Oliver said he had not talked to Small and had not noticed anyone going down to the cellar except the old waiter at one point.
“Drunk as lords, we both were,” put in Sheila, winking at Jury through a cloud of cigarette smoke. He noticed the hand holding the cigarette had very long fingernails. Secretary, my eye.
“So you neither of you saw this William Small after you went into dinner?” They shook their heads.
“I can’t recall seeing him either after or before,” said Darrington.
“And Ainsley—?” They both shook their heads. “But you were there the night Ainsley was murdered?”
“Yes. Sheila left a bit before I did. We had a . . . misunderstanding. Over my buying Vivian Rivington a drink.” A smile played on Darrington’s face, as if such misunderstandings were a source of constant amusement to him.
A coal fell in the grate and lay smoldering. It had nothing on Sheila. “Don’t be silly,” was her weak response.
Jury remembered Lady Ardry’s account — albeit undependable — of the various relationships between these people. “I understand Mr. Matchett is engaged to Miss Rivington. Vivian.” Simultaneously, there came an angry no from Darrington and a yes from Sheila.
Oliver blustered. “Well, there’s been some talk of it. But Vivian would never throw herself away on someone like Matchett.”
“Who would she throw herself away on, love?” Icicles hung from every word.
Jury felt almost sorry for Sheila. She was shallow but not, he thought, brainless. Whereas, he suspected Darrington was a bit of both. He couldn’t quite square this with the crisp style of the Bent mysteries, and said, “I’ve read your book, Mr. Darrington. Only the first one, I must admit.”
“Bent on Murder?” Oliver preened. “Yes, that was probably the best.”
Sheila looked away, as if she were uneasy. Jury wondered why she should be disturbed by the mention of Darrington’s books. It was a point worth pursuing, thought Jury, who often annoyed his colleagues by not sticking to the facts. But what were “the facts,” strained through the grid of the individual perception, assuming even that one wanted to tell the truth? And most people didn’t because most people had something to hide. He was almost glad this lot had been drunk — or were said to have been — it made them realize that the picture was blurred. He could always tell when something had shifted center, and something had definitely shifted with Sheila. It wasn’t the mention of Vivian Rivington, either; that had been pure, straightforward jealousy. Whatever this was, it was not straightforward. She was staring at the air over his head.
“I wonder if you might have a copy of your second book?”
Darrington’s eyes flicked toward the bookcase beside the door and then quickly away. Sheila got up from the couch and walked over to the fireplace, avoiding Jury’s eyes. She threw the stub of her cigarette into the fire and then started, yes, washing her hands together. The Lady Macbeth syndrome. Jury had seen it often enough.
“The second one wasn’t too well received,” said Darrington, making no move toward the bookcase.
Jury did it for him. There they were, the colorfully dust-jacketed Bent mysteries, all in a row. “Isn’t this it?” Jury pulled it from the bookcase and watched Darrington dart a quick glance at Sheila. “Would you mind if I borrowed it? And the third also? Your Superintendent Bent might give me an idea or two.”
Darrington recovered himself, and said, “If you want to bore yourself, go right ahead.” His laugh was unconvincing.
They were both relieved to see Jury out.
• • •
Jury glanced at the map Pluck had made for him as he walked down the High Street, at the X showing the Rivingtons’ house. Why couldn’t these people have been gathered together for him fifteen minutes after the murder, the family all grouped in the drawing room, choking on their tea, the servants all cringing in the kitchen of some arcane country house? All there nice and neat. Here he had to go mucking about over half of Northants, and the trail days old, so cold that a trained bloodhound couldn’t snuffle it out. For a moment, looking down the High Street where the winter light glittered on the gum-drop houses and danced off the snowy roofs, he wondered if he had landed bangup in a fairy-tale town on this Christmas Eve.
The Rivingtons’ house was the large Tudor structure just on the other side of the bridge, in the square. When he got closer to it, from the vantage point of the humpbacked bridge, he could see it was two houses together really, quite large.
