The Old Contemptibles

by Grimes, Martha

  Alex stood in the middle of the room, his head cocked slightly. “Remember me?” He was staring at Kingsley.

  “Of course I remember you. We had dinner together.” Kingsley’s smile was strained.

  Jury had dragged over another chair and Alex sat down. “We warmed a bench together, too.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He squinted at Alex.

  Jury asked him, “Did you have a total blackout from the booze?”

  Kingsley looked down and up again at Alex. “Not total. I vaguely remember someone sitting next to me. I expect it was a bench; I expect—well, police assured me it was outside of Jane’s house. It always keeps coming back to me, doesn’t it?” He exchanged glances with Jury.

  Alex sat stiff in his chair. Finally, he said, “Did you kill my mother?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell should I believe you?”

  “You shouldn’t.” Kingsley shrugged. “I’m lazy, I’m a drunk, I have a rotten temper.” His eyes met Alex’s squarely.

  Alex grew less rigid. He started to smile, caught himself, kept the line of his mouth thin as he looked at Jury.

  “He had no reason to kill your mother, Alex. None.” Then Jury added, “Why don’t you tell him that dream?”

  Alex frowned. “Why? I already told Dr. Viner and it didn’t help.”

  “You know more about it now. Go on. That Queen of Hearts thing is going to bother you the rest of your life. Kingsley’s a psychiatrist.”

  “Not much joy, there,” said Alex, his eyes burning.

  “Couldn’t agree more, old chap.” He reached round to the shelf behind him. “Valium? Librium?” He looked over a couple of vials and then up at Alex. “Oh, go ahead. Tell me. Can’t hurt. ‘Queen of Hearts’? I’m intrigued.”

  One foot crossed over the other knee, Alex fiddled with the lace of his Reebok shoe and related the dream. And then there was a flow of talk about his school, his betting, his ponies, his poker. Suddenly, he stopped, embarrassed.

  Kingsley lit a cigarette. He held the pack up to Alex, and when the boy nodded, tossed it to him.

  “Good-looking lighter,” said Alex.

  “I like it.” Kingsley looked at the bottom. “Sentimental value.” Then he just sat there, smoking.

  Alex squirmed. “Well?”

  “Sorry. I’m thinking.”

  He kept inhaling, studying the smoke as he exhaled, saying nothing.

  Alex blurted out: “But I don’t feel guilty. I mean, about the betting.”

  “Why should you?” asked Kingsley. “You were doing it to help out your mother. To help with expenses. To help keep Genevieve off your mum’s back.”

  Alex kept talking. “The thing is, I know I cheated. But it was mostly turf accountants. Most of them are villains anyway. And the cards. I had the dollar in more of a recession than the Fed.”

  Kingsley laughed, hard. “Is it a secret?”

  “What?”

  “The trick. You didn’t win, or hardly ever, but you always walked away with more than you went to the table with.”

  Alex was silent, pulling at his earlobe. Then he reached in his back pocket and brought out a wallet. From this he extracted a twenty-dollar bill and laid it on the table.

  “Well?” Kingsley didn’t touch it, just looked at it.

  Alex turned it over. It was a single. “Pasted together, back to back. That’s why I couldn’t use sterling. The bills are different sizes.”

  Jury was fascinated. “I don’t get it. I’m dim.”

  “You make change. Put in the twenty, pull it out as a one with other bills.” He looked from one to the other then up at the ceiling. “Okay, I’m not proud of it—”

  “I’ll bet,” said Kingsley, dryly. “On second thought, no. Not against you.”

  Alex looked dead earnest. “It’s poker, isn’t it? That Queen of Hearts thing.”

  “Sounds like it. What do you get from that?”

  Alex slumped back. “I don’t know.”

  Casually, Kingsley said, “Well, you were holding hands with your mother.”

  “Queen of Hearts.” Alex paused. “And . . . another one in the deck.”

  Kingsley nodded. “Poker.”

  “A pair.”

  “You and your mother—I didn’t know you, but she was a friend, and she did little but talk about you.” Kingsley smiled broadly. “I can tell you, Alex, you and Jane were a great pair.”

  Again, Alex slumped back, but with what looked like relief. He covered his eyes with his hand. He made no sound. Jury could see tears tracking down his face.

