The Blue Last

by Martha Grimes

  “Oh, aye.” Benny sat up straighter. “Talked about me, did she?”

  Jury smiled. “She did, yes. She thought that you’d sent me.”

  His mouth gaped. He seemed at a loss for words. “Me send you?”

  “She needed a policeman, she said. She said somebody was trying to kill her.”

  Dramatically, Benny slapped his hand to his forehead. “Gem’s not going on about that with you, is she?”

  “I thought you might know something about all of this. Do you?”

  “Yeah, I do: I know it’s her imagination, is what I know.”

  “What else do you know about her?”

  Jury thought from the way the boy wouldn’t meet his eyes that Benny was a little ashamed of not knowing more about Gemma.

  “All I know about Gem is, she’s what you call a ward of old Mr. Tynedale. Kind of like being adopted, only it isn’t. Mr. Tynedale really likes Gemma.”

  “The others don’t?”

  “It’s more that they don’t pay any attention to her. Like she’s invisible.”

  “You don’t think that’s her imagination, too?”

  Benny shook his head. “No, because that’s even what Mr. Murphy says. He’s head gardener. ‘Like she’s invisible, pore gurl.’ That’s what he said. Cook likes her; so does the maid. And Mr. Murphy, of course. Gem goes up to Mr. Tynedale’s room-he’s sick, see, and keeps pretty much to his bed. She reads to him, reads a lot. Gem’s only nine, but she’s a good reader. She could read this stuff-” he extended his arms to take in the bookshelves “-as good as I could, and I’m pretty good.”

  “Does she ever talk about her parents?”

  Benny shook his head. “No, never. Sad, that.”

  Benny, thought Jury, probably knew a lot about sadness. “None of them so much as mentioned her.” Jury looked around at the shadowy walls, the dull yellow of the wall sconces. This was a very restful little place.

  Benny spread his hands. “Like I said, because she’s invisible.”

  “I hope not.” Jury sat back, thinking, resting his eyes on the dog Sparky, who had been lying motionless beside Benny’s chair. Sparky, feeling eyes on him, looked up at Jury. Jury thought of the cat Cyril and wondered, not for the first time, if animals weren’t really the superior species.

  Benny looked down at Sparky, too, and then at Jury. “I don’t know where she ever got this harebrained idea.”

  “Your dog?”

  “No, of course not. And he’s not a she.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I mean Gem. About somebody trying to kill her. She even has them doing it different ways.”

  “I know: shooting, smothering, poisoning.”

  “Well, it’s daft. I mean, I guess she could be, a little. Then I wonder if maybe it’s something she saw or maybe something that did happen to someone and she made all this up from scraps.”

  Jury thought “Sigmund” mightn’t have been a bad name, after all, for Benny.

  “Or maybe,” Benny went on, “being ignored or being invisible, well, being shot at or poisoned is just the opposite. You know, the most attention getting.”

  “That’s a very smart diagnosis, Benny, except you’re forgetting another possibility.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe it’s true.”

  Seventeen

  He wanted to talk to Mickey and thought they must be on the same wavelength when Mickey called and suggested a drink and maybe dinner.

  “Liza and I were kicking around the idea of drinks and a meal at the Liberty Bounds, you’ve been there; it’s near the Tower Hill tube station. They’ve got good food.”

  Liza. Back then, years ago, he’d had feelings for Liza that crossed the borders of friendship. But she was married to Mickey, so… Jury said, “I haven’t seen her in years, Mickey. As I remember, she was very indulgent when it came to cop talk.”

  “Hell, yes. You’ve forgotten she was one? Let’s meet at seven, seven-fifteen? That sound all right?”

  “Definitely.”

  Jury left the Tower Hill station and arrived at the Liberty Bounds at twenty to seven. He had a pint at the bar, drank that down, then ordered another and carried it over to a table in a window. It was the table in the window that made him think of the Jack and Hammer, though this pub was ten times larger. He pictured them there in Long Pidd: Melrose, Trueblood, Diane, Vivian-

  It was while he was thinking of Vivian that he had raised his eyes to the door and seen them walk in-Mickey and Liza Haggerty.

