be sure a woman actually loved me unless she was rich.”
Jury picked up a tiny shrimp on a square of buttered bread. “Oh, you poor fool.”
Melrose gave him a narrow-eyed look and smiled. “That was brilliant, Richard, that little scheme in Victoria Station. Vivian thought so too, although what your point was, we couldn’t work out.”
Jury muttered more to himself than to the room’s occupant, “Thick as two planks. God give me strength.”
“Anyway, we really enjoyed it. On the way back here, we stopped in a scrofulous pub and drank and laughed ourselves sick.”
“I’m glad you had a good time.”
“We did.” Melrose slid down in his chair. “You know, it was almost romantic.”
“Did you think so?”
“Yes. That young kid who played the violin? ‘Fascination’? The Orient Express? Remember? We saw Vivian off to Venice in that same spot. Franco Giopinno, God, what a fool and a cad. It doesn’t surprise me Vivian didn’t marry him, but it does surprise me she went with him for all of those years.”
Irritated, not for the first time, by his friend’s obtuseness when it came to Vivian, Jury said, “Do you think you’ll ever settle down?”
“What? I am settled down. Look at me.” Melrose spread his arms wide. “The fire, the whisky, the—”
Ruthven stood in the doorway, looking artfully deferential. “I’m sorry to bother you, m’lord, but Martha would like to know if you’d prefer the steak and kidney or the pheasant pie?”
“Either, Ruthven. Whichever is easier for Martha.”
“Sir.” Ruthven turned and withdrew.
“The choice of pies, the butler … How much more settled could I get?” Melrose ran the glass of Laphroaig under his nose as if he hadn’t been drinking it all along.
Jury shook his head and stared at the ceiling. “Settling down ordinarily means marriage.”
“It does? Why?”
Jury ignored that inane response as Ruthven came in again, this time with the telephone on a long cord. “I’m sorry, Superintendent, but it’s a call from Scotland Yard. I believe the caller is a Sergeant Wiggins?”
“Thank you, Ruthven.”
Ruthven whipped the cord round behind him like a lion-tamer and delivered the phone to the table by Jury’s chair
.
Jury loved the drama of the house phone being brought to him. He said, “Wiggins, what are you still doing at the Yard at this hour? You must be dead, man … He did? … Good, good … Right, now go home.” Jury hung up and said to Melrose, “The Nairobi police took in Benjamin Buhari. What he told them was nothing.” Jury took a long drink of whisky. “I still don’t see how a man could do that—shooting without checking the ammunition first.”
“You don’t have children,” said Melrose. “There still remains the question of the murder site. Why choose the courtyard of the Artemis Club, a public place?”
“But it really isn’t ‘public’ in the sense of people continually coming and going. Remember, the customers are not only screened, but given a time to show up. So Buhari would have had an undisturbed few minutes, except one of the club’s punters, that woman, put in her appearance earlier than she should.”
“Okay, but Maggie Benn was putting the club itself in jeopardy, especially Leo Zane. Why?”
“She wanted Leo Zane to be a suspect and there was already a connection between him and her father. So he certainly became a suspect—the suspect, as far as I was concerned.”
“She wanted that?”
“I think she either hated him or was afraid of him.”
“Why?”
“I’d say he came across some information or evidence that Maggie Benn was the woman in his office with David Moffit.”
“Where does all of this put Leo Zane?”
“At best I’d say he’s innocent. He had nothing to do with the Moffits. So he was being set up.”
“He’s in a hell of a position,” said Melrose. “I bet these two women will be implicating him all over the place. And what about Claire Howard? You said you thought she knew him because—”
“She called him ‘Leo’? That’s pretty easy. Maggie Benn talked about him a lot, I expect. Always referred to him as ‘Leo,’ and Claire simply picked up on that.”
“Well, I hope he’s got a good lawyer.”
“He will. Pete Apted.”
“Do you think he’d take the case?”
“He loves weird stuff. The more complex a case, the more he likes it.”
“So where would all those millions go now?”
“Certainly not to Claire Howard, not if she’s found guilty. David’s money would go back to his mom. Paula Moffit.”
“But Maggie Benn would be a suspect too, given the Metropole in Reno—”
“Indeed. And there she is, right now, in police custody. Many thanks to you. You should work for Scotland Yard. Wiggins and I would love having you on our team. You could be DC Melrose Plant.”
“‘DC’? Detective constable? Then Sergeant Wiggins would be over me.”
“Sure. But you’d work your way up in no time.”
“Snails?” said Jury.
“Escargots, please,” said Melrose.
Ruthven had announced dinner twenty minutes before.
“Snails. I’m ringing Karl Mundt.”
“Who’s he?”
“RSPCA.”
“Really. Do they do snails?”
“They do anything that walks, crawls, or flies.”
“No, they don’t.” Melrose was excavating in a little shell pulled from an ambrosial broth.
Jury looked sadly at his plate. “Sorry, I just can’t eat this.”
“After Martha went to all the trouble, especially for you. Here, we’ll swap our plates.” Melrose picked up Jury’s and put his own down in place of it. “That way she’ll think you ate half, at least. I didn’t know you were a snail-hater.”
“A snail-lover, you mean.”
“You are less fun every day.”
“Thank you. As to the ‘fun’ quotient, have you forgotten your aborted trip on the Orient Express? I’d say whoever thought that up has a sense of fun.”
“Why did you do it, anyway? You lied to both of us.”
“True. So you aren’t reassessing my fun potential?”
“No.”
Ruthven had stepped in to replace the escargots with a smoked salmon mousse and to refill their glasses with a Pouilly-Fumé.