  Kingsley opened a drawer, got out a box of tissues. “Catch.”

  Reflexively, Alex put out his hands. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  “Ha, me. I didn’t do a thing. What did Dr. Viner have to say about that dream? I want to know which of us is the cleverer.” He smiled.

  Alex told him. “It didn’t mean much, what she said.”

  “Free association has to go somewhere. It probably would have come round to poker.”

  “It’s funny, though, what I thought when she was walking away.”

  “What?”

  “Association. Pack of cards. Pack of lies.” He got up. “I’m going back to see Granddad.”

  Jury nodded.

  • • •

  “That was very good, very clever. Wrong pair, though.”

  “I expect so. You know, I wondered why Lady Cray kept going round and round on that point. The ‘exotic’ woman who gave her chocolates. The ribbon she started to pull from the hair of a woman in front of her . . .” Kingsley picked up the letters again. He shook his head. “Wasn’t it taking a hell of a chance that I wouldn’t find them?”

  “They were well hidden, except from the eagle eye of Lady Cray. And if you had, what’d you have done? Had a confrontation? Burned them? They might make it appear you were having an affair with Jane, but . . .” Jury shrugged. “Graham Holdsworth committed suicide.” He paused. “Alex says he didn’t read them.”

  “It’s possible. He strikes me as a kid who’d respect his mother’s privacy. It’s also possible he couldn’t resist the temptation when he was younger.”

  “I wondered why a kid with his memory—stuff sticks to it like flypaper—couldn’t remember after seeing those letters again and again—like the pills—couldn’t remember what was missing.”

  “Because he didn’t want to.” Kingsley blew a smoke ring, stuck his finger through it.

  “You surely don’t think he knows?”

  “Half knows. A shadow on the mind. A cobweb he can’t brush away. Don’t worry, it’ll fade, disintegrate. But what wouldn’t fade is for him to realize his mother killed herself. He’d be in a tearing rage for most of the rest of his life.” He stubbed out his cigarette, looked at Jury over the rim of his glass. “So what are you going to do about that?”

  “Have a drink.”

  Kingsley parked another glass on the table.

  “Make it a double. I’m going to see her.”

  42

  “You’re back.” Helen Viner opened the door wider; she was smiling; she did not seem to be at all sorry that he was back.

  “I’m back, yes.”

  • • •

  She was wearing a dress of some soft material that swung and lay in folds about her. Across the pale background was a pattern of willow branches with delicate leaves that seemed to drift and sway when she walked.

  “I hope you don’t mind my making a comment that might seem, well, not terribly complimentary—” But she was already shaking her head. Of course she wouldn’t mind.

  “You know, you’re not absolutely pretty—”

  She sat back and laughed. “I hope I’m not ‘absolutely’ anything.”

  “—but you give the impression of being so. If I weren’t already drained of emotion, I’d be very attracted to you.”

  “It’s called transference.”

  “It’s also called other things.” />
  Her brows rose in question over hazel eyes that now looked the color of that damnable lake. Liquid stone. “Odysseus was afraid of the Sirens, the Sirens’ song,” he said.

  “That’s very flattering—”

  “No, it isn’t. If the ship had bashed into those rocks, he and his crew would be dead.” Jury had no idea why this image was so present to him, but it was. “Like Virginia Holdsworth, the friend you pushed from that tricky passage between Scafell and Mickledore.” Jury pulled Plant’s snapshots from an envelope and placed them on her desk. “Study these, why don’t you?”

  Her composure was astonishing. She denied nothing, merely gave the impression she might be humoring a delusion and did as she was bid: she looked at the pictures and then at him. She said, with a small shake of her head, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Yes, you are. This is Mr. Plant’s shot of that cleft in the rock wall called ‘Fat Man’s Agony.’ ” He saw that tiny smile drift across her face as the willow leaves did across her breasts when she shifted her arms.

  “So? If Mr. Plant has been walking and snapping pictures, what’s it to do with me?”

