I Am the Only Running Footman

by Martha Grimes

  “There’s another painting there, Mr. Swann, a portrait you probably did?”

  “Yes, Rose and Phoebe. Rose Winslow walked out on Edward. You can imagine,” he added shaking his head.

  It was as though any such behavior on the part of one of them would cause the others to close ranks completely. Jury thought of Hugh Winslow. “Did you hear any talk of another man, someone who perhaps, well, lured Rose Winslow away?”

  Paul Swann stared at him, and then he laughed. “Lure Rose? Good God, I should certainly think it would be the other way round. Poor Ned.”

  “Did David Marr ever mention her?”

  “Yes. He disliked her. Well, she wasn’t very likable, you see.”

  His voice slightly muffled, Wiggins said, “Seems strange they’d keep her picture about, in the circumstances.”

  “It’s because of Phoebe,” said Swann. “It’s really all they’ve got left of Phoebe.”

  Jury looked at the watercolor, the strange milky light of the fog he’d captured that blanketed the pier. “Did you ever hear Marr mention a woman named Sheila Broome at all?”

  “Broome? No, never.”

  “Well, it was just a long shot, Mr. Swann. Thanks.”

  Wiggins had been studying the watercolor and said, “You know, that’s good. That yellow you just put on. Changes the whole thing, really. Makes it look like it’s floating.”

  “Ah, that’s just it, Mr. Wiggins. Thank you. You’ve a grand eye. Do you dabble in the paint pots too?”

  “Just a bit,” said Wiggins, without a pause. “Sunday painter, that sort of thing.”

  Jury looked out to sea. Whenever Wiggins found himself in the presence of art, literature, music, a new persona evolved out of the fog, a form taking shape right before Jury’s eyes. At any rate, with Swann’s speaking to him like a brother, Wiggins had begun to unwind the labyrinthine scarf.

  And to include Paul Swann in the elite group of those Wiggins would like to save from certain death. “Care for one, Mr. Swann?”

  Paul Swann thanked him and held up the amber lozenge in the fading light. “That is a truly remarkable color.”

  “I’ve always thought so, Mr. Swann,” he said innocently, holding up its mate in the same way.

  Jury scuffed at the broken shells at his feet and was rather sorry his own inartistic eye could identify nothing much but tan beach and gray water. The conversation had switched to literature.

  “Sometimes I wonder if Coleridge’s dream about Kubla Khan was inspired by George the Fourth and his plans for the Pavilion. The renovation had been going on for ten years when he wrote ‘Kubla Khan.’ ” Paul Swann smiled. “ ‘His flashing eyes, his floating hair.’ Can you think of a better candidate for him than the Prince Regent who ‘fed on honeydew and drank the milk of paradise’?”

  “I never thought of it exactly that way,” said Wiggins.

  Jury shook his head. If he ever thought of it any way, it was news to Jury.

  “And Mrs. Fitzherbert, the only woman he ever loved, according to George, might have also been the perfect candidate for the poor woman ‘wailing for her demon-lover.’ ” Paul Swann sighed and gathered up his paints and sketches and brushes. “Love, love, hmm. I suppose I don’t truly qualify as an artist, never having known the turbulence of heartrending passion. But to tell the truth, seeing all the misery it causes, I just thought I’d give it a miss.” He grinned. “I imagine the crime passionnel keeps you in work. Do you think this is one, this case?”

  Jury said, sadly, “There’s certainly enough passion to go round, Mr. Swann.”

  • • •

  Swann left them and they walked down the Promenade, past the pub, what looked like changing rooms, a video place where chairs and tables were set up outside for people wanting coffee and soft drinks.

  • • •

  Next door, a fellow was busy slapping paint on the facade of a little museum of antique slot machines, called the Old Penny Palace. He laid down his brush and went inside. Wiggins studied the poster describing some of the machines on display and said, “Look at this, will you?” He pointed to a strength-tester. “Haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid. Good for the circulation.” He raised his arm, tried to make a muscle. “And over there. Tell your fortune, that does. One of those booths where you pick up a phone and a voice tells you your future.”

  “A voice from the next world, Wiggins?”

  “I know it’s just a tape that runs over and over. Still, I wouldn’t mind giving it a try. Could we stop here for a minute, do you think?”

