Their surprise must have shown on their faces, for Charly Moss uttered an expletive they couldn’t quite catch. Then, “Why doesn’t he tell people?”
“You’re a woman,” said Jury.
She had risen from her office chair and now stood, arms stretched out as if doing a fitting at a dressmaker’s. “It would seem so, yes. Sometimes I think he does it just for the fun of it.”
“Pete Apted, you mean?”
Jury and Plant took the two hard chairs she gestured toward.
“Pete Apted, yes.” Quickly, she picked up a near-to-overflowing glass ashtray, and banged it against the metal wastebasket, hard, as if it were resisting being emptied. When she set it back on her desk, Jury saw black ashes still clinging to its center, ashes from last week, last month, perhaps last year, hardened on the glass. (Take a bootscraper to get that lot off, thought Jury.) Then she reached for her pack of cigarettes, looked at them from under lowered eyelashes—neither a coy nor a coquettish glance, but a shamefaced one. She offered the cigarettes around, saying, “I don’t suppose . . . ?” The invitation to share in Silk Cuts plunder trailed off weakly. Hopeless that anyone else in the whole world smoked these days.
Melrose Plant came to her rescue and took one. “You suppose wrongly.” He pulled out his lighter and reached across the table. “Only the sissies have stopped.”
“He means me, Sissy Number One.”
Plant’s smile was, well, dapper. That was the only way to describe it—it went with silk cravats and spats. Right now he was inhaling smoke as if it were a vintage wine.
“Women solicitors aren’t uncommon these days.”
“Ones named ‘Charly’ are. I mean, if you’re set for a man, you sort of have to readjust your expectations. And sometimes I honestly believe there are people who don’t trust me—clients, I mean—don’t trust me as a brief because I’m a woman and because of this.” She waggled the cigarette. “It’s come to be as bad as a bottle of whiskey and a dirty shot glass on the desk.”
“I’d trust the judgment of anyone Pete Apted recommended,” said Jury. Her smile was ingenuous. Jury thought that she didn’t have the sort of looks that would hit you all at once, on impact, looks that bowled you over. Her hair was drawn back (with tendrils escaping) and hooked with a tortoiseshell barrette. It was an unexciting brown, until light hit it, as did this morning sun’s streaking suddenly through the window. As her eyes that appeared light brown turned to copper as bright as pennies in another shaft of light. Most of her lipstick was nibbled away, leaving the outline. It matched the burnt-orange silk blouse. She wore a hunter green tweed suit. The colors of fall. An autumn woman. He thought that the more one saw of her, the more one would come to think her extremely pretty.
“Then tell me,” she said, “what this is all about.”
Perhaps he’d been invited along to light Charly Moss’s cigarette, thought Melrose Plant, who wasn’t listening very attentively to Jury’s recitation of the facts. He knew it all. His instructions from Jury were to sit quietly until Jury signed him to speak.
“Like my dog Mindy, you mean? And what do I bark out when you tell me to speak?”
“Oh, you’ll know.”
He sat there watching Charly Moss take notes—she was taking them rapidly, slapping back sheets of the yellow pad as if tossing the paper out of her way.
Jury stopped talking.
She stopped writing. She said, “Hmph!” Then she left her chair to turn and look out of the window behind the desk, in much the same posture Apted had assumed. Her arms were folded across her chest, her back to them. “Hmph!” she said again. She turned back and leaned against the window, frowning. Her head rested against a sunny pane and Jury could see the red in her brown hair.
Charly asked, “How well do you know her, Mr. Jury?”
Jury did not like the question. That frisson of fear raced through him again. He didn’t (he knew) know Jenny as well as people would be likely to suppose. “Pretty well,” was all he could think to say.
She was back in her chair now, leaning across her desk. “Well enough she’d confide in you?”
“Yes—”
No. That was what her look said. “But she didn’t, Mr. Jury.” Jury’s face flushed.
“Do you think she’d tell me the truth?”
“If you don’t think she told me it, then how can I say?” He hated this defensive posture.
