The Corpse of St James's

by Jeanne M. Dams

  ‘It’s nearly ten, love. If you’re off on a shopping binge with Lynn, you’d better get cracking.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Alan grinned, mussed up my hair, and left me to surface in peace.

  Once I’d regained full consciousness, I showered in haste and then considered what to wear. I hadn’t packed with the intent of visiting an upscale gallery with an upscale lady, but I had tossed in my one and only Little Black Dress. Not so little any more, owing to my love of carbohydrates, but undeniably black and understated. With pearls it would have to do.

  I headed for the stairs and ran smack into Jonathan. ‘Dorothy, may I speak to you for a moment?’

  I nodded and looked around. There was no one in sight, but conversation from the floor below told me Alan and Tom and Lynn were nearby. ‘If it’s private, we’d better duck back into your room. Alan might come up and pop into ours.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s especially private. I just wanted to say I’ve been a fool, and I know it. I . . . it’s jealousy, you see. I never thought of Jemima as anyone I cared about, so when I found out about her pregnancy, all those years ago, I didn’t understand why I . . . well, I was watching you yesterday, your face, and you seem to have worked something out that I didn’t even know until just now. I . . . I thought I was only trying to protect Aunt Letty, when all the time . . . and I’ve always thought of her as more like a sister, and now it’s all gone pear-shaped. I don’t know what to do.’

  He sounded more like a lovesick teenager than a man in his thirties. ‘I can’t tell you, Jonathan. You have to work it out for yourself.’

  ‘I know. But what I really wanted to tell you was to go ahead and do what you need to do to find Bert and . . . say anything you want to him. We need to find Melissa’s murderer, and if the police keep on thinking I did it, they’re not going to look much further.’

  ‘I don’t know how true that is. I find it hard to believe that the Met will accept the easy answer, but I can imagine that they may spend a bit more effort just now trying to find proof of your guilt than looking for another suspect. And since they won’t be able to find that proof, you not being guilty, it will, perforce, take up a lot of their time.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked so downcast I had to give him what encouragement I could. ‘Don’t worry too much, Jonathan. You know better than most that the police are efficient and conscientious. They don’t put many innocent people in prison.’

  ‘Not many. But there have been some. You know there have been some.’

  ‘Yes, well, then we’ll just have to trust in God, won’t we?’ And leaving him with what was obviously a startling idea, I went downstairs to my breakfast.

  ‘Seeing as it’s nearly lunchtime,’ said Lynn with an assumed air of martyrdom, ‘I’m making omelettes. Is there anything you don’t like by way of filling?’

  ‘I’ve never been too partial to pickled herring in an omelette, but other than that . . .’

  ‘If I had any, I’d put it in just to spite you. Sit down now. They only take a second.’

  Less than an hour later, replete, we sallied forth into a beautiful day, warm and sunny, with the smell of summer in the air.

  ‘Are those roses I smell?’

  ‘You ask that in England? There are roses everywhere they can possibly be made to grow, even in London. I think the nearest ones are actually in the garden two squares away, but in weather like this, you can smell them even over the diesel fumes. Hi! Taxi!’

  Bond Street wasn’t that far away. I was getting nervous. ‘What are we going to do if he doesn’t work there any more?’

  ‘Ask where he’s gone. I can play the grande dame and say I prefer to deal with Bert, personally. I don’t have to give a reason. Rich bitches don’t need reasons. But if he’s there, then I’ll get all snooty with the gallery owner and act like I’m going to spend a bundle, and you can chat up Bert while I debate about whether I like the one with the invisible white cubes or the one with the invisible black lines.’

  ‘Oh. It’s that kind of gallery.’

  ‘Probably. Most of them are these days. Don’t worry. I’ll twist them around my little finger. And here we are.’

  Lynn paid the driver what seemed to me an exorbitant amount of money for a short ride, and we went inside the imposing premises of the Andrews Gallery.

  They seemed imposing to me, anyway. Intimidating, even. There is something about the atmosphere of a place where lots and lots of money changes hands that gives me a cold chill. Lynn was used to it and batted nary an eyelash.

