“I . . . well, no. I believe I know Grace better than Seaingham himself.” MacQuade cleared his throat and cast Melrose such a look as would have given the game away completely, if nothing else thus far had done.
• • •
Melrose had retreated to the bookcases and a volume of French poetry, not to read, but to watch Frederick Parmenger and Bea Sleight. She had muscled out Vivian, who had managed to get Parmenger to put down his book. Vivian now sailed straight by Melrose — apparently on the way to someone more interesting.
“Turning your blue blood red, is she, sweetie?” said Vivian, well into her second brandy.
Parmenger was doing a marvelous job of ignoring Beatrice Sleight once again. Having displaced Vivian, who seemed to interest Parmenger, Beatrice was now draping herself more or less about his chair, thinking the proximity would make him lose his place. Parmenger didn’t even look up from his page as he said something to her that detached her quite quickly from the chair arm. Melrose smiled. Rude bastard, he supposed, but likable for some reason . . . perhaps for his very refusal to —
“He’s doing my portrait, in case you’re wondering why he’s putting up with us.”
The voice interrupted his reflections. Grace Seaingham had come back from her prayers. She was one of those, apparently, in whose presence it was dangerous to think. “I can’t imagine anyone would call it ‘putting up with’ you, Mrs. Seaingham.”
The laugh was as pure as the voice. “Come now, Mr. Plant. You’re no flatterer.”
“I know. That’s why I said it.”
Pleased, she colored slightly. There was altogether too little color in that pale face, and the tinge of pink against white seemed almost to have drawn itself from the Christmas rose she had plucked from the centerpiece, upsetting its delicate balance. It had been a pleasing, childlike gesture of gratitude toward Susan Assingham for bringing the flowers. A gesture typical of Grace Seaingham, he was sure. If there were any troubled waters, she would be the one to anoint them with oil.
It was very difficult, he thought, looking at her, to avoid this ecclesiastical turn of thought. On the other hand, as with her taking the rose, she reminded him of nothing so much as one of Rackham’s fairies, beating delicate wings over Kew Gardens, a sprite so transparent one could see through her. “I’d like to see this portrait. Is it finished?”
“Yes. It was Charles’s idea,” she added, with a slight shrug, as if to say she was not guilty of such self-indulgence. “Charles thinks the world of him. He’s not a portraitist, ordinarily. I’ve no idea how Charles talked him into it.”
The devil she hadn’t. Seaingham was simply not a man one refused. He’d got MacQuade out of that garret, hadn’t he? Lord, he’d even got Vivian here, and Vivian never put herself forward.
She excused herself when Susan Assington beckoned. As she moved toward her other guests, he wondered if she were simply too good to live.
TWELVE
1
“ACONITE,” said Cullen. “The Queen Mother of poisons. Had your lunch?” he asked, passing the autopsy report across the table to Jury like a plate of food.
Jury had found Cullen and Trimm in a tiny restaurant in old Washington called the Geordie Nosh. Trimm was shoveling in huge portions of meat and vegetables. Possibly, because it was after three o’clock and late for lunch, there were no other diners.
“I ate on the train, thanks.” A pleasant-looking woman came over to the table. Jury asked for coffee.
“Ah, man, that’s not food. How’s London?”
“The same. Tell me more.”
Cullen did so around mouthfuls of food. “Deadly stuff. Medical examiner says as little as a fiftieth of a gram could kill a man. Greeks used to smear it on javelins and darts.” He paused. “Ever see I, Claudius? It’s how one a the owld buggers got it —”
“I don’t mean its history,” said Jury, ignoring Trimm’s look, which might itself have been smeared with the stuff.
Cullen went on. “Numbness, tingling, burning, heart fibrillation — those are the symptoms, the M.E. said. In other words, she’d’ve known something was wrong, only didn’t have time to do anything about it — and the stuff can work fast. One socko dose —” Cullen drove a fist into Trimm’s shoulder. The constable went on eating with great concentration, working his way right round his plate — mash, stewed steak, vegetables — as if all consciousness of the world beyond his plate were gone.
