She seemed simply nonplussed that Jury should think they’d be on anything else. “It’ll kill him,” she said simply.
That did surprise Jury. It did not seem to have occurred to Helen Minton herself that her existence, or lack of it, would go far toward killing anybody. “Go on,” he said.
“With what?”
Maureen was nothing if not literal. He smiled at her. It was a smile that had often turned a woman’s literal mind into more imaginative channels. And Maureen was as softhearted as the featherweight sponge cake she had served with the tea. Wiggins was working on his second slice.
“Apparently, you think Frederick Parmenger is — was — very fond of his cousin.”
“I do, yes.” She poured herself more tea, and Jury too, and rocked and reminisced. From the time Helen had come there they’d been close as two peas in a pod. Find one, find the other. “Until she went off to school, I mean. He was teaching her to paint, or trying to. She never had the knack, much. But him, he was a genius, even from when he was small. I don’t mean I was here then. That’s what Mrs. Petit — she was cook — told me. ‘He’s a genius.’ ”
Whether Maureen or Mrs. Petit understood what it meant didn’t seem to matter; the word was enough; it hung, even now, in the air like the smell of good cooking.
“There’s lots of pictures of his upstairs. You should see them.”
“I’d like to see the house, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Nothing, her look said, would be too much trouble for him. Sitting there, with Jury talking and Wiggins eating his cake, Maureen had relaxed considerably. Nor had it seemed to occur to her as odd that a Superintendent from New Scotland Yard would be inquiring into the death of her mistress. To Maureen, sudden death meant police.
When Jury touched again on the elder Parmenger her face locked up again.
Jury thought he knew the key to that particular door. “You see, Maureen, I knew Helen Minton.”
2
SHE sat up straight. Jury was no longer the policeman in some routine investigation, but like some sailor who’d come from the sea with the remarkable tale that in a foreign port, he’d come upon her long-lost relative. “It was a chance meeting. I didn’t know her all that well.”
“Aye, she was that nice, she was.” She fixed Jury with worried eyes. “Why are you asking questions, though?” It had apparently only now occurred to her that a Scotland Yard Superintendent wouldn’t be showing up on the doorstep because a woman had died a natural death.
Jury’s answer was indirect. “I wanted to know about her relations with her family — her uncle, her cousin. Or anyone who might possibly have had a grudge against her.” This time when Wiggins discreetly produced his notebook, Jury didn’t sign him to put it back.
“ ‘Grudge’?” Maureen looked from one to the other, saw they were serious, gave a strained sort of laugh. “It almost sounds like you think she was —” She couldn’t get the word out.
Jury did it for her. “Murdered? There’s always that possibility, yes.”
“That’s daft.” Her little laugh was far less certain than her words. “There was no one that’d wish Helen any harm.” Friendship outweighed formality in her forgetting the “Miss.” “She didn’t have enemies; she’d hardly any friends, even. I mean, she didn’t go out much, nor have people in.”
“She had her cousin.”
“Mr. Frederick? That’s different.”
“Do you know where he is? We haven’t been able to turn him up. The Northumbria police would like to talk to him.”
She shook her head. “He’s often away. He goes to France and places like that.” Maureen did not appear to approve of such places.
“When Helen was living here — after her parents died, she got along with Edward Parmenger, did she?”
Maureen didn’t answer; she was watching Wiggins scratch away with his pen and quite clearly resented it. Her gaze made Wiggins look up and he laid his notebook aside. Then he said, “Did you make the cake, miss? It’s the best I ever ate. I’m careful what I eat, especially sweets.”
Hiding a smile, Jury looked away. As a loyal, plodding, and energetic note-taker, Wiggins was invaluable. Lately, he’d been polishing up his charm.
This time it seemed to work, for Maureen was quite happy to replenish his plate, and with his mouth full, Wiggins took up where Jury had left off: “This Mr. Edward Parmenger — I sort of got the idea he wasn’t too fond of the girl. What do you think about that?”
Sergeants didn’t bother her as much as superintendents, apparently — at least not those who were having their third helping of her cake — and she answered: “Like I said, he seemed a bit cold towards her. But then he was a hard man, to tell the truth.”
