“It must have been a dreadful shock. What do you intend to do now?”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t be calling you this late, but I didn’t know who else to turn to.”
I felt the ambivalence one always feels in such a situation, flattered to be important enough to a person to be the one to whom they turn in time of trouble, yet wishing you weren’t.
“Maria, why don’t you come here to the hotel.”
“Oh, Mrs. Fletcher, I couldn’t ...”
“No, I insist. Obviously, there will have to be a trip to the police, but it doesn’t have to be now, at this hour. I would feel much better if you were here. Spend the night if you wish. The living room has a lovely pull-out couch.”
She uttered a few further protestations, then agreed.
By the time she arrived, it was almost three in the morning, and I was exhausted. Simultaneously, my adrenaline was flowing at an accelerated pace, and I wouldn’t have been able to sleep whether she arrived or not.
As I waited for her, I thought about the location she’d mentioned, Wapping Wall. I remember it, of course, as a setting in Dickens’s novels, a densely populated waterfront cut into many pieces by narrow, twisting alleys, long sets of stone steps, and a succession of docks, including Execution Dock where condemned pirates and thieves, including Captain Kidd in 1701, were left for the tide to wash over them three times. It was, in Dickens’s time and probably long after, a sinister area of London where crime and criminals ruled.
I had no idea what the area was like today, but had a feeling I would soon find out.
Maria and I sat in the living room. She was now more composed, although she occasionally lapsed into quiet sobbing. She knew nothing more than what she’d told me on the phone.
“I assume they identified him from objects in his pockets,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Will you ...” I hesitated before completing my sentence. “Will you have to identify the body, Maria?”
She shook her head.
“Who will? Does he have family here in London?”
“Yes, a stepbrother.”
“Is he a writer, too?”
“No. He’s a talent agent.”
“Really? Does he handle big stars?”
“No. I mean, I really don’t know. I know very little about him. His name is David Simpson. Jason and he haven’t had much to do with each other. I suppose it would not be an overstatement to say that they dislike ... disliked each other.”
The next time I checked my watch, it was 4 A.M. “Would you like something to eat?” I asked. “I’ll order it up.”
She went through a mandatory “Oh, that isn’t necessary,” then quickly agreed that food would be welcome. After room service had delivered club sandwiches and coffee, I asked Maria about herself, her life, what she aspired to.
“I’m an actress,” she said.
“How wonderful. I have great respect for people possessing that kind of talent. Have you appeared in anything in London?”
“Oh no, nothing that impressive yet. I’ve been in some smaller productions. I toured Ireland and Wales two summers ago with a troupe.”
“That must have been fun.”
“It didn’t pay much, but I learned a lot.”
“You’re a beautiful young woman, Maria. Have you thought of films?”
She smiled. “Of course I have. Every actor or actress does. I’m afraid I haven’t made much headway in that direction, but I keep trying.”
“That’s the spirit. It’s so difficult making a living as a performer. Lord knows where most people find the perseverance and patience to continue.”
“Like writing,” she said.
“Yes, very much like writing. I was fortunate to have a loving and supportive husband who made sure the refrigerator had food in it while I tried to sell my stories.” I laughed. “I still have a wonderful drawer filled with rejection slips. I treasure those. Somehow they mean more than the letters I’ve received praising what I’ve done, and announcing a publication date for my newest book. Does that make sense?”
“I think so, although I would love to receive such a letter informing me that I’d been selected for a major role at the Old Vic.” She sat back and her eyes misted. “My God, Mrs. Fletcher, it just hit me full force that Jason will never receive such a letter. He was so talented, and it will never be recognized.” She started sobbing. I sat beside her and put my arms about her, pulled her to me and held her close, murmuring over and over, “I know, I know, I know.”
After she’d calmed down, I suggested we catch a couple of hours’ sleep before the sun came up. The couch was already made up. I gave her a spare nightgown, suggested that she try to get some sleep despite the fact that this horrible thing had happened, and went to the bedroom where I lay awake for an hour. Was it reasonable to assume that whoever killed Jason Harris also killed Marjorie Ainsworth? Possible, certainly, although as hard as I tried, I could not come up with a link. I also had to admit to myself that if pressed to name the person most likely to have murdered Marjorie, it would have been Jason, based on nothing but pure intuition. Now he was dead, a corpse dragged from the river Thames. Of course, that did not rule out the possibility that he had killed Marjorie, and had met his own fate for some reason totally unrelated.
I wondered whether Jane Portelaine had heard about Jason’s demise. She’d certainly dismissed him at the funeral, but that didn’t necessarily represent her true feelings. Was she disengaging from him for my benefit? Possibly. Her denial of friendship with Jason certainly hadn’t held water with me. Their relationship, on whatever level it was conducted, was blatantly self-evident during the weekend at Ainsworth Manor.
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” I said softly to myself as I rearranged the pillow beneath my head. Then I sat straight up. Wapping Wall. Yes, I knew it from reading Dickens, but I’d also been made aware of it more recently—in the past day or two, in fact.
