Where Memories Lie

by Deborah Crombie

  They appeared to have been taken on the same day, and she recognized the communal garden behind Erika's house. The trees were in full leaf, and groups of people she didn't recognize smiled into the camera. The women wore sundresses and cotton blouses, the men had opened their collars and rolled up their sleeves.

  "It was a victory party," Erika said. "That August. For those of us who had made it through."

  And then Gemma found the photo. Erika must have been only a few years younger than Gemma, but she looked slight as a girl. Her dark hair was loose, and her deep brown eyes looked into the camera with the gravity that Gemma had come to know so well. She was astonishingly lovely.

  Erika took the photo from her, gazing at it. "I remember her as if she were someone I knew once." She put the photo aside and took the teacup Gemma offered her. "Now," she said, "what is it you don't want to tell me?"

  ***

  Elated by her success in finding the photo of Joss Miller in the same edition of the paper that had contained Erika Rosenthal's article, Melody was more than a little disappointed when Gemma wouldn't take her along to talk to Dr. Rosenthal.

  But she knew Gemma always made an effort to include her when possible, and she had to trust Gemma's judgment on this one. She was nervous, though, as Gemma had said she might call for backup, and Melody knew little more than that Dominic Scott had apparently committed suicide, and that Joss Miller might have had some connection with David Rosenthal.

  The minutes ticked by and Gemma didn't ring. Melody ate a cheese-and-pickle sandwich at her desk and drank a nasty cup of vending machine tea that tasted like pond sludge. She sorted through incoming reports, initialing the things that didn't need Gemma's perusal, then, checking the time again, she realized her access to the Guardian's digital archives had not yet expired.

  Turning back to the computer, she put in an advanced search for articles or clippings concerning Joss Miller from the war onwards. She found articles on investment mergers and art acquisitions, and a few photos similar to the one in the May 1952 edition. Her attention had begun to waver when she saw the notice of a wedding in June 1953 between Josiah Miller and the Honorable Lady Amanda Bentley.

  So Miller had married a minor but well-funded title-if her memory served her, the Bentleys had been in the biscuit trade. But by that time, Joss Miller had probably been more interested in the title than in the money.

  Alert again, Melody kept on with her search. Ellen Ann Miller had been born in 1955, according to the birth notices. And in 1960, the Honorable Amanda had quietly passed away, according to the obit, "after an illness."

  "No fuss, no muss," Melody said aloud. Apparently Amanda Bentley had served her purpose, for Josiah Miller did not remarry, although there were occasional reports of society liaisons.

  In the early seventies, photos of Ellen Ann Miller began to appear at society parties. Melody whistled through her teeth. Even in her late teens, Ellen Miller had been stunning. Not beautiful, exactly, but she had possessed a feline, predatory sexiness that practically oozed off the page.

  And then, in 1978, Ellen Miller smiled out of a photo captioned High Time at the Roxy, and beside her name was that of the handsome, dark-haired young man with his arm round her shoulders. Harry Pevensey.

  ***

  "This other man, killed like the girl," Erika said when Gemma had finished. "And Joseph Mueller's grandson hanged himself? Dear God, there has to be an end to it."

  "So what if Joseph Mueller kept the brooch because he was afraid it might be identified, or perhaps just because he liked keeping reminders of his cruelty," Gemma mused aloud. "And when Dom was desperate for money, and his mother wouldn't help him, Dom took it and had it put up for sale." Had he found it by chance? she wondered.

  "Then, when I told Kristin that you had made a claim on the brooch, she told Dom, and he panicked."

  "Even if he didn't know how it had come into his family," agreed Erika, "he couldn't afford to be associated with it."

  "The barmaid at the club where Dom met Kristin said they argued that night," she went on. "If he told her she had to take the brooch out of the sale, that he had to have it back, and she told him she couldn't-or wouldn't-then he must have been desperate. But I still don't see where he got a car in time to get back to Chelsea and wait for her to get home."