“Like that with everybody, you mean?” asked Wiggins, pressing the tongs of his fork down on cake crumbs.
“No. No, not exactly.”
“Well, then, like what, miss?”
“He didn’t like her. Mrs. Petit was always saying how he didn’t.”
“That’s the cook, is it? Or was?”
“Yes. Mrs. Petit — she’s dead now — felt sorry for Miss Helen.”
Jury smoked and stared at the fire and waited for Wiggins to ask the question, Then why did Parmenger take her in?
“Could I have another cup of tea, do you think?” The sergeant’s desire to charm answers out of witnesses had its limits.
As Maureen poured the last of the pot, Jury asked, “How old was she? Where was this school?”
“In Devon. It was very expensive.” If Edward Parmenger had been a bit tight-fisted with his love, he wasn’t with his money, her tone suggested. “About fifteen, I guess. She was there about a year, maybe two. Then Mr. Edward took her out.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was only kitchen help then. And though Mrs. Petit talked about things, I never did hear. . . . Well, I never thought it was odd, nor anything.”
Yes, you did, thought Jury. “You didn’t sense some sort of — scandal, maybe?”
“No, sir, I did not!”
Jury had to smile. She was so much younger than the old family retainer — the Mrs. Petit sort, or Melrose Plant’s butler, Ruthven. Maureen, he thought, should be walking out, as they used to say, with some young man. She even had him thinking in Victorian terms. From the way Wiggins was looking at her, Jury was inclined to think she might make him forget his cornucopia of medicants.
“I’m sure if anything — to put it bluntly, Maureen, if your mistress was murdered, you’d surely want the person brought to justice.” He was using Victorian terms himself.
Her back grew ramrod straight. “It’s certain I would. But I can’t —”
Jury waited, but Maureen was silent. “It sounds as if Edward Parmenger took Helen in without wanting to. Did he feel some obligation?”
“Well, I should hope that if my mum were to die —” The girl crossed herself. “ — someone would take me in. I don’t, now, have many relations left. An old auntie in County Clare.” She blushed. The Maureens of this world stuck to business and didn’t get off onto their own problems. She cleared her throat and went on in a softer voice. “I only mean that, yes, it was a sort of obligation.” She turned sad eyes on Jury. “Helen’s da, he killed himself, they said. And her mum died later, I guess of a broken heart.”
And the Maureens would also be inclined to romanticize. “So Edward Parmenger took her in, yet didn’t seem to like doing it?” Jury leaned over the table, putting his hand on her arm. “Look, Maureen, I know you must feel loyal to the family. But what I’m thinking is that Edward Parmenger farmed out Helen Minton — sent her to that expensive school — because he didn’t want her around his own son. They were very close and they were cousins. And she was a lovely girl. Then Helen’s father was not a person of very strong character . . . ” He waited, not precisely clamping his hand on her arm, but not easing up on it either. Wiggins was dividing his time between his note-taking and givin
g Jury uncharacteristic dark looks.
She sighed, started to poke the fire up, couldn’t reach the log with the poker, not with Jury holding her arm, and gave up. “He was Mr. Edward’s younger brother and drank too much and gambled. And he worked for Mr. Edward and — how do you say it — ‘cooked the books.’ ”
Wiggins asked, “So what you’re saying’s that Miss Minton’s Uncle Edward was kind of taking it out on her?”
“It looked that way. And, too, he really liked his sister-in-law. Well, who wouldn’t? Helen — I mean, Miss Helen, was like her. Looked like her, too. She was a quiet sort. And it just killed Helen’s mother when it all came out about her husband, and there was Mr. Edward threatening to go to law and —” Maureen spread her hands, hopelessly.
Jury said, “So when it ended so tragically, maybe he was salving his conscience by taking in Helen. But he didn’t want her about. So he sent her away to school.” It wasn’t enough, Jury thought.
Seeing her face turn away, Jury felt sorry for her. It was as if some invisible hands had loosened the collar at her throat, the pins in her hair — it had probably been happening all the way through this interview and Jury had only just noticed — for the years dropped away together with the formality. A strand of dark hair now drooped about her cheek, the comb had come loose in the back. Looking into the firelight, she said, “Ah, the pore girl.”
