“Old Polly?” said Ernestine. “For pity’s sakes, she’s too sensible for that sort of thing. Keeps herself busy enough in her mind she doesn’t have to go about wasting her imagination that way.”
“It’s because she’s got the imagination,” snapped Augusta.
Ernestine shoved the mean-looking cat, who had been rummaging among the sandwich rinds, from the table. “Got to admit, old sweat, that letter to you would take some imagination!” Ernestine guffawed and beat her blackthorn stick to the floor. “Augusta here wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”
Jury wouldn’t bank on that, seeing the look on Augusta’s face. Ernestine, though, apparently having got the lion’s share of whatever went round all of their lives, didn’t appear to notice the look of murderous rage. And as the cat, frustrated in its play for minced chicken, stalked the lovebirds again, Jury also wondered what odd little mental quirk had one sister keeping cats and caged birds where the other was an ornithologist.
“Who’s your own candidate for that lot of letters?” he asked Ernestine.
Chin resting on crossed hands atop her stick, she gave it some thought. “Derek Bodenheim’s my guess.” She ignored her sister’s shocked expression. “Peabrain, Derek’s got. Sort of child who tore wings off insects. Or it could be old Sylvia, if it comes to that.”
“You’re accusing one of your own birdwatchers?” said Augusta.
“Rubbish. Just because you like birds doesn’t mean you wouldn’t take an ax to your mum, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Jury, shoving his notebook in his pocket. “Thanks very much for your time. I might be wanting to talk to you later. And no going into the Horndean wood, Miss Craigie.” Of course, of course, was her reply. He knew she’d be off like a shot the moment he left.
At the door, as Jury was handing them one of his cards, Augusta said, “I do hope this awful business won’t postpone our church fête, will it? It’s to be tomorrow, and I’ve got my tent and costume all planned out.”
Ernestine hooted. “All kitted out in fortune-teller’s rig. Madame Zostra. Damned silly business. If the church needs money, why doesn’t it go whistle for it?” She was studying over Jury’s card. “Said you were Inspector, didn’t you? This says Superintendent. What’s the difference? You in charge of the whole boiling, or what?”
Jury smiled as he scanned the vault of the blue sky. “Not much difference. Just look at it this way: not all policemen are inspectors, and not all birds are Crackles.”
II
As he drove the short distance back to Littlebourne High Street, Jury tried to remember what it was that one of them had said that nagged at him. The wood, the body, the birds . . . ?
The detail lay buried, sunk like a stone. Driving slowly along the quarter-mile of road toward the Celtic cross, he thought of the possibility of the woman’s having been on her way to the Kennington estate. As Jury ran over the list of people he wanted to see—Peter Gere; the doctor, Riddley; the Praed woman; the Bodenheims—he was conscious of the hurried clop clop of hooves. When he looked in his rearview mirror, he saw a brown pony, topped off by the little girl with the yellow hair.
He was clearly being kept under surveillance by one of Littlebourne’s most resourceful citizens.
III
“It was about a year ago,” said Peter Gere, feet planted on the desk in the one-room police station. “It was Trevor Tree—Lord Kennington’s secretary—called me sometime round about midnight saying the place had been burgled. Kennington kept his collection in a glass-topped case in a study that had a French door leading out to a courtyard and windows on the other side overlooking the gravel drive. The reason I mention that is, we didn’t see what Tree could possibly have done with the stuff except to toss it outside to someone else waiting there. There wouldn’t have been time to do anything else except maybe drop it in a vase of roses. We searched the people, the house, the grounds.” Peter Gere shrugged. “And they were all watching one another from the time the alarm went off—”
“The case was wired?”
Gere nodded. “So was the house. Besides Lord and Lady Kennington, there was the old cook, and a housekeeper who’s no longer with them, a gardener, and Tree. It wasn’t the first time Kennington had missed stuff. Some odds and ends of antique jewelry—brooches, some Egyptian-like stuff, a ring shaped like a snake, a diamond in a gold setting, some lapis lazuli—he’d bought from Ramona Wey. She’s got a shop in Hertfield. They weren’t all that valuable; Kennington thought he’d misplaced them himself until this other thing happened.
