“That was true, though.”
“Yes, it was true. But a good deal of that money he inherited not just from his mother, but from his grandfather. My husband, James. And it just irritated me to death to see Billy throw it away.” She leaned forward, out of her glazed cotton garden. “If this artist had been the next Manet or even David Hockney he was supporting, fine. Indeed I would applaud that.”
“So would anyone. Manets and Hockneys are hardly thick on the ground.”
She considered that. “Yes, you do have a point. I was expecting too much.”
Jury wondered. “Do you think it was one painter in particular, then?”
“It would make more sense, wouldn’t it? I mean artistic merit aside, he’d, the painter I mean, have had some value for Billy.”
Jury looked into her gray eyes, the skin beneath them smudged from a recent bout of either allergies or tears. She looked away. “Do you think this artist was a particular friend, then?”
“Oh please, Superintendent. You mean was he just a little Nellie? I interpreted all of this breast-beating for the sake of art to be precisely that. Perhaps Billy fancied him, I don’t know.”
“You didn’t object to that?”
“Well, really, what difference would it have made if I had? You’re wondering if I find it, generally speaking, rather louche behavior? Yes, I guess I do. But after all, one’s sexual orientation is a given, isn’t it? Being an idiot about money isn’t. It’s learned behavior, and that can change.”
“Did you meet any of Billy’s friends at all?”
“Once, yes. He brought an extremely attractive woman here once. Her name was Anjelica, no, Angela something.”
“And you still think he might have been gay?”
“Perhaps she was a screen. Or she might have been some unconscious choice. Or, more simply, perhaps Billy was one of those who liked it both ways.” Daintily, she smoothed the arm of the chair.
Jury cornered a laugh and shoved it back in. “Why do you suppose he broke it off with her?”
Rose’s eyes widened. She sat back among the flowers. “I have no idea. I’m surprised he was taken with her, though, because she was at least ten or fifteen years older.” She pulled herself up. “Mr. Jury, if I don’t have a cup of tea, I’ll start baying. Would you come along to the kitchen with me? We can continue our talk whilst I put the kettle on.”
“Happy to.” Oh, how he wished Wiggins were here! For Wiggins, a trip to the kitchen was as rejuvenating as one to Lourdes. He followed Rose Ames out of the living room.
The kitchen was quite handsome. From one of those hanging racks, copper pots and pans glinted and gleamed. She filled a copper kettle, rather old and battered, and set it on a great Viking stove.
“I’m surprised you don’t have staff—or a cook, at least.”
“Oh, I have them; just God knows where they are. They’re like mice. They skitter away at the most inconvenient times. I keep meaning to fire the lot, but I’m lazy. It would mean getting replacements and you know how difficult that is. Billy was lucky to have a quite decent cook, though she’s not as good as she thinks she is.” She whispered this last, as if in confidence.
“Mrs. Jessup?”
“Is that her name? I keep wanting to call her Miss Jessel, of course. Well, one does get awfully caught up in Henry James with one’s grandson in his old house.”
Jury leaned against the door frame as he watched her open the tea canister and spoon some out into a stoneware teapot.
“Well, the woman dislikes me with an intensity.” She shrugged as she said this. “Probably because I criticized her cooking. I went around to Lamb House for Sunday lunch a month ago. She served up a very handsome leg of lamb, rare. Now, I know rare is the going thing these days, I mean, restaurants seem to have cultivated a taste for raw everything”—she was collecting sugar and cups and saucers on a tray—“but you shouldn’t eat rare lamb. It has to be cooked through to avoid that disease—BSE, I think—no, that’s mad cow disease, isn’t it? At any rate, there’s one that sheep carry.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, you do now, so take heed. Or rather, tell your cook to.”
“Oh, I shall definitely do that.”
The kettle clattered over the burner and she whisked it off and filled the pot. “So Mrs. Jessup took umbrage and told me no one had ever criticized her cooking and I told her it was no criticism of her culinary expertise, only that lamb, no matter who cooks it, must be well done. She wasn’t mollified. To add to that, on another occasion, she had served rabbit, which I refused to eat because of the danger of tularaemia.”
“What’s that?”
“A bacteria rabbits carry and it can be fatal. Again we went the route of her cooking ability, which, I told her, was beside the point. Can you carry the tray?”
“Glad to.” Jury took it from her hands and followed her back into the living room.
Over her shoulder, Rose said, “There’s also myxomatosis.”
“Never heard of it.” Jury set the tray on the coffee table.
“You don’t recall that awful time when the government wiped out just about the entire rabbit population because of myxomatosis? I thought that was criminal; there was no need to go to that extent.” She poured the tea. “Philip Larkin wrote a poem about it. Do you like Philip Larkin?”
“One of my favorites.”
She handed Jury his tea, saying, “It’s called ‘Myxomatosis,’ but poetry never is about what it appears to be, is it? In any event, the narrator is speaking to the rabbit trapped in a field. He calls it a ‘soundless’ field. I wonder if this is because rabbits were rounded up and slaughtered and now this one is the only one left. He’s imagining what the rabbit must have been thinking just before he killed it. He addresses the rabbit: You must have thought everything would be all right ‘If you could only keep quite still and wait.’ It’s terribly poignant.”