  "And the other man, this Harry-"

  "Pevensey. A washed-up actor. Dom used him to cover his connection with the transaction. He was protecting himself from the first-"

  "And then you think this young man, who could kill so ruthlessly, took his own life out of guilt?" Erika shook her head. "That I find difficult to believe. The suicide is an act of a different type of character entirely."

  "Perhaps not guilt, but desperation-if he meant to run you down last night, and failed-" Gemma shuddered, not only at the thought of how close Erika had been to peril, but because by sending Kit to check on Erika she might have put him in danger, too.

  Erika set her cup in its saucer with a clink. "I think you're wrong, Gemma. If he failed last night, why not try again? And how would he have known that my recognition of the brooch would damn his family? Even if the sale had been traced back to him, why not claim he picked it up at an auction or an antiques stall?"

  Gemma stared at her, trying to fit all that they had learned into a cohesive whole. "Unless Joss Miller kept David's manuscript," she said slowly, "and in it David revealed everything-"

  "You think this young man would have put the brooch up for auction knowing its history-knowing how his grandfather had come by it?" Erika raised her delicate eyebrows in disbelief.

  Gemma thought of Dominic Scott as they had first met him, white and sweating, collapsing at the news of Kristin Cahill's death.

  They knew now that he had been a junkie, strung out and ill-was it conceivable that he had taken an object that he knew tainted his family, then planned and carried out two murders, and attempted a third?

  Dom Scott, who had been so bullied by his mother that he had hated to go into her sitting room, with its reminders of his grandfather's success?

  Dom Scott, whose grieving mother had compared him to his grandfather, even as his body hung cooling upstairs, and found fault?

  "Oh, no," Gemma breathed. "We got it wrong. We got it all wrong."

  ***

  "Bingo." Cullen came into Kincaid's office looking jubilant. "I've got the bastard. I found a Land Rover still registered under Joss Miller's name. And, in the property tax rolls, I found a lockup garage in Chelsea Square, also in Joss Miller's name. That's where Dom Scott will have kept the car. I've put in a request for a warrant to search the garage. We need to get any trace evidence from that Land Rover before his mum twigs and cleans it. You know she won't want her son to go down as a murderer."

  Kincaid pushed back the reports he'd been poring over and sat back in his chair, frowning. "Another car. And a lockup. Of course." He shook his head. "But even assuming we found trace evidence on the car, we still couldn't put him in the driver's seat at the scene of the accident." He straightened the papers, thinking. "Not that proving him guilty would do anything other than tidy up our case results. We can't prosecute a dead man."

  "No," said Cullen. "But it won't be prosecution that will worry Dom Scott's mother. Just the rumor of her family's involvement would be enough to send her into a tizzy. You know she-"

  "Reputation." Kincaid sat up so quickly the chair rocked. "Nothing matters more to Ellen Miller-Scott than reputation. What if Gemma was right? What if Erika Rosenthal's husband had some proof that Joss Miller was involved in war crimes?"

  "David Rosenthal has been dead for years," Cullen argued. "Whatever he knew obviously died with him."

  "But what if it didn't?" Kincaid glanced at his watch. It was long past time for Gemma to have checked in. The formless anxiety that had plagued him ever since they found Dom Scott's body suddenly coalesced into a hard knot of worry, and he reached for his phone.

  ***

  "Where are you?"
Kincaid said sharply in Gemma's ear. "You've been ages-"

  "I'm still at Erika's. I'm sorry, my signal's iffy-"

  "We found the Land Rover, still registered to Joss Miller. And a lockup garage in Chelsea Square, about a seven-minute walk from the house. But I don't think Dom-"

  "I know." Gemma stepped out into the garden, where her mobile reception was better. "It was Ellen."

  She told him all she'd learned from Erika, then added, "What if Dom came across the brooch and chanced selling it, because he was desperate and had nowhere else to turn? He probably had no idea of its history or of its true value until he showed it to Kristin."

  "But Ellen would have known," Kincaid continued. "Either because she'd seen David Rosenthal's manuscript or-"

  "Or because her father told her." Gemma's voice was flat with disgust. Could Joss Miller possibly have bragged to his daughter about rape and murder?

