“Don’t you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe. I’m surprised you’re even interested. No one else is, now. After those letters, and now this murder in the Horndean wood. . . . ” With the back of her hand, she shoved dark hair off her forehead.
“Of course I’m interested, Mrs. O’Brien. It’s a terrible thing to have happen.” That earned him a tiny, fleeting smile, like a leaf snagged on rock in a stream. It quickly disappeared. “Who’s her doctor?”
“Dr. Riddley. The local doctor. There’s nothing they can do, except to wait. I go to the hospital, talk to her. It’s hard talking to someone who doesn’t hear. I took in a tape recorder with some of her favorite music. Katie was a real musician,” said Mary O’Brien, mustering some of the old pride she must have felt. “There was no one around here, no teacher good enough to teach her. She’d gone through them all. This Cyril Macenery was good enough, and cheap, too. I haven’t got all that much, and she had to have the best. Katie helped out too. Her music meant a lot to her. She did odd jobs, mostly cleaning, for a lot of people—Miss Pettigrew, the Mainwarings, Peter, Dr. Riddley—quite a few others. She took care of the horses at Rookswood sometimes, too. Helped out in the Magic Muffin, waiting on tables in the summer when there was a lot of business. . . . If she hadn’t had to have the best teacher we could afford, you don’t think I’d have let her go roaming in that part of London, do you?”
Her defensiveness would turn into defeat if he didn’t stop her. There was in her tone the rising note of hysteria. “The London police won’t forget, Mrs. O’Brien.”
“I’ll just show you your rooms.” As she led them up a dark staircase lined with old engravings of birds and bucolic country scenes, she said, “They say you never can tell what might trigger something for someone in a coma. I talk to her and play the music. You’d never guess what her favorite song was: ‘Roses of Picardy.’ Katie was so old-fashioned.”
Jury wondered how she squared that with Jordache jeans and a bright pink shirt.
II
Jury’s fascination with the little girl with the yellow hair was growing. She had got bored with swinging on the gate and had disappeared during his talk with Mary O’Brien.
Having dispatched Wiggins to question the postmistress and the Mainwarings, Jury was setting off for the Craigie cottage. His exit from the Bold Blue Boy and Emily Perk’s from the sweet shop several doors up the High occurred almost miraculously, and certainly simultaneously.
Jury watched her for a moment while she looked off into space, ignoring him with near-spectacular indifference. He hadn’t had anyone make such a display of not seeing him since he’d nicked Jimmy Pink, the dip who worked Camden Passage. She was bending her head over a screw of white paper, apparently debating which sweet to pop into her mouth. Still without seeing him, although he was the only person on the pavement, and a large one at that, she began hopping on one foot, then jumping forward and planting both feet, legs splayed across some invisible pavement pattern. Then she twisted herself in air and started the whole performance backwards, all the while holding tightly to the little white bag of sweets. Her formerly unkempt and straggling hair had been worried into two separate bunches on either side of her head, and when she hopped, the bunches bounced.
He crossed the High Street and got into his car, which he maneuvered round the bottom of the Green and back up the opposite side, past the Blue Boy. As he neared the Celtic cross, he looked in his rearview mirror. She was standing stock still, stuffing whatever sweets she’d got into her mouth and watching the C.I.D car for all she was worth.
SIX
I
AUGUSTA Craigie—or the woman in the unruly garden whom Jury presumed to be Augusta—seemed to be doing something to a bed of primulas when he unlatched the gate. Except for the one little patch in which the woman worked, the rest of the yard was a jungle. She was plying a trowel around tiny windmills and waterfalls, ducks leading ducklings off to war, frogs dressed in polka dots and sitting on plaster benches. There was even a tiny Ferris wheel. It was a carnivallike atmosphere.
“Miss Craigie?” She looked around at him, her mouth pursing in a small o. “I’m Superintendent Jury, Scotland Yard C.I.D.” He showed her his warrant card.
Immediately, she pulled her collar up and her sleeves down, as if to cover any exposed skin. Hard to do, since Miss Craigie was already well covered, all in gray from her hair down to her lisle stockings. With her small eyes and sharp nose, she reminded Jury of a field mouse.
