I Am the Only Running Footman (16 page)

“You're Colin Rees?”

“Colly, yes, sir.” The boy shook Jury's outstretched hand. He was thin, with legs like spindles and fingers like dry twigs.

“I'm Superintendent Jury. This is divisional Commander Macalvie.” The boy nodded at Macalvie with the solemnity of an acolyte. “This here's my brother, Jimmy. Say hello, Jimmy.”

That Jimmy, who was a stubbier version of Colly, wasn't going to say “hello” was made clear by the head turned to the floor as if the eyes meant to drill a hole through the divisional commander's shoes.

Colly Rees shrugged. “Jimmy never did talk much before Uncle Bub got after him about that lady and now he don't talk at all. Uncle Bub said we was to stay straight out of it. Well, he's not a proper uncle, he ain't, but —”

“Let's sit down, Colly. Jimmy?”

Jimmy stood like a stump, his eyes on Macalvie's shoes.

Colly, sitting half-on, half-off one of the leather benches that lined the lobby wall, said to Jury, pumping up his lungs for another go, “What happened was, Jimmy and me was inside the pub —”

“What were you and Jimmy doing
inside?
” asked Wiggins, looking a little fretful at the possibility of a violation of the licensing laws.

“Oh, well, we was just waiting in the kitchen. For Uncle Bub. He kind of caretakes the place and he was closing up. Me and Jimmy'd come from the fillums down in Curzon Street.”

Jury looked up at Macalvie, whose silence was being bought at the price of a stare that could have nailed Colly Rees to the wall. “Go on, then,” he said to Colly.

“It was Jimmy saw her. He was standing on a bench, looking out through the window at the rain.”

“Saw who?”

“This lady, sir. Well, that's what Jimmy says. Now me, I was near the side door that was still open. And I heard someone running. It must have been the same lady, sir.” He was crushing his hat up into a ball in his earnestness.

“You heard her. You didn't see her?”

Colly Rees shook his head impatiently and twisted his cap. “It was Jimmy done the seeing. Well, see, we neither of us dihn't think nothing of it, just somebody running in the rain. It was only after we was watching the telly and heard the news about that lady getting —” Colly jerked his scarf about his neck. Wiggins winced.

“Okay. Go on, Colly.”

“Nothing to be going on with, except it was a lady.”

“Jimmy?” said Jury to the little one's back. Jimmy Rees hadn't moved an inch since he'd taken up his station by Macalvie's shoes. And Macalvie, thought Jury, was making the
supreme sacrifice: he hadn't cuffed, slugged, or shouted at him.

Colly said: “Oh, you won't get nothing outta Jimmy, sir. Acts like he's deaf as a post when he wants to.”

“Didn't he describe this lady?”

“No. ‘The rainlady' he calls her.” He looked at his brother, whose head bobbed slightly like an apple on a branch, perhaps by way of confirmation.

Jury looked at Macalvie and back at Colly. “It was raining. Is that what he means?”

“I don't know, sir, do I? Whenever I ask him all he says is, ‘ 'Twas the rainlady.' He frowned at Jimmy's back, as if this runic message better not pop out inside the walls of New Scotland Yard. “And Aunt Nettie she talked to him something fierce about telling stories, and give him a box round the ears, and give Uncle Bub one, too, for letting us stop in that pub. Said she'd do us both proper if we was to say anything about that night.”

“I wouldn't worry about Aunt Nettie, Colly —”

“I don't guess you would. She ain't your aunt, is she? But she says she won't let us watch the telly or have no sweets. Jimmy just loves the telly, that's why he don't talk much. He'd as soon let everybody else do it. I asked him and asked him, dihn't I? And that's all he says. ‘ 'Twas the rainlady.' ”

Macalvie pried his eyes from the downturned head of Jimmy Rees and beamed them on his older brother. “You said you heard running footsteps. How'd you know it was a woman?”

“Well, I guess it had to be, dihn't it, if Jimmy here
saw
a lady?” he said reasonably.

“That's not what I asked: I asked what you
heard.
”

“She was running, sir. I mean, ‘
it
,' ” he added as a quick qualification. “ ‘It' was running, sir.”

