“No, I’m not in trouble. A friend of mine might be.”
“Who’s the brief in this case? Ordinarily, I—”
“There isn’t one, yet. I thought perhaps you could recommend one.”
Apted’s chair squeaked as he shifted, took his hands from behind his head, took his feet off his desk. The desk wasn’t large, nor were the other furnishings at all luxurious. The room had a pleasantly tatty quality. The long curtains were in need of cleaning and the grim portraits could have stood a dusting. Jury especially remembered these men in silks looking down at him as if they could hardly wait to prosecute.
“Good lord, Superintendent, you must know more solicitors than I do.”
“No. But the point is . . . I wanted to make certain you were free—”
“I’m never free.” Apted played a riff with his thumb down a stack of briefs.
Jury’s smile was constrained. “Besides that, I mean.”
Apted’s smile was warmer. He creaked back in the swivel chair and resumed his former position. “Okay, what’s it about?”
“Do you remember the lady—actually she really is a lady—Lady Kennington—who retained you to help me?”
Apted looked away briefly, returned his look to Jury, said, “Kennington. Jane . . . no, Jennifer. Jane was the name of the other lady—” And then Apted looked away again quickly and cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
Apted, Jury thought, was a remorseless man, but not an insensitive one. He knew that for Jury, that affair had been extremely painful. “Never mind. Anyway, it’s Jenny Kennington who’s in trouble. A double murder in Lincolnshire—”
“I read about one—the actress Verna Dunn. I saw her once. Is the other murder connected?”
“Yes. I mean, I think they’re connected.”
Pete Apted rooted in the brown bag on his desk and came up with another apple. “You’re not supposed to ‘think.’ ” He bit into the apple, said, “This is the law you’re talking about.” He swallowed, turned the apple for another big bite. “We go by appearances, one and all.” The crisp sounds of chewing filled the room.
“Well, the appearance here is that Jennifer Kennington’s guilty.”
“I’m not talking about that kind of appearance; I’m talking about the one that I’m remorselessly led to after sifting through the so-called facts.”
“I don’t know what you mean. Anyway, this is a shift in your way of thinking. I seem to recall being told—by you—‘If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck—’ ”
“ ‘It must be a duck,’ ” Apted finished for him.
“Well, in this case it certainly looks like a duck. Jenny—Lady Kennington—was the one with the most opportunity. And possibly motive.” He told Pete Apted about the movements of the several guests after the dinner on the night of the first of February. Jury had to admit he had never been convinced that Jenny and Verna Dunn were strangers to one another.
Pete Apted stopped munching, tossed the core along with the comment: “Yeah, I’d say this is probably Walking Duck material. Where’s the gun?”
“Max Owen’s. But it sat in a mudroom off the kitchen where anybody could have got hold of it.”
“Let me guess: the Lincs police have narrowed the ‘anybody’ down to one. Jennifer Kennington?”
“It looks that way, yes.”
Apted grunted, said, “Could she use a shotgun?”
“Rifle. I wouldn’t think so, but this Lincs policeman, Bannen, thinks she can.”
Apted frowned, thought for a moment. “The second murder?”
“Two weeks later, on the fourteenth, one of the servants, a girl named Dorcas Reese, was strangled. Garroted.”
Apted shook his head. “That’s not ordinarily a woman’s method. What about motive there?”
“Nil.”
“Opportunity?”
“Also, nil. She was in Stratford-upon-Avon at the time.”
Apted pushed his chair back. “Or says she was. Not much of a distance to cover, though.” He looked at Jury. “Two murders? Off the record—do you believe she did it?”
Dryly, Jury said, “If she had, do you think I’d tell you? You once said you can’t represent someone you know to be guilty. But, for the record, no, she didn’t. Of course she didn’t.”
Apted’s eyebrows shot up. “ ‘Of course’? Where’s the ‘of course’ in this business? You know better than that.”
“I also know Jenny Kennington.”
“You also knew Jane Holdsworth.”
Jury sat back, feeling he’d just been punched. “Thanks for reminding me.”
