Jury said, “I interrupted you. I hope you don’t mind.”
Parker laughed. “A welcome interruption, I assure you. Been getting maudlin, drinking and reading Swinburne. D’you like Swinburne?” Not waiting for an answer, he scooped up the book and read: “. . . That no life lives forever,/That dead men rise up never,/That even the weariest river/Winds somewhere safe to sea.” He snapped the book shut as if he’d just made a cosmic point. “One of my favorites. I take comfort in it.” He held up his glass. “Comfort in poetry and a good stiff drink.”
Jury said, “Doesn’t sound very comforting. ‘The weariest river . . .’ ”
“Oh, but the point is it flows to sea, it connects with something.”
Jury settled back on a sofa that was far more comfortable than it looked and felt that he was in the company of an old friend. How strange. They sat for a moment in silence as Jury let his gaze wander about the room.
Parker said, “Looks a little like a junk shop, doesn’t it? I live rough.”
Jury said, “If you can call being surrounded by jade and ivory and these paintings ‘living rough,’ I suppose you do.”
Parker relit his pipe and fanned out the match. “Max Owen can’t breath in this room. Pretends to have an asthma attack every time he gets in here. But I expect it’s just jealousy.” Parker looked about him. “Max has a better eye for arrangement than I do.”
So does the cat Cyril, Jury wanted to say, but smiled instead.
“It was my char.”
Jury didn’t know what he was talking about. “Pardon?”
“Madeline, the woman who comes to char for me, she walked into the Case when you were there. It’s how I knew who you were. She’s every bit as good as a newspaper. What can I do for you? Or, better yet”—Parker rose and walked to a rosewood sideboard—“what can I get for you?” He unstoppered one of several hundred pounds’ worth of cut- or pressed-glass decanters. “Whiskey? Cognac?”
“Whiskey, thanks.” Before the cut-glass tumbler was in his hand, Jury could taste it. The glass seemed to have trapped the amber light. Old whiskey from old glass. Jury took a drink. It went down his throat like burning silk, the heat of it relaxing his muscles, expanding his veins. Ah. Was alcoholism the next stop? He’d given up cigarettes (and was trying to keep his eye from roving toward that japanned box on the coffee table, just right for a pack); would whiskey be the next to go in his small repertoire of bad habits? “This is the smoothest whiskey I have ever drunk.”
“Umm. Good stuff, I agree. Forgotten which one it is.”
“I’d sooner forget my financée’s face.”
Parker laughed and tossed his drink back in one gulp, quick and neat. He repositioned the pipe stem between his teeth, puffed a bit.
Jury regarded the pipe, watched the puffs of smoke winding a ribbony path upward. He asked, “Were you a cigarette smoker once and switched to a pipe?”
Parker frowned a bit, as if thinking this over, thinking back. “Not really.”
Not really? Good lord, could one perhaps in one’s youth have smoked them and then forgotten?
“I take it you were?” Parker smiled through the sensuous smoke.
“Pack a day.” Actually, more like two. Pack-and-a-half, at least.
“Um. Don’t you miss it?”
Jury stared, blinked. He shrugged. “I can pretty much take it or leave it, I can.” He rocked his hand. “Comme ci, comme ça, that’s me.”
Parker smiled, looking as if he didn’t believe a word of this, then said, “You know Mr. Plant don’t you? He lunched with me.”
Jury smiled. “Don’t I know it? He’s still talking about it.” Too late, he recalled his knowledge of Mr. Plant was supposed to be “slight.”
But Parker was too taken with the compliment to notice. “Tell him he’s welcome any time. Nice chap.” He was silent for a moment, and then prompted, “I assume you want to ask me about these two women?”
“Oh. Sorry.” Jury sat up, replaced his glass. Sadly.
The astute Parker rose, replenished both of their glasses. Jury sat back again, sipped. “Yes. You knew Verna Dunn pretty well?”
“I did. And didn’t like her much.”
“That seems to be a majority opinion. She was Mrs. Owen when you knew her?”
Parker nodded. “Verna was an actress. All the time. She was adept at masking her true self. If indeed there was a ‘true’ self. I’m inclined to believe she was a series of sham selves.”
