The Dirty Duck (19 page)

“Perhaps what was mentioned before: she might have been uncomfortably persistent.”

Cholmondeley's look was scornful, as if to say Jury should be able to come up with something better than that.

“Or maybe she knew something that might be even more embarrassing than this commonplace love affair. I'm still wondering why a man like you—a
sophisticated and experienced traveler, and an Englishman—would want to join up with a group of Americans on a tour.”

“I don't see why that bothers you.”

“It does. According to your passport, you've been to the Continent five times already this year. To Amsterdam.”

“What's odd in that? I've told you I'm a dealer in precious stones. I have to go on buying trips.”

“I should think you'd be a bit sick of Amsterdam. This tour stops there for an entire week. And you could hardly be looking for someone to show you round London. Or Stratford, for that matter. You could go there anytime. I should think, if you wanted a holiday, you'd choose the Mediterranean, the Amalfi coast, the Côte d'Azur—something a bit different.”

“Superintendent, you take
your
holiday on the Amalfi coast or wherever bloody well suits you. And leave me to take mine.” Cholmondeley stuck his cigar in his mouth and reached toward his hip pocket. Apparently, he thought it was settling-up time.

“I would do, except I never seem to get a holiday. But when I do I don't make it a busman's holiday, like you.”

Cholmondeley merely shook his head, extracted a very large note from a money clip and dropped it on the table.

Jury opened his own notebook. “The Amsterdam police have had a few talks with the gentleman you do business with, Paul VanDerness. Mr. VanDerness runs a legitimate shop. Most of the time. But on one or two occasions there's been some suspicion of black-marketing in diamonds.”

“I don't believe it, but even were it true, what's that to do with me?”

“I was just thinking, if one is on tour, as opposed to traveling alone, how the luggage is done. Honeycutt would have taken care of that particular drudgery for everyone. Just collected it all in a big heap and plunked it down for customs. A mountain of luggage. The Farradays probably had fifteen cases among them. Seeing as how it's only a bunch of Americans—and, for the most part, holiday-makers—the customs people might not even inspect it. Or just give it a cursory examination. If I wanted to take out diamonds illegally, I might join up with a tour.”

Cholmondeley knocked ash from his cigar with the little finger on which winked one of those diamonds in which he dealt, and said, “You'd better be careful, Superintendent. I have nothing more to say, except that my solicitors won't like this at all.”

Jury said nothing. He knew that Cholmondeley would not be able to resist his own further defense.

Pocketing his cigar case, Cholmondeley went on. “So you've come up
with the ridiculous notion that I told Amelia Farraday I was
smuggling diamonds
and that she threatened—oh, really, it's all too absurd.”

Jury still said nothing.

“And what about the Bracegirdle woman? And Amelia's daughter? Was I going about indiscriminately ‘slashing'—as the newspapers love to say—in order to keep them all quiet? Do you imagine they
all
knew about my alleged black-marketeering? It's unfortunate for me that Amelia isn't here to put an end to this nonsense.”

After a while Jury broke his silence. “It's more unfortunate for Amelia.”

 • • • 

“Do you really think that, sir?” asked Wiggins, when they were in the car and on their way back to Brown's Hotel.

“About the smuggling? I don't know. Never be able to prove it, I suppose. I took out a search warrant, but the men found nothing at all in his digs. Not that I thought they would. Cholmondeley would have rid himself of whatever contraband he brought over when they got back to London the first time. Or maybe even in Paris—I don't know. Shook him up a bit, though.”

“Would
it provide enough of a motive?”

“Frankly, I doubt it. The lack of motive is the worst thing about this case. Where are we without one? It might as
well
be the Yorkshire Slasher we're dealing with. Indiscriminate killing. Only we know it isn't indiscriminate.” They drove in silence for a moment along Piccadilly. “When we get to the hotel, you see Cyclamen Dew and I'll see the aunt. Haven't met her, have you?” When Wiggins shook his head, Jury said, “I'll bet it'd clear your sinuses up in a quick hurry. What was that pill you took back there? It's a new one.”

Wiggins seemed pleased that Jury was keeping tabs on Wiggins's prescriptions. “A bit of high blood pressure. Got a diastolic ten points higher than it ought to be.”