  He had forgotten how Liza Haggerty looked. He waved them over and thought his expression must have been rather sappy for Mickey laughed.

  “What’s wrong, Richie? You drunk? Or have you forgotten Liza?”

  “No way I could forget Liza.” Jury smiled. He also blushed.

  So did Liza.

  “Waterloo Bridge,” said Jury.

  Liza laughed. “What?”

  “Ever since someone brought that film up, I’ve been seeing that actress everywhere.”

  “Richard.” She laughed and shrugged her coat off.

  Jury shook his head. “I’d forgotten how pretty you were, Liza.”

  “Oh, don’t let that worry you. He forgets all the time.” She tilted her head in Mickey’s direction. “I’ll have a martini, straight up, with a twist. And tell them I don’t want watered gin, either.” This last she called to Mickey’s departing back.

  “Lord, but it’s good to see you both again,” said Jury.

  “Yes.” That was all she said, but there was conviction in the word. “Friends shouldn’t lose touch, should they?” Liza’a smile stopped just short of glorious. It must have taken a hell of a lot of courage to smile like that. Serious now, she said, “Mickey told you?”

  He nodded. “I’m-” Looking at her, he simply couldn’t say more.

  Liza gave him the most sorrowful look he’d ever seen. “I try not to think about it. Having been on the Job once makes it a little easier. I mean, we deal with death so much. We haven’t spent so much time ignoring it; we’ve had to come to grips with it-” It was hollow talk and she knew it.

  Mickey was back with the round of drinks.

  Liza raised hers as if she were going to toast them, and said, “Don’t they know what a martini glass is?” She shook the stubby whiskey glass. “And there’s ice in it. Mickey? Now why’d you let him do that?”

  Mickey threw up his hands in surrender. “I told him, baby, I really did. Just be glad he didn’t use the sweet stuff.”

  She took a sip. “I’d say this was three parts vermouth to one part vermouth.”

  Jury laughed. “You should have drinks with a friend of mine in Northamptonshire; she was born with a bottle of vodka in one hand and two olives on a stick in the other.”

  Mickey said, “Not to change the subject-”

  “But you will.”

  Mickey smiled and looked at Jury. “You talked to Kitty Riordin. What do you think? Am I right?”

  “I agree she could’ve done it.” Jury still hadn’t gotten over the way the woman had smiled, looking at her baby’s picture.

  “What I wonder is, does Erin know about all this?”

  “You mean Maisie. I don’t know.” Suddenly, he looked at Mickey and laughed. “Hell, Mickey, you sound more interested in this alleged imposture than in the murder itself.”

  “Forget ‘alleged.’ You don’t see any connection?”

  “With the murder of Simon Croft? Not at the moment.”

  “Then maybe money wasn’t the motive.”

  “That kind of money? Moneyed money? I’d say it’s always a motive. Few other motives could touch it. The Tynedale inheritance would be one hell of a motive.”

  Liza said, “Mickey told me about this case. She would have to be the Medea of all mothers to carry this off for half a century. Now, would someone get me a real martini?” She pushed her glass toward them.

  Jury smiled and took her glass and went to the bar, where he stood as the bartender po
ured a frugal measure of gin. He thought about his walk on Sunday. It had taken him past the site of the old Bridewell Prison, supposedly a “house of correction” for beggars, thieves and harlots. He tried to imagine the hopeless horrible life there. Bridewell was a scandal. The Bridewell orphans-what a way to begin a life. Orphans. He looked back at the table. Then the drinks came.

  “Here we go,” Jury said, setting down the drinks. “Is this my fourth? Or my fifth?”

  “Well, it’s only my second, so hand it over.” She took a sip, got up.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Croft found out,” said Mickey.

  Jury laughed. “You don’t even speculate, do you?”

  “Of course I speculate. Sometimes.”

  Liza was back holding a stemmed glass. “It just took a little bit of convincing. It’s a trick I picked up in my former line of work. I offered to shoot him.” She tossed a couple of bags of crisps on the table.

