The Anodyne Necklace

by Martha Grimes

  “Which Underground station did Cora use?”

  “Same’s we all do. Wembley Knotts. Cora complained a lot about the tube. Shocking how much it’s gone up. Just from Wembley Knotts it’s eighty p to King’s Cross. But they keep building more, don’t they? Still, I guess police don’t have to travel that way.” She seemed resentful of this. Not only were the authorities keeping her tenants safe and sound, they didn’t have to share the Underground.

  II

  Outside number twenty-four, a ring of grubby children were holding hands and skipping round a battered pram. They were all coatless, despite the September evening, and one of them was completely stark except for its vest.

  In their frolic round the perambulator, they kept to the tune of “Ring-round-the-rosy,” but supplied more robust lyrics, dependent largely upon a series of obscenities directed to the innocent occupant.

  “Your mum home?” asked Jury, after checking to make sure the baby wasn’t smothered or otherwise dead. It lay sleeping on its stomach, tiny hands fisted, with rosy cheeks like small flames not even the soot of Catchcoach Street could extinguish.

  Without a break in the tune or the skipping, the children merely exchanged their fuck you’s to “Mam’s home, mam’s home, mam’s home”—interspersed with high giggles that they could be so resourceful in giving out information without suspending important operations. Thus inspired, they continued their chant, bouncing even higher with feet and bobbed hair, changing now to “Makin’ mash, makin’ mash, makin’ mash.” This further commentary on “mam’s” doings brought forth fresh peals of laughter and also the opening of the door.

  “Shut yer mouths and get yer knickers on. What you want?” The last of this was directed at Jury and Wiggins.

  A rat-faced dog saw its chance to escape and sprinted through the crack in the door. Through that opening Jury saw half a face and half a figure and doubted the other half would be any improvement over the oily hair, metallic eye and pendulous breast. When she opened the door wider, the extraordinary girth completely filled it. The whole figure sported a cotton frock straining at its buttons.

  “Police officers,” said Jury, showing his ID.

  “Come about Ashley, well, no wonder. Come on in.” Before he could correct her misapprehension, she was shouting at the ring of children to come on in and get their mash.

  “You were expecting police?” asked Wiggins.

  “It’s always police, innit? In them macs and blue suits you ain’t the Two Ronnies. Come on, come on—” Exasperated by their dimness she motioned them through the door. “So what’s Ashley been gettin’ up to? Showin’ hisself in the ladies again? Stop that!” she yelled to the goblin-ring, climbing all over the pram and nearly upsetting it. “An’ come get yer tea.”

  Two of them had stuffed themselves into the pram with the baby while the others shook it violently. At the mention of food, they nearly toppled the carriage, and Wiggins with it, in their rush for their tea.

  “Shut yer filthy mouths and get yer knickers on, Joey.” She smacked the child’s bald bottom as he darted between Wiggins and Jury.

  “Back here.” She motioned Jury and Wiggins along like a tour guide.

  • • •

  “Back here” was the dirtiest scullery Jury had ever seen. Crusted dishes, spent crockery and pockmarked pots covered every surface. Icicles of grease hung from the cooker. Sergeant Wiggins stared with perverse fascination at a frying pan which held an inch of hardened lard.

  “Mrs. Beavers from next door told us you might be able to help us, Mrs. Cripps.”

  “You mean Beavers ain’t down t’ the pub ’avin ’er ten pints and callin’ it ’er ahfternoon sherry?” She made a primping movement with her hand and then hung over the gas cooker, relighting an old cigarette. At the wobbly kitchen table, the urchins shouted threats and imprecations at their mam, all the while beating their cutlery on its surface. Seemingly oblivious to it all, she spooned out mashed potatoes into their several bowls. They all grabbed for the tomato catsup to douse their bowls. Wiggins stood near the table, fascinated by this red and white mélange.

  Her cigarette dribbled gray ash over the pan as she said, “Well, I tol’ ’im, din’t I? Brings in ’is li’l bit a stray, fer all the world t’ see . . . ”

  She was accustomed, it seemed, to dealing with police, had even achieved a certain rapport with them. Jury smiled his thanks as he refused the proffered pot of mash. Wiggins took a step backward.