“Any idea why they were arguing, or what about? Did they show any signs of anger during dinner?” Jury wondered, not for the first time, if Max Owen had really been the cause. That was the trouble with lying once; you might be suspected of lying twice.
He must have winced because Parker asked, “Anything wrong, Superintendent?”
“No, no. About that argument—?”
Parker shook his head. “Hardly spoke to one another at dinner. Though that, I expect, could mean something in itself. I wasn’t, of course, looking for any such sign, so there might have been something I altogether missed.”
“If you missed it, so did everyone else, apparently. What topic could have been so explosive it would cause Jennifer Kennington to shoot Verna Dunn?”
“Oh, but did she?”
“I should have said ‘allegedly.’ I’m too used to the Lincs’ police version.”
“Where in heaven’s name was the gun—a shotgun, too. Or was it a rifle? Either way, bit hard to hide in a handbag, wouldn’t it be?” Parker was up again, topping off their glasses.
“I expect one could argue the gun—a rifle—had already been placed in the car or left at the Wash to be retrieved. But it’s a weak point in their story—the police version, I mean.”
Parker repositioned himself on the small sofa, made a few jabs at his pipe with a pipe cleaner. “I’d say there’s more than one weak point there. The story as I understand it is that Jennifer Kennington and Verna Dunn got into Verna’s car and drove to the Wash, to the inland part of it, specifically what’s apparently called ‘Fosdyke’s Wash’—a name that no one was acquainted with until its present notoriety—and here Lady Kennington shot Verna Dunn, got back in the car, drove back to Fengate, and parked the car down the drive far enough that no one heard it. Then Lady Kennington appeared at Fengate sometime after eleven with what police regard as a very strange and spurious story about having walked to the Case—or nearly to it—and then walked back again.”
Jury nodded. “That’s Chief Inspector Bannen’s line, yes.”
“I’d say it’s a good deal easier to believe her story than your DCI Bannen’s.”
Jury laughed. “He’s not my DCI Bannen.” Jury swirled the whiskey in his glass, holding it up slightly so that it caught the saffron light of the fire. “But he’s damned smart. He’s self-effacing enough that one could easily forget that. Remember, you left Fengate at eleven or eleven-five. So why didn’t you pass her?”
Parker stopped in the act of tamping down the bowl of his pipe. “Yes. That is true.”
“There is really no other route, is there? No other way she might have gone?”
Parker frowned. “Oh, there might be some rubbishy old trail from here to there. But why would she take it?”
“In any event, she said she took the footpath.”
Parker sat back. “One of us must be lying.” When Jury merely nodded, Parker asked, “Is that why you’re here?”
Jury gave an abrupt laugh. “No. I don’t see that you’d have had much opportunity. Unless you . . . oh, went home and immediately picked up your own car and raced to the Wash.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it? Isn’t there some question as to time of death?”
“Yes, there is. But there’s also no evidence of more than one set of tire treads. And then there’s motive. Granted, Verna Dunn seems to have been universally disliked, but there’s no evidence of motive in the case of anyone else. Max, Grace—those are the most likely insofar as motive is concerned. But there
opportunity really takes a hike. At least, in the case of Max Owen it does.”
“What about Dorcas Reese? How does she fit into all of this?”
“That’s even more of a puzzle. She wasn’t shot; she was strangled. Garroted. Lady Kennington claims to have been in Stratford-upon-Avon, but police were quick to point out that it would be possible to drive from Stratford and back in a few hours.”
“Surely, that’s cutting the cloth to make it fit, isn’t it?”
“It seems so. But no one can come up with anything better.” Jury put down his glass. “I was, I suppose, hoping you might have remembered something helpful. . . . She’s a good friend of mine, Jenny is. Well, I’ve got to be getting along.” Jury rose and so did Parker. “I thought I’d talk to your—groundskeeper, is he? Peter Emery?”
Parker nodded, walked with Jury to the door. “You know Peter’s blind? Has been for several years. It was a shooting accident. Terrible thing, as Peter was in love with the outdoors. He lives with a young niece. . . . ” Parker stopped. “I wonder, would you mind taking something along to them—that is, if you’re going there now?”