“Perhaps she did tell you the truth. But she delayed it, certainly. It would be impossible for me to work up a defense if Jennifer Kennington were holding back, that’s all.” Then she turned her attention to Melrose. “You were in her house in Stratford with the local police? Detective Inspector”—she consulted her notes—“Lasko?”
Guiltily, Melrose said, “Me? Well, yes, and the one policeman, that was all.” As if only “one” policeman would make the whole visit informal.
Charly tipped her legal pad toward her and wrote again. “With a search warrant?”
Melrose slid down in his chair. Why was he feeling guilty? He wasn’t the Stratford-upon-Avon police. Yet, why hadn’t that occurred to him the day Lasko got him to go along to Ryland Street? He said to the solicitor: “Well . . . uh . . . I expect I can’t say?” Yes, he could. He remembered Lasko’s words to the cat.
Her look was severe. “That’s illegal, Mr. Plant. You do know it’s illegal, don’t you?”
Defensively, he said, “Hell’s bells, it wasn’t my idea.” Huffily, he added, “I was there only because I was asked to look for Lady Kennington. By Superintendent Jury, here. No one knew where she was, including Stratford police.”
She looked from Plant to Jury and back again, as if they were in cahoots. Back to Plant. “Was anything found? Anything taken?” She returned her gaze to the legal pad and wrote furiously.
“I certainly took nothing.”
“Detective Chief Inspector Lasko?”
Melrose had been so busy that day looking for signs of where Jenny might have gone, he wasn’t paying strict attention to Lasko. He simply remembered him clumping about upstairs. Had he taken anything? Melrose shrugged, smiling foolishly.
“Because anything taken from that house won’t be admitted as evidence.”
Good God, what about the silence he was supposed to be sitting in? He wasn’t supposed to say anything until Jury told him to. And here was Jury himself with raised eyebrows, apparently wondering why he hadn’t been told about his and Lasko’s visit to Ryland Street. “I’m being grilled,” said Melrose, assuming this would elicit from this lady solicitor blushes and apologies.
“Get used to it” was what she said. “Obviously, I’ll have to get in touch with Chief Inspector Lasko. Now, this other woman, Dorcas Reese.” She looked up over their heads, staring at the air or the wall for so long, Melrose turned to see if someone had come stealthily into the room, gliding silently across the rug. The rug (which Melrose decided was not Tibetan, not Karistan, and worth two hundred, three, maybe, tops) was the only thing in the office that might have been called a bit of a luxury. The desk looked like police-issue gray, the filing cabinets, ditto. Everything was battered and used, right down to the dark smudges on the edge of the desk, her side. Cigarette burns. This redeemed her slightly. She too was human.
No, she wasn’t. Right now her burnished copper eyes were narrowed at both of them. “The barmaid, this Julie Rough, told you the Reese girl had ‘a bun in the oven’—?”
Jury shook his head. “The M.E. said she wasn’t pregnant.” He inclined his head toward Melrose. “Mr. Plant was there when DCI Bannen brought that news.”
Charly Moss turned her sharp eyes on Melrose.
“Well, good lord, I’m not the alleged father. It’s just a bit of information I picked up from the Owens. Mr. Bannen was not interrogating me.” Unlike some others, he hoped the message to her read.
Charly Moss leaned toward them over crossed arms. “If she honestly believed she was pregnant, the same questions would apply about her feelings, her attit
ude. How was she? How did she act?” Charly chewed at her bottom lip, erasing more lipstick.
Jury shook his head. “Normally, from what I hear, with pleasure or excitement, at least for a while. I think it would have meant she quite definitely had a man on a short lead. At the same time, I was told Dorcas was considering an abortion, but seemed willingly considering it.”
Charly looked down at her pad, brushing a stray wisp of brown hair behind her ear. “A great deal of attention has been focused on Verna Dunn, but very little on Dorcas Reese. It’s as if she’s merely a supporting player. It’s quite possible she was killed by a different hand, let’s say, for instance, the father of the baby, who might not have cared for the ‘short lead.’ Say he didn’t want it, or didn’t want it known. A man already married or prominent or both. Or anyone who didn’t want this baby. A vengeful wife, perhaps? But I find it interesting the murder of Dorcas Reese takes a back seat to the Dunn woman’s murder. Class? Who cares about a maid? Or something else?”