  Beginning again in the middle of some conversation with herself, she went on, “Right under me own nose and bangin’ ’er—” She pointed to some nether region at the rear of the house “—an’ I’m not puttin’ up wi’ that, am I? Got me pride, ain’t I? I just takes meself off t’ the Labor Exchange. Bloody job only pays three quid a week and the Screeborough gang takes two a that just fer a kip on their bleedin’ couch and one quid for me mornin’ tea. I ast ya.” She circled the table and dropped another dollop of potatoes in each bowl. “There an’ that’s gone, so shut yer mouths. An’ keep yer darty ’ands off Sookey’s bowl.” Smartly she slapped a hand which had skulked toward its brother’s mash with a spoon. She surveyed the ring of grimy faces and said, “Where’s Friendly?”

  “Over t’ the schoolyard. Said ’e was goin’ t’ show it t’ Fiona.” Giggles all round and Sookey took advantage of this to flash out a grubby hand and hook up a spoonful of mash from Joey’s bowl.

  “I’ll ‘show it’ ’im, don’t think I won’t. Just like ’is Da, Friendly is.”

  Wiggins was studying the graffiti-covered and faded wallpaper where huge stalks of gladioli had been transformed into phalluses. Following this, he retreated with his notebook to the kitchen doorway.

  “Mrs. Beavers said you’re a friend of Cora Binns, Mrs. Cripps.”

  “Cora? Yeah, I know Cora. What’s this in aid of? Ashley been at Cora again?”

  “Gimme some Ribena, mam,” yelled Sookey.

  “Shut yer face. Ain’t got none, ’ave we?”

  “Ah, fuck.”

  “Cora Binns has been murdered,” said Jury.

  “What? What ya mean, murdered?” The expression on Jury’s face told her it wasn’t a joke. “Well, I never . . . ” The cigarette dangled. The word was drowned in the cacophony of bowls and banging forks and whines. If the Cripps children heard it, they were more interested in their own affairs, and soon were scrambling down from the table. One of them—the girl with the dirtiest face and the stickiest fingers—paused in the doorway to look Sergeant Wiggins over.

  “It happened,” Jury continued, “in a village not far from London. Littlebourne. Cora was apparently on her way there to be interviewed for a job. Can you think of anyone who might have wanted her out of the way? Or boyfriends, perhaps? Jealousy’s a pretty common motive.” She could think of no one. She still seemed to be having difficulty in digesting this information. Jury took the picture of Katie O’Brien from his pocket. “Ever seen this girl, Mrs. Cripps?”

  She wiped her hands down the sides of her frock, in deference, perhaps, for the dead, before taking the snapshot. “Pretty li’l thing. No, I ain’t never seen ’er. What’s she got to do with Cora, then?”

  “I don’t know she has. But she met with an accident in the Wembley Knotts Underground station about two weeks ago. The girl’s from Littlebourne, same place the murder happened.” Jury pocketed the picture. “Do you know where Drumm Street is, Mrs. Cripps?”

  “Sure. That’s just two streets over.”

  “This girl in the snapshot was taking violin lessons in Drumm Street from someone named Cyril Macenery. You wouldn’t know him, would you?”

  “The fiddler? Sure, we all know Cyril. What you want to do is go along t’ the pub at the end of the street, there.” She nodded her head to the left. “That’s where they all hang out; Ashley, too. Right run down old place it be; you’ll see it next the sweet shop.”

  Wiggins, who was trying to detach the fingers of the little girl who had his trouser leg in
a viselike grip, looked as if even a rundown pub would be sanctuary, compared with the Crippses’ kitchen. He closed up his notebook, tucked his pen in his pocket. “I can go along there, sir, if you like.”

  “We’ll both go. Thanks very much, Mrs. Cripps.”

  “If ya see Ashley, tell ’im ’e’s wanted ’ere. Bloody fool sits round that pub all day. ’E won’t be much ’elp, I can tell ya. Can’t even see straight once ’e’s got an Abbot’s in ’im.”

  “Okay. Thanks for your time. And I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this to anyone, Mrs. Cripps.”

  “White Ellie’s what they call me.” She lay a finger against her mouth. “Me lips is sealed,” she whispered.

