The Knowledge_A Richard Jury Mystery

by Martha Grimes

  This occupation immediately caught Wiggins’s eye when he came back in. “What’s this lot, then? You’re doing sketches—?”

  “Hope you don’t mind my using your art equipment. That’s the professional rendering, I take it?” Jury nodded toward the framed coat of arms.

  Wiggins was clearly proud of it. “Hand-painted, twenty-four-carat gold. Cost me five hundred pounds, this did. I’m thinking now about an illuminated family tree.” He returned to the colored circles: “Reno? London? Nairobi?” Wiggins was reading off the legends at the tops of the circles. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to rethink this case.”

  Wiggins took a step back, with an almost affrighted expression. “You’re filling in names?”

  “Of the people connected with the case in these three cities, yes. Isn’t that obvious?”

  The obviousness of the task was lost on the sergeant, who went back to his desk and matters of aristocracy and heraldry, taking up (the virtually unliftable) Burke’s Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, which fell open to the once Wykham, later Wiggins family. “The ancestor I remembered was Fitz-Hugh Wykham, ninth baron de jure.” He cleared his throat and read: “Crest comprised of burning bush proper, with supports: Dexter, a swan; sinister, a fish, scaled.”

  At the whiteboard, Jury was tacking up the “Nairobi” circle and left it to join Wiggins at his own wall. “It’s very intricate, isn’t it? Very stylized and permanent. And the language: ‘Dexter, a swan; sinister, a fish, scaled.’ In other words a swan on the right and a fish on the left.”

  And a sigh from Wiggins.

  Jury plowed on: “So you look at your coat of arms and see something sane, tightly connected. The connections are based on millennia of heraldry: rock solid, hammered down.”

  Wiggins jumped as Jury brought Wiggins’s heavy spyglass down on his desk three times.

  Jury turned toward the whiteboard. “Then you look at my circles and see them as sloppy, mutable, shifty, entangled. While your bear, rampant though he might be, is pinned into place, my Danny Morrissey is wandering all around the circle, a ghost in the machine. Unconnected to anything. Your crest is what you think evidence is; my circle is what it is not.”

  Wiggins frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Evidence can change. A future bit of evidence can change the old one.”

  Jury waved his hand. “That’s merely exchanging a sure thing for a sure thing. What we want is an unsure thing. A wild guess, a leap of faith, a ‘What if?’ For example, what if we’re wrong about the shooter? What if there was somebody else in that drive, out of sight?”

  “Couldn’t have been another person who got away without being seen.”

  “Melted into the crowd.”

  “At that point there was no crowd. If you don’t mind my saying, sir, you’re grabbing at straws.”

  “Which is exactly what I want to do.” Jury plucked his coat off the hook, stuffed himself into it, said, “So I leave you with your long line of barons. Du jour. Bye.”

  Wiggins rushed to the door and yelled to Jury, already moving down the hall, “It’s not du jour, it’s de jure.”

  Without turning, Jury gave Wiggins a wave. “Soup of the day, Sergeant.”

  Five minutes later, Jury was out of his office and outside the building, standing near the revolving sign of New Scotland Yard.

  Nearly perfect timing: Robbie Parsons pulled up in another two minutes. As he pulled out into Victoria Street, he said, “What? I didn’t tell you everything? You think I was lyin’?”

  “Not at all. But no one ever tells us ‘all he knows,’ because you don’t know all you know.”

  “What’s that? The Rubik’s cube of police interrogation?” Robbie had blended into the stream of traffic going up Whitehall.

  Jury laughed. “I simply mean there are details people leave out because they don’t think of them at the time, or don’t think them important.”

  “Believe me, I told you everything important.”

  “Come on, Robbie—does Sherlock miss clues that Watson could discern?”

  A brief silence. “So you’re Sherlock, I’m Watson?”

  “The other way round.”

  They were driving along the Strand when Jury said, “I’ll buy you a drink. The Coal Hole’s just down there.”

  “And where’ll I be parking?”

  “Just pull into the Savoy’s drive. I’ll take care of it.”