  A white-haired man was seated at a desk at the back of the room. Even my unpractised eye could see that it was an antique, a fine example of what Jemima would call the decorative arts. Louis the Fourteenth, perhaps, or that sort of style, anyway. The carpet it was sitting on was the sort I would have hung on a wall, had I been fortunate enough to own such an exquisite piece of weaving. I was very glad the weather was good. The thought of walking on the probably priceless rug with wet feet made me cringe.

  The paintings on the walls didn’t match the surroundings. I nearly giggled as I looked at one canvas that was apparently blank, though on a closer inspection it had some sort of pattern in the brushwork. Lynn’s invisible white cubes.

  The white-haired man rose and smiled with just the right degree of condescension. We might be customers, but he was certainly not going to be mistaken for anything so crude as a salesman. ‘Good morning, ladies. Lovely morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lynn crisply. ‘I wonder if Bert is here this morning.’ She allowed her accent to become somewhat more American than usual, and her attitude to become far less amenable.

  ‘Bert? Oh, Robert.’ White-hair frowned. ‘He is no longer with us, but I assure you, madam—’

  ‘I prefer to deal with Bert. Where has he gone?’

  ‘Er . . . I believe he has opened his own gallery, madam. I could not say whether he is able to offer quite the standard of quality—’

  ‘Where is it?’ Really, Lynn cultivated a very nice standard of quality herself. In rudeness, that is.

  ‘Madam?’

  ‘Bert’s gallery. Where is it?’ She had raised her voice, as to the deaf or stupid, and was speaking with a cut-glass emphasis on each word.

  ‘Er . . . I believe I may have the address somewhere.’

  ‘Good.’ Lynn sat down on one of the spindly little gilt chairs that were clearly there for decoration and crossed her legs, plainly prepared to stay there till she got what she wanted, if it took all day.

  White-hair conceded, if with a bad grace. He went back to his desk and pulled out a rather dirty business card. ‘Ah. Here we are, madam. I hope you won’t be disappointed.’

  ‘Do you?’ said Lynn, and swept out, trailing invisible robes, and me, in her wake.

  ‘Goodness!’ I said as we waited for a taxi. ‘That was an impressive performance, I must say. I was ready to curtsey.’

  ‘I was always a hit in the minor roles at Bryn Mawr.’

  The address we’d been given was in Chelsea, not quite as upper crust as Bond Street, but very close. ‘Hmm,’ I said when the taxi drew up to the kerb, ‘I wonder. Didn’t Letty say Bert had a flat in Chelsea? I wonder if he lives over the shop.’

  We paused before the door. ‘Robert Hathaway, Fine Art’ was written in flowing gold script on the glass.

  ‘Bert Higgins, Robert Hathaway. How the lowly have risen,’ was Lynn’s comment. ‘Shall we?’

  The shop was smaller than the Bond Street place, and furnished less opulently. On the other hand, I greatly preferred the art. These paintings were recognizably pictures of something or someone. Small, friendly-looking objets d’art sat here and there on shelves and one lovely little piecrust table. And on one corner of the mantel sat – aha! – a very nice Staffordshire dog.

  No human being was in sight, but the ping of the opening door brought a voice from behind a curtain at the back of the store. ‘Hullo! Be with you in a tick!’

&
nbsp; ‘I might just be minded to buy something in here,’ said Lynn sotto voce. ‘I like his style.’

  ‘Much nicer than old stuffed shirt back there,’ I agreed.

  ‘And what can I do for you today, or would you just like to look?’ The young man was dressed in designer jeans and a white shirt that managed to be both elegant and casual at the same time. He was very good-looking, tanned and fit, and had an engaging smile.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Actually, I just wanted to talk to you. That is . . . you are Bert Higgins, aren’t you?’

  TWENTY-TWO

  His smile faded. ‘That’s the name I was born with, yeah. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know quite how to tell you this, but I’ve become a friend of your cousin Jemima.’

  Now his expression was definitely wary. ‘Ye-es?’

  ‘And . . . did you know about her recent tragedy?’

  ‘Look, if you’re trying to tell me something, just tell me, OK?’

