“But now we know she wasn’t pregnant.”
Colleen pressed the fist holding the balled-up handkerchief to her mouth. “No, but why’d she lie and say she was, that’s what I can’t make head nor tail of.”
“Perhaps she wasn’t lying; it could have been she really believed it. Or, it could have been wishful thinking or a lever to get whatever man she’d fallen for to marry her. It’s hardly a new trick.”
Colleen sniffed, pulled herself up in her chair. “Not very clever, that. Well, I don’t wonder but that’s the reason she got killed. I told Dorcas her making up stories would get her in trouble one day.” A fresh wave of tears swelled, and Jury moved a box of tissues from the table beside him to the one at her elbow crowded with pictures of the past. She thanked him and dabbed at her eyes. “She was rebellious, was Dorcas. Tested the boundaries all the time.”
Jury hid a smile. Colleen must have been reading books about adolescence. Dorcas was a little old to be testing her boundaries. “In what way, Mrs. Reese?”
“Things like not going with the family to Skegness. We done that every year for the last fifteen. Whenever Trevor gets his holiday. Vi, too, now she’s been working. It’s a sort of tradition, if you see what I mean. We’re always down for the same rooms at Seagull’s Rest every year. Mrs. Jelley says she always thinks of them as being our rooms, nobody else’s, and she puts us down for next year while we’re there. Same room and board for us, never more’n a hundred seventy quid. Can’t do fairer than that, I always tell Trevor. . . . ”
Jury let her ramble on about Seagull’s Rest, reflecting on Skegness and how unspeakably dull it would be, as routine as home, especially for a young girl who’d be wanting discos or drinking beer on the terrace of a pub, all of these pastimes involving sex in some significant way. How pleasant it would be to stay home and not have Mum or Dad around to tell you what to do or Violet to compete with. He could hardly blame Dorcas for “revolting.” Skegness. Even Jury thought he’d sooner stay home.
“. . . and Dorcas wasn’t like Violet. Our Vi always has some young man hanging about. I don’t mean to speak ill of my own child, but Dorcas wasn’t that pretty, you see. The men weren’t after her like they are Violet. That’s not her real name; it’s Elspeth, after Trevor’s mum. But she hates that name, always has, so she ups and tells us her name’s ‘Violet’ from now on, and ‘not a shrinking one, neither,’ that’s how she put it; Vi’s the clever one.” Here, Colleen set off on a cruise around Violet’s many virtues.
Jury let witnesses take their own line. It was in such unguarded talk that they very often gave the game away. Violet with all of her boyfriends, Dorcas with none.
“. . . and you can imagine that made Dorcas a mite jealous.”
“Yet there was some chap, if not actually ‘hers’—one whom she very much cared for.”
Vigorously, Colleen nodded. “I don’t think she was lying about that, Inspector. Why, she’d been ever-so-sprightly for weeks a while back, not like herself at all.”
“That’s what Mrs. Suggins said. The cook at Fengate. That Dorcas had seemed quite the happy girl, but recently rather glum and nervous. Can you think of anything that would account for these changes of mood?”
Smartly, she shook her head. “Not besides whoever this man might have been, I can’t. And whatever he actually did, I couldn’t say. And it’s true, a week or two before she—died, she’d got awful snappish with us. More like the old Dorcas. What I thought was, her and her young man had a spat. I mean, if there was a young man.”
“Yes, I’d say so. I can’t believe it was all wishful thinking, but whether he was aware of her feelings, well, that’s something else again.” Out in the kitchen, a kettle sang.
Colleen looked over her shoulder. “Never mind, it’ll turn itself off. Don’t know what I ever did before we had this electric one.”
“Don’t let me keep you,” said Jury, starting to get up.
Quickly, she motioned him back down. “No, no. It’s finished and Trevor’ll be home any moment now. And Violet with him. They always come back about this time for their tea.” She paused and pursed her lips, considering. “Look here, we’ve plenty for an extra to tea, and police got to eat like the rest of us, so why don’t you stay?”