Jury was reading the medical examiner’s report. “Could this stuff have been ingested accidentally?”
Cullen shook his head. “No way. Comes from the root of monkshood. Looks kind of like turnips, or something.”
Trimm was in the process of eating his mashed turnips or swede and didn’t miss a beat.
“Wolfsbane, some call it. Wolves dig it up in winter when they’ve no food.” With a fist wrapped round his fork, he sawed away at his meat, which was obviously tender enough he could have cut it with his finger. Releasing his aggressions, perhaps. He stuffed a large bite of steak in his mouth and pointed to the report with his fork.
“I seem to remember some case or other — can’t this stuff be turned into a crystalline powder?”
Mouth full, Cullen nodded. “Aye, it could. Could even kill you if it got into a cut.”
Jury pushed the sugar bowl toward him. “Looks like sugar?”
Cullen frowned. “Don’t know. Sort of sweetish taste, the M.E. said.”
“Helen Minton said she’d occasionally give some visitor tea.”
“This visitor puts it in the sugar bowl? Well, that’d take care of a few American tourists.” He chewed reflectively. “Ever see American football? Washington Redskins, like?”
“I wasn’t thinking of the bowl of sugar.”
The woman came back to the table and took dessert orders. Trimm had sopped up all of the rich gravy with a piece of bread. He laid his knife and fork neatly across his plate, that job finished, and ordered the apple crumble. When Jury refused, Cullen said, “Ah, you got to have dessert, man. Everything in here’s fresh-made. Best food for miles, and cheap, too. Did you locate this painter cousin?”
Jury shook his head. “I’ve got someone working on it. He’s an elusive chap.” Jury went back to the report. “Death was immediate?”
“With this aconite, it could have been minutes; could have been hours, depending on the dose.”
“Do you know a pub called Jerusalem Inn?”
Trimm plucked a toothpick from its holder and belched. “Place owt abacka beyont? Spinneyton way. Nowt but fights an lock-ins there.”
“There’s a kid there named Robin Lyte.”
Trimm shrugged. “Means nowt t’me,” he said, prepared to be as unhelpful as possible.
Jury turned to Cullen. “Is the name ‘Lyte’ common around these parts?”
“Not that I know.” He gave a short laugh. “If you’re looking for whoever killed Helen Minton at that place, I could believe it. Only all around Durham there’s been more snow than here. Spinneyton’s been snowed in, from what I hear.” Cullen looked gloomy. “Match with Sunderland was called off too.”
“No one could have made it to Washington in the snow, then, that what you’re saying?”
“Not unless they skied here,” said Cullen, catching himself before he actually laughed. “Think it was someone there, do you?”
Jury shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. There’s a hotel near here called the Margate —”
“Sheels,” said Trimm. “Soonderland coast.” He punched his thumb behind him as if the coast of Sunderland were on the curb.
“South Shields,” said Cullen, translating. “I know the hotel. Kinda run down; used to be a nice place. Oh, your sergeant called. Wiggins, that the name? Man kept sneezing, I couldn’t make it out, quite. You’re to call Scotland Yard.”
“Thanks. You going back to the station?”
“Um. Come on Trimm; not got all day, we haven’t.”
Constable Trimm spooned up the las
t of Cullen’s custard and let the spoon clatter into the bowl. “Doon,” he said with the satisfaction of a man who’s completed a trying task.
2
“SHE was pregnant,” said Wiggins. The crackling sound might have been a bad connection, or just Wiggins removing the cellophane from another box of cough drops. “Of course, the school couldn’t keep her, said the headmistress. The old headmistress, that is. Took me a long time to track her down. Place is near the sea, too.” There was a pause during which Jury was meant to commiserate.
Jury didn’t. He could almost hear Wiggins’s sinuses whining. They seemed to have taken on a life of their own.
Sergeant Wiggins went resolutely on. “According to Maureen — oh, I went back to the Minton house for a bit of a chat. I know you didn’t tell me to —”
Jury smiled. He bet Wiggins went back. “No, but I’m glad you did. I think Maureen knows more than she’s telling.”