“It was clever of Tree. He breaks the case, disposes of the emerald somehow, calls the police himself,” Peter went on. “It couldn’t have taken Lord Kennington more than two minutes to pull on a robe and get down to the study, and there was Tree on the phone. Kennington didn’t really suspect him until later, next morning, when he was gone. He would have got a lot more of a headstart if it hadn’t been for the cook, who couldn’t sleep and saw him going down the drive at six in the morning. But even then she thought he had some reason. Tree was a smooth fellow. A charmer. Clever, sophisticated, very plausible. I met him once or twice over at the Blue Boy. You know the type. . . .
“Well, it was then that Kennington knew what had happened. We had police waiting in London, at Tree’s digs. The necklace wasn’t on him and it wasn’t in the flat. They nicked him, but hadn’t any proof. Police in London watched him for several days. Then comes the irony. Tree gets run down by some bleeding teenager in the Marylebone Road. And no one ever found that emerald. Worth a quarter million, it was.”
“That’s a lot of money to trust an accomplice with. If you think Tree handed it over to someone else, what makes you think the someone else didn’t unload it?”
Gere scratched his neck. “I never thought he had a mate. Not him. And that’s the main reason. He’d never have trusted anybody else. Kennington must’ve been a mug to trust him.”
Jury smiled. “Hindsight’s great.”
“Yes, I expect so. I didn’t like him, not by half. Cheeky sort, he was. Kennington apparently thought he knew enough about jewelry to have him buy it. He was showing the stuff he bought from Ramona Wey round in the pub, saying what a bargain he’d got. To tell the truth, I wondered if he didn’t have something going with her. Two peas in a pod, those two.”
“You don’t care for her, I take it?”
“Oh, she’s all right, I expect. Anyway, what’s all this in aid of?”
“I don’t know,” said Jury. “Littlebourne just seems to come in for more than its share of grief.”
IV
“Stupid old sod!” said Nathan Riddley, yanking down the knot in his tie like a hangman’s noose. They had been discussing Augusta Craigie. “Polly ought to have her up for slander. Tell her to get stuffed.”
Dr. Riddley sat smoldering in his swivel chair, turning it from side to side, his anger deepening, Jury thought, with every turn.
“Far as I’m concerned,” Riddley went on, “you don’t have to look any further for the author of those stupid letters. I know what you’re going to say—that she got one herself.” Riddley shrugged. “So she sent it to herself. I’m sure that sort of thing happens often enough. Diverting suspicion, and so on. Hers was almost flattering. ‘I knew what I wanted to do when I saw you stark through the chink in the curtain.’ Bit of a giggle, that’s what most of us would have if we saw Augusta stark.” The swivel chair creaked as he leaned forward to get another cigarette, then sat back again, rolling the chair from side to side. All the furniture in the surgery was old, wooden, pockmarked, except for the aluminum table used for his examinations.
“How’d you know what was in hers, Dr. Riddley?”
“She was showing it round, man. Doing, she said, her civic duty.” There was a silence as Riddley smoked and turned his lighter in his fingers. The ashtray was already full to overflowing. His fingers were stained with nicotine. He seemed a nerve-wracked young man. Youngish. Jury put his age in the mid-
thirties. He wondered if having a surgery in even such a small village as Littlebourne were still a pressured existence. Looking at him, Jury thought it was no wonder women fell in love with doctors, and Riddley would be odds-on favorite for a romantic candidate: unattached, good-looking, probably chauvinistic enough to fascinate. With all that going for him, he might even live down his Irish ancestry—those blue eyes, that copper hair.
In the expanding silence, Riddley tapped ash from his cigarette and said, “Superintendent, I confess in the face of your relentless questioning.”
Jury smiled. “To what?”
“Anything, anything. You’ve asked exactly two questions since you walked in the door. No, three, with that last one. You’ve simply let me yammer on and on. So what have I said that’s going to see me in the dock? Of course, you’ve read the letter about me and Ramona Wey. All in blue. Writer didn’t have much imagination, though, since he chose Ramona as the object of Mainwaring’s affections, too. Sort of like throwing darts at a board and seeing which will hit the bull’s eye and which fall wide.”
