Help the Poor Struggler (14 page)

“You've solved it, Macalvie?” Neal's tone was wry. “I sure as hell hope so. Because I don't seem to be getting anywhere. Our chief constable is a little upset. He keeps getting these calls from frightened parents.”

Macalvie leaned back in his chair, hands laced behind his head. He gave Neal his laser-look. “That's too bad. Give Dorset my blessing and ask your chief if he'll grant me another twenty-four hours.”

Neal smiled and dumped the rest of his coffee in the sink. “I'll do it straightaway. In the meantime, I better go back and look for the Riley boy's killer. Don't you think?”

Solemnly, Macalvie nodded. “It'd be a great kindness to Dorset police.”

Neal left, shaking his head.

Macalvie started talking as if it hadn't been Neal, but Neal's wraith that had just floated out the door, part of a spirit-world set to drive him mad, since the forces of the real world couldn't dent him.

“Take the name of the pub where this string of killings started, the Five Alls: the sign is usually divided so you see these five figures representing authority. ‘I pray for all'— that'd be a priest or other symbol of the church; ‘I plead for all' — barrister or solicitor; ‘I fight for all' — military, right? ‘I rule all' — a lot of positions fit that; and ‘I take all.' Interesting, that figure. Sometimes the Five Alls sign says, ‘I pay for all,' meaning king, queen, and country. Other times the fifth figure is John Bull, who ‘pays for all.' But in our Dorchester Five Alls, the fifth figure is the Devil, who ‘takes all.' Like lives. Now, we've got George-bloody-Thorne, solicitor; we've got Davey White's granddad, vicar —”

Wiggins interrupted. “But you're forgetting Simon Riley's father is only a butcher.”

Macalvie smiled slightly. “True, but his wife's got some family connection with a Q.C. who's running for Parliament — ‘I rule for all,' in other words. That's two figures left: the soldier and the Devil. The Devil's the killer. So that leaves one more murder.” He looked at Jury. “Your expression tells me you don't like my theory. Disaster.” Macalvie held out his hand to Wiggins, who rolled a lozenge into it.

“I'm sure you noticed the portrait of Jessica Ashcroft's father.”

“Of course. He was a Grenadier. Military.” Macalvie opened the top drawer of a desk and took out a pint of whiskey and a smudged glass. “I'm going to quit this lousy job, I swear to God. Go to America. The booze is cheaper.” He looked up at the ceiling as if the geography of the United States were etched there, uncapped the bottle, took a drink, and handed the glass to Wiggins.

“We might have come to the same conclusion by different routes,” said Jury. “That is, if you're thinking of Jessica Ashcroft.”

“Yeah. I'm also thinking of Sam Waterhouse. He sat in a cell for nearly nineteen years, knowing he was railroaded.” Macalvie shook his head. “I still say he's not the type. He wasn't once and he
still
isn't. Are you reading your fortune in the bottom of that glass, Wiggins, or are you going to pass it along?”

“Waterhouse would be a dead cert, given
your
reasoning. Hatred of authority. And he got out just before these murders were committed.”

Macalvie lapped his hands round the glass and studied the ceiling. “I still don't think it's Sam.”

“What about Robert Ashcroft?”

Macalvie stopped looking at the ceiling and took his feet off his desk. “Meaning?”

“Four million pounds. And being gone just over the days of the murders. No one in the present Ashcroft household had ever seen him before he returned from Australia. I'm going up to London to talk to the Ashcroft solicitor. But even if Ashcroft
is
the real brother, there's still —”

Macalvie interrupted. “The Campbell Soup Kid's money. Right?”

Jury nodded.

“Then why the other killings? A blind?”

Jury nodded again.

Macalvie shook his head as if he were trying to clear it, poured some more whiskey in the glass and handed it to Jury. “What's his story about taking BritRail to London?”

“That he thought he'd be buying a Roller advertised in the
Times.”