  • • •

  “Did you see that skillet, sir?” asked Wiggins, as they walked up the street toward the pub. “There were tiny footprints in the grease.” Wiggins shuddered.

  ELEVEN

  I

  THE sign of the Anodyne Necklace creaked in the rain blowing down the dingy street. Its scabrous paint had once been green, but most of the color and detail were now washed out so that Jury could just barely make out the shape of the crude strand of beads which must have given the pub its name. It was an undistinguished, narrow building of dull burgundy-brown which the dusk turned to the color of dried blood. Windows frosted halfway up glowed yellow and obscured the shadow-life within. The pub shared the narrower end of the street with a tiny sweet shop, in which the only sign of life was a flickering telly, and a dusty-looking news agent’s on the right. At one time the Anodyne Necklace must have been a coaching inn, though how coach and four could squeeze through the crumbling arch was hard to imagine. The name of the pub, which had been painted on the stone of the archway, was almost obliterated.

  “I think it means ‘cure,’ ” said Jury, to Wiggins’s muffled question about the name. No one looked more in need of one than Wiggins. His shoulders were hunched inward against the rain as he sneezed into his handkerchief.

  • • •

  The yellow glow in the windows had come not from the electric lights of the chandeliers but from the gaslight behind sconces on the wall. There were other remnants of a former Victorian elegance: the snob screen at one end of the bar which ran the length of the room; the antique frame of the mirror in need of resilvering. Other than this, there was sawdust on the floor, round deal tables, hard benches lining the walls. An incongruous string of Christmas lights looked either backward or forward to some more festive season. Middle-aged women, clustered in twos and threes, sat with their half-pints, sharp-eyed as overseers watching what their men were up to. Not much, it would appear. Most of them held onto their drinks as if to a past of broken promises. What there was of activity was divided between the dart game at the rear of the room, and one table where a group of some five or six—apparently lorded over by a fat man with pince-nez—seemed intent on some sort of game.

  “Slumming, love?”

  The girl who addressed Jury actually wore, above the blaze of a very low-cut red blouse, a velvet band round her neck and a beauty spot beneath an eye leaden with mascara and blue shadow. Jury couldn’t imagine what custom she could scare up in here. Probably she lived in the street as well as on it.

  The bartender, who turned from the optics to knife smooth foam from a pint of stout, seemed to know her well enough. “Go home, Shirl, and get your beauty sleep. You could use it, girl. What’ll it be, mate?”

  “Information,” said Jury, watching Shirl move off, having taken the sting without flinching.

  The publican cast a bored eye on Jury’s warrant card. “It’s Ash again, ain’t it.” He nodded in the direction of the men at the table. “Over there.”

  “Not him. It’s about Cora Binns. Your name?”

  “Harry Biggins.” His eyebrows danced upwards in mild surprise as he set two pints before a couple of regulars who stared in the mirror behind the bar and pretended not to listen. “Cora, is it? She never seemed to do no harm.”

  “No. But someone’s done her some. She’s been murdered. What do you know about her?”

  “Cora? Well, I’ll be.” Having just named her, Biggins was soon forgetting all about her, as he wiped down the bar and denied any personal knowledge at all of Cora Binns. Several minutes of questioning by Sergeant Wiggins elicited nothing.

  Jury took out the picture of Katie O’Brien. “How about this girl, then?” He could not tell from Biggins’s expression whether he was lying or not when he denied even more fervently any knowledge of the O’Brien girl. No, he hadn’t heard about the accident in the Wembley Knotts station. That Jury found very difficult to believe, but he let it pass for the time being. “She had a music teacher who I was told comes in here. Macenery. Now, please don’t tell me you don’t know him or I’ll have to wonder how you stay in business, Mr. Biggins, given the few people you seem to know. I shouldn’t imagine you’d be in business long.” Jury smiled.

  “Never said I didn’t know ’im, did I, now? That’s ’im, over there at Doc Chamberlen’s table. That ain’t ’is real name, Chamberlen; he just uses it for the game. Cyril’s the one with the beard.”

  “What game?”

  “Wizards and Warlords, it’s called. They’re in ’ere all the time. Stupid game, far as I’m concerned. But there ain’t no accounting for tastes, is there?” Harry Biggins flashed a gold tooth to let Jury know how cooperative he could be.

