The Old Fox Deceived

by Martha Grimes

  Jury was delighted to see him. “Mr. Plant.” He moved towards him, hand outstretched. “I can hardly believe it. Understand you’re an old friend of the family.”

  “I was in York when I found out what happened. I always seem to be around just when you don’t need me.”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Plant: you might be very useful. Being a friend of the family, having the run of the house, so to speak.” Jury looked at him. “Navigating the waters.”

  “Ha. That would be a bit tricky. Julian Crael is a rather formidable iceberg. He spends a good deal of time walking the cliffside and the moors and generally being pale and interesting.”

  “Am I to take it you don’t care much for Julian Crael?”

  Melrose shrugged and smiled and changed the subject. “I’ve been following your career in the newspapers.”

  “That must have made for very light reading.”

  “Not at all. I knew you’d been put in charge of this case. I must admit I rather enjoyed that business in Long Piddleton — though that might seem a trifle macabre. Indeed, I enjoyed it almost as much as Agatha.”

  “How will I ever get on without her?” Jury looked quickly round. “She’s not — ?”

  “You’re safe, Inspector. She’s not. Now. Could I induce you to have dinner with me at the Fox Deceiv’d? I hear they’ve very good food there.”

  “Good idea. How about seven?”

  “How about six? That’s when it opens, and I’ve a taste for a Rackmoor Fog.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a little drink the publican concocted — Mrs. Meechem? — I daresay for the tourist trade. Gin, rum, brandy, whisky and sharks’ teeth. Tell Sergeant Wiggins to have one. It’ll cure anything, even the Black Death.”

  “Have you seen Wiggins, then?”

  “Yes. He’s in the kitchen exhorting the cook to confess.”

  “I’ll go along there, then. See you at six. If I’m not there just have a double.”

  “Then you wouldn’t see me at all.” Melrose called after Jury’s departing back, “You couldn’t use, well, you know, a bit of help in the meantime, could you? Even a sounding board for some of your reflections? Try it out on the dog, that sort of thing?”

  Jury thought for a moment. “Perhaps. As long as you’re here, Mr. Plant, you could go along to the Makepiece cottage and see what you can find out. It’s the nearest one to the Angel steps, up on Scroop Street. It’s called Cross Keys and there’s a chance they might have heard something.”

  Plant’s face, Jury saw, was beaming as he made a brief note in his pocket-diary. The little notebook looked surprisingly like Jury’s own.

  • • •

  In a kitchen the size of a rugby field Wiggins was hunched over his notebook, a pot of tea, and a plate of excellent-looking sandwiches. Across from him sat a plump, red-faced woman of indeterminate age, her brown hair drawn back in a neat bun.

  “This is Mrs. Thetch, Chief Inspector. She’s just been kind enough to give me tea.”

  Jury was hungry himself — it must have been the sea air — and picked up a sandwich. Minced chicken, very good.

  “I’ll just get you a cup, sir.” Mrs. Thetch started up but Jury waved her down. “No, thanks. This is fine. Tell me, Mrs. Thetch, how long you’ve been with the Craels.”

  “Eighteen years, I was just telling the sergeant.”

  “You knew Lady Margaret, then.”

  “Yes, sir. But not very well. I came just before . . . you know.” Her face wore an obligatory sad look. “I was vegetable cook for a few months; then after Mary Siddons died, poor thing, I stopped on as cook.”

  “This Mary Siddons. She had a daughter, Lily?”

  “Yes, sir. We still see Lily. Terrible about her mother. Drowned, she did.” Mrs. Thetch nodded her head towards the rear of the house and the cliffs. “No one ever knew why she’d be walking along that stretch of shingle so near to high tide. There’s a long, narrow strip right at the bottom of the cliff that’ll take you from Rackmoor as far as Runner’s Bay. But you can only walk it when the tide’s out. Lots of folks do. Poor Mary Siddons must have tried to walk it when the tide was coming in.”

  Wood appeared to tell Jury that Mr. Julian was waiting for him in the Bracewood Room. (Apparently, the Colonel named his rooms after horses.) The butler gave the voluble Mrs. Thetch a dark look and preceded Jury through the dining room.

