The Five Bells and Bladebone

by Martha Grimes

  “Am I, sir?” Wiggins stowed the handkerchief and frowned.

  Jury had no idea. “And Racer’d be the first to tell you a pea-shucker’s life is full of grief.” He smiled: parking illegally was one of the perks of the job, and he took a childlike delight in looking through the windscreen at the puzzled, mildly surprised faces of pedestrians watching him dump his plainclothes car on the double line and casually get out. Jury had to nudge Wiggins out of his fig-ruminations by leaning in through the window and saying, “Are you coming along?”

  Wiggins popped out of the car immediately. The Starr-dust was one of his favorite places, and he was definitely going along.

  • • •

  The Starrdust was as far from a trendy little boutique as hitting another galaxy could be. Jury had been here a few times, and still never got used to the dark. What light there was inside came delicately streaming from a sort of mock-planetarium ceiling where a goldish glow behind the cutout stars and planets mixed with the silver blue behind a quarter-moon. And because the lights behind them winked on and off, as if Mars and then Venus were coming on and sinking back, the whole gave the effect of slowly turning. The lights caught counter, customers, fixtures together in a sort of Hephaestean golden net.

  Always playing on Andrew Starr’s old phonograph were scratchy recordings that fit this mood. Hoagy, Dinah, Glenn Miller. Today it was Dinah singing the song Jury had heard in the background over the phone. Stars were falling on Alabama and Covent Garden. For when they had entered, one of Andrew’s shop assistants was up on a high ladder, rigging up what looked like a silver pail attached by a string to the molding of the door. A spill of tiny gold and silver stars showered on Jury’s shoulder and Wiggins’s hair.

  She gave a mouselike squeak and scrambled down the ladder.

  And when she saw who it was, she said it again, clapping her hand over her mouth as if the little squeal might get out of control. It brought her counterpart — not twin, but counterpart — from the cubicle of office to see what was going on. One of them was Meg; he thought the other’s name was Joy. They had similar spun-gold hair held back by combs decorated with rhinestone stars. Their eyes had that same starry luster, but perhaps it was the darkness. They were dressed in silvery blouses and black cord jeans with gold suspenders so that side-by-side and with the shiny pail between them they looked like extraterrestrial milkmaids.

  “Sorry. Sorry.” They said in unison as Dinah wound down on the phonograph.

  “We had the clock on the door for lunchtime —”

  “But you mustn’t have seen it,” Joy put in quickly, as if Meg might have been suggesting Jury and Wiggins were great nits who couldn’t even read.

  “Not to worry,” said Wiggins, “a shower of stars is better than a bucket of water.” He picked a star from his eyebrow and smiled contentedly, for he seemed to feel at home in the Starrdust. Its other-worldly imperviousness to earthly diseases and sloughs of despond appeared to comfort him.

  Starr himself was fairly well known in the astrology trade (if that’s what one could call it), and the shop had a mix of books on the subject, some very rare, some newer. Andrew’s custom had a remarkable range, from the penny-farthing kiddies to the titled and wealthy, who took his horoscopes as some do the Times — as gospel. The thing about Andrew Starr was that he believed also they were gospel-true. How else could he have concocted this little sanctuary in the middle of the babble of Covent Garden?

  Wiggins, whose sneezing attack had stopped the minute he’d walked in, was showing Tommy the little hut that Starr had assembled for the kiddies who came in. Horror-Scope was written in cursive neon-blue above the door, and its walls were studded with half-moons and stars. There was scarcely room to walk between that and the latest addition to the shop, which stood directly across from it: a gauzy tent, like a large bed-canopy, that floated its wispy, silver pleats from a central core out and over a round support of wire. This was Madame Zostra’s domain.

  It was probably that voice that had been singing along with Dinah, far off in the kitchenette. It was a very narrow, but very long shop, and people had a way of appearing out of the dark. As Heaven had replaced Alabama on the record-player, one of the twins looked round and said, “I expect you’re wanting to see Carole-anne. She’s just wetting the tea and Andrew’s gone to get some super food. He always does that when we haven’t time for a proper lunch. It being May, the tourist trade’s just plain hell.”