“What is your relationship with Miss Wey?”
“Oh, there you go again. Questions, questions. My ‘relationship’ with her is doctor-patient. Period. But Mainwaring’s—” Nathan Riddley’s blue glance flicked away from Jury’s eyes.
“Mainwaring?”
Riddley shrugged. “Let the Craigies and the Bodenheims do the gossip, please.”
Jury changed the subject. “What about Katie O’Brien?”
That did make him stop rocking his chair. “Katie? My God, I’d almost forgotten. . . . You heard she’d been attacked in a London tube station.” Jury nodded. “She’s in a coma. Been that way for two weeks and the longer it lasts, the worse her chances. Whoever hit her wasn’t kidding around. Landed a terrific blow to her skull. She suffered a tear of the brain stem, sort of thing you might get in an auto accident. Whiplash. And you know, of course, the longer the coma keeps on, the worse the chances of any sort of recovery. We don’t see many miracle awakenings, except in books. It’s really terrible.”
“What hospital is she in?”
“Royal Marsden. It’s in the Fulham Road.” As Riddley made a jab at the ashtray, the pale red-gold hairs along his wrist glinted in the sunshine. “Mary’s taking it awfully hard. I’m really worried about her.”
The worry seemed to be more than clinical, Jury thought. He would not have thought of Riddley and Mary O’Brien. Perhaps he was older than he looked. More likely, Mary O’Brien was younger than, at this awful moment in her life, she looked.
SEVEN
“I’LL simply have them kill one another off. That way I can get rid of them faster.”
Polly Praed announced her plan to Barney, her cat, who lay like a paperweight atop her manuscript pages.
Polly was not much interested in the motive for these multiple killings—she was only interested in the method. Tap, tap, tap went the typewriter keys, painting a clear image of Julia Bodenheim threading an embroidery needle which she had recently dipped in curare:
“Oh, do be careful, Mummy,” said her daughter, Angela, whilst flipping through a fashion magazine. “Remember, you’ve no thimble.”
Of course Mummy had no thimble. Polly smiled. Angela had taken pains to hide it.
Angela was only pretending to read. Actually she was watching closely the flying fingers of her mother as they deftly drew primrose thread round the edges of the hoop. “Oh, Mummy! There, you’ve gone and pricked your finger!”
Polly shoved the glasses to the top of her head and sat back. Matricide? Would the public go for that? Or would it be rather too sickening? Sophocles, after all—
There was a knocking, like doom, on the door.
She jumped. Then, annoyed at the interruption, shoved her glasses down. Why was someone knocking now, just when Mummy Sylvia was about to die a very painful death? (Clutching her throat? Clawing at the air?) And thinking how she really ought to read up on poisons, Polly went to the window to peek out—
Oh, good God! Him!
Wildly, she turned, searching the room as if she might find a gown of beaten gold to take the place of the dreary twin-set. Why hadn’t she put on her blue frock this morning . . . hair, awful . . . no lipstick . . . God! Another knock!
“Ju-ust a mo-ah-ment. . . . ” She tried to flute it, but her voice cracked. She ran to the bathroom for a comb.
• • •
Humming tunelessly, Jury waited on Polly Praed’s stoop and looked over the pleasant prospect of Littlebourne Green. He was wondering when Melrose Plant might get there, was rather surprised he hadn’t turned up by now, as he had called him early this morning. Lady Ardry had probably shackled herself to him, and Plant was looking for an acetylene torch. . . . The other half of Jury’s mind was looking up and down the street for the girl with the yellow hair. He was sure she was out there somewhere. Um-hm. In the doorway, suddenly, across the Green. That tearoom with “Muffin” in its name—
Sunnybank Cottage’s door opened.
