“You make it sound like a gang rape, Macalvie. Maybe Wiggins could just read the notes.”
Disinclined as he was to stop eating his boiled egg, Wiggins put down his spoon and took out his notebook.
“Put that away, dammit,” said Macalvie. “I know who said what. So, the kids made up this silly song, mostly, I imagine, because The Thornbirds has been putting everybody to sleep for days now on the telly. You know; it’s that mini-mind soap opera series. Julie —”
Macalvie could get on a first-name basis pretty quickly, Jury thought.
“— said Angela got a real going over with that pun on her name. None of the kids much liked Angela Thorne. Why?” Macalvie answered his own question. “Because she was sullen, bad-tempered, plain as pudding, wore thick glasses, and was so good at her lessons it even tired out the teachers. Julie said the headmistress just wished Angela’d take her O levels and get the hell out. Pretty funny.” Whatever Macalvie was remembering from the night before obviously delighted him.
“Not very funny for Angela. Wasn’t this Julie Elgin a little cut up over Angela’s murder?”
“Sure. Scared witless, like everybody else. News travels fast. At midnight parents were calling her to say their kids wouldn’t be going to school. But the point is, nobody liked Angela, including her parents.”
Jury put down his coffee cup. “Her teacher said that?”
“No. And she didn’t have to, did she?” Again he answered his rhetorical question. “Mummy’s eyes were red, but more from booze than from tears. George was more worried about his own neck than his kid’s death, though of course, he put up a front — but it was all pretense, no pain — and the older sister, the one who got the looks, kept talking about being in shock, as if she’d like to go into it for my sake, but couldn’t get the electrodes in place. In other words, it was all an act. I asked them for a picture of Angela. Mum and Dad kind of looked at one another as if they couldn’t quite place their youngest, and finally Carla — the sister — had to go off and look for a picture. Funny. There were certainly pictures of the bosomy rose Carla all over the mantel. But not even so much as a snapshot of Angela.”
“Then she must have been a lonely little girl. Let’s get back to your theory of what happened.”
“Well, it’s the dog, isn’t it?” Macalvie watched Jury lighting a cigarette as if it were a daemonic act, meant to trap Macalvie into reaching for the packet.
“The dog? Macalvie, if you say something about the dog in the nighttime, I’ll do just what you want — leave.” Jury smiled.
Macalvie’s hopeful look vanished when Jury didn’t actually get up. Then he shrugged: stay or leave, it was all one to Macalvie. “The person who killed the kid must have had some connection with her or Lyme Regis. How the hell did he or she know where to drop the dog?”
“Dogtags, maybe.”
Macalvie looked pained. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jury. A perfect stranger wandering all over Lyme carrying a terrier looking for Cobble Cottage? No way. So it was either someone who befriended the Kid and the Poor Kid’s dog,” (Jury could just feel the sympathy welling up in Macalvie’s breast) “someone not from Lyme, or someone who’s been living in Lyme and knew the kid’s habits.”
“But Angela Thorne didn’t habitually go against the rules, you led me to believe.”
Impatiently, Macalvie stuffed a sourball in his mouth, sucked on it awhile as he hankered after Jury’s cigarette, then tossed the candy in the ashtray. “Wonder how Kojak stood it. . . .Look at little Angela’s feelings about Mum and Dad and school and so forth. Somebody could have befriended her and then hung around Lyme, waiting for a chance. What do you think?”
“I think no.” Jury would have laughed had Macalvie not looked so serious. Disagree with Macalvie’s theory?
“Why the hell not?”
“Aren’t you overlooking the obvious?”
Macalvie gave Wiggins a can-you-believe-this-guy? look, got no reassurance from Jury’s sergeant, and turned the sparking blue eyes back to Jury. “I never overlooked the obvious in my entire life, Jury.”
“That’s swell. You do think Angela was killed by the same person that murdered the other two, don’t you?”
“Probably,” said Macalvie, cautiously, like a man being led into a trap.
