The Anodyne Necklace

by Martha Grimes

  “The left.”

  “I was thinking, at first, of rigor mortis. That perhaps she was holding something and he couldn’t prize the fingers loose. But, then, I gave that up because it would take rigor a while to set in, wouldn’t it? And I imagine the murderer would simply have taken it from her. So that doesn’t work—”

  “On the contrary. There’s a thing called cadaveric spasm. Instant rigor. It’s not usual, but it has happened at the moment of death, if the death is violent and there’s intense emotion. I remember hearing of cases in the war: men still with their rifles aimed. There was one they called the ‘tea party’—soldiers in a trench, all caught when the shell exploded, all frozen in the last act of their lives. One had a canteen raised to his lips. There’d be no way of knowing after the real rigor progressed.”

  “You mean you think she was holding something? Something incriminating?”

  Jury shook his head. “No, I think she was wearing something incriminating. Something, at least, the murderer didn’t want found.”

  Melrose’s next question was interrupted by the approach of Molly bearing down on them, her work-hardened hands apparently impervious to the sizzling platters she carried.

  “Steaks up.” She deposited the plates and tossed her long braid over her shoulder. “Kitchen’s closing, so whatcher want fer afters?”

  Melrose snapped his napkin into his lap. “Soufflé Grand Marnier, please.”

  Molly’s expression remained placid as she said, “We only got bread-and-butter pud.”

  “I’ll pass, thank you.”

  Jury also declined the sweet.

  “Suit yerself,” she said with a shrug that suggested only the most dim-witted would turn down the pud.

  When Molly had shuffled off, Jury said. “Let’s back up a moment: for starters—as Molly would say—we’ve got these anonymous letters. For afters, the murder of Cora Binns. It’s the main course I’m especially interested in: Katie O’Brien, together with a chap named Trevor Tree. I don’t suppose you remember that story. It didn’t make headlines, but it was an interesting little fiddle he worked on one Lord Kennington. As you’ve been here a whole half a day, you’ve probably heard of his estate, Stonington—”

  “Indeed I have,” said Melrose. “I’m buying it, it would seem.” Melrose smiled brilliantly. “Well, I had to have some reason for hanging about Littlebourne.”

  “That’s resourceful of you. Anyway, this Tree made off with a quarter-million in jewels. A necklace was the chief booty. But over the months he worked for Kennington, it seemed the lord of the manor was missing the odd piece here and there. Nothing of extreme value, some antique stuff. And apparently Tree was such an amiable, trustworthy chap, Kennington never suspected him. Indeed Kennington apparently thought he might have misplaced the stuff himself. I think perhaps Tree was at it to see how much his employer did trust him.”

  Melrose shook his head. “It’s all I can do to hold on to my own valuables. My mother’s jewelry keeps turning up on Aunt Agatha. She was wearing a moonstone on her finger this morning. God knows how she does it.”

  “That’s what made me finally twig it.”

  “Agatha’s finger?”

  “No. Cora Binns’s. Ernestine Craigie found the body and, in her words, the dead woman was ‘bedizened, beringed and bejeweled.’ Cora Binns was wearing a necklace, bracelets, ornate earrings. But no rings. Not on the right hand, at least. The ring, or possibly rings that I think she might have been wearing also might have been part of Kennington’s collection. Not the good stuff, but some of the antique jewelry not easily identifiable.”

  “But why go to all the trouble of murdering the woman if the police wouldn’t attach any importance to it?”

  “The police wouldn’t. But Lady Kennington might have. Cora Binns was on her way to an interview. Whoever met up with her somewhere along the way recognized that ring. And certainly might have wondered how much Cora Binns knew.”

  “What was the woman doing in the woods, though?”

  “She was given five quid by her boss at the secretarial agency to take a cab from Hertfield station to Stonington. But she pocketed the money and took a bus. She got off in Littlebourne, apparently thinking Stonington was in walking distance. It’s two miles away, though. But if you cut through the woods, it minimizes the distance considerably.”