Jury opened his mouth to answer, but she hadn’t really been asking.
“Grace Owen says she went to bed at eleven. No way of knowing whether that’s true. Still, she’d have had to take a car if she did indeed go to the Wash; her husband, someone, would have heard a car leave. And there was only the one car, one set of tread marks.”
“A car could have been left, say, in Fosdyke village, and the rest of the way taken on foot.”
Charly Moss was frowning. “Unless she was shot elsewhere and the body transported—no, the Lincs police, the medical examiner, could have told that from the postmortem.” Charly shook her head. “Where is Jennifer Kennington now? In Stratford? Has she actually been arrested yet?”
“I don’t know.”
Charly looked at her watch as if it would notify her of the passage of those moments. “She’d be in Stratford-upon-Avon otherwise?”
“Yes. Look”—Jury slid forward in his chair—“based on what we’ve told you. What do you think?”
He liked the fact that Charly Moss did not answer questions immediately; she needed to think things through. Now she said, “I’d say that the case against her is circumstantial, pretty speculative. There’s no hard evidence. The rifle is problematic, certainly. Anyone could have taken it, brought it back. Yet. The man in charge, this Lincoln chief inspector—”
“Bannen.”
She nodded. “Mr. Bannen might have a number of unplayed cards. He’s not obliged to let you see them; he’s not even obliged to talk to you. But you know that. Give me his number and hers. Does she know you’re retaining me?”
“She knows about Pete Apted, yes. I mean, she knows I’ve talked to him. But not you.”
Charly tapped her pencil against her teeth. “Isn’t this up to her? She might not want me as instructing solicitor.”
“I think she will.”
“She’s luckier than most, having a detective superintendent on her side.” Charly looked at Melrose. “And an antiques appraiser, of course.” She beat a little drum-roll with pencil and pen.
Melrose’s smile was slightly artificial. He inclined his head, nodding.
She said, “Speaking of retaining—this will cost her a bundle. I hope someone has enough money.”
With that, Jury turned to Melrose, gestured elaborately.
You’ll know, Jury had said.
“I have enough.”
• • •
So that was it. You just wanted me along to make assurances that I’d mortgage off Ardry End.” The damp February wind was channeled by the Inns of Court and drove a spike of cold across their faces.
“Nope,” said Jury. “I wanted to make sure you knew what you’re paying for.” He smiled.
“And there was never any doubt I’d pay?”
“Of course not. Do you think I would ever doubt your generosity?” Jury’s smile widened.
Melrose sighed and turned up the velvet collar of his chesterfield. “I’m going back to Brown’s. What about it? Do you want some breakfast?” He checked his watch. “It’s only eleven.”
“Why not? I mean, if you have enough money.”
“Oh, ha.”
Melrose hailed a taxi.
• • •
Brown’s Hotel was one of the finer London hotels, identifiable by a discreet bronze plaque on its brick front. Inside, it was just as quietly stated and decorous, rather self-consciously so. It did not shout LOOK AT ME! but it certainly murmured it. The flocked wallpaper, the rich velvets, the heavily curtained high windows in the room where the hotel served its popular afternoon tea.
Plant and Jury were in the dining room, uncrowded at this late hour, eating their eggs and bacon in comfortable silence. Jury’s butter knife scraped across his crisp toast. Melrose was cutting his toast up into fingers.
Jury frowned. “What’re you doing?”
“Making soldiers.”
“Good lord.”
Melrose didn’t care. His three-minute egg had been topped, and when he had finished cutting up the oblongs, he dipped one in.
“A grown man,” said Jury, shaking his head.
“I always eat my eggs and toast this way.”
“Maturity generally has us grown-ups halving our toast.”
“Maturity curdles in my aunt’s company. One feels one is right back with Nurse at the nursery tea.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know. I hadn’t much experience of nursery teas as a kid.” He had finished his own bacon and was looking at Plant’s. “You going to eat that bacon?”
Melrose shoved the plate toward him. “Help yourself.”