  While Wiggins talked to the young fellow behind the counter, Jury waited beside the Laughing Sailor. It was dressed in a navy blue uniform and sported a white cap over its sad painted eyes.

  “He said the place wasn’t open yet, he’s trying to get it ready for its opening,” said Wiggins.

  “Then how’d you get these?” Jury held up a token.

  Wiggins counted his tokens, frowning. “Well, I just happened to show him my warrant — ”

  “Wiggins!”

  “No harm done, no harm, sir. Try a few machines; it’ll take your mind off things.”

  “I’m going next door for a cup of coffee.” He was looking at the poster near the door listing some of the museum’s offerings. “I wonder what the butler saw.”

  • • •

  He sat with his Styrofoam cup and a foil-wrapped packet of peanuts. He pushed the peanuts in a circle, assigning to the spokes of this wheel the different signs — Aries, Gemini, Sagittarius. Jury looked at the peanut planets and wondered ruefully if perhaps he should take Andrew Starr up on his offer to draw a horoscope, that in it he might find one or two elusive answers.

  Disgusted with himself, he dropped the peanuts into a metal ashtray. Murder wasn’t in the stars; it was on the ground, his ground. And it would help, he supposed, if any of the people he’d talked with had been his idea of a proper villain. The thin, plain fabric that had been woven around David Marr and Ivy Childess had now been interwoven with more exotic threads, perhaps obscuring rather than heightening the pattern in the carpet. There was also the disquieting knowledge that Macalvie was right, that solving the murder of Ivy Childess depended upon solving the murder of Sheila Broome.

  He stared out at the darkness gathering over the Atlantic and thought about Sheila Broome. Perhaps it was the geography that was throwing him off — connecting her with Exeter when she had, after all, spent a good deal of her time in London. She’d been good-looking, the type Hugh Winslow went for. And if she had threatened, like Ivy Childess, to tell Marion Winslow . . .

  Jury rested his head in his hands. Ivy Childess, Hugh Winslow had said, could ferret out anyone’s secrets. Jury thought of that bulletin board in David’s living room. What if she had ferreted out David Marr’s? What had Macalvie said about something worse than murder? Betrayal of friends and benefactors.

  He felt he needed something, like background music, to silence one part of his mind so that the other could function. Jury drank off his cold coffee without tasting it, started back to the Old Penny Palace.

  Through the gathering dusk, he looked down the strand toward the West Pier, floating in the mist.

  Then glided in Porphyria . . .

  23

  WHEN Dolly had said this morning that she was thinking of moving back to Brighton, Kate had been astonished.

  She was tired of London, she said simply, as if that were reason enough for leaving it, though it meant giving up the decorator flat and the job that she’d clawed her way up to. Kate told her she couldn’t understand how Dolly could give up what she’d worked so hard to get.

  Maybe you don’t want me in the house.

  Kate didn’t immediately say yes, not because she hadn’t wanted Dolly here, but because she was too filled with surprise that her sister, who had for years spoken of Brighton as provincial and dull, would even consider living in it.

  When she said it again, that Kate must not want her in the house, the tone was
so sad that Kate had to put her hand on her sister’s arm and give her a little shake. That wasn’t true; of course she did, she told Dolly.

  Dolly said they’d have plenty of money, more than enough, even without Dolly’s high-paying job, and that Kate could stop all of this. “All of this” meaning her taking in boarders. Dolly made a graceful gesture with her arm (wasn’t her every move graceful?) taking in the long drawing room where they’d been having a sandwich for lunch.

  But she was used to it, Kate said; she didn’t really want to give up her little business.

  Dolly had shaken and shaken her head, no. It was degrading, running a bed-and-breakfast.

  It wasn’t for Kate, though . . . .

  The reply had been explosive. Then it’s dangerous. Dolly’s hand was shaking and she brought the silver pot down on the table with a thud.

  Dangerous? Surely Dolly couldn’t be talking about their prospective roomer. Kate tried to laugh, but it stuck in her throat.

  Dolly hadn’t stayed to answer. Her Cossack hat was already on, and her boots. She walked hurriedly to the door, where she took up her coat and walked out, the door slamming behind her.