The woman looked, he thought, rather newly minted, in the sense of a makeup job that had the stamp of someone about to appear on a film set. Yet, despite the layers of thick mascara and a totally inappropriate green-gold glitter of eyeshadow, he could see the eyes beneath it all were wonderful. Perhaps it was the film-set notion that made him think of Elizabeth Taylor. The face might be otherwise unremarkable, but with those eyes it would take a person of iron self-control even to notice the rest of her. Jury did, however; he was paid to. She was a rather petite, early-middle-ageish woman in a twin-set the color of drabbit. A nice mop of dark curls, apparently untamable.
“Miss Praed? I’m Superintendent Jury, Scotland Yard C.I.D.” He flicked his ID.
This seemed to surprise her out of her pose of slinky nonchalance—one hand up the doorsill, the other drooping on her hip. But she said nothing.
“Could I have just a word with you?”
There was a feeble sort of wave of her arm, apparently inviting him in. She cleared her throat, as if to speak, but nothing came out. Jury removed his coat and dropped it on a couch. He looked round the study, or whatever she called it, its small window facing the Green. A battered library table took up what little space there was; an equally battered orange cat was washing its forepaw. Around its neck was a red bandanna, victory flag, perhaps, to mark its hard-won battles with less fortunate cats. “Nice cat,” said Jury, trying to put her a bit more at ease.
“Its name’s Barney,” she blurted out, like an actress cued from the wings.
“Barney looks as if he can take care of himself.”
“He’s a coward, actually.”
Barney seemed to think this estimate called for further explanation and stopped washing. He sat aloof and princely, paws together, tail lapped round them like the robes of state. Barney glared at both of them.
The subject of the cat exhausted, Jury asked: “Could I just sit down a moment? It won’t take long.”
“Oh. Yes.” She turned absently, looking for chairs as if the furniture removers had come and cleaned her out.
“There’s a chair just there,” Jury informed her. Beside it was a small repast of cheese and crackers on a table. “Did I interrupt your tea, or anything? Sorry.” She gave a shake of her head, curls bobbing, and sat down in that chair, nodding him toward another. She offered some cheese and crackers to Jury, who refused.
“How long have you lived in Littlebourne, Miss Praed?” It was going to be rough going with her, he could see. Police did certainly unnerve some people totally.
She bent her head over the single cracker and cheese tidbit she had taken from the plate. How could anyone manage to make a bit of cheese look like a small, dead animal?
“Oh, a long time. Oh, I guess even ten or fifteen years. . . . ” A rather lengthy debate with herself followed over how long, exactly, she’d lived in the village. Twelve and one-half years was her final decision. This was submitted to Jury for any possible inaccuracy.
“I understand you’re a writer. Mysteries. I guess I haven’t read—”
His confession elicited an electric response: “I hope not! I mean, you wouldn’t like them at all. I’m sure you’d hate them. I bet most policemen hate mysteries, especially the ones like mine where the lead character’s a Scotland Yard inspector. No resemblance to reality—” This rush of words out, she labored over the cracker and cheese again.
“I hope they are removed from reality. Police routine’s pretty dull, after all.” Jury smiled the smile which had once prompted a seven-year-old girl to insist he have the remainder of her container of Smarties. It had the effect on Polly, unfortunately, of making her reach for a pair of ugly, horn-rimmed glasses with which she promptly covered her eyes.
“I interrupted your writing, I guess. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said quickly. “I’ve just been practicing murders.”
“Practicing?”
“Like scales, you know. I practice on the Bodenheims. I’m calling it The Littlebourne Murders.”
“Which of them is your victim?”
“All of them. I’ve killed off each one half-a-dozen times. Guns, knives, faked auto accidents over cliffs, the lot. Right now I’m into poisons. Curare is nice. Cheese?” She thrust the plate toward him. He shook his head. She took another mouse-morsel of cheese and set it atop another cracker. Then she said, casually: “What’d you say your name was?”
“Jury. I’m with Scotland Yard.”
“Are you? You’re a detective?”
He had thought they had got that sorted out long ago. “That’s right. I’m sure you heard about the woman found in the Horndean wood this morning.”
She nodded. “Beastly, wasn’t it?”
“We’re trying to ascertain just who she was.”
“I’m sure she was a stranger. No one I’ve talked to ever saw her before. That is, from what we could tell from the Craigies’ description.”
The Anodyne Necklace Page 6