“Then you’d have to assume that the murderer was friendly with all of the victims. That’s possible, but not very probable. I don’t think the murders are indiscriminate or arbitrary, but at the same time, I don’t think the killer took the chance of ‘befriending’ these children. Simply because it would have been a hell of a chance to take —”
“True. Especially for a man just out of prison.”
And since Macalvie’s theory left only one candidate for the string of murders, it was perhaps less than fortuitous for her that Molly Singer chose that moment to appear in the doorway of the White Lion’s dining room.
II
It wasn’t love at first sight when Molly Singer met Divisional Commander Macalvie.
The sparks between them made Jury think of a high-speed train braking. She could sense Macalvie’s hostility, even before he opened his mouth.
Jury offered her breakfast, and Macalvie offered her a grim-reaper smile, which was enough to kill anyone’s appetite. Jury doubted she had one to begin with. She asked for coffee.
Today she looked different. Her eyes were less molten gold and more honey-colored. That might have been because of the gold cape she wore. Her dark hair was pulled back, but the shorter ends clung to her face as if they were wet with seaspray or rain.
“I just wanted to have a little talk with you about last night,” said Macalvie. “Your handling of the situation was kind of odd.”
“Yes, I suppose it was. Though at the time I wasn’t thinking too clearly —”
“Did you panic, or something?” His tone was almost friendly.
“Panic. Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
“That’s why you threw your cape over the girl?”
She nodded and looked away.
“Not because you wanted to hide the body.” The tone was simply matter-of-fact.
Quickly, she looked at him again. “That’s ridiculous. If I’d killed her, I certainly wouldn’t leave my cape behind to lead police right to my door.”
Macalvie shrugged. “You’re not the only one in Lyme or hereabouts who owns a cape.”
“You think I’d take a chance like that?”
“I don’t know. Do you know the Thornes?”
She shook her head, looking down at the coffee brought by the patrician waitress, but not drinking it.
“How did you know where to take the dog?”
“The name of their place was on the tag.”
“Very humanitarian. There’s a pub in Dorchester called the Five Alls. Ever been there?”
“No. I don’t go to pubs.”
“Not a drinker?”
“On the contrary, I drink a lot. But alone.”
Wiggins, who seemed to have taken a liking to Molly Singer as another victim of life’s vicissitudes, looked sad. Jury was afraid he might take them all for a stroll down Gin Lane.
“As I’d guess,” Molly went on, “you already know.”
Macalvie’s eyes grew round as a cat’s. “How would I know that?”
She looked at Jury. “The superintendent might have told you. More likely you’ve already been at the dustbin men.”
Macalvie laughed. “You’re pretty smart.” He made it sound like an indictment. “Where were you early yesterday morning? Around six, say?”
“In my cottage. Asleep. Why?”
“And where the afternoon of the tenth?”
“In my cottage. Or walking on the Cobb.”
“Like last night?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone see you?”
“Probably not.”
“You don’t go out much.”
“No.”
“You don’t see people.”
<
br /> “No.”
“Funny way to act.”
“I think I’m agoraphobic.” What there was of an embarrassed smile was quickly erased when Macalvie slammed his fist on the table.
“I don’t care sod-all about some phobia. If you’ve been to psychiatrists, I’ll subpoena their records if I have to. You don’t go out, don’t see people, and yet —” Macalvie pointed toward the street “— in that short-stay parking lot by the ocean you’ve got a great little Lamborghini that’s clocked up over sixty thousand on a ‘C’ registration. You do a hell of a lot of traveling, don’t you? In that car you could make it to Dorchester and back in a little more than an hour and to Wynchcoombe in two, I’ll bet — provided a cop didn’t get in your way. What’s a little stay-at-home like you doing with a Lamborghini?”
Molly Singer got up slowly. “I think I’ve answered your questions.”
“No, you haven’t. Sit down.”
“Wouldn’t you rather finish your breakfast?” Before anyone could stop her, she tipped her side of the table, sending plates, food, cutlery crashing and rolling, and most of it into Macalvie’s lap. Then she walked out.
“God! What a temper.” Macalvie seemed perversely pleased, looking at his stained suit and the wreckage all around them: cups, kippers, broken glass.
