The Case Has Altered

by Martha Grimes

  “After he came to Lincolnshire, I first hired him to do odd jobs, realized how good he was, then kept him on and let him have the cottage.”

  “What about Zel? Where are her parents?”

  “According to Peter, the mother was a tart, the father—his own brother—a shiftless drifter. Neither one of them wanted a child. So Peter took her in. I’ve no idea where they are now.”

  “That must be pretty hard on her.”

  “Yes. It might account for her extremely lively imagination.”

  Melrose smiled. “Zel thinks the public footpath out there is cursed. She’s inclined to blame Black Shuck.”

  Parker laughed. “Oh, yes, I’ve heard about him. It.”

  Melrose said, “Quite the lad, he or it is. That reminds me. Zel said the Reese girl—woman, I mean—often took the public footpath.”

  “Stick with ‘girl.’ Not very grown up was Dorcas. More soufflé?”

  Melrose held out his plate. “Twist my arm.” Parker served him and he said, “You knew her, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. Saw her in the pub any night I happened to go there.”

  “Did she do any work for you?” Melrose couldn’t think how to put a question of Dorcas’s visits. “Helping you with the cooking, perhaps?”

  Parker looked up as surprised as if Melrose had valued all of his collection as worthless. “Cook? Dorcas? Not likely.” He laughed.

  But Melrose had picked up another note behind the laughter. Not quite comfortable with this line of questioning, Parker wasn’t. “No one seems to have known the girl, really. Excepting perhaps for Mrs. Suggins.”

  “It’s not surprising.”

  “Mrs. Suggins said she was rather, ah, too inquisitive—”

  Parker smiled. “Bit of a snoop, Dorcas was. Perhaps when you haven’t a life of your own, you want to borrow others.”

  “She must have had some life of her own. She told one or two people she was pregnant, after all.”

  “Ah, yes. Forgot about that. Maybe that’s why she was killed. Some fellow that didn’t want to marry her—Dorcas was the type who’d marry or be damned.” Parker topped off their wineglasses. “Or there’s the possibility she knew she wasn’t and just went about saying it. To show, as I said, she had a life.”

  “It’s quite possible, yes. Only, if she wanted people to know it, why wouldn’t she have told people who’d be likely to spread it about? The aunt sounds more like a person who’d keep a secret.”

  “Madeline? Any secret would be safe with her. But, then, the girl was murdered and I suppose secrets do come out.”

  “Not enough to clear things up, though.” Melrose sat back, feeling drowsy from the weight of the food and the wine. “I was thinking more of something else: that she might have overheard something, or seen something that made her dangerous.”

  Parker was silent, thinking this over. “Hmm! That’s a thought, certainly. Knew something about the death of Verna Dunn, you mean?”

  “Possibly.”

  Parker picked up his wineglass, swirled the wine a bit, thought some more. “Dorcas was the type of servant who could be right at your elbow and you’d not know it. The girl was infinitely unknowable. She simply didn’t stick.” He drank his wine.

  There it was again, this queer feeling that poor Dorcas was so “unknowable” she faded right into the background of watery land and opaque pearl sky. She fit it so well, this flatness, so difficult to measure and, by some accounts, so dire.

  • • •

  Heading toward Northampton, Melrose could not fathom how he’d wound up in the Deepings and Cowbit on his journey to Algarkirk. He put it down to a total lack of any sense of direction. Or probably he’d gone into one of his fugue states that followed some interminable conversation with his aunt. Just outside of Loughborough, he ran into road works and pulled up behind a stream of cars that looked as if they’d been there for days. Melrose sat and thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel, wishing the Rolls people had had the foresight to include a CD player in these old Silver Shadows. A bit of Lou Reed would shake up these yobs in their neon orange vests, who appeared to be taking a tea break. At least the one standing over by the side had a Styrofoam cup in his hand. Staring at Melrose as if planning where to put the next stick of dynamite. Resentment of the Ruling Class, that was it.

  The beefy fellow walked over to the Silver Shadow, said to Melrose, “Nice car, verra nice, like one meself, I would, only it’s too pricey for me.”