  All Kate could do was to gather up the cutlery on the tray. That she might be about to harbor an escaped convict, a criminal, made her want to laugh out loud. Yet Dolly’s behavior during this visit had been strange, very unlike her, as if she were stuck in the past, talking of things they used to do when they were children. Dolly would stay out for hours and hours when before she’d spent most of the day in her robe, smoking at the breakfast table. Now she would come back with a report of this place and that — the museum, the Pavilion — all places where their father had taken her, dressed in one of those pastel gossamer dresses sprigged with tiny flowers . . . . Perhaps it was his death. Was he reaching out from the grave to make certain she was still his little girl?

  Kate could still see Dolly standing before the window the night their father had died, staring out through the dusk, and the rain blown by wind, great long curtains of it, blowing against the window in waves.

  24

  WIGGINS was trying his luck on the Love-Test. Its lightbulb display did not seem to be making Wiggins happy; the bulb beside “Amorous” was not lighting up. Jury passed the strength-tester and What the Butler Saw and stood looking at the machine called Midnight in the Haunted Graveyard.

  He put in his token and watched the tiny white figures pop up. A skeleton slid out of an opening grave, a dot of white — a ghost — raised itself behind a headstone; another ghost peered from a hole. A cloaked figure fluttered about in this miniature colony of the dead before it disappeared into the wood. Jury’s thoughts scattered as the ground reclaimed its skeletons, the stones and trees their apparitions. Flash cars and flash men . . . . They all loved Phoebe so much . . . . It all fell apart . . . . “Where have you gone to, Elizabeth Vere?”

  • • •

  “Just a moment, sir,” said Wiggins, his eyes glued to the viewer of What the Butler Saw.

  Jury slammed his hand over the viewer. “You’ll have to skip the naughty bits, Wiggins.” He wrote in his notebook, tore off the page, and handed it to Wiggins.

  “Check to see if Plant called headquarters about the snapshot he took to Exeter —”

  “But we’ve already —”

  “I know we’ve already. And find Miles Wells.”

  Wiggins frowned. “The driver of the car that hit Phoebe Winslow? And ask him exactly what?”

  “If the lady in the car was Sheila Broome. And why he drove for several blocks and then came back.”

  “No one mentioned a lady in the car, sir.”

  “I just did, Wiggins.”

  • • •

  “Sheila Broome?” said Macalvie, dragging his feet off the desk in the Brighton police station. “But what the hell? Even if it was revenge, why not go for the driver?”

  “That’s the point. I think she was the driver. She’d been arrested once for drink-driving, Macalvie. If he hadn’t taken the rap for her, she’d have been in jail. But to do that, they had to switch seats. Stop the car and switch. I doubt he was simply being a gentleman about it; I imagine he thought it was his neck, too. Better to be booked for an unavoidable accident than for letting your drunk companion drive without a license and run somebody down. The question I asked myself was why little Phoebe ran out into the street.”

  “So what’d you answer yourself?”

  “Hugh Winslow answered. She was angry and frightened; what frightened her was seeing Daddy in bed with a woman who certainly wasn’t Mummy — Ivy Childess.”

  Macalvie looked long and hard at the tips of his run-down shoes, which he’d just planted on the desktop again. Then he said, “So anyone in that family would hold not just Hugh responsible but Ivy. They’d ice her, any one of them, right? Just like Sheila Broome.”

  “Absolutely. In a way, I suppose, it ricochets: they wouldn’t kill him — after all, he’s family — they’d kill her.”

  “Could even have been Hugh himself.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not suggesting it’s murder on the Brighton Express, or something? That they were all in on it?”

  “No. Only one of them. And I don’t think that’s the whole of the motive, either.” Jury studied the photograph of the Queen hanging on the dull, ocher-colored wall. “I think the motive might be very confused; it has not to do just with the death of Phoebe, but with Rose Winslow. ‘Betrayal of friends and benefactors,’ that’s what you said.”

  Macalvie sighed. “I wish I’d known what I meant.”

  Jury sat back, dug his hands in his pockets. “You haven’t seen the Winslows; you didn’t see what sort of family they are. They’re as bonded together as the figures in a portrait. It’s unconscious, I think. I doubt the Winslows know what form their punishment takes. Hugh wasn’t sent packing, after all. They just stopped communicating. They don’t cut you down, they cut you out. To betray one is to betray all. And David Marr certainly knew that.”