It even broke the porcelain pose of the waitress in black and white.
III
Lyme Regis was one of many coastal villages whose beauty was reckoned in proximity to the sea. It had been two centuries ago so much the object of Jane Austen’s affections that it now had, where the Marine Parade ended in a narrow street, a pretty boutique called Persuasion. Thought Jury, If Stratford-upon-Avon wants to put Shakespeare on sugar cubes . . . why not?
Macalvie came out of the newsagent’s at the top of the street, at the triangle where Broad Street and Silver Street ran together down to the sea, taking tearooms, greengrocers, Boots, and banks with them. Wiggins had been left to see to the wreckage at the White Lion.
Just as Macalvie appeared, a Mini went speedboating down the narrow street. He wrote the registration number in his notebook. Macalvie would do dog’s duty just so long as it gave him the pleasure of collaring some miscreant.
He slapped the notebook shut and said, “Nothing there. She knew Angela because Angela would stand around reading Chips and Whizzer without paying. The old broad in there hated her. She chased her off yesterday evening somewhere around six. She was closing up late.”
Macalvie was turning a stile of postcards and removed one that showed the confluence of the streets they were on. He stuffed a stick of gum in his mouth, and said, “You’re a minder, you know?”
Jury looked at Macalvie, who was frowning down at the postcard. “Meaning what?”
Macalvie shrugged. “A minder: kind of cop who watches over frails. Defenseless women.”
Jury laughed. “You see too many American films, Macalvie.”
Unoffended, Macalvie said, “No, I’m serious.”
Indeed he did look it, staring from the picture-view of the street to the real thing. One would have thought he might be an artist, studying light and angles. “I’d like to know what she’s doing in Lyme,” he said, almost inconsequentially.
“Molly Singer?”
He shook his head. “Her name’s not Molly Singer. It’s Mary Mulvanney.”
Macalvie slotted the card back in the rack and started up the street.
IV
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
TEN
THE Lady Jessica Mary Allan-Ashcroft looked from blank square to blank square on the calendar hanging in the kitchen and with her black crayon, stood on tiptoe so she could reach FRIDAY: 14 FEBRUARY. She drew a giant X across that square, knowing she was cheating, since it was only teatime and the awful day was not yet over. Another day as blank as the square. There were now five X’s in a row. The picture above them showed some Dartmoor ponies doing what they always did — chewing grass. She looked at the picture for March. It showed the giant rock-formation of Vixen Tor and a few hardy pilgrims on their way up the rocks. Another stupid pile of rocks they walked for miles to see.
Just last August she had been driving out with Uncle Robert and had seen a lot of people with boots and back packs at one of those tourist centers, all kitted out to walk to one of those tors in the middle of Dartmoor. Jessie and her uncle were driving with the top down in his Zimmer, and she thought those people out there must be crazy, walking when they could be driving. She told him this and he burst out laughing.
• • •
“Eat your tea, my love,” said Mrs. Mulchop. Her husband, Mulchop, served as groundskeeper and sometimes as butler and looked no more like one than he did the other. He sat now at the kitchen table eating a mess of something.
Mrs. Mulchop moved a pot in the huge inglenook fireplace, in the huge kitchen, in the huge house, in the huge grounds. . . .
Jessie’s mind drifted like a veil of rain over all of this hugeness that was the Ashcroft house and grounds. “It’s too big,” she said, looking at the egg on toast on her plate. Its sickening yellow eye stared back at her.
“Your egg, lovey?”
“No. The house. I’m all alone.” Jessie rested her chin in her hands.
Mrs. Mulchop raised her eyes heavenward and shook her head. She did not realize that beneath this surface melodrama, a true drama of heartsickness was playing itself out. “You’re ten years old, not a baby. Wouldn’t your uncle be annoyed to see you so sorry for yourself?”
Jessie was shocked to think that anyone would believe Uncle Robert would ever be “annoyed” by Jessie. “No! He’d understand.” Now Jessie felt the threat of real tears. Real tears she could not contend with.
