I Am the Only Running Footman

by Martha Grimes

  Andrew Starr relaxed and lit another cigarette. “If you want to know what I think, it’s that her boyfriend really did want to settle down. Probably, in a little cottage in Kent or somewhere—”

  Jury smiled. “That’s not exactly my impression of David Marr.”

  “I’m extremely intuitive, Superintendent. Seriously.” He looked round the room. “I’ve always been fascinated with this sort of thing — when was Marr born, do you know?”

  Jury calculated. “Nineteen forty-six. I’d have to check the month and day.”

  “And hour. Find out that for me and I can tell just what kind of person he is.”

  Jury had heard of using clairvoyants to solve crimes, but not astrologers. “Thanks. We can use all the help we can get. But do you think he was capable of murder?”

  To Jury’s surprise, Andrew Starr did not immediately say no. Instead, he gazed up at his mock-planetarium, and finally said, “Oh, he seems very cool, but he’s the sort who might do anything — murder, even — if he’s terribly disillusioned.”

  Wiggins looked up from his notebook. “That ‘ace’ up her sleeve, sir. Would you say she might have known something about David Marr?”

  “Possible. In some way she certainly thought she could trump Marr’s trick—No. No. No, children—”

  This was addressed to the stardust twins, who were in the process of hanging the mirror that had been resting against the bookshelves. One of them stood on a short ladder, the other was holding the mirror at the bottom.

  “—a little bit higher. That’s right.”

  It was an odd sort of mirror, a combination of mirror and kaleidoscope. From its fractured center, chips of color turned and reflected in spangles on the twins’ faces. “Where’d you get that?” asked Jury.

  “Antiques shop in Brighton. I thought it would fit here. The kaleidoscope effect is an optical illusion.”

  “Brighton?”

  Andrew nodded. “Used to live in Hove. I did a fair business in Brighton with horoscopes. You know it’s quite famous for looking into the future — if one can put it that way. The place has got a long tradition of astrologers and clairvoyants and so forth. Of course, it’s a seaside town, so perhaps that’s to be expected. Most of them are honest, I’d say. One or two quite brilliant. I was never one of the one or two,” he said ruefully. “Still, I’m honest.”

  Wiggins was watching the mirror-event with great fascination. “Don’t you think, sir, I should just go and give the young ladies a hand?” Without waiting for Jury to agree, he put his notebook on the counter and went off.

  “Interesting. We’ve got to talk to someone in Brighton.” Since it was Wiggins whom Jury was going to have do the talking to, he was glad he was out of earshot; Wiggins didn’t much fancy seaside resorts, winter or summer. Winter, especially, spelled certain death. “Did you ever know Ivy Childess to go there?”

  “Not to my knowledge. As I said, Ivy didn’t believe in much of anything but cold, hard cash. Your sergeant seems to be right at home —” He nodded toward the mirror-event. “— if he ever tires of the Met, think he’d like a job?”

  Jury smiled. “That’s the sign in the window, is it? Speaking of that, have you had any response?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite a bit. But they don’t really suit, somehow.” Andrew shrugged. They’re either condescending or crass.” He looked up at the planets. “They seem to think it’s all a joke, or cleverly commercial, or unworthy of their considerable talents.”

  “The reason I ask is I have a friend who just might do you. Well, if you can take someone a little bit zany. But hardworking and loyal and very, very pretty.”

  “Sounds divine. As to the zany, good; that’s our style. And as to the pretty, all the better. Customers like it, and so do I. A pretty face lifts the spirits, Superintendent, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I certainly would.” He looked at the stardust twins, who with Wiggins’s help had hung the glass from the neon heavens. The three of them were standing, looking up at it, making fun-house faces, splattered with rainbow-chips. “Are they sisters?”

  “Meg and Joy? Oh, no. A lot of people think they’re twins, even. I have them dress alike and I suppose again it’s a kind of illusion. Most people see what they want to, or at least what they expect to. No, Meg and Joy came in one day when I needed a clerk. They just stood there, looking beamish, and their poor faces fell when I told them I only needed the one. They looked so unhappy that I just hired them both. I couldn’t bear separating them, I hated to break up the set.” He smiled. “But I haven’t been sorry. Do you know, they’ve been here for nearly two years, and in all that time I haven’t heard one cross word between them. Plenty of cross words from Ivy, though. And she couldn’t stand Meg and Joy. To me that says a lot about Ivy Childess. Not only was I not going to make her a partner, I was going to fire her.”

