The Old Fox Deceived

by Martha Grimes

  Jury wondered if Fiona weren’t really living in two worlds, after all. That if these clothes she now wore, instead of being the latest new-old thing from a Carnaby Street boutique, weren’t instead the real thing: costumes dragged from old trunks that others would have packed in years ago.

  “How’s the job, Fiona?” Jury asked, lighting her cigarette.

  “I’ve been chased round desks by better men than that one, haven’t I?”

  “I’m sure you have.” Jury took the envelope from his pocket and handed it to her, saying, “Find out what those initials mean, will you, love. I think it might be a hotel in S.W. 1. If it is, it should be easy.”

  “Anything for you, dearie,” said Fiona, handing him a cream-colored envelope.

  “What’s this?”

  Fiona, now employed with the elaborate job of filing her nails, shrugged. “Well, I don’t know, do I, love? One of the PC’s on duty downstairs brought it up. Said a gentleman brought it in late last night, some nob in a swell car who thinks it’s public parking outside the door, and nearly got himself nicked. Told him to push off. . . . ”

  Jury had torn open the envelope, pulled out the single sheet of notepaper, and retrieved a snapshot which had fallen to the floor. He paid no attention to Fiona’s chatter as he read:

  Dear Inspector Jury,

  Hope the enclosed will interest you — I found it in Julian Crael’s room. I also hope you don’t mind my keeping the other for purposes of identification. You and Wiggins had apparently departed for London before I could catch you, but that gave me a chance to stop in York and see Agatha: you will be happy to know she’s working for you. Makes an excellent Mole. I will be at the Connaught and thought we could meet later and return to Rackmoor together. I’ve a very fast car.

  PLANT

  He studied the snapshot. It certainly looked like a picture of Gemma Temple— or Dillys March? — but it was a very recent picture, not something torn from a photo album of years ago. He assumed Plant had asked himself the same question: What was it doing in Crael’s room?

  • • •

  “Sounds a right muddle,” said Chief Superintendent Racer, after Jury had filled him in on the Rackmoor case. The comment was not intended as an extension of sympathy, but rather implied the muddle was Jury’s fault. “So why the hell aren’t you up in this godforsaken village sorting it out? Why are you down here flatfooting it all over London?”

  “I told you. I need to make some inquiries—”

  Racer looked around him, arms extended, mock-aghast. “Funny. I could have sworn we had a whole police force somewhere around here, all sorts of people who can make inquiries.” The expression changed, the brow settling in its usual hard lines. “If somebody had to come down here, why didn’t you send Wiggins?”

  Jury searched for a reason. “I needed him there. There was something he could do better than I.”

  Racer guffawed. “Wiggins can’t do anything better than anybody. Not even you, Jury.” Racer flashed a kind of cutthroat smile, as if he hadn’t meant the slight, which, of course, he had.

  Jury’s tone was all innocence as he asked, “Then why do you keep assigning him to me? You must think it’s the blind leading the blind.” Although Jury was always promising himself he wouldn’t engage in any sort of sparring match with Racer, it was usually a promise he broke.

  “He needs his training, doesn’t he, man? I suppose you think one of your mates should have to suffer Sergeant Wiggins, is that it? Always the other chap, isn’t it?”

  Racer’s illogic was as impeccable as the cut of his Savile Row suit. “It’s no good being a loner, Jury. A policeman’s got to be on the team. You know my policy is two men on an inquiry. How the bloody hell would the country get on if the P.M. went hightailing it all over the place, instead of sending one of her underlings?”

  “I didn’t know you held me in such esteem.” Jury smiled.

  “Very funny.” Race spat out a shred of tobacco. “That’s not what I mean, but you do put yourself about, don’t you? Too bad you haven’t more ambition.”

  Jury suspected what was prompting this talk of “ambition.” “Has the subject of my promotion come up again?”

  “The A.C. did mention it, yes.” His tone was grudging.