  As he followed Wood, Jury thought: one disappearance, two auto accident victims, one in a mental institution, one drowned. One murdered. Rackmoor, for all its bracing sea air, didn’t seem the healthiest place in the British Isles.

  6

  When he walked into the Bracewood Room, Jury knew he’d found the portrait of Lady Margaret Crael. It hung above the marble mantelpiece, dominating the room and the room’s other occupant, Julian Crael. The woman in the picture was seated on a sofa or chaise longue, the back of which was a dark curve of wood. The painter might have surprised her, his subject, from behind, for it was the back of the sofa which presented itself to the viewer. The woman seated there was shown from the shoulder upwards and in profile. Her head was turned to the left, looking along the length of her arm, black-sleeved and outstretched along the mahogany frame. Across the sofa had been tossed a silky material—a Spanish shawl, perhaps, black fringed. One had to peer closely to pick out details of silk and fringe and wood, for the dark shawl melted into the black dress, the dress into the dark background, so that all was dark except for that pellucid profile and hair. The pale gold hair fell loosely about her shoulders, swept back from her face as if a breeze had blown through the room. The palm of her hand was turned upwards, slightly cupped, the fingers apart and a little extended, as if she were beckoning to someone — someone out there beyond the portrait’s frame. Jury looked away.

  “I’m Julian Crael,” said the man beneath the portrait. And, seeing the direction of Jury’s gaze, added. “That was my mother.”

  The identification of Julian Crael as the son was quite superfluous; anyone with eyes in his head would have known this was her son. Had Julian Crael been a woman, a girl, he might have been the twin of the seated woman. The pastel coloring, the deeply set blue eyes, the cornsilk hair — he looked himself as if he had stepped down from a painting.

  “She’s beautiful,” said Jury. A banal comment, considering.

  “It’s a good likeness, too, considering Rees did it from a photograph. He’s the local artist. Lowers himself occasionally to do portraits. Pays the rent, I suppose. She’s been dead eighteen years.” Crael drank off what was in the glass he was holding, and looked away, into empty air, over Jury’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry. And I didn’t introduce myself. Richard Jury, C.I.D. I wanted to ask you a few questions about Gemma Temple, Mr. Crael.”

  Julian had left the fireplace to replenish his drink. He held the decanter up in mute question. Jury declined the whisky. “What about her?” asked Julian, pouring. “You mean, why don’t my father and I agree as to whether she was Dillys March? Why should we, since we agree on little else?” He hoisted his glass, gave Jury a chilly smile, and drank. And then he returned to his position by the mantel, his outstretched arm across it like the arm in the portrait above him. It was not, Jury was sure, a conscious pose.

  “You’re sure she wasn’t Dillys March?”

  “Absolutely. It was a swindle. Would have been, that is.”

  “Then you must have thought of collusion, Mr. Crael. This Gemma Temple certainly must have had information supplied her by someone who did know Dillys.”

  Julian smoked and turned his silver lighter round and round in the fingers of the hand still lying on the mantel. “I suppose so.”

  “Who, then, Mr. Crael?”

  Julian dropped the lighter into his pocket and his arm from the mantel and turned his back to the fireplace, still smoking. “I’ve no idea.”

  “But you do agree that’s the only answer, at least if she wasn’t Dillys March.” Jury wanted to dra
w this commitment from him, found it strange he seemed reluctant to make it. “Mr. Crael?”

  Briefly, Julian nodded. “Yes.”

  “Tell me: why did Dillys leave as she did?” Julian smoked and shook his head. “Colonel Crael says she had gone off before.”

  He nodded. “Dillys was willful, selfish, spoilt. I suppose they gave her anything she wanted to make up for the loss of her parents. Nothing she did would have surprised me.”

  A log disintegrated in the fireplace, spitting out sparks and tiny tongues of flame. Julian’s eyes, like the blue-tipped flames, seemed to burn at Jury. He was struck anew by the beauty of the man’s face and how out of place it seemed here. He belonged to another time and place, Arcadian, perhaps. “I take it you did not care much for Dillys March.”

