The Case Has Altered

by Martha Grimes

  Jury interrupted: “I know all this.”

  “Of course. I just wanted to make sure I did. Let me go on: second murder. In this case the victim, name of Dorcas Reese, was seen leaving the Case Has Altered alone the night of fourteen February just after it closed and was seen to take the public footpath, which was her usual route back to Fengate. Somewhere between the hours of eleven and twelve-thirty, as far as the medical examiner can put it, she was garroted. Since we know it would have taken her, say, fifteen minutes to reach the Visitors’ Center, we can whittle that down to between eleven-fifteen and twelve-thirty.

  “Theory number one: the two women took Verna Dunn’s car, drove to the Wash or, at least, that’s where the body ended up. Jennifer Kennington shot her, then returned with car to Fengate, told her trumped-up story about taking a walk.

  “Theory number two: Dorcas Reese, being a Nosy Parker, discovers something, overhears something, or finds something that makes her potentially dangerous to the murderer of Verna Dunn. If you accept theory number one, that person must be Jennifer Kennington. She returns to Lincolnshire, having contacted Dorcas, and told Dorcas to meet her in Wyndham Fen, and kills her. This presumably is what the prosecution will argue. The question of the transporting of the rifle to the Wash I’m sure they’ll have an answer for; the question of the killer shooting one victim, garroting another, I’m sure they’ll also have an answer for.”

  There was a silence during which Jury could hear behind him the whisper of silk. Charly Moss had shifted in her chair. He had almost forgotten she was there. “I’m waiting for theory number three, the one that doesn’t star Jenny Kennington as the killer.”

  Pete Apted dropped the velvet curtain tieback he’d been fooling with and went back to his desk, where he didn’t sit down, but stared at the several files and stack of papers. “The theories I just ran through are the more popular ones with the Lincolnshire constabulary. I expect Mr. Bannen has pretty much dusted off one or the other, with numerous variations.” He scratched behind his ear, shook his head. “You can hardly blame him. The most damaging bit is that Jennifer Kennington kept quiet about her relationship with Dunn. Then had a noisy fight with her, and then left the scene at the same time that Dunn disappeared. And was gone for close to an hour.”

  “It’s what happened.”

  Pete Apted was flicking through the papers and files on his desk, and answered, with an abstracted, almost absentminded air, “No, it isn’t.”

  Jury sat up, astonished. “What?” He looked around, looked over to Charly as if she might offer support. But she said nothing.

  As if he hadn’t heard Jury, Apted went on: “What I can’t understand is why, since she obviously had to account for her movements, she didn’t simply say, ‘I was tired, I went up to my room without going in to the others—rather rude, I know, but I felt unwell.’ Something like that. It beats me.” He shook his head, kept flipping through papers. “I don’t see—Charly, read that part of your interview again.”

  Charly Moss thumbed up the top pages of the pad in her lap and read: “ ‘I was so outraged by her attitude, I—I just walked away and left her smoking a cigarette.’ Then I said, ‘Outraged about what? That’s never been clear.’ I’ll just read the rest of this, questions and answers.

  “JK: ‘The investment. Max was investing in a pub I was to buy. She said she’d convinced him that such a venture would be a losing one.’

  “Me: ‘But why would she do that?’

  “JK: ‘To make things difficult, to hurt me. Verna’s always been like that. She doesn’t have to have a reason other than that.’

  “Me: ‘Go on. You walked away . . . ’

  “JK: ‘I, uh, I . . . found myself on the footpath and decided to walk to the Case Has Altered. It’s a pub near Fengate; I—’

  “Me: ‘The Case Has Altered is nearly a mile along that footpath. Didn’t that seem a bit far to go for a drink? When you could have simply gone back into the house?’

  “JK: ‘No, no!’ Shaking her head, ‘I didn’t want to talk to anybody and certainly didn’t want to see Max Owen. I was afraid I’d say something.’

  “Me: ‘Yes, but if you wanted a drink, as you say, there was a decanter of whiskey right by your bed.’ ”

  Apted asked, “How’d you know that, Charly?”