  Jury did not even bother to smile. When Racer rose from his desk, his thumbs hooked in the little pockets of his vest, Jury knew it was lecture time. The Summing Up. Jury’s whole career laid out in little, presented in Racer’s florid and cliché-ridden style. He started in now, walking round his desk, the red carnation in his buttonhole bobbing a little with each springy step. As Racer recounted — endlessly, it seemed — Jury’s weaknesses, Jury looked out of the window over the smoky chimney pots and between high-sided buildings like a tunnel at the end of which lay a tiny bit of the Thames. The sky above was dove gray and a few flakes of snow mashed against the window.

  “ . . . pack it in unless you go up before the selection board, Jury.” He stopped in his circling of the room to give Jury a thin-lipped smile. “Cold feet, that it?”

  Jury didn’t rise to that particular bait. “I intend to. Sometime.”

  “Sometime? Sometime? Why not now? When I was in your position . . . ”

  He droned on. Jury could only assume all of this avuncular talk was Racer’s way of discussing Racer’s own rather illustrious career, managing to polish it here and there by comparing his own ascent with Jury’s. Racer liked to think that Jury was afraid of failure; whereas, Jury hadn’t gone before the selection board simply because of his own ambivalence about the promotion to superintendent.

  It was almost an annual ritual, some years, semiannual, this talk of Jury’s career. In some perverse way he almost enjoyed Racer’s attitude. Jury was fascinated by the overwrought meanings lavished on the subject by Racer, who loved to talk about it. The delicate balance which Racer kept between the talk and the action was a marvel of fancy footwork. It was like watching a man climbing a filigree fence, searching out ever more toe- and fingerholes. Since the Assistant Commissioner was always bringing up Jury’s future, Racer had to keep finding fresh reasons for denying it. Why he did so was much too complicated for simple vindictiveness. Jury wondered sometimes if Racer saw him as his younger self, as the tabula rasa on which Racer could write his own failures and thereby disown them.

  Racer was still talking as he walked round the room. Over the top of his tartan vest blossomed a tie like a rare flower into which was stuck a sapphire stick pin — all of this mere gilding to his suit. Where did he get his money? Jury thought he recalled talk of the wife having private means. Racer came to a halt in front of a painting — one of the two bad ones he had acquired from the government cache. It was a wretched study of Westminster Bridge. With his back turned to Jury he meticulously ran down the list of Jury’s cases, lingering over the details of one which Jury had botched many years ago. That was his way: he dwelled upon Jury’s failures as if they were paintings he could scrutinize at leisure and in detail.

  “ . . . so I’d appreciate a report in. You just pick up the phone and dial.” Racer’s finger made little circles in the air. “Simple. You won’t get far as superintendent if you can’t play on the team, Jury.”

  • • •

  Jury left Racer’s bracing presence to find Fiona Clingmore adjusting her black hat. Her black coat lay beside her on the desk. “Got that name for you.” She picked up a pad, tore off a paper from it, and handed it to Jury. Royal Victoria Hotel. In Victoria, it is.”

  “You’re wonderful, Fiona. I’d take you to lunch, only I’ve got to see some people.”

  She motioned him closer with a conspiratorial wink and a crooking of her finger. Sotto voce she said, “Expect I shouldn’t be talking about this, but the A.C. and your super had a real set-to the other day about you.”

  “How flattering.”

  “You’re to be superintendent, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.” Jury took a sip of bitter coffee from Fiona�
��s cup and set it back.

  “This time’s different. Everyone knows you should have got it long ago, don’t they? Disgraceful, I call it, the way he keeps getting in your way.” She hitched her thumb toward Racer’s door. “I’ve heard lots of talk about it.” She snapped her purse shut with a decided little click, lay it and her arm on the black coat. “Indeed, I’ve even heard some say you should be Commander. Funny, though . . . ”

  “What’s funny?”

  She shrugged. “You don’t seem to care all that much.”

  Jury looked at her arm, clothed half way down in the black jumper sleeve, the skin white against the dark wool of the coat.