“She did; she knew Helen Minton was pregnant. Of course, she didn’t want to say, thought it would be disloyal. But since I’d found out anyway, I guess she thought it wouldn’t hurt to confirm it.”
“What else?”
“Parmenger, her uncle, nearly went berserk. In a muck sweat he was about the whole thing.”
Jury was silent for a moment. “Seems something of an overreaction unless he was a real Puritan. Unless —”
Wiggins seemed to be breathtakingly silent.
“Wiggins? What else did she tell you?”
Wiggins cleared his throat. “I’m not supposed to say anything —”
Jury held the cool receiver against his forehead for a moment to keep from yelling into it. Then he said, “I work for Scotland Yard. So you won’t feel too disloyal to Maureen, I’ll help you out. She thinks the father was Frederick Parmenger, right?”
“Sorry, sir. That’s right. She’s pretty sure he was the father.”
“That certainly would explain it better. Still . . . did he believe some old wives’ tale idea of cousins intermingling?”
“Don’t know. And we located Parmenger, sir.”
Jury was lighting a cigarette. “Thank God for that. He certainly keeps himself to himself. Where is he?”
“Place called Spinney Abbey — it’s up near where you are. About ten miles from Durham.”
The match nearly burnt Jury’s fingers. “Spinney Abbey? Is there a Spinneyton on that map in your mind?”
“That’s right, sir. Owned by a man named — just a tic — Charles Seaingham. He writes things —”
“I know. He’s one of our leading critics. Go on.”
“Well, it seems Frederick Parmenger went up there weeks ago to do some painting. Got a commission from this Seaingham to paint the wife’s portrait.”
Jury was silent, thinking, for some moments.
“Sir?”
“Thanks, Wiggins. You did a great job.”
Ordinarily, any compliment from Jury would have cleared Wiggins’s sinuses in one second flat. But he seemed more concerned with imminent tragedy. “You want me up there, sir?” The tone clearly implied no burning desire to join his superior.
“Sure.”
Silence. “It’s Newcastle-upon-Tyne.”
“I know that.”
“Coal country. You know that old saying, ‘coals to Newcastle.’ ” Wiggins’s feigned laughter strangled him. “On the train? You know how I hate train stations.” Since Jury was saying nothing encouraging, Wiggins added wistfully, “As I’m not on duty tomorrow, I was going with Maureen to Stevenage to visit her brother.”
“Okay. Since I’m full of the Christmas spirit, you can take the train from Stevenage.” Jury let Wiggins rattle on about smoke, coal and grime, as if the sergeant were himself a toy train on a track, and then said, “Right. Well, I’ll expect you tomorrow. Take a fast train.”
“You got to be careful of those. The suction’s so bad it can pull you right onto the tracks.”
“Stand behind the yellow line.”
THIRTEEN
JURY looked down the strand to the Margate Hotel — a long, white, blank-faced building — luminous on the wet, gull-starred sands like the skeleton of a ship picked clean by the tide where snowdunes mounded against a rocky promontory. There were no signs of life, except out there beyond the rocks, a man and woman walking, arms wrapped round one another, both turned to black shadows by the sun setting over the sea.
On the Margate’s porch, scattered rocking chairs creaked with wind or the ghosts of old guests. The porch had been deserted by the living. One could hardly expect a seaside resort to be a hive of activity in midwinter, he supposed; but there was something about this hotel that made him wonder if even its summer days were gone. Hard to imagine colorful bathers out there, the high-pitched squeals of children with sand pails, the bright bathing caps.
Only the fact that the large front door stood open told him that the place was not closed for the season. And then came other signs: raised voices from a point at the end of the shadowed hall; the opening and shutting of drawers from a room behind the front desk; and when Jury looked to his left, through a door ajar, the figures of two or three elderly people sitting still as effigies. All he saw of one woman was the twined gray braid above the top of a chair. Another must have been asleep, head drooping. And then there was the fluttery movement of a hand as it turned the pages of a magazine.
