“She really likes you.” The barest hint of emphasis on that you, the Competition.
“I’m old enough to be her father, easily.”
Despondently, Tommy said, “But like you said, ten years from now it won’t make any difference. Time just expands all over the place, or whatever.”
Angry with himself, Jury addressed himself in his thoughts: You great nit, why don’t you just stop trying to console him? But no, nitdom won out. “Oh, no. To narrow that gap, why that’d be twenty years, twenty at least. Can you imagine Carole-anne waiting around for twenty years?” He smiled.
Tommy pushed the door open on his side. He said, quite soberly and sensibly, “No, and I can’t see her waiting around for ten, neither.”
Nit. Jury sighed.
• • •
Tommy looked at the woman now, his eyes narrow and squinting, like someone surfacing after the twilight sleep of an operation, trying to place the fuzzed image of the face before him. “Sadie?”
It was the look on her face that struck Jury, that spasm of recognition, instantly recalled, and another fitted into place. She had passed her hand across her eyes in the way that Carole-anne had done yesterday in the Starrdust. Jury felt his stomach tighten with anxiety. Not a fear of being lost in space, but that it was, like the Starrdust’s ceiling, a fake one of jazz and glitter; a throwaway, dispensable universe.
“Superintendent,” she said. It had looked like an effort to drag her eyes from Tommy Diver.
“This is Tommy Diver.” He did not complete the introduction.
“I’m Hannah Lean.” She put out her hand, her face now vacant.
Tommy barely touched the fingers before his arm fell away like lead. “You look just like my sister.” His voice was bitter, his face parched with anger.
He walked away down the path.
• • •
Jury let him go, knowing Tommy would stop when he was out of her line of vision.
For a moment they merely studied each other; then she said, “I suppose that was clever of you, but it means nothing.”
“No? You recognized him.”
Pushing up the sleeve of the old sweater, that nervous mannerism Jury was quite sure had been one of Hannah Lean’s, she turned her face and looked across the sheet of water. Gray in a gray afternoon. Then she turned back. “The boy looks very much like my grandfather at that age. It startled me.”
He said nothing, just turned to go.
“Give it up, Superintendent.”
He turned back. “You’re Sadie Diver, aren’t you?”
Her face was perfectly still. After a moment she said, “That’s ridiculous. I’m Hannah Lean.”
Jury’s stomach tightened again. “This is a hell of a thing to do to that kid. He’s only sixteen.” Now he did walk off.
And she called after him, “Ah, but who’s doing it, Superintendent?”
• • •
He heard the harmonica, its sound soft and diffident coming from the garden in which he sat earlier that day, while the white cat stalked through the groundcover.
The white cat was there again, or still there, curled by the statue of the nymph with the water-filled basket. Tommy was sitting on the opposite side, his knees drawn up, playing. When he saw Jury, he stopped, slapped the harmonica several times against his hand, and pocketed it.
He did not get up, just sat there with his arms wrapped round his knees, and said, “I expect that’s why you brought me to Northants, isn’t it?”
“Not entirely, no.”
“Well, she didn’t recognize me, did she?”
Jury said only, “What about you? Did you recognize her?”
With a great deal of agitation, Tommy pulled up a clump of grass, which grew long in this garden, and let the blades flutter off. The white cat opened an eye, yawned, continued its doze. “She wouldn’t pretend not to know me. That’s not like Sadie.”
There was no real conviction in his voice. Jury was afraid the dream-world, like the blades of grass, was being borne away. “No. I expect it’s not,” was the only weak answer he could give to this.
As they walked on toward the house, her words kept running through his mind: But who’s doing it, Superintendent?
• • •
Crick led Jury and Tommy in their long climb up the staircase, down the hall, through the door of Lady Summerston’s room. He announced them formally, and she turned in her seat on the balcony, peering into the somber shades of her sitting room.
