The Old Fox Deceived

by Martha Grimes

  “Julian Crael: by far the strongest motive I can see. But a cast-iron alibi.”

  “Makes you wonder, right there,” said Wiggins, folding his napkin carefully.

  “Except it could be just as he says it is. Then there’s Adrian Rees. Ample opportunity: he was walking up Grape Lane and saw her. But motive is awfully thin, there. I should imagine the Colonel’s patronage would continue, though possibly in somewhat diminished form.

  “Then, Maud Brixenham: both motive and opportunity. The Colonel, if he’s interested in marrying; the return of the prodigal daughter (as you put it) might take up a lot of his emotional capital.

  “Lily Siddons: motive, yes. But opportunity — very little. She’s pretty well out of it unless she could run like hell from her cottage, murder the woman, and get back again all in ten minutes. It takes that much time to get there in the first place. This is further complicated by the fact that someone may be trying to kill her.

  “Kitty Meechem —”

  “Oh, surely not, sir!” Wiggins looked down at the ample breakfast he’d just enjoyed as if he couldn’t believe it’d been served up by a murderess.

  “Want some more eggs, Wiggins?”

  “Oh, no thank you. I’m quite stuffed.” He patted his stomach.

  Jury threw some coins on the table, a tip for the rather slow-moving waitress named Biddie or Bitsy who had spent a great deal of time in arranging and rearranging the cutlery on the other tables and staring at the two of them until Kitty had finally collared her. “Let’s go, then.”

  • • •

  Jury splayed his arms and leaned out over the seawall where the tide had left its bright litter of shingle and shells and partially beached little boats. The morning was brighter, the horizon gauzelike, the sun misty. The whole of the tiny village, with its brown-red roofs staggering upward looked wonderfully precarious, as if it might tumble down at any moment like a child’s building blocks.

  “When Maud Brixenham described that dinner party . . . Look in your notes for that, will you?”

  Wiggins took out his notebook. Jury had often marveled at how he could cram so much into such a small space, perhaps because the sergeant’s writing was so crabbed. He found the part and read: “ ‘It was a small party. Just Titus, Lily Siddons, Adrian and this Temple woman. We were in the Bracewood Room’ . . . that’s the room, sir, where you were talking with Julian Crael . . . ‘and Gemma Temple was sitting in front of the fire. Julian and I were standing about with our sherry . . .’ ”

  Jury looked out to sea, not minding the boredom which Wiggins’s notes often aroused in him. His exasperation with Wiggins’s editorializing and often painful longeurs was diminished by the fact that for absolute precision Wiggins couldn’t be beaten. Here the lengthy report was compounded by the Brixenham’s woman’s love for detail. Wiggins’s voice droned on, painting in, practically, the very textures of the materials, the paintings on the walls. Trollope, watch by his side, couldn’t have outwritten Wiggins. Jury merely waited for the part he wanted and watched the pallid sunlight weaving in and out of clouds to cast an uneven pattern of light and shadow across the shingle like dull, flocked gold. A petrel flashed toward the sea.

  “ ‘ . . . and then the door opened and Lily walked in. She just froze there, in the doorway, staring at the Temple girl.’ ”

  “ ‘She was struck by the resemblance to Dillys March, is that it?’ That’s you speaking, sir. And then Miss Brixenham answered, ‘Struck by it? She was utterly shocked. Her face went as white as her dress.’ ”

  “That’s what I can’t understand,” Jury said. “She reacted as if she thought it surely was Dillys March and clearly registered something less than pleasure. But she didn’t appear to question it: that cover-up story of the Colonel’s, about the cousin. Would you have believed that, had you been Lily Siddons?”

  “No, I guess not. Why would this cousin never have turned up before?”

  “And this whole costume business.” Jury turned his back to the wall, took out a fresh packet of cigarettes, and slowly tore the tab from its top. Wiggins, as if in some comradely communion with his superior, took out a fresh box of cough drops.

  “Assume for the moment that Lily really believed this so-called Gemma Temple was Dillys. She hated her. She was always playing second fiddle to her as a child. Why give over her costume to Dillys March?”

