Gemma’s mouth crimped up like an old lady’s at a particularly juicy piece of gossip. “I thought there was something funny about him when he wouldn’t baptize Richard.”
Jury made a sound meant to dismiss the gardener’s expertise. Then he said, “But about your being asleep-”
“It woke me up! Would it wake you up if somebody was choking you?”
“Fast.”
She dropped Richard (who Jury moved quickly enough to catch) and turned her hands so that she could encircle her neck. She stuck her tongue out and made choking noises.
“Terrible!” said Jury. “I wonder you could get the hands off you.”
Gemma missed a beat or two and said, “Oh, they just went away.”
“But then how about being smothered?”
Suddenly recalling this important detail, she said, “That’s right, the hands came back and picked up a pillow and smothered me. I only just managed to bump the pillow off.”
“Thank God. You must be strong.”
Uninterested in her strength and the subject of smothering, she gave a shrug and said, “I guess.”
There came another silence which she broke finally by saying in a fluting voice, “Well? Well? Isn’t Richard going to ask?”
Jury scratched his ear and looked at Richard (who looked supremely indifferent). He was thoughtful while Gemma started jumping as if she could hardly wait to tell the rest of her story. “You mean, what happened next?”
“Yes!” She took Richard from Jury’s hands and looked at him gravely. “I was almost poisoned.”
“I remember that. And the cook very nearly quit.”
“Benny told me about the way this family in Italy used to poison each other. The Medicines. They’d keep poison in all sorts of places, like in a ring. And when the victim was about to drink, they’d click open the ring and dump the poison in. That’s what happened.”
“To you?” When she nodded, Jury said, “The poison was in a ring someone was wearing?”
Emphatically, Gemma nodded.
“But you don’t know who?”
This time she shook her head, just as emphatically, sending her hair swinging like leaves in the wind. She had finished and was now rearranging Richard’s neckerchief.
“That’s really some story.” Jury brought out his small notebook and the stub of a pencil he kept telling himself to throw away. “Here.”
She frowned. “What’s that for?”
“For your statement. That’s what it’s called, a statement. What you do now is write down whatever happened. Didn’t Richard tell you about this?”
Her mouth gaped. “No!”
“Then he’s very lax. Witnesses always have to write their stories down, make their statements.”
“But I’ve already stated!”
“Yes, to me. But it has to be written down, if that’s what actually happened.”
Gemma looked horrified. “It’ll take days to write it. Months! I don’t write very good.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. Scotland Yard sees all sorts of writing.”
Gemma gave Richard a sharp rap against the lattice. “Nobody ever told me, not those police who came, they never told me.”
Jury sighed. “That’s too bad; they should’ve taken your statement.”
She was clearly angry with Richard and gave him back to Jury. She stood there, arms folded, looking at the notebook Jury held, and the pencil. “You said, ‘whatever happened.’ ”
“That’s right. We’d hardly need a statement of what didn’t happen.”
Gemma scratched her elbows. “Well, maybe some of it didn’t. Some of it could’ve been-you know-like a bad dream. Like the choking part. It did wake me up, I mean I thought it did, but maybe I was dreaming it all and got mixed up.”
“Hmm.” Jury grew thoughtful again. “That’s certainly possible.”
“And the smothering part, too. It was as if it’d happened. It felt real.”
“If it was a dream, well, of course, you wouldn’t need to put it in a statement.”
With her hands on his knees for support, she jigged on one leg, then the other, kicking her feet back.
“What about the poison, then? Could you have dreamed that, too?”
She shook her head. Dark leaves swirled as she bounced from one foot to another. “I was… just… thinking about what Benny told me… so much… I must’ve… thought it… happened.”
“Well, yes, I can see that.”
She stopped, a sober look on her face. “But the shooting really did happen.”
“Yes, there’s proof of that. You said you went to the greenhouse. Tell me, did Jenny Gessup ever go out there?”