• • •
This morning Isabel Rivington was dressed in a camel’s hair suit and a white silk blouse, looking just as elegant as she had yesterday. Although, frankly, Jury would have preferred Sheila Hogg, who was a bit steamier. This one came on as a kind of piranha. Jury wouldn’t have been surprised to see a finger or two missing when he left.
“I was hoping to see your sister — Vivian, is it? — today, too.”
“She’s up at the vicarage.”
“I see.”
“The night of the seventeenth, the night Small was murdered, do you recall seeing him in the bar before dinner?”
Having invited Jury to sit down, she plucked a cigarette from a china holder and leaned toward the match he held out. She seemed in no hurry to get down to answers. “If he was the one sitting with Marshall Trueblood, well, yes, I saw him I suppose. But I didn’t take much notice. There were several people in the saloon bar.”
“And you didn’t go down to the wine cellar after his body had been found?”
“No.” She crossed silky legs, down one of which the firelight made a band of gold. “I’m a bit of a coward about that sort of thing.”
Jury smiled. “Aren’t we all? Your sister did though.”
“Vivian? Well, Vivian’s—” She shrugged, as if discounting Vivian’s predilection to look at dead bodies. “And she’s not my sister, exactly. We’re stepsisters.”
“You’re the trustee of your sister’s estate?”
“Barclay’s and I, Inspector. What’s that to do with the murders of two strangers?” She seemed to expect him to answer.
He didn’t. “Then you don’t have complete freedom in deciding how the money will be spent.” Her expression shifted from bored acquiescence to irritation. “When does she come into the money herself?” Jury asked.
Her heavy gold bracelet clanged against the ashtray as she tapped her cigarette. “When she’s thirty.”
“Rather late, isn’t it?”
“Her father — my stepfather — was a bit of a chauvinist. Women can’t handle money — that sort of thing. Actually, she could have got it any time she married, by the terms of the will. Otherwise, when she’s thirty.”
“And when will that be?” From the way she was looking everywhere except at him, Jury concluded he had found a sore spot. There was something about Isabel Rivington to which he took an instinctive and near-immediate dislike, something dissolute. She was beautiful in a sluggish sort of way that bespoke overindulgence in syrupy liqueurs and two-martini lunches. But her skin was still very good, the pores tight and fine, and her hands well kept. The nails were lacquered in a modish brown-rose shade and so long that the tips were beginning to curl in at the ends. It might be difficult to strangle a man and avoid scratching him with nails like that. He wondered sometimes if that part of his mind which registered such details even as he was talking about other things might not simply have frozen over, impervious to the human tragedy, catching up facts like flies in amber.
“Vivian’ll be thirty in about six months.”
“Then she’ll have control of her money?”
Angrily, Isabel stubbed out her cigarette, the end fragmenting like a shell. “Why do you make it sound as if I’m juggling the books?”
All innocence, Jury said, “Was I? All I’m attempting to do is gather the facts.”
“I still don’t see what this has to do with two men coming here and getting killed.”
“How long have you lived in Long Piddleton?
”
“Six years,” she answered and glumly drew another cigarette from a silver case.
“And where before?”
“London,” was her unembellished answer.
London, thought Jury, had certainly discovered Long Piddleton. “A bit different, isn’t it?”
“I’ve noticed,” she said.
“Vivian’s — your stepsister’s — father was quite wealthy, wasn’t he?”
The subject of money having arisen again, she turned her head sharply away, and did not answer.
“There was some sort of accident, wasn’t there? Miss Rivington’s father?”
“Yes. When she was about seven or eight. He was killed by a horse kicking him. He died instantly.”
Jury noticed this brief recital was not very remorseful. “And her mother?”
“Died right after Vivian was born. My own mother died about three years after marrying James Rivington.”
