6.The Alcatraz Rose

by Anthony Eglin

  “That’s fine,” Emma said with a quick nod. “Just tell us what you can.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she replied doubtfully, dabbing her nose again with her hanky. “I’ve lived in Canada for the last twenty five years. During all those years I had very little contact with Reggie. In the beginning we exchanged Christmas cards and sent a few birthday cards, but all that ceased after three or four years, and I doubt there were more than a half dozen phone calls over the years. We were never what you would call a close family in the first place. You see”—Grace sighed—“Reggie is not my true brother.”

  Kingston and Emma glanced at each other in surprise. “Really?” Kingston said. “That may or may not have bearing. But we’d like to—”

  “We share the same mother, but his father died at quite a young age and four years later she remarried—and that man was my father. That’s why we have different surnames. Mine is Williams—it’s never been Payne. We grew up together in a typical semidetached house in North Harrow. We went to the same primary school. When we reached our midteens we ended up in different schools, though.”

  “Ah.” Kingston nodded.

  “Yes. So you see, Doctor, when you ask me to remember things about his youth—hobbies and all that—there’s not much to tell.” She paused, glancing aside for a moment. “The only thing that comes to mind is his playing the drums. When he was about sixteen, he played in a band for a while. I used to go to the Red Lion, our pub, to see them. His group was quite popular, back in the day.” She paused for a moment, thinking, then continued. “It was when Reggie got his first job that we began to drift apart. He started to spend less and less time at home, staying out with his friends, yobs, mostly. By that time there were the usual cars and girlfriends, too.”

  “Do you recall what the job was?” Emma asked.

  Grace smiled for the first time since they’d arrived. “I do, as a matter of fact, because we teased him mercilessly. He worked in a women’s shoe shop.” She looked up to the ceiling. “I can even remember the name of the store—Dolcis. It didn’t last long, though.”

  “What did he do after that?”

  “I’m not sure. Drifted along. I know he was out of work for some time. I don’t think he was looking that hard, though. For a while we phoned each other regularly, then all of a sudden he stopped calling and wouldn’t return any of my calls. Soon after that his phone was disconnected. I remember being very hurt and angry at the time, but I got over it fairly quickly. You know how it is when you’re young, working six days a week and having a good time on the weekends. My mother was more upset about his behavior than I was. Come to think of it, that might have been the last we heard of him for quite a few years. By that time I was bent on a career and had pretty much given up on him.”

  “What years were those?” Kingston asked.

  Grace looked down briefly, then back at Kingston. “Let’s see. Gosh, I don’t know—1953, ’54, thereabouts.”

  “You said that was the last you heard of him for several years. So you did hear from him, eventually, then?”

  “We did have one get-together. I stopped in London one year, on a layover to Paris. I was curating a Postimpressionist exhibition that was going to tour several Canadian cities.”

  “What year was that, approximately?” Emma asked.

  She gazed at the ceiling for a moment. “Probably 1999, 2000, thereabouts. He’d read about it in the newspaper—my name was mentioned. We had lunch in the West End. I was surprised to discover that he was fairly well-off, or appeared to be. As I recall, I did most of the talking, which was really foolish of me and I later regretted it, because I went away still knowing very little about what he’d been up to all those years, other than he’d done well with investments and was part owner in a company that had something to with the financial markets and international trade. As a result, he often traveled abroad. It all sounded awfully complicated at the time. He’d never married and owned a house in Buckinghamshire—the Chalfonts, I believe.”

  “Nice area,” Kingston said.

  She gave a curt nod. “So I’m told.”

  “Anything else?” Emma asked, after an awkward pause.

  “Not that I can think of. It was a long time ago,” she said, shaking her head.

  Kingston looked quizzical. “Is Sophie your niece?”

  She smiled. “No, Sophie’s my daughter.”

  “Sorry, we weren’t quite sure.”