Macalvie bestowed upon Colly a smile like splintered wood. “I mean, how could you tell she or he was running?”

With his tongue he made a clicking sound against the roof of his mouth: “It was them high heels. I never did know a man to wear them.”

“Running?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Walking fast, maybe.”

“Running.”

“Walking.”

Wiggins looked from Macalvie to first one boy and then the other. “Sir, does it make that much difference?”

Macalvie glared. “You decide if it's the truth first. You decide if it makes a difference second.” He turned back to Colly. “Let's say it was a woman,” he graciously allowed. “You wouldn't have heard the tap of the heels; the heels wouldn't have hit the ground if she'd been running. So she was walking fast.”

“Either way, she might have seen something, Macalvie.” Jury turned to Colly. “Okay, Colly, it was certainly brave of you to come here. Both you and Jimmy.”

Jimmy did not respond to pronouncements on heroism. He kept his eyes on the shoes.

“Sergeant Wiggins here can take you home. Where do you live?”

“Near Wapping Old Stairs, sir.”

Macalvie was tearing open another pack of gum. “I can do it,” he said.

“You?”

“Sure. Maybe get some sweets, some ice cream along the way. What do you say, kids?”

Colly said Jimmy liked chocolate flake; Jimmy did not confirm this.

Jury smiled and shook his head. There were moments when kids were just not going to open up — maybe later, but not now, chewing gum and chocolate flake notwithstanding. “Decent of you, Macalvie.”

“No problem. Maybe we can have a little talk about this lady.”

As if the voice were coming out of the floor and transmitted by the divisional commander's shoes, Jimmy said, “ 'Twas the rainlady.”

T
HE
house in Knightsbridge faced one of those small green parks surrounded by a wrought-iron fence whose gate could only be unlocked with a key. There was no one else up and down the street and no traffic. Jury often marveled at the silence of such neighborhoods; even traffic kept its distance. Several blocks away cars and buses moved along Sloane Street. Jury looked at the cars parked in front of the house: a white Lotus Elan, dropped, really, like a blossom between the long, black Jaguar and the sable brown Mercedes. As he waited, an elderly woman with two Labradors unlatched the gate of the park and went in.

He looked above the door, at the stained glass and the pediment into which had been carved a coat of arms, now faded. The woman who opened the door, probably a housekeeper, was short and curt. If she was surprised at seeing Jury's warrant card, she hid it well.

•  •  •

Hugh Winslow was a tall, spare man somewhere in his middle sixties who probably kept in shape by regular exercise
on tennis and squash courts. His eyes were very blue in the sunlamp-tan of his face, the skin tight over the cheekbones, the complexion like parchment. The body relaxed when he settled into the deep armchair in which he had been, apparently, reading; his manner was that of a man who had solved all of his problems some time back, and he looked at Jury as if whatever had brought police to his door was either inconsequential or a mistake altogether.

“What can I do for you, Superintendent? Would you care for a drink?” He started to get up.

“No, thanks. I'd just like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Winslow, having to do with a young lady who was murdered four nights ago near a pub called I Am the Only Running Footman. Do you know it?”

“No, I don't think I do.”

“Your brother-in-law frequented it.”

“I've visited David a few times in Shepherd Market, but I've not been to that pub —” He broke off.

“I didn't say Shepherd Market.”

Winslow fumbled for both cigarettes and words. “I was simply assuming—”

“I see. Perhaps you've talked with your wife or your brother-in-law?”

“Yes, that's it.”

You should have thought of that before I did, thought Jury. “David Marr was, so far as anyone knows, the last person to see Ivy Childess alive. He's in a spot. I wondered if you could tell me anything about him.”

“David and I see very little of one another, Superintendent. He comes here infrequently, usually when Ned is here.”

“Your son.”

“Yes.”

“And are you on good terms with him?”

Hugh Winslow's answer was oblique. “He used to stay
here when he came to London. Now he's taken rooms in Belgravia.”

“But how do you get on?”

“Not very well. He's excessively fond of his mother, though. They both are, Ned and David.” His smile was strained.

“What do you mean, ‘excessively'?”