A girl came out of the back room with a sheaf of folders and stopped suddenly, surprised, apparently, at winter custom. She herself must have been the youngest thing around, in her late twenties, pretty in a sullen sort of way. Probably thought it wasn’t worth going to the trouble of paint and powder around here. But now her eyes raked over Jury and then strayed to a piece of broken mirror propped in a corner of the desk. She bit her lip and ran her free hand over her hair. “Wanting a room, were you?” She slipped a registration card in a little holder and shoved it toward him. Her smile was both flirtatious and ruined by bad teeth.
Jury let her hang onto her illusion for a moment that he might be a customer. “Not many people this time of year, are there?”
Disgust was written all over her petulant face. “Aye. And the ones that come, they’re these old-age pensioners. They all got something the matter with them, but Mrs. Krimp — that’s the owner — let’s ’em live here on the cheap.” She shrugged thin-bladed shoulders. “Might as well . . . no other custom.” From her bag, resting on the counter, she drew a wand of lipstick and started making up. Then she got out comb and nail varnish as if Jury had stopped by to pick her up for a night on the town. She settled down for a natter. “Anyway, gives me a job, it does, so why should I complain? Though I’m a trained steno, just try to get a job up here. I can tell by the way you talk you don’t come from here.”
“I’m from London.”
“London.” It might have been Atlantis. “Never been there. Aren’t you lucky?”
Jury smiled. “It’s got its drawbacks. No sea air, for one thing.”
“In the summer I guess it’s not all that bad. There’s a few places in Shields that’s a bit of fun.” She left it to Jury to imagine what sort of fun she had in mind. “Then there’s places in Washington New Town, in that new shopping center. There’s a disco there called the Silver Spur that’s got rock groups. Ever been?” Jury shook his head. ‘Don’t like disco music, that it? Kiss of Death’s on tonight.”
“What?”
“Oh, go on. Kiss of Death. That’s one of the best groups around. You’re not that old.”
“Unfortunately, I am.”
Cupping her chin in her hands and smiling her unseductive smile she said, “You don’t look it. Anyway, I like —”
Older men. He finished it for her. “As a matter of fact, I don’t want a room. I want information.”
It was as if they’d had a long-standing affair and he’d just thrown her over. Beneath the paint and powder, her face hardened into sullen lines. “What sort?”
Jury took out the snapshot of Helen Mint
on. “This woman: she’s been here a few times, I think. You recognize her?”
But the girl didn’t even look at the picture. Her eyes narrowed. “You police, or what?”
“Yes.” Jury laid his card on the desk, which she frowned over. “Scotland Yard?” What he had lost in the romantic arena, he had gained in the professional. Her face was all wonder at the idea that the Margate Hotel had awakened the interest of New Scotland Yard. She looked down at the picture, started to shake her head, and then looked again. “Oh, aye. Been here two or three times, maybe.”
“When was the last time she was here?”
“Don’t remember exactly — maybe a week ago.”
“How long did she stay?”
She shrugged. “Couple of days.”
“Was she friendly with any of the guests?”
“You must be daft. Who’s to get friendly with? Wait a bit, now, I’m a liar. . . . She did seem to talk to Miss Dunsany sometimes. But mostly she just liked to go out and walk up and down the beach. I guess she liked the sea air.” She leaned across the reception desk, and there was a sharp glitter like broken glass in her otherwise empty eyes. “Why do police want to know about her?”
“Did you ever see her with a man? I mean, did she ever come to the hotel with one?”
“No, not when I was here. You never get that sort of thing here, not in this broken-down place. Any man ever brought me to a place like this for a weekend —”
Jury interrupted before she could get into her own amorous adventures. “So she came alone and pretty much stopped here alone and took long walks. Didn’t you think it a little odd?”
She shrugged. “Beats me why anyone that young — I mean young compared to them —” She nodded toward the parlor. “ — would ever come to the Margate.”
She unscrewed her small bottle of nail varnish and started painting her little fingernail blood-red. Since Jury wasn’t going to make free with any salacious information about Helen Minton, she had lost interest in her, alive or dead.
“You said that she was friendly with one of your other guests.”
Jerusalem Inn Page 12