The Old Contemptibles (38 page)

“That’s right. Six years ago you knew about her planned walk up Scafell. You knew she’d always been determined to cross over by way of Broad Stand. You got up there before Virginia. But when you discovered Francis Fellowes had come along behind her—after you’d shoved her off—
that
must have unnerved even you, Dr. Viner. There was no way down except past Francis.”

She said nothing. Jury waited. Her curiosity would force her to speak.

“Police questioned Francis because no one else could possibly have been up there, unless, of course, it might have been an expert climber. Which I am not.”

“You were there; Francis painted you into the picture.”

She laughed. “Oh, my
God!
He couldn’t have seen—”

It was the smallest slip. “ ‘Seen you’? Why? Because he had his back turned? Because you were hiding in that crevice called Fat Man’s Agony?”

“No. He couldn’t have seen me because I wasn’t there.”

Jury tossed the leather pouch on the desk.

“What’s this?” She picked it up, opened it.

“A Claude glass.”

“And—?” Her smile was tilted. She tapped the ash from her cigarette.

“And he painted the scene behind him.” Jury nodded toward the little mirror. “That’s why painters of the picturesque used a Claude glass. Fellowes painted the crevice in that rock face.”

She put it on the desk between them and sat looking at him, still with the upward tilting smile. “Superintendent, even
if
there were such a painting, I don’t believe a face would be distinguishable. Not even with all of your fancy forensics equipment. I take it you have nothing to show me to convince me otherwise.”

He didn’t. “I’m going to give you a choice.”

“Why,
thank
you. But am I going to choose?”

“Yes. You’re thinking all of this is speculation on my part. But let me tell you this: out of the number of people who have a vested interest in Adam Holdsworth’s money, you’re the only one with a motive for these killings—and the manipulation of Graham and Jane. Because the only other people who could possibly come into a large part of that inheritance are Alex and Millie Thale. Adam wouldn’t leave it to any of the rest of them. But as he’s been donating to the upkeep of Castle Howe, it’s a fair bet he’d put the Castle in his will. And as he’s said, you really run the place. I said it before: you want to control Alex; you thought of yourself as the woman who might step into his mother’s shoes. But you won’t.”

“I won’t? And how do you think you’ll prevent me?”

“I’ll ruin you. Here’s your choice: either I’ll make use of my ‘speculations’ and these letters and the painting and pictures; or you’ll resign your post here. And never come within breathing distance of Alex Holdsworth.”

She sighed. “Don’t be absurd. All of this”—she waved her hand over pictures and glass—“is pure conjecture.”

“The lawyer I have in mind will take this ‘pure conjecture’ and have you down the Old Bailey before you can turn around.”

“If you’re so
certain,
why give me a choice?”

The silence drew out as Jury looked at her. “Because of Alex. He couldn’t stand to know his mother committed suicide. Better that none of this come out.” Jury got up.

At the door he turned and said, “As far as I’m concerned, you ought to be shot, Dr. Viner.”

 • • • 

He walked back toward the main building on legs that felt rubbery. On a white bench some hundred feet away he saw Lady Cray sitting, facing his way, now waving him over.

“Hello,” he said. Jury felt hollow as he looked at the older woman. Lady Cray was sitting upright, her leather bag clutched in her hands. Above the large sapphire on her ring finger, the knuckle was white.

“I’m not spying. Dreadful woman, isn’t she?”

Jury couldn’t help but smile. “What have you got in there, Lady Cray? Ribbons? A gun?”

She sighed and relaxed a bit. “I told you; I’m off ribbons. Thank God. And I’m not carrying, as they say.”

He laughed.

She opened the bag, shut it again. “I do have a revolver
and
a license for it. But Mrs. Colin-Jackson thought it might be better if it were placed in the Castle Howe safe.”

Jury just looked at her for a moment. Then he said, “You know what you remind me of?”

“I’d probably rather not.”

“Greek theater. The
deus ex machina.”

“Ah,” she breathed, her fingertips tight along the top of her bag. “I consider that a compliment.”

“It is. Did you want to see me?”

“I always want to see an attractive man. But the precise reason I waved you over is because Mr. Plant wants to see you. He called from the pub. Not to me, but to Mrs. Colin-Jackson. It sounded rather urgent.”