“He wanted his son Frederick out of harm’s way.”
She shook her head wearily. “I’m being that honest with you. I don’t know.”
It might not have been enough for Jury, but he knew it was quite enough for Maureen Littleton. He got up. Wiggins did so too, reluctantly. Besides looking at Maureen, he had been toasting his feet and forgotten his pad and pen. “Thanks, Maureen. You’ve helped a great deal. We can see ourselves out.”
Immediately, the hair, the white collar, and the set of the mouth got tucked properly in place. The uniform was straightened and a Certainly not, sir, although unspoken, hung in the air.
• • •
It was a beautiful house, the shadows in the dimly lit hall hanging like the dark velvet draperies at the high windows in the drawing room they passed before reaching the front door. There was a fire ablaze in there too, and Jury saw the small head of a dachshund rise, its nose testing the air for unfamiliar smells.
“It’s hers,” said Maureen. They walked into the room, and the little dog clambered up heavily, as if its weight or its sorrow were too much for its legs. It had been lying on a scrap of rug by the fire and in front of a leather wing chair. “It won’t leave that place. I try taking it down to my parlor to get it to lie there by the fire. But as soon as I’m not watching, it’ll just struggle up the stairs and come back. She always sat here after dinner. My, but she did set store by that old dog.” Maureen looked at the dachshund helplessly. “He’s nearly blind. He’s going to die soon.” She said it with the certainty of a doctor pronouncing sentence.
• • •
They stood on the front stoop in the dark, Maureen with her arms wrapped around her uncloaked arms, Wiggins telling her to get back inside before she caught her death, Jury looking off across the street at the blank frontage of the Church of Scotland. It was cream-washed and in the night seemed sickly in its moonlit square. He almost resented its lack of ornament. No embroidery, no stenciling of stained glass, just this sickroom pallor. Surely, he thought, with perverse annoyance, the God of the Scots could do better than that. Presbyterians, he thought, and then wondered with some shame if he were right. Were all Scots Presbyterians? Oughtn’t he to know? He was furious with himself because he thought any police Superintendent ought at least to know that. He sure as hell didn’t know anything else that was coming in very useful. It was a point that he felt he had to settle right now and Wiggins knew all that sort of stuff. “Wiggins!”
Sergeant Wiggins turned, startled, from Maureen, with whom he had (Jury had heard their conversation filtered through his own anger) been discussing Christmas dinners. “Sir?”
“Nothing.”
Wiggins resumed his talk with Maureen. “Well, of course, we police never know. But if I’m here Christmas . . . it’d be nice. I’m not a fancy eater, I should tell you. . . . ”
Jury wondered who was inviting whom to a meal, and he smiled a little, his annoyance with God somewhat assuaged.
“ . . . plaice and chips, that’s the ticket with me,” continued Wiggins. “I know it sounds awful dull, but —”
“And mushy peas,” said Maureen, brightly.
Jury still kept his eye on the church, their debate over the relative merits of whole versus mushy peas again falling away like grace. Just one lousy stained-glass window, is that too much? Do You have to take it all away? How do You expect people to believe in that pale, sick-looking blank front? Before he realized he was saying it, and still with his back to them, he said, “She was like a sister to you.”
The conversation stopped. He heard the intake of Maureen’s breath, and turned, even more ashamed. He hadn’t meant to say it aloud. It had been in his mind all the while they had talked. Both girls the same age, servant and orphan, pretty and kind and serious. And, he was sure, lonely. “Sorry,” said Jury, feeling completely inadequate, turning back to look at the Church of Scotland with renewed anger. See what You’ve done!
He felt Maureen’s hand, delicate as the snow drifting down, on his arm, and all of Ireland lodged in her voice now. “It’s the truth you’re saying; she was. But I swear I don’t know what happened. If you’re right, and someone did — this awful thing, well, I like to think I’m a good Catholic, but I don’t think I’d wait for God to take vengeance. No, I don’t know but what I’d kill the killer meself. And that’s the truth.”
Jury stood staring at the Church of Scotland and thinking things over and growing the more angry because his anger was subsiding. But not his sadness. This doorstep reminded him too much of that other one down the path from the village green in Washington.
