“That’s going pretty far.”
“Well, I guess I see her point. If I’m obsessed, I’m obsessed.”
“It’s not exactly as if you’re possessed by demons.” Jury smiled.
Tommy let his stick fall into his other hand and sighted along it like a rifle. “You know how I get in the billiard room? It’s during the tours. We have tours see, mostly of the gardens, which are quite fabulous. I put on an old coat and hat and glasses. The guides wouldn’t know me from Adam anyway. And when the last tour’s on, I just hang round the edge of it, slip in the closet and wait for them to leave. I can get in an hour or so’s practice that way. No one else ever goes in the games room. Then I just slip out the french door and go round. No one’s figured out why the french door isn’t locked some mornings.”
“My God, what determination.” Jury laughed.
• • •
Somehow, Robbie had managed a safety shot that landed the cue ball up against the cushion. Melrose chalked his cue tip. If he didn’t miscue — and he probably would — he could pot the black —
“Get your chin down,” said Tommy, standing behind him.
Melrose straightened and sighed. “I don’t need an audience.”
Jury smiled. “If you’re going in for championship play, you’ve got to get used to it. Hurry up; I’ve got to get to Durham.”
“Then let me concentrate.”
All he needed now — and there they were — was a pair of brown eyes just at cushion level staring at him.
“Go away,” said Melrose.
Chrissie did not move, nor did her eyes.
There was nothing for it, except to try. He lapped his bridge fingers on the edge of the table —
“Straighten them out. You can’t make that bridge for a cushion shot.”
Oh, damn them all! He felt as if his arm were frozen in place, and he was rather ashamed of himself for wanting to show off to Whittaker, who, once again, told him to get his chin down to cue level.
“And stop looking at the pocket. Look at the ball.”
How did he know Melrose had let his eye stray to the pocket? He looked from the cue ball to the black, a perfect shot if he didn’t miscue. Just as he drew the que back and thrust it forward, the small voice said,
“It’d be easier just to hit the black one.”
He cursed. The tip of the cue slipped right off the top of the white ball, and she, apparently having accomplished her purpose of making him miscue, went off, carrying Alice.
Jury smiled. Tommy sympathized. Melrose stared at the white cue ball and the black object ball. He straighted up and looked at the empty door Chrissie had just gone through. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It really was Beatrice Sleight.”
Maybe he couldn’t play snooker, but he could get a thrill by wiping that smile off Jury’s face.
2
THEY were standing outside beside Jury’s police-issue Granada, Melrose hunched down against the cold in his fisherman’s sweater. “It was done so no one would think Beatrice Sleight was the intended victim. A mantle of confusion thrown over the whole thing — quite literally: Grace Seaingham’s white cape. The murderer potted the black with the white. It’s quite simple. Except of course, getting old Bea to cooperate. That must have taken some pretty fancy play.”
Jury was leaning against the car door, looking toward the windows of the inn. “You don’t need fancy plays with a shotgun in your hands.”
“You mean someone got Beatrice down to the solarium and told her to put on the cape.”
“I imagine it was done a bit more smoothly than that, but, essentially, yes.”
“So you think I’m right?”
“Dead right. It makes a good deal more sense than explaining the otherwise strange behavior of Beatrice Sleight, surely the last person to go to chapel — and in Grace Seaingham’s cape. So someone is going to great lengths to keep police from looking for connections between these people and Beatrice Sleight.”
Melrose pulled his sleeves down to cover his hands. The sky had turned a miraculous and dazzling blue; sun was melting snow; the wind had calmed. “Nobody liked her. And if the lady of the house wasn’t the intended victim . . . well, Grace Seaingham had a hell of a good reason for murder.”
Jury shook his head.
“Oh, come on. You believe she’s so good, you’re overlooking the obvious.”
“It’s not that,” said Jury. “Even if she wanted Beatrice Sleight dead, what reason would she have for killing Helen Minton?”
Melrose stopped the little jig he was doing to keep warm. “Who says it had to be the same person?”
