“This isn’t over territory, is it, Lu? You were the one who wanted me to stay on this case.”
“Territory? For God’s sakes, did you just hear what I said?”
“Do you want to know? Or do you simply want to throw dagger looks at me?”
The dagger disappeared back into its sheath somewhere. But she held the look. So did he. Would either of them have looked away if Ron hadn’t come out into the hall?
“It’s lawyer time. He’s raising hell.” Ron went back in.
Lu opened her mouth to say something when her mobile rang. She listened, frowning, said her gloomy thanks, flipped the phone shut. “That was the lab. The DNA will take a week. At least.” She sighed heavily and leaned against the wall.
“It was Snow who ate that sandwich,” said Jury. “Nobody else could have done it. Nobody else would have done it. It explains the jacket. Billy didn’t take it off because he didn’t eat. Beat a confession out of Snow; that’s all we need.”
“That’s all?” She smiled wanly and pushed away from the wall. “I’ve gotten in trouble once or twice with the way I treat suspects, you know, breaking plates over their heads, that kind of thing—” She shrugged. “Of course, it’s still a long way from eating a meal to shooting a man.” She chewed around the end of her thumb.
“What possible reason could Snow have for eating the food except for making it look as if Billy ate it?”
“But we don’t have the proof yet.”
“He doesn’t know that, does he?”
A WPC poked her head in the door this time. “Call for you, Superintendent.”
Jury picked up the receiver. “Jury.”
“God!” complained Melrose Plant.
“Not really, but go ahead.”
“I’ve been through fifteen of your cronies this morning. Why does it take fifteen connections—?”
“That’s the life of a private eye, Digby. Any luck?”
“Yes. But what I don’t understand is why you don’t know this. Don’t you do background checks on suspects and so forth?”
“Know what?”
“What is it?”
“Gilbert Snow is the brother of Billy’s cook.”
Jury’s mouth opened, but didn’t say anything for two seconds. Then, “What? Jessup is his sister?”
“That’s the way it works. If he’s her brother, then she’s his sister. Without fail.”
Lu Aguilar was mouthing what?
“How in hell does Angela Riffley know this?”
“Oh, come on: she’s the talented Mrs. Ripley.”
“Thanks.” Jury hung up, said to Lu, “I think we’ve got our connection between Snow and the victim.” He told her.
She stared at him, was still standing stiffly as he started out of the room.
“Oh come on, Inspector. Let’s break a few plates.”
Snow’s expression, when Aguilar sat down opposite him, was hugely condescending. The lady detective. Pfffft. He looked her up and down and pursed his lips.
Jury, leaning against the wall again, felt his hand twitch, wanting to curl into a fist. He wondered how much of Lu’s time was spent putting up with this sort of reaction.
She reached over, shut off the tape, leaned across the table, pulled his shirt collar tight with those long fingers, and got into his face. “Listen: we don’t think you’re the shooter, Gilbert, we know you are.”
He looked as if he were choking and grabbed her hand.
With a sour smile, she let go and turned the tape back on.
Rubbing his neck, he said, “Even if the gun’s not mine? Even if it’s goddamned Brunner’s?”
“You know, the funny thing about this gun is its lack of prints.”
Gilbert Snow hawked up a laugh. “I guess not. Wouldn’t Brunner have wiped them off?”
“And then tossed the gun in a desk drawer?”
Snow looked away. “People do funny things.” He was inspecting his nails as if she’d just given him a manicure.
“No. They do stupid things. In your hurry to get rid of your own prints, you wiped all of the prints off. You have any siblings, Gilbert?”
She had changed course and he looked up, surprised. Also confused. “What’d’you mean?”
“Siblings. Brothers? Sisters?”
Snow was calculating, Jury knew, how far they’d come. He could hardly deny a fact so easily checked by police.
“Yeah, I do, a sister. Why?”