  “Hell’s not the half,” said Meg with a quick bob of her platinum head.

  The word startled Jury, it seemed so out-of-place here. And the black-gowned form floating out of the dark forking up a piece of gâteau gave it no credence, either. “Super!” Mouth full, she added, “Took you long enough, dihn’t it?” To the twins she said, “Andrew’s back and he brought some of that Black Forest you like.”

  The twins left with Wiggins and Tommy in tow, for they had just emerged, bending way down to clear the sign, laughing.

  “Who’s that, then?” Carole-anne whirled around to watch the newcomer disappearing down the narrow passageway.

  “Friend of mine.”

  She looked suspicious. “I never met him,” she said, thereby canceling out the acquaintance, since she hadn’t as yet approved it.

  “You will. As to what took me so long: I’ve only been gone for a day —”

  “Day-and-a-half. Had your tea?”

  Jury shook his head. “Thought you were slimming.”

  “Knowing you’re going to die makes you crave sugar.”

  Jury winced. “Carole-anne, I’ve got what looks like a double murder on my hands. That kind of makes me want to husband my time, love.”

  “Makes you what? Cor, don’t we ever talk fancy after we’ve been one day with an earl. Have some gâteau.” She held a laden fork toward his mouth.

  “No thanks, I’m slimming. What were those hysterical calls about?”

  She nodded toward the tent. All important business — that meant any business of Carole-anne’s — was to be conducted within its massed shadows. It was a little like entering a smaller cave after leaving the anteroom of a larger. There was a round table covered with the familiar star-and-planet pattern on dark blue felt and a chair either side. In the middle was a crystal on black velvet, between two golden balls that cast a yellowish glow upward, as in the child’s game of holding a buttercup under a chin. In front of this was a deck of cards. Tarot.

  Carole-anne had put by her cake and donned her hat. One of them, for Carole-anne had many hats. This one was an elaborate turbanlike thing of silver lamé, looped round with pearls and swagged in thin gold chains (probably from its wearer’s large supply of costume jewelry). She sat like a swami, legs crossed, hands folded, staring into the crystal ball.

  Jury sighed. What she was really doing was quickly trying to construct a believable tale of the Madame Zostra Murders. After two minutes on this cushion, Jury knew his back would kill him. “If something doesn’t take shape in there in ten seconds, I’m leaving, love.” He wouldn’t have come in the first place, if it hadn’t been for Tommy.

  Beringed fingers quickly went to cover her eyes. Lapis lazuli eyes, which accounted for a good bit of the Starrdust’s fresh clientele. Andrew Starr had spent a great deal of money on Madame Zostra’s various appurtenances. He was a dreamer but no dummy; he could probably hear the cashbox clang when he first saw her. Though Jury was quite sure it was Carole-anne who’d convinced him to organize the whole show.

  “The aura is all wrong. You’re disturbing it with your doubts.” Apparently, even she thought that sounded pretty unconvincing, for she immediately dropped her hands and picked up the Tarot pack. She started shuffling it.

  Jury stared. “The Tarot. Carole-anne, people don’t shuffle those cards.”

  She shrugged and started up-turning them and slapping them down. What was this — murder, his fortune, or blackjack? Naturally, when the Hanged Man appeared, she shoved it toward him, saying, “It’s appeared —” (
she was trying to remember the number of murders) “— twice.” Zip went the splayed line of cards back together.

  “Now we’ve sorted that out, I want you to take care of Tommy. When the shop closes, take him back to the flat.”

  “Is that him, then?” She had made her lightning-move, good as any contender for the Gold, up and yanking back the smoke of gauze. After all, she might be getting control over a totally new person.

  They were coming down the passageway, amid laughter and giggles. The evening break was over, and Jury could see outside a little clutch of customers getting impatient.

  Jury said hello to Andrew Starr, a good-looking, pleasant young man who’d turned his particular métier of horoscopes into a lucrative business. Before he could finish his introduction of Tommy — who stood there slack-mouthed, just looking at Carole-anne — she said, “You’re going to love it here.” He was whisked inside the tent of gauze.

  Andrew Starr went ahead to unlock the door, let them out, and let the customers in.