“Too bad. A pill a day, is it? My cousin's got high blood pressure.”

Making the turn up Albemarle Street, Wiggins was only too happy to fill Jury in. It was the first really new illness that the sergeant had managed to contract in several years. Until now, he had had to settle for refining the old. “Doctor says it's the job, you know. We're under too much strain, we are, and it can't help but show. Now, you, well, I don't think you're quite so sensitive as me—” When Jury turned his head away quickly to study the glass facade of the Roller showrooms, Wiggins apparently felt he had leveled an unintended smart at his superior, and quickly added:
“Not
to suggest you're calloused, or anything like that. I only meant that I, well,
I've always
felt
things so much more than most people. It's bound to have to come out some way, isn't it? We really sacrifice ourselves to this job, don't we?”

Wiggins should have a good time with Cyclamen Dew—a high old martyrdom for both of them.

“. . . and it's such a terrible nuisance, having to take pills for something that's got no symptoms. I mean, when a person's in such otherwise good health.”

Jury looked at him in open-mouthed amazement. But Wiggins's face was perfectly straight. Almost holy.

W
hen Jury walked into the paneled lounge of Brown's Hotel, Lady Violet Dew was pouring something from a small flask into her cup of tea and reading a
Hustler.

She looked up over the rim of the magazine and shoved up her glasses. “I only need them for reading,” she said, slapping the magazine shut. She smiled—as well as she could, given the absence today of both uppers and downers—and looked at Jury appreciatively.

He had been similarly appraised the day before, when he had collided briefly with Lady Dew as the Honeysuckle Tours coach was readying itself for the jaunt between Stratford and London.

“Questions again. I heard all about it; the hotel's all agog; chambermaid's nearly scared out of her pants. Sex crimes are always the worst, aren't they? Probably because at bottom that's what everyone wants. Sit down, sit down.” She patted the cretonne invitingly. “Have a cuppa? I'm buying.”

Jury did a wonderful imitation of a man completely bushed who was all prepared to relax. He even loosened his tie. “I could use one, that's for certain.”

“Bet you don't get much chance just to relax and have a bit of a natter, do you? Got to get home to the little wife and kiddies, I expect.”

His smile was quite brilliant in the semidark of the bar. “No wife and no kiddies.”

She gave him a playful slap on the arm. “
Go
on. A good-looker like you? Well, if you're single, all the policewomen must be stark ravers.”

“Not quite all. I have my bit of fun, of course.”

She moved a few inches closer. “Ever been to the States? Haven't seen anything till you've seen Hialeah racetrack. Play the ponies?”

“Why, Lady Dew—”

“Vi.”

“Vi. You've already invited Mr. Plant.”

“So what? The three of us could have a right old rave-up, don't you think we couldn't.”

“I'm sure we could. In the meantime, how about answering a few questions?”

“Anything for you. Fire away!” She put her knobbled hand over Jury's.

“Where were you last night?”

“Where—?” For some reason, the implication of her being a suspect seemed to delight her; she laughed and slapped her thigh. “Wish I'd been out on the town, but there it is. I was all by my lonesome. In my room here.”

“With Cyclamen?”

“No. Cyclamen went to the play with Farraday and the girl. All by myself, like I said. No witnesses. Just up there whacking away at my razor-strap.”

“It's no joking matter. Aren't you at all afraid?”

“Would you be afraid if you'd just had three gins? And why would you think I'm afraid if you think I'm the guilty party? ‘Where were you last night?' ” She parodied Jury's low voice and intonation.

“Assuming you aren't, I should think you might feel queasy about three women on your tour having been murdered. Only the women, it seems.”

“What about the boy, James Carlton? Do you think he's another victim? Only the body's not been found yet? Of course I'm afraid, you idiot. Why do think I'm down here drinking myself blind?” She motioned to the waiter for another cup.

“You say your niece went to the theatre?”

“Yes. Got back around eleven-thirty or midnight, so I can't give her an alibi. Maybe the others can—Farraday and the girl, Penny.”

“Would she be capable of crimes like these?”

“Probably not. But I'd say the same about any of the others. There's Farraday and Schoenberg and Cholmondeley. I couldn't take odds on any of them. You don't really think a woman did them, do you? It's sex, take my word.”