“I see.” Jury watched her as she crossed and recrossed her legs, nervously making little jabs toward the ashtray with a fresh cigarette. He thought he’d take a shot in the dark. “Your stepsister is going to marry Mr. Matchett, is she?” Not precisely true, but it riveted her attention on him. Her fingers were poised over the ashtray, her head snapped around, her feet were planted firmly on the floor. Then she smoothed out her expression, and bland indifference reasserted itself. Jury wondered if her interest in Simon Matchett were more than merely friendly.
“Where did you hear that?” she asked, casually.
Jury immediately switched the subject. “Tell me about this accident to James Rivington.”
She sighed, a woman whose patience was wearing thin. “It was in Scotland one summer. When I was down from school. God, I hated it — the north of Scotland. Sutherland. An isolated, windy place — nothing to do but count the rocks and trees and heather. No-man’s-land, as far as I was concerned. We couldn’t even keep servants, except for one old cook. They loved it — Vivian and James. Well, Vivian had this horse she specially liked, stabled with the others out back. One evening Vivian and her father had an awful row, and she got so furious she just rushed right out in the dark and jumped up on that horse and he — James, I mean — came out after her. They were yelling at one another, and the horse shied and kicked her father in the head.”
“It must have been very traumatic for your sister — being so young, to have that happen, and herself up on the horse at the time. Was your sister very spoiled? Did she get much supervision?”
“Spoiled? No, not really. She had a lot of fights with James. As to supervision, I suppose she had her complement of nannies and so forth. And James was pretty strict, certainly. As I said, a bit of a chauvinist. Of course, Vivian was quite sick about the accident. I even think it might have . . .” She paused and picked up the smoldering cigarette, which had turned half to ash in the glass ashtray.
“ ‘Might have —’?”
Isabel blew out a narrow stream of smoke. “Unhinged her mind a bit.”
Strange that these were Lady Ardry’s very words. “You think your sister is psychotic?”
“No. I didn’t mean that. But she’s certainly a recluse. You wonder why we left London. It wasn’t my choice, certainly. All she does is sit and write poetry.”
“That’s not so odd that one would call it ‘unhinged,’ is it?”
“Why must people feel they’ve got to protect Vivian even before they’ve met her?” Her smile was tight.
Jury didn’t answer. “Did you benefit by your stepfather’s will?”
A shadow brushed her face, as if a raven had flown past. “What you are working up to — isn’t it? — is what will happen to me when Vivian gets her money. You’re dead wrong if you think she’s going to throw me out in the snow.”
Jury studied her for a moment, pocketed his notebook, and rose. “Thank you Miss Rivington. I’ll be leaving now.”
As he followed her to the front door, Jury pondered on the geography of Scotland, and something an artist friend of his had said about the quality of the light there. There was something in her story of the death of James Rivington that sounded very fishy.
• • •
Jury took a deep breath of fresh air and observed the imprint of his boots in the fine crust of new snow; he looked longingly at the sparkling expanse of whiteness which was the village square. As he crossed the road, he saw two children on the bridge. They looked about eight or nine, and were rolling the fresh snow into balls along the gray stone balustrade. It was an odd little bridge with two semicircular arches. As he passed the bridge, he solemnly bade the children good-day and wondered what it was like to be that age again, and have your cheeks turn pink in the cold and your hair stand up in wet spikes. It wasn’t until he’d gone another fifty feet and turned to look back that he realized they were following him. They stopped suddenly and pretended to be inspecting one of the pollarded limes along the High Street.
He started back toward them, and they were set to cut and run, when he called out. Clearly, they knew who he was. Trying to keep a straight face, he drew out his badge in the worn leather folder and displayed it. “Here, now. Were you following me?”
Their eyes widened into plates, the girl pinched her lips together, and they both shook their heads violently.
Jury cleared his throat, and in very official-sounding tones said, “I’m about to go into that tearoom just there” — and he pointed across to the bakery — “and have my morning coffee. Probably they serve chocolate, and I’d like to put a few questions to you, if you wouldn’t mind coming along.”