Jury tossed his cigarette butt onto the hard ground. “I do.” He looked up at the marble-hard blue of a cloudless sky. “A lot of poisons are very unreliable — they might just make you sick. Which is how aconite can act on the system, if one doesn’t get a fatal dose. The murderer apparently felt that with Helen there was time to take a chance, at least, on when she’d get that fatal dose, so the poison could have been put in her medicine by someone visiting Old Hall and death might have looked like a result of her heart problem; then Helen Minton found out something about Robin Lyte. But it doesn’t get us very far, does it?”
“If he’s Parmenger’s son —?”
“Um. Parmenger’s the other reason I think the same person killed both of them. Parmenger knew them both — Helen and Beatrice. He’s the connection.”
“Could Helen Minton have threatened his reputation by telling the world?”
“It doesn’t seem in character for either of them. For her to tell, or for him to mind. Parmenger’s above it all. Who else have we got? Lady St. Leger? A little hard to believe you’d shoot a commoner because she hated the peerage —”
“There’s always Lady Ardry,” said Melrose, hopefully.
Jury went on: “William MacQuade? Sort of a dark horse, that one. He’s certainly a survivor, but I see no motive.”
“He couldn’t stand Beatrice Sleight. She loved making snappy little comments about ‘literary’ writers. What about the Assingtons? They seem to be standing out on the edge of this whole thing. No motive at all. He’s just the Great Physician and she seemed all impressed by the trash Beatrice Sleight wrote. Proper featherbrain. Just the sort of murderer Elizabeth Onions would have running about in The Third Pigeon.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I don’t think it’s fair to have mental incompetents as murderers do you? They’re not responsible.”
Jury climbed into the car. “I’m going to Durham. I’ll take Grace, you take Susan.” He smiled and started the engine.
“Thanks. I’d sooner take cyanide.” The car idled as Jury looked past him for a long moment. “What are you staring at?” Plant turned to look at the tiny windows. Chrissie had her face plump up against the glass.
“A pair of brown eyes,” said Jury, waving to her, before he drove away.
Melrose saw the eyes quickly disappear below the sill where the melting snow dripped and ran like rain.
TWENTY-ONE
1
ON A day like this, seen from a distance and through the fog, Durham Cathedral appeared to float magically above the peninsula where the River Wear made its sharp, hairpin turn.
The chapel in which Grace Seaingham knelt was off to the right. How long could a woman stay on her knees? Jury wondered. It wasn’t a long time standing, but on your knees, it was like forever.
Jury studied the geometrical quarry-markings on the columns, and watched her. Finally, she rose, made her way across the empty pew, and came out upon the aisle. Her glance downcast, she didn’t see Jury until she was a few feet away from him. When she did, she caught the collar of her white wool coat about her neck as if Jury were a stiff, unwelcome wind. She did not smile.
“Sorry, Mrs. Seaingham. I’m not shadowing you.” His smile felt artificial, as it usually did in her presence. “You said you’d be here, and I wanted to tell you something. . . . Look, I’m sure you’d rathe
r talk somewhere else.”
Her own smile made him feel cheated; of what, he didn’t know. “I don’t mind. Do you? If we’re talking about death —” She gave him a slight shrug. “ — why not here?” With one of her elegant, Edwardian gestures, she indicated they might walk about. They might have been going on a tour of Spinney Abbey.
Jury felt, here in the cathedral, at a disadvantage. Though why he should want an advantage over Grace Seaingham he wasn’t sure. He turned to look at her and saw that serene profile, the pale hair. She had stopped before the fresco of St. Cuthbert. “Freddie Parmenger should see this. Only he doesn’t much like churches. Did you know the monks carried St. Cuthbert’s bones about for hundreds of years? First from Lindisfarne, and then Chester-le-Street. It’s not far from here. This was the final resting place.” Her face still turned toward the fresco, she asked him, “What was it you wanted to tell me?”
“It wasn’t you, Mrs. Seaingham. I made a mistake there. The intended victim really was Beatrice Sleight.”