  “Well, you’ll be getting this one pretty soon when all of us die from exposure, sitting around watching you chaps.”

  The man laughed, thought that was rich. “Never mind, at least you don’t have to take the bleedin’ detour. Had to route traffic off onto one of the B roads and they weren’t ’alf mad ’cause of that, I can tell you. But we’ll be finishing up in two days time, or should be.”

  “How long’s this lot been going on, then?”

  “ ’Bout two weeks, I expect. No, less than that, as we started on the Wednesday, I remember it was the fifth because me mum’s birthday came on that day and I missed the cake. She wasn’t ’alf mad, me being the only son—”

  Drone, drone, thought Melrose, closing his eyes as the roadworks fellow went on about his mum. Birthday! Melrose snapped awake. Oh, God, Agatha’s birthday was either today, or perhaps yesterday. Or tomorrow. Sometime around now. How old was she, anyway? A hundred and twenty? Of course, he’d got nothing for her and checked his watch, wondering if he could make it to Northampton before the shops closed.

  “Okay, mate, be on your way in a minute. Nice talkin’ to you.” The roadworks fellow slapped the side of the car as a small truck leading the traffic in the other lane came close. Well, he decided, getting past the ditch-digging or whatever they were doing, he’d make it to Northampton after all.

  A smile split his face as he thought of the perfect present. He gunned the car and blasted off, waving dementedly back to his new pal.

  18

  Jury sat in the Stratford-upon-Avon police station, waiting for Sam Lasko to reappear. The way Lasko’s secretary described the inspector’s comings and goings made him sound a little like the genie-out-of-a-lamp. Jury was her Aladdin, a little kid without an ounce of imagination who came here occasionally to call in his wish-markers. Since this visit was his third, it better be his last (Jury could almost hear her say).

  “I’ll wait, thanks,” he had said fifteen minutes before. She had given a little suit yourself shrug of the shoulders and returned to her brisk typing.

  She was middle-aged, possibly more than “middle,” tall and thin and wearing a putty-colored jumper over a cloyingly pink blouse the color of bubble gum. Everything about her looked pulled tight—her hair in a punishingly tight chignon, her straight, flat mouth, her thin nose. She put Jury in mind of a schoolmistress who fastens on the lives of her charges, looming in disapproval over the clumsy translations of Ovid. The name on the little black plaque on her desk read C. Just. Miss Just. Jury liked that. During the fifteen minutes of his presence, she had looked up from the rattling typing and said that she had no idea as to when Inspector Lasko would return, and wouldn’t he prefer to come back? In the question there had not been a trace of concern for the comfort of the visitor, merely the testiness of one who feels her work interrupted by the looming shadow of Scotland Yard. It was clear to Jury the first time he’d seen Miss C. Just that she suffered poorly policemen whose rank outstripped that of her boss.

  Sam Lasko finally appeared, his lamp left behind somewhere, looking his usual woeful self. The look had nothing to do with the way things were going in his life; he’d cultivated it over the years to disarm the public in general, and to throw suspects off their guard in particular. And to get favors out of people like Jury. Could anyone refuse such a miserable man as D.I. Lasko? Jury hadn’t been able to resist Lasko’s hangdog look once, and he’d found himself involved in a triple-murder in Stratford some years back.

  “This gentleman’
s been waiting to see you,” said Miss Just.

  As if he’d come to report a cat up a tree. To her chagrin, Lasko actually put on a broad smile and cuffed Jury several times on the shoulder as they went into Lasko’s office.

  “I expect you’re here about your lady friend?” Lasko sat down heavily in a swivel chair that needed oiling. He started creaking it back and forward like a rocker.

  “What about this ‘imminent’ arrest, Sammy?”

  Lasko rubbed at a spot on the toe of his shoe, his foot against the edge of his desk. “That’s what I heard.”

  “Don’t make it sound like a rumor. Is it true? Or just good PR for the Lincolnshire police? Do you know this DCI?” Jury asked.

  “Not before this business, no. I’ve heard about him. He’s even more relentless than me.” Sam made another pass at his shoe.