Slowly, Lu smiled. “Just curious.” She opened the folder before her, and seemed to read, and let him sweat. “Back to the gun.” She looked up from the folder, leaned toward him again, but this time as if they shared a secret. “Gilbert, it was stupid in another way, leaving that gun in Brunner’s desk. If it weren’t for that, we might never have connected you with this murder. And if we hadn’t, we might never have found out about your sister. Annie Jessup. Billy Maples’s cook. So why don’t you just tell us what her little part in this is?”
Blood had suffused Gilbert Snow’s face. “I told you, I want a solicitor. I know my rights.”
“Absolutely. We’ll get you one. God knows you need one. But think of it this way: Annie Jessup might have nothing to do with this. Annie might be innocent, or if she was acting for you, might have done so in ignorance. So if you can tell us about her, save us some trouble, it might pay off for you. We might work out a deal with your lawyer.” She smiled. “When you get one.”
He sat there, his face rigid and red. “I know my rights.”
“Right.” She told the tape the interview was terminated and shut it off.
Then she stood up and looked down at him. “Wrong choice, Gil.”
They walked out.
“Do we have enough to pick her up?” Jury asked, knowing the answer.
“Richard, it’s going to be hard enough holding Snow. I’ve got seventy-two hours, and then I need something real. Like DNA.”
“In seventy-two hours you could get blood from a turnip.”
“I’m wondering who’s the turnip, him or me.”
They paced, Jury and Aguilar, walked around the empty room, circled around each other.
She stopped and said, “Are we absolutely certain it isn’t Kurt Brunner?”
“Yes. Snow’s whole attitude, his failure to mention Jessup’s being in Lamb House, the half-eaten dinner—of course we do. We can certainly question her.” Jury paused. “But wait a minute. If police go marching into Lamb House…” Jury lifted her mobile from the table, looked at his watch, and dialed Boring’s.
He knew it was the young ginger-haired porter who answered because he spoke in a whelping voice. “’Allo! Borin’s!”
“Mr. Plant, please.”
There arose a mild commotion at the other end as if any request for Mr. Plant would find them not knowing how to deal with it.
Finally, Mr. Plant pulled up and answered. He sounded enormously pleased with himself. Jury said, “You’re not through yet. You’re going back to Lamb House.”
“What?”
“Work your way into Mrs. Jessup’s good graces; see what you can find out.”
“You mean where she stands vis-à-vis her brother? What if she doesn’t know anything? What if she had nothing to do with it?”
“That’s possible, but I’m betting she did. He’ll get in touch with her. He wants a solicitor, so he’ll certainly want a phone.”
“She’ll know we suspect her of something, won’t she?”
“Yes, but it won’t really frighten her because Gilbert Snow will be out of custody.”
Jury watched Lu Aguilar try to assimilate that bit of information. He told Melrose to get back to Rye as soon as possible and flipped the phone shut. “You’re going to have to let him go.”
“What?”
Was that everyone’s word for him these days? “We’ve got to make the Jessup woman feel safe; we’ve got to convince her nothing’s happened to her brother. That we’re still plugged in to Kurt Brunner.”
“
Who is this Plant person? Why are you letting some friend of yours take charge of Annie Jessup?”
“Because we can’t. That’s what I’ve been talking about.”
She started walking again, her arms folded across her chest. “I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I, Lu, but what’ve we got? If one of us walks in there, or one of the local police, she’ll know immediately what’s wrong. Look, this will solve your problem of the seventy-two-hour hold, won’t it?”
She had to agree to that.
“This friend of mine is the one who discovered Mrs. Jessup was Snow’s sister.”
“He did?”
Jury nodded. “So he’s not some crazy who’s running around London thinking he’s Sherlock Holmes.”
Actually, he was, but Jury saw no reason to share that with DI Aguilar.