“‘If you could only keep quite still and wait.’ Yes. We do that ourselves, don’t we? Hope if we don’t make a lot of noise, the danger might pass us? Anyway, Mrs. Jessup didn’t take too well to your commenting on the possible toxic effect of her cooking, or its possible fatal outcome.” Jury laughed. “Can’t say I blame her. What was the name of that disease?”
“Myxomatosis.”
The small clock chimed the hour. Jury was surprised he’d been here for well over an hour. He was to be at Sir Oswald’s by three.
But this question was important: “Mrs. Ames, did you wonder what was causing Billy’s mood swings? It must have been the reason he impressed different people in different ways. Some found him easygoing, sweet, even; others found him explosive, ‘on a short fuse’ was how one put it.”
“No, I didn’t wonder what caused it. I knew what caused it. Billy was a manic-depressive.” She poured more tea.
Jury was astonished that she would assert this so baldly.
She went on. “I tried to get Roderick and Olivia to take it seriously; I know my Mary would have—”
“Your daughter?”
She nodded. “But Roderick is simply too proud to admit there was a mental disorder.”
“Did you say anything to Billy himself?”
“Oh, yes. But it’s like talking to an alcoholic, isn’t it? He’s the last one to admit to a problem. I asked Billy to at least try and get medication. There are psychiatrists who are into pharmaceuticals who would prescribe something without demanding you see them two or three times a week. But he wouldn’t do it, which was to be expected, since he wouldn’t admit anything was wrong in the first place. I told him this condition runs in the family. But that had little effect.”
Jury frowned. He recalled something Roderick had said about his first wife, that she was temperamental and moody. “You mean Mary?”
“Mary? Oh, no, I mean me.”
His mouth literally fell open. “You?”
She laughed. It was a sweet and silvery sound. “I’m so glad you’re astonished. Yes,
I’m the villain of the piece. My own mother was in and out of institutions when they were even worse places than they are now. And I, I was luckier; my father found an excellent doctor who knew about manic-depressive behavior and its treatment long before we started calling it a bipolar disorder.”
“When did you get this treatment? How old were you?”
“Twenty or so. But up until that time, I’d be ashamed to admit to some of the things I did. During the war, I…I was a hellion. I had no care nor conscience for other people. Much worse than Billy, I’ll have to say.”
He just looked at her, trying to imagine her hellion days, and couldn’t. “Then could Billy have aroused somebody’s wrath?”
“If he was as I was in the depressive state, he certainly could. So if you asked me if he had enemies, all I can say is I wouldn’t be surprised. I hate to think it, but there it is.”
Jury drank his tea and looked at her.
THIRTY-TWO
Jury sat in the mellow light of a late afternoon sun in the little mews house off Cadogan Square. Sir Oswald Maples had answered the door himself. It was, he had said, one of his better days.
Jury was talking about his visit with Rose Ames and nursing a Scotch.
Oswald laughed. “Rose is quite something. Billy, gay? That’s what she told you?”
“I asked her.”
Oswald looked puzzled. “But why would you think that? I’m sure you’re wrong. Or she is.”
“She thought it was possible, that’s all. That Angela Riffley was a screen, or could be, possibly an unconscious choice—”
“I never knew a person to analyze every detail the way Rose does.”
Jury smiled. “No? What about your old workplace, GC and CS? What about you code breakers? Don’t tell me that wasn’t analyses right down to the ground.”
Oswald laughed a little. “Yes, I get your point. I should admire the tendency. But I still think Rose is wrong.”
Jury didn’t comment on that. He said, “I asked her what, if anything, she thought about Billy’s mood swings. Whether it was possible Billy had what they call bipolar disorder.”
Oswald thought about this. “He was certainly moody, yes…”
“She hardly hesitated in telling me it was a long-standing trait in her family. She said she herself had suffered from it.”
“I had no idea. When was she diagnosed?”
“When she was in her twenties. Apparently she found a very good doctor. But she said up until then she’d been a hellion.”
Oswald smiled. “I can imagine.”
“She tried to get Billy to do something, to see a psychiatrist, something—but he wouldn’t.”
“No. He found Kurt Brunner. Billy needed somebody to prop him up at times.”
“What were his parents doing about him?”
“Roderick didn’t know what to do, and Olivia of course wasn’t aware anything should be done, advocating, as always, freedom to choose.”
“Addicts aren’t free to choose.” He thought about Aguilar; he wondered how free he was to choose.
“How true.” Oswald leaned forward, plucked up his cane. “I have something here that’s quite interesting. It might throw some light on things, certainly will upon Roderick.” Oswald managed to get to his feet with the help of the cane and move to the bookshelves along one wall. The bottom shelf of one stored papers, notebooks, and folders. From a pile of folders, he drew out one, moved to the sofa, and handed it to Jury.
“Are you familiar with the Kindertransport?”
“No. What’s this?” Jury held up the folder.
“In a moment. Let me freshen these drinks.”
As his hand went toward his glass, Jury rose and said, “Allow me.” He picked Oswald’s glass from the coffee table. “It’s not often I get the chance to pour an eighteen-year-old Glenlivet.”