“Superintendent! You’ve cleared things up by now, I hope.” On the chair beside her were the usual albums — the stamps, the photos — and the usual game of solitaire was in progress. “I refuse to have some dark column of a police constable standing outside my doorway, nor do I see any need of it. It’s all very mysterious, and I hope you’ve come to explain yourself. Who’s this?”
When Tommy Diver stepped from the shadowy room onto the balcony, she blinked, narrowed her eyes in much the same way as he had done himself. She put on her glasses. But all she said was, “You know, you remind me of someone.”
The picture of the someone sat there on the table before her and even Jury could see the resemblance between Tommy and Gerald Summerston. Fortunately (he thought), she did not make the connection. Jury had always wondered if the old really do remember their youth much more clearly than the young remember yesterday. Perhaps so, but Eleanor Summerston’s memories were shored up by the albums and, like the pictures there, turning sepia-brown with age.
Tommy’s smile was the first genuine one Jury had seen since they’d left Ardry End. “Did you like them, then? Whoever I remind you of?”
The glasses now dangling from the narrow grosgrain ribbon, she said, “Oh, I’m sure I did. Do you like cards?” When he pulled out a chair and sat right down, she seemed to grow festive. “Let’s have tea. Or beer. Young people like it; I never have.”
Jury was standing, looking out over the dried pools toward the lake. She stood there in the same spot, gazing across the water. The sun came out briefly, fuzzed her outline, veined the lake like shattered glass. It was May, but it was winter light.
Tommy was saying that he’d like some tea; Lady Summerston decided that cakes would be nice. He scooped up the cards she shoved toward him, riffled the two halves of the deck, and slotted them together. Handling the cards lent him an air of authority.
“I’ll just have Crick bring up the tray.” She blew into the old intercom and placed the order. “Now! What shall we play? You don’t happen to know poker, do you?”
It was the right question. Jury saw the glint in Tommy’s eye. “Learnt it when I was a kid.”
He slapped the deck down for her cut.
Jury walked back into the sitting room.
• • •
In the dark corner atop the bureau the antique soldiers stood, bayonets and rifles ready, prepared for action. He wondered what Hannah Lean’s childhood had been like. Could it really have been happy, with the parents both dead? The face looking out from the portrait at the top of the stairs looked studious. Had she been so as a child? Enjoyed her lessons? Read books . . . ?
That made him think of the bookshop, the little girl with the Sendak book and the baby made of ice. The strange little figures in hooded cloaks scrambling through the window, leaving the changeling, taking the real baby.
And it was then that he realized where he’d gone wrong: it was all symbolic, all psychological, that story about the girl and her baby sister. There never had been an ice-baby, after all. Deep in her mind the older child had made it up. The baby was there all along.
Crick had come with the tea tray and gone again, his coming and going barely noticed by Jury, like the laughter on the balcony which seemed so far away. “Raise you ten,” Jury heard Tommy say. Ten pence or ten pounds? The money Sadie had sent him.
Another puzzle-piece fell into place. Sadie might have been too careful to send a check, and it appeared to have been a largish sum. Jury walked out to th
e balcony.
“Tommy, how did your sister send you that money?”
Tommy looked up from his cards, surprised. “Recorded delivery. I expect she didn’t want the money getting lost. Why?”
Jury left in search of a phone.
• • •
Wiggins had his mouth full of one of the cakes donated to keep up Constable Pluck’s strength. Immediately, he started talking about Long Piddleton’s being just the sort of place he wouldn’t mind transferring to. If he could just get his sinuses used to the country air.
Jury interrupted and told him about the letter. “At least we know it’d be Sadie Diver’s signature. Probably, she didn’t even think about it or if she did, she certainly wouldn’t have told Simon Lean that her brother was coming up to visit her.”
“It’s half-five, sir. I’ll get onto it straightaway, but the post offices will be closed.”
“I’m not asking you to post a letter, Wiggins.”
“Sir!” said Wiggins, as smartly as he could, given the cake in his mouth.
Thirty-four
“HANNAH?”
