Vertigo 42 Page 12

  He saw a number 22 rolling up the street, ran across to the bus stop and caught it and climbed to the second level. He loved London buses almost as much as London cabs.

  Chelsea

  Thursday, 4:00 P.M.

  20

  * * *

  It was a face Jury hadn’t seen before, a nurse’s face, who appeared at the door of the mews house off Cadogan Street, and Jury was anxious that Sir Oswald Maples had taken a turn for the worse.

  But he hadn’t long to worry, for the face of Sir Oswald appeared just then over her shoulder, looking both irritated and pleased, the first for the nurse, the second for Jury.

  “Superintendent!” said Sir Oswald, elbowing the woman out the door as he held out his free hand, the one not gripping a cane. “Good-bye, Louise,” he added.

  Nurse Louise, for her part, looked even more irritated than had Sir Oswald, but not forgetting her nursy-niceness, said to him: “Now you be sure to take those tablets Doctor prescribed—”

  “Thank you. Good-bye.”

  Louise sniffed, raised her eyebrows at Jury as if he might be going to countermand her orders, and then left.

  Sir Oswald Maples shut the door. He lived here alone and had done so for many years.

  Jury said, “Sorry I didn’t call ahead, but my mobile died.”

  “The appropriate fate for it, I think. Nurse Louise has left me a mobile, with a charger, so fire yours up if the charger works on it.” Oswald indicated a table near Jury.

  “You’ve got some new ailment?” Jury asked as he plugged the charger into his mobile. Good.

  “Yes. Her.” He jerked his head toward the door she’d just passed through. “I was just about to pour myself a large whiskey when, lo and behold, I discover she’s locked the drinks cabinet! Can you believe it? She “dropped in” to give me a new load of medicine and I couldn’t get the key out of the damned woman. She thought it was so awfully cute.”

  Jury did have a hard time believing there was actually a lock hanging on a chain that ran between the handles of the two doors of the cabinet. “I don’t believe it.” Jury reached into his macintosh pocket and brought out his keys. “Got a hammer?”

  “What are you going to do? Just keep in mind that’s a Louis Quinze chest.”

  Jury just looked at him. “Do you want a drink or do you want me to keep that in mind?”

  Oswald laughed. “Go ahead and open it. If you can.”

  “Anyone can.” Jury took a key off a ring he brought out of his pocket.

  Oswald went to the kitchen at the other end of the living room and returned with a lightweight hammer.

  “What’s that?”

  “A bump key. If you do it right, it pushes the pins up simultaneously, but only for a split second, so you’re timing has to be right.” Oswald handed him the hammer. Jury turned the key very slightly to the right, hit it with the hammer a couple of times. “There you go.” He opened the door. “And no damage to the antique chest, and most important, we can lock it again and no one will ever know.” He reattached the key, returned the keys to his pocket.

  “Brilliant!”

  “Here.” Jury took out the ring of keys again, removed the bump key, and handed it to Oswald. “It might take a little practice, but you can do it.”

  “Well, get out the whiskey.”

  Jury said, peering into the cabinet, “This is quite a stash, Oswald.” He pulled out a bottle of Talisker and one of Johnnie Walker Black Label and set them on top of the chest. Then his hand went back in to pull out another. “What’s this? Yamazaki? Never heard of it.”

  “Japanese. It’s delicious.”

  “Maker’s Mark, Oswald? That’s Kentucky bourbon.” Jury set that beside the others.

  “Nurse Louise must have bought that one. There are glasses there. Do you want soda? Water?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ll have some of this.” He lifted the bottle of Yamazaki. “You?”

  “That’ll do. Just don’t go overboard. It costs a bloody fortune.”

  Jury smiled and poured two fingers into each glass, handed one to Oswald, and they sat down.

  Oswald leaned his head back, stared up at the ceiling. His glass sat on the table. For all of his fussing about a drink, he’d yet to take a sip.

