Vertigo 42

by Martha Grimes

  The shop was never crowded, never more than one or two other customers, and often he and Trueblood were the only ones. Melrose was so concerned that the shop might close for lack of business, that he had suggested he would like to invest in it or even become a silent partner. “You see, books have always been a hobby of mine.” Books had never been a hobby; they were a necessity.

  Mr. Enderby had been quite pleased by this offer and had told Melrose that he would keep it in mind. Melrose knew he wouldn’t.

  Melrose loved the shadowed aisles, the atmosphere of dust and desuetude, the little fireplace in which lumps of coal burned intermittently, reddening up, turning to cinders, going out. Mr. Enderby, behind his counter in the shadows, head bent over his “accounts,” seemed to Melrose always in danger of going out himself.

  He and Trueblood had been to Enderby’s bookshop only the past week. As Trueblood stood negotiating, Melrose had looked up from his stereopticon to see misty waves of rain coming out of nowhere, as if from an uncertain and questionable sky. Like Mr. Enderby’s china, unstamped, undated.

  ____

  Mr. Enderby had not been taken away for more questioning, DCI Brierly having been apparently satisfied for the moment with Enderby’s statement, a statement amounting to very little. He had not even been the one to find the body on his back step.

  “Mr. Enderby,” said Jury, when he had gone into BookEnds with Melrose, “customers use the back way in, do they?”

  “Yes. Not often, as there’s no reason to be going through the alley. But my shop, being the end one, well, a person might find it easy just to park his car near the alley’s end and come in. I’ve got book displays all along the side of the shop in the windows, and someone looking at the windows might come to the end and just decide to pop round to the back door instead of walking back to the front.” He shrugged and fell silent, as if words failed him or were meaningless.

  They were gathered round Mr. Enderby’s counter-table, Melrose and Jury sitting on tall stools as Enderby sat in his chair, his books closed in front of him. He drummed his fingers on them.

  Jury said, “He’d been in the area for a few days, apparently, and he was looking for the Old Post Road, so there was something or someone in this neighborhood he wanted to see.”

  Mr. Enderby removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with a square of silky material. He looked thoughtful. He said, “That inspector asked me if I knew anyone round here might be expecting a visitor, anyone saying, ‘my cousin, my nephew, Gloria’s husband,’ you know, somebody turned up or expected. Just trying to jog my mem’ry, he said.” Mr. Enderby put his glasses back on, adjusted the earpieces. He folded his hands over his small belly and shook his head. “No. Nothing like that I remember.”

  “What about Stanley?” said Melrose.

  They both turned to look at Melrose, settled on his stool. He said, “Was anyone expecting Stanley?”

  ____

  Someone was, as it turned out.

  Her name was Hildegard Tallboys, and Melrose was perfectly happy that Stanley had not reached his destination.

  They had found Miss Tallboys because they had, on the off chance of finding out how Stanley fit in, gone to each of the shopkeepers and asked about pet owners in the neighborhood of Reacher’s Row and Crutches Close on the other side of the Old Post Road.

  Here there were small, boxy, many-hued houses, poorly placed, as if a child had walked away after tossing down his building blocks.

  Number 13 was a dingy gray with dark green trim outside. Inside, the lighting was dim, which was just as well, since it helped to hide the unattractive, bulky furniture and the old, rather sinister wallpaper with its dark ivy rolling upward like tentacles. There was a great deal of tile—in the entryway, around the windows, and outlining the fireplace in which sat a single-bar electric stove, unlit. The room was cold and clammy and reminded Melrose of one of London’s underground public toilets.

  He eyed the mantelpiece with its display of stone cherubs on either end, each holding a fold of stone cloth. He bet they wanted mittens.

  Miss Tallboys had followed the direction of Melrose’s gaze. “Got that pair across the way at Germaine. Quite pricey, but I expect they’re worth it.”

  Melrose expected they weren’t but just sipped the tea that had been served them from a pot covered by a rose-colored crocheted tea cozy. She could have served it boiling from Hell’s Kitchen and it would still have gone cold by the second sip. But then Hell had long frozen over in number 13, Crutches Close. Miss Tallboys simply had a knack for a chill.