  Jury smiled. “Wow.” Then he got serious. “Even if Jenny did have a motive for killing Verna Dunn—and I’m still not convinced she did—how can he ignore absence of motive in the case of Dorcas Reese? Moreover, how can he ignore the possibility there are two killers or that it’s a total stranger?”

  Lasko spread his arms. “Both connected with Fengate? Anyway, don’t ask me, I’m just the baby-sitter.” He wiped his eyes, beginning to water from some allergy. “Fucking pollution. Look, Bannen wouldn’t make an arrest unless he was sure he had a case. Because she’d have some flash git of a lawyer getting her out before you could say—” Lasko sneezed, then blew his nose.

  “It’s total nonsense. The woman was shot with a rifle; how did she get it there?”

  Lasko shrugged, opened and closed drawers. “Got it into the car somehow beforehand? Planted it at the scene? Her prints were on it.”

  “Everybody’s fingerprints were on the damned gun, including the cook’s. So were Verna Dunn’s.” Jury said it again: “Total nonsense.”

  “Is it? How do you know?”

  “You just know a person, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably what the wife of the Yorkshire Ripper said.”

  “Come on, Sammy.” He watched as Sam’s other hand started shuffling through files.

  “Look, as long as you’re here—”

  “No,” said Jury, rising.

  • • •

  The door of the Ryland Street house opened just as Jury was raising his hand to the brass knocker. Jenny took a step backward. “Richard!”

  “Hullo, Jenny.” He saw that she was wearing the brown coat and Liberty scarf she’d worn the first time he’d ever seen her. Ten years. How could so much time have passed with so little to show for it? “Going out? I’ll go along with you.” Jenny was elusive. She always had been.

  “Only for a walk by the river.” She smiled and started to close the door behind her. Then she said, “Wait a minute; I need something.” She went in, ran up the stairs, then was back.

  As they walked along the pavement toward the church and the public park, he wondered if she knew about this imminent arrest and decided she didn’t. He told her about having seen Pete Apted; her reaction to this was apprehensive.

  “If I need Pete Apted, I must really be in trouble. Who’s paying him, for heaven’s sake?”

  Jury looked at the church façade and smiled. “Pro bono, as they say.”

  “Oh, certainly.” Her laugh was rueful.

  They passed the church and came to the river, where they stood side by side. Jenny pulled a plastic bag from her pocket and started throwing out bread crumbs to the ducks. The ducks farther out caught on to this and steered toward shore.

  It occurred to Jury that Sammy’s question was as valid as Apted’s had been. How could he be so sure she hadn’t done this? Yet, so was his reply that one just knows about some people. What he knew about her was that she was generous, kind, loyal, and self-effacing. Yet about her past he knew very little, and it surprised him to realize it. She had been married to James Kennington, who had died before Jury met her, and she had been in the process of leaving their big house, Stonington, selling it to raise some capital.

  That was all he knew. There was something about Jenny, a whole side that she kept to herself, and it made him uncomfortable. He could not explain this discomfort. Even now she maintained an unnatural calm given the danger she was in. She fed the ducks and swans with a serene disdain for what might be going on around her. It was such a tranquil scene; murder and Lincolnshire seemed far away. She appeared unmoved by her danger, perhaps (he told himself) because she knew herself to be innocent. Nothing then would happen to her.

  A bossy swan shoveled his way between a bank of ducks and snatched up a large knob of bread. Jury said, “You’re in some danger, you know that.”

  “Yes,” she simply said. Now the greedy swan collided with another and started chattering. Jenny shook the bag, loosening up any stray bits, threw them over the water, and shoved the bag back in her pocket. She dusted her hands and said, “May I have a cigarette?”

  Automatically, Jury’s hand went to his pocket. Ruefully, he smiled. “I quit.”

  “Of course. I forgot.” She returned her gaze to the river. “I wish I could.” After a moment’s silence, she said, “You want to know what happened, I expect. And you want to know about me and Verna Dunn. What did that Lincolnshire policeman tell you?” Her hands were buried in her big coat pockets, the wind off the water fluttered the edges of the Liberty scarf.

  “I’d rather hear your version than Bannen’s. According to him, you’d known her for years.”