“How did you know where I was?”

She didn’t answer.

Jury looked behind him, following her gaze. “Why is her office set apart out here, and right amongst the flowers?”

“There was a similar situation in Eden, I believe.”

The girl in the tree shimmied down through the branches that blew and parted like wings, to drop the last few feet into a bed of flowers.

He’d followed her here and watched her get up from the same sort of stalks and petals he’d found her in long ago. She started off through the long grass and he followed, the grass barely separating over his head.

A rustle. Reflexively, he bellied down, tail twitching, tongue clicking. He was about to spring when he saw her ahead, getting away from him, and he sacrificed the smell nearby to the greater pull of the need to follow her.

This constant vigil was tiring, keeping her always in mind and nearly always in view. But she had been his business ever since he’d found her like a storm blowing over the vast lake, thunderclaps of rage, lightning flashes of terror. She was his business, and he’d better mind her.

A white stoat flashed across his line of vision, catching him off guard. He nearly veered from his straight path and gave chase. No.

Flutters and shadows of wings flowed above him, lit atop the hedge nearby and he pulled up again. No.

Now she was small in the distance because of these stops and starts of his, and he ran faster.

It seemed to take forever, moving through these crowded fields
and crowded skies, and he was late. Already she had been up the old tree and was down on the ground.

She was worse than hounds, her anger fenced in but swirling like a dark sea. Now there was a different smell, a different sound. He had smelled it before; he had heard it before—the sudden slap and ratcheting sound.

Then she turned and walked back and the seam of tall grass closed behind her like the wake of a ship.

Rushes, flights, runs. Mice, robins, stoats. Some day there would be time for all that, not now.

He raced toward the house.

 • • • 

Alex was standing at the sink, eating a tasteless sandwich, a lump of cheese between hunks of bread. No one was about. The only sound that registered was the tick of the long-case clock over by the hearth.

He was staring over the field and thinking of his mother. He was indulging in the most fatal of fantasies: what his life might have been like if only . . .

R. Jury, Supt.
He chewed and fantasized. What if his mum had married him and Alex could have had a Scotland Yard superintendent for a stepfather?

He looked down at the sink, dropped the sandwich into it, ashamed of himself. That was the kind of wish some little kid would have.

Staring down, he tried to pull back the old, dependable Alex, the one that seemed to be getting away from him. He was not some little kid, he thought, furiously blinking his eyes.

Alex swallowed, looked up and out the window and saw the cat streaking through the grass toward the kitchen.

Sorcerer? He opened the door, walked through the cramped mud-room and outside.

 • • • 

Sorcerer darted toward him then turned and darted back. Back and forth, back and forth.

Alex followed.

Up the tree. Look around. Jesus
Christ!
“Sorcerer?”

The cat nearly flew down a ladder of air and ran toward Castle Howe.

Alex followed him, stumbling through the long grass.

The car park of the Old Contemptibles was just about large enough for three cars. Nearly crowding Plant’s Japanese car out was a Jaguar XJ10, this year’s model, mirror-black, with a registration tag that in itself was worth a small fortune. It was personalized

FAN

having belonged, apparently, at one time to a “Fan” or a “Fanny” or a “Frances.” Only this one had been recustomized—a
G,
intaglio—very professional, very illegal. Jury looked at it and slowly shook his head.

He didn’t think anything could make him smile. This did.

 • • • 

“Superintendent!” called out Marshall Trueblood. “She insisted; we called from Long Pidd; we’re here; Agatha has tire tracks on her back.”

The regulars were used by now to Melrose, the librarian. But the two new additions were something else. Wiggins was standing at the bar, apparently trying to convince O. Bottemly to mix him up some medicinal brew.

Except that her absence had doubled the beauty of her sometimes sharply etched, sometimes blurred memory-face, Vivian Rivington might never have boarded that train in January. She rose fluidly from her chair in the same cream wool dress she had been wearing the last time Jury saw her; even the large-brimmed hat was there, lying on the table by her glass of sherry. Jury knew she would have rushed toward him, but, Vivian-like, checked herself and simply stood there.