  Anyway, the tea had been served only to keep the talk of the murder going. Hildegarde Tallboys was disappointed by the flimsy findings of Scotland Yard: Jury was not exactly a font of information. She had, after all, gone to all of this trouble with tea. Nor had she apparently given any thought to the fate of the dog that the victim had, as nearly as they could work out, been there to deliver to her.

  “Miss Tallboys, how did you contact the dog’s owner?”

  “Well, I didn’t, did I? I’d no idea who the owner was. Are you saying it was this man that got murdered?”

  “I don’t know. If you didn’t contact the owner, what was the procedure? How did you come to pick this dog?”

  “I haven’t seen the dog, have I? So I don’t know if it’s the same one.”

  Blood out of stones, Jury thought, his tight smile wanting to snap. “Right. But you contacted someone.”

  “Yes, of course. It’s this Web site, PetLoco. My friend Louise Phenn told me when I said I thought I should have a watchdog.”

  “PetLoco?” Loco, he gathered, being some misdirected form of “locator.” “How did this organization work?”

  “You go on their Web site and have a look at pictures and read the bit about the dog. They’re all up for adoption, and not on the cheap, I might say. Seventy pounds mine cost. Looked to be a nice Staffy.”

  “Staffordshire terrier for seventy quid? Sounds like a bargain.”

  “Well, you have to pay extra for delivery. Another fifty.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been much cheaper just to go to a shelter in Northampton?”

  “Need a car, wouldn’t I? Anyway, I don’t like those places. Noisy, all the barking and everything. Depressing.”

  “So you paid and arranged for the dog to be brought to you here.”

  She nodded, lifted the rose cozy from the teapot, lifted the lid, replaced both, satisfied. “Don’t think I don’t know about scams. Louise checked this PetLoco out quite thoroughly before I sent any money. No, they’re on the up-and-up. The dog was to be brought here this week. That is, the one just past. They said they could only assure the exact day forty-eight hours ahead of time because of schedules of the people who bring them. I expect they get volunteers from nearby. I mean, no one’s going to bring a dog all the way from London, are they?”

  “Given today’s Saturday, you should have heard from them at the latest on Thursday, shouldn’t you?”

  Curtly, she nodded. “Heard nothing, looked at the Web site, rang them. Well, they were just as surprised as I was. Woman I spoke to looked up the records, said the dog should have been delivered Tuesday or Wednesday. I asked who was supposed to bring it; well, they wouldn’t give out any names, would they? Very cloak and dagger. Like that writer, John le Carré.”

  Melrose liked it that she pronounced it La Car.

  She sniffed. “Silly waste of time.”

  Melrose frowned. “What is? Waiting for the dog?”

  “No. Those spy books. People chasing all over Europe. Life’s not like that.”

  Melrose cleared his throat of mild laughter. “Actually, I imagine Mr. le Carré thinks life is.” He was careful to pronounce it La Car.

  “Oh, he just goes and makes it all up. Pack of lies.”

  “No, he actually worked for MI6 before—” When Melrose sa
w Jury giving him a smile that definitely didn’t reach the superintendent’s eyes, Melrose shut up. He’d only wanted a bit of entertainment to take his mind off his toes, which were frozen to stubs.

  “Do you think we could have a look at that Web site, Miss Tallboys?”

  “On my computer? It’s not working properly. Anyway, I didn’t use mine, I used Louise Phenn’s. Mine, it takes hours to get anything on it with pictures. You know what they’re like. Slow as Moses.”

  “Then I think we’ll be going. Thanks very much.”

  It was then she raised the teapot. “There’s a bit more, if you’d like another cup.”

  Melrose couldn’t believe she’d still be pouring from that pot. Tea, like revenge, was best served cold.

  They both got up. At the door, Jury said, “What about the dog, though? I mean, assuming the dog who came with this man is the one. He’s certainly a Staffordshire terrier.”

