Vertigo 42 Read online

  “Oh? Why?”

  “A woman doesn’t get all cagey and mysterious over a call from another woman, does she? I’m guessing the man she came here to meet. Too bad I couldn’t hear more of the conversation.” Blanche leaned over the tea tray and selected a biscuit with ivylike white icing. She held the plate out to Jury.

  He took a plain shortbread biscuit. “Good point.” He liked her deductive ability. “But she didn’t mention any man?”

  “Didn’t have to, did she? She certainly wasn’t wearing that getup to please me. Wait. She had me take her picture with one of those new kind of cameras, and then she forgot to take the camera.” Blanche got up, went to a small table in the corner, pulled out a drawer. “Here it is. Maybe you can get the picture. I’m no good at this.” She sighed at her own lack and handed the camera to Jury, who fooled with the buttons and brought up the picture. “This is a great help, Blanche.” Stunning dress, even more stunning on the live woman. Sequined top, very low V-neck, draped skirt. Almost black bobbed hair, silky and worn with a fringe that obscured her eyes in the picture. The strappy sandals with a vinelike embellishment—how could women manage in such heels?

  Jury chewed the shortbread and reflected. “Do you know anything about Arabella’s childhood? I’m thinking specifically of her being one of six children who went to a house party—”

  Blanche threw up her hands. “You’re talking about that terrible business in Cornwall—or was it Devon?—where that little girl died. The woman who owned the house got arrested? I didn’t believe it myself. But my sister Nancy couldn’t talk of anything else.”

  “Nancy?”

  “Belle’s mum. She wanted to bring a civil suit against the woman after she got off on that murder charge. I said, ‘Nance, you’re balmy. What would you charge her with? And Nancy says ‘endangering the lives of children.’ Well, as she’s already got off the murder charge, it’s not likely you could make that stick.”

  “Where’s her mother now?”

  “Dead. So’s her dad. Died within six months of each other—heart attack and cancer. Sad, that. Arabella went to live with an aunt on the father’s side. I was just as glad it wasn’t me who got asked. I couldn’t take to the girl.”

  “Why not?”

  “She was just too—needy. That sort of thing scares men off, I once told her. You make too much of a fuss or want too much attention, it puts people right off.”

  “Did she ever talk about that day at the house in Devon?”

  Blanche shook her head and crimped her lips together, as if in imitation of Arabella’s tight silence. Then she spoke again. “Not to me, and from what Nancy said, not to her either. Nothing beyond saying they—the kids—were playing hide-and-seek.”

  “Did she ever mention those children in any other context?”

  Blanche shook her head.

  Jury picked up his cup and swallowed the lukewarm tea. He said, “Thanks so much for your time, Blanche. I’ve got to be going.” He rose, picked up the camera, and said, “Mind if I keep this? I’d like to get some prints made. All we have are crime scene photographs and you don’t always want to show one of those for identification.”

  “Oh, go right ahead and take it.”

  As they walked to the door, he said, “One other thing. You said that Belle had never worn the kind of clothes she was wearing in that picture.”

  “You’re right there.” She snorted. “Never saw her in anything but jumpers and skirts or trousers.”

  “But you never saw her much, anyway. So how can you be sure?”

  Blanche gave him a long-suffering look. “Some people you wouldn’t have to see often to tell if they’d wear that red dress and those crazy shoes. If you’d known her, you’d see what I mean. Belle just wasn’t the sequined-red-dress and four-inch-heel type. That’s all.”

  Sidbury/Northampton

  Sunday, 8:30 P.M.

  37

  * * *

  Dr. Keener had his surgery on the ground floor of his home in the outskirts of Northampton. The house was a modest brick and stone structure with two front doors, one for the house and one down a little walk for the doctor’s office.

