The Dirty Duck (25 page)

Harvey's head seemed to have been drooping steadily, like a man nodding off. Now it was in his hands. Jury's voice, low enough at the beginning, was now even lower, as he said, “Look, Harvey. We could sew the whole story together, I guess, but there'd be seams. You did all this because of Nell Altman, because she'd been deceived, betrayed—and my guess is—seduced by Jonathan . . . and I guess you thought, Farraday, too.” Jury was silent for a moment. “You loved her.”

Harvey's voice, changed by tears, larynx seeming to strangle a shout, came from somewhere between sofa and rug.
“You're goddamn right I loved her!”
His head came up. “Jonathan took her away from me like everything else. I knew Helen—Penny wasn't much more than a baby then—and I wanted to marry her, before Jonathan came along, the dirty bastard. He was always like that with women. Poor Helen . . .” Harvey's head dropped in his hands.

Jury's silence was so monumental that Wiggins finally broke in and said, “This vendetta against Farraday, though—”

“He let her die, goddamnit!
And I can tell you this. I thought maybe he should have a taste of it, himself. Those two were
sluts
—listen, I finally put a private detective on Helen, that was after she disappeared with the baby. It was years. Years.” There was a long pause. “I waited too long. She was dead.”

Melrose Plant said, quickly, “She'd have died anyway, Harvey. Somewhere along the line she picked up syphilis.”

“Farraday.”

Jury shook his head. “No. Not Farraday. And what did Gwendolyn Bracegirdle have to do with James Farraday?”

“Nothing. Except she had a big mouth. And she saw the resemblance. Faces. She kept on about how much Jimmy looked like me. Looked like Jonathan, I should say, only Gwen didn't know that. I could hardly carry out this plan with
her
around. I shut her up.”

“And what did you have planned for Penny Farraday?” asked Wiggins.

Harvey looked at him as if he were a stranger. “ ‘Planned'? You think I
would hurt Penny? That's Helen's
daughter!”
He slumped back on the sofa, his arm across his forehead. “Nothing. Jimmy—well, that's something else. Jimmy and I got on like a house-afire. Jimmy, I could have convinced . . .”

Silence again. Finally, it was Wiggins who asked, “Of what?”

But the fleeting smile on Harvey's face suggested that his thoughts were not in that room. “Of course, I had to give him something to make him sleep. From Stratford to Heathrow—I got ahold of a rental car—and then on the plane. But, boy, could that kid
sleep.
Once he woke up on the plane and was watching the movie.” Harvey chuckled, as if he'd forgotten everything except Jimmy Farraday. “That kid had more imagination. He was like Helen—” Then he pulled himself out of the dream and said, “I had to give him another injection. . . .” He ran his hand over the back of his neck, frowning, as if in an effort of remembrance, as if he, indeed, had been asleep for a long time. “He's at my house. It's in Virginia. Other side of the Potomac. Place I bought when I got this little idea. An old stone place in the woods and a room up high with bars. Kind of like a tiny castle. A kid would get a kick out of that, wouldn't he? Guy that lives there I found to take care of it because he's sort of witless. Anyway, you pay people, pay them enough, they'll do anything. So when I got Jimmy there I just told him the kid was kind of sick and to not let him out and leave plenty of food for him. That I'd be back in a few days . . .” His eyes traveled over the faces of the other three, but did not seem to focus. “Farraday . . .” Now he sounded as if he'd lost interest in his own conversation.

Melrose Plant said, “I think you found your own Claudius when you finally killed your brother.”

Harvey Schoenberg did not respond.

Jury looked at him for a few moments. Then he said, “Take care of things, Wiggins,” and left the room.

J
ames Carlton Farraday stood in Dulles Airport with the tall, black policeman for whom he had formed a definite attachment ever since the officer—Sergeant Poole—had actually gone out and found some Jell-O.

“I told him, miss,” said Sergeant Poole to the flight attendant. “But he doesn't believe me.” Sergeant Poole looked down at the cat-carrier, one designed to meet all of the specifications of air travel. The gray cat was grooming itself, as certain of its privilege as was James Carlton.