  “Oh, my goodness, no. A dog that’s been involved in a murder. I think not.” They stood in the open doorway as she added, “That place’ll have to return my payment, of course.”

  “But the dog will have to be returned too, to them.”

  “I expect police’ll have to take care of that, won’t you? It’s not my dog, is it?” The door closed with a cold little thud.

  Jack and Hammer

  Saturday, 3:00 P.M.

  28

  * * *

  They had, after the events in Wretch’s Row, retired to the Jack and Hammer, where Melrose and Jury had told them the story about the chilly interview with Miss Tallboys.

  Mrs. Withersby, with a fag caged from Trueblood in the corner of her mouth (another stuck behind her ear), leaned on her mop and listened and smoked.

  Stanley was lying under the table on a comfortable old quilt Diane had bought for him.

  Agatha, enjoying another Shooting Sherry, was scandalized by the quilt’s being a “genuine Goodings” and Stanley on it. “That quilt probably cost twice what the dog did! It’s an antique!” That Diane was not defending this profligate purchase annoyed Agatha far more than Strether getting buzzed at the bar and probably trying to sell Dick Scroggs a useless investment.

  Vivian, puzzled, said, “If this man had merely been enlisted to deliver him, why would Stanley have been so upset? He was ready to jump into that van with the dead man.”

  Trueblood fiddled with his Montblanc, rolling it over his fingers like a small baton. “How do we know Stanley is the dog this Tallboys woman was to get?”

  “We don’t,” said Melrose.

  Jury drank his Adnam’s, set the glass down, and said, “You can debate this, but I’ve got to go to London.”

  “But wait,” said Vivian to Jury. “What do you think?”

  “That you’re all a bunch of nutters.” The voice was not Richard Jury’s but Mrs. Withersby’s, she of pail and rag. “Every one of you lot’s got a mobile phone. ’E told ya”—here she nodded toward Jury—“that there dog might of come from this PetLoco place and not one of you tried to ring it. All you lot do is sit around and talk.”

  They all turned to look at Jury again.

  He slid a couple of pound coins from the table and handed them to her. “Have a drink, Mrs. Withersby. Me, I’m off to London. They can sit here and talk.”

  ____

  He was in the car and heading for London on the M1 when his mobile stuttered in his pocket.

  “John McAllister, guv. Says he’d be free to see you whenever you get back.”

  “Good. I’m on the M1, just passed the Dunstable turn off.”

  “Okay. I’m looking at this file. The shot of the kiddies who were at Laburnum. This one where they’re standing together. Strachey’s pretty tall. John’s the shrimp of the lot. Funny little kid. Why did his parents have him wear those black-framed glasses, poor kid?”

  “He didn’t have parents, Wiggins. He had minders.”

  “I was reading her testimony. Tess Williamson didn’t call him ‘John.’ She called him ‘Mackey.’ ”

  Jury felt a sudden sense of desolation, the way you do sometimes on a Sunday when your street is empty of the usual foot traffic.

  “Tell him seven. And try not to get bogged down in afternoon tea and the D’Sousas.”

  “Ta, guv.”

  Jury floored the accelerator, thinking of the empty street, thinking he could outrun it.

  Clapham Common

  Saturday, 4:00 P.M.

  29

  * * *

  But there was to be no serving of tea and cheesecake on this Saturday afternoon in the D’Sousas’ spartan little house on Clapham Common. Both of them, mother and daughter, looked thin as rails, as if they might have stopped eating altogether.

  The only interesting thing Wiggins had seen was a coal-black cat, who had been, understandably, playing dead, curled up by the cold grate, until Sergeant Wiggins walked in. The cat followed him to the sofa and sat pushed up beside him, paws nudged under chest, blinking.

  “Nice cat,” said Wiggins, who wasn’t much of a cat, or for that matter a dog, person. But he gave the cat a few strokes. The cat was clearly happy to have something living and breathing in the room.

  “Sookie seems to like you,” said Colleen D’Sousa. “What was it you wished to see us about, Sergeant?” Then, “Oh, would you like a glass of water?”