  Robbie did so. Jury got out, had a word with the doorman as he showed him his ID and pointed along the drive. Then he got back into the cab.

  “We’ll be all right for half an hour.”

  “Misusing police authority, tut-tut.”

  “That’s why you call us the Filth.”

  The Coal Hole had actually been the coal cellar for the Savoy Hotel. Jury had always liked it for the leaded windows surrounding its entrance; for its dark wood and many-roomed interior; for its wide selection of ales.

  Seated at one of the small tables with their drinks in front of them, Jury said, “Tell me about this little girl, Patty Haigh.”

  Robbie gave a brief chuckle. “Looks like a little girl, but acts like MI6.”

  “Now there’s an observation. Meaning what?”

  “Cunning. Clever. Brave.”

  “Where does this child live? When she’s at home?”

  “Brixton.”

  “Parents, brothers, sisters?”

  “No, no, and again, no.”

  “Who does she live with?”

  “Some cousin or other. I heard she’s on the game.”

  “Doesn’t sound good,” said Jury.

  “Listen, I expect any kid can get on a plane to Kenya with a killer can handle the downside of life with a slapper, don’t you?”

  “It’s a point. But this kid is still in Kenya.”

  “Why can’t you lot get the cops over there to find her?”

  “We lot have been trying. Only, a little girl in the heart of Nairobi? That’s not easy. Especially one so resourceful as she is.”

  “Very resourceful. More than the Filth.” Robbie raised his mug to toast one of them.

  Nairobi, Kenya

  Nov. 2, Saturday evening

  13

  Several streets later in what looked like a square in a better part of town, Patty stopped and sat down on a low stone wall.

  Across the street was a little restaurant that seemed to be dedicated to soup, for its sign bore the words “Supa Bora,” which, according to her phrase book, meant “good/best soup.” She hadn’t eaten in a long time and was extremely hungry.

  After consulting her book to find the simplest words to use for ordering food, she jumped down from the wall and crossed the street. Looking through the window of this soup kitchen, she was reassured, for there were few people inside and all of them women. Only one table was occupied, by two women, and behind the counter a couple of servers dressed in orange and magenta. She realized then that orange and magenta were by way of being the little restaurant’s “colors,” for she could now see that the sign had been painted in alternating orange and purplish red.

  She took out her phrase book again and looked up what would best pass for “I’m waiting for my mother.” She did not have time for little words like “for” and “my,” so she just took a word that meant “waiting” and assumed “mama” would be pretty much understood in any country, any language. “Waiting for Mama” would be sufficient to answer any question, since the questions would all resemble one another. “What are you doing here?” “Why are you alone?” “Why are you here?” Et cetera. It made no difference what a person might ask—and she wouldn’t understand more anyway—the one answer would suffice.

  Registering confidence and command, Patty opened the door and sailed right up to the counter and greeted the two servers with “Jambo” (her favorite word, along with “kwaheri” for good-bye) The two women wore bright turbans.

  The middle-aged women at the table, who had followed Pat
ty’s progress with great curiosity, finally returned to their bowls, bread and talk.

  One of the servers smiled at her and asked a question, which Patty realized was probably a request for her order and wouldn’t be answerable with “Waiting for Mama,” so she just brazened it out by picking the first item written on the chalkboard and wondered what they were slopping into the big bowl. Fish? It looked like a biggish piece. If it turned out to be meat of some kind, she would eat around it. She did not want to take out the bills that B.B. had given her and that she’d rubber-banded into a roll, so she managed to separate a couple from the roll in the backpack, brought the notes out and raised her eyebrows as if asking, “Enough?”

  She was given her bowl, bread and change. From a cutlery basket she pulled out a spoon. She carried all of this to an empty table, pleased with the transaction; it shored her up knowing she could survive in this country on her own. One of her life lessons from Charlie the dip had been, “Money talks.” (He would have told her to toss away her phrase book.)

