“John!” Pratt swung his legs from the table.
John MacAllister merely shrugged, kept flipping through a thick wad of papers in a manila folder.
Arrogance was a dangerous flaw in a policeman’s character, unless it was wedded to genius, as it was in the case of Jury’s friend Macalvie (who’d be the first to agree).
“Let’s say,” said Pratt, placing his chin on his laced fingers, “it sounds highly improbable. If I can be frank —”
Jury smiled. “It sounds impossible.”
As Jury had just echoed MacAllister’s opinion, the inspector said, “You’re damned right.”
Pratt, like Jury, an affable man, had his limits. Insulting a Scotland Yard C.I.D. man was one that MacAllister kept pushing. “John, take Pluck or Greene and see if you can get anything else out of Mr. Browne. Chop, chop, John.”
With a savage look at Jury, John MacAllister left.
“What has he said so far? Theo Browne, I mean.”
“Nothing. Claims the book is his; Trueblood claims Browne nicked it from Watermeadows. I asked Trueblood why he hadn’t taken the book with him, it being so ‘priceless, priceless,’ as he keeps wailing about it —”
Jury smiled. “And what did he say?”
“That Lady Summerston insisted she’d keep it until he’d paid for the lot. Said she’d make sure it was under lock and key, and it was, except Crick put it in that writing-desk or secrétaire with the other books.”
“Lady Summerston’s the sort who wants to appear to drive hard bargains, likes to do deals, thinking that’s what her husband would do. I expect she thought if that book had been sitting round in plain sight for years, it would be safe enough to lock it up in that secrétaire,” said Jury.
“And she can’t say for certain if that’s her book, not since Browne rebound it. Though I believe Mr. Plant: the chances of two of those turning up in one village are pretty slim.”
“Slim as my theory?” Jury smiled.
Pratt looked at the photos again. “I will certainly allow the similarity is striking.” He shook his head. “How could she get away with it —”
“They.”
“Yes. Well, he’s dead, isn’t he? And I thought I’d enough on my platter with that.”
Jury handed Pratt a paper from the file. “Copies of the cards in Sadie Diver’s handbag.”
Pratt looked at the double line of impressions. “NatWest Bankcard, Barclaycard — what are these?”
“Library book tickets. If you want to take out a book, you hand one over, collect it when you get your book.”
“Surprisingly enough, I do read, Richard. Even been inside a library in my time.” He held up the four small cards. “But she mustn’t be much of a reader, if she has the tickets and not the books.”
“I doubt that’s the reason she had them. It could be just another way of establishing the murdered woman’s identity. Like the credit card. Sadie wasn’t a one to use credit, either, according to her brother, Tommy. All of these within the last two months, Charles.”
Pratt looked at the specimen page that showed the backs of the plastic cards. “Unsigned. Still, there’d be signature cards if we needed exemplar writing.”
“Maybe. I think the credit card business is pretty lax. You sign something, send it back. Anyone could have signed.”
“Well, then, the signature wouldn’t be that of either Sadie Diver or Hannah Lean.”
Jury left the window to sit in the cozy chair Pluck reserved for his visitors. “Documents experts can pick up similarities and differences. That means a subjective judgment. I know one especially brilliant. And sometimes he can’t tell.” Jury thought of Willie Cooper’s comment about art and science.
Pratt sighed. “Okay, we seldom hope for an exact match, not in prints, writing, tire treads, whatever. We just hope for enough. Like seven out of a dozen points of similarity in a fingerprint.” He slapped the folder shut, as if he were angry with its contents. “And who’s this policeman found the body?”
“Roy Marsh, a friend of the woman I mentioned — Ruby Firth.”
Pratt looked at him, smiled bleakly. “Does that connection bother you? What’s it to do with the Diver woman?”
“Proximity. Also, he might be protecting Miss Firth.”
“Between London and Long Pidd I’m getting one rotten headache.” He said this from under the tent of his hand. “Like watching a couple of cats play with string.”
“Sorry about the headache.” Jury sat back, feeling extremely tired himself. At least he hadn’t as far to go to doss down as Pratt. “If we pull it tight enough, it might make a cat’s cradle.”