  “Maybe I don’t,” was all he said.

  6

  The Raineys lived in a tiny maisonette in the euphemistically named Kingsman’s Close in Lewisham. Lewisham itself was a fairly straightforward rundown and riotous place. But Jury had always loved that section of London across the Thames which took him through Greenwich and Blackheath, its expanses of green grass and trees. And in the winter, snow.

  A sickly trail of ivy leeched its way up around the front door, which was answered, finally, by a sticky-faced boy of six or seven. “Me mum ain’t home,” he announced, and shut the door.

  Jury knocked again, and heard a voice call, “Gerrard! Who was that?” There was then some commotion and presently the door was yanked open by a youngish woman who used her free hand to wallop the child. “You bad boy.”

  “Inspector Jury, madam. C.I.D.” She looked at his I.D. as if she were starved for reading matter. “I’d like to see Mrs. Rainey.”

  “Well, I’m one of them,” she said, blowing out her cheeks and wiping her brown hair back from her forehead. “But I expect it’s Ma you want. My mother-in-law, Gwen. But Gwen’s out for the day. Gone to the films. Come on in.” Wiping her raw, red hands on her apron, she held the door wide as she used her other hand to smack her son’s fingers away from his nose, which he had been picking all the while he had been staring up at Jury.

  “Ma told me another policeman was here the day before yesterday.” Rather desperately, she looked around the small, crowded sitting room, with an eye to locating a seat for Jury. A large basket of laundry occupied the couch. A cat had jumped from the basket and come to snake its way round their several legs. Gerrard kicked it and got another slap. Jury imagined this was the common mode of communication between mother and son.

  “We could go into the kitchen, couldn’t we? It’s just a madhouse out here when the twins wake up.”

  They were behind the couch, sleeping in a playpen. Gerrard was doing his best to wake them by beating the sofa cushions with a stick. “Stop that, you bad boy.” His mother cuffed him on the ear. “Come along, then,” she said to Jury, in a friendly voice. She was probably happy for any diversion.

  Jury started after her to the kitchen, Gerrard bringing up the rear, yelling at the top of his lungs, “Mum! You was to give me my marmite and bread!”

  Jury grabbed him by his overall suspenders. “You’re under arrest, old chap.”

  The boy yelled and giggled in turn. The younger Mrs. Rainey turned and gave Jury a stupidly grateful look for taking over the child. He supposed she could do with a bit of help.

  If the sitting room was a shambles, the kitchen was a jewel of cleanliness and order, probably the woman’s only refuge. Sitting on the counter were a cut Swiss roll, a jar of marmite, and slices of bread, set out for the boy’s lunch. As she went about pouring the tea to the tune of Gerrard’s whines, Jury spread some marmite on the bread. Never the one to stand on polite ceremony, he shoved the slice into the boy’s mouth. Gerrard choked and giggled again, thinking it a great lark to be thus manhandled by a stranger and a policeman to boot.

  Mrs. Rainey pressed a mug of milky tea into Jury’s hand. “My name’s Angela, by the way. It’s Gemma you’ve come about, isn’t it? That other policeman was here and he asked Ma an awful lot of questions.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to bother you again, but I thought just possibly your mother-in-law or perhaps you might have remembered something else that would be helpful.”

  Angela Rainey shook her head. “Really, there just doesn’t seem to be anything. Believe me, we’ve talked and talked about it. Do you know, Gwen said that it wasn’t until this happened that she realized how little she actually knew about Gemma Temple. I didn’t know much either, and I think I knew her better than Ma. See, Gemma and me were about the same age. I lived next door. Next door, I mean, when we all lived in Dulwich years back.”

  Gerrard was demanding “choc in my milk!” and his mother went to the fridge and took out a bottle and a small tin of Hershey’s.

  “Didn’t Gemma Temple ever talk about her life before she came to the Raineys as au pair, then?”