  "Deathbed confession, maybe," Kincaid said more charitably, but then he hadn't heard Erika describe what Joss Miller had done. "But if Ellen learned the history of the brooch, no matter how or when she came by the knowledge, she would have known that if the piece were publicly connected with her family, it could prove disastrous.

  "She would have been livid when she found it missing." Gemma imagined Ellen going to her father's desk or safe-surely the Millers had a safe-perhaps to get a piece of her own to wear, and realizing the brooch was missing. "Oh, God, she'd have ripped poor Dom to shreds. And she would have told him he had to get it back, at all costs."

  "So then Dom sent Kristin flowers," Kincaid continued, "and got her to agree to meet him that night at the Gate. But Kristin told him she couldn't take the brooch out of the sale-"

  Gemma thought of the girl she had met. "My guess is that she was fed up with him. And she wanted the money from the commission. That four percent of the sale price would have meant something to her, if not to Dom. And she would have told him that we'd been there, saying someone had claimed the brooch, that it had been stolen during the war. That would've put the wind up Dom completely. But then…how did Ellen-" Gemma hesitated, still not quite sure she could put it together.

  "I think," said Kincaid, "I think that Dom rang his mother, after Kristin left him at the Gate that night. We'll have to ask Eva, the barmaid, if she remembers him using his mobile. And Ellen…" Kincaid paused, and Gemma knew he was running his free hand through his hair until it stood on end, the way he did when he was working something out.

  "Maybe at first she just meant to talk some sense into Kristin," she said. "Ellen's Mercedes was in for repairs, so she might have had the Land Rover out for a small errand, then parked near the house rather than in the lockup-"

  Kincaid picked it up. "But the car had no plates-from the records I'd guess it's an old mud car from their country place-and that might have occurred to her while she was sitting in front of Kristin's building, waiting for Kristin to come home. And Dom's news about Erika coming forward would have raised the stakes enormously. It meant not possible ruin, but certain ruin. She must have realized that if Erika came forward, it wasn't just reputation, but the possibility that the Millers and their business assets could have faced a lawsuit. There are enough precedents. There have been both individuals and corporations sued for profiting from atrocities committed against Jews during the war."

  "And then she saw Kristin walking down from the bus stop, alone." Gemma watched the leaves of Erika's fig tree move in the breeze. "And she knew Kristin would have to cross the road-"

  "And Ellen would have guessed that she could risk the CCTV, because the car had no plates, and the camera would never get a clear view of the driver's face." Kincaid paused, and when he went on, his voice held a hint of awe. "What a risk she took. But she couldn't stop there. She still had to try to get the brooch removed from the sale. So the next morning, she sent Dom to see Harry Pevensey. That was the row Harry's neighbor heard. But Harry refused as well-even a percentage of the reserve on the brooch would have been a godsend to him-"

  "And Dom had no proof of ownership, not without doing the very thing he was trying to avoid." Gemma couldn't help but feel pity for Dominic Scott. "And then when he went home to tell his mum Harry wouldn't cooperate, we were there to tell him Kristin was dead, murdered. No wonder he fainted on us. He must have realized his mother had killed her."

  Kincaid finished the thought for her. "And then, because Dom had failed in his mission, that night Ellen killed Harry, too."

  Gemma felt ill, not only for the vicious deaths of Kristin Cahill and Harry Pevensey, but for the brutal choice Ellen Miller had forced on her son. "And Dom-Dom had to decide whether to inform on the mother who had bullied him his entire life, in the process ruining his family's-and more important, his grandfather's-name-"

  "Or let his mother get away with murdering two innocent people. No wonder the sad bugger decided it was easier to top himself."

  "Or three people," said Gemma. She looked through the conservatory window at Erika, still sitting in the kitchen, and told him that Erika had seen a car waiting in her street last night, its lights dark, and that she had described it as looking like a Land Rover. "If her cabdriver hadn't waited until she got in her door-" Only then did the enormity of what might have happened really hit her.