“That’s very kind of you, only—”
“Well, I expect your missus is a better cook than I am,” she said with a particular look, a coy movement of her head.
Jury almost laughed. Here was a new straw to grasp at! Jury told her the good news. “I’m not married, Colleen.”
She chirped out a few blandishments, “Good-looking man like you, girls must be blind!” She went on in this vein while Jury considered taking her up on her offer simply to stay longer and talk to husband Trevor and the sister. But the alternative to any talk of substance was they’d spend their time round the dinner table with the mum on and on about Violet’s talents, thus far untried by marriage.
Jury thought for a moment, then said, “It’s only just occurred to me. Not only could Dorcas have believed she was pregnant, but there is such a thing as a false pregnancy.”
“A what?”
“Women can actually conjure up a pregnancy. They even have all of the side-effects that come with a real one: morning sickness, bloating, and so forth.”
Colleen’s hand was at her cheek, where a pinkish blush spread. “Does it go on, then, for the whole nine months?”
“I don’t know; I rather think not.”
“And you think our Dorcas was going through something like that?”
“I’ve no idea. If she deluded herself that she was pregnant, it shows how much she wanted a child.”
A cutoff laugh from Colleen. “Not her! She was always complaining about her friend Sheila’s nappies and her having to get up at all hours night and morning. No, Dorcas was never looking forward to being a mum.”
Jury leaned toward her in his chair. “But she must have been looking forward to something, Colleen. Marriage perhaps. Getting this man she might have thought was the father.” He was interrupted when the front door opened in a flurry of feminine giggles. The grunts (Jury imagined) came from Trevor, the father.
Violet breezed in—the expression really fit, thought Jury, not because she was lithe and limber, but because she seemed insubstantial. She fluttered and floated to various surfaces—the hall table where she roughed up the post to see what had come for her; to the dining room table to see if she liked the look of her tea; to the mirror over the mantel to see if she liked the look of herself. Yes. She tossed her flyaway, weightless light brown hair back over her shoulder. The face was pretty, yet without a hint of character, just as it appeared in the photograph. She was plump, but lacked density. Finally she fluttered to the sofa and fell softly into it like a sack of cinders.
Trevor, his face like a flatiron, had stopped in the doorway and been introduced. Unimpressed by Scotland Yard, he asked only if his tea was ready.
Not so, Violet. She was impressed enough for both of them. “You been talking about Dorcas, haven’t you? I’d just like to say it’s disgraceful that woman got off with not even a slap on the wrist! I just want to go on record.” She must think Jury was the press.
Mildly, Jury said, “There wasn’t enough evidence to convict her. She’s probably innocent.”
Violet made a dismissive gesture with her fingers. “It’s them as has money that never gets convicted.”
“Vi, we’ve been talking about”—Colleen looked round to see if anybody was listening—“about Dorcas saying she was pregnant when she wasn’t.”
“Maybe it was just another one of her stories is what I think.”
“No, she could have thought she was.” Here the mother lapsed into an explanation. She had got what Jury had said near letter-perfect. This surprised him; he hadn’t given Colleen that high a mark for comprehension.
In her tremulous falsetto Violet said, “Want a baby? Dorcas? Don’t make me laugh. Last thing she wanted. Couldn’t sta
nd kids, squalling and clobber, that’s all they’re good for, that’s what Dorcas’d say.”
“It doesn’t surprise you, then,” said Jury, “that it’s not true, her being pregnant?”
“Nothin’ surprises me about Dorcas. She was always making up stories. Made me tired, it did, not being able to sort out what was true from what weren’t. Not that I lost any sleep over it.”
Colleen said, tearfully, “That’s a shame, Violet Reese, not caring about your poor sister.”
“Oh, Mum.” Violet sighed as Colleen’s tears spilled over.
Wanting to avoid a family fracas, Jury asked, “Did she ever mention anyone, any man in such a way you might think she was intimate, I mean, that she was having sex with him?”
Vi slid down in her seat and laughed in silent heaves. When she finally righted herself, she said, choking on the words, “Since she was in the comprehensive, she had a reputation.”
The scandalized Colleen said sharply, “Violet! Watch your mouth, now.”