“You’ve come to see my sister. But I really don’t think she’s able . . . I mean, such a shock. You can imagine!”
“Yes, I can. But perhaps we could have a talk?” If he could get into the house he could deal with everyone’s shock there.
“We? Oh. Yes, I suppose . . . ” She looked uncertainly at her plaster ornaments, but finding no ecouragement from the ducks and frogs, she gave up and gathered her sweater even more tightly round her thin chest and led the way up the path to a small door. The roof was badly in need of rethatching. The heavy, wheat-dark collar round windows and door had long ago sprung from the netting meant to keep out nesting birds.
A long-haired cat with a down-drooping thug’s face appeared from behind a bush and swayed along at her heels. Three others—Jury had the impression of gray and orange—were slipping like shadows round the corner of the house.
The look of the garden seemed to have reasserted itself inside. The Craigie sisters’ talents leaned more toward ornamentation than housekeeping. Behind the front room, through a low-hanging beamed arch, was another room—a study or sitting room of some sort: before its one window sat a large library table overflowing with rolls of paper, writing implements, draftsman’s tools. This was all overseen by a pair of lovebirds in a wicker cage.
Everywhere else there were birds, also. Only these were stuffed ones under glass, or porcelain ones on mantel and shelves. Augusta Craigie, who had seated herself in a bulky, cretonne-covered chair, said, “Ernestine is an ornithologist. That’s why we’ve all the birds about. The lovebirds are mine. Sweet, aren’t they? Ernestine has written a number of articles on birds. I just do the housekeeping.” She moved her hands in an apologetic way, as if the hands were not quite equal to the task.
Jury did not know whether the three cats lined up and looking at him, paws neat and tails twitching, were the same cats come inside or other cats spawned in the darkness of the cottage. Even in midday a lamp was needed, and one was lit, a tall one beside Miss Craigie’s chair. Its fringed shade cast a puddle of gloomy light. The thug-cat jumped up on her lap, dealing what should have been a death-blow, but Miss Craigie didn’t seem to notice.
“Ernestine is the president of the Hertfield birdwatchers’ group. She’s usually up before five and out with her binoculars . . . so, you see, it’s perfectly natural she might have come across the . . . poor woman.”
Jury decided Augusta was an overexplainer and left her to it. She must have taken his silence as some assumption of guilt on her part and rushed ahead to embroider upon the circumstances. “She was out making one of her little maps, you see, for the birdwatchers. We all use them when we go out together, usually in teams, if there’s something—like the Speckled Crackle—truly important . . . ” A bitter note crept into her voice as she said, “You know, it was just as bad for me—quite as bad!” Even in the dull light Jury could see her face flush; she had blurted this out as if Ernestine had hogged the limelight long enough. “Seeing that dog come trotting up the street with that—thing in its mouth.” Augusta sank back in her chair and then just as suddenly sat forward, sweeping the cat to the floor, who then set off to stalk the lovebirds. “I don’t understand any of this at all, Inspector. We’re being singled out. It’s almost as if police—you—suspected us. First there was that other inspector from Hertfield coming here and asking all those questions . . . well, really, it’s most unfair.”
Jury let his demotion pass and said, “I hope you can understand
how important it is to question anyone who had a part in discovering the body. We don’t mean to harass you. If it hadn’t been for you and your sister, she might still be lying out there in the wood.” Jury smiled.
The sudden switch from victim to heroine brought Augusta’s hand up to smooth her hair, then her skirt. Now she was able to let her naturally curious bent take over: “Who was she? Do you know?” Jury shook his head. “We’d never any of us seen her before, so maybe it is someone from Horndean or Hertfield. I was just saying to Miles Bodenheim—Sir Miles—and we both agreed, there must be some psychopathic killer, come down from London, maybe—” (On vacation? Jury wondered) “—and it puts us in mind of Jack the Ripper.” Her small shudder seemed more one of pleasure than pain. “You remember the way he mutilated his bodies—”
“I don’t think that’s the case here.”