I turned on the light and went through my purse until I found Jimmy Biggers’s business card. Sure enough, his office was located on Wapping Wall.
I returned to bed and, after my going through a series of relaxation exercises, beginning with my toes and ending with my eyes, sleep finally arrived.
Chapter Thirteen
I’d no sooner gotten up and dressed when the phone rang again. “Mornin’, Jess. Seth. Sleep well?”
“Good morning, Seth,” I replied, my head still foggy from lack of sleep.
“Mort and I are gettin’ ready to see the town. Thought you’d like to have breakfast with us.”
“Seth, I ...”
“You all right, Jess?”
“Yes, but I was up very late last night. Something has developed that I must take care of this morning.”
“That so? Can we be of help?”
“No, I don’t think so, but thank you for offering.” Then, without thinking, I proceeded to tell him about Jason Harris’s murder, and Maria Giacona sleeping in my living room.
“That sounds mighty serious, Jess. We’ll be right up.”
“No, Seth, I—”
“No arguments, Jessica Fletcher.” He hung up.
I went to the living room and wakened Maria. “You’ll have to get up now, Maria. Two male friends of mine are on their way here.”
She disappeared into the bathroom, and I hastily put the bed linens back in order and folded up the couch. It had no sooner snapped into place when there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and Seth and Morton walked in. Seth was dressed in a handsome tan poplin suit and wore his walking shoes. Mort was in his Cabot Cove sheriff’s uniform. He had changed shirts, however. Last night it was tan; this morning it was blue.
“I really don’t know what you can do,” I said. “Ms. Giacona is in the bathroom, and I intend to escort her to the police station.”
“Jessica, I know you are a woman who has traveled the world, and who feels very comfortable with crime, but there is no substitute for a professional talki
ng to a fellow professional,” Mort Metzger said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“If there is any trip to be made to the London police, I will make it with you. After all, I am a law enforcement officer. I speak their language. Trust me, Jessica. It’s a good thing I’m here.” Seth glanced at him and frowned. “That we’re here,” Morton added.
After Maria had finished getting dressed, I introduced her to my friends from Maine, and the four of us went downstairs for breakfast. Seth insisted upon putting the check on his room tab. When he saw the amount, and calculated pounds to U.S. dollars, he remarked, “I could feed a family of four for a month back in Cabot Cove for this money.”
“Hotel breakfast,” I said lightly. “Come on, let’s go.”
Like all London cab drivers, ours this morning was steeped in the history of the city. He pointed out to us the National Museum of Labour History, which, he said, memorialized the strivings of common men and women for a better life. He also pointed to a fascinating church, St. Paul’s Shadwell, that had been built to minister to sea captains, including Captain Cook.
“Everything’s so old,” Morton Metzger said, his tan Stetson pulled down low over his eyes as he peered through the taxi’s window.
Eventually, after our mini-tour of the Wapping district of London, we pulled up in front of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary, Thames Division, established in 1798 and responsible for patrolling fifty-four miles of the river with its thirty-three police boats.
I looked at Maria. “Are you up to this?” I asked.
She’d been extremely quiet the whole morning, saying virtually nothing. She looked at me with those huge brown eyes and forced a smile onto her pretty lips. “Yes, I suppose I have to be.”
A sergeant at the front desk asked who we were.
“My name is Jessica Fletcher, and these are my friends,” I said. “This young lady was a close personal friend of someone you found in the river last night, a young man by the name of Jason Harris.”
The sergeant licked his thumb and turned pages in a book. “Yes, he’s in the book. What’s your business?”
“Well,” I said, “this young lady, whose name is Maria Giacona, received the phone call at Mr. Harris’s flat last night. They were ... well, they were very close, and we felt that you would probably want her to personally identify the body.”
The sergeant glanced down at the page in front of him, looked up, and said, “That’s already been done.”
“It has?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Who, might I ask, identified the body?”
“Not for me to say.”
“Sergeant, is there a detective or an inspector with whom we could speak about this matter?”
“Any of you family?” the sergeant asked. He was a slight man with thin black hair; a wavy scar on his upper lip formed a horizontal S over his mouth.
“No, no family, but someone who was very close to the deceased. Please, Sergeant, can’t you show a little consideration for this young woman who has lost a loved one?”
He looked at each of us, then punched a button on a telephone console. “Inspector, there’s four people out here inquiring about the floater last night.” He listened to what the person on the other end of the line said, then hung up. “Okay, you can go back and see Inspector Bobby Half, down the hall, third door to the left.”
Three of us started toward the corridor, but Mort Metzger lingered. He put his hand across the desk and said, “Sheriff Metzger, Cabot Cove, Maine. Here on official business.”
The desk sergeant looked at Metzger’s hat, then his uniform. Morton’s hand continued to dangle over the desk. The S above the sergeant’s mouth wiggled. He limply shook Mort’s hand.
“Come on, Mort,” Seth said impatiently.
Unlike the desk sergeant, the inspector was a big man. He had the rugged, leathery look of a commercial fisherman, which, I reasoned, resulted from having spent his career squinting against the sun’s reflection off the water of the Thames. His hands were hamlike, calloused, and covered with scratches, nails grimy. His face was round, like a Halloween pumpkin, all the features barely protruding from the surface.