“There's no evidence of that. And if there were—it could still be a woman, couldn't it?”

“Odd sort of woman.”

“Decidedly odd. Tell me about your niece, Lady Dew.”

At that, she let go of the hand she had reclaimed, let it drop with a thud on the table. “Don't know what you mean.”

“Sure you do.” She wouldn't have made a good poker-player. Were it not for her stiffening defensiveness, Jury wouldn't have had any particular reason for believing that Cholmondeley was right about Cyclamen Dew.

When she said nothing, Jury prompted: “Gwendolyn Bracegirdle and Cyclamen were very friendly, according to some reports—”

“A damned lie!”

“What is?”

“That Cyclamen's—well, perverse.”

“What about Miss Bracegirdle?”

“I don't speak ill of the dead,” she said with questionable self-righteousness.

Jury smiled. Lady Dew would speak ill of anyone if it damned well suited her. All she needed was a little pushing. Although it was clear she wasn't all that fond of her niece, still she would probably think it a blot on her own sexuality if a female Dew were queer. Jury pulled the roll of magazines from his pocket.

“What's that?”

“Just some mags I was taking to a friend. The Dirty Squad cleaned up yesterday.”

“ ‘Dirty Squad'? What's that?”

“Drugs and Pornography . . . Ah, ah!” Jury jerked them away as she outreached her arm. “Police evidence.”

“Said you were taking them to a friend.”

“Well, he's another policeman.”

“Two of you going to sit and drool over them, that it? Disgusting, I call it.”

“We all have to relax sometime.” Flicking through the magazine, Jury let out a long, low whistle.

She was trying to twist around to have a look over his shoulder. He slapped the magazine shut. “Sorry.”

“Damned bloody blackmail, that's what it is!” She snapped her mouth shut as the waiter set the fresh teapot down with Jury's cup. “All right, what if Cyclamen does like her bit of fun that way? Who'm I to look down my nose, though it beats me how she could—and with that Bracegirdle person. So dull. I wonder which of them was the, you know, and which . . . ? Well, that sort of thing goes on all the time and no one thinks anything of it. Look at the Honeycutt person. Idiot. To each his own.”

Jury handed over the magazines. “Your niece and Miss Bracegirdle used to ‘go off' for periods of time. Did they go to the plays together in Stratford at all?”

“Not to my knowledge. That night I thought Cyclamen went to bed with a sick headache, but of course I don't know. Here now, what are you suggesting?”

“Nothing, really.” Perhaps he oughtn't to have handed over the magazines before he got her answers; she was trying to look at the centerfold, forgetting Jury. “In other words, she might have been out on the night Gwendolyn Bracegirdle was murdered, and also out last night. Lady Dew?”

“Eh? Oh. Yes, I suppose so. None of us have alibis.” She seemed to think this rather rich. “Never been married. Um. How old are you, lad?”

“Forty-three. Not so young, after all.”

“Ha! Just you wait'll you get to be sixty-two like me.
Then
you'll think it's young.”

Even if he hadn't seen all of their passports, Jury would have known she was in her eighties.

But at the moment, he felt very old.

 • • • 

Penny Farraday pushed her shirttail into her jeans and smoothed down her hair.

“This is Detective Sergeant Wiggins, Penny. C.I.D.”

She held out her hand. “I'm pleased.”

“How do you do, miss?” said Wiggins.

“I'm sorry, Penny. But we need to ask you some questions. You went to the theatre last night with Mr. Farraday and Cyclamen Dew?”

“Yeah, that's right,” she said in a lackluster voice. Picking up a magazine, she absently thumbed through its pages.

“What time did you get back here?”

“Ten-thirty, maybe eleven. Amelia”—her hand froze in the act of turning a page and then went on—“was supposed to go too, only she changed her mind when we got to the theatre and said she was just going to walk around. I think He was pretty mad. Can't say I blame Him.” Nervously, she tossed the magazine on the table. “It was
The Changeling.
It was good. You know what a changeling is?” Despite Jury's nod, she went on to explain: “A changeling's when you put the wrong little kid secretly in place of another one.” She frowned and continued her explanation by means of extrapolation: “It's like stealing kids and pretending they're your own. It's not
quite
the same thing as adopting—”