  “I had a drink with your friend Tom Williamson.”

  “Did you? Good. I suggested he talk to you.”

  “It’s a very cold case, Oswald.”

  “It’s a very sad one. He was here the day she died in their house in Devon. In June, I think it was. A Monday in June . . . no, a Tuesday. I keep making that mistake.”

  “I don’t see how you could even remember the month, much less the day. Seventeen years ago, my God.”

  “The reason I remember is that the so-called home help I had then was a woman who makes Nurse Louise look like Vanessa Redgrave. Zillah Peabody. She always came on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. I loathed her coming; I was glad Tom was here for moral support. I couldn’t understand what was holding her up; the woman appeared with all the punctuality of a Japanese bullet train and with twice the impact. I thought I was having a holiday from her until Tom told me it wasn’t Monday that day, it was Tuesday. It wasn’t one of her days to come. He thought it was funny.”

  “Did you know her? Not the bullet train; I mean Tess Williamson.”

  “I’d met her, yes. Talked to her a few times. It was a bloody disaster, her dying. Well, Tom never believed it was an accidental death.”

  “Neither did Brian Macalvie. That was a coincidence, that he was on the case. I’ve just been there, to Laburnum, I mean, with Macalvie.”

  “That was damned decent of you.”

  “Not really. Tom Williamson is the sort of person you just feel you want to help . . . Know what I mean?”

  Oswald nodded. “Indeed.”

  “Do you know anything at all about him that might shed light on this? I’m thinking about his work in codes and ciphers.”

  “Spy stuff?”

  “Well, it was GC and CS, Oswald. It was Enigma, the German navy.”

  Oswald held up his hands, palm out. “That was long before Tess Williamson died. We’re talking about the end of the war—forty-four, forty-five. Tom Williamson came on after that, in the late seventies, after they moved to headquarters outside of Cheltenham and became GCHQ.

  “Nevertheless. It’s still codes and ciphers. It’s still sensitive material.”

  Oswald picked up his glass again and looked at it. Then he set it down, as if the expected transformation hadn’t yet happened, but he was prepared to wait until it did. He looked at Jury in much the same way.

  Jury said, “Was he forced to retire or was it his own idea?”

  “I don’t know. I only heard about his leaving GC Headquarters. Heard it on the grapevine. Remember, this was the eighties, Thatcher’s government. The employees at GCHQ wanted to unionize; indeed some of them belonged to a union. The government refused to let them with the excuse that it would compromise security. A number of people were dismissed because they wouldn’t give up union rights.” Oswald shrugged. “Tom was one of them. That’s what I heard.”

  “It had nothing to do with the inquest involving Tess?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Jury felt an inexplicable sense of relief, he guessed for Tess Williamson’s sake. He turned his glass between his palms, as if there were a need to warm up whiskey. “Tell me about Tess Williamson.”

  “What I know of her.” Oswald picked up his glass, didn’t drink. “I was never really certain what I thought about her. Except she was awfully nice and, of course, beautiful. But there are some people you just can’t pin down.”

  Jury laughed, briefly. “Most people.”

  “Perhaps. Well, there was the dreadful business of that child’s falling into that pool and dying
. Surely an accident.”

  “Forensic wasn’t so sure. That was the problem.”

  Oswald massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. “I can’t get my mind round any of it. The way Tess died. It was very strange. Nothing I can think of explains it.”

  Jury looked up and around the low ceiling and blackly varnished timbers. “One thing might. Suicide.”

  “What? Why wasn’t that proposed at the time?”

  “Because it wasn’t evident to anyone who knew her; they could have been in a state of what alcoholics call denial. Including Brian Macalvie. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him less than positive. Mentally stumbling—well, slightly stumbling.” Jury smiles. “I’ve never seen Macalvie completely miss his footing.”

  Which was what he’d said, in essence, to Tom Williamson, not about Macalvie, but about Tess. They were her stairs.