  “As a favor to Colonel Crael?”

  “Maybe. But why not just toss together another costume for Miss Temple? I think she’s lying.”

  “Oh, well, sir.” Wiggins’s face was almost torn by his wolfish grin. “They’re probably all lying, if it comes to that.” He popped a cough drop into his mouth, said round it, “In your list, you never mentioned the Colonel. Do you think he’s right out of it, then? And I honestly can’t see how Kitty could’ve had a motive.”

  Jury laughed. “That worries you doesn’t it? Well, it’s not likely. But you can bet the Colonel’s leaving his part ownership of the Fox to her. Though it’s hard to see how that could be directly related to killing Gemma Temple. Anyway, Kitty’s alibi is the same as Lily’s. They were together. And as for the Colonel himself — ample opportunity, but absolutely no motive I can see.”

  “You didn’t include Olive Manning. She’d both motive and opportunity.”

  Jury smiled. “You seem to favor her, Wiggins. You keep coming round to her.”

  “The thing is, she knew Dillys March well, didn’t she? If there’s any question of collusion, she’d be a very likely person to have found this Gemma Temple person, seen how much she looked like Dillys, and brought her to Old House.”

  “Yes. You’re right there.”

  “Your instincts are good, sir. Which one of them do you think is guilty?”

  “I haven’t met the Manning woman, yet, of course, but . . . ”

  “Of the others, though?”

  It was what had depressed him this morning. The thing which had diverted his thoughts into the channel of this phantom promotion, the superintendency which he had been so modestly brushing aside, telling himself he didn’t need the money, the prestige, the ego-trip. He wondered now if what he didn’t need was to be in an even worse position, to be faced with even more of the same, the dilemma which now confronted him. He did not know how to answer Wiggins’s question. As he looked out over the gull-marked shingle, the dull gold of the horizon, he finally said, “None of them.”

  His feelings were playing hell with his objectivity.

  15

  The gray brindled cat slipped from the sill and walked toward the back of the Rackmoor Gallery, pregnant with ownership. Jury had disturbed its nap by framing his face with his hands and putting it up against the window.

  When he walked in, he nearly stepped on an envelope which must have been shoved under the door. He picked it up. The flap had come unstuck and he could see a pound note had slipped out, one of several. The envelope, cheap stationery, was addressed to B. Makepiece, and had been mailed months before. Jury was interested in the return address, what there was of it. R.V.H. London S.W. I. He was studying it when Adrian Rees appeared, wearing his paint-smeared apron and carrying a small bowl which he set on the hardwood floor. The cat went over to it.

  “I’d say, Come in, but you already are.” Rees yawned.

  Jury held out the envelope. “I found this on the floor.”

  Adrian looked at it, color spreading up his neck. “Oh, I see. It’s just a bit of a loan. From Bertie.” When Jury just looked at him, he went on. “For Christ’s sakes, what do you think? I’m blackmailing him? Bertie’s the only one in Rackmoor who can be depended on for a spot of cash.”

  “I would imagine he’s quite a good manager. Could I have the envelope, if you don’t want it?”

  Adrian looked down at it, extracted the notes, and handed it back to Jury. “Is the Fox out of its letterhead again?” He leered. Then he frowned. “Hell, I know it’s terrible borrowing from a boy. But I’m a bit desperate for money — not the b
est thing to say in the circumstances.” He sighed and idly wiped a brush back and forth across his apron.

  “What do you think of his story?”

  “Whose?”

  “Bertie’s. About his mother going off to Ireland.”

  Adrian smiled. “It’s hard to believe that one would go to such lengths to tend a sick old granny.”

  “Did you know his mother?”

  “Roberta? Saw her about, is all. Puff of wind would have blown her away, at least in the brains department. But the old wowsers in the town seem to have swallowed it. Codfish and Frog-Eyes, that lot. You must admit for pure resourcefulness it’s quite good. Who’d scarper off to Belfast to check up? That what you came about?”

  “No. It was about Gemma Temple I came. Your relationship was somewhat closer than you allowed.”