Jury took a bite of the salmon. “Umm. I’m eating every bit of mine and half of yours.”
“No, you’re not.”
“But you got my helping of snails, so in all fairness—”
“Hold on: did we strike a bargain? Shake hands? Swear brotherhood forever? Sign anything?”
Having finished his mousse during this mild harangue, Jury now looked toward the kitchen, where he was sure more mousse sat.
Melrose held up his hand. “Don’t even think it; no second helpings. The main course will be a knockout.”
The main course was, since everything and its vegetable brother had been all but drowned in Old Peculiar. It was a steak and kidney pie.
“My God, but that smells wonderful, Ruthven,” said Jury.
Ruthven was dispensing large portions, after which he placed the dish in a silver holder. It sat between a silver bowl of new potatoes and its twin of a pistachio-dusted cauliflower. A fresh bottle of wine—a cabernet sauvignon—had been decanted and was now poured into another of the three wineglasses.
“So why did you pull that stunt?”
“I thought maybe it would throw a switch.”
“What kind? The nostalgia switch, perhaps?”
“No.” Jury sighed.
“The travel switch?”
“As it didn’t work on you or, I assume, on Vivian, who I thought was much more into reality than you—”
When Melrose appeared to be giving this matter some thought, Jury said, “You shouldn’t have to think about it. Either you get it or you don’t.”
But Melrose insisted on getting to the bottom of this switch business and Vivian’s reaction to it as well as his own. “Of course, Vivian’s always been a bit of a mystery—”
Jury interrupted. “No, she hasn’t. Vivian’s always been utterly transparent.” Jury took a bite of drenched beef. “So I was only trying to change the track by flicking a switch.”
For Melrose, this seemed to make the puzzle the more puzzling. “What track?”
“Christ,” breathed Jury. “You and Vivian are like two people on two trains running along side by side. You wave, you smile, you might even throw kisses, you mouth silent words.”
When Melrose merely sat there staring and smoking, Jury took another gasp or two of wine, leaned closer into the table and said, “Okay, maybe this is none of my business, but given that I’ve known you and Vivian for so many years, and especially given that if it hadn’t been for you, she would’ve married me—”
Melrose had been about to take his own drink of wine when Jury said this and was so shocked by it that the glass slipped right through his fingers. “Oh, hell!” He started mopping up the spilled drink and calling for Ruthven, who came through the door immediately to see both Melrose and Jury trying to salvage the damage.
Ruthven said, “Mr. Jury, you sit down, sir. I’ll have this off in two ticks.” Ruthven then called, “Pippin!”
Pippin? thought Melrose. Were they employing someone named “Pippin”?
They were, for here she came—burst, rather—from kitchen to dining room, apron strings flying almost straight out, like the hair bunches held back in ribbon.
Melrose wondered how old she was: Six? Sixty? “Ruthven, we really don’t need the cloth off. Superintendent Jury and I can go into the living room—”
But Ruthven was having none of it. Pippin wasn’t either, for she hardly knew what obeisance to make to his lordship: Curtsy? Fall on her knees or her face? Cross herself in the presence of one as radiant as the master? Then there was the master’s friend …
“Get this vase off, girl, quick now—”
The vase of roses, Jury decided, was much too big for Pippin, so he reached for it at the same time she did, their fingers quarreling for a brittle moment before the whole lot fell right over the edge of the table, wher
eupon Pippin grabbed up her broom and, turning it to sweep, also knocked over Jury’s glass, which splintered into shards.
It was the turn of Martha, the cook, to come rushing in and start a little snarling lecture aimed at Pippin. Jury quickly defended the poor little maid, hoping to keep her from slipping, apron strings, hair in bunches, broom, completely back into the pages of Bleak House, when through the breezy open window came another voice: “Trouble, oh, my!” And the gardener’s face appeared. “Got me electric blower-vac right here and it’ll pick up all that lot on the carpet.”
For a moment, Jury was afraid Mr. Blodgett would crawl over the windowsill, but, no, he called out he’d go right round the back and …” The rest was lost.
So in another half minute, they were all together, Ruthven and his wife, Martha, insisting that Lord Ardry and the Superintendent sit right down and they’d have everything back together, fresh white cloth on the table, fresh glasses, fresh wine, as if nothing had ever happened.
As all of these hands were busily setting things to rights, and Mr. Blodgett was sucking up glass shards and rose petals, Melrose said over the blower noise, “You were saying it was my fault Vivian didn’t marry you? Oh, ha ha ha. Well, we’ll have to put that to a vote! Let’s go to the Jack and Hammer when we’re finished here. How do you do, Pippin. I don’t believe we’ve met—” He stood.
She curtsied. Further and further into Bleak House went Pippin.
As Pippin’s broom handle came down hard on Melrose’s shoulder, Jury said, “Perhaps we should repair to the library—?”
Melrose leaned closer to Jury and whispered, “No, no. My staff would be doubly miserable if they thought they were banishing us from the dining room.”
“Pippin, you clumsy girl, be careful o’ that broom!” Martha’s voice was strident.
“Nearly done, m’lord,” said Ruthven. “I’ll just pop down to the cellar for another bottle—”
“Bring up the cognac, Ruthven.”
“I believe there’s a fine Louis Royer, or perhaps—”
As he bowed himself out of the dining room, Martha was once again on the heels of Pippin. They had arranged everything—candlesticks, crystal bowl holding four pears, so righteously perfect they too might have been cut glass. They stood near the dining-room table looking pleased as punch at the effect of their ministrations, as if they were waiting to have their picture taken.
The Knowledge: A Richard Jury Mystery (Richard Jury Mysteries) Page 32