  For a moment, Julian turned his face away and did not answer. Jury took the opportunity to pocket the matches with which he had lit his own cigarette and which had been lying in a cut-glass dish beside his chair. One never knew where matches might come from. Moreover, he wondered why the lowly packet was even in the room, consorting with two table lighters — one of green Murano glass, the other porcelain, along with Julian’s own silver lighter.

  “Shouldn’t you be asking me things more pertinent, Inspector? Such as, where was I at the time of the murder?”

  Jury smiled. It had been the father’s question, also. “According to your statement, you were in your room.”

  “That’s quite right. I dislike these Twelfth Night parties. My mother started it. She loved parties, and so does the Colonel. I don’t. I am, indeed, rather antisocial.” He seemed waiting for Jury to challenge this. “I’d like to show you something.” Julian walked over to the French doors, opened one, and beckoned to Jury. They went out into the icy air of the terrace. Rime edged the balustrade to which Julian had backed up, the sea behind him, the waves sucking against the cliffside. Julian was looking up at the blank wall of the house. He pointed. “Those are my windows.” Then he crossed the terrace to the left and pointed towards the village. “There’s a path that connects up with these terrace steps. It’s a nice walk along the cliffs. It joins up with more steps down to the seawall. The easiest way to the house is to come round by the Fox steps, up along the seawall, then to the path, then to the terrace. And that’s the way people came and went.” He walked back to Jury. “All night long, Inspector Jury.” His eyes glittered for the first time with something like humor. “As to the inside. There are two doors to my rooms. Both face the landing where the musicians were playing all the evening long. Oh, true, they did take a bit of a break, but there was always someone out there. I went into my room at ten. The party had started already. I could not have come out without someone’s seeing me. Even if that were remotely possible, I surely could not have gone out and come back without someone’s seeing me.”

  “And you couldn’t even have scaled the wall,” Jury said. They were back in the drawing room now, Jury sitting in the same chair and bending matches down one by one in the book he had taken from his pocket.

  Julian, once again by the fireplace, spread his hands in mock-helplessness; he looked very amused.

  “Do you often stay at the Sawry Hotel, Mr. Crael?”

  “What —?”

  “The Sawry. It’s quite exclusive. In Mayfair, isn’t it?”

  A moment of bewilderment, and Julian regained his icy insouciance. “Our family use it. I go up to London occasionally. Like all the rest of the world. Why do you ask that?”

  Jury held up the matches, cover out.

  Julian stared at the book of matches, looked away.

  “Gemma Temple came from London.”

  “Well, good God, Inspector. So does Adrian Rees. So does Maud Brixenham. And Olive Manning just got back from London. Half the world’s in London.” He drank his whisky.

  Charming evasion. Jury changed the subject again. “Tell me about Lily Siddons.”

  Julian had just picked up his glass and now set it down again, hard. “What in God’s name has she to do with it?”

  “Don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. Wasn’t there a dinner party here the night before?”

  “Ah, yes. Miss Temple’s debut. Father invited Lily. Along with Rees and Maud Brixenham. But I still don’t understand—”

  “The costume. The costume Gemma Temple was wearing really belonged to Lily Siddons. There was, apparently, some swapping.”

  Julian stared. “Are you telling me the murderer meant to kill Lily?” Jury didn’t answer, just looked at him. Julian snorted, shook his head like a hound baffled by a fouled line. “To tell the truth I wasn’t paying much attention to their conversation and really don’t remember anything about costumes. Oh, yes, this Temple woman decried the fact she hadn’t one. I left round about then. You’ll have to ask my father. Or Maud. Or Lily herself, why don’t you ask her?”

  “I certainly shall. Lily Siddons used to live here, didn’t she? When her mother was cook?”

  “Yes, as a child for a few years.”

  Jury thought for a moment. “You know, I sometimes feel murders are done in the past, in a manner of speaking. That what was really meant was to kill someone a long time ago — and it’s taken all this time of dragging the feeling around — like a dead body, really. Until one finally manages to get on with it. And dumps the corpse in the present. On the Angel steps. Somewhere.” He stopped because of the look on Julian’s face: it was ashen, blighted, stricken. It lasted for only a couple of seconds, but it was sharp enough to convince Jury that Julian had been about to admit something — to step over a precipice, and had then quickly drawn back his foot.