  “Because I’m blessed with second sight. Also, because I saw her room when I went to the Owens’ house. The room, incidentally, is in a part of the house that would have allowed her to bypass the living room. If she hadn’t wanted to rejoin the group there, she could easily have avoided it.” She returned to her notes: “ ‘. . . whiskey right by your bed. Wouldn’t that have been less tiring than walking a mile to the pub? Especially since it wasn’t open?’ ”

  Apted held up his hand to stop the reading and said to Jury, “Does that sound reasonable to you? You’ve just had bad news; you want to be alone for a good cry; you also want a slug of booze. Solution: go to your room, drink yourself blind from the decanter, cry in your pillow. Right?”

  “And so what Jenny was really doing,” said Jury, barely able to control his anger, “was getting into Verna’s Porsche with her, driving to the Wash, shooting her, then driving back to Fengate. That might make sense to you, but it doesn’t to me. It’s crazy. The bloody Wash . . . ” Jury recalled Bannen’s description of the tides. “You’d have to be a local, wouldn’t you, to be familiar with the tides? Had it been a spring tide, the body would almost certainly have washed out to sea. How would Jenny have known that?”

  Apted shrugged. “I don’t see why she couldn’t’ve. High tide, that’s fairly common knowledge. You can depend on the prosecution’s saying that. High tide, spring tide, or even neap tide: prosecution can say that the murderer might have counted on any high tide—not simply the spring tide—washing the body out to sea. So either the tide or the sands would cover the body and delay discovery.”

  “If you’re convinced she’s guilty, why are you taking this on?”

  “Did I say I thought she was guilty? I don’t remember saying that. All I’ve done is, one, toss out a couple of theories the Lincolnshire police are toying with, and, two, said I didn’t believe Jennifer Kennington took a walk to the pub.”

  Jury sat back, his anger receding. Still, he felt he was being played with, felt he might as well be in a courtroom. “All right. Then where was she?”

  Apted was still standing at his desk rather than sitting, and he pulled down the knot in his tie and rolled his head as if his neck ached. He massaged the muscles, said, “You appear to be missing the obvious.”

  Jury felt again the rush of ice in his veins, as if the air in the room had suddenly plunged to zero. “Price’s studio?”

  “Of course. Jack Price went back to his studio a little after ten. Just as Kennington was setting off on her so-called walk.” Apted shrugged, arms extended, hands palm-out, in an exaggerated pose.

  Jury blustered. “But . . . there’s no reason she shouldn’t have gone there. She knew Price, had known him, I mean.” Jury thought of what Annie Suggins had said. “She knew Max Owen and so it’s logical she would have known Price, too.”

  “Absolutely right. But then why should she try to hide it? Especially in such circumstances? Why keep it secret?” Finally, Apted turned his swivel chair and sat down. “Why keep any of this secret? Her relation to Verna Dunn, her having known Price?”

  Jury said nothing.

  Apted said, “It’s unfortunate you have to find out about your lady’s past in this way, but—”

  Barely controlling his anger, Jury said, “She’s not ‘my lady,’ Mr. Apted.” He got to his feet.

  “Suit yourself. Except, well, don’t make a habit of this.” He smiled, a genuinely friendly smile, but stopped short when he saw the expression on Jury’s face. Then he shrugged. “Did I say something wrong?”

  • • •

  Did he say something wrong?”

  Charly Moss and Jury were walking down the steps of Apted’s
office, Jury still feeling the smart of the barrister’s words.

  “Yes. He thinks I’m stupid, dumbly following at the heels of whatever femme fatale crosses my path. A sort of Moose Malloy.” Jury’s smile was grim.

  “The big lug in the Raymond Chandler novel?”

  “That’s the chap. You like detective novels?” They started walking.

  “The good ones. Most of them aren’t. P. D.James, hers are wonderful. And the one whose protagonist is a female solicitor.”

  Jury grunted. “I’m not sure I should have Jenny lawyered up.”

  Charly’s smile was broad. “Gee, thanks.”

  Jury smiled in response. “Nothing personal.”