“Sorry, Mum.” Looking at Jury she said, “She’d used to talk about nearly every man that way.”
“I don’t understand. I thought Dorcas wasn’t, well, very attractive to men.”
“ ‘Attractive?’ Whoever said you had to be ‘attractive’ if you was willing? She was just man-crazy. Sorry, Mum, I don’t like to make you feel bad, but he is a rozzer—if you’ll pardon the expression”—she made a little bow with her head—“and we can’t be holding out on police.” She leaned toward Jury. “ ‘Poor Dorcas’ is right. She was, I guess you can say, ‘available.’ What the kids used to say in school was ‘willing.’ ‘Dorcas is willing.’ They got that from a book by what’s-his-name?” She screwed up her unlined forehead in a semblance of thought.
Jury supplied the name: “Charles Dickens. David Copperfield. It’s ‘Barkis’ there.”
“That’s the one! Dickens. There’s this old guy who hardly ever speaks. When he wants to propose to the nurse, he sends a message: ‘Barkis is willin’.’ Well, it sounds a little like ‘Dorcas,’ see?”
Colleen looked pale, pressed a tissue to her mouth, then said, “You’ve no business dredging all that stuff up, Vi. This is your poor dead sister.”
Violet, having heard that enough in the past, ignored her mum. “I did feel sorry for her. It was the only way she could get a man to pay any attention to her. But I’ll tell you truly, not even that could get her a man, I mean a permanent one.” She turned her attention to Jury again. “But, see, I could name a few names but that don’t mean I’d’ve named them all.”
“Vi! That’s a dreadful thing to say about Dorcas.” A fresh flow of tears came; once wiped away, Colleen said, “I’d better go and see your da gets all his tea.” She got up and left the room.
Jury thought the mother was the only one who was grieved by Dorcas’s death and felt a renewed empathy for her. Violet could have told Jury in private about that harsh judgment on Dorcas’s life. “Dorcas is willin’.” Had Dorcas been pretty, or seductive, or even sweet and saintly it would not have been so sad; it was her lack of any of these qualities that made her beleaguered sexual history and death so awful.
“Why wasn’t this in the information you gave Lincolnshire police—pardon me, the ‘rozzers’?”
“You do learn quick,” said Violet looking him up and down, coquettishly. “I can tell you one thing,” Vi went on. “It wasn’t no one local, meaning Spalding. You’d best look where she worked.”
“You mean Fengate?”
“There and that pub. Case Has Altered. You know it?”
Jury nodded. “How can you be sure?”
“From the way she talked. ‘Got me a real man this time,’ she’d say, which pretty much lets out the ones round here.” Vi giggled. “ ‘I bless the day I ever took that job.’ She’d just let go with these hints, you know? Now that sure sounds as if it was Fengate or the Case or somewhere around there.”
“Your mother says Dorcas had been ‘snappish’ for the last couple of weeks. Did she strike you in that way?”
“Aye. Far as I was concerned, that was just Dorcas being Dorcas. I mean, she was in this really good mood for weeks before that, and then the mood changed.”
“Any idea as to why?”
Vi shrugged again, said, “Probably the guy dumped her.”
“If she honestly thought she was pregnant—”
Vi brushed that aside with a flutter of her hand. “Go on, she was lyin’ about that like she did about what happened with all these men that was sweet on her.”
Jury smiled at that old-fashioned way of putting it. But he wasn’t at all sure of the truth of what she said. He was more ready to believe Dorcas was honestly going through a false pregnancy. “Who’s your doctor, Vi?” Jury pulled a small leather notebook from his inside pocket.
“Dr. McNee. Only don’t get the idea in your head that Dorcas went to him. Well, she wouldn’t’ve done, would she?”
Just then Trevor, having finished his tea and rolling a toothpick in his mouth, had brought a heavy book into the parlor, keeping his finger in it to mark the page, sat down, and opened it. He did not look as if he were a man next in line to supply answers to questions put by police. The women were clearly used to his lack of social grace; Colleen asked if his tea had been all right.