  “That bad, was she?”

  “That bad. To tell the truth, I’m surprised it wasn’t the other way round, her being killed. I mean I’d say she’d have been more liable to kill Marr for refusing to marry her. Poor bloke.”

  “Did she ever mention any other men, Andrew? Could that have been the ace up her sleeve?”

  Andrew Starr thought for a moment. “I honestly can’t remember any other man ever being mentioned. He’d have to be rich.”

  “Or someone who might very well have made David Marr jealous.”

  “Him jealous? Oh, no, I don’t think so. In fact I think Marr and I had the same thing in mind: dump her.”

  “She wouldn’t have taken kindly to dumping.” Jury pocketed Wiggins’s notebook and got up. “Andrew, I appreciate your help.”

  “Happy to. And tell that friend of yours to call and set up a time we can get together. Or she can just come round, but the place tends to get very busy.” Andrew wrote on the back of a Starrdust card and handed the card to Jury. “There’s another number here. Ex-directory. The business line can get terribly tied up. We’re closed today, actually. We left the door open for you and your sergeant.”

  “Well, I’ll just collect my sergeant and be on my way.” He called to Wiggins, who turned unhappily from the mirror and came back to the counter, in a wake of giggles. The stardust twins went about polishing the mirror.

  “I like your shop, Mr. Starr. Bet the kiddies find it a sort of paradise, with all the lights and stars and that little house over there.” Wiggins nodded toward Horror-Scopes.

  “They do, yes. Not been inside that, Sergeant?” Andrew slid a bit of a smile in Jury’s direction as Wiggins hesitated, looking at the house.

  “Don’t tempt him. Thanks again.”

  “That’s all right. I hardly feel I’ve been questioned by police.” He smiled.

  “There might be someone coming along to ask a few questions. The Devon police have an interest in this case. Anyway” — Jury smiled — “you might feel you’ve been questioned by police then.”

  “I’ll be watching out for them. Good-bye, Superintendent. Sergeant.” They shook hands as the stardust twins watched. The one on her ladder perch waved the dustcloth.

  • • •

  On the pavement, Jury blinked. “A nice fellow; a nice place.”

  “You know, sir, all of that fooling about with the mirror — I hope you didn’t think I was larking.”

  “No, of course not. Anyway, we all need a bit of a lark now and then.”

  They were walking toward the Covent Garden tube station.

  “What I was really doing, was asking a few discreet questions of the girls.”

  “Oh? Did you find out anything, then?” Jury looked away, smiling.

  Wiggins walked along deep in thought. To help it along, he drew out his tube of lozenges. “Only that they didn’t really know anything, sir. But they did ask me round to their place for tea and a chat sometime. Here, do you need their address?”

  “Just keep it handy, Wiggins. You never know. Here’s the station.” They looked up at the blue and red sign. “It’s going to be pret
ty, isn’t it, when they finally finish.” He nodded toward the scaffolding outside. “Going to be done in a garden motif. Well, it’s Covent Garden, isn’t it?”

  “True. We’re not going to be seeing too much of gardens in the next few days. I want to talk to Marr’s friend, Paul Swann, so I just thought we’d go down to Brighton in the morning.”

  The lozenges might have done for the London market; Brighton, however, hard by the sea, necessitated the drawing out of Wiggins’s handkerchief. “Brighton, sir.” He blew his nose and, without even as yet casting his eye on the cold sea, or lifting his face to the cold sea air, he looked as if he were coming down with sea-virus. “That’s right by the sea, sir.”

  “I know.” It occurred to Jury that not once in the Starrdust had Wiggins gone for nose drops, handkerchief, lozenges. Jury stared up at a sky as unyielding as cement. “Hard falling back to earth, isn’t it?”