But Augusta wasn’t having that. She went after the gory details like a hound on scent, detailing the appearance of the corpse as described to her by her sister. That same sister seemed to be rousing, for there were thumpings and creakings and sounds of someone descending the stairs.
“That must be Ernestine. I can’t think why she’s up. I don’t know why she didn’t faint dead away—Ernestine! You really should not be up!”
If this were Ernestine blocking the archway, she didn’t look as if she could be brought down by a gale wind. She was stout, square, determined. Any objections to her present course would obviously be beaten off with the blackthorn stick she carried. Even the cats scattered like buckshot. She was wearing a navy pea coat, buttoned tightly across her large frontage, and a knitted cap had been pulled down over her ears with such force, that nothing but a gray fringe of hair and the barest hint of eyebrow showed.
“Out, of course,” was her snappish answer to her sister’s timid question as to where she was going. “A nice lie-down, that’s all I needed. Just got to get the Wellingtons on—”
“But you can’t be going back to the Horndean wood. This is the police from Scotland Yard, and he wanted to ask—”
“Why shouldn’t I go back? The Crackle won’t wait forever. I expect police have tidied up by now. Right, Inspector?”
“We’ve taken the body away, ma’am. But you can’t go into that part of the wood yet.”
“Why not, I’d like to know? The Speckled Crackle is very nearly an extinct bird, sir. It’s that part of the wood he’ll return to, if any. They like the wet, you know.” She was chugging toward a little window seat by the door where her Wellingtons waited, stiff as soldiers. Could only brute force stop her?
“This Speckled—what is it?”
She stopped. She turned. “Great Speckled Crackle. Don’t tell me you’ve not heard of it?”
“No, I haven’t. Is it rare?”
“Rare? Rare?” She walked back a few paces. “It’s been sighted only five times in the last three years. Once in the Orkneys, once in the Hebrides, and once in Torquay. It’s clearly off course, somehow.”
“And you’ve seen it in the Horndean wood?”
“Think so, yes.” Now she was unbuttoning her pea coat.
“I’ve a friend who saw a Spix’s Macaw once.” Jury offered her a cigarette which she absently accepted.
The eyebrows shot up, devoured further by the pull-down cap. “But that’s impossible! The Spix’s Macaw is only seen in Brazil. Somewhere in northwest Bahia. It’s an extremely rare bird!” She sat herself down as if from shock in the twin of the cretonne chair.
Jury shook his head. “Maybe it simply got blown off course.”
Regarding him with extreme suspicion, she said, “I can’t believe this person saw one. I’m an ornithologist and keep abreast of such things. I’ve heard no report of Spix’s Macaws.” Her eyes narrowed as she puffed on the cigarette she held between thumb and index finger. “Describe one.” She might have been interrogating a murder suspect.
“Well, it was blue, he said. Darker blue on the back and wings. And about, oh, two feet or so long.”
There was a brief, amazed silence as Ernestine stared at her sister. At first, Jury thought she might be going to accuse Augusta of having something to do with this spurious Spix’s Macaw report. But what she said was, “Augusta, don’t be sitting about like a sparrow. We’re peckish and it’s nearly twelve. Let’s have some sandwiches.” To her sister’s resigned and departing back, she yelled: “Minced chicken in the fridge!” Then she settled back for more bird-talk. “The Spix’s Macaw is . . . ”
Jury gave it exactly three minutes and then decided she was primed enough to get off birds and onto birdwatchers. “How often does your group meet?”
“Once a month, third Monday.”
“Who belongs to it?”
“The Bodenheims—Miles and Sylvia. Mainwaring and his wife, when she’s about.” Ernestine smirked a bit.
“I take it she’s not about very much?”
“Trouble there, if you ask me.”
Augusta returned with a plate of sandwiches so neatly cut they looked hemmed. Jury refused the food, but accepted a cup of coffee.
“Tell me, Miss Craigie, you must have speculated on who this girl might be, or at least a reason for her to be walking in the wood.”
Making no attempt to hide the fact her mouth was full of chicken, Ernestine said, “None whatever. Some shop girl, probably.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Don’t know. Just looked the type. Bit tartish, you know, all those bangles and earrings. ‘Bedizened, beringed, and bejeweled,’ as our old mum used to say. But all from Woolworth’s is my guess.”