  All Julian said was, “Is Papa pairing me off with Lily, then? I expect he might. He’s always had a soft spot for her. No matter she was the cook’s girl.”

  “I imagine he’d like you to marry. You must be supremely eligible. Titled, rich, handsome, intelligent — how have you escaped?”

  “I’m glad you’ve got it in the right order. The title’s not much. Only a baronetcy. Our guest, Mr. Plant, seems to have given away far more than I’ll ever have. I’ll be Sir Julian one of these days.” He seemed to take no pleasure in it. “As to Lily. Yes, my father’s very fond of Lily. She takes him back. In some small way she helps to create the illusion that it’s not all over.”

  “Then does Lily Siddons come in for any money, Mr. Crael?”

  Julian frowned. “Probably. Why?”

  “Simply that anyone who did have a claim on your father’s capital, either literal or emotional, might have some reason for wanting Dillys March out of the way for good and all.”

  Julian could only stare. Then he laughed. “Ye gods. First Lily is victim and now murderess? The idea of her wielding that knife — preposterous. To say nothing of its being a roundabout way of collecting on her inheritance,” he added dryly.

  “Why preposterous? A woman could have done it.”

  “She’s so imminently sensible. Works like a demon at her restaurant. And she doesn’t have the—” He seemed searching for a word to describe her lack. “She hasn’t the passion to do murder. Lily’s a bit of an iceberg. The original Snow Queen.” Jury held back a smile. “I guess she’s attractive enough. Pale skin, blond hair. Yes, I suppose she is.” He seemed newly digesting this information, as if he’d just made the discovery. “The Colonel’s very democratic, isn’t he?”

  “Who do you think might have done it, Mr. Crael?”

  He gave a short laugh. “No one. Oh, let’s see now. There’s Adrian Rees. He’s certainly a fiery sort. Always getting up to stuff. Barroom brawls. Living up to his image.”

  “You don’t like him?”

  “I don’t care about him one way or the other.”

  That indifference, thought Jury, which appeared to extend to most things and most people, was too studied to be real.

  “Rees might be capable of collusion with someone else, of course. He needs money for his gallery, I know that. Father’s loaned him quite a bit.”

/>   “Did he know enough about Dillys March to prime Gemma Temple?”.

  “I don’t know. The Colonel certainly confides in people. Maud Brixenham, for example. If I’m not altogether blind, she would like to become Lady Crael. Papa’s quite presentable looking. Fifteen, twenty years older than Maud but doesn’t look it. And, after all, she’s fifty-five, so what’s the difference?” Jury smiled at this small-boy way of looking at passionless old age. “The Colonel’s very active. It’s all that damned hunting, I suppose.”

  “Has your father shown an inclination in her direction?”

  “He confides, Inspector. But not in me.” Julian threw Jury a sardonic glance. “No, old Maud would not want Dillys coming back and laying claim, as you put it, to my father’s affections. Nor would Olive Manning. I think she blames my father for letting the sordid affair go on between Leo and Dillys. Her son is in some mental institution. But to give the devil her due — Dillys, that is — Leo Manning was round the bend long before he came here. Father hired him as chauffeur as a favor to Olive. He was no damned good, either as chauffeur or as person. But, of course, his mother doesn’t believe that. No, it was all Dillys’s fault. All our fault, I gather. Papa pays the bills for Leo Manning. He’s a generous man. There are probably annuities in that will of his all up your arm.” Julian looked at Jury. “No, Inspector. He would not disinherit me for Dillys March. Of course, he might leave it all to the Kennel Club or the Destitute Huntsmen’s organization.” He smoked and was silent for a moment. “Perhaps this Gemma Temple simply meant to pick up Dillys March’s fifty thousand pounds and leave.”

  “Or stay.”

  “She couldn’t have got away with it. Never.”

  “She seems to have made a good beginning.”

  “But to make an end would have been impossible. It’s one thing to get through forty-eight hours of posing as someone else. But to play-act that out over a long period—?” Julian shook his head in disbelief.

  “Dillys March was, I take it, not universally liked.”