  Mickey, Jury thought, was obsessing. Jury tried to get him off the subject, but Mickey managed to slide back to it. Jury wondered if being obsessed with Kitty Riordin kept him from obsession with his own condition.

  Liza, though, knew how to get him off the tangent: she brought up some old cases either he or she or both had worked. Fairly soon all three of them were laughing and ordering up more drinks. “Remember-” Liza began “-that bank job?”

  “I didn’t do bank jobs, babe.”

  “No, no, no. That bank job where the perp ran out with a satchel of money right into several cops and surrendered and it turned out to be the cast of The Bill?” The three laughed until they choked.

  Remember? Remember? They swapped stories for nearly an hour, drank and ate vinegar crisps. Mickey laughed so hard he got one up his nose. Liza sat between them with a hand on each of their arms and once, laughing, got her head down so low a strand of black hair trailed through her martini.

  Jury thought how much alike Liza and Mickey were, and yet they weren’t in any way competitive.

  Liza went on about the time Mickey thought she was the perp in a theft and locked her outside.

  Jury was laughing. “Liza, if you’re ever available, remember-” He realized what he’d said, and could not unsay it. They both sat smiling but the smiles were wooden. It was only a moment, and Jury got up, nearly toppling his chair in the process. He moved between tables, heading in the direction of the men’s room. He did not go in. Instead he leaned against the wall opposite, giving himself a mental lashing. Poor Mickey, poor Liza. He felt as if he’d poured the black night, like ink, across their table. He held this position for a century or two, then he felt a light hand on his arm.

  “Richard,” said Liza. “Never mind. Come on back.”

  He looked at her and saw her smile was real and bright. She tugged. “Come on!”

  Jury followed her back to the table, where they resumed their stories and laughter and got pleasantly, wittily, winningly drunk.

  Eighteen

  “ You’ve got to come with us, Superintendent.”

  It was Marshall Trueblood’s voice coming over the wire to Jury, who was sitting in his office at New Scotland Yard, chucking a memo from DCS Racer into his OUT box and pulling out the file on Danny Wu. When Marshall Trueblood was talking, you could do things like this, for listening only to every other word in Trueblood’s conversation sometimes made more sense than paying close attention.

  “Why,” asked Jury, “do I ‘got to’? I seem to recall that trip you and Plant took to Venice, where you also said I’d ‘got to.’ But why you need my actual physical presence is a total mystery to me since you have no trouble at all making me up. For example, how I intended once to marry an alcoholic woman with four crazy kids, two in Borstal.”

  There was a pause, then Trueblood said, “Not Borstal-”

  Jury brought his feet off his desk with a frustrated thud. “Trueblood, these were not real people. And you made up that sob story to keep Vivian from marrying Franco Gioppino. Well, Vivian’s left Count Dracula, or he left her and marched right out of Long Pidd with some transparent story about his mum getting sick.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, but she still hasn’t broken it off officially.”

  “Meaning what the hell? That still doesn’t explain Florence.”

  Jury took one of the papers from the Wu file. Danny Wu had never been indicted, much less convicted, for any of the various things he was charged with. He held the page up to the light as if looking for a watermark. He could scarcely believe it: Danny Wu was being investigated in a case involving some stolen art. That was as hard to believe as this phone call. “Is Melrose Plant part of this scheme? Where are you calling from?”

  “The Jack and Hammer. It’s Diane’s new cell phone we’re using.”

  “The real reason,” said Melrose Plant, who was now in possession of the cell phone, “he’s going to Florence is to get a painting authenticated. I think he wants you along as security. A goon.”

  “He’s got that right, but why in hell does he have to go to Italy? Aren’t there people here in England who do that sort of thing? Sotheby’s? Christie’s?”

  “Oh, he’s going to one in London, yes. I told him to call the fraud squad. Heh heh.”

  “The Fine Arts and Antiques Division, you mean.” He heard a scuffle at the Long Pidd end, or at least a scuffle of voices. Trueblood returned. “I see no point in advertising this picture. It could easily be stolen.”