  Jury walked through that door into an empty waiting room. A bell tinkled when he opened the door, no doubt to alert one of the doctor’s staff. But it was Dr. Keener himself who opened the inside door to his office and said, “Superintendent Jury, do come in.” He was wearing the waistcoat and trousers of a three-piece suit, the jacket temporarily draped over a headless plaster torso that stood by a window. The torso was clearly a teaching device, as all of the organs and arteries were marked in brilliant colors, and all named.

  “Please have a seat.”

  Jury sat in the chair usually filled by a patient.

  Taking the swivel chair on the other side of the desk, Dr. Keener said, “What can I do for you, Superintendent? I’ve an idea it’s about the young man who was shot in Reacher’s Road.”

  “You’re right, doctor. Do you recall you hesitated over your diagnosis—or not your diagnosis, exactly, but the circumstances. You seemed perplexed by something in the scene.”

  “Quite right. I still am. I’m waiting for a forensic report.”

  “May I ask what you found so puzzling?”

  “There were three bullet casings, right? Meaning three shots were fired. The shooter wasn’t very good, was he? One shot hit the ground; another grazed the victim’s ankle; the third was the one that killed him, struck him low in the back. The shots were fired from behind the victim, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet. That’s truly remarkably bad shooting, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jury smiled. “I would.”

  “I noticed it particularly because a couple of days before that I’d been one among a half-dozen others at a shooting party on the Windmill estate, not far from here. Grouse, pheasant, that sort of thing. I thought I could have done better than this person, and I’m not a very good shot. Of course, the shooter might not have been trying to kill him, but to warn him. That seems a rather extravagant warning, though, don’t you think? Three shots?”

  “To scare him off, possibly? But then he would have killed him by mistake, which is even a grosser error than merely bad shooting.”

  “Hm. The trajectory of the bullet suggests he was aiming low. That dog belonged to him, didn’t it?”

  “The dog was certainly sticking to him at the site.”

  “Strange . . .” The doctor sighed. “Well, put that incident together with the woman falling from the tower and it strikes me Sidbury is not the place to buy your holiday cottage.”

  “What did you make of that fall?”

  “That she didn’t fall is what I made of it. It wasn’t an accident. Have you been up that tower?”

  Jury shook his head. “It’s really Northampton police’s case.”

  “You’re a tall man. The window ledge would hit you about here—” Dr. Keener placed the edge of his hand against his chest. “Now, this woman was tall for a woman—a little over five-nine—but certainly not six feet. The window ledge would hit her about here.” He moved his hand halfway up his chest. “It would have been extremely difficult for her to hoist herself up and position herself for an accidental fall. Putting herself in that position—she would have had to have suicidal intentions. The alternatives to accident are suicide and homicide. And for either of those, that tower would be an awkward venue.”

  Jury liked the “awkward venue.” He smiled.

  Dr. Keener went on. “But that’s our problem, isn’t it, the awkwardness, as it had to be one of three.”

  “Afraid you’re right there, doctor.”

  “So I’d go for homicide, simply because it means there was a second person choosing the site for reasons we can’t fathom. At least I can’t.”

  “Perhaps that in itself is the reason: that we can’t fathom it. And the site wil
l distract us from other things, such as motive. But I agree with you, it’s impossible for that fall to have been accidental, and I can’t imagine a person bent on suicide putting herself through a lot of difficulty in order to commit it. Homicide is the most likely explanation. She has a date; she’s dressed up for it; they go looking for fun. The tower’s a lark.”

  “I don’t think it was for him, though.”

  “And ultimately not for her, either.”

  Ardry End

  Sunday, 9:30 P.M.

  38

  * * *

  The dog?” said Melrose “Stanley?”

  Jury had driven to Ardry End after leaving the doctor’s house.

  “But how would a dog be a threat?”

  Jury raised his eyebrows. “Have you forgotten Mungo?”

  “By no means. Mungo is unforgettable. Still—”

  “That must be what Dr. Keener is suggesting. The terrible marksmanship, the shots aimed so close to the ground.”