  20

  KATE looked up at the high, huge dome, the silver-winged dragon, the star of mirror glass, the open flowers, and the ropes of jewels from which hung the splendid chandelier and wondered what it must have been like when the room was alight. An artificial day created by a blaze of diamonds.

  On the other side of the red velvet cord, Kate was the only visitor now. The half-dozen others who had been wandering about were no longer to be seen. The guard at the end of the banqueting table looked bored, impatient to be home, probably; he had ceased long ago to be impressed by gilded serpents and silver dragons and jewels. Perhaps he thought of it as some sort of joke, some hoax, the sort of thing that royalty was always getting up to. He yawned and clasped his hands behind his back.

  Her mind, she supposed, was no less mundane, no less homeward-looking. In the midst of this splendor — what exotic dishes must have been served up at that table! — she thought of the meal she must fix, the carrots and cabbage left out. Carrots and cabbage.

  Kate dug her hands into her coat pockets, her purse trolling from her wrist, and wondered what Dolly was doing, where she was. They had had another of their arguments about the bed-and-breakfast business, letting the room to a stranger. I beg your pardon, Dolly, but that’s generally the sort who books rooms: strangers. Who was he? What did she know about him? Didn’t she realize it could be dangerous?

  He had hardly looked dangerous. He looked, indeed, quite attractive, quite interesting. Had she told Dolly she had met him in the Spotted Dog — well, all hell would have broken loose. Kate sighed. To meet someone in a pub and offer him a room, knowing nothing about him . . .

  A guard was at her elbow, telling her quietly that it was just on five, closing time. How long had she been standing here? As she walked out into the long corridor, the question remained: What did she know about him except that he was charming? Nothing. He came from London, and what did that mean? Perhaps Dolly was right this time. But then Dolly did not share her, Kate’s, loneliness.

  Under a ceiling divided by small trellises, Kate walked through the reds and blues, bamboo and porcelain, and wondered what sort of man, what sort of king, could build himself this fantasy world. Whose lives had he ruined, whose hearts had he wrecked in the fashioning?

  Kate made her way across Castle Square. A light rain lifted and billowed like a delicate curtain and there were few other people in the square, which is why she noticed the man at the far end of the long walk. It was too far away to tell absolutely, but she thought he resembled the man she’d met in the Spotted Dog. He did not move; he seemed to be looking at her.

  It made her nervous, although she knew it was ridiculous. He was observing the Royal Pavilion, not Kate. She stopped and turned and looked back. The exquisite architecture of the Pavilion’s facade was sorely borne upon by high scaffolding. Most of the workmen had left, but two still sat up there, smoking and drinking from Styrofoam cups. A building full of silver dragons and diamonds and dry rot. She stuffed her hair up under her knitted cap and thought that the reality was the scaffolding, not the silver and gilt. The workmen flicked their cigarettes over the edge, took their belongings, quit, unaware they were patching up a fantasy. Buildings rot, that meant jobs.

  When Kate turned again, the man was gone.

  21

  THREE floors up, Carole-anne Palutski was reeling in the undies pinned to a rope she’d rigged between windowsill and close-hanging branch. The row of bright-colored bikini panties billowed slightly in the wind up there, like flags on a yacht. In the Islington house, there were just the three of them — Mrs. Wassermann in the basement flat, Jury on the ground floor, Carole-anne two floors above, where the rent was cheaper. The middle flat was vacant, and Carole-anne had convinced the landlord to let her “show” it. This was done not simply for the reduced rent it allowed her, but to make sure that if anyone got in, it would be someone who would not upset their clubby threesome.

  • • •

  “Hi, Super!” she called, waving her free hand hysterically as if she didn’t see him every day. The undies shot in; the head disappeared.

  Jury went up the steps to his Islington flat, first looking to see if Mrs. Wassermann was in. These days, with Carole-anne around, Mrs. Wassermann had become less fearful of the London streets, had taken to going out more to the shops and the butcher’s and the greengrocer’s.