  It was fish soup and it was very good. But she frowned when she began to wonder why she thought it was all right to eat fish if it wasn’t all right to eat beef and chicken and pork. After all, fish were living things. Unfortunately, she had just spooned up pieces of carrot and tomato and now she was worrying about vegetables. If “living things” was the yardstick against which she should measure food, she’d starve. So she added “that can feel pain.” But how did she know a carrot didn’t hurt, or a tomato weep in some strange ways that humans would never understand?

  It was only when she heard a screech of laughter that she realized she’d sat down at the table next to the two women. One was dark as ebony, the other pale and looking like a ghost beside the sturdy black woman. It was the ghost who’d screeched. Now they were both laughing, but quietly, as the ghost told a tale that seemed to encompass a visiting family. Patty was delighted to know that the woman was English—no, American, or maybe Canadian. It was not only the flat vowels, but the way she was handling knife and fork. She’d taken a largish piece of meat out of her bowl, cut it up, switched the fork from left hand to right, in that wasteful way of Americans, and now was talking about a family named “Nelson,” with whom she had some connection Patty hadn’t discerned as yet.

  Promptly, Patty took one of her notebooks from the pack, along with a rollerball, wrote down “Nelson” and waited.

  The American went on and Patty strained to listen; she could not catch every word, but she heard enough to make sense of it: “Says Emma—she runs the place—‘You’ll like this one, Betts.’” Here the timbre of the voice notched itself upward, so she must be quoting “Emma” and she herself (Patty inferred) must be “Betts.” “‘New York … three kiddies, but you’ll only have to watch over the littlest one while the others are out sightseeing—’”

  Here the voice trailed off, and the other woman picked up the conversation with questions. “Where are they—?”

  Patty couldn’t hear the end of this. But she heard the answer.

  “Hemingways—” Blur of words.

  Ernest Hemingway? Of course not. Something named—Patty thrust her hand into her backpack and pulled out her guidebook and looked up the name in the index. Hemingway, Ernest. Beneath that, “hotel.” She flipped to that page. Wow.

  The black woman didn’t say “Wow,” but her indrawn breath would, if breath, like money, spoke. “They rich?”

  Betts, the ghost, said, “Piles of it, says Emma. They come every—”

  Patty had it: Betts was some sort of caregiver, probably babysitter or nanny, registered at this agency run by Emma. She was to babysit the Nelsons’ kids, the Nelsons from New York who would be staying at the luxurious Hemingways Hotel. And from the pictures in the guidebook (just look at that mirrored bathroom!) and the number of dollar signs heading the description, the Nelsons weren’t hurting for money. Patty patiently waited for their arrival day.

  And got it within another two minutes. “… New York … Cape Town. Their plane … Tuesday morn … I’m to meet … until Sunday. Good post,” said Betts, wasting effort on switching her fork again.

  Patty flicked the pages back to the Hemingways description: pool, spa, restaurants, twenty-four-hour room service. There were little pictures. A white-clothed table with tea things. Check-in time, three P.M. Check-out time, eleven A.M. They always got you, didn’t they? Hotels. Kicked you out early; made you wait all day to let you in. Got paid twice for the room, to boot.

  No more talk about the Nelsons was forthcoming; the women appeared to be packing up to leave, getting into coats, collecting parcels. When the black woman rose, she looked at Patty, bent down and asked if she was all right. Assumed Patty spoke English, apparently.

  “Bora,” said Patty, surprising the woman.

  Now they were joined by Betts. “You’re not English, then? American?”

  “From London,” said Patty, stirring her soup a little.

  “So what are you doing alone here, pet?” Betts said, practicing her nanny skills.

  She did not need to say “Waiting for Mama.” “I’m going to meet up with my family. We’re all staying at Hemingways Hotel.”

  Patty had thought vaguely of finding a room for the night; she knew she had plenty of money, but hotel people would have plenty of questions. A small girl asking for a hotel room? Money might talk, but so did managers, and to police and to the Social. She was sure the Social Service stuck their noses into kids’ lives here just as they did in England. Some Kenyan version of the Social.