  Jury crossed the street to the car, Wiggins following reluctantly, looking back over his shoulder, feeling perhaps that his future was in there, held hostage in the Horror-Scope play-house, until someone with more wisdom than Scotland Yard had ever had could free it.

  Wiggins sneezed.

  Twenty-six

  GOD’S WILL had had as little to do with the death of Tommy’s sister as it did with the running of the Mulholland household. That, Jury imagined, was left squarely to the iron will of John Mulholland and the iron hand this short and sturdy man kept fisting round the cap he held. The wife was thinner and taller — tall sitting down — with a blank face that looked as if the bandages had just been removed, so unblinkingly expressionless was it.

  Or perhaps it was just Jury himself, having moved so quickly from the dark environs of Andrew’s shop into an interrogation room at Wapping that struck him as a glare of white light by comparison.

  Mulholland would not sit down, nor would he answer the superintendent’s mild and friendly greeting with a like one. Down to business, with no garnishments of sadness or remorse, no platitudes even to cover up the apparent lack of feeling. He had answered the questions of Wapping police; he had seen the niece’s body; he wanted merely to collect his nephew — with whom he was obviously furious for having tricked the family — and return to Gravesend.

  “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but I’m keeping Tommy in London for another day or two. He’ll be well looked after.”

  “ ‘Keeping’ him? We mean to take him back, and that’s that.”

  “Well, no, it isn’t, exactly. We need him for our inquiries.”

  Mulholland’s square face suffused with blood; his mouth was tight, lips tinged slightly blue by his anger. “He don’t know nothing we can’t tell you.”

  “He might. He got here just after Sarah was murdered. And he knew her well. Look, Mr. Mulholland, the boy’s not being tossed into a flaming pit. Let’s not argue. I’d win.” Jury smiled. “Sit down, won’t you?”

  If Mulholland refused to take a seat (which he did), Jury was happy to disconcert the man by pulling round a chair for himself. So did Wiggins, taking out his notebook and a fresh handkerchief, as if they had all the time in the world.

  “I’m sorry about your niece,” Jury said, looking from one to the other. The uncle glared. The aunt looked away. At least she, perhaps influenced by the sergeant’s producing his own handkerchief, fetched a small one from her purse. It was almost as if someone else had come along to give her leave to release emotion that she must have been used to suppressing when her husband was her only company.

  Jury felt sorry for Gladys Mulholland as she quickly removed the handkerchief from her mouth when her husband looked darkly at her. But he felt even sorrier for Tommy Diver. He was glad he was tucked away in the Starrdust. It wasn’t a sixth sense that had told Jury what a return to Gravesend would be like, it was the clear memory of himself at that age. He’d been luckier, though, with his own relations, who had been kind enough before the death of his own uncle and the dwindling resources of his aunt had forced her to put him in Good Hope.

  “Am I sure? Well, I ought to know my own niece, man.” John Mulholland was not the man to equivocate, even if equivocation was warranted. The worst possible kind of witness, thought Jury. The kind whose own ego or pride would get in the way of any identification. The sort of witness, indeed, who might send the wrong man into the dock.

  It was Gladys Mulholland who leaned forward, puzzled. “Do you think it’s not, then? Not our Sarah?”

  At that our Sarah, Mulholland snorted.

  Jury answered her question with his own. “What was she like, Mrs. Mulholland?”

  That he would ask a question so innocent and seem himself to be at all interested in her niece and her opinion of that niece, both puzzled and pleased her. The tension eased. Arms as taut as wires relaxed; legs pressed tightly together moved slightly apart. She reminded Jury of a wooden puppet with controlling strings slackening.

  Her husband had had to drop them. He now faced the window overlooking the Thames, resolutely. A question not directed to him was not a question worth answering, anyway. That was Jury’s objective, to get him out of it temporarily. Mrs. Mulholland’s recitation would otherwise have been interrupted again and again.

  As she talked about the nice child Sarah Diver had been, Jury moved from his chair and nodded to Wiggins, who continued the questioning. Jury himself went to stand near the husband; he lit a cigarette and offered Mulholland the cigar he’d taken from Racer’s humidor. The man looked at it with suspicion, but the desire for a smoke being stronger than the desire to fend off police, he took it with grudging thanks. Difficult to remain hostile and inflexible when you’re standing round having a friendly smoke with a chap. Having the sergeant take over the interrogation also suggested that the investigation into the death of his niece was now on a lower key. Superintendents tended to intimidate witnesses, Jury had found only too often.