“Sometimes she did, but she’s gone.” Hence, scarcely worth the breath to talk about.
“Was Richard with you in the greenhouse?” Jury gave the doll a pat.
“Yes, except he wasn’t Richard yet. He was-Ruth or Rebecca or Rachael or Rose or Rhonda…” She shrugged.
Richard’s tenure on earth as a girl still gave Gemma trouble. Jury was glad the litany of names ended.
She said, “If it’d been Richard, then he could have caught whoever did it.”
“That’s right. You turned the light on when you went in?”
Clasping Richard to her chest, she said, “I had to see, didn’t I? I only turned one on, anyway.”
“What happened then?”
“I heard a kind of crack, then the window broke and glass scattered everywhere. Then it was like a mosquito whrr’d past me. I got down.”
“That was smart.”
The corners of her mouth stretched down, indicating exasperation at being questioned yet again. “I guess I have to write a statement about being shot at.”
Jury was looking off across the garden, where Melrose was dumping another bucket into the flowerbed. Mulch, maybe. “You know what? If you tell this to-what’s your new gardener’s name?”
“Ambrose.” Looking in the same direction, she squinted.
“Tell Ambrose and he can write it down. As soon as he’s finished his garden chores, of course.”
Although this arrangement was preferable to writing herself, there were still reservations. “He’ll just argue about every little thing.”
“He can’t. He wasn’t here, after all. He didn’t witness it.”
“He’ll still say I saw it the wrong way round.”
Jury didn’t know what to make of this little conundrum. “I’ll tell him just to write down what you say and not argue about it.”
Gemma murmured, “He won’t pay any attention.”
“If you think I’m going to carry buckets until you sort all this, well-”
They were standing near the greenhouse. “You’re doing the job so well I’d say you were a natural-ow!”
Melrose had just dropped a bucket of fertilizer on Jury’s foot. “Oh, sorry about that.”
Jury rubbed at his ankle. “Sure. Now, what did Angus Murphy have to say about this Jenny Gessup?”
“Unreliable, useless, uninterested, or, as he put it, in a state of desuetude.”
“Funny word to be using.”
“Isn’t it? He says she didn’t have the strength for some of the jobs, such as carrying buckets for hours on end. This-” Melrose said of the bucket on the ground “-must be the dozenth today.”
“What’s in it?”
“Who cares? Fertilizer, I expect.”
“Listen: I want you to write down the account of the shooting Gemma’s going to tell you.”
“What? What? That would be one of the labors of Hercules, I suppose you know. And if she’s told you already, why-”
“Because sometimes details turn up with repetition. You know that. She might mention something left out of what she told me.”
Melrose frowned. “What about the poisoning and the choking?”
“That didn’t happen. I suspected that. The shooting clearly did. Being shot at gave her bad dreams, and the choking, smothering business
was only that. A dream. The poisoning didn’t happen either; it was the result of someone’s talking about poisoning in general.”
“But that still leaves the question, why shoot her?”
“No, it doesn’t, not if that was the only attempt made.”
“Sorry, I don’t follow.”
“Gemma might not have been the target. People assumed she was because of these other two fictionalized attempts. If they hadn’t occurred, police would have brought up the other possibility: it wasn’t Gemma.”
“Then… who and why?”
“One of two things might have happened: it could have been a prearranged meeting in the greenhouse between the shooter and his or her target-just to get the person out of the house probably. Or the shooter saw someone in the greenhouse, thought the person was the target, took the opportunity and got a gun. An impulse. As I said, those are just possibilities. But it wasn’t necessarily Gemma the shooter was after.”
“Good lord, you’re not suggesting it was old Angus Murphy?”
“No. He’s still around after several months. Had it been Murphy he’d most likely be dead by now. My guess is Jenny Gessup, who I’m going to see as soon as I can gather up Wiggins.”
Melrose bent, cursing, to pick up the bucket. “The antiques appraiser was chicken feed to this.”