“Who the hell,” he said, clearing his throat, “eats mushy peas?”
NINE
1
“OF COURSE, I don’t celebrate Christmas,” said Mrs. Wasserman, as she poured Jury another cup of strong coffee. “You know me . . . ” And she smiled and shrugged as if her own religion had been bought by caprice during a day’s shopping. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t give presents to others, you know, who do observe it.”
They were sitting in Mrs. Wasserman’s basement flat drinking coffee and eating cake. He was tired after the long visit to Eaton Place; still, he had not been sorry when she had noticed him coming up the walk. Jury did not want to go up the two flights to his empty flat. Maybe he should adopt Cyril before Racer threw the cat out of the window some day; Mrs. Wasserman would love feeding him, as she did Jury, whenever she got the chance.
She had been astonished to find him back, for he had told her he was spending the holiday with his cousin in Newcastle. Astonished and pleased. She depended on Jury for protection. Bolts, locks, chains, bars — many of which he’d helped her install — were no match for a Scotland Yard Superintendent living above you, sitting across from you.
For some moments she had been rocking away, talking about the Christmas season; now she leaned toward him, dropping her voice to a whisper, as if the bolts and bars could keep out not only muggers, but Jehovah: “To tell the truth, I like your Christmas.” Jury might have been the one who had thought up the holiday. “All the decorations, the colored lights, to see the Prince turning on the lights of the big tree . . . And Selfridge’s! Have you seen the windows?” Jury shook his head. “You should see the windows, I know you’re busy, but you should take a minute. They’ve done the whole Christmas story, one window to the next, and you walk around the outside and there it is. The Wise Men and everything.”
Jury smiled. “They have the Wise Men in Peter Jones. They’re really getting around.”
Mrs. Wasserman dismissed Peter Jones with a wave of her hand. “Ah!
That store . . . Just because it’s in Sloane Square . . . No, no. You’ve got to see Selfridge’s. Such windows, Mr. Jury.”
He thought of the Wise Men and Maureen and the Church of Scotland.
“Excuse me, but you look a little down. It’s this work you do. Here, have some more cake.”
He shook his head, smiling slightly. “I guess it is the work. Sorry.”
“Sorry? To me you apologize?” In mock-horror, she spread her fingers across her large, black-clad bosom. Her hair was as black as the dress and drawn back as it always was into a bun, so tightly pinned he thought it must make her head ache. “To me he apologizes,” she said to the empty chair beside Jury, as to a third visitor. She poured more coffee. “After all you’ve done for me, you don’t apologize for being down, no.”
“Thanks. But I haven’t really done that much. Just helped out with putting in some window grilles and a deadbolt lock.”
She replaced the coffee pot and addressed the invisible visitor again. “Just a lock, he says.” Mrs. Wasserman smiled and shook her head sadly, as if Jury were simpleminded. “You have helped me considerable, ever since you came here. Wasn’t I afraid even to go on the Underground?” She sipped her coffee. “And one day you’ll find Him, I know,” she said, complacently, brushing cake crumbs from her broad lap.
With the talk of decorated windows, it took Jury a moment to sort out the Him, and realize it wasn’t God she hoped he would find, but her relentless pursuer, the man who she claimed for years had been following her. Jury knew there was no such man.
But he was real to Mrs. Wasserman, some image burned into her brain from the Old War — that’s the way she spoke of the Second World War — in the way people do, making distinctions between what was real and meaningful and what was now, today, merely trendy. Vietnam, to Mrs. Wasserman, was a stupid, wasteful skirmish. None of them got their heads screwed on, she had said of America, of all of those responsible. But it wasn’t the Old War. In Jury she felt she had a confederate, despite the difference in their ages. He had been six, she had been a young woman during the Old War. What she had been forced to endure — she had been in Poland then — he had never asked and she had not told him, nothing beyond a few pictures from her album, but those certainly not of the war. Pictures of the family, and no details. Whatever the source of the Pursuer, he was something that had rooted in her mind and thrived on darkness, like the plant there in the corner that seldom saw light. She kept the curtains drawn, the chains fastened, the bolt thrown.
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