From the bench in the secluded garden, the one where he and Tommy had sat and talked, she turned her head to look at Jury. This time she was not able to draw the veil over her expression, which was simply shock, and so she quickly turned to look down at the wicker basket on her lap. It contained several cuttings of japonica.
“Mind if I sit down?”
Her reply to that was, “So you’re giving me back my name. Thank you.”
Jury sat beside her, watching her. “Oh, I don’t believe you really want to thank me. Not just before you might have been charged for your own murder. Charged as Sadie Diver. Wouldn’t that have made the Northants constabulary look bloody silly? Imagine the publicity when the last of an old and distinguished family is found to be an imposter who’s murdered the real granddaughter and her own lover. They’d have a right meal of that, the media.”
Her hands worked in her lap. The voice that answered was flat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. God knows, I have no desire for publicity.”
Jury offered her a cigarette. She shook her head. “Not ordinarily. But in this case I think it would have helped the whole charade along. When the case came to trial — which was what you wanted — publicity would have helped.”
She sat, holding the basket of cuttings, as still as the statue at the end of the garden. Jury thought she must have wished she could turn to stone at that moment. “Probably you don’t want to hear my scenario, but I’ll tell you anyway: Simon left the house that night, but not to go to London. He was to meet Diane Demorney at the summerhouse later —”
“He took the car!”
“No, he didn’t. You did. Since you’d told Crick and your grandmother he was going to London, naturally that’s what they assumed when they heard it leave. The last time Crick saw you, you were sitting at the dining table, drinking coffee.” When she again retreated into stillness, he went on. “You killed him. Not before you found out about the meeting at the Town of Ramsgate, though. I’d imagine it was a typical little argument between husband and betrayed wife and that Simon wasn’t too upset about it. He was sitting down, facing you; the thrust of the wound suggests that. Then you did three things: managed to get his body into that secrétaire in case someone, Diane, perhaps? came along. You then got in the car and drove to Wapping to that prearranged meeting at the Town of Ramsgate.”
She shook and shook her head, as if in utter disbelief, and smiled slightly. “Three things. What was the third?”
“You wrote that note.”
She looked at him with pure astonishment. “From the Firth woman? Good God, why wouldn’t I have said it was from this other person — Diver? is that her name? — why go the long way round?”
“For the same reason you burnt it, Hannah. Anything left out in the open, anything pointing directly to Sadie Diver, might have eventually made us wonder if, indeed, the signs weren’t rather conveniently clear. On the other hand, the murder of a little hairdresser from Limehouse might have gone unnoticed. You wanted the two murders connected; otherwise, Hannah Lean would be the chief suspect for the murder of her husband. You have a more subtle mind than Simon had; and he wasn’t exactly stupid. But if he’d meant to burn that letter, he wouldn’t have waited months to do it, surely. That was a mistake on your part, to say that. Still, the joy of the whole thing was that he’d done all of the work for you.”
“You call it joy.” She looked away. “And how would I have known about Ruby Firth, then?”
“Your husband didn’t seem to keep his affairs a secret.”
Jury waited for a moment, hoping that Hannah Lean was the sort who took enough pride in her own cleverness in confusing police that she’d talk. Only he knew she wasn’t and that she wouldn’t.
“My husband didn’t confide in me,” she said dryly. “So it’s very unlikely he’d tell me all about this rather elaborate scheme he and his mistress had worked out in order to murder me.” Now she did turn her face to look at him, the smile uncertain, like someone who had just remembered how to smile.
Jury went on: “The necklace that was delivered to the house. Simon probably meant to collect it himself, but knew it wouldn’t make that much difference if you’d intercepted it. He could simply say it was a gift.”
She turned her profile to him again, looking toward the japonica, thinking. And then she said, “I have no idea what ‘necklace’ you’re talking about. Anyway, Simon wouldn’t have done that: he knew I don’t care for jewelry.”