“Just be sure we each get the same measure.”
Jury did and handed Oswald his drink. Then he went back to his sofa and got comfortable. A sip of the whiskey was enough to ensure that.
“The Kindertransport was what one might call an underground railway, organized to get children out of Germany and Poland and Czechoslovakia. These trains went by way of Holland to England. This was in thirty-nine, right after the pogroms. What was needed was a country to take the children to. The U.S.—I think to its shame—refused, as did many others. But we didn’t. The trains eventually got ten thousand children out who would certainly otherwise have gone to the camps with their parents. And for the most part, these children never saw their families again. Can you imagine what that parting was like at the stations?”
“I’d rather not.”
“No. Well, it was reported that occasionally a desperate parent would actually reach up to the window of the train and pull his child through it.”
“How sad. I suppose the ones who allowed their children to go, probably knowing they’d never see them again, they were courageous.”
“Yes. I try to put myself in their place. I imagine Billy’s being taken away on one of the trains.” He stopped and slowly shook his head.
But he was taken away. Jury could feel himself staring down miles of empty track, and he wondered what had been the use of it. The bombs, the burning buildings. He thought of his mother dying in one of them. Everything turns to rubble and dust in the end. He wondered how those parents stood it. Or how Oswald Maples stood it, his only grandson murdered.
Oswald took out a big white handkerchief, passed it over his eyes and under his nose.
Jury said, “I’m sorry.”
Maples put the handkerchief back in his pocket. “Anyway, this document,” he said, pointing to the file. “I found it in one of the huts when we were clearing out in ’43. I don’t know, nor did anyone, just how it got there. I don’t attach any particular mystery to its having gotten there other than the mystery of carelessness in failing to log it; however, the content is quite interesting. It pertains to the Kindertransport.”
He handed the file to Jury, who opened it and looked at the several pages inside. Jury looked up. “I don’t read German.” He smiled.
“Oh, dear. But isn’t the translation there? There was—I had one of the secretaries type it out in English—well, sorry. I got so used to the language in the ordinary way of things. Here, let me read it to you.”
Jury passed the file across the table.
Sir Oswald adjusted his glasses, saying, “I’ve read this so many times I very nearly have it memorized.” Delicately, he cleared his throat.
Jury found him to be delicate in all of his movements, a thrifty person in that respect. But then if he, Jury, were hounded by pain with every movement, he’d be economical with those movements, too.
“It begins,” said Oswald, “rather in medias res; I have no idea what happened to the first page or pages. I supposed it could have been much longer, but who knows?”
“You’re talking about Bletchley Park? Codes and ciphers?”
“Enigma, yes. But this wasn’t coded. It begins:
…why being transported to freedom? Why being saved? Hans was not saved. He was not borne off to a better, brighter life. I walked that platform to the end and back again. I studied their faces, some of them no older than two or three, others fifteen or sixteen, and many Hans’s age.
And then I stood quite still and looked at the children pressed up against the open windows of one car. There were forty or fifty of them crowded there, a few weeping for their parents, but most of them with a sort of astonished interest in this event, many laughing, many pleased. It was, after all, a trip, an adventure. One of them, a boy of eight or nine, was especially excited, as if he were about to get his first taste of freedom.
Freedom: I thought this ironic. I wanted to tell him there is no freedom. We are bound, each of us, if by nothing else, by our attachments.
Of course, the Jew had not meant to kill him. (He kept claiming he had not meant to shoot the boy and perhaps not, but even there I wonder.) He wa
s insane to fire at the group of SS where a little band of schoolchildren was so close by. In my mind’s eye I watch them, have watched them again and again.
The train rested there for some minutes while I regarded this car full of children and that particular nine-year-old boy, whose face turned pale at the trouble visited on his mother and father’s having to watch him go. Just as the train began to move, I reached up and from that little crowd of children pulled him down. He was startled into silence and looked around, baffled as a blind boy seeking some exit. The others called and screamed after him, and waved and hung out the window as the train left the station.
I walked the boy back to the line of parents gathered behind a barrier, all straining toward their children as the train pulled away, weeping and calling out, and this still goes on endlessly in my mind, as if all of life were this weeping and calling out.
It was not hard to find his parents. They were astounded, seeing him there and not on the train and clearly torn between relief and anxiety. His name was Josef. That was the name they called him. I watched their faces, their pale, drawn faces and watched the light and color drain from the day. What was happening? They did not understand—how could they?—when I took my Luger from its holster and shot him in the head. I watched him fall like a star and crumple at my feet.
Strange to say, but I did not hear the shot. Inside my head was nothing but a drum roll.
The guards rushed over, but stopped short when they saw me.
“The boy did not have clearance to be on the train.” I snapped this out at them and at the parents, who were too horrified to object. Anyway, what would be the point of objecting now? He was dead, and I…
“There it ends.” Oswald Maples shut the folder.
“My God. Who was this person?”
“His name was Röhm. Obergruppenführer Werner Röhm, a lieutenant general in the SS.”
“A high-ranking SS officer. So the other men, the guards, the police—no one was about to dispute what he did,” said Jury.
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