  Jury was reading the details of the alleged art theft. “I know just the man for the job.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. So what’s this painting, anyway?”

  “A Masaccio.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He was a famous Florentine painter, a pupil of Masolino.”

  “That’s two down; want to go for three?” Jury put the Wu file on his desk and leaned over it.

  “The Renaissance.”

  “Yes, I have heard of that.”

  “We have to-” There was another scuffle around the telephone in Long Piddleton, then a female voice said: “Superintendent, I’m glad I caught you before you engaged in any idiotic plan that involves travel abroad.” Diane Demorney warned him off. “Your stars are in direct opposition to one another. Scorpios have to be careful when this happens.”

  “I’m not a Scorpio.” Jury didn’t really know this. But neither did Diane. Direct opposition?

  One-beat pause on Diane’s part. “Yes, I know. What I meant was that a Scorpio is going to figure prominently in your horoscope.”

  Diane Demorney could make the quickest recoveries of anyone Jury knew. “I’ll bear that in mind. Now put Plant back on, love.”

  She didn’t. She said, “You know what they say, ‘See Florence and die.’ ”

  “Actually, what they say is, ‘See Rome and die.’ ”

  “Well, it makes no difference, since you’d be dead, anyway.”

  Jury heard the rasp of a cigarette lighter. “True.”

  Plant came on. Jury asked, “What in hell is this call? One of those family round-robin things we used to get when we were away at school?”

  Melrose Plant’s voice seemed to shrug. “I never got one. Of course, that might have been because-”

  Jury squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a few soft blows with the receiver. “Has there been an epidemic of the literalism virus there?”

  “Huh?”

  Jury slapped another page of the Wu file over. “I can’t go to Florence.”

  “When did you last have a vacation?”

  Jury’s eyes strayed to several travel brochures Wiggins had left on his desk. “Last week. I hopped over to Vegas to perform with the Cirque du Soleil. I was diving from the rafters onto a water-covered stage.”

  A real silence ensued this time. They seemed to be passing the phone around again. When Melrose came on again, Jury asked, “Do you remember being evacuated during the war?”

  “Good l
ord, that’s a bit of a change of subject. Evacuated to where? This is the kind of place people got evacuated to. Anyway, no. I wasn’t born yet,” said Melrose.

  “So you don’t remember?”

  “That generally is the case with the unborn. Why?”

  Jury was looking at the snapshot of Kitty Riordin holding the baby Maisie (if she was Maisie). “I’m just trying to sort the identity of someone born then. Whether the mother of this baby is one woman’s or another’s.”

  “Offer to cut it in half. It worked for Solomon.”

  “I knew you’d help.” Jury was looking now at the snapshot of Alexandra and Francis Croft. “Do you know what a screen memory is?”

  “Yes, a recollection of Agatha walking through the door as she did just now. That’s a scream memory if ever there was one.”

  “Not ‘scream,’ ‘screen.’ ”

  “Screen? Oh. Isn’t that a Freudian concept? The idea being one throws up an image to mask another image too painful to be let into consciousness. Is this about the women and the unfortunate babe?”

  “No, not really.” It’s more about me. “Look, I’ve got to be going-”

  “You picked just the time. Agatha is heading for the telephone.”

  “Right. Are you really going to Florence?”

  “Yes, of course. As Diane says, see Florence and die.”

  “Right. ’Bye.”

  “Richard! Richard! Come away from there, love; it’s too dangerous!”

  The street was barely recognizable, almost leveled, flattened, not a building remaining. Small fires burned all across this expanse of concrete and rubble, as if fallen stars had ignited.

  “Richard!”

  His mother’s voice. He should have left. But there were too many fascinating things out here, the dusk festooned with tiny winking lights. She still called. He still stayed, rooting through broken concrete, through rubble…

  His mother called again…

  Had that street, that building, that voice been a screen memory? But for what? The memory of finding his mother under all of that rubble, that was what should have been screened, shouldn’t it?