  For a long moment, he was silent, wiping the brush back and forth. Then he shrugged and said, “Someone saw us, I suppose?” Jury nodded and waited. “Well, I should hardly call it a ‘relationship.’ It was only the one time.”

  “A lot can happen in one time.” It always surprised Jury, this way some people had of doing it by numbers. He thought back over the last years, of the women he had known. A lot could happen in the one time, certainly. “Why didn’t you tell me, Mr. Rees? I could have so easily found out. And did. Another thing: did you see Gemma Temple the night she was murdered — I mean, before you saw her in Grape Lane?”

  “What? No, absolutely not! Anyone says I did is lying.”

  “She was seen on the High Street. Near here.”

  “I don’t know anything about that. As for not telling you about the other business: I already had all the suspicion I needed attached to me, thank you very much. I was the last person to see the Temple girl, and that right after all that stupid mouthing off in the Fox about Raskolnikov and murder.”

  “You don’t think I attached any importance to that, really, do you? That sort of crime might be convincing in the hands of Dostoyevsky, but I’ve never run into it on the streets of London.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell me that? Perhaps then I’d have admitted to knowing the Temple woman.”

  “It’s not a trade-off, for God’s sake. Now would you please tell me about Gemma Temple?”

  “Oh, very well,” said Adrian, truculently. “She’d seen me in here once and a couple of times in the Fox. And I, of course, had noticed her. Who wouldn’t? She was quite good-looking and something new to turn one’s thoughts to. One night just after closing she walked out of the pub and I followed her. She was walking along the seawall in the direction of Old House. I caught her up and we chatted a bit and I suggested she come back to my place for a drink. Not very clever but it’s all I could think of, Rackmoor not being the Sodom and Gomorrah of all England. Anyway, we came back here.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then what ‘what’? You know what. The scenario is pretty well fixed.”

  “It didn’t need much persuasion, is that it?”

  “Inspector, it didn’t need any persuasion. And I don’t regard myself as all that magnetic, either.”

  Jury thought he was being overly modest. Adrian Rees exuded sexuality, masculinity, intensified by the exotic touch of his being a painter. “Which night was this?”

  “Two nights before the murder.” Adrian smiled grimly.

  “What did she tell you about herself?”

  “Absolutely nothing, and that’s the truth. No more than I told you before. She walked about with a drink in her hand looking at my paintings and making idiotic, I suppose obligatory, comments about them. And she talked about the village, which she found a trifle dull. There wasn’t that much talk, after all.” Adrian smiled roguishly.

  “And she didn’t mention having lived here once?”

  Adrian shook his head. “And when she turns up the next night at that little dinner party, I was the one who stammered and blushed. You’d think she’d never seen me before that evening. I’d no idea she was some sort of cousin of the Crael family.”

  “How much did you know about Dillys March?”

  “You mean the Craels’ ward, the one who disappeared?” Jury nodded. “Only what the Colonel told me about her. About her and Lady Margaret and his son, Rolfe. I was up there and he was down here when I was doing Lady Margaret’s portrait. . . . What are you saying, exactly?”

  Jury didn’t answer that. “You’re quite sure you had never seen Gemma Temple before she came to Rackmoor?”

  Adrian looked furious. “Bloody hell! Of course, I’m sure!”

  Jury smiled briefly. “Don’t be overly indignant. You didn’t tell me the truth before, you know.” He looked off into the dark environs in the rear where the cat was washing himself. “Did you finish that picture, the one of Gemma Temple? I’d like to see it.”

  “No, but I shall. I’d just been working at it when you came.”

  Jury looked down. “With a dry brush?”

  The anger which had started to drain from Adrian’s face returned. “My God but you do notice everything, don’t you?”

  “That’s what they pay me for. I’ll see you later.”

  16

  The bell tinkled over the door of the Bridge Walk Café when Jury walked in. The dining room was small, with a low-beamed ceiling, whitewashed walls, small tables with ladder-back chairs. A large sideboard with stacks of blue and white china. Very clean and attractive and empty of customers. Business would hardly be expected to be very good in mid-winter.