  Oswald frowned. “But this Commander Macalvie didn’t know her.”

  “Yes, he did. He really liked her.” Jury reflected. “I think Tess Williamson might have reminded him of someone.”

  “But—what would have been her motive?”

  Jury shrugged. The movement was slight, certainly not registering indifference. “I would suspect because of what happened at Laburnum five years before: the death of Hilda Palmer.”

  Oswald’s frown was deeper this time. “You’re not thinking she killed her?”

  “No, I’m not. To have done that seems completely out of character with what I’ve heard about her. Just something happened then—”

  “Well, obviously something happened, man.” Sir Oswald’s tone was scoffing as he made to rise and pick up his glass.

  He had, after all, drunk it. Jury rose while Oswald was still struggling to his feet and took the glass from him over to the sideboard.

  “Thanks.”

  He poured a small measure into both glasses, restoppered the bottle, and returned Oswald’s glass to him. Then he sat down again. “What I meant was that Tess Williamson knew.”

  Oswald had been about to sip, but stopped. “And didn’t say?”

  “And didn’t say.” Jury raised his own glass.

  Oswald thought for a few moments, his gaze moving round the room. “And didn’t tell her husband?”

  “No.”

  “A lover?” Oswald’s frown was deeper still.

  Jury didn’t answer right away. He too looked about the room. “I don’t mean that, no.”

  “But if you believe she knew something about the way Hilda Palmer died—well, she must have been protecting someone.”

  Jury nodded. “Besides Hilda and Tess herself, there were five children and a friend of the Williamsons, Eileen Davies. She was supposed to be sitting out in front, on a bench.”

  “That woman. Yes, what about her?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken with her, but she lives in Belgravia, very near, so I think I’ll just drop in after I leave you. According to her, she was in the front garden the entire time.”

  “And there could have been somebody else that nobody saw.”

  “There could, yes. But it seems a little unlikely a stranger—another person—could have picked a moment he or she had no way of knowing would come, so that the person could have appeared, killed Hilda, and disappeared.”

  Oswald was silent. “But Tess’s own death: I still think accident is more likely. A woman with vertigo standing at the top of a high flight of stone stairs—”

  But they were her stairs . . .

  Belgravia

  Thursday, 6:00 P.M.

  21

  * * *

  Cosmetic surgery had not been the way to go for Elaine Davies; it might have made her look more youthful, but it was the look of a youth misspent. The face was all wrong, the eyes too high, the mouth too low, the nose two short for the distance between. Her blond hair, colored with highlights, was cut in a bob. She wore a perfectly cut, champagne-colored suit, silk blouse, string of pearls.

  How did women find the time to maintain such a carefully wrought appearance while just puttering about the house? How did Phyllis Nancy dress around the house? He had seen her only either in her morgue scrubs, blood streaked, or in a backless black dress when they went out to dinner at Aubergine.

  “Yes?” The perfectly penciled brows rose.

  “Sorry. I was woolgathering.” The weightless black dress. Jury smiled.

  Having nothing else to intrigue her, his warrant card did. “Ah! Scotland Yard? What have I done now?”

  The simper in the question made him want to tell her something she had done.

  She stood back, flinging the door wide, happy to find she’d done anything at all.

  Behind him was a courtyard around which several narrow houses were arranged in a half-moon. In the center was a lavish fountain. Jury entered a portal, which was the only way he could put it to himself, as it seemed almost like an entry to a yacht; there was nothing actually nautical about it other than three small engravings of HMS-somethings, but the tiny room had that shipshape look about it.

  The living room was one of varying shades of white, the sort of off-whites that always made him wonder why paint bothered. “Champagne” was the most daring departure from stark whiteness. The side chairs and sofa pillows were the same color in silk shantung. She invited him to sit. A fire burning low in the fireplace provided the only spark of color.