  “Marr?”

  “I’m sure he was having an affair with Rose Winslow. Rose strikes me as being a slightly up-market version of Ivy Childess: selfish, untrustworthy, avaricious. But with enough of a flame-to-moth quality that she singed more than one pair of wings. David Marr’s, for example. He’s got a collection of stuff in his room — photos, cards. One’s from Vegas. He’s never been to the States, and according to more than one person, Rose always wanted to go. None of the Winslows, no one, has heard a word from her. So why should David Marr have done, and why keep it a secret?”

  “It wouldn’t go down a treat with the family. And Ivy Childess found out. Well, well, now Marr has no alibi and a great motive,” said Macalvie.

  “A touch of blackmail — oh, not for the up-front money. Ivy didn’t want to stretch out her days dusting off the stars at the Starrdust. She wanted marriage. Marriage to any of the Winslow-Marr family. She’d drop David to pick up Hugh; drop Hugh to pick up David; I’m sure she must have had a bit of a go at Ned, too.”

  “You’re talking jealousy.”

  Jury raised his eyebrows. “Among them? Oh, no. If David had won Ned’s girl in a fair fight, or Hugh won David’s — the other would have been a gentleman, would have backed out. It’s not jealousy; it’s betrayal. Betrayal is probably the mortal sin with the Winslows.” Jury pocketed his cigarettes and said, “Plant’s gone to Exeter. He wanted the waitress at the Little Chef to take a look at a photo.”

  “She’s already looked. Something new?”

  Macalvie didn’t seem surprised. When the wheel stopped, he’d just spin it again.

  Jury smiled. “You were right about the connection between those murders, Macalvie.”

  “That’s a relief; for a while, life had lost its music.”

  “Why in the hell would the killer wait so long? Phoebe Winslow died nearly a year before Sheila Broome.”

  “So there wouldn’t appear to be a connection. But that’s just the opinion o
f your standard, plodding detective.”

  “If there’s anything you aren’t, it’s ‘standard.’ ” And then it occurred to Jury that he hadn’t known Macalvie was even in Brighton. But it didn’t surprise Jury that he was. The standard, plodding detective would follow a tidal wave if a clue were tossing about on its crest. “Why’re you here, Macalvie?”

  A police constable stuck his face around the door to tell Jury someone had called about an hour before and left him a message, which he handed to Jury. “He said his name was Plant, sir. Mr. Melrose Plant. That he was leaving Exeter, but that he’d get in touch later. I was careful to write it down, sir, since it was a bit odd.” The constable frowned with the oddity of it and ducked out.

  “Weren’t they all Porphyria?” Jury read the note to Macalvie, who sighed and said, “Does he have to send his messages in code?”

  “Well, obviously he means they were all alike — they were, too: that long, blond hair. Selfish, avaricious.” Jury frowned, remembering the photos in the drawing room of the Winslows’ house. “And so far as the hair goes . . . even Phoebe Winslow.”

  Macalvie was drawing a newspaper clipping from his wallet. “My little bit of news comes straight from chocolate flake country.” He unfolded the strip of paper and handed it to Jury. “We’d better get the lead out, Jury. There’s someone wandering around Brighton who’s in considerable danger.”

  “Who?”

  Macalvie turned the newspaper around so that it faced Jury. It was a cutout from the entertainment section. “The Rainlady.”

  • • •

  Jury looked at the pretty girl in the picture, at the heart-shaped face and long, blond hair. “You found her. Jimmy Rees finally told you?”

  “Hell, no. He’s still back there with chocolate flake coming out of his ears. It was the telly, Jury. I was in your office and flicked on Wiggins’s set to catch the news. I thought maybe some Fleet Street reporter could tell me who killed Sheila and Ivy. Anyway, the ten-twenty news is supposed to end with this pretty lady coming out in a white slicker and umbrella. It’s always raining, see, at ten-twenty. She’s the weather girl. Her name is Dolly Sands and she took it with her, in a manner of speaking. Very suddenly she felt she needed a holiday. Dolly Sands lives here in Brighton.” Macalvie was shrugging into his coat. “And I think we better find her before she takes a permanent holiday.”