Pratt looked up, smiled slightly. “Yes, I can see now it is possible. Proof of identity . . . But forensics will surely turn up enough, even if witnesses — even family, friends — are undecided. Good God, can one live in this world for more than twenty-four hours the way it is without proof of identity?”
“If someone wanted to take it away from you, it could be done. A wipe-out of a life.”
Pratt’s laugh was brief and bewildered. “Look, if the woman at the Watermeadows estate is indeed this Diver woman, and the dead woman is actually Hannah Lean, then her fingerprints are going to turn up at Watermeadows, correct?”
“And all you have to do is move in there with a print expert and dust the lamps, is that what you think? I don’t. Look: if Simon Lean went to the trouble of planting things belonging to his wife in Sadie’s flat, then he sure as hell would have done what he could to remove her prints from at least the most obvious places. And Sadie herself could certainly have wiped down the stuff in Hannah’s bedroom, just to name one room. So after your lab men hit the most obvious places and can’t make a match with those of the corpse, what then? Go over the entire Watermeadows estate? Do you think your Chief Constable would agree to the money and manpower involved in that project? And for what reason? Has anyone at Watermeadows been charged with murder?”
Pratt put his head in his hands. “Dental records, handwriting — good Lord, that sort of evidence can’t all have been switched about.”
“Not ‘switched about’ necessarily. Taken care of, in one way or another. Sorry. Hannah Lean’s your chief suspect, isn’t she, Charles?”
Grumpily, Pratt started stuffing papers into his satchel. “Nine times out of ten I know and you know it’s a family member. Jealous husband, greedy wife, et cetera. Or, in this case, it’s the other way round. And she was there, wasn’t she? Doesn’t have the shred of an alibi, and I’d say plenty of motive —”
“Perhaps.”
Pratt snorted. “ ‘Perhaps!’ My ‘God, he passed up no opportunity to humiliate her, I’d say. Anything in skirts, even Miss Lewes. Not the most fetching woman —”
“But good for ten bob now and again.”
“Considerably more than ten bob.” Pratt brought the chair thumping down on its legs as he leaned forward to get at some papers. “Several thousand. Here and there, now and then.”
“And did she go to the summerhouse that evening?”
“We’ve got casts of at least four different bootprints. Naturally, she’s not too willing to admit one of them is hers.”
Jury shook out his last cigarette, crushed the empty packet, and watched Pratt as he jammed the last folder into the satchel. “You’ve pretty much decided Hannah Lean killed her husband, though. Then charge her. That way you’ll get her prints.”
Pratt’s look was sardonic. “Thanks for the advice. And if you’re right, I might as well collect my pension. Perhaps I oughtn’t to say this, but you seem determined to defend a woman who, to your apparent way of thinking, you’ve never even met.” He zipped the case shut.
Jury looked away from Pratt’s cut-glass gaze. “If she’s dead, and no one knows it, she should be defended, shouldn’t she? I’ll see you later, Charles.”
• • •
“The place is absolutely bristling with business, Dick. You’ll have to get out the folding chairs. My Lord, even
old Jurvis is coming across, it looks like, for a pint.”
Melrose turned from the window and waited while Dick knifed the foam from the top of Vivian’s morning Guinness. Even Vivian was in, growing paler, he thought, as if each day drew her closer to a visit from the Italian contingent. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen Miss Demorney in here before; she seems to favor Sidbury.”
“It’s my Thunderbolt. Draws them like flies, it does.”
Kills them dead like flies would be more to the point, thought Melrose. The chief consumer of the new product was Mrs. Withersby, who had put away her pail and bucket to come down the bar and bedevil Melrose, whom she seemed to hold responsible for all of the ills that beset the village, as if, as feudal overlord, he should be taking better care of his suffering subjects. “There’s some people who stick by kith ’n’ kin no matter what, and some as let’s ’em down when t’ first little bit a’ trooble strikes. The Withersbys ain’t niver been ones to be afeared t’ admit when fambly’s done wrong. A’ course, that’s us. Can’t expect them that don’t live by the sweat of their brow to hold with that! And you see the kind a’ mess Long Pidd’s in now, don’t ya, m’lord?”