  “Everything. The reason he took it was to compare it with a painting done by Francis Fellowes six years ago. When he went up Scafell with Virginia Holdsworth. Or, to be more precise, behind Virginia Holdsworth. The painting itself is at the lab at New Scotland Yard. No one seriously questioned that Mrs. Holdsworth’s death was an accident because, if it weren’t Mr. Fellowes or some highly experienced walker who could have got away by means of Broad Stand—then it wasn’t anyone.”

  “It wasn’t anyone. Ginny fell.”

  “No one took into account that someone could have hidden in that large crevice and waited until Mr. Fellowes finished his painting. Then, after he’d left, the killer could go down.”

  Her expression betrayed nothing. The smile stayed in place as she turned her head toward the window at the sound of the branches slight soughing in the wind and back to Jury. “I don’t know what on earth police might have come up with for you to make such a—momentous accusation. But it isn’t true; Ginny Holdsworth was a good friend.”

  “Jane Holdsworth was a better one.”

  Perhaps she had tensed, for now she visibly relaxed. “I thought it was fairly clear by now that Jane’s death was a suicide. I, at any rate, was in Kendal.”

  She shouldn’t have looked so smug, thought Jury; she really shouldn’t’ve. “Oh, I know where you were; and I know where Dr. Kingsley was, too. It was his bad luck that he was in Lewisham and drunk, to boot. You would have been smarter to leave him alone rather than go to the trouble of planting these letters in his office.” Jury tossed the little pile on her desk.

  Now her expression did change. A tiny muscle twitched in her cheek. “What’s this?”

  “Letters you wrote to Jane Holdsworth. You were being careful, five years back, not to incriminate yourself. You didn’t even sign them.”

  Her frown deepened. She had loosened the ribbon, had removed one page from its envelope. “Then what in God’s name makes you think that I wrote them?”

  “Because Graham Holdsworth was your patient. And all of the supposed ‘patient-doctor’ confidentiality game you’ve been playing, as if you really meant to protect the poor man, has really been more of a con game. Let’s put it this way, Dr. Viner: we all have our latencies; none of us is totally heterosexual, and perhaps Graham Holdsworth leaned a little less in that direction. But as far as I’m concerned ‘latent homosexuality’ is a meaningless term. But it’s a highly charged term to many people who aren’t practicing homosexuals. I think you manipulated Graham into thinking his ‘latent’ feelings were manifest ones that he was too frightened or straitlaced to express. He wasn’t gay. No one person I’ve talked to ever had any reason to think that; just the opposite, really. The idea was totally surprising to them. Your purpose in all of this was to control both Graham and Jane Holdsworth because the person you really wanted to control was Alex. The way to control Alex was to control Jane.” Jury lit a cigarette with shaking fingers. “And the way to control Jane was to have a love affair with her. You know who has your number, Helen? Lady Cray. In her rather clever and roundabout way, by telling Kingsley stories about herself and pondering her own ‘latencies,’ she was trying to find out about you. ‘She’s not quite straight, not quite the ticket.’ Lady Cray’s words.”

  Helen Viner rose from her chair and walked to the casement window, staring out.

  “Jane . . .” It stuck in Jury’s throat. “Jane was either bisexual or perhaps she was experimenting. But not a lesbian; I know that. It makes no difference how long- or short-lived her relationship was with you; in the end she couldn’t live with whatever part it had had in her husband’s suicide, couldn’t, probably, live with the thing itself. And certainly couldn’t live suspecting it might have had to do with Annie Thale’s murder.”

  Her hand was on the casement latch, pushing it open—possibly for reviving air—when Jury said that; it froze. “Annie Thale?” Her back was turned, her hand still on the window against which the branches lashed as they’d done the previous night. She spoke the name again, shaking her head. Then she turned. “That’s insane.”

  “That isn’t; you may be. Annie Thale was the only person Graham confided in; she might have been in love with him herself. At any rate she knew he was straight as an arrow, and she suspected that arrow was being deflected by you. Annie Thale was like her sister: a good, stable, even steely woman. Not the type to kill herself. I’ve talked to the sister. Tommy Thale is one person you overlooked.”

  Helen Viner pulled the window to with a furious little tug and latched it. “Superintendent—” She came back to her chair and leaned toward him. “—I think Jane’s death has affected your ability to think clearly.” Her tone was maddeningly sympathetic.