  As Jury went up, Carole-anne ran down, her espadrilles slap, slap, slapping on the staircase, her bottle of bright coral nail varnish in one hand. She had finished one set of fingers and one set of toes. They just missed a collision in front of his door, which didn’t surprise Jury; she’d caused enough out in the street. Carole-anne was the only person he knew who could saunter across Piccadilly Circus nonstop. Today she was wearing blinding pink shorts and top that made a surprising blend with her red-gold hair. Only, some of that hair had been dyed an even deeper red since he’d seen her five days ago. Hot coral, brazen pink, brassy orange, fiery licks of hair.

  “Hello, Carole-anne; you look like a Tijuana sunset.” As they went into his flat, he asked her what she’d done to her hair.

  “Now you’ll be on about it, I expect,” she said crossly, as she flopped herself on his sprung sofa and finished applying the polish to her other toes. Then, “Oh,” she said carelessly, unfolding herself and pulling a piece of notepaper from the waistband of her shorts. “Here. It’s from SB-stroke-H.”

  Carole-anne refused actually to name Susan Bredon-Hunt, as if by this magical incantation, the person named might appear out of fire and smoke on the spot. Jury looked at the note and its terse message: eight o’clock.

  Now, Jury knew that Susan Bredon-Hunt was not a woman of few words. He waved the paper. “This all? No flowery tribute to New Scotland Yard and its minions, me being minion number one? No frills and furbelows? No, ‘love, Susan’?” He sat down and pulled out his cigarettes and wondered if he had any more beer.

  “You needn’t get shirty,” Carole-anne said, huffing it out. She was now half-reclining on the sofa, her legs raised in the air, the small of her back propped with her hands. “I’m only the bloody answering service, I am.”

  Jury smiled. Well, it was true. Carole-anne loved to come in and answer his telephone and play her records on his old record player. He sometimes came home and heard the keening wail of Tiny Rudy, her favorite vocalist, or the calamity-in-the-kitchen sounds (breaking crockery and crystal) of Ticket to Hell, her favorite rock group. Given this access to his flat, Carole-anne had decided three months ago that her favorite policeman should have it redecorated and (naturally without his knowledge) had called Decors, one of the swankiest outfits in London, to come round with their swatches.

  Her largess with imaginary money was then forgotten, but the swatches had turned up all the same, in the hand of Susan Bredon-Hunt — tall, model-thin, high-fashion clothes, hair razor cut . . .

  It was beginning to sound metallic. All Carole-anne’s doing, with her various descriptions of Susan. Her dresses looked like sheet-metal, straight up and down. But then if you’d got nothing up here (the description turn
ing graphic), you wouldn’t want to call attention to it, would you? And them cheekbones. She looks like a kite; she’s all wings — hips, face . . . One of these days you’ll be looking up at my undies and see her fly over.

  “You need someone with a bit more bounce,” she said now, raising her legs again.

  “You’re bouncy enough for me. Let’s get back to this job at the sleaze joint. You can’t take that job —”

  “Don’t be such an old stick, Super. It’s a leg up, init?” Her own legs came slowly down.

  “Leg up, hell. From King Arthur’s to Soho is leaving a cesspool for a sewer.”

  She puffed with the exertion of lowering her legs back over her head. “All the Q.T. Club wants is that the hostesses see the clientele don’t run out of drinks and chips. You know, for the gambling.”

  “Oh, don’t I know. The whole Dirty Squad knows. You look like a pretzel.”

  She turned her head and stuck out her tongue.

  “That wheel’s so rigged you could hoist a mainsail on it.” Carole-anne sighed and sat up. “You should see the gown I wear —”

  “No, thanks.”

  Her hands were on her hips. “Lord, you’re wors’n an old mum.” She tossed her head. It was a poor attempt at hauteur with a pile of red-gold curls spilling across her face.

  Jury sighed. He could sympathize with the old mums of this world, trying to convince their kids they shouldn’t do what they didn’t want to do anyway. Well, he supposed the kids had to beat up on someone because they were mad at themselves at not having the nerve to undertake what was usually some harrowing scheme involving danger.

  “You have to be twenty-one to work in that place. You’re under.”

  It was worse than telling her she was ugly. “I’m not under. I’m over. Twenty-two.”

  “No kidding? Last week you were twenty-five when you went looking for that steno job. Twenty-five being the age they wanted. Age melts from thy divine countenance.”

  She changed the subject. “How long you going to be gone?”