  “Yes. I’ll get to that. That night, though, we had an argument after dinner. I wanted to know how she’d have the gall to go to Fengate. She said Max was backing a new play, some sort of ‘vehicle’ in which she’d planned a comeback. Well, that might or might not have been true, but I know it wasn’t her reason for turning up that weekend. She wanted to make trouble. That’s all. Just trouble.” Jenny shook her head. “I told her to leave him alone. Leave the man alone or I’d tell him what kind of person she really was. That had no effect. After all, she’d been married to him; she knew him better than I did. This was after dinner, Saturday night. The others were having their coffee. I couldn’t stand her any longer—all I wanted to do was get away from her, and I didn’t want to go back to the house because she’d be there, too. So I simply left her standing there out in front of the house and started walking the public footpath. I walked it for some time, thinking I’d go to the pub and have a drink. Then I heard a church bell sound the hour a long way off and checked my watch and saw it was eleven o’clock. The pub would be closed. So I started back.” Sadly, she looked at the ground. “That’s the lot.”

  “You didn’t hear a car start up? It would have been around ten-twenty or so?”

  “Verna’s car?” Jenny shook her head. “I was on my way to the pub, I told you. I’d have been over halfway there, too far away to hear a car.”

  “The Owens thought the two of you had gone off in it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. In the midst of a dinner-party two of the guests go larking around in a car?”

  “I expect the Owens assumed whatever the argument was about took precedence over good manners. So tell me about Verna Dunn.”

  Jenny studied the cold night sky, and said, “I was related to her; we were cousins. . . . ” She looked away, started in again. “We lived together for a time, Verna and her mother with me and my father. Her mother wasn’t a bad person, just a little dim. Of course, she couldn’t believe what I told her about Verna. Nor could my father. It was just too outlandish to believe. Even as a child she seethed with jealousy. She hated me, but I somehow came to believe it wasn’t personal. Verna was relentless in her pursuit of other people’s possessions: dolls, pets, money, husbands. She went after all of them. She seemed to be more of a force than a person; she hated most people—perhaps all people, but anyone standing in her way if she wanted something, such as my father’s full attention; toward such a person she was remorseless.

  “Listen to this—” H
ere Jenny drew a small leather book with a gold metal clasp from her pocket. It appeared to be one of those diaries with flimsy pages that girls are fond of keeping. She read: “ ‘Sarah is gone from the barn. I can’t stand it, it won’t do any good for me to look anymore, only I keep on looking because if I stop I know I’ll never see her. I know Verna let her out and did something—’ ” Jenny stopped and said, “Sarah was my pony.” She turned to a later part and read: “ ‘I can’t find Tom.’ Tom was my cat. And there were my doll, my favorite dress, my gold bracelet. I never found them. I never knew what happened to them. No one, not my father and certainly not her mother, believed Verna could have done this. Every time the look on Verna’s face was one of pure triumph. It was near unbearable. You see, I never knew what happened to them. Had she killed the animals? Had she just taken them somewhere and left them? Had she given them to people, saying they were strays? Well, it’s hard to do that with a pony.” Jenny’s smile was rueful. “The trouble was that Verna was so clever about hiding this compulsion to ruin things for people. That’s the way it often is with disturbed people; they’re so plausible. After she’d cheated at some game or other and I told, she would weep copious tears, she’d be the picture of heartbreak—”

  Jury said, “That’s all dreadful, Jenny. But I can’t imagine a prosecutor would take a child’s diary seriously as evidence.”

  He was surprised by the shrillness of her voice, for Jenny was ordinarily a soft-spoken woman. “You don’t think it stopped after childhood, do you? That these were just pranks and she finally grew up? When I was twenty-five she broke up my engagement. I really loved him. And I don’t know what happened. All I know is that one day he simply wasn’t there. Years later, after I married James, I thought I was shut of her. And then she started calling, calling James and making up stories about what hard luck she’d had and getting his sympathy. It was of course far more subtle than I make it sound.” Jenny pulled her scarf away from her hair and held it at both ends. She looked at it as if she wished it were a garrote. “I told James not to talk to her and never to let her come to Stonington. I’m not sure he absolutely believed me—who would? You don’t.”