  “Thanks. Now who in here might have known Cora Binns? Since you didn’t.” Jury returned the smile.

  “Try Maud over there.” Biggins indicated a woman whose yellow hair was rolled up on top of her head like a basket of lemons. She was sitting with two others, and all three were coated and kerchiefed.

  “You take Maud, Wiggins; I’ll take the table.”

  • • •

  As he walked up to it, Jury caught a snatch of conversation.

  “ . . . played strip poker wi’ ’er. Lost by a ’and.” Burst of laughter from the others, all except the portly gentleman in pince-nez who seemed to be intent upon the play. He threw an odd, many-sided, crystal blue die.

  From a sallow-faced young man in jeans there came a groan.

  “Look at Keith, ’e’s getting excited.”

  Keith looked about as excited as he would in the grave. The one Jury decided must be Ash Cripps had a wide, dented face, as if a car had backed into it. He rolled his cigar in his mouth and looked down at a piece of graph paper. They all had sheets of paper. The table was awash in paper. The fat man had a much larger sheet, creased with many foldings. The game appeared to be something of a spectator sport, if one were to judge from the way people wandered over, pint in hand, watched the proceedings for a moment, and then wandered off.

  One of them said, “We’re walking along the passageway, checking for a secret entrance in the north wall.” This came from the young, bearded man identified as Cyril Macenery.

  “You find a door,” said the fat man.

  “We listen outside the door,” said Macenery.

  The fat man threw the die again. “You hear a lot of snorting and stamping.”

  “Gorgon tries to pick the lock,” said Ash Cripps with a fatuous smile.

  “No good,” said the fat one, rolling the die again.

  “We bash it in,” said Macenery.

  “No. The door flies open and two huge stallions appear.”

  The others were silent, looking at Macenery, on whom they seemed to be depending to get them out of a spot. He said, “Manticore uses silver shield to gather in sun’s rays and shield is turned into fire-breather against stallions—”

  “Police,” said Jury, tossing his card onto the papers like a player anteing up.

  Their response was automatic: they all looked at Ash Cripps, who shrugged, tossed down his pencil, and started to take his coat from the back of his chair.

  “Not you, Mr. Cripps.” He nodded toward Macenery. “You.”

  Astonishment, stamped on all of their faces, was like a new day on the fac
e of Cripps. “Not me?” He looked at Cyril. “What you been gettin’ up to, then, Cy?”

  “I’d like a word with you later, Mr. Cripps. In the meantime, you can go.” That took the bloom off the day for Ash. “I’ve just been talking to your wife,” said Jury.

  “Elephant? Got a big mouth, she ’as. Bugger all.” He drank off his pint and left.

  II

  “It’s about Katie, isn’t it?” asked Cyril Macenery when he and Jury were seated at a table out of earshot.

  “Partly.”

  “I told that other cop everything I knew. How many times do I have to answer the same questions?”

  “As many times as we ask, I guess. The other man was from ‘H’ Division, Mr. Macenery. I’m with Scotland Yard. Something else has happened.”

  “What else?” He seemed extremely wary, and looked now very young and very nervous. Probably, he was older than he looked, but the jeans and turtleneck and extreme blue of his eyes would have put him in his late twenties if one hadn’t noticed the small lines of age. His hair and beard were fawn-colored and neatly trimmed.

  “You were Katie O’Brien’s music teacher for how long?”

  “Around eight, nine months. Twice a month. What’s Scotland Yard on this for?”

  Jury didn’t answer. “I’ve heard you’re a fine musician. Good enough, apparently, that her mother, who’s pretty protective, let Katie come into London just to go to you. Was—is—she that good?”

  “Yes. I wouldn’t have bothered otherwise. I need the money but I’m not about to take on every sodding mum’s kid to get it. After about ten, fifteen years’ practice she’ll be able to play all right.” He smiled bleakly.

  “I guess she can’t practice much where she is now,” said Jury, trying to break through what he felt to be the man’s way of dealing with the violence done to Katie O’Brien. He could feel Macenery’s unhappiness as he made little circles with his glass on the scarred table. “There was the matter of her clothes.”