  “How would the Binns woman know that?”

  “Whoever she asked directions of must have told her.”

  Melrose, wrestling with the tough steak, finally put by his knife and fork. “And that’s the someone who followed her, having, I take it, seen this ring and knowing . . . But wouldn’t that mean this person might have been in on the whole theft of the Kennington stuff from the outset?”

  Jury nodded. “That necklace has never surfaced. Tree got rid of it somehow and my guess is he let someone know—an accomplice, perhaps—something about where he’d stashed it. That’s what I can’t figure out. It’s been a year since Tree got run down by a car.”

  “But what’s all this to do with the O’Brien girl?”

  “Katie was attacked in the Wembley Knotts tube station. Trevor Tree was from that section of the East End and so was Cora Binns. They both frequented a pub called the Anodyne Necklace. Katie went in there a few times with her violin teacher. All of those people coming together under the same roof, even if at different times, could hardly be coincidence. Someone is looking for that emerald; someone wants it very badly—not surprising, considering its value.”

  Melrose pushed his plate away. “I hope to God you sort all this out before I’m forced to put on my waders and go looking for the beastly Speckled Crackle.”

  “You’ve met Miss Craigie, obviously.”

  “Yes. I really feel on intimate terms with this bird. I’m sure I could pick it out of a police line-up. Frankly, though, were I Ernestine, I don’t think I’d feel very comfortable walking round the village with those high-powered binoculars of hers swinging from my neck. A garroting might be in order. And I’ll tell you something else. If you think the O’Brien girl might have been attacked because she knew something, there’s a little girl who was a good friend of hers who I think is keeping something back from police. . . . ”

  II

  The little girl in question was coming through the doll-like doorway of the private bar, all oblivious of Jury and Plant, directly in her line of vision. Quickly she disappeared behind the bar. Thence ensued a great commotion of glasses rattling and papers rustling. In a moment she reappeared, a box of crayons and a coloring book firmly in hand. These items she pretended to be inspecting closely.

  “Isn’t it a bit late for you to be up canvassing the public houses? It’s nearly ten. Oughtn’t you to be home with your mother?”

  Turning upon Melrose with an air of abstracted concentration, Emily Louise said, “Oh. It’s you.” She went back to counting her crayons.

  “Surprise, surprise. I said, oughtn’t you to be home? Your mum must be very worried.”

  She was mouthing the names of the colors silently: blue, yellow, purple. “Mum’s at the pictures in Hertfield.”

  “That’s no reason for you to be doing watchman’s duty. But since you’re here, why don’t you sit down for a bit? Superintendent Jury would like a word with you.”

  The frown extended from the box of crayons upwards and came to rest on Jury’s face. “Who?” She squinted myopically, as if trying to make out something on a far horizon.

  “This gentleman seated directly across from me.”

  All unconscious of the formidable gentleman to whom she was being introduced, Emily Louise grudgingly climbed up on a chair beside him, opened her coloring book, and selected a crayon.

  Melrose could not help inspecting the picture. It was another awful scene, this one a barnyard. She was aiming an orange crayon at a duck. He tried to control his annoyance.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Jury, holding out his hand. Her small hand lay in his like a cold petal. “I under
stand you’re a friend of Katie O’Brien.”

  She was going at the mother duck with a vengeance and merely nodded.

  “Katie was a pretty good rider, I hear.”

  “Kind of.” Having filled in the duck with orange, she began to color the webbed feet blue. Plant stared at it.

  “Nice to have friends,” said Jury. “Too bad when something happens to them.”

  Emily nodded and started coloring the line of ducklings blue, to match the mother’s feet.

  Jury went on: “Friends sometimes tell us things. . . . I remember when I was a lad, I had this great friend. Jimmy Poole, his name was. We were always together. Jimmy Poole and I used to tell one another secrets, and sometimes we’d even stick pins in our fingers and swear on the blood we’d never tell—”

  “Don’t talk about blood.”