Hugh Winslow stubbed out the cigarette and poured himself a whiskey. “I simply meant ‘extremely,' that's all. It's not unnatural, especially where Marion is concerned. She's the sort of woman who calls up strong feelings in men.”

“In you, Mr. Winslow?”

He looked at Jury over the rim of his glass. “I don't see what this has to do with — Miss Childess.”

Jury smiled. “Humor me.”

Winslow sighed. “Marion and I are somewhat — estranged. We have been ever since our daughter died.”

“I'm sorry about your daughter, Mr. Winslow.”

“Yes.” He got up and started to wander about the room aimlessly, poking up the fire, moving to the high window. Jury was reminded of Marion Winslow. “It happened just out there,” he said, nodding toward the street. “The man responsible wasn't sentenced — it wasn't, I suppose, his fault. He seemed, actually, a decent chap. Wells, or something, was his name.”

“Miles Wells. I've checked the accident report. Ten o'clock at night, wasn't it?”

Abstractedly, Hugh nodded, continued his own train of thought. “Yes, I suppose so. It's difficult being thought perfect, you know; that's the way they seemed to think about Phoebe. It must have left her very little room to breathe. Like other children, she had a temper. She was only a little girl, not a holy icon. But everything seemed to change, with that.”

“Until her death, you and your wife were quite happy, were you?”

“I'd say so, yes.”

“Yet, there were other women, Mr. Winslow.”

Hugh Winslow had returned to his chair by the fire. It was a dark leather wing chair, and again Jury was reminded of that meeting with his wife. An odd feeling, like déjà vu.

Hugh's smile was a little chilly. “Well, that's true. You might not understand it, but Marion is about the most perfect woman I've ever known —”

“And it was difficult for you to live with perfection.”

He nodded. “But if it's David you've come about, you'd be better off asking Marion.” He started to pour himself another drink.

Hugh Winslow seemed as isolated as the privileged strollers in the park across the street; it would need a key to get in.

“I have talked with her; it isn't David Marr I wanted to ask you about, particularly. It's Ivy Childess.”

The decanter froze in midair. Then he put it down, replaced the stopper, and said, “I really don't know what you mean.” It was a poor effort to regain his composure. The key had turned; the gate was open.

“I mean that you knew Ivy Childess.”

“I met her once. It was here, at a small cocktail party.”

“And you'd met her since, hadn't you? At the Running Footman.”

He looked over at the dying fire. Then he turned and said, “Yes.”

“But why see her at the pub your brother-in-law often went to?” Jury thought he knew the answer to that.

And it was confirmed when Winslow said it had been Ivy's idea; she liked the place. “But they knew nothing about Ivy and me. Marion certainly didn't.”

“Are you sure she didn't suspect?”

“Yes. If she had—”

“If she had, she might have divorced you, is that it?”

“Ivy kept up her relationship with David simply so no one would suspect.”

Perhaps he really believed that. “Was she holding out for marriage? Did she threaten to make a scene?” Jury knew he was right from the unhappy look Hugh Winslow gave him. “Which is perhaps a price you weren't prepared to pay. Your wife has a great deal of money in her own right.”

“I am not exactly a pauper, Superintendent. Oh, you're right, in a way. I wasn't prepared to pay the price. I love Marion; I had no intention of marrying Ivy.”

Jury was silent for a moment. His mind had turned to the talk with Stella Broome.
Flash cars and flash men.
Like Ivy Childess, in a way. “Mr. Winslow, about ten months ago there was a young woman murdered in a wood off the road between Exeter and Bristol. Her name was Sheila Broome. Mean anything to you?”

Hugh Winslow seemed relieved that they had left the subject of Ivy Childess. “No, no, I've never heard the name.”

“The end of February. The twenty-ninth, it was.”

He tried to laugh, but it caught in his throat. “Superintendent, you seem to be asking me where I was.”

Jury smiled. “That's right.”

Winslow's voice frosted over. “I believe I was out of the country. I have offices in Paris. But I can certainly check my calendar, although I doubt that particular appointment would be noted, were I going to Devon.”

“Check it anyway, Mr. Winslow. Is that your Jaguar outside?”