“Be happy to. I’ll have to ask you directions, though. I know the cottage is also off the footpath.”
“Better than that, I’ll let you have an ordnance map. Back in a tic.” He hurried off.
Jury smiled, wondering if the kitchen weren’t Major Parker’s real domain. Jury looked around again at the pieces out here, crowding the entrance hall. And it was quite a large hall, at that. Wonderful staircase, the sort one might fantasize beautiful women in ball gowns descending.
“Here we are.” Parker returned, a map in one hand, a white cardboard container in the other. “Plum ice cream. I promised to take it round today, but I’ve got very involved with this dinner I’m experimenting on. And here’s your map. I’ve marked the way. It’s quite simple.”
“Plum ice cream. Sounds good.” Jury put out his hand. “But not as good as that whiskey.”
• • •
Plant had told him about Peter Emery’s blindness. “Still gets around, though. His memory serves him to find his way through the woods; he’s been with Parker for at least a decade, so he manages.”
Jury left the footpath for the sodden and spongy grass, crossing over it to the cottage path. It was, as Parker had said, quite easy, once you have a map. Most things were.
Plant had warned him about the little girl Zel and her fiefdom. Thus, when she yanked the door open, Jury was prepared to have it shut in his face. But it wasn’t. Plant, exaggerating again, he thought. She looked up at Jury, and said, “Oh. Hello.”
Jury answered her hello and inclined his head toward Bob, who struck Jury as pretty much like any other dog he’d ever seen—tongue out, panting, tail wagging. He wondered how Plant came up with these wild stories he told.
Jury introduced himself, held out the carton of ice cream. “I’m just the delivery chap.”
The little girl’s eyes widened. “It’s my ice cream?”
“Plum.”
That he would be entrusted to dispatch something this valuable clearly raised him in her estimation.
It must be her uncle, Peter Emery, who’d come to the doorway of the little parlor and overheard this transaction. Jury introduced himself, said he’d just come from speaking with Major Parker. He wasn’t officially on this case and Emery shouldn’t feel obliged to talk to him at all. It was Zel who answered.
“We like company.” She turned in a quick circle, her red-gold hair flying, and raced for the kitchen with her ice cream.
Peter Emery laughed. “True enough. Come on in and sit awhile.”
When Jury was arranged in a comfortable chair, and Zel returned and arranged beside it, Jury said, “I understand you once were factor on an estate up in Perthshire. Gorgeous country.”
Emery needed only this barely stated urging. “Aye, it is that: I remember—”
He spoke for some moments, uninterrupted. Jury thought it was natural for a man who couldn’t see to covet memories of those places and things from a time in which he could. Peter Emery was a grand storyteller, too; the timbre of his voice could have enthralled an audience by merely reading a train schedule.
During her uncle’s recitation, Zel had been moving covertly, with a little sideways maneuver of her feet—toes, heels, toes, heels, that corny music hall routine—moving closer and closer to Jury’s chair until she could place both hands on its arm and, gaining purchase to push off the feet again: toes, heels, toes, heels, until her uncle had to tell her, Zel, you mind now, and she stopped dead. Willingly. Right beside Jury, who smiled at her, but vaguely, as his attention was still fixed upon her uncle Peter. So having got some of Jury’s attention, she set out to get the rest of it by walking her fingers up and down the chair arm as if she were practicing scales, the fingers recklessly close to Jury’s own hand. Her head was down, following the progress of feet or fingers as if they were the source of endless fascination.
Jury had managed to work Peter Emery’s conversation from Scotland to the murders and Emery was saying what a “turrible, turrible tragedy” it all was.
“You liked her?”
“Oh, she was all right, I suppose.”
“No, she wasn’t, Uncle Peter. You said so.”
Emery blushed and smiled. “The mouths of babes. All right, I tell a lie, then. No, Zel’s right; I didn’t like her. A person doesn’t want to speak ill of the dead.”
“No one I’ve talked to seems to mind speaking ill of Verna Dunn,” said Jury, smiling.