“Nurse Jury wants some more.” Jury’s fork stabbed the last of the bacon. “Thanks.”
Melrose looked around the room and saw that several other candidates for lung disease were lighting up cigarettes. “We’re in the smoking section. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“No.” Jury was piling blackcurrant jelly on his last piece of toast. “I asked for it.”
Melrose’s cigarettes were out and he was fishing for his lighter. “That’s extremely generous of you. Requesting it for my sake.”
“It’s not generosity. It’s superiority.” Jury flashed a smile with jelly on it. “What’d you think of her?”
“Our hard-headed lady lawyer?”
“Chauvinist.” Jury permitted himself to lean into the smoke gently rising from Plant’s cigarette.
Melrose smiled. “Sorry. I thought she knew what she was doing. She’s smart.” He smoked.
Jury finished the bacon. “Bannen knows something relating to Dorcas Reese’s death. Relating, I mean, to Jenny. He gave me the impression he was pretty certain Jenny had also killed Dorcas Reese.”
Melrose sat back, startled. “That’s bad news.”
“Yes.”
“But the good news is, nobody concerned has an alibi, except for Max Owen, perhaps. Plenty of time for any of them to get to the Wash and back.” Melrose poked his finger through a smoke ring and watched the smoke, pale blue in the noon light, disperse. “Verna Dunn was last seen with Jenny Kennington a little after ten P.M. The car was heard starting up between quarter after and ten-thirty—”
Jury said, “Could it have been another car? Say, Max Owen’s, that night? And later, someone drove Verna’s car to the point where her body was found?”
Melrose snorted. “Shouldn’t one go with the obvious explanation?”
“All right, I’m floundering.”
“That’s okay. You deserve the occasional flounder.”
“Thanks.” Jury looked at his watch. “Hell, I guess I have to get back to Victoria Street. What are you going to do? Back to Long Pidd?”
“I expect so. What’s the next step in all of this?”
“The next step, I’m afraid, is that Chief Inspector Bannen will arrest Jenny.”
Melrose said, “Getting back to Price, though. You say he was an old friend of Jenny’s?”
“I’m afraid that tells more against Jenny than against Price. Another
lie. Anyway, he has no motive.”
“Not one we know of. We’ve only recently realized Grace Owen had a motive. That is, if she thought Verna Dunn had harmed her son.”
Jury said, “I keep running these events through my mind: the fight, the car, the footpath, the Wash, the body . . . They don’t compute. Something’s wrong. Out of place.” He shook his head.
The dining room was emptying out, the last couple but for Plant and Jury rising and carrying their cigarettes curled in their fingers like diamonds. Jury sighed and longed for just one Silk Cut. He said, “Don’t you think that someone who really cared for you would confide in you?”
Melrose pushed his bread plate toward Jury with the tip of his finger. “Have a soldier.”
24
Jury had managed to set aside the Lincolnshire gloom, only to be overtaken, this afternoon, by the Victoria Street gloom. The breakfast with Plant had helped to raise his spirits a little. Not for long.
Not when he’d just got off the phone with Sam Lasko who’d been decent enough to let him know that not five minutes ago, they’d brought Jenny Kennington into the station.
“Waiting for Bannen to get back and tell me when his people are coming to escort her to Lincoln,” Lasko said.
“Back from where?”
“Scotland.” He tried to cheer Jury up by telling him he didn’t really think Bannen had all that much of a case. “Or he wouldn’t be lollygagging around by Loch Ness, would he?”
Jury couldn’t help but smile at this image. He stopped smiling. “All that much of or not, it’s enough of a case to take her into custody.” Jury told Lasko about Charly Moss while he doodled tiny cats. “Of course, that search of her house doesn’t make Stratford police look good.” Jury pulled over a pad, started doodling Lasko’s eyeglasses.
“What search?”
“You know. That unwarranted search you and Plant made of her house.”
Lasko was silent, thinking. Then he said, “I wasn’t searching the property, Jury. I was searching for her. Nothing was removed from the premises.”
Jury smiled. “Oh? Plant says you were rummaging around upstairs. Expect to find her under the bed?”
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