Apted chewed at the corner of his mouth. “Sorry. But you of all people should know that no one’s innocence is a dead cert.”
“I don’t agree.”
“Your privilege.”
“You’ll take the case, then?”
“I didn’t say that. But I’ll talk to her.” Jury felt a wave of relief, the first he’d felt in the last twenty-four hours. Apted when on: “And get her a fucking solicitor, will you? Now, tell me what you know.”
“Everything?”
“No, just tell me half of it and let me guess the rest.” Apted dragged a legal pad toward him.
Jury told him. It took a good half hour, ending with the telephone call from Plant yesterday evening—the reluctant telephone call.
“I think my days as an antiques appraiser are finished. I’m going back to Northants.”
Ever since Plant had called him and told him that Jenny might indeed have a motive they hadn’t heard about, he’d been fearing Bannen might charge her. He was brought out of this fruitless replay of his conversations with Melrose Plant by Pete Apted’s voice. He missed the first few words. He’d damned well better pay attention. Apted didn’t like to have to repeat things.
“—this Lincs policeman let her go back to Stratford-upon-Avon some forty-eight hours after the Dunn woman’s murder. Which is where she was when the second murder occurred.” He looked up. “She says she was in Stratford-upon-Avon?”
“Yes.”
“Stratford is around eighty miles—”
“Seventy-three. No more than two hours, certainly.”
Apted nodded, asked, “Why did police let her go back to Stratford the first time?”
“Not enough evidence to hold her, much less arrest her. At that time, no motive.”
“The motive was subsequently discovered.”
Jury nodded. “I don’t know precisely what it is, but apparently they’d known one another for years.”
“So she lied.”
Jury winced at this chilly appraisal. “I expect she was frightened. After all—”
“Before the murder?’
“What?”
“You’re saying Jennifer Kennington was frightened before the Dunn woman was murdered.”
Jury frowned. “I don’t—”
“Yes, you do.” Apted studied the ceiling as if watching a scene being enacted at Fengate. “Lady Kennington walks into the drawing room where the Owens and guests are gathered for cocktails. Does she say, ‘My goodness, Ms. Dunn, I haven’t seen you for years!’ Or even, given the old relationship, ‘Hullo, you bitch.’ No, instead, she pretends she’s never met her. So you’re saying she must have been afraid before the murder.”
“Probably not.”
“ ‘Probably not’ is right. So ‘fear’ doesn’t account for her silence. Her silence could be accounted for if she planned to kill the Dunn woman. As this—” Apted drew the pad toward him. “—Chief Inspector Bannen clearly knows.”
Jury said nothing.
Neither did Apted for a moment as he ran his pencil between his teeth as if it were an ear of corn. Then he tossed it on the desk and said, “Still, a past dispute, assuming there was one, no matter how acrimonious”—he shook his head—“seems a bit iffy as a motive.” He picked up the pencil again and flicked it like a small baton over and around his fingers. “Who’s this confederate of yours at the Owens’ who’s be
en feeding you information?”
“Melrose Plant. He’s good at—” Jury tried to describe what Plant had been doing without making it seem underhanded.
“Infiltrating, anonymously, other people’s lives. Does he want a job now this one’s over?”
“Plant?” Jury smiled. “I doubt it.”
“Charly Moss could use a good footpad.”
“Who’s Charly Moss?”
“Lady Kennington’s solicitor, or will be.” Apted wrote the name on a pad, tore the paper off, and handed it to Jury.
Jury relaxed for the first time since he’d walked in. “To brief you, you mean? You’ll take this on?”
“Did I say that? What were Kennington and Dunn arguing about?”
“No one appears to know. They were already outside when they started.”
“So? Why were they outside? You said it was after dinner, near ten P.M. Did they have to leave the company of the others in order to start bickering?”
“No one knows that, either. They both wanted a breath of fresh air, Jenny said. Once they got outside, they argued. A little while later, fifteen or twenty minutes later, the people inside heard a car leaving.”
Apted frowned. “Why didn’t she come in immediately?”
“I don’t know. She said she wanted a walk. To clear her head.”