  ‘Your daughter is dead, Mr Higgins. She was murdered. And I’m trying to help the police find the man who did it.’

  He said nothing for at least a minute, which can be a very long time. Then he went to the door, locked it, and pulled a shade over the window.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I could use a cup of tea. Or something stronger. Let’s go through to the back.’

  Behind the curtain was a small, cluttered office, and behind that, a tiny, very clean kitchenette. ‘Sorry, only two chairs,’ he said, with a glance at Lynn.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m really just along for the ride. I’ll go back out in front and take a look at your stock.’ She disappeared, and I sat down.

  ‘Tea?’ asked Bert.

  ‘Thank you, but I’m fine. You have some, though.’

  ‘If it’s all the same to you . . .’ he said, and pulled a bottle of Laphroaig and a glass out of a cupboard. Pouring himself a healthy splash, he sat down opposite me at the minute kitchen table and took a good swig. ‘Now. Tell me. For a start, who are you, and how did you get mixed up with my . . . with Jemima?’ He took another swallow.

  ‘My name is Dorothy Martin, and it’s a long story. You might want to ease up on that a bit.’ I nodded to his nearly empty glass.

  He gave me a long, not particularly friendly look, and pushed the glass away.

  ‘It all started the day of the Investiture, a week ago Wednesday. Or well, no, back a lot further than that, really. My husband and I have been friends with Jonathan Quinn for a long time.’

  He looked up sharply at Jonathan’s name.

  ‘So,’ I went on, ‘when Jonathan was to be awarded the George Cross, we were invited to the ceremony at Buckingham Palace, and just as we were leaving, we ran into Jemima.’ I narrated the rest of the day, the discovery of the body in St James’s Park, and then Jonathan’s disclosure the next day that he knew who the victim was. ‘Now you know . . . or I suppose you do . . . that Jonathan was a fairly high-ranking officer with the Metropolitan Police before that terrible terrorist thing that left him too handicapped to serve. But what you don’t know is that my husband used to be a policeman, too. Chief Constable of Belleshire, until his retirement a few years ago.’

  ‘But . . . you’re American.’

  ‘I am. My husband is English. It’s a second marriage for both of us.’

  ‘Wait a minute. What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Martin. Dorothy Martin.’

  ‘I read something in the paper . . . but the name wasn’t Martin. Nestle . . . Desmond . . .’

  ‘His name is Alan Nesbitt. I kept my name when we married. I’d used it for over forty years, after all.’

  ‘Right. But I still don’t see . . . look, I’m sorry, but what does your personal history have to do with anything?’

  ‘I think we might do better if you just let me tell my story,’ I said, suppressing a sigh. ‘The point of my personal history, and Jonathan’s, is that when Jonathan decided not to tell the police, the official police, that the body was Melissa’s, he was violating not only the law – withholding evidence is a crime, you know – but his personal code of conduct.’

  ‘He did that? Not like him. He was always such a good little boy, was our Jon.’

  ‘His reasoning was that Jemima’s position at the palace made her vulnerable to the lower echelons of the press, and he wished to avoid scandal, if he could. And he persuaded Alan, my husband, to go along. Which is out of character for Alan, too. That was when I began to suspect that Jonathan’s feelings for Jemima were somewhat different from what he supposed them to be.’

  ‘You’re not saying . . . Lord! Then that’s why . . . Jon dropped me like a hot brick the minute he knew about Jemima’s pregnancy. I could never understand why, but if . . . another thing, too. I wondered how Aunt Letty managed to find me, with the name change and all. But if she had a copper doing the hunting . . .’

  ‘Yes, Jonathan was the one who found you. Incidentally, the financial support you’ve been providing has been a great help to Letty. She wanted you to know that you could stop sending it, now that . . . well, that you could stop. But there is something else you could do that would aid us in the present situation.’

  I paused. Now I truly wanted that cup of tea he had offered earlier. I was parched from so much talking. But he was really listening now, really interested in what I had to say, and I didn’t want to break the mood.