  When she herself took a seat on the sofa, he realized this was the color of the suit. Elaine Davies was a hell of a color coordinator. The mystery of her troubling to dress as she had was thus solved: not to have done so would have messed up the tone-on-tone scheme.

  But her meticulous attention to her clothes made him wonder how she could have been a close friend of Tess Williamson. Tess struck him as one who would probably favor big thick sweaters and jeans. At least when she wasn’t standing at the top of the garden stairs.

  Elaine was like the courtyard fountain, stilled, as if the ring of water were frozen in midfall. Tess made him think more of waves’ collapsing, their uneven approaches to shore.

  “It’s about Tess Williamson.”

  Her eyes widened; her squarish mouth opened, said nothing for a moment. “Tess? But Tess has been dead for nearly twenty years.”

  “Seventeen. Hilda Palmer for twenty-two. You remember that.”

  She swallowed but remained perfectly intact, legs crossed, hands linked over a knee, silver bracelet dangling. She looked distressed or at least to the extent distress could penetrate the perfect makeup. “Tess had vertigo. Her death was an accident. There was an inquest—”

  “It was an open verdict. Tom Williamson still has doubts.”

  “Tom? After all these years?”

  “He’ll always have doubts.”

  “But Scotland Yard! That’s rather extreme, isn’t it?”

  “That’s an address, Mrs. Davies, not an experience. We’re Metropolitan police, that’s all.”

  “Oh, please . . .” She waved that truth away. “How is Tom? I haven’t heard from him in such a long time.”

  “He seems fine.”

  “He’s such a sweetheart.” She sighed. “Never remarried.” ­Absently, Elaine twisted the ring on her finger, as if she could use a refresher.

  Tom Williamson would be quite a catch for any woman: still relatively young; handsome, intelligent, kind. Extremely rich. A prize, he’d be.

  Jury said, “Tell me about his wife, Tess. You were a good friend, I understand.”

  “Tess?” Elaine fingered a pearl-studded ear. The earring flashed pink in the firelight. “There’s not that much to tell. Tess was a rather transparent person. You know. One always knew where one stood.”

  “And where did you stand?”

  She seemed a mite surprised. “As you said, I was a good friend. I knew her, I expect, as well a
s anyone.”

  Jury doubted it.

  “Tess was a very positive, cheerful person. Very dependable. Very straightforward.”

  “So you didn’t see her at all as troubled?”

  “Troubled?” She would echo the end of every question.

  “Was there any truth in the gossip about Tess Williamson and her photographer friend?”

  She gave a little shake of her head. “I don’t think so.” She was vague.

  He would get no more, simply because she hadn’t any more to give. Again, Jury doubted the depth of the friendship

  “But she wasn’t an unhappy person?”

  “No. Now that you mention it, yes, there was one troubling episode for her. They both desperately wanted children, but she couldn’t seem to get pregnant. That really bothered her. Both of them. They went to a man in Harley Street. As it turned out, Tess couldn’t have a baby. Something wrong internally. She didn’t give me details.” She thought for a moment. “Dr. Smiley, that was his name. I remember because of the spy stories, you know.”

  “George Smiley. Right. Brilliant character.”

  “Dr. Smiley. I wonder if he’s still there . . . Well, why not? I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  Jury nodded. “Definitely, yes. Tell me about the day at Laburnum, when Hilda Palmer died.”

  That did crease her forehead. “It was awful. Awful. I doubt I’ll ever get over it.”

  She’d gotten over it long ago. Her own role in it, Jury imagined she’d played to the hilt. Elaine would enjoy a bit of drama. “I understand you were in the front garden when this happened . . .”

  “I didn’t see anything, if that’s what you mean.”

  He nodded. “What were you doing?”

  “Reading. One of the other little girls, Victoria, I think her name was—”

  “Veronica, I understand.”

  “Oh? Well, she was playing, you know, ‘It,’ so she was turned up against a tree counting—”

  “Did you see her doing this?”