Apted just looked at him for a few seconds. “Did she take a pig to look for truffles?”
“All right, I realize it sounds like strange behavior—”
Apted nailed him with a look.
Jury went on: “I’ve been wondering about the wife, Grace. This didn’t have to be premeditated, after all. Perhaps it could be explained by a fit of passion. Not caring if anyone saw you or not.”
Apted made a sound that showed how much he believed that. “Subsequent events show that whoever did it very much cares if he or she is discovered. A rendezvous on the bloody Wash, for God’s sake?” He snorted. “Is Grace Owen given to fits of passion?”
“I’ve no idea. She strikes me as a rather serene woman. Childlike in some way.”
Apted got up, shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. He turned now to the window and stood silently looking out.
The morning’s gossamer drizzle had stopped and washed away the gray film of the day, now the sunlight, even though weak, coated the mullioned pane with silver, so that Pete Apted stood in a web of silvery netting. Jury was again surprised by how young the man looked. This room, Apted’s office, had amused Jury the other time he had been in it, for it looked so much the chamber of a much older, conservative, crotchety lawyer. Oil paintings on the walls to right and left showed stern old men in silks, lawyers or judges, all of whom would have thought Apted a renegade, a revisionist. Jury recalled once broaching the subject of Justice and Apted had looked as if the word were from some law-lexicon he himself had never heard of.
Everything in the room—curtains, chairs, the leather sofa—was fine and old and dusty, and made one think that Pete Apted had simply borrowed the place for a while from one of his elders whose pictures hung on the walls. Jury waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, Jury said, “What about Dorcas Reese, though?”
Apted shook himself, as if he’d been dozing. “The second victim. I almost forget her.”
“Everyone seems to.” Jury told him what he knew about Dorcas, and what Annie Suggins had told Melrose. “She wasn’t a very bright girl. The cook says she was a terrible snoop, looking in drawers she shouldn’t have been, listening outside doors. She said to the cook—Annie Suggins—or if not said directly to her, said where Annie heard it, ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have listened.’ Not the precise words, but . . . ”
Apted sat down in his chair and stared at his desk blotter for a few moments. He looked up. “So the motive in that case you assume to be Dorcas Reese’s overhearing something that made her dangerous. Something pertaining to the murder of Verna Dunn?”
“I can’t think of any other motive, assuming the same person who killed Verna Dunn also killed Dorcas Reese. Dorcas otherwise doesn’t sound like a threat. She’s so colorless people forget her.”
“Oh, I don’t know. These ‘colorless’ types have a way of asserting themselves if the occasion allows for it. There’s always blackmail. Hasn’t anyone considered that as a motive?”
“I expect Bannen has. There’s no evidence of blackmail.”
Apted shrugged. “Maybe she hadn’t collected yet. I’ll tell you one thing, though: if there’s no more evidence than you’ve given me, it sounds like the Lincs police don’t have a very strong case. The gun, for instance. They went out for air. Where was Lady Kennington carrying the rifle? In her cigarette case?” Apted frowned, leaned his chin on his tented fingers. “The car leaves; the car returns; Lady Kennington returns. Ergo, Lady Kennington returns in the car. What kind of reasoning is that?” Apted sat back, started rolling his tie up from the bottom. “This gets to look less and less like a duck, Superintendent.”
17
Lord knows what had routed him out of bed the following morning at not enough past six to even consider leaving the warm and downy confines of his bed. Perhaps it was a moral awakening, for Melrose had no intention of its becoming a bodily one. He closed his eyes.
And in so doing, saw again, heard again the news that Chief Inspector Bannen had come to tell them the Lincs police were about to arrest Jenny Kennington. The motive seemed fairly clear now.
“You didn’t know, any of you, that they were related? That they were cousins?” Bannen had said to the astonishment of Max Owen. What it had taken so long to surface was the longstanding animosity Jennifer Kennington had felt for Verna Dunn. It would account for a motive.
“What really told against her,” Max Owen had said, “was keeping it a secret, was lying about it.”
That wasn’t all. The findings of the medical examiner had turned up the rather surprising news that Dorcas Reese was not pregnant.