“With that attitude, you’ll never make first base at the Chelsea Flower Show.” Jury turned to leave. “And don’t forget to take down that statement.”
Melrose called to Jury’s swift departure, “All she’ll do is argue.”
Jury smiled. Full circle.
In the kitchen, a tea party appeared to be in progress, with Sergeant Wiggins at the center of things. Around the table also sat an elderly but robust-looking woman who must be the cook, two young ones who were probably maids and a thin, acne-scarred lad who would have been a groom, if there’d been horses. Leaving that occupation, Jury imagined he was Archie Milbank, who did odd jobs under the gimlet eye of Barkins, who was not present at the table.
The kitchen was wonderfully massive and cozy at the same time, partly owing to an inglenook fireplace blazing away as if initiating the Great Fire of London. It was flanked by a large industrial-size Aga and a modern column which housed a microwave oven and what looked like a rotisserie. The cook was not hurting for modern conveniences.
When Jury walked in, Wiggins rose and the others looked at Jury with simple delight, as if he were one of the Wise Men come with a bucket of frankincense. (Jury had trouble getting that image of Melrose Plant out of his mind.)
Jury’s smile only increased the general air of beneficence as Wiggins introduced him around the table. Here was Mrs. MacLeish, cook; Rachael Brown, maid; Clara Mount, cook’s helper; Archie Milbank, “maintenance.”
Jury thanked Mrs. MacLeish for the mug of tea she was pressing into his hand and asked if he could have a word with her. Of course, of course. They went to Barkins’s little sitting room.
“First,” said Jury, “I’m awfully sorry about Mr. Croft. You knew him from childhood, didn’t you?”
Her eyes grew glassy with tears, against which she drew a handkerchief from her apron. “I did that, yes. Mr. Simon was a lovely man, just lovely. Like the rest of the family, scarcely ever a cross word.”
“It’s been suggested he was afraid of someone or something. Did you get that impression?”
She frowned. “He did seem not to want to see people, or at least some people. I thought it was because of that book he was writing. Spending all his time on that, he was. Of course, I never did see him much as I went to the house only twice a week to do the cooking. Mr. Simon wasn’t big on cooking for himself. Sometimes he got Partridge’s to cater. I do know he got that policeman-a friend of the family, he was-to stop in every once in a while. So I expect he could’ve been afraid, couldn’t he? Maybe it was for some of those valuable paintings and things?”
“Possibly, yes.”
Jury thanked her and rose.
They were in the car with Wiggins thumbing through his notes. As always, they were copious. “According to Mrs. MacLeish, who went to Simon Croft’s house to prepare meals for him, the only people who got inside the house were the grocer and your DCI Michael Haggerty. Maisie Tynedale called. But Croft did not want her inside and told Mrs. MacLeish to say he was busy with work that couldn’t be interrupted. He had taken to doing this several weeks before.”
“This is the paranoia we’ve been hearing about?”
“Yes. She says the policeman-meaning DCI Haggerty-had a cup of tea with her in the kitchen when he came round, and so did the grocer, a Mr. Smith. Anyway, they had tea-”
“Occupational hazard.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Go on.”
“-had their tea and a good chat.”
“About what?”
“Oh, the new millennium dome. I was telling you-”
“Yes, yes.” The last thing Jury wanted was for Wiggins to get stuck on that. He wondered if he’d last until the millennium.
“What it looks like is Simon Croft could have been suspicious of any of them, anyone in the family.”
“Good thinking on his part. So am I. You know, I don’t get this: here’s Croft with money enough to be catered for by Partridge’s or Fortnum and Mason. Why would he be using Mrs. MacLeish to cook his meals?”
Wiggins gave a smart little nod and said, with authority, “I can answer that, sir, I believe. Mrs. MacLeish has cooked for the Tynedales and the Crofts for decades, ever since the older men were young ones. Simon Croft has always depended on her and wouldn’t give it up, not for love nor money. He was spoiled. They’re all spoiled, if I’m any judge. They get used to how things were done a long time ago and they’re not about to change that.”