He felt her indrawn breath almost as if she were robbing him of oxygen. The whole massive Norman structure made him feel like a mountain-climber, a clumsy back-packer, out of his element, as he looked up at the rib vaulting, the transverse arches. He felt a sort of lack, a need to be reassured, like some fractious kid. He felt ridiculous.
And it was obviously in his own mind; it was nothing she was doing or saying, for her sudden turn on him was merely surprise and relief. “But why in heaven’s name would Bea have on my cape?”
“Whoever killed her wanted everyone to think it was you they meant . . . ” He didn’t finish. “Just how the killer got her to wear the cape and go outside, I’m not sure. Perhaps some plausible story of having a little ‘talk’ where they couldn’t be seen — in the chapel, maybe —”
Her eyes were luminous, whether with relief or the beginning of tears, Jury couldn’t tell. “Then it wasn’t —” Abruptly she stopped, turned her head toward the painting of St. Cuthbert.
“Wasn’t what? Or who?”
She didn’t answer.
“Your husband, you mean. I doubt very much that it was your husband in any event.”
“You don’t think he killed her?”
Jury didn’t answer this. He only said, “If she was his —”
Her smile was chilly. “Go on, say it. Mistress. Might he have been concerned that Beatrice was going to tell me?” Her voice was taut.
“Blackmail?”
“Charles didn’t know I knew.”
Jury let that go by. It was her first suspicion that was more interesting. “You were relieved at first that someone wasn’t trying to kill you. Again, your husband?”
“No, of course not.” She said it too quickly.
“Mrs. Seaingham, when you found out about the murder of Beatrice Sleight, you assumed it might be you someone wanted to kill. No one else did, except police.” And Melrose Plant, but he didn’t add that.
“Well — the cape . . . ”
Her tone wasn’t convincing. “You turned out to be right. But I think your assumption was a little strange at the time. Why do you always wear white?”
She was taken aback by the question. “Why . . . I don’t know; I suppose I never thought much about it.” She looked down at the coat.
“You shouldn’t. It only increases the pallor; it accentuates how pale you are. You should wear colors. Pastels, something like that. It’s obvious you don’t want people to think you’re ill. And you are ill, aren’t you?”
Perfectly recovered and utterly cool, she said, “I’m dying, actually.”
“Of what?”
Only a small muscle twitched in her cheek as she shook her head, “I don’t know. Neither does Sir George. He can’t make it out. The tests show nothing.”
“You’re lying, Grace. There haven’t been any tests, have there? You won’t let him make them.”
The porcelain skin did take on color at that as she gave him a long look. “If you already knew that —”
“It’s because you’re afraid it’s your husband, isn’t it? That’s the way some poisons work. Small doses, just a bit at a time. Arsenic. Aconite could, except you’d have known immediately something was wrong. There’s numbness, tingling —”
“Don’t be stupid! How can you imagine —” The voice was strained.
Jury put his hand beneath her arm. “What you’ve been thinking about Charles isn’t true.”
She obviously did not know what to say to this and reverted to the subject of the saint on the wall. Jury thought she looked almost luminous against the dark background of stone, the ghost who never stops searching. “He didn’t like women, you know, St. Cuthbert. That chapel I was in, the Galilee Chapel it’s called, was built for women because he didn’t want them approaching his shrine. He didn’t like women at all.”
Jury smiled. “Nobody’s perfect. Let’s go outside.”
• • •
The princess had come down from entrapment in the tower to have a peek out of the front door at a world that she hoped was real. The coil of hair, silvery in the sunlight, had loosened and strands escaped, feathering her temples. In her cheeks, there was some real color, and her skin looked almost amber in the watery light trapped in the close, girded on three sides by the buildings used by Durham University.
With the defenses pretty well stripped away and even the mannerisms changed — she was chewing at a corner of her mouth, taking off the pale lipstick she wore — she put Jury in mind of a pretty, nervous young girl. The long strap of her purse slung over her shoulder, her arms were tightly folded across her breast and she was telling Jury about her bouts with nausea, her refusal to eat more than would barely sustain life, her careful monitoring of whatever she drank. “Do you like old movies?”