  "Bloody hell!" Kincaid swore so viciously that Gemma jumped. "Of course. Erika. Erika is the last, and the most vital, link. You were right to have been worried about her. Listen-" He stopped and Gemma heard Cullen's voice in the background, and Kincaid responding with "No, hang on to the warrant. We're not going to search the garage yet. We don't want to tip Ellen Miller-Scott off. I have a much better idea."

  ***

  "I will not let you put another young woman's life in jeopardy." Erika crossed her arms, looking as stubborn as Gemma had ever seen her.

  Gemma sat once more in the chair opposite and studied her friend across the small kitchen table. Although when Kincaid had explained to her what he meant to do, she'd agreed reluctantly, she knew that he was right. Now she just had to convince Erika.

  "I know you don't want to do that," she said earnestly, meeting Erika's gaze. "But you don't want to see Ellen Miller-Scott get away with two murders, not to mention what she did to her son. And we can't place her at the wheel of that car at the time of the collisions, any more than we could have placed Dominic."

  "But if you find evidence on the car-"

  "It doesn't matter. Any good lawyer would make mincemeat of it, and Ellen will have the best. All she has to do is say her son was driving, and that he took his own life because he felt guilty over what he'd done. She could even say Dom was drink-driving and both deaths were tragic accidents, and we couldn't prove otherwise. But"-she leaned forward, pushing her empty teacup and plate aside-"we believe she's going to give us the perfect opportunity to prove intent to commit murder.

  "I think she waited for you to come home last night. I suspect she rang first to see if you were in-we'll check your caller ID-and when you didn't answer, she took her opportunity, and if not for your cabbie, she might have succeeded. We'll need to be prepared for her to ring you again," Gemma added, "because if you are at home, she'll need some ruse to get you out of the house."

  "But her son is dead! How could this woman go on with-"

  "I don't believe for one moment that Dom's suicide will stop her from trying again. Ellen doesn't know how much we know, so as far as she's concerned, if she silences you, she removes the threat to her way of life and preserves her father's legacy."

  Erika gazed out into the garden, and the slight movement of air from the open window moved a feather of white hair against her cheek. She sighed. "Gemma, I'm not disagreeing with any of that. No one wants to see this woman caught more than I. But I want to do it myself. I don't believe that a decoy will convince her, and it's my right to take the risk. If I hadn't kept silent all these years-"

  "Her father would have killed you the way he killed David," Gemma said brutally. "Joss Miller must have been s
ure David hadn't told you what he'd learned, and decided that killing you after he'd murdered David might cause unnecessary interest. But now you have a chance to close the books, and you need to let us do our job. And our job is to protect you as much as it is to catch a killer."

  There was a long moment, in which Gemma heard the neighbors who rented the flat upstairs from Erika scraping furniture across the floor. And then, in the following silence, a faint thread of music, the theme of an afternoon show on the telly.

  "All right," Erika agreed at last. "But I don't like it. And I still don't believe anyone can play me convincingly."

  Gemma smiled, her relief making her flippant. "If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were a bit full of yourself. Give us a bit of cred-"

  The door buzzer sounded, making them both start. When Erika started to rise, Gemma motioned her back with a hand. "No," she said softly. "Let me get it." She grabbed her phone, her heart thumping, and went quietly towards the front of the flat. They had assumed Ellen Miller-Scott would stick with the tried and true, keeping her hands clean, but assumptions were just that. They had no assurance that she wouldn't try to attack Erika in her flat in broad daylight.

  But before she could peek out the bedroom window, she heard Melody's voice calling out, "Boss, are you okay in there?"

  "Melody!" Gemma unlatched the door and urged Melody inside. "What are you doing here?"

  "Your mobile's not picking up. I was worried about you."

  "Damn," said Gemma, wondering if she'd missed other calls. Her signal had been patchy when she talked to Duncan.

  "And I had something to show you," Melody went on. She pulled a sheet of paper from her bag, and Gemma recognized it as another copy made from the Guardian archives.

  Gemma took the page and moved farther into the hall, where she could hold the picture under the wall sconce, and stared at it, trying to take in what she saw.