The young lady in the uniform of British Airways knelt down (James Carlton wished grown-up women would simply talk to him from up where they stood) and smiled (he also wished they wouldn't look sticky that way) and said, “It's too bad, dear, it really is; but the United Kingdom just won't let animals into the country.”

James Carlton sighed. “Now that's about the silliest thing I ever
did
hear. There's more cats in England than anywhere I ever seen—saw, I mean. You going to tell me they was all
born
over there?”

The flight attendant laughed artificially, casting a desperate look at Sergeant Poole. He smiled and shook his head and shrugged. The sergeant seemed to know when he'd been bested.

In a reasoning-with-a-child tone, the young lady went on. “It's not
precisely
that the animal can't go in—”

Here comes some other big lie,
thought James Carlton, studying the faces of the people probably waiting to board his flight and deciding which ones he wasn't going to sit beside.

“. . . it's the quarantine laws. The cat would have to be quarantined for nine months, you see . . .”

“That's a pretty stupid law. This cat don't—doesn't—have rabies, nor
anything like that. For the lord's sakes, I been kidnapped with this cat for five, six days.
I
ought to know. You got any
idea
what this cat's been through?”

Actually, the cat hadn't been through all that much, considering. Except for being forcibly yanked down that big tree.

The poor young woman shrugged. “I don't make the laws, James—” And then she did something utterably unthinkable, at least as far as James Carlton was concerned. She pinned a tag to his sweater and patted it.

A tag? He craned his neck to look at it.
It had his name and destination on it
So horrified was he that he forgot his manners, not to say his education. “Ah, hell, lady! I ain't wearing
that!
I know who I am and I know where I'm going!” He yanked the tag off and handed it back.

White-faced, she seemed truly not to know what to do. “We're merely trying to assure that you don't get—” And even as she brought out the word it was clear she'd have liked to retract it: “—lost.”

Sergeant Poole burst out laughing.

 • • • 

When Jimmy Farraday arrived at Heathrow Airport at nine fifty-five that same night, it was difficult to say which of them—Farraday or Penny—was happier to see him.

Farraday tried on his gruff act—cigar in mouth, small punch at Jimmy's shoulder—but it soon broke down into a simple embrace. Penny's own joy was expressed in a plethora of salty words and newly handled cigarettes (the latter supplied by Jury). When Penny's enthusiasm for Scotland Yard was about to burst, Jury gave her a look.

The look silenced Penny, but it was clear that Jimmy had seen the whatever-secret-knowledge that had passed between them, and stuck out his hand. “Pleased,” was his simple and heartfelt acknowledgment of this grown-up towering over him.

(Jury noticed he had quickly rid himself of that other grown-up—the one following him in British Air uniform.)

“Pleased, myself,” said Jury. And he was, for the first time in days.

James Carlton Farraday, who had left the past and all of its trials behind him for the present, turned his attention to his sister, and gave directions in the manner of one who would not be crossed.

The first was: “Watch your language, Penny. I told you, They always know by how you talk.”

The second: “We got a new cat. They wouldn't let me bring it.”

The third: “They had this movie on the plane I swore I seen—saw—before—”

And they were walking away, when Penny asked, “Yeah? What was it?”

“Missing,”
said Jimmy Farraday. “It was kind of dumb—”

Jury noticed that J. C. Farraday walked a respectful distance behind brother and sister, sister now taking brother's hand—

As Jimmy said, “Except it had Sissy Spacek in it.” Then he seemed to look quickly around him, making sure no Memory that had been listening over the years was butting in. “Remember?”

Jury had never felt Heathrow to be so unpeopled, such a void, as he felt it now.

Penny answered, “I remember.”

“Brightness falls from the air.”

—Thomas Nashe

“T
he computer guy,” said Sam Lasko again, shaking his head in wonder. “I can't get over it. He seemed like such an elf.”

Lasko and Jury were sitting in the incidents room in the Stratford police station. “One I don't want to see under any mushrooms,” said Jury. “He planned it for a long time. A very long time.”