  Mrs. Mulholland was talking about the days before Sadie “went to the bad.”

  “How do you mean, ma’am?” asked Wiggins.

  “Wild, too clever by half, just like her mother. That’d be Bessie Mulholland. My maiden name was Case.” She tapped Wiggins’s notebook, and inclined her head toward her husband. “His sister,” making sure the sergeant understood the Cases were quite another kettle of fish.

  Mulholland had turned from the window to challenge this: “She weren’t like the rest of us. A black sheep, was Bessie. And what about that brother of yours —?”

  Wiggins interrupted by saying smoothly, “I know what you mean. I’ve a sister myself.” He went on: “But exactly how ‘bad’ was ‘bad’ in the case of your Sadie?”

  “Sarah,” said the aunt. “Named after her in the Bible —”

  “Was it drugs, then? Men?”

  Mulholland apparently felt he had kept out of it long enough. “She was getting up to all sorts of things, even when she wasn’t as old as Tom. I think she had all the conscience of a cat. And I’ve never known anyone who could put it over on you like Sarah could. Stand there and lie through her teeth and look innocent as anything —”

  “She must have done. Looked innocent, I mean. After all, she got into the Little Sisters of Charity. A Mother Superior is usually nobody’s fool.”

  There was an extended, embarrassed silence. The Mulhollands did not look at one another — he turned back to the window; she studied her interlaced fingers.

  “It’s odd, your niece’s choosing the convent, especially given the sort of young girl she was.”

  Mulholland turned his big square face on Jury. “That was the agreement, that she’d stay for a year at least. It was either that or she needn’t come home.”

  His wife twisted in her chair. “Sorts of things we Cases never got up to.”

  “A course not,” said her husband. “Who the hell ever fancied the Case women enough to drag their knickers —”

 
; Thereupon came a weepy cry from Gladys, who dropped her head in her hands and sobbed her small hankie into a tiny ball. Wiggins offered her his handkerchief.

  “What you’re saying is that Sadie — pardon, Sarah — was given the choice of sorting herself out with the Little Sisters or sorting herself out on the road,” said Jury.

  “Damned right. And what’s wrong with that?” A bull pawing dust couldn’t have looked more belligerent.

  Jury felt sorry for him, in a way. Having the care of a sister’s child and having the child turn out to be a bad lot. It must have been hard for him to take, a reflection on his own abilities to raise children properly.

  “Nothing at all. I don’t blame you. Probably do the same myself in your position.” Jury ignored Wiggins’s stare.

  Neither of them responded; both of them seemed relieved he’d have done the same.

  • • •

  He was definitely one of Hamlet’s gravediggers, thought Jury. Willie Cooper always struck Jury as a doctor who could barely suppress his glee at the sight of a corpse, particularly when Scotland Yard was in on the cutting-up, even more especially when it was Jury. Or “R.J.,” as Cooper chose to call him. Jury had been watching as Cooper made his careful measurements, described every bruise, scratch, mark, the chief of which were the abrasions on the victim’s back. There were two superficial knife wounds; the one that killed her was the penetration of the lung in the upper apex. Blood, a good two pints of it, had seeped into the chest cavity.

  “Single-edged,” said Cooper.

  To Jury it sounded all too familiar.

  Cooper continued talking: “She could have slipped on the wet stairs, slipped or been pushed, to make those marks on the back. The clothes were torn.”

  “Meaning someone made a grab for her?”

  Cooper looked up at him. Cheerful as he was in other ways, the eyes had a dead look as if they mirrored the eyes of all of the dead he’d seen. “I was talking.” He folded two sticks of gum in his mouth, then collected a hair specimen, which he bagged. He was in clinical white, a rubber cap imprisoning his hair, surgical gloves on his hands. He stood with his arms akimbo, hands against his waist. “Not bad, R.J. In pretty good repair, considering the cadaver spent some thirty hours in combat with the cruel sea, as it were.”