FIFTY-ONE
“I can’t imagine,” said Melrose, sitting in the Lamb House kitchen, “Kurt Brunner’s doing such a thing. I was truly shocked.” He was watching Mrs. Jessup slice through a roast lamb, carving it for that evening’s dinner. Her face was pink with the effort, an effort more than was called for, surely. It was only a leg of lamb. On the other end of the pastry table, little lemon tarts and custard tarts and airy little cakes rested. There were two large pans in the oven. He found the smell of the mince pies tantalizing. But he wondered what on earth she did with all of this baking, as he himself ate only a mite’s portion of it.
“I’ve never come right out and said, but I never much cared for Mr. Brunner. I always found him a bit of a mystery, and kind of too secretive.”
“Really?” Melrose munched on a biscuit that had come, as usual, with his tea. “I found him to be quiet, but never secretive.”
She regarded him with a smile that Melrose found unpleasant. Or was this merely his reaction to Jury’s insistence that she was part of the plot to murder Billy Maples?
“Gilbert Snow hasn’t the wit to have done this on his own,” Jury had said.
The cook put down her knife and went to the oven to peek at the little mince pies and slide them out. “I might be prejudiced, but I don’t have much liking for the Germans.” She set the cookie sheet on the table.
“Yes, you did mention that before.” He set down his teacup. “You mean because of the war?”
“I certainly do.”
“That’s a rather old battle to be fighting, isn’t it?” He laughed, quite deliberately, hoping the laugh would set her off.
She took a brief break from the meat carving. “You think that us that lived it should forget?”
Obviously, Mrs. Jessup hadn’t. So he trotted out an old shibboleth to further annoy her. “No. But it’s best to let bygones be bygones, wouldn’t you say?”
“No, I most certainly would not.”
The doorbell rang.
“Who can that be? It’s not Wednesday.”
Cheerily, Melrose said, “Who indeed? I’ll see!” and left the kitchen.
He had come back last night from London and sat for a long time in the study, thinking. Every once in a while he’d pick up the book splayed over the chair arm and read.
It was The Turn of the Screw. He was looking to Henry James for inspiration. The housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, was aptly named—a pleasant, ordinary woman, her thinking opaque, without an ounce of imagination, and a poor companion and confidante for the unnamed governess, who had entirely too much imagination. Or at least that’s how Melrose read it. He could be wrong; those two children, Miles and Flora, perhaps really were trying to drive her away.
Melrose walked back and forth, back and forth. Oh, come on man, give me an idea! This “little problem” would surely have interested the Master. Come on, it’s right down your street!
There were no children like these, like Flora and Miles. So why was the reader prepared to believe in them? Because of the ambiguity? Because all of the events that transpired could be accounted for in at least two different ways?
Ha! Melrose tried to imagine Henry James dealing with the dreadful Minnie Babcock, dealing with her in fiction, if not in fact. He couldn’t imagine James dealing with any children in fact. In his mind’s eye, Melrose watched Henry James exiting the kitchen from which falling crockery, breaking glass, and screams issued.
Melrose rewound the tape in his mind. The glass breaking as if it had been inadvertently swept from the table, glass tumbling, shards of it sent flying. Henry James would have registered every single shard.
Try to be one of those people on whom nothing is lost!
Suddenly he had it.
Melrose sat forward so fast he might have been shot in the back.
He walked some more. He just didn’t know who the original perpetrator was.
His mind was full of the beastly Minnie Babcock, the effect she’d produced in Mrs. Jessup. Yes, he was pretty sure he had it, or at least the part that sent the cook into a frenzy.
Right then, last night, he had smiled a Peter Quint smile and picked up the phone.
Today, the doorbell rang.
Who can that be? It’s not Wednesday.
Who indeed? I’ll see!
Melrose all but ran to the front door.
He opened the door and looked down. “Hello, Malcolm.” Farther down. “And Waldo. Do come in.”
Malcolm did, but Waldo paused to raise his leg and pee on the step.
Melrose saw this as an auspicious beginning.
He took them into the study. He said, “Malcolm, I’m releasing you from the confines of childhood, from all moral and civic obligations to your fellow man.”