If Vivian was a picture, Marshall Trueblood was a tableau: vicuna jacket, gray crepe de chine shirt into the neck of which was tucked a jade green ascot that matched his Sobranie cigarette, tasseled calfskin loafers. Trueblood had forgone Armani momentarily, thinking the Italian blood too hot, perhaps, for the Lakes.

“Vivian.” Jury felt the smile spreading through his body.

But she was wringing her hands as if she’d something to apologize for and saying, “When they told me in Venice about your getting mar—”

“A drink, a drink,” shouted Trueblood, as if they’d all been stranded in a desert. He got up and shoved Vivian down—rather roughly, Jury thought.

She continued: “When the three of us were in the Gritti Palace, they told me you—”

Melrose grabbed her hand, stroked it (also rather roughly, Jury thought) and said, “Vivian, Vivian, let’s not go on about it.”

She broke free of Trueblood’s and Plant’s holds, rose, took two quick steps and slowly wound her arms round Jury’s neck. Her “I’m so sorry” came muffled from lips fast against his chest.

He could feel the small, shuddery sobs. “It’s all right, Vivian,” Jury said against her hair, his arms about her waist. “It was wonderful of you to come.”

“Don’t forget me, old sweat!” said Trueblood. “I chauffeured! We came straight up from Long Pidd after Vivian drove hell-for-leather from Heathrow.”

Jury turned his face from Vivian’s hair toward the window. “That your Jag out there?”

Trueblood said, “Actually, it’s Viv’s. Wedding present.”

Said Melrose, “It’s just what she needs in Venice.”

“It’s not
for
Venice. It’s for when she’s home.” Trueblood was collecting glasses for refills.
Home
was, and would always be, Long Piddleton.

“Interesting registration number.”

Trueblood said nothing.

Vivian was blowing her nose. “Registration number?”

“I didn’t think you’d seen it, love.” He held her at arm’s length. “And incidentally, thank you.”

“For what?”

“For hiring Pete Apted, Q.C.”

She looked confused. “Who?”

It wasn’t Vivian? Who, then?

He said to Melrose and Wiggins, who’d left the bar with his hot toddy, “We need to go back to Castle Howe.” Melrose was up in a flash. To Trueblood he said, “You two stay here. We’ll take Fang.”

“Helen Viner,” said Melrose. “Why didn’t I see it?”

“For the same reason Adam Holdsworth didn’t. For the same reason Alex could look at her almost as a surrogate mother,” said Jury, as the Jaguar left the hamlet of Boone.

“What’ll she do, sir, do you think?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what I think she’ll do, Wiggins: I think she’ll try and bluff it out. She’s convinced she has so much influence with Adam Holdsworth and that she’s so indispensable to Castle Howe—which she, not Colin-Jackson, runs—why give up now?”

“There’s no hard evidence,” said Wiggins.

“None,” said Jury.

“She murdered two people outright and was responsible for the deaths of two others. She may have ruined the lives of two children.” He paused. “I don’t think the motive was money alone.”

Wiggins half-turned to look at him; Jury said nothing.

Melrose was thinking of his own conversation with Helen Viner. “She loves control; to her, it’s food and drink. She feeds on it.” He raised his eyes to watch the gray, scudding clouds. “You know who she reminds me of? Coleridge’s Geraldine.”

“Geraldine?” asked Jury.

“In ‘Christabel.’ The demon, the vampire-rapist. Helen Viner plays on sexual needs and fears. Do you really think she’s had her last taste of blood?” He paused. “Somewhere I heard that when Byron read ‘Christabel’ aloud, Shelley was so terrified he ran screaming from the room.” Through the windscreen Melrose saw, in the distance, the plinth that marked the Castle Howe driveway. “No hard evidence? She should be shot.”

“My words exactly,” said Jury.

Lady Cray was still sitting on the bench overlooking the deep lawn and gardens, watching many things.

She was watching the clusters of daffodils down there near the stone cottage swaying, but hardly “dancing” (Wordsworth
would
exaggerate so) in a stiff breeze that made her grip the collar of her lightweight coat.

She was watching as Adam Holdsworth played his newest, silly-arse game (the one the sergeant had taught him) of flying his wheelchair down the grassy incline, whooping all the way, waving to her after he turned; he started buzzing up the lawn again, only to repeat the process. Once, he had come close to ramming into the doctor’s cottage. She shook her head.