“When I get a chance to watch.”
“Remember Suspicion? I’ve felt like Joan Fontaine — you know, when Cary Grant is walking up the steps with that glass of milk.” Her smile was genuine; the violence of her bout with tears coming out of the cathedral seeming to have rinsed her face of all traces of its old anxiety. “Weren’t people afraid it really was him, the husband? But, of course, no one could really think they’d let Cary Grant be guilty. Because he was so charming; because he was Cary Grant.” Sadly, she looked at Jury. “My husband isn’t Cary Grant.”
“No. But he’s not trying to poison you.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Simple. He loves you.”
Her look, for her, was almost coy. “Now, just how do you know that?”
“For one thing, he said as much. For another, he didn’t love Beatrice Sleight. For yet another, there’s the way he looks at you. And, absolute proof: I can’t imagine a man like your husband, whose study must be absolutely holy to him, letting a painter in there and you in there to sit for a picture, unless it was terribly important to him.”
She looked at him with something like wonder, a vulnerable, youthful look, and then she laughed. “You’re either a wonderful detective or an awful romantic.”
He smiled. “Oh, I’m both.” He took her arm. “Come on; let’s have lunch.”
• • •
In a tiny, luncheon-jammed restaurant in the middle of old Durham they ate some marvelous food — mushrooms as drunk as lords in winy, cheese-crusted dish; a casserole whose main constituent was Old Peculier; Stilton and gooseberry tart. Jury made sure that Grace ate everything, and she didn’t need much coaxing. While they ate, she told him about herself and Charles: how she had simply been hoping the “thing” with Bea was a sort of middle-aged-fling business — she laughed — old middle-age; how she had always wanted children, but it had never happened. “And yet, there was Reeni — Tommy’s mother — who thought children were a bit of a bore.” She ate her cheese and tart and grew quiet for a moment. “I used to watch Tommy with her. He adored her; she was so beautiful, but no character, really. Neither Irene nor Richard had much of it, to tell the truth. They were fun, charm
ing, rich, and —” She shrugged and changed the subject. “There’s an old junk shop near here I like to root round in. It’s where I found this” — she raised the pendant she always wore — “and later found out how much it was worth. The poor, old man had no idea: he sold it for a pound. It’s worth a thousand.” She let the necklace fall. “I was wondering, could we go there for a few minutes?”
“Sure.” Jury paid the bill and they left, walking up the cobbled street toward her shop.
“I’m glad to hear you’re not perfect, Grace.”
“Meaning?”
“The junk dealer. You took him for a thousand quid.” Jury laughed.
She stopped dead. “Really, Mr. Jury. I went back and gave him the money.”
“Oh, hell. And I was just beginning to think there was hope for you.”
She smiled broadly. “Meaning — I split the difference with him. I’m not perfect, after all.”
“You could have fooled me.”
They both laughed.
But as they entered the secondhand shop, Jury did not feel really happy at all. If her husband wasn’t trying to poison Grace Seaingham, who was?
TWENTY-TWO
1
“WHAT do you think, Ruthven?” asked Melrose. His butler paused in the act of brushing Melrose’s jacket and appeared to be contemplating a universal enigma.
“Had you noticed, sir, how Mr. Marchbanks decanted the claret last evening?”
The circumstances of last night might have provoked some other response, he thought, from anyone else. But given Ruthven’s unyielding concern with the proprieties, Melrose supposed he oughtn’t to be surprised. “Didn’t let it breathe, or something?” Melrose was scrutinizing himself before a cheval mirror, a scrutiny that had nothing to do with vanity, but rather with seeking out signs of decay and premature death, and wondering, as he often did lately, if he couldn’t trap some unwilling beauty into sharing Ardry End. He sighed, thinking of Polly Praed and her idiot letter. (“Your Grace??”) “I was thinking, Ruthven, more along the lines of what happened to Miss Beatrice Sleight, not about the butlerian maladroitness of Marchbanks.”
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