Zel chimed in: “I don’t!”
Peter said, “Verna Owen she was then. He’s not been married to Grace for very long, six, seven years maybe. Lovely, Grace Owen is. But Verna, I can see why he got rid of her—”
“Did he? Did Max Owen initiate the divorce?”
Peter Emery snorted. “It wouldn’t have been her, that’s sure. Not with all of Max’s money. She shoved people about. I mean, moved them like she was playing a game. For her, it was. Life was a game.”
“You’ve been here for ten years, did you say?”
Zel piped up, “Eleven and a half. Eleven and four months.” She seemed to think her exactness over this must surely please a Scotland Yard detective.
“Did you know Verna Owen very well? I mean, had you much personally to do with her?”
“Some. Enough to dislike her.”
“She wasn’t a very popular woman, apparently.”
“With good reason.”
“Such as?” inquired Jury.
“She was a ruiner. You know—” Then apparently recalling his niece was present he said, “Zel, you was to fetch us some tea.”
“No, I wasn’t,” she answered, a stickler for facts. Her back was to Jury’s chair arm now, and she was bending her head as far back as she could, looking at Jury from her upside-down eyes. And then she must have thought tea might get her points: to Jury (and Jury alone) she said, “You want tea?”
“I certainly do,” he said, his smile winning. “Don’t we get any of that plum ice cream?”
Zel looked uncertain, looked from her uncle to Jury, who kept his expression unhelpfully sober. “It isn’t really ready yet. It has to sit.” She paused, thinking. “It has to blend.”
“Really? Major Parker seemed to think it was pretty well blended. Imminently edible. At this moment. Right now.”
“Zel!” Her uncle was not really angry, only slightly embarrassed. “What kind of hospitality’s that, now?”
She crackled to life and ran toward the kitchen.
Her uncle raised his voice even more to her vanishing back. “And don’t you be hanging about the door, there, gurl. You just get that ice cream and tea.”
A cacophony of glass and metal, dishes and cups and kettles, sounded as if to assure her uncle that Zel was busy and had no time to be hanging about doorways.
When she was out of earshot, Peter Emery said, “I don’t want t’go setting a bad example, or her learning
from me to hate people, you know? Zel’s so impressionable.”
Jury smiled. He seriously doubted it. Well, Peter Emery wouldn’t be the first grown-up who didn’t know his charge. “A ‘ruiner’ you called her?”
“Aye, she was. She just liked t’muck up people’s lives, just fer the hell of it. She was that kind.”
“And did she try to muck up yours?”
Peter turned his face to the pale heat of the dying fire. “Tried to, that’s sure.”
When he didn’t embellish upon this, Jury asked, “Was it sexual?”
Obliquely, Peter answered. “Several times she came here. At first it was—it seemed—innocent enough, her wanting to know something about Mr. Parker’s land, saying she was thinking of asking him to sell her some acres. A bunch of nonsense. But then she got pretty, well, friendly—”
“Tried to seduce you, you mean.”
Jury thought it was a natural conclusion to reach, especially in light of Emery’s obvious embarrassment. He must be a bit of a prude. But that was probably better than counting one’s conquests. Any woman might make a play for him. Emery was not only handsome; there was an aura of sexuality that clung to him like smoke.
Emery said, “This Lady Kennington who stayed there, she seemed a nice woman. Why would she . . . ” Peter shrugged, cleared his throat, as if the thought were difficult to put in words. “Why would she shoot her?” He leaned forward. “And why go to the Wash? Everybody at the pub was talking about it. Why would Lady Kennington kill her?” he asked again.
“It’s quite possible she didn’t.”
Emery shook his head. “ ’Tis a rumor with teeth in it. That policeman from Lincoln was here. Looking for guns, he was, rifles. I think he must’ve collected every .22 caliber from here to Spalding. I used to be a good shot, myself.” Peter sighed and edged down in his chair. “I don’t mean to flatter myself that I’m—you know—irresistible to women. But Verna Dunn . . . awful embarrassing, that was. Her being Owen’s wife and all. A woman acting that way, what good can you say of her?”
“Mr. Emery, what—”
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