Melrose had become fairly good at decoding Mrs. Withersby’s messages, generally phrased to cover all eventualities. As in this one, which could have applied equally to the recent murder or the pig-and-bicycle debacle. If to the latter, it also said that both Lady Ardry was in the right and the butcher Jurvis was in the right. Melrose, in any event, was in the wrong. It was all shrouded in such mystery and delivered in a tone of such menace that the purport was of course to get Melrose to buy her the drink she so richly deserved having suffered so long under his suzerainty and total lack of concern for his subjects.
“A Thunderbolt for Mrs. Withersby, Dick, if you please.” Dick never seemed to mind if the help drank on duty as long as someone was paying for it, especially if it was his fabled brew. Having received her portion, she moved back down the bar to the snob screen.
Diane Demorney was sitting at a table with Theo Wrenn Browne, whose skin was drawn so tightly over the delicate bones of his face that he looked like a burn victim. Propping him up, Melrose imagined. Even Marshall Trueblood, not much used to staring down danger, could look it in the face much better than Browne.
Trueblood was not about to look Browne in the face (“beastly little man”), obviously, as he had removed himself to the other side of the table to sit with his back to the couple.
Joanna Lewes had come in twenty minutes before and ordered a double brandy, which she had taken to a corner table and gulped down in two swallows.
Melrose walked over. “May I join you for a moment?”
“Entrapment,” she said, turning over manuscript pages, and going at them with her pencil. “Did you wish to hear the next installment of the Heather Quick story?”
Melrose opened his mouth to say something by way of apology, but she went on:
“Still, it was far more enjoyable than being grilled by the Northants police. Not that they found out anything your superintendent didn’t already know. I can’t complain, though; I’ve got a good third of a book out of it. I could call our little tête-à-tête two nights ago a first draft.” She reshuffled the papers. “Not that I ordinarily do second drafts, but in this case I’m wondering how close Heather is going to come to the dock.” She slapped down her pencil. “If Heather can make a fool of herself, I daresay her creator should enjoy the same privilege. And since Theo Wrenn Browne was at the summerhouse engaging in cheap theft, I am as near to enjoying anything as one could be, in the circumstances. Just look at him over there, crying on her shoulder. Cold comfort there. And what about her, I’d like to know?” Joanna sighed. “I only wish police would get this whole thing sorted out. I’ve got a deadline.”
Melrose wondered if her impatience to be done with the investigation was prompted by its consuming her time, or by not knowing the outcome so that she could polish off the Heather Quick story.
Vivian told Trueblood that he should be glad that Theo Wrenn Browne had drawn attention to himself and away from Marshall. “Isn’t that right, Melrose? Though I honestly can’t imagine Theo Wrenn Browne —”
“Ha! Anyone who could nick a signed edition and rebind it would be capable of anything, murder or even adding color to Casablanca.” He was looking nearly his old self, clad in an exquisitely tailored loose jacket in burnt orange with a multicolored scarf draped about his neck. A bit overdone for May, perhaps, but not if you’re celebrating. “Joanna the Mad’s apparently had her go with Superintendent Pratt. She has my sympathy — but I can’t honestly imagine her having much to do with Simon Lean, lounge lizard.” He crossed a silky, lavender-clad ankle above a Gucci shoe over his knee. He must have been gearing up for Italy himself. “You know, here we all are, sitting about looking hideously apprehensive, twirling our pearls and tugging at our mustaches as if this were the drawing-room scenario where the detective confronts us and unravels everything. So where is our friend Superintendent Jury? The Revelation Scene is surely at hand.”
• • •
Jury’s walking through the door had the opposite effect. The Jack and Hammer emptied within two minutes, except for Melrose, Trueblood, and Vivian.
“I haven’t seen a place clear like that since Gary Cooper walked down the street in High Noon,” said Melrose.
“Hullo, Vivian,” said Jury, smiling. “Ready for the big day?”
She rearranged the silk scarf at her throat and smiled inanely. “ ‘Big day’?” she repeated, in a wondering tone. Said Marshall, “Don’t strangle yourself, Viv-viv.” To Jury he said, “And have you nailed Theo Wrenn Browne yet? What’re you waiting for?”