I went through my introduction again. This time, however, Morton insisted upon injecting himself into the middle of things. “Sheriff Metzger, Cabot Cove,” he said, shooting his hand at Inspector Half.
“That so?” Half said. “Where might Cabot Cove be?”
“Maine, Inspector,” I quickly said, moving to put myself between them. I told him of Maria’s relationship with Jason Harris and expressed surprise that the body had already been identified. I asked by whom.
“His half brother, stepbrother, something like that. Came in a few hours after we dragged him out of the river.”
“David Simpson,” I said.
“That was his name.”
“He was certain it was his stepbrother, Jason Harris ?” I asked.
“Hard to be certain about a body like that. His throat had been slit from ear to ear, it had, and his face pretty badly battered in. Frankly, I couldn’t tell him from Winston Churchill. A bloody mess, that’s what he was, and floating in the river didn’t help.”
“Then how could his stepbrother make a positive identification?”
“Who knows? He didn’t have any hesitation, and that was good enough for me.” He looked at Maria. “What were you, his girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to see the body?”
“I ... no, I suppose after what you’ve said, it would be better if I didn’t.” She started to cry.
“Inspector, it seems to me there are certain procedures here that should be followed,” Sheriff Metzger said with considerable profundity.
“You’re the sheriff of where?”
“Cabot Cove, Maine. You see, I flew here on behalf of Mrs. Fletcher, who I am sure you know, is one of the world’s most distinguished writers. She also was the person who discovered the body of Marjorie Ainsworth.”
Morton’s comment obviously meant something to the inspector. He smiled—actually, more of a simple parting of the lips—and extended his hand to me. “You’re the one I’ve been reading about. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Likewise,” I said.
Inspector Half seemed unsure of what to do next. He sat behind his desk and rolled his fingertips on its surface. “Happy to oblige you folks,” he said. “If you’d like to see the body, you’re welcome.”
Maria turned and walked to the door. “I don’t want to see him,” she said.
“Let’s go,” Seth Hazlitt said.
“I would like to see the body, Inspector,” I said.
“Jessica—”
“I would like to see the body.”
The Inspector stood. “I warn you, it isn’t a pretty sight.”
“I assure you you won’t have a fainter on your hands,” I said.
The Inspector and I went to a small morgue set up at the rear of the building. Through the window, the Thames rolled by. There was a considerable amount of commercial activity on it, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it had looked like two or three hundred years ago when pirates plied its waters. I didn’t have much time to contemplate history, however, because before I knew it, Inspector Half pulled out a body drawer from the wall and had flipped the end of a sheet that covered a corpse’s face.
I quickly turned away. It wasn’t recognizable as a human face, nothing but a gruesome mass of black flesh, no nose, no eyes, just a fetid blob. Look at it, Jessica, I told myself. You asked for this.
I forced myself to look once again at what the inspector had exposed, “Thank you,” I said. “That’s sufficient.”
By the time we reappeared in the lobby of the constabulary, word had gotten out who I was. Inspector Half personally escorted us to the front door. The desk sergeant asked timidly, “Could I have your signature for me kids, Mrs. Fletcher?”
Half gave him a stern look. “If she wou
ldn’t mind, Inspector,” the sergeant said.
I quickly scrawled my name on the piece of paper he held out, thanked them once again, and walked out onto the street.
“Why did you have to see the body?” Seth asked. “It’s nothing for a lady to see.”
“Seth, someone had to look at the body. Frankly, I was surprised you didn’t come with me. As a doctor, you’ve seen enough corpses.”
“Yes, but I couldn’t have been any help. I never met the young man when he was alive.”
“Well, I did.”
“Was it as terrible as he said it would be?” Maria asked.
I solemnly nodded and avoided her gaze.
“Who could have done such a thing?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Maria, but we’ll try to find out.”
“Must be near lunchtime,” Morton Metzger said. “I’m hungry.”
“It’s only eleven o’clock,” Seth said.
“My body is all turned around,” Morton said. “Jet lag, I guess. What say we find ourselves a place to get a snack, just to tide us over till lunchtime.”
I wasn’t particularly hungry after viewing the remains, but I wasn’t averse to a cup of tea. We looked down the length of the street and saw a pub at the far corner. “Let’s go there,” I said. “We can call a taxi after we eat.”
The pub was called the Red Feather. We looked through the window. It seemed pleasant enough, somewhat run down, but weren’t most neighborhood pubs? The others started in. I stepped back to take in the entire building, which was only two stories tall. Then I noticed a small sign next to the door:
JIMMY BIGGERS
PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS
We settled at a table in the main room and ordered Devonshire ham and Silton cheese sandwiches. I asked the owner where Mr. Biggers’s office was; he pointed to a set of stairs to the rear.
“Is he up there now?” I asked.
“Probably asleep. He works nights most times, and sleeps the day away.”
“Do you think he would mind being awakened by an old friend?”
Murder, She Wrote: Gin and Daggers Page 12