“You observed her rather closely if you saw all of that.”
“Saw the body through these first.” Again she lifted the binoculars. “Wasn’t sure what it was, though, and I tramped over. I didn’t spend too much time looking—you can imagine—but, being a trained observer, it wouldn’t take much to see what I saw. I went off straightaway to the nearest phone and called the police.”
With the answers flowing freely now, Jury hesitated to ask his next question. “The, ah, damage to the body was done with a small ax found near the stump. I understand it was yours, Miss Craigie. Why did you keep it there?”
But it would take more than bloody axes to put Miss Craigie off. “To chop through thick stuff, of course. Small branches, that sort of thing. Get a better view.”
“Anybody else ever use it you know of?”
“I expect so. It was always lying about. Not necessarily there—the birdwatchers wielded it now and again, so it might have been found anywhere round about there.”
Jury changed the subject. “Tell me, did you know Katie O’Brien?”
They didn’t, for a moment, seem to comprehend. “Oh, that O’Brien girl. Forgot about her. Got coshed on the head, didn’t she, about a fortnight ago? Well, if the mother will let her run about London, it doesn’t surprise me.”
Augusta said, more to disagree with her sister than to defend Katie, Jury inferred, “Katie always seemed such a nice girl. She did cleaning for people in Littlebourne to help out. And she was very thorough; I had her in to help me often. She worked, Katie did. A responsible child. Not like some of those others that go to the comprehensive.”
Ernestine made a deprecating gesture. “Nice as ninepence, maybe, but I always say still waters, that sort of thing. Bet she’d be off with a boy soon as say knife.”
“Perhaps,” said Augusta, “it was the girl for Stonington.”
“Stonington?” said Jury.
“Why yes, that’s the Kennington place. I heard Lady Kennington was looking for someone to do typing for her. Stonington’s just the other side of the wood, on the Horndean Road. I’m quite sure Mrs. Pennystevens told me that she—lady Kennington, I mean—had a prospect she was expecting to interview a day or two ago. Maybe this person in the wood was one of them.”
“Doesn’t it seem unlikely that such a stranger would be walking through the Horndean wood, though?”
Augusta said brig
htly, “But, Inspector, perhaps she was dragged there. You know. Killed somewhere else. Or executed. Really, it does sound like some sort of ritual crime. Had you thought of that?”
Jury had to admit he hadn’t.
“Oh, bosh, Augusta. You’ve been reading too many of Polly’s thrillers. She’s our local hack,” she said to Jury. “Not a bad sort, actually. Tried to get her in the birdwatchers—”
Jury’s mind was on the Kennington place. Why did the name seem familiar? He couldn’t remember Carstairs or Peter Gere mentioning it. “Are you on the telephone?” he asked the Craigies.
“Of course,” said Ernestine. “Got heaps of calls to make about the Society. Yes, of course you can use it,” she said to Jury’s next question. “Back in the study there. Mind you don’t knock my maps about!” she called to Jury’s departing back.
• • •
“Stonington?” said Inspector Carstairs with some surprise. “No, no one mentioned the woman’s being for Stonington. The bus driver says he remembers a woman of that description getting off the Hertfield-Horndean bus in Littlebourne. It was the last bus for Horndean, and got to Littlebourne at 8:05. It was dusk.”
“This Kennington. I seem to have heard the name somewhere before—”
“It was in the papers about a year ago. Lord Kennington had a collection of jewels, among them an emerald, very rare and very valuable. The secretary, a villain named Tree, walked off with them. Or it, I should say. Poetic justice, maybe, but Tree was run down by a car a few days later. The necklace is still going missing, as far as we know.” Carstairs turned away from the telephone to make some comment to someone there, then he was back. “I’ll get onto this Stonington business straightaway. Lady Kennington lives there now. Husband’s dead.”
Jury thanked him and rang off.
• • •
When he returned, they were arguing about the letters. Augusta’s favorite candidate, it seemed, was Miss Praed.
The Anodyne Necklace Page 5