The boy and girl stared at each other, trying to read permission in one another’s faces, then back at Jury, their expressions mingling fear, puzzlement, and temptation. Temptation, of course, won out. They nodded, and one on each side of him, the three of them tramped along to the square.
The Gate House Tearoom and Bakery was a stone building that had once served the purpose from which it took its name: a little house above a lych-gate, through whose narrow arch one could go up the walk to the Church of St. Rules. It was up a very short lane that led directly off the square, with the church beyond it. The tearoom was on the level above the narrow passageway, and the bakery was below.
Around one half of the square were tile-hung and half-timbered cottages whose upper stories jutted out over the narrow walk that ran as a perimeter around the square. On the west side of the square, there were other cottages, interspersed with a sweet shop, a narrow little dry goods store, and a post office. Most of the shops were back beyond the bridge, but these had smuggled their way into these quieter surroundings. They were all mixed higgledy-piggledy, as if glued together by some child.
Jury imagined the square leafy and green in summer. In the middle was a duck pond, and from this distance he could see the ducks bunched up on one side, bobbing within the reedy marsh grasses like buoys. The snow was coming down a little more now, and the square was the most tempting length of shiny, crusty, unbroken snow Jury had ever seen. Not a track on it, not a print. He stopped as they reached the edge of the square, and reflected that it was not really a good example for the children to have their man from New Scotland Yard, that bastion of Law and Order, go cutting across the park when there were perfectly good paths meant for going around it. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed they were both looking up at him, waiting for him to make his move. The ways of the Yard were, and would ever be, inscrutable.
Jury coughed, blew his nose, and then said sternly: “What do you two know about identifying prints? Footprints? You don’t happen to remember seeing any about the Jack and Hammer? Any strange ones? About this size?” Jury planted his outsized Wellington firmly in the fresh snow layering the green. It made a delicious scrunch.
They looked from his large print to him and both, again, shook their heads. He thought he might as well make it edifying. “Do you know the difference between the prints of a man running and a man walking?” Mystified, their small heads flicked
back and forth. “Are you willing to help out the Yard in this matter, then?”
Now their heads were bobbing up and down just as furiously.
“Very well. What’s your name?” he asked the boy.
“James.” The boy spat it out, then clamped his lips tightly, as if he might have given away secret information.
“Good. Now then, what’s yours?”
But the girl only lowered her head and plucked at the hem of her coat.
“Hmmm. Then it must be James, too. Very well, James and James.” He waited for her to mumble some correction, but she merely kept her head down, though he thought he saw a smile, like a mouse, creep across her downturned mouth.
“Listen carefully, now. It might be most important in our investigations. You, James, I want you to run, fast as you can, up to that duck-pond, and wait. And you, James” — and he put his hand on the girl’s shoulder — “I want you to walk to the pond, making circles as you go. Every once in a while, walk around in a circle.”
Both of them looked at him as if they were waiting for a gun to go off, and when he nodded, the boy took off with something equivalent to the speed of light, sending up clouds of snow behind him. The girl started walking very slowly and carefully, planting her feet firmly, and every now and again making an ever-widening circle. Jury himself chose a smooth, unbroken expanse of snow and crunched over it as noisily as he could. When he reached the pond, the boy was puffing from the exertion and the girl was still out there making circles. Finally, she circled her way to where they were standing.
All three of them then stood looking back at their handiwork.
“Excellent,” said Jury. “Notice, now, these tracks where you were running, and how only the first part of the boot, the ball of the foot, hits the snow. And notice how”— he crouched down and ran his gloved finger around the girl’s print — “one tends to lean to the outside when one goes round in a circle.”
Both of them nodded vigorously.
“And now, perhaps I can set you a riddle.” Jury and the children walked round to the other side of the duck pond. The ducks remained undisturbed, their heads still tucked beneath their wings. He looked across the remaining expanse of nice, crusty, unbroken snow, and said, “All three of us will walk about five feet apart so our tracks are completely separate, to the edge of the road. Let’s go.”
The Man with a Load of Mischief Page 8