  Wiggins had never understood “water” as a social refreshment. “No, thanks.” Then he went for it. “But a cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss.” His smile included Sookie, who purred. Jury would have killed him. But he was frankly already bored with these two, and had it not been for the cat, he’d be snoring inside of five minutes.

  Colleen and Veronica, her daughter, looked at each other in an almost startled way. “Tea? Why I don’t believe we have any, do we, Veronica? You could have a look.”

  Wiggins thought he was hearing things; his eyes widened to moons. This was England, wasn’t it?

  “That’s all right, Miss D’Sousa,” he said as she began uncertainly to rise to search the kitchen. “Just have a seat, please.” No tea was to have serious consequences. He slapped his notebook onto his knee and clicked his ballpoint into action. “Twenty-two years ago—”

  “Surely, you’re not going to question Veronica about that Hilda Palmer girl?”

  “Dead girl, Madame. Hilda was only nine.”

  Colleen raised her hand to her rolled-back dark hair, as if to press the upsweep into place.

  Wiggins hadn’t seen a do like that since Mildred Pierce. It had looked terrific on Joan Crawford.

  “I can’t think why—”

  Wiggins held up his hand to stop her. ”It’s Veronica here I’d like to do the thinking. Now, miss, you were the one in the game who was ‘It,’ right? Meaning you had to be the finder.”

  Nodding, she said, in her surprisingly little-girl voice, “Leaning against the big oak. I was to count to a hundred. You’ve got to do more than just ten or twenty, don’t you, to give everyone a chance to find a proper place. And the grounds of Laburnum were very large. It was boring to have to do all that counting.”

  “You peeked, then, didn’t you?” Wiggins had flipped to a page in his notebook, as if he were confirming this bit of information that he’d just invented.

  Insulted for her daughter, Colleen said, “She did no such thing!”

  Wiggins looked from one to the other. Veronica D’Sousa was by now thirty-one or -two years old. Still living with Mum, poor lass. Being controlled with a heavy hand, if the missus had to react to his comment as if Veronica were still nine.

  “Pardon me, but you weren’t there.” He turned again to the daughter, smiling conspiratorially. “Everybody peeks, don’t they? God knows I always did.”

  Seeing it was a bit of a game, just as hide-and-seek had been, she said, “Only a tiny bit. Just the once. I was looking to
see if Kenneth had gone behind one of the big stones there in front of the house. It was just a quick look-see. I didn’t see him, or anybody else, but that’s where he was in the end.”

  Wiggins absently stroked the cat, who was snoozing now. He said, “But there was somebody, miss.”

  She frowned. “No. They’d all hidden.”

  “Not Mrs. Williamson’s friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mrs. Davies. Elaine. She was sitting on the stone bench, reading.”

  “I guess she was, yes.”

  “Were you often at these outings Tess Williamson organized? What I mean is, was it always the same group of kiddies?”

  “Always. Except, of course, if one or the other of us had a cold or for some reason couldn’t be there, but that almost never happened. Mrs. Williamson organized such treats. Like taking us to the winter fun fair in Hyde Park at Christmas. Or to Fortnum’s for tea. Mostly, it was to Laburnum; we loved going there. Sometimes we’d all meet at their house in Knightsbridge.”

  “Hilda was always one of the group, was she? Yet she wasn’t much liked by the other—”

  Colleen, of course, interrupted. “Do you think this is appropriate, Sergeant Wiggins?”

  Wiggins smiled what Jury liked to call his Death’s Head grin. “I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t.”

  “Really, Mum. You’d think I was still nine years old!”

  Wiggins was glad to see Mrs. D’Sousa sink back into her chair. Perhaps Veronica wasn’t as much under the thumb of her mother as he’d thought.

  Veronica went on. “Hilda was a hard little girl. Even cruel. But often it’s better to keep such people around than to get rid of them.”

  Wiggins appreciated the thought that went into that. “Keep your enemies closer, right? You mean because she could be vengeful? I heard she was.”

  “That, but also because she could be a scapegoat for us.”

  That surprised Wiggins. It surprised Mum too, obviously.