  “I got married a year after arriving in Canada. My husband passed away eight years ago. When I told Sophie about Reggie—that he’d died and I was going back to England for a while to sort things out—she insisted on coming with me. I was cool to the idea at first because we’ve had our ups and downs these last few years, but it’s turning out to be a good decision. As you can imagine there’s so much to deal with: solicitors, Inland Revenue, local matters, this tax, that tax, it’s never ending. So much more than I’d anticipated.”

  “Well,” Emma said, giving Kingston a subtle eye-over-the-shoulder glance signaling that they should be on their way, “you’ve been more than cooperative, and I hope we haven’t been too intrusive with our questions.”

  “Not at all,” Grace replied, taking a long pause, a distant look in her eyes, as if she’d been reminded of something. “There was one thing that really upset me. It may not mean much for your purposes, but in 1975 our mother passed away, and I tried to locate Reggie to tell him about the funeral arrangements. He’d said earlier that he might be moving, so I called the few friends and people we both knew, but nobody had any idea where he was. In the end, I concluded that he must have moved out of the country.”

  “Without telling anyone?” Emma said.

  “It certainly looked that way at the time.”

  As if impelled by some invisible force, they all stood at the same time, apparently in agreement that nothing more was left to be said, on either side, and that the meeting was over. The only courtesy remaining was for Kingston and Emma to thank Grace for her time and make a respectable exit. As they were making tentative steps toward the door, Emma stopped and turned to Grace. “There is one last question, if I may? It’s personal in nature, and if you feel uncomfortable answering it, please say so.”

  “That’s all right, go ahead, Emma.”

  “Are you heir to your brother’s estate?”

  “I don’t see that it’s any of your business, but yes, I am. Soon after Reggie died, I received a call from his solicitor to that effect. That’s the main reason why I’m here.”

  “Thanks again for allowing us to steal so much of your time. We appreciate it very much,” Kingston said. “If we learn anything that sheds further light on Reginald’s death, we will certainly let you know.”

  “I would appreciate that,” Grace said as they reached the front door.

  “And if you think of anything else in the coming days that might be helpful, please do let us know,” Kingston said, handing her his card.

  “I will.”

  Kingston raised a hand momentarily. “One last thing. We’d like to chat with Thomas before leaving, if it’s still all right with you. It’s doubtful, but he may have some information on the rose in question. One never knows.”

  “Yes, of course. You might still catch him. Unfortunately, he suffers from severe arthritis and usually quits about this time. The black gate by the corner of the house, over there,” she said, pointing.

  Kingston and Emma had taken no more than a half dozen steps down the front path when they heard her call out.

  “Just tell him you’re old friends. That’s all.”

  11

  AS KINGSTON AND Emma entered the rear garden, Kingston said, “Thomas certainly looks old enough to know if the Belmaris rose was growing here at one time, or perhaps still is. Depends on how long he’s worked here, I suppose.”

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  The smoke had abated and there was no sign of Thomas.

  “Damn,” Kingston muttered.
>
  “Looks like we missed him after all.” Emma looked at her watch. “It’s four thirty. We could check out the pubs.”

  “A possibility. Never mind, we’ll just take a little tour of our own. Grace won’t mind, I’m sure.”

  Emma smiled gamely. “Lead on, Macduff.”

  Walking along the perimeter path, past a fifteen-foot-deep perennial border, Kingston remained mostly silent, his eyes roaming with practiced concentration, punctuated now and then by his muttering about a certain plant or pointing out something that he thought might interest Emma.

  Walking under the shade of a meticulously spaced avenue of pleached lime trees, Emma spoke for the first time. “This rose, is there any way you could recognize it if it’s not blooming?”

  “Never having seen it and not knowing if it had any unusual leaf characteristics, I’d say no. If it were a thornless rose, like Rosa banksiae—Lady Banks’ rose—it would certainly narrow the field, but there’s still a good chance it could be in bloom at this time of year. As you can see, there are still a lot of roses out, like that white climbing one on the brick wall over there. That could be Madame Alfred Carrière.”