  “Okay.” Jury lit a cigarette, tossed the match in the ashtray. “Jimmy Poole and I used to go out in the woods and smoke fags and stuff like that, which we weren’t supposed to. We did a lot of things we weren’t supposed to—”

  “Like what?” she asked without looking up from her book. But the crayon had stopped moving.

  “Oh, you know. Swimming in water too deep. Staying out after dark. We used to put pillows in our beds to make our mums think we were asleep and then crawl out of our windows. Jimmy Poole was really clever when it came to finding places where no one could find us. He left false trails. There was a cave where we liked to go and where we hid stuff we didn’t want our mums finding. I remember once I stole a comic from a news agent’s.” He watched as both Emily Louise and Melrose looked at him in mild astonishment. “Oh, yes, I did things like that. Honesty came to me late in life, I expect. I swore Jimmy Poole to secrecy.” Jury looked at Emily. “He didn’t tell, so I was safe.” He noticed Emily was scrubbing away at the line of ducklings with deep concentration now. “That cave was a good place to get away from our mums.”

  “Didn’t you like them?” Emily had laid down her crayon and was frowning horribly at the book.

  “Sometimes, I guess. Sometimes not. We used to have to make up incredible stories to explain where we’d been and what we’d been doing. I mean, if we came home with our clothes muddy or torn we’d have to make up stories.”

  “Who made up the stories, you or Jimmy Poole?”

  Jury considered. “Jimmy Poole. He was smarter.”

  “Why doesn’t he work for Scotland Yard, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She was looking at him now, hard. “I wish I had a lemon squash.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Plant would be happy to fetch one.”

  Melrose, who had been feigning a light doze, opened one eye and said, “I might miss an installment.” Sighing, he got up.

  “Go on, then,” said Emily Louise, prodding Jury’s arm.

  “Well, Jimmy Poole told me lots of strange things and made me swear I’d never breath a word to anyone. But then something happened to someone in the village.” Emily Louise had clasped her hands over the top of her head as if she meant to push herself under the table. “This one person had an . . . accident.”

  Emily slid down in her seat. “A bad one?”

  “Pretty bad. She fell downstairs. That is, maybe she fell. Some people thought she might have got pushed downstairs. We were never sure, though, who did it.” Jury studied the coal-end of his cigarette.

  “Well, didn’t the police come?” Emily frowned mightily at Jury, apparently much irritated at this dereliction of duty on the part of England’s finest.

  “Not the Yard, no.”

  Emily shook her head sadly, disappointed that Jury’s villagers hadn’t had the foresight to call in the Yard.

  “Of course,” said Jury, “they might have done. If only Jimmy Poole had told what he knew.”

  There was a deep silence on the part of Emily, a silence interrupted only by Melrose’s rattling three glasses onto the table. One lemon squash and two brandies. Emily took a sip of her drink and then said, “But he didn’t tell.”

  “No. But I did.”

  “You! But it was a secret!”

  “I know. Believe me, I thought about it and thought about it. See, the trouble was Jimmy Poole was sick and I couldn’t ask him if it was okay to tell.”

  “What was wrong with him?”

  “Mumps. He couldn’t talk, his throat was so bad.”

  “Did he die?”

  “No. But you see, as long as he couldn’t talk, I couldn’t get him to agree to letting me tell the secret. I had to decide for myself, and that’s what always makes it hard. Deciding for yourself. You know why I finally did?”

  Emily shook the head beneath the clasped hands, but kept her eyes riveted on Jury.

  “Because I was afraid that someone else might get pushed downstairs. Or maybe even the one that they pushed might get pushed again.”

  “Didn’t she die?”

  Jury shook his head. “No.”

  “That’s good. Who did you tell?”

  “The rector. He seemed the right sort of person.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell the constable, then? Didn’t your village have one?”

  “Yes. Only, I was afraid of police.”

  “I’m not!” Her answer rang out.

  “You’re not, I know.”

  She rolled her blue crayon back and forth. “Was Jimmy Poole mad at you?”

  “No. He was glad. He said he’d have told himself, finally, only he couldn’t talk.”