“Aye.”
Again, she introduced Jury as (as usual) “Inspector.”
Trevor gave Jury a look over the top of the book. “Aye.”
“He might be wanting to ask you a few questions. He’s Scotland Yard, Dad.”
Trevor merely nodded and went back to reading. Jury didn’t take this personally, for he spoke to family members in the same abbreviated manner.
Vi kept trying. “He thinks we might’ve recalled something since that other policeman was here. You might know something.”
“I know nowt.” Trevor shook his head, didn’t even raise his eyes from the page.
What surprised Jury was that he really did appear to be reading, instead of using the book as a shield against police. His eye movements showed this to be the case. Although Jury couldn’t imagine he could really comprehend what he read, not with three people in the room trying to get him to talk. Jury had been going to offer some sympathetic comment, but decided not to, as Trevor Reese did not appear to need it. He was a small, spare man with dark hair and a toothbrush mustache and a Chaplinesque pallor. But without Chaplin’s whimsical expression. Trevor seemed sober and somber and a man of few words. He was master of only three—aye, no, and nowt—and used even them sparingly, yet managed to convey, with his stunted vocabulary, that he wasn’t about to let himself be intimidated by any rozzer. They could pistol-whip him and he’d still gi’ ’em nowt.
Jury watched him wet his finger, turn a page, and keep on reading. The book was heavy, thick, looked hard to lift, much less hold and read. “You know that your daughter—Dorcas—wasn’t pregnant after all.”
Trevor still held the book, but lowered it a little. “Aye.”
The “ayes” had various tonal shadings, this one suspicious, as if Jury were here to take it all back and tell him poor Dorcas’s condition would be reported in the Daily News.
“Do you yourself go to the Case?”
That surprised him, as Jury meant it to. Trevor was enough taken aback to lower the volume to his lap. “Aye.”
“About the regulars there: did Dorcas seem sweet on anyone in particular?”
Trevor pursed his lips, seemed actually to be giving this some thought. He surprised Jury by answering. “Aye. That Price fellow.”
“Who lives at Fengate?”
“Aye.” Hadn’t he just said? Trevor shook his head and the book came up again.
Trevor Reese’s voice was strangely melodic; his phrases had the upward swing of an Irishman, but the sheared-off consonants and resonant vowels of an old fenman.
“How did you know she liked Jack Price?”
“Usual way. Flirty.” His eyebrows did an amusing little danc
e by way of illustration. Then he went back to his book, licked a finger, turned the page.
In her annoyance, Vi punched a pillow she’d been holding in her lap. “Ah, come on, Da! You know more’n you let on. And you can just put that book down, for god’s sake.” She turned to Jury. “Da loves to read. In winter he reads to us, sometimes. Mum’s baking something, apples or pudding, and when it’s near finished, she lowers the door of the cooker and all of us sit round it, listening to Da. Dorcas did a lot of it, too. Had a good reading voice, did Dorcas. Easy on the ears.”
Surprising to Jury, this lovely description of a family scene. Reading aloud—how often did one come across that now? He said the same.
Vi merely repeated her words: “Da! Come on. You know things I bet you’re not telling.”
“Here, girl, and don’t you be tellin’ me what ah know or don’t know.”
Vi was standing now, shaking her head at such stubbornness. “Me, I’m having my tea, too.”
Since Trevor’s last answer had been close to being two whole sentences, Jury decided to push his luck.
“Anyone else she treated in that particular way, Mr. Reese?”
Again he contemplated the answer, but settled for another No.
“Look, I know you want to find out who killed your daughter—”
The book came down. “Ya know nowt, man. Ya think us wants t’be all us reminded by talkin’ to you lot?”
“No, I don’t think that. But aren’t you forced to think about it more and more because Dorcas’s murder hasn’t been solved?”
Trevor made no answer; he shrugged and raised his book again.
“Did Jack Price show any interest in your daughter?”
“Not ’im. ’E just sits quiet-like. Keeps hisself to hisself. It ’oud pay others t’be like ’im.” His baleful glance suggested one of those others was sitting on his sofa.
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