“You don't seem too happy about it.”

“No. Am I supposed to be?”

“I only mean, in figuring it out. I really
did
think it was some creep around here had nothing better to do with his time—”

Jury smiled. “The way you put things, Sammy . . .”

Lasko shrugged. “Well, you know what I mean. Anyway, I was sorry to see you go.” Lasko's expression turned mournful, as if Jury were a too-seldom-seen relation.

“I'd never have guessed.”

“So where'd Schoenberg get the passport?”

“In the U.S. One assignment he gave that private detective was to get one of Jimmy's school pictures. The little ones they do over there. Just right for a passport. And then produce a facsimile of a birth certificate, which he got very easily merely by making a request as Jimmy's father. He was really the only one, besides brother Jonathan, who knew what name was on the certificate.”

“And he took that kid all the way back to the
States
 . . .” Lasko sighed. “You ever been—?”

“No, Sammy. But Penny Farraday nearly had me swear on a Bible I'd come and visit them.”

Lasko shook his head. “I can't get over this Schoenberg. To go to all that
trouble—?”

“The man was obsessed, Sammy. He'd been going to a lot of trouble for
years.
Private detectives, the lot.”

“Christ. The guy must have gone absolutely off the rails over this Altman woman.”

“He did. ‘Dust hath closed Helen's eye.' ” Jury pocketed his cigarettes and stood up. “He definitely did. See you later, Sammy.”

Jury was nearly out the door when Lasko (who had all the while been eyeing certain papers on his desk) said, “Listen, Richard—”

“Forget it, Sammy.”

B
eyond the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the river Avon flowed on, undisturbed.

“Hamlet
again,” said Melrose Plant. “Are you sure I can't induce you to join me? The first part was quite good. I missed the second.” He did not want to go into his reasons for missing the second part of the play, not once, but twice.

“Thanks, no,” said Jury. “I think I've had enough of revenge tragedies to last me awhile.” It was evening, and there was a storm coming on, and light had fled from the water. Jury watched the ducks bobbing in the shadows of the willows, like lumps of coal. “You're going back to Northants tomorrow?”

“Yes, I expect so. When Agatha's there, one occasionally has to count the silver. The American cousins, happily, have returned to Wisconsin. I believe they must have hightailed it out of here after the last . . . well, you know. Not even Agatha's plying them with promises of high teas at the manor house—as I'm sure she did do—could keep them here. So the Biggets and Honeysuckle Tours are all safely at home by now. I think I should like to visit Hialeah racetrack. I would imagine Lady Dew is odds-on favorite. Well, if you won't attend the theatre, then how about a drink at the Duck afterwards?”

“I have a bit of business to attend to.”

“I see.”

“No, you don't.”

“No, I don't.”

Jury smiled. “You're a very accommodating chap, you know.”

“I know.”

There was a brief silence, and then Jury said, “Do you really think she's going to marry that bloke?”

Innocently, Melrose inquired, “ ‘She'? ‘Bloke'?”

Looking across the water, Jury said, “Awful, wasn't he? I shouldn't have thought Vivian would go in for that type.” He glanced at Melrose. “Did you find her much changed?”

“Vivian? Vivian?” Plant stalled around by inspecting his gold cigarette case.

“At times, you can be tiresome. Yes, ‘Vivian-Vivian.' Didn't you go on about the old days with her?”

Melrose plucked out a cigarette and offered the case to Jury. “Good lord, no. Barely exchanged the time of day.”

Jury took a cigarette, and just looked at him, shaking his head.

“Anyway, they're not married yet. If I know Vivian, she won't go through with it. Never could make up her mind about anything important.” Leaving that cloudy judgment hanging in air, Melrose looked at his watch. “I'd better be going. I'll miss the second part
again.
If you
should
change your mind, I'll be in the Dirty Duck after the play. . . .” Melrose paused a moment, and then said, “I suppose you'd as soon forget the whole business. But at one point in that business of questioning Schoenberg, you weren't exactly hell-on-wheels. You certainly left the room quickly enough, there at the end.”