Malcolm chewed his gum a little slower, as if the gum itself didn’t want to miss any of this intriguing harangue. He swept the unruly hair from his forehead and said, “You ought to be up on a box in Hyde Park, you.”
“I know. Anyway. This freedom of movement is limited to only the kitchen and the garden, for I imagine you might have some overweening need to rappel. There’s quite a good stone wall out there.”
Waldo gave out a murmurous growl. They both looked at Melrose with a frown.
Malcolm asked, “So what’s all this in aid of?”
“I’ll tell you if you agree not to tell anyone else.”
“Who’d I tell around here? There’s only us.”
Waldo walked away and began sniffing the furniture.
“Please remember: this is a very famous house and that makes everything in it valuable.”
“Except in the kitchen?”
Melrose was reassured. Malcolm was a quick study.
“Right. Now I leave it to you to decide what is the most annoying behavior in the circumstances.”
“Okay, but what’s these circumstances?”
“Good question. I want you to rattle the cook, you know, a really good rattle—drive her crazy. No, let me rephrase that: I want you to make her really angry.”
Malcolm’s forehead pleated into little folds as he smiled slyly. “No problem,” he said, pleased. “Why?”
“I want her to incriminate herself.”
Malcolm’s eyes widened and he blew out his cheeks. He looked as if this might be the opportunity of a lifetime. “I bet that Scotland Yard detective’s behind all this.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
“Is this to do with Billy’s murder?”
“It most certainly is. If you can wring something out of her—I mean, Miss Jes—Mrs. Jessup, you would be instrumental in solving the case.”
Malcolm fairly glowed with righteous purpose. “Prob’ly she won’t want Waldo in her kitchen.” He gave one of his snorting little laughs.
“Depend upon it. But first—” Melrose reached into the sitting room and plucked a coil of rope from the desk where it had been waiting by the James journal. “There’s an excellent old brick wall round back, as you know. Come on.”
Melrose returned to the kitchen, where the leg of lamb, looking succulent and pink, rested on the table, nicely sliced. Here would be an unwelcome remark! “You k
now, Mrs. Jessup, it’s not really safe to serve rare lamb. There’s some bacteria that might get into it, can’t remember the name of it, but it can be fatal.”
Oh, that was a hit with the blood pressure!
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I’ve heard that criticism before and I don’t much care for it. You think I’m out to poison you, do you?”
He held his hands, palms out, to ward off her words. “Sorry, I wasn’t criticizing your cooking, I—”
“Who’s that child and what’s he doing out there? Look!”
The lamb forgotten now, she was looking out of the window. Melrose came to stand beside her. “Oh, that’s just Malcolm. Don’t you recognize him? He’s a cousin of Billy Maples. His uncle is Roderick. He lives with them. He’s to be my dinner guest. But I don’t see how he’ll make it up the wall, do you? Not with that dog.”
Mrs. Jessup stared at Melrose. She was momentarily speechless, hearing that Melrose not only countenanced this affair but that he was largely responsible for it. “Now, sir, you go out there and get that boy out of the garden!”
Ah! A promising sign; she had forgotten her place enough to start ordering Lord Ardry around. “If you insist,” said Melrose, sighing.
“It’s just priming the pump,” he said to Malcolm, as the boy unhitched his end of the rope.
Waldo got free on his own. “You know, I don’t think Waldo would even get halfway up, the way you tie that rope.”
“It’s just for show,” Malcolm answered obscurely.
Malcolm and Waldo, both looking surly, followed Melrose into the kitchen.
“Here they are!” said Melrose, as if Mrs. Jessup had only wanted boy and dog in for tea and tarts. He made introductions all around, met by Mrs. Jessup with her hands on her hips, glaring.
“Might I ask what you’re doing here, young man?”
Malcolm had immediately sussed out that day’s baking and headed for the pastry table. “Come by train,” said Malcolm, reaching for a mince pie.
Waldo was sniffing up a storm, not neglecting Mrs. Jessup’s ankles.
Dust Page 28