  It was one of those rare near-spring days that wash over the city, cleansing it and softening the sharp edges of buildings, the air like a scrim behind which the distant Thames turned the color of pearl. Jury looked up at the sky, a milky blue, and said, “He was talking about a case I was working on three years ago. For one brief, shining moment I was a suspect since I’d been close to the lady in question and had, apparently, been the last one to see her alive.”

  They had walked from Lincoln’s Inn to the Bell Yard and into Fleet Street. It was there that Charly took in a quick, sharp breath and stopped. “You mean she was murdered?”

  “She—” He was surprised by the force of the feelings he thought he had laid to rest. The memory of Jane Holdsworth caught him surprisingly unaware, even though he’d just before felt like smashing Pete Apted for bringing it up. Yet, he recognized some alchemy, some change that had occurred in the interceding years since she’d died. Sorrow had become less sorrow, had become more resentment. He felt tricked. But he had surely felt that from the start: tricked, cheated? Perhaps only now did he feel it undisguised and undiluted by contrary feelings of loss and remorse. . . . Give it a rest, will you?

  “Okay,” said Charly, looking up at him from under a hand that shielded her face from a sudden glare of light.

  Jury came out of his fugue, realized he’d spoken aloud. He laughed. “Not you, I didn’t mean you. I was talking to myself. Thinking out loud. Pete Apted makes me nervous as hell. I’ll probably be a lousy witness. He’s too damned clever.”

  Charly laughed. “You can’t be too damned clever in this business.” She looked up at him. “Was he too clever three years ago?”

  The question was oblique, the sort where an answer doesn’t give much away. “Yes.”

  They continued their slow stroll in silence, Charly suggesting they cross over to Dr. Johnson’s house. Standing outside, she looked around. “Imagine what all of this was like in the eighteenth century. Imagine having your morning coffee, or whiskey, for that matter, with Johnson and Boswell and Oliver Goldsmith. Imagine.” She shook her head in a sort of wonder, and they walked slowly back to Fleet Street. “Not so many years ago, the newspapers were housed here. Now it’s all computers. They can’t use the old buildings.”

  They stood on a corner, waiting for a light to change. Jury said, “You’ve said nothing yourself about Jenny Kennington. Did you think she was lying, too?” He wished he could keep the anxious note out of his voice.

  “Concealing would be the way I’d put it. Yes. I do think she’s concealing something.”

  Jury smiled thinly. “Isn’t that the same, really?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  Jury watched a wave of office-leavers flood a bus stop in the Strand. They always looked sad, almost frantic to him. “All right. But any way you put it, Jenny’s holding back.”

  Briefly, Charly nodded. “You didn’t feel it?”

  The light changed and they started across the Strand, dodging traffic that paid little attention to lights. Once on the other side, Charly picked it up again. “Pete and I both felt it.”

  Jury said, “I wouldn’t think Apted would place much faith in intuition.”

  “I think he calls it something else, ‘gut-level rationale’ or something equally inventive. But that’s what it is: intuition. He’s a highly intuitive man.” Charly turned and started walking not backwards, but at an angle so that she could see Jury’s face, her feet doing an odd little crisscross movement—sideways—and her handbag clutched behind her back.

  Jury smiled. He knew who Charly reminded him of now: Zel. Zel grown up would look this way.

  She said, “You want to believe you don’t like him much, don’t you?”

  Jury stopped dead, looked up at the sky. “That’s a strange way of putting it; actually, I don’t like him at all.”

  “That isn’t true.” She smiled. “You’re a lot like him, you know. Although he doesn’t have your superficial charm.” She looked dead serious.

  “Thank you for that.” He stopped suddenly when he saw they were getting close to Leicester Square. “Good lord! We’ve walked this far?”

  “A distance, anyway.” Jury’s mind had registered, but vaguely, the statue of Nelson, the National Gallery, St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Yet, there had been no sense of time passing. He had been able to move through a familiar landscape and block something of it out, and because of that, he was able to set aside his anxiety, however briefly. In this there was an astonished sense of relief.

  “Look: you wouldn’t want to go for a meal, would you? I know it’s early, but—”

  Charly interrupted. “I’m terribly hungry; I skipped lunch. We’re nearly in Soho and I love Chinese.”