“Then he wanted you to suspect this affair. A means of getting you to London for a confrontation with his ladylove.” Admitting nothing, she still had to defend her own plan, thought Jury. “That’s just why you were determined to find out, especially since he didn’t give it to you. On your usual trip to Northampton, you stopped in at the goldsmith’s. He recognized you. And then you knew. Or at least enough that you suspected they might, or she might, have also gone to your solicitor. You could have called him under any pretext at all, and he would certainly have said something like, ‘It was so nice to see you, Mrs. Lean.’ Any number of things could have confirmed a suspicion that someone was playing your understudy.”
She set the basket of cuttings aside, got up and walked over to the statue. A robin fluttered away from the stone basket. She stood there, back to him, her hand on the rim of the bowl. Without turning, she said, “And you brought the boy Tommy here, hoping he’d recognize his sister.”
Did he? Jury knew she wanted to add. He sat leaning forward, hands clasped, looking down at a patch of dead nettle. Of course, he couldn’t answer that unspoken question. He did say, “Your surprise wasn’t an act. Tommy looks like your grandfather at that age.”
“I must have been a real disappointment to him — my grandfather.”
Jury looked up, frowning. “Why would you say that?”
She shrugged. Her back was still to him. “Awkward, shy, plain —” Again she shrugged. “A rather frivolous thing to be thinking of, in the circumstances.”
Could she really have seen that portrait of herself every time she climbed the stairs and thought that? “You really loved your grandfather, didn’t you?”
Her head made a deep nod. “And Eleanor. I’m glad Simon’s dead. I’m glad we’re — both out of danger.” With her hands stuffed in the pockets of the tweed skirt, she turned and resolutely faced him. “Eleanor would have been next, Superintendent. Have you thought of that?”
Of course, she didn’t believe she was out of danger. “Many times, many times.”
For a while she said nothing, just stood there. “Then I’ll be charged, I take it, with murder. Hannah Lean would have made an ideal suspect: no alibi, but opportunity, and enough motive for ten suspects.”
“You are Hannah Lean.”
She came to the bench, lifted the wicker basket, and said, “Are you quite sure, Superintendent?”
Thirty-five
&nb
sp; “AND ARE YOU?” asked Melrose Plant.
They were sitting before the drawing room fireplace, Jury on the sofa, Melrose in his comfortable brown wing chair. The leather was so old it had lost its resilience and much of its patina.
But Jury wasn’t smiling. He wished he felt as comfortable as the aging dog Mindy looked. She seemed to do little but make rugs of herself at appointed places through the house. Now she was slumbering before the fire.
“It’s rather unsettling,” Melrose went on, when Jury didn’t answer. “To think that one could go about impersonating someone else impersonating one’s self. It’s like dealing off the top and bottom of the deck at the same time. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, if you know who anybody really is.”
Jury did smile at that. “Eleanor Summerston’s very words.”
Ruthven moved solemnly into the room, carrying a silver coffee service and a telephone. “Your sergeant wishes you to call him, Superintendent.” He handed Jury a slip of paper as he set down the tray. He went about plugging in the telephone and asking Melrose, “What time will you be requiring dinner, m’lord?”
“Oh, eightish, I think. All right?” he asked Jury.
Jury nodded and Ruthven cleared his throat, tapped his gloved fist against his mouth, preparatory to giving one of his Parliamentarian uppercuts. “Your aunt has informed Martha she will be joining you.” His tone was like a death knell. At the end of the room, the long-case clock bonged out the hour of six in sympathy.
“It would be nice if she would tell me, the merry host. What’s Martha cooking?”
“A very nice suckling pig, sir.”
“Jurvis’s?”
“Certainly, sir. Mr. Jurvis has the finest selection of meats for miles around. And reasonably priced, if I might add.”
Melrose reflected. “Well, we could take the apple out of its mouth and put a sign in front of it saying, ‘Special, seventy-nine p.’ On the other hand, a better idea would be to call my aunt and tell her she won’t be joining us.” He watched Jury watching the fire. “Tell her we’re both contagious, or something. You know how to handle it, Ruthven; you lie superbly.”
The Five Bells and Bladebone Page 25