  “He had mumps.” Jury nodded. Emily Louise blew out her cheeks, then poked them with her fingers, one on each side. For a long while the three were silent—Melrose with eyes narrowed to slits, Jury staring out of the casement window, Emily Louise puffing out and collapsing her cheeks. Finally, she said, “Did Jimmy Poole ever give you anything?”

  Jury thought for a moment, stubbed out his cigarette and said, “Yes.”

  Another silence. “Did he tell you not to give it to anyone else?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it before he got sick?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it?”

  “A tin box.”

  “What was in the box?”

  “Money. Some letters. Some jewelry. A strange message.”

  “What sort of message?”

  Jury shook his head. “I never figured it out.”

  Now, only Emily’s eyes appeared above the table rim, contemplating Jury. Then, suddenly, she jumped up, gathered her crayons and book together, and said, “I’ve got to go now.” It was as though she’d suddenly remembered ten previous appointments.

  As she disappeared through the doorway, Melrose said, “That was absolutely fascinating—”

  Jury interrupted. “Keep an eye on her, will you? You were right, I’m sure. She knows something, all right.”

  “Well, she’ll never tell me!” When Jury didn’t respond to this, he went on: “She’s to do the phaeton rides tomorrow. There’s a fête tomorrow, didn’t you know?”

  Jury shook his head. “First thing I have to do is talk with this Lady Kennington. Right now, I think I’ll have a kip. Christ, I’m tired.”

  “It’s all that mucking about with Jimmy Poole.”

  Jury smiled and yawned as he cranked open the casement window, disturbing the brown-edged climbing roses.

  “I seem to remember,” said Plant, “that you told me you were born and bred in London. There never was that village, was there? There never was a Jimmy Poole?”

  Jury thought of the bluish-cold lights coming on in the Fulham Road, the girl with the doll, the mum with the pram, the boy with the guitar standing in front of the Saracen’s Head. The blurred outlines of rose petals drifted by in the dark.

  “There’s always a Jimmy Poole.” He drank off his brandy and said good-night.

  FIFTEEN

  I

  AS Melrose stood breathing in the heavily scented air of the roses which had escaped Sylvia Bodenheim’s ministrations, he heard a shrill ye
ll coming from some point beyond the privet hedge. The stable block was back there, so he cut through the hedge, much to the distress of the gardener who craned his neck to see what this stranger was doing to his topiaries.

  Melrose wasn’t sure what had woken him at first light, but as he hadn’t been able to sleep again—perhaps sharing Jury’s unease regarding Emily—he’d got dressed and fiddled around for a bit over a pot of tea and finally made for Rookswood. He knew she would be there, grooming the horses in preparation for the fête.

  The voice was definitely hers, and it was now yelling, Give it back, give it! The rather unpleasant laugh, in answer to this demand, was male.

  As Melrose rounded the stables, he glimpsed the white sweater-sleeve of Derek Bodenheim raised on high and holding a book. Neither Derek nor Emily saw Melrose, as he was standing to the side of the stable door. Anyway, they were too engaged in their game of grabs—although it didn’t appear to be a game to Emily.

  Derek’s back was to Melrose as he stepped forward, raised his silver-knobbed stick, and brought it down smartly, catching Derek just in the crook of the arm. “Really, old chap. She asked you nicely, now, didn’t she?”

  “What the bloody hell—?” said Derek, rubbing his arm and glaring at Melrose.

  Emily had moved swiftly to collect her book. Her face was very red with all of the exertion.

  “Stupid,” said Derek to her. Then he turned his temper on Melrose. “You oughtn’t to go about hitting people with that stick on their own property, you know. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  Melrose didn’t bother answering. He was very curious about the sort of man who could possibly get pleasure out of teasing a ten-year-old. “Why don’t you just run along, there’s a good lad.”

  “Run along! Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” Then he turned to Emily: “I’ll tell your mother, see if I don’t, you’ve been reading dirty books.”

  “Go away! It’s not dirty. I never read it anyhow.”