  Hemingways (according to the guide map) was a couple of miles from Nairobi’s center, about a mile from the Karen Blixen Museum and the Karen Hospital. The hotel looked too far to walk to; she would have to get a cab. It was in the Karen district. Patty wondered who Karen was; she must be famous. The Karen district also looked in the guidebook to be pretty expensive. Big homes, walls, gates.

  After the cab dropped her in front of the glamorous hotel, Patty walked through the vast glass door held open by a doorman who had an inquiring eyebrow and whom she ignored. Walked up the marble stair, watched herself in the mirrored lobby for two seconds and then walked over to a little desk, in front of which sat two chairs and behind which sat a well-groomed youngish woman who radiated authority.

  “I’m Janice Nelson,” said Patty, radiating her own authority. “My dad made a reservation for the family for Tuesday. Our plane from Cape Town was grounded at the airport—” Which one? Which one? Oh, yes. “—in Johannesburg and there weren’t enough seats for all of us, including my aunt, so Aunt Monique and I got on the plane to Nairobi. My father had business in Johannesburg, he discovered, so had to stay anyway. Then Aunt Monique got sick while we were in the Karen Blixen Museum and had to go to the hospital, so she sent me on here. With money.” Here Patty took out the fattest of her rolls and quietly placed it on the counter. “So if you could just give me a single room for three nights, that will be okay.” The look on her face said that yes, of course they could.

  The surprised expression on the hotel clerk’s face suggested, Not so fast. “Why, that’s just awful, dear …”

  Ho-hum, thought Patty.

  But she did check her slim computer monitor, saying, “Ah, yes, the Nelsons. Arriving on Tuesday. If you’ll just wait here, I’ll get our manager to have a little talk with you.”

  Patty thought it safe to assume she wasn’t going to call the police. Patty had a history; she had a family; she had money. No, the clerk really was going to get the manager, or someone managerial.

  And here he came, reminding her of a black swan in his sleek black clothes and dark hair. Tall, long-necked, and rake-thin, he bent down to have a parley with her. Hands on knees, his elbows out like wings, he said, “Now, Meees Jan-ees. What seems the problem?”

  Nicely, Patty shrugged. “There is no problem, sir. I explained to this lady—” The desk clerk still hovered. “—about getting separated.” Bad word to use. “About my dad’s business in Johannesb
urg and me coming on to Nairobi with my aunt. The family’s coming on Tuesday, as you know. If you’re suspicious about me, all I can say is I can pay for a room in advance.” She thumbed up the roll of shillings, which she retrieved from the counter.

  “Not at all, not at all, no suspicion, Meees Jan-ees. Just I think maybe I call your father? Your mother? To let them know you’re here—”

  “Go ahead, but I don’t see how you can since right now they’re probably up in the air.”

  “But then your auntie?—”

  Patty shut her eyes, blocking out thickheadedness. “Like I said, poor Aunt Monique is in the Karen Hospital. She got violently ill from something, probably plane food. Look, I’m really tired; all I want is to go to bed.” She recalled the description of Hemingways. “—And maybe a little room service. So please—?” Patty smiled quite brilliantly.

  The manager became all business, signaling to one of the bellhops (or whatever they were called in Kenya), a small, rather elderly man who quickstepped to their party of three. “Take this young lady’s bag—”

  The young lady was quite happy to be relieved of what was becoming a very heavy weight, so she unslung it from her shoulder and held it out to the little man.

  “To room—”

  Here he looked rather helplessly at the clerk, who quickly held out a key card.

  She said, “This one I think best.” She smiled at Patty as the manager directed the bellhop.

  “I’m quite sure you will be comfortable, Meees Jan-ees,” said the manager, almost clicking his polished heels together. “If you need anything—”

  “There’s room service,” said Patty, as she walked off with the little man, who seemed nearly collapsed around her simple backpack. “Good night.”

  The porter led her through the long sitting room and outside to a white corridor, up a few steps, down a few, and past rooms (or suites) that had been named after famous Africa-connected people. He stopped at one and unlocked the door for her.