  Angela shook her head as she slapped Gerrard’s hand away from the Swiss roll. “Said she was raised by an old auntie, and she was dead. Said she’d been in a home after that for a while. But we can’t remember the name. If she really was. . . . ”

  Gerrard, who had been maintaining a fairly constant noise level either with whining or humming, saw he was getting little for his troubles, gave up, and went to sleep. His chin fell forward on his chest.

  “She was how old when she came to live with the Raineys?”

  Angela calculated. “Round nineteen, I’d say.”

  “What about her birthday?”

  “Birthday?”

  “Yes. Didn’t she ever celebrate it?”

  “Funny. I can’t say she ever did. Funny, I never even remember Gemma had a birthday.”

  “Never any mention of other relatives?”

  “No. Said she was an orphan.”

  “But even orphans have a past of sorts.”

  “Not Gemma. Believe me, I was that curious too. Gemma was very secretive.”

  “Was there anything at all about her that was memorable? I mean, habits, nervous mannerisms, likes and dislikes, that sort of thing?”

  Angela looked at Jury over the rim of her cup. “Only men. Men seemed to be her chief ‘like.’ Do you think maybe it was something deep in her past that got her . . . killed?”

  “It could be, yes. Do you — did you — still see her?”

  “Yes. She’d come round maybe once or twice a year. She was just here about a month ago. We had a nice chat. Gemma fancied herself an actress and she even managed a tiny part in some play. That was back in the summer. Last I ever saw of her. Poor Gem.”

  “These men. Did you know any of them?” Angela shook her head. “Another thing: Did she drive?” Angela looked puzzled. “Drive a car, I mean.”

  “Oh. Now you mention it, no, she didn’t. Funny about that. All the while she was here, she never learned to drive. But didn’t they find her car, or something?”

  “Yes.”

  Angela glanced at the counter and slammed down her tea cup. “Look at that, would you! Where’s my Swiss roll gone to?”

  Gerrard, mouth lost in chocolate crumbs, was pretending to be asleep and trying not to smile.

  To the tune of a loud slap and a louder scream, Jury said good-bye and left the house.

  7

  Victor Merchent sat in vest and suspenders alternately scratching his stomach and his dog as if one were an extension of the other. The dog lolled lazily on the tile hearth before the imitation log. Around Victor Merchent’s feet, which were shoved into carpet slippers, lay the scattered pages of the Times. He himself was deep into a racing form.

  Fanny Merchent sat squarely in the center of the couch. She seemed more receptive than her husband to this interruption of the daily routine. Probably welcomed it, thought Jury, since Victor must figure prominently in that routine.

  The parlor on Ebury Street was like Victor — overstuffed. The pieces ran from the worst of period to the worst of modern; there was none of the usual English chintzy-charm. And Mrs. Merchent was a bric-a-brac person, too. Presents from Brighton, Weston-super-Mare, Blackpool, and other middle-class watering places line
d shelves and sills. The sentimental relics of a lifetime spilled over onto tables and desks: seashells, framed snaps, memory books. Small porcelain figurines graced the fireplace mantel above the sleeping dog.

  “You were asking, Inspector, about my sister’s boy. Olive was here just before Christmas. Carries her cross like a true Christian.”

  Jury’s makeshift excuse for being here at all was that he needed additional information about Olive Manning’s son, Leo, and any interest in the mother was purely peripheral.

  Victor Merchent looked up from his racing form. “Ain’t she always here round Christmas?” His lower lip protruded and his mouth downturned in testimony to his feelings about Olive’s visits.

  “Just never you mind, Vic. When I look at some of your family.”

  “Well, they ain’t bleedin’ livin’ here on the cheap, are they, my girl?” He snapped the paper. “And where’s my tea?”

  “Be a bit patient, can’t you?”

  “I like my tea at the regular time.” Bleakly, he regarded Jury.

  “You were just saying, Inspector . . . ?”

  “Your sister’s son is in an institution?”

  Before the poor woman could answer, her husband cut in with, “Mental. Daft, that one is.” He drew a circle round a spot on his head.