“I'll have somebody checking the paper on that one, to see if there
was
a car. And check to see if Ashcroft really went to see it. But let's assume — just for the sake of the argument —”

“I'm not trying to argue, Macalvie.” Jury handed the whiskey glass to Wiggins, knowing he wouldn't drink from the same ditch. “I just think Jessica Ashcroft's in trouble.”

Macalvie went on as if Jury hadn't interrupted. “— that Ashcroft's guilty. Ask again — why didn't he drive up to London? He stayed at the Ritz. The doorman would have noticed any of those cars of Ashcroft coming in and out. He couldn't have used his own cars. They'd attract too much attention. It's got to be either train, bus, rented car. No, renting's too risky. Probably train. Early morning train from Exeter to London on the tenth, and he has a talk with the stationmaster to make sure he's remembered
leaving
the area. He checks into the Ritz. Train back to Dorchester — it's only a three-hour trip — six hours coming and going. Or he could even have got off in Dorchester, killed the Riley boy, then gone on to London. On the twelfth, to Waterloo Station, late night train to Exeter — no, not Exeter. The stationmaster might remember him. Axminster. What about Axminster?”

Wiggins shook his head. “Why would he go to all of that trouble? Going back and forth? If he wants to put us on the trail of a psychopath —?”

“Because he's got to be
out
of the area the killings are done in,” said Macalvie.

“Then what does he do,” said Jury, “after he gets off your Axminster train? He can't
walk
to Wynchcoombe. How does he get there? And how does he get to Lyme Regis?”

“Not the train, then. So he doesn't rent a car. He
buys
one in London. Something fast and pricey that's already M.O.T.'d. Buys it from one of the sleazy grafters all over London. They don't give a damn what name you tell them. That gives Ashcroft the thirteenth to do his interviewing of tutors and allows her to pack up and they go back to Ashcroft on the fifteenth.” He looked at Jury. “So what do you think?”

“Do you care?”

“Not particularly. We'll circulate pictures round the used-car
lots. Pictures. But I don't want to breath on Ashcroft hard enough to make him suspicious.” Jury's theory had now become his. “I can't send a police photographer.”

“We've got a photographer,” said Jury.

Macalvie frowned. “Like who?”

“Molly Singer.”

Macalvie smiled. “You mean Mary Mulvanney.” He sat back and put his feet on his desk.

“Okay, just for the sake of argument, I'll go along with you. Let's say she
is
Mary Mulvanney. Given Sam Waterhouse, given Angela Thorne's father, that certainly adds up to a lot of coincidences. Too many. There's a connection between the murders. The old one and these new ones. The same theory that applies to Waterhouse might apply to her. Revenge. Though the killing of the Riley boy and Davey White isn't clear. Anyway, we get Molly into Ashcroft as a photographer for some classy magazine about cars or the country gentleman. We can certainly work up some bona fides.”

Macalvie took his feet off the desk and frowned. “Jury, you're saying you want to put your chief suspect in the
same house
with Jessica Ashcroft?”

“Who says she's my ‘chief suspect'? And what about Waterhouse? Anyway, Jessica's living there right now with another suspect. Her uncle. If Molly Singer were guilty, she'd hardly try anything in the house on a photography assignment.”

“Mary Mulvanney.” From his wallet, Macalvie drew a snapshot. It was a smiling trio of a woman, a little girl, and an older girl with pale skin and dark hair who was the smiling center of the three.

Jury shook his head. “I don't see any more resemblance to Molly Singer than to any dark-haired girl.”

Macalvie returned the picture to his wallet.

That's what got Jury. He'd been carrying it around for twenty years. “You'll never get over that fifteen-year-old kid
walking into your office and telling you the law's scum, police are scum, and especially
you're
scum. She really got to you, didn't she?”

Macalvie didn't answer for a moment. “No, Jury. She really got to
you.
Let's go talk to her, if that's the only way to convince you who she is.”

“A little browbeating?”

“Who,
me?”

“Just let me handle the photography business, will you? After a chat with you she might not feel like cooperating with police.”

Macalvie had made himself at home in the chair by the fire, having picked up the black cat and dumped it on the floor. The cat sat like lead at his feet, its tail twitching.