“Was not pregnant? Whoever said she was?” said Max.
Dorcas, it appeared, had told a friend of hers and also an aunt, a woman who cleaned for Linus Parker and who had told the police that Dorcas had told her, but had not told her the name of the father. According to the aunt, she had seemed quite sanguine about her condition—satisfied, even. There was no doubt in her mind that she would be married within the month. Dorcas had said all of this. Madeline Reese (Dorcas’s aunt) had not told this to police before because she hadn’t wanted to add to Dorcas’s parents’ already too-heavy burden. And what possible good would it have done, anyway?
Chief Inspector Bannen was (he had said) of two minds about this “disclosure.” Possibly, she had told this tale to get the man to marry her. He wondered if Dorcas might have confided in someone in the Owen household. No, unless Dorcas had told Annie Suggins. When questioned, the cook had said she couldn’t imagine Dorcas being “sanguine” about a pregnancy. That would take a woman of great maturity and with more self-command than Dorcas had ever had.
In mulling all of this over, Melrose knew he would never go back to sleep. It had been especially difficult to tell Jury about Jenny; yet, Jury seemed to have seen it coming, although not the form it would take.
Melrose gave up any thought now of going back to sleep. He got up and got dressed. But when he got downstairs, he heard none of that friendly tuneless humming of the previous morning coming from the kitchen. It was cold; gray shadows pooled in the corners, and the windows gave out on a dawning day so fresh, the whole landscape might have been born at that moment. He found the tea, made himself a cup, and went out.
• • •
He wasn’t the only one up and about. A hundred feet off the path, all standing in a ground mist that made it appear they were floating there, ghostly excrescences of old fenmen, were a tall man that he thought was Jack Price, two other men, farmer or laborer types, and two enormous horses. Melrose was glad he’d had the foresight to wear wellingtons, so that now he could make his way across the
peaty land to join them. What on earth were they doing out here, plowing at this ungodly hour? Melrose watched Jack Price gesturing in his talk with one of the farmers, behind them a team of horses that looked big enough to plow Hell under. He trudged over to where Jack Price stood.
“Morning,” said Melrose. God only knew if it was morning, still darkish at six-forty-five. Probably analogous to midday to those farmers out there. Melrose shivered. What a life. Probably ate their evening meal at four P.M.
Jack Price, in his standard gear of flat cap, rubber coat, and rubber boots, nodded to him, said around the dead cigar clamped in his teeth, “He nearly broke the plow.” Here he indicated one of the men with hands around the bits in the horses’ mouths. “Bog oak. Ever seen one?”
“Not seen and don’t know. What is it?”
“Just a tree.” Jack tossed away the stub of his spent cigar. “Especially big one, might be lying down there eighty, ninety feet. Got buried under peat and that preserved it. Could be upwards of four thousand years old. These trees must’ve blown over some time in the past. This is probably just a piece of one. Wonderful firewood they make. Ah—”
Melrose saw that with a mighty tug, plowhorses and men had got the tree, or part of a tree, aboveground. “Good lord, it must have the girth of a sequoia.”
“I love this wood. It’s soft now, has to dry. But I like it for my work, the bigger pieces. Bog oak trunks were lying about like fallen ten pins after they drained the fens. In the eighteen hundreds they found antlers of extinct red deer and skeletons of grampus. Water back then, the flooding, would drown the land for weeks at a time. Parker likes to talk about how his grandfather kept his boots by his bed because the floor could like as not be inches under water. A lot of this country still lies below sea level.” Jack stopped to take another cigar out of his pocket, bite off the end, light it with a flame-thrower of a lighter. “Dick, over there”—he inclined his head in the direction of the men—“he loves to say, ‘If nature’d meant these here fens t’be dry land, she’d o’made ’em dry in the first place.’ It’s the ‘damned Dutchmen’ who have to bear the brunt of the blame, of course. Getting in here and building all of these dikes to rush the water out to sea. To hear Dick talk, you’d think it was only last week the draining took place. In a way, I envy him. It would be nice if the past were that close and accessible.”
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