  “It’s lovely,” Emma murmured, smiling at Kingston’s inability to give a simple yes or no answer when it involved roses.

  A half hour later, they’d walked every inch of the roughly four-acre garden with no signs of the small red-black Belmaris rose.

  “Too bad,” Emma said, as they headed for the car. “I’d like to have seen what it looked like.”

  Kingston nodded. He would have liked seeing it, too—though not finding it didn’t prove it hadn’t been growing here at some time in the past. After all, it had died out at Belmaris Castle as well. Gone extinct.

  Or so it was believed.

  “Well, Emma, the rose aside, what do you make of all that?” Kingston asked, looking in the Triumph’s rearview mirror at what was now Grace Williams’s house.

  “It all seemed tickety-boo. Nothing obviously contradictory, but why should there be? I’d like to have been able to take notes, though, particularly with regard to all the dates—but I’m not sure that it really matters anymore.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, we’ve learned nothing whatsoever to advance the hypothesis that Payne is connected to the Fiona McGuire case, or who might have wanted to kill him, or why. Everything the woman said seems perfectly plausible, and her absence abroad for so long explains why she wasn’t able to provide much that might interest to us. Frankly, I heard nothing that warrants our further involvement. Maybe you picked up on something that I missed?”

  “Not really.” Kingston shook his head.

  They’d reached the end of the lane from the house when a red VW convertible zipped by, within inches, in the opposite direction, headed to Beechwood. The driver was a young woman.

  “Whoa,” Kingston hollered, swerving. “Idiot!”

  Emma smiled. “Sophie, no doubt.”

  Kingston righted the TR4, then looked over at Emma, who was gazing silently out the window at the bucolic scenery.

  “You don’t mean to tell me that you’re giving up already? What about the book? The inscription? I know she said it’s not proof, but you and I know that’s nothing more than a platitude. The odds are at the least fifty percent that Reginald Payne wrote the notes and that the R stands for Reggie.”

  “All right. Then where do we go from here? Whom do you suggest we talk to next about the elusive Mr. Payne?”

  “I have to give it more thought,” he replied, eyes on the road ahead.

  A minute of silence passed, then Emma looked at Kingston again. “By the way, that award thing with your mobile was a bit dodgy. What if Thomas asks Grace about it?”

  “I knew you would frown on something like that—and rightfully so— but I thought it was a quick way to gain the gardener’s confidence. He could easily have sent us packing. We just have to hope he doesn’t ask.”

  “If he does, I’d love to see you explain your way out of that.”

  “I’d have to buy the trophy and have it engraved, that’s all. As it was, they allowed me to photograph it in the shop as a precondition of purchase. In any case, it seems highly doubtful that we’ll be going back there.”

  “You’re something else,” she said, with sigh and a shake of the head.

  Small talk followed until they were about a mile past Bourton-on-the-Water. Stopped at a traffic light, Kingston turned to Emma, who was doing a quick makeup check in the rearview mirror. She’d adjusted it while they were stationary.

  “I have an idea,” he said.

  “About Payne?”

  “Yes. It’s hardly brilliant, but at least it’s worth a try. You remember Grace’s mentioning that Reggie played in a band when he was a teenager?”

  “Some pub, right?”

  “The Red Lion,” Kingston said. “In North Harrow, I believe. And apparently they were—as she said—‘quite popular.’”

  “So?”

  “Well, there’s an outside chance we could track down some of the other musicians in the band. Ask them about Reggie.”

  “Wow!” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emma shaking her head. “That is a really long shot. If it was a small band—which it probably was—you’re talking about four or five men, now all in their mid- to late seventies, surely half of them would be dead by now.” She paused, brushing her cheeks lightly, as Kingston readjusted the mirror. “So, Lawrence, tell me how you’re going to find two or three men who played in a nameless amateur band, in a London suburb, over sixty years ago? Where would you even start, for heaven’s sake?”