“It sounds almost incestuous. That’s the trouble with closely knit families; they don’t know when the hell to stop.”
Thirty-nine
Dulwich always surprised Jury. It was a real village within the Greater London area, home of Dulwich College and one of the best picture galleries in the country.
The house Jenny Gessup lived in was a small, attractive, yellow painted-brick one, with front garden given over to winter despoilment: hedges straggly, earth stone hard, flowers gone, probably some time ago.
Jury raised the brass dolphin-shaped door knocker several times. Finally, a young woman opened the door. She was short, with a trim build and delicate cheekbones. She did not appear to be one to handle wheelbarrows and buckets, but apparently had, as Angus Murphy hadn’t complained about her lack of ability, only her laziness. Her hair was a hybrid grayishbrown the color of tree trunks. She did not appear best pleased to find two strangers on her doorstep.
“Miss Gessup?”
“It’s with a hard G like “guess,” not like “Jesus.”
Jury could tell she was delighted at being able immediately to take them to task. He smiled. “I’m Richard Jury with a J. Exactly like ‘Jesus.’ ” He showed her his identification.
Jenny Gessup’s face was red. “You’re public servants; you ought not to get smart with those who pay your salary.” She flung the door wide and marched herself into her sitting room, leaving the two of them to find their way by following their noses. They did.
Jury made himself comfortable on a small sofa slipcovered in lavender linen. The color on walls and woodwork was a pastel, a faded peach; chairs were covered in stronger garden colors: delphinium blue, daffodil yellow. It was as if summer had retreated here, having lost its brief campaign with the winter outside, and here was its last ditch stand.
“Miss Gessup, you worked at Tynedale Lodge.” She pulled back and, Jury thought, became wary.
“You could say.”
Jury smiled. “I do say. But you weren’t there long, were you?”
Defensively, her voice raised a notch or two. “I only took the job as a lark, anyway.”
“According to Miss Tynedale, you stopped coming.”
Jenny gav
e a dismissive wave of her hand. “Oh, her. She acts like the lady of the manor.”
“She is. Why don’t you like her?” Jury could almost see a door close in her mind. All she did was shrug and study her bitten fingernails. “Why did you quit, then?”
“I told you. I wasn’t serious about that job.”
“Then why did you take it on in the first place?”
“Extra money, of course. I’m saving up to buy a car.”
“Are you working now?”
She shook her head.
“Have you since you left the Lodge?”
“Can’t find anything that suits.”
The illogic of that answer, given she signed on as a gardener, which didn’t suit either, Jury did not explore. She had quickly reached that point where her answers would be static or lies.
“You remember Gemma Trimm?”
“Gemma?” Jenny brightened a bit. “Yes, of course. We were kind of friends. I liked Gemma, but no one else paid much attention to her. Sad.” Her voice was wistful. “There was that shooting up at the Lodge. Southwark police said it was robbers first off and then said it was some boys acting up. Well, Gemma thought it was someone trying to kill her. That’s daft.”
“What if the shooting wasn’t random? What if the shooter was after someone else?”
Her fine brown eyebrows drew together in puzzlement.
“I mean, is it possible the killer thought it was you in the greenhouse?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, that’s ridiculous.” Not meeting his eyes, she picked at a bit of skin around her fingernail.
Jury left the idea on the table. He said nothing.
“Anyway,” she went on, “if they were trying to shoot somebody besides Gemma, why not Angus Murphy? He was in the greenhouse a lot more than me.”
“Too big. No one would have mistaken him for you.”
“If you know something that might make you a danger to someone else,” said Wiggins, “you’d better say.”
Just then a woman appeared, holding branches of greenery of the sort one collects to make wreaths. Holly, perhaps. She stood in the doorway to a courtyard, smiling.
Jury and Wiggins both rose. Jenny stayed put on the sofa. “It’s my aunt Mary.”
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