  Jury laughed. “And I know absolutely the perfect restaurant. Been there many times.” As he took her arm to steer them through the rush-hour traffic, Charly said, “But it should be on me. You’re by way of being a client.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll pay for it in the end. Or your friend Mr. Plant will.”

  “Deal. He can afford it.”

  28

  If ever there was a place not bound to take your mind off your problems, it had to be the Blue Parrot.

  Melrose sat at the bar, waiting for Trevor Sly to return so he could have another beer, and wondered why it appeared so insular, so untouched by time and the changing seasons. The Jack and Hammer, now, it always registered them: the cold clamminess of winter, the soft air of spring, the autumn haze.

  The Blue Parrot, on the other hand, was never anything but a desert waste. The only clue to the seasonal change came when Trevor Sly hung bells on the papier-mâché camel and strung a few lights on the palm tree.

  Melrose wondered, as he looked at the big birdcage by the door, why it had taken Trevor Sly so long to bring in a parrot. Fake, of course, with multicolored feathers—it irritated Melrose that it wasn’t blue, but he was damned if he’d ask—and riding on a painted perch. Melrose stayed clear of it; it was voice-activated and sat by the door so that every customer who entered got treated to Ahoy! followed by some scrofulous comment Melrose couldn’t make out. He wondered if Sly himself had taught the parrot its alphabet.

  Speaking of customers—

  Where were they? The place was blank as a dune even though the banner across the mirror announced a HAPPY HOUR 4-6 FREE BAR SNACKS. Melrose was the only customer in the place, and Mine Host was now coming through the beaded curtain with a plate of the free bar snacks.

  Trevor Sly was an uncommonly tall, thin man with arms as long as pulled taffy and stiltlike legs. And when he started in with his humming sort of voice and sycophantish head-dippings, Melrose wondered if Sly might be about to coil.

  Actually, he did when he arranged himself on the tall stool he liked to sit on and twined his legs round it. First, though, he placed the suspect-looking tidbits on the bar. Melrose looked them over. Cheese? Potato? Fish paste? At any rate, Trevor did try to ingratiate himself to his customers, which was more than could be said for Dick Scroggs.

  Sly claimed his custom came not before dinnertime, but after it. “Mostly at night, you know. We attract a fairly wild bistro-type crowd, the young ones, you know.”

  Melrose didn’t. The “young
ones” he’d seen could hold a party in a dustbin; they had no need to search out a pub in the middle of the Mojave and be insulted by a parrot.

  Melrose pushed his glass forward for another Cairo Flame (was he mad?) and told Trevor Sly to set himself up, too, at which the man slid off his stool like a waterfall and thanked Melrose with many a humble hand-washing. He then served himself an inch of fifty-year-old single malt whiskey and collected Melrose’s ten-pound-note.

  After Sly resettled himself, Melrose looked around and said, “No one about much,” as if he were genuinely surprised.

  “Never is on Tuesdays,” said Trevor.

  He always had some inexplicable reason for the lack of custom.

  “Still, I have to do the bar snacks, as that’s what I’ve advertised. And you never know, someone might come. I just started my Happy Hour and news travels slow around here, as you know.”

  Slow? He must not know Agatha. “But you do have a few regulars from near here. They’re the people at Watermeadows, isn’t that so?” The people meaning Miss Fludd. Miss Fludd was the real reason Melrose had come here.

  “Oh, yes,” said Trevor Sly. He did not embroider.

  Melrose sighed and drank his Cairo Flame. Must he have another to pry information out of the man? “Finished your drink, Mr. Sly? I say we have another!” Melrose thought that sounded hearty enough.

  Sly simpered and uncoiled himself and set up the drinks again. Why was it, Melrose wondered, that the man had to shut up like an oyster when there was something he really wanted to know? On the subject of the Fludds of Watermeadows, Sly was perversely mum. Lord knows it wasn’t out of discretion, which Trevor Sly lacked in abundance.

  “I recall that Miss Fludd was here one day when Marshall Trueblood and I stopped in. I expect, with Watermeadows being so near” (which it wasn’t—it was just nearer to Sly’s than to anywhere else) “that she must be one of your regulars.”