  “It could be friend or a fan who remembers them.”

  “You’re kidding, right? That would be even harder.”

  Kingston sighed. “I suppose so. It was a good idea while it lasted.”

  Ten minutes later Kingston stood by the car outside Emma’s house after having said goodbye to her with a promise to keep in touch. He’d reluctantly declined her offer of tea. It was getting late and he had a long drive ahead. As she opened the red front door, she stopped and turned to face him.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Lawrence,” she called out. “I didn’t mean to be a wet blanket. I think you should follow up on your band idea. You’ve nothing to lose. In any case”—she smiled saucily—“you’re not going to be doing much else in the coming days, by the looks of it.”

  “That’s true, but I was hoping that we—you and I—could continue to, well, work as a team.”

  “Oh, I think you can manage this one perfectly well without my help.” She smiled. “I doubt Andrew will object to your tracking down a group of octogenarian musicians.”

  Kingston had to smile back at that.

  He gave her a goodbye wave, got in the car, and drove off.

  12

  KINGSTON WOKE LATE the next morning. It had been a wrinkled-sheet night of successive dreams—none memorable—punctuated by lingering thoughts of the day’s exploits. The opportunity to see Reginald Payne’s extraordinary garden had been a high point and, of course, working with Emma. Considering it was their first excursion together, he couldn’t have been more pleased. Their chemistry surpassed anything that he’d anticipated or hoped for. He could not recall any awkward moments, unease, or ticklish differences of opinion. If anything, the outing had left him with a growing respect for her abilities, a greater appreciation of her quick-witted humor, and an awareness of how comfortable he now felt in her company.

  Despite her lukewarm reaction to his band idea, he planned on pursuing it anyway. In fact, the next time they met or talked, he was going to tell her about a hero of his, Scotland Yard’s celebrated Victorian-era Detective Inspector Jonathan Whicher, who had once said—an observation Kingston had long ago committed to memory—“The detective’s job is to reconstruct history from tiny indicators, clues, fossils. These traces are both pathways and remnants: trails back to a tangible event in the past and tiny scraps of that event, souvenir
s.”

  Whicher’s pronouncement certainly applied to a number of cases that Kingston had worked on over the years. If not for a tiny porcelain Meissen figurine, sitting on a mantelpiece in a stranger’s house, Kingston wouldn’t have solved the mystery of his missing colleague and two murders. Were it not for a wire coat hanger that the police had overlooked but he’d bothered to study in detail, he could not have followed the trail to a London dry-cleaning establishment, where he would eventually solve the crime, putting another murderer behind bars.

  The problem that now faced him was that with no clues or “souvenirs,” he didn’t know how to go about a search, where to start. The Internet was the obvious place, but unless the pubescent members of the band had gone on to make some kind of mark for themselves in the musical world, a Google search would be unlikely to reveal anything. At best, it would simply provide names and a brief résumé of the group. After that, where could he go, whom could he talk to? Why was so little known about a man who, according to his sister, had been very successful in his chosen career and appeared to have accumulated sufficient wealth to enjoy a life that few people could afford? Beechwood would have cost plenty.

  He wandered into the kitchen, surprised to find Mrs. Tripp already there and making tea. They wished each other good morning, and she put a plate on the table. “My Arthur asked for apple scones, and I made extra for you and for Mr. Andrew.”

  Kingston offered enthusiastic thanks which, as usual, embarrassed her.

  Mrs. Tripp had been organizing Kingston’s life for more than six years, and he couldn’t imagine functioning without her. He had told her about his trip to see Julie, and it occurred to him now that there was no need for her to come to the house during that time. Andrew could check in once a week to make sure nothing catastrophic had happened.

  “Mrs. Tripp, you know that I’ll be leaving for the States soon,” he said.

  “Ooh, that’s right. Tell me the dates again.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll write it all down, like I always do. Anyway, I don’t see any reason for you to work while I’m on vacation. So I am giving you a vacation, also—paid, of course—”