  “Good lord, trying to shoot the dog?” Melrose drank his wine. They were having dinner.

  “DCI Brierly hasn’t been able to find the person the dog was meant for.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t meant for anyone. Perhaps he was in town for some other reason. Both of them, Stanley and his handler. Or owner, possibly.

  “Is there a connection between the two killings? Or is it a coincidence?” Melrose’s tone was doubtful.

  Jury just gave him a look. “If I knew that I wouldn’t be sitting here eating your cook’s coq au vin.” Fresh peas and tiny new potatoes completed the meal. “I’d be out doing something.”

  “You’re in a bit of a mood.”

  “Yes, I am in a bit of a mood. That this Belle Syms is really Arabella Hastings isn’t getting me closer to an ending.”

  “Don’t be daft. Of course it is if Arabella was one of the kids at Laburnum. So now you know that this present murder has something to do with Tess Williamson’s—”

  “I’ve considered that possibility, yes.”

  “Why in God’s name kill somebody by tossing her out of a tower? What if the fall doesn’t actually kill her? That’s a damned awkward murder site. Why not just toss her off a cliff?”

  Jury set down his fork, spread his arms. “Do you see any cliffs around here? The tower makes sense: you want something high enough to account for the broken neck.”

  “ ‘Account for’ a broken neck? That sounds as if the neck were already broken.”

  “It was.”

  “Aren’t you begging the question?”

  Jury sighed. “Two murders and you’re making up a syllogism?”

  Melrose shrugged. “I still think the method is crazy.”

  “Maybe the killer is, or maybe he’s bored; this is a game to him.”

  “But why choose here? Sidbury and Long Piddleton?”

  Jury shrugged. “Because her aunt lives here? Perhaps Arabella was coming here anyway, and her killer saw an opportunity to get her outside of London.”

  Melrose worked up a frown that had Ruthven (who was removing the plates) worried. “Are you quite all right, m’lord?”

  “Yes, of course. How about some cognac with the pud?”

  Ruthven smiled. “There’s cognac in the pudding, sir.” Ruthven seldom allowed himself to make little jokes. “It’s Martha’s bread pudding. The hard sauce.”

  “Better and better.”

  Ruthven swanned out with the dinner plates.

  Jury thought about his conversation with Harry Johnson. “What if there were two of them? Two women who looked enough alike that no one would suspect it?”

  Melrose groaned. “That old gimmick? I don’t like it.”

  “Oh, well, I’m sorry if this strikes you as unoriginal. Maybe after a vat of that Courvoisier, I’ll come up with something a little more outré. For whatever reason, there’s definitely a question of identity here. Remember Harry Johnson?”

  “Good lord, your favorite sociopath. You still talk to him?”

  “He pointed out that she went to four different public places that evening. One wouldn’t do that unless one wanted to establish a presence.”

  Melrose wasn’t listening but thinking his own thoughts. “Two women? Remember Vertigo?”

  “If I didn’t, I’d be the only person on the planet.”

  “Her husband kills her, finds a woman who looks like her, finds some sucker to follow her around—in the film James Stewart—who attests later to seeing her fall out of a church tower.”

  “In the film the sucker is Stewart; in real life, I take it, it’s me.”

  “Who else?”

  “Thanks. Well, I’m going to Laburnum tomorrow morning.”

  “Again? What do you hope to find?”

  “A letter. A note. Do you want to come?”

  Melrose poured out some more cognac. “No, thanks. I’m too busy.”

  “You? Busy?”

  “I do have this house to run—”

  “No you don’t. Ruthven runs it.”

  “There’s the livestock to see to.”

  “Yes, I can see that’s a full-time occupation.”

  “Anyway, you don’t really want me to come. You’re on a mission, best carried out by you yourself.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m merely trying to find answers to Tess Williamson’s death.”

  “A mission.”