They had appeared unannounced, Macalvie overriding Jury's objections. It had taken enough persuasion on Jury's part to keep the chief superintendent from dragging Molly Singer into the Lyme Regis station.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Molly, looking from Macalvie to Jury.

“The hell you don't,” Macalvie said, working the old Macalvie magic. “Twenty years ago your mother, Rose, was murdered in a little place called Clerihew Marsh —”

“I've never heard of it,” said Molly.

“In Dartmoor, maybe forty miles from here.”

Her face was a mask, unreadable; her body rigid, untouchable. But the emotion she was holding back seemed forcibly to spread through the room. Jury felt simultaneously drawn to her and held off.

What interested him was that Macalvie seemed totally unaffected. It wasn't that he was an unfeeling man; he just didn't seem bothered by the electricity in the air.

“Would you like to see my birth certificate to prove who I am?”

“Love to.” He popped a hard candy in his mouth and leaned toward her. “Papers don't mean sod-all. You could bring in the priest who officiated at your baptism and all the rest you've made your weekly confession to — you
are
a Catholic, I suppose — and it wouldn't matter. You're still Mary Mulvanney. What the hell are you doing in Lyme?”

“Must I get a solicitor?”

Macalvie smiled slightly. “Of course
Singer
could be your married name. Is it?”

“No.”

“Why don't you finish telling us just what happened in Clerihew?”

The question surprised Jury. It clearly surprised Molly Singer. And as he asked the question, he had taken the snapshot from his wallet and handed it to her.

She wouldn't take it, so he dropped it in her lap.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“You really overwork that line, you know?”

Molly looked at Jury almost hopefully, as if he might untangle the web Macalvie was weaving. Jury said nothing, even though, strictly speaking, he had precedence. This was Dorset, not Devon. But there was a chemistry in the room, a delicate balance that he might upset if he intervened.

“Sam Waterhouse is out — but I expect you read about that.”

“I've never heard of him.” Her voice was flat; her expression bland.

Macalvie had played two aces in a row right off the bottom of the deck — showing her that picture and then suddenly bringing up Sam Waterhouse. Macalvie, for all of his surprises, didn't use cheap ones. He grew serious. Unless that too was a trick. Maybe Macalvie's pack didn't have a bottom. “Let's go over that story of what happened on the Cobb again.”

Molly Singer merely shook her head. Still she hadn't touched the picture. “Why? You wouldn't believe it.”

He slid down in the chair, crossed one leg over the other, and said, “You'd be surprised.” He sounded almost friendly.

She told him. It was the same story she'd told Jury. And she had no explanation. Impulse, she said. To Jury, her story had the form of a dream . . . this woman out on those rocks, finding a dead child, carrying back the dog . . .

He saw Macalvie look at him, reading the expression. His smile was taut and his message clear:
Minder.

Molly was talking again: “It's the truth, what I told you. I know you don't have sympathy for what might loosely be called ‘neurosis' —”

“Try me.”

He sounded perfectly sincere. But what did that mean? “When you walked into the hotel dining room, you recognized me, didn't you?”

“I never saw you before that day,” she said.

“Well, I sure as hell knew you: the kid who walked into my office twenty years ago and took the place to pieces. You've got to watch that temper, Mary — excuse me,
Molly
— or someday you'll wind up killing somebody.”

She stared at him. “So now I'm the chief suspect.” She looked down at the picture and shook her head. “It's a poor picture. How could anyone say this girl and I are the same person?”

“I'm not going by the picture and you damned well know it.” He reached out his hand for the snapshot.

“What motive would I ever have for killing Angela Thorne?”

“I'm no psychiatrist —”

Bitterly, she said, “That's obvious.”

“— but I imagine it'd be very hard to think of your baby sister writing on the wall in her mother's blood. Hard going to that nut-house and seeing her catatonic. And what you screamed at me twenty years ago was that no matter how
long it took you'd get your revenge — against police, judges, God — anything responsible for not finding the real killer. Sam Waterhouse was a friend of yours. And you wouldn't look kindly on anyone who helped put him away. George Thorne. The kid's father.”