  “If my ability to think clearly were impaired, your whole presence would convince me you couldn’t possibly have done all of this. You’re so—what was Lady Cray’s word?—‘plausible.’ What is it you want? Control of Castle Howe? Or control, period? You’re a regular puppeteer. That was a particularly adept touch you used with Mr. Plant, suggesting that Alex might need therapy but not with you. That, of course, would allay any suspicion you wanted to influence him. But you already do, and you know it. And that’s what counts. To control Adam and Adam’s money, all you need to do is control Alex. But Alex is much sharper than you think.”

  Her laugh was strained. “Believe me, I give Alex high marks for sharpness.”

  “Not high enough. On some level of his mind he knows your whole persona is a lie. A pack of lies. Maurice Kingsley knows it too, though he’s actually too honorable to say it.”

  “That’s amusing. Maurice is an incompetent.”

  “Oh, no. No, he isn’t. He’s a far better doctor than you are. Dr. Kingsley might be a drunk, but you’re merely window dressing.”

  She stared at him, then down at the letters. “And so I ‘planted’ these in Maurice’s office?”

  “Of course. It would pretty much cinch things, wouldn’t it, if police thought Kingsley was Jane’s lover? A jealous lover. And you directed Lady Cray to see him—thinking her obsession with red ribbons just might result in her spotting these letters.”

  Helen Viner was turning a small daggerlike letter opener between her fingers. “That would be taking a chance. What if Maurice had seen them first?”

  “What if he had? What would he do with them? Take them to police and say, ‘Look, I found these in amongst my books, but I didn’t write them?’ Anyway, if it hadn’t worked, you’d simply have gone back to his office and collected them.”

  She smiled, as if Jury had made a genuine joke. “No, I don’t expect he would.” She laid down the letter opener, plucked a cigarette from a circular black box of John Players. When she saw Jury wasn’t going to light it for her, she reached in a drawer for her matches. Then, her cigarette between her cupped hands, she leaned back and exhale
d smoke toward the ceiling, thoughtfully. It was as if she were considering the comments of a patient. “Now. This all began with Ginny Holdsworth.”

  “That’s right. Six years ago you knew about her planned walk up Scafell. You knew she’d always been determined to cross over by way of Broad Stand. You got up there before Virginia. But when you discovered Francis Fellowes had come along behind her—after you’d shoved her off—that must have unnerved even you, Dr. Viner. There was no way down except past Francis.”

  She said nothing. Jury waited. Her curiosity would force her to speak.

  “Police questioned Francis because no one else could possibly have been up there, unless, of course, it might have been an expert climber. Which I am not.”

  “You were there; Francis painted you into the picture.”

  She laughed. “Oh, my God! He couldn’t have seen—”

  It was the smallest slip. “ ‘Seen you’? Why? Because he had his back turned? Because you were hiding in that crevice called Fat Man’s Agony?”

  “No. He couldn’t have seen me because I wasn’t there.”

  Jury tossed the leather pouch on the desk.

  “What’s this?” She picked it up, opened it.

  “A Claude glass.”

  “And—?” Her smile was tilted. She tapped the ash from her cigarette.

  “And he painted the scene behind him.” Jury nodded toward the little mirror. “That’s why painters of the picturesque used a Claude glass. Fellowes painted the crevice in that rock face.”

  She put it on the desk between them and sat looking at him, still with the upward tilting smile. “Superintendent, even if there were such a painting, I don’t believe a face would be distinguishable. Not even with all of your fancy forensics equipment. I take it you have nothing to show me to convince me otherwise.”

  He didn’t. “I’m going to give you a choice.”

  “Why, thank you. But am I going to choose?”

  “Yes. You’re thinking all of this is speculation on my part. But let me tell you this: out of the number of people who have a vested interest in Adam Holdsworth’s money, you’re the only one with a motive for these killings—and the manipulation of Graham and Jane. Because the only other people who could possibly come into a large part of that inheritance are Alex and Millie Thale. Adam wouldn’t leave it to any of the rest of them. But as he’s been donating to the upkeep of Castle Howe, it’s a fair bet he’d put the Castle in his will. And as he’s said, you really run the place. I said it before: you want to control Alex; you thought of yourself as the woman who might step into his mother’s shoes. But you won’t.”