“He’s still in the running. You know there’s no way of absolutely proving that’s the Summerston book.”
“You mean the Trueblood book.” He sighed. “Come on, Viv, let’s go have lunch at Jean-Michael’s and let them get on with it. I’ve been famous for fifteen minutes; when Mummy and the sisters show up with Count D., it’ll be your turn —”
“Franco!” she snapped. “And he’s coming alone.”
Jury heard her mumble as they started for the door, “He damned well better be.”
• • •
Melrose sat looking at the pictures after hearing the story that Jury had told Pratt.
He shook his head. “Do you mean to tell me that on top of a double murder the woman at Watermeadows isn’t Hannah Lean?”
“Not exactly ‘on top of.’ That’s why Simon Lean and Sadie Diver conspired to kill his wife.”
“And something went wrong.”
“Something sure as hell did. That flat was kept by a person who was either compulsively neat and clean, or who didn’t want her fingerprints turning up.”
Melrose thought for a moment. “You mean it’s now a case of making an identification? And the eyewitnesses are contradicting one another.”
“Tommy Diver says the woman in Wapping isn’t his sister; the uncle says it is. No one else is sure.” He nodded toward the pictures. “See for yourself. Incidentally, Wiggins is coming along this afternoon with Tommy. I want him to visit Watermeadows,” Jury added, grimly. “Would you mind putting them up for the night?”
“Of course not,” said Melrose, absently. Then he clapped his hand to his head. “I don’t believe it.”
“What?”
“We may have our own eyewitness. I think I’ll gag. Agatha. Don’t you remember? She said she ‘almost had lunch’ with Hannah Lean. Ran into Mrs. Lean in Northampton, she says. Oh, no.”
Jury was smiling, handing Melrose the two snapshots of Hannah Lean and Sadie Diver. “She’s your eyewitness. Chat her up. Also, chat up Diane Demorney. You might be able to get something out of her.”
“How wonderful. Why would Hannah Lean have gone to London on that night?”
“Enticed there by her husband, perhaps, under some pretext.” Jury thought for a moment. “Ruby Firth was at the Town of Ramsgate that
night. One thing strikes me: the last person who drove that Jag was most likely a woman. Certainly, no one nearly as tall as Simon Lean.”
“He was in no condition to drive it,” said Melrose dryly.
Twenty-nine
UP THE GRAVEL and through a corridor of yew hedges Jury walked toward the summerhouse. He had left the car in the lay-by that anyone might easily have used if he wished to approach the property. It was an obvious and simple way to the summerhouse, if one didn’t mind rush grass and standing pools, as the cottage was a good hundred yards from the road.
A constable from the Northants police had been sitting on a stone bench near the summerhouse, reading Private Eye and too deep in scandals and parodies of scandals to notice Jury. When Jury was nearly in front of him, he looked up suddenly, got to his feet, and said, with a great deal of authority, “Sorry, sir, but no one’s permitted on these grounds. Let’s have your name, then, if you don’t mind.” From his breast pocket he quickly drew a small spiral notebook.
Jury showed him his warrant card and, before the man’s discomfiture led to a rush of apologies, said, “I just wanted a look at the summerhouse. Everything quiet?”
“As the grave, sir.”
• • •
What, he wondered, did he expect to find?
Nothing had changed, except that a white cat strolled in from the small dock beyond the french doors. On the lake, the blue and green boats bobbed. The white cat moved proprietarily through the furnishings, ignoring Jury as if he were just another armchair, and sat in the center of the room washing itself.
In the rough sketch propped against the mantel, had he expected to see the lineaments of the woman he had talked to yesterday? Traces of the younger Hannah Lean? He sat down on the sofa and looked at it, watched it more than looked at it, as if in the watching the eye might move, the tiny muscle twitch just by the mouth. Something. From the manila envelope he carried he drew the photographs of the dead woman. Yet he knew there would be nothing there to help him. Like tentative portrait-sketches, the faces of the dead look unfinished.
The Five Bells and Bladebone Page 21