“Your uncle’s only been gone a few days, lass. No need to get fidgety about it —”
“Four days! Four and a half! See —” Jessie scraped her chair back and marched to the calendar. “He didn’t leave me a note. He didn’t give me a Valentine, either.” She went back to her chair as if she’d just proven all theories of a clockwork universe defunct in the face of this outrage against reason. But what she felt was more worry than outrage.
“He’s probably only gone up to London to see to another governess for you.” Mrs. Mulchop glanced at her husband, but his face was too near his bowl to return the look.
Jessie heard the slight sharpness in that another. She ran through governesses like a shark through a salmon-fall.
“And you’re not all alone. There’s me and Mulchop and Miss Gray and Drucilla.”
The Dreadful Drucilla, Miss Plunkett, the present tutor-governess. Not a proper one, though. More of a minder Uncle Rob had settled for when he had discharged the Careless Carla, who was absolutely brilliant at maths, but a little absentminded about keys and spectacles. Out walking across the moor, she had lost Jessie one day, though there had been, in the confrontation with Robert Ashcroft, some doubt as to who had lost whom.
Battalions of governesses. How they sat so neatly and nicely when he was interviewing them. Uncle Rob questioned them closely about their former posts, their credentials, their ability to respond to emergencies; but now and then he would throw one in from left field, such as And do you like rabbits?
Jessie liked to see the corners of his mouth twitch and the bewildered look on the face of the prospective employee. Well, yes. That is, I expect I’ve nothing against them. . . . He had explained later to Jess that it was a matter of honesty, and Miss Whatever-her-name wasn’t being honest. She was from Portland (where the Ashcroft stone had come from). In Portland, one is never allowed to mention rabbits. They all hate them, Uncle Rob had told her.
Thus that one had lost out on a very well paying post, as did most of the prospective women who applied. They sat there saying, Oh, yes, Mr. Ashcroft, when they meant No; or Oh, no, Mr. Ashcroft, when they meant Yes. And a lot of them would try to snuggle up to Jessica until they realized she wasn’t much good for a snuggle, and call her stupid things
like “Poppit,” and pet her dog Henry, to show how much they liked animals.
Robert Ashcroft could not go on forever relentlessly pursuing the perfect governess, so in the end, he left it up to Jessie, as she was the one who would have to put up with the woman. Uncle Rob often asked her why it was she avoided the nicer ones and chose the worst. There was the Hopeless Helen (who kept the key to the drinks cabinet in more or less constant motion); the Mad Margaret, who had trembled during the interview with a severe case of stage fright, but ended up roaring like a lion, acting being her field of expertise; the Prudent Prucilla, who left rather quickly one night, along with the Crown Derby. Of all of them, the Dubious Desiree had lasted the longest because she had done nothing absolutely wrong, short of hating her pupil, a fact that she kept very well hidden from everyone but Jess herself. Jess put up with the cold-blooded treatment because she knew Desiree was going to do herself in anyway, eventually. In the meantime, she did make Jess a little nervous because of her looks: she was dark and sleek and always winding herself on the couch like a cobra when he was around. But Uncle Rob was not easily fooled; the Dubious Desiree lasted a month.
It seemed a great puzzle to Uncle Rob — his niece’s choices. Why Miss Simpson instead of Miss James? Miss Simpson seemed a bit stiff to me. But Sally James was, well, rather smashing, he said, before he had returned to the reading of his morning paper, the jamming of his morning toast.
Jessie was not about to have any Smashing Sallys around.
Thus Jessie had never complained about any of them because she knew, every time one of them got sacked, there might be another just waiting in the wings. The Amiable Amy.
Jessie was an omnivorous reader — largely owing to Mad Margaret, who stuffed books and plays into her like sausage. Mad Margaret thought herself the heroine of all of them. Many was the rainy morning that found Jess curled up on the window seat in the library with Henry as a backrest, poring over Jane Eyre and Rebecca. Jessie knew just how sly some women could be: soft and kind and quiet-spoken and so sly (and amiable) they might even catch Jessie in their nets.
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