  Lynn did it for me. She poked her head in from the showroom. ‘Sorry to interrupt, just when you were all nice and cosy, but I’m going to run a few errands. Bert, there are two paintings I like very much, so I’ll be back to talk to you about them. Does the front door lock itself . . .? Good. Have a lovely talk.’

  The door pinged, and she was gone.

  ‘Bert, may I change my mind about that tea?’

  ‘Sure. Earl Grey or Darjeeling?

  ‘Darjeeling, please.’ I watched as he moved about his kitchenette with an economy of movement which was pleasant to see. ‘Do you live here?’

  ‘Upstairs. I have quite a nice apartment on the upper two floors, with a proper kitchen. I like to cook. But it was a bother running up every time I wanted tea or coffee or a snack, so I had this put in. Barely room to swing a cat, but it suffices. Milk? Sugar?’

  I accepted both, and we settled down again. I tried to remember where I’d left off.

  ‘You said I could help you somehow, but I don’t quite see how. In fact, I don’t see how you fit into this at all.’

  ‘I told you that Jonathan and Alan decided not to give the police the vital information about Melissa’s identity, in the hopes that we could clear up the matter quickly ourselves.’

  ‘Are you a policeman . . . er . . . a police person too, then?’

  I smiled. ‘No. I’m a retired schoolteacher. But I’ve discovered an unexpected talent for snooping, and on occasion I’ve been of use to the police. In this case, I’m acting entirely unofficially. You see, it became necessary to tell the police everything, and they were extremely angry with us for not telling them sooner. They didn’t charge any of us – Alan because he had outranked them all at one time, Jonathan because he was a hero. You heard about that?’

  ‘One could hardly avoid it. It was splashed all over the news.’

  ‘Had you heard about the George Cross, until I told you just now?’

  ‘No. I’m not surprised, though. Jon was always brave, and always soft about kids. He saved a couple of them from drowning once, at Brighton, only it didn’t get put about. He didn’t want anyone to make a fuss about it. He deserves that medal, several times over.’

  ‘You were really good friends, weren’t you?’

  ‘The best mate I had, ever.’ Bert made a dismissive gesture. ‘But you were telling me how you got mixed up in this business.’

  ‘Well, with Jonathan and Alan both out on their ears, so to speak, I was the only one still free to poke around and see what I could find out.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you’re a splendid Miss Ma
rple, or whatever, but perhaps it would be just as well to leave it to the police?’

  ‘It looks as though the police think Jonathan did it.’

  ‘Jon! But that’s . . . that’s . . .’

  ‘Ridiculous. But look at it from their point of view. He was closely involved with the family. He was in the vicinity. He was actually there when Alan found Melissa’s body, and then he concealed her identity from the police. No other viable suspect has surfaced. They don’t want it to be Jonathan, but that very fact is going to make them careful to keep him at the top of their list. And there’s something else you don’t know.’ I debated for a moment, and then decided, in for a penny, in for a pound. ‘Melissa was three months pregnant.’

  ‘What? She’s a child! It’s impossible!’

  ‘She was fourteen. It’s entirely possible. And true, I’m sorry to say.’

  He stood, turned away from me. I waited while he fought for control, thinking all the while what a pity it was that men were ashamed to cry.

  When he thought he could trust himself to speak, he said, ‘Are you telling me you think Jon’s the father of Melissa’s baby?’

  ‘I don’t think so. The police may. DNA testing would prove the matter, one way or another, but that’s terribly expensive and takes a long time. No, my idea is quite different. I do think it’s likely that the same man is almost certainly responsible for the pregnancy and the murder. But I’m quite sure it isn’t Jonathan. And that’s why I’ve come to you.’

  He turned abruptly to face me. The signs of his tears were still there, but he was furiously angry. ‘If you think for one moment that I would have molested my own daughter—’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly. How could I possibly think that? For one thing, you’re gay, aren’t you?’

  He simply looked at me.

  ‘That little fling with Jemima happened before you were comfortable with your sexuality, didn’t it? You might even have been trying to prove to yourself that you were heterosexual, because you knew how that father of yours would react to your being gay. My guess is that learning about the pregnancy shocked you into a reassessment. Something did, anyway, and you realized that wasn’t the path for you.’