  Laburnum

  Monday, Noon

  39

  * * *

  Jury got out of the car and slammed the door, which sent a flock of pigeons beating upward. This left behind an even more deathly quiet that stayed with him as he mounted the stairs and felt under the thriving holly in one of the planters for the keys the housekeeper was to have left for him. He had called Macalvie; Macalvie had made arrangements for the keys.

  He unlocked the thick oak door, closed it, and stood in the Great Hall and listened for some little overture of sound. Any house as old and big as this one would have its portion of creaks, groans, and sighs. But there was nothing. This was one of the things that had slipped through the net when he’d been here with Macalvie: total silence. Tess Williamson had spent long periods of time here alone.

  Jury walked into the sitting room and dropped into a down-­cushioned chair that sent forth a cloud of dust that reminded him of the pigeons’ flight.

  Had Tess needed to come here to exorcise some kind of guilt? But hadn’t she had her share of punishment and for what she hadn’t done? If she hadn’t killed Hilda Palmer, what had she done? She must have felt she’d betrayed someone, and the only one who would have been that important to her would be her husband.

  Tess must have been covering up for somebody else.

  He thought about the children and their uniform dislike of Hilda Palmer. Mundy Brewster had said that adults didn’t understand what Hilda was like—how could they unless Hilda had one or the other in her crosshairs. On the surface she was sweet. She’d pretend to save things, some little creature she’d hurt in the first place. “She was the most vicious person I’ve ever known . . . Imagine the ruination that lay in her wake if she’d ever gotten to our age now.”

  Jury smiled again at the “our age.”

  He took out the diagram that forensic had made, showing the positions of the people who’d been at the house that afternoon, both adults and children. None of them had clear alibis, with the possible exception of John McAllister, who was lying at the bottom of a laburnum tree. And possibly Elaine Davies, who’d been on a bench and not paying attention.

  Jury was by now through the dining room and standing on the patio, looking down to the drained pools. He looked at the urn at the top of the marble steps and at the angle of the steps themselves. He looked beyond the steps to the grove of laburnum trees, at the one Johnny McAllister ha
d supposedly climbed and wondered, why?

  “He loved formulas . . . Can you imagine a ten-year-old fascinated by molecules and maps of numbers?” Mundy again. She wasn’t surprised when McAllister turned out to be a brilliant doctor. “He was wizard in science and biology.”

  Even though the coroner’s verdict had been an open one; even though there’d been a lack of convincing evidence, the suspicion that Tess Williamson had been guilty never lifted. He sat down on the top step of the patio, by the urn. Had there been contact between Tess and John McAllister during those five years before she died?

  Possible, but not likely. She would have discouraged it, and he? He might truly have wanted to step forth and admit to killing Hilda. Had the case been presented with John McAllister as the killer, any solicitor with half a brain could have gotten him off . . .

  Only, Tess Williamson knew how fragile this boy was, how little support he was getting at home, how little it really was “home” for him. What would have happened to him? Was she afraid he’d be put in an institution?

  And Tess’s own death?

  Tom Williamson was convinced it was murder. “I expect I’d better get a solicitor,” he’d said, jokingly. But as for Tess’s fortune, Tom already had it. She would probably have allowed him any part of it for anything he wanted. Tom, from what Jury could tell, didn’t want anything but Tess.

  Money and revenge. Those were the two motives that might apply in this case. Revenge? The only people who could logically have wanted revenge would be Hilda Palmer’s parents. Hilda’s mother was the only person who professed any desire to kill Tess Williamson. The rather awful truth (Jury suspected) was that more than one adult, and any number of children were relieved the girl was gone. Yes, any one of those children could have pushed her.

  Jury sat with his head in his hands. If Tess Williamson had indeed committed suicide and tried to make it appear an accident, there had to be a note. Or a journal. Something so that Tom would know not only about her own death but also about what had happened to Hilda. She would have left a note and left it someplace where Tom would be sure to find it, but not someone else.