  Lily Siddons appeared, her pale hair tied back in a kerchief, and with an apron on. Jury supposed this was the kitchen entrance. “Oh. Good morning.”

  He touched his hat and was a bit surprised to feel its tweedy floppiness. He’d almost forgot he’d put it on this morning. “Miss Siddons, would you mind if I asked you a few more questions?”

  She wiped her hands down her apron. “No. No, I wouldn’t mind, if you wouldn’t mind coming back to the kitchen so I could get on with my work.”

  Inside the kitchen, he saw she had been chopping up vegetables. Jury pulled out a chair and sat down. She was working at a large table in the center of the room, an enormous butcher’s block table. “I wanted to ask you about your mother.”

  For a moment she was silent. Then she said, “I don’t see the point.” She picked up a cup of coffee, now cold, apparently. She poured it down the sink and turned her back to Jury.

  He waited for her to turn round again, tracing his finger through some flour which remained on the table, probably from the loaves of bread left to rise in bowls under towels. Lining the walls near the big stove were copper bowls. A row of small, high windows overlooked the stream which ran below and under the bridge. Bands of morning sunlight cut across the window sills, made rhomboids of light on the floor, and sparked the bottoms of the copper bowls.

  “You do all this yourself?”

  Turning back to the chopping block, she nodded, and picked up the knife. “In winter, yes. In summer, I have help. We’ve a lot of people on holiday here.” Jury had never seen such swift chopping. She held the tip of the big knife down with her right fingers and with her left hand lifted the hilt and brought it down in short, swift, rhythmical movements. The knife cut the carrots into ever smaller bits as she chopped, swept it back, chopped, swept. “You’re very deft with that knife.” Jury fished for a cigarette in his shirt pocket, slapped his pockets for matches.

  “The trick is that the blade should never completely leave the board.” She wasn’t looking at him when she added, “And I suppose you’re meaning to suggest that I could cut up a person like a carrot, is that it?”

  “Was she killed with a knife? First I knew it.”

  Lily stopped, angry, hand on hip. “May I please have my picture back? The one you took last night?”

  Jury reached in his pocket. “Sorry, Lily. I took it off by mistake.”

  She started in on the vegetables again. “I doubt you do anything by mistake.”

  He put the pictu
re, framed again, on the table. “Your father doesn’t sound a very steady type, to go off and leave the both of you the way he did.” Lily didn’t answer. “It’s odd her marrying someone she must have known so little, too. How long were they married?”

  The knife stopped. “You’re trying to say something rather nasty, aren’t you? Like maybe he got her pregnant and she had to marry him.”

  “Did he?”

  “No.” She emphasized the single syllable by using the knife to sweep all of the vegetables into a stainless steel bowl.

  “After you were born, your mother stopped on at Old House as cook.”

  Lily wiped her hands down her apron. “Mr. Jury, you know all this. Why do you keep asking?”

  To see if it’ll come out different, thought Jury. He was watching her face closely. What he said was, “Because there’s got to be a reason in all of this for her suicide and these threats to your life, Lily.” Quickly and sadly, she looked down at the bowl in her hands. She said nothing. “Could it be because of your mother?”

  Startled, she looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Something that happened when she was alive? Or something she left behind? I’m not sure just what I do mean.”

  Lily turned away, furiously shaking her head and slamming the knife and the bowl down on the counter of the sink.

  Jury persisted. “Could it be something you don’t even know about; but someone thinks you do? Could it be you’re a threat to someone?”

  “Threat? That’s silly.”

  “What about to the Craels?”

  She whirled round to face him and her skin was as white as the flour on the table. “Me a threat? Me?” She flattened her hands against the outmoded gingham apron as if proving her identity. “I was only Cook’s girl. ‘Cook’s girl’ is what they used to call me. Not Lily, just ‘Cook’s girl.’ ” Two bright spots came into her cheeks as if she’d just pinched them to bring the color up. “I even thought it was my name. Mum told me someone asked me on the street what my name was and I said, ‘Cook’s girl.’ She thought it was ever so funny.”