The Old Fox Deceived Read online

  The receiver squawked; his eyes snapped open. He must have dozed off. “Yes, sir?”

  “I said, get down to the office. Make it snappy. There’s been a murder up there and they want us. Wiggins can fill you in.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Two days ago. Nights, that is.”

  Jury groaned. “That means they’ve moved the body. That means—”

  “Stop whining, Jury. A policeman’s life is full of grief.”

  • • •

  A half-hour later, Richard Jury stepped out into what might possibly be a day of weak sunshine. He checked the row of metal mailboxes just outside the front door, found only circulars in his, stuffed them back in the box, and went down the stone steps. The little park across the street was delicately awash in pale sunshine, its pallid greens and dull golds like a faded canvas.

  Once at the gate, he remembered he had a small gift for Mrs. Wasserman and retraced his steps, going back up the short walk and then down the four steps which led to her basement apartment. He knocked, but tentatively, not wanting to frighten her. Silence within, as she was probably debating whether to answer. A curtain to his left flicked back, and through the double iron grilling of the window he saw her eye and nose. Mrs. Wasserman was far advanced in paranoia. Islington for her was the Warsaw Ghetto. He waved. The curtain dropped. The chain clanged back and the door opened. Her ample bosom and broad smile appeared.

  “Mr. Jury!”

  “Hello, Mrs. Wasserman. I brought you something.” Jury handed over a small package from the pocket of his Burberry.

  Her face was alight as she opened it and then held up the whistle.

  “It’s a police whistle,” said Jury. “I thought maybe you might feel a little safer about going to market or Camden Passage with that round your neck. One blow on that and you’d have every bobby for a mile running down Islington High Street to your side.” Hell of an exaggeration, but he knew she’d never have occasion to use it. It was an old one he’d found in an antique shop near the Passage.

  Jury had often watched Mrs. Wasserman from his window, as she went up the walk dressed in her black coat and flat black hat and flowered shopping bag. She’d stop inside the gate, look both ways. Outside the gate, both ways again. Down the pavement, look to the sides and behind. . . .

  Over the years she’d asked him a few times — very meekly — to accompany her to the High Street or the Angel. To alleviate her embarrassment, he would say he was going that way anyway, and on the odd days when he wasn’t at New Scotland Yard, his life was so loosely structured that he might as well have been going her way as not. He looked at her now as she took tentative pipes at the whistle, childishly pleased. He towered over her, the short, rather corpulent woman, her black hair in a bun drawn back as tight as a satin cap. The navy blue dress was pinned with a filigree brooch. He wondered what her youth had been like before the war. She must have been very, very pretty once.

  That’s what he had in common with her — the war. Both his own father and mother had gone in it. His father at Dunkirk, and his mother in the last blitz of London. When he was seven years old, their home had collapsed around the two of them like a house of cards. In the darkness he had searched for her through the night until he had seen her under the charred remains of beams and bricks, seen her arm, her hand lying against the rubble, thrown out from underneath as it might have been thrown out from under a dark coverlet in her sleep. For seven years after that he had been handed round from aunts to cousins and back again until he had, at fourteen, simply lit out on his own.

  He could never glimpse a woman’s hand after that, an arm lying against the dark cloth of a chair or the wood of a dining table — just the hand and arm, not the face, not the body — without that piercing numbness, as if his mind had been cauterized. This image, which should have been in the ordinary way of events absolutely hideous, was instead endowed with what he supposed Yeats must have meant by “a terrible beauty.” That porcelain hand against the blackness of a smoking London building appeared in his dreams like a lantern in the dark, a light in the forest.

  “Inspector Jury,” said Mrs. Wasserman, bringing him back from that burning building, “I can’t thank you enough. It’s so nice of you.” She clutched his arm as if it were a spar from a sinking ship. “My brother, Rudy. You know, the one I write to, the one who lives in Prague. Do they let them have their mail, do you think, uncensored?” Jury shook his head; he didn’t know. “Ah, who knows? But I tell him not to worry about me. So much he worries. I tell him there’s a policeman who lives here. No, not just a policeman. A true Englishman. God bless you.”

  He tried to smile but could only swallow hard, looking back and off at the sun-painted park. “Thank you, Mrs. Wasserman.” He did smile then and raised his hand to his head in a brief salute.

  Walking through Camden Passage towards the Angel, he felt almost lightheaded. She had saved some part of his day. Jury, despite his twenty years with Scotland Yard and seeing, as he had, the dregs of humanity, had never been reduced to mere cynicism.

  A true Englishman.

  To Jury, it was still the ultimate compliment.

  2

  “It’s on the coast. Fishing village — or was once — near Whitby. More of a tourist place now, in summer, at least.” Detective Sergeant Alfred Wiggins took out a small tablecloth of a handkerchief and blew his nose. Then he tossed his head back and applied drops with a tiny dropper, sniffing hugely after each application. Wiggins had managed to turn hypochondria into an art or even a sport.

  “Still got that cold, Sergeant?” The question was so rhetorical even Wiggins didn’t bother to answer. “Can’t the Yorkshire people handle this murder? They’re no fools.”

  “Tha sah is na jus the murrer.”

  Jury had, over the years, learned to interpret Sergeant Wiggins’s secret language of the sick room. He so often had a cloth to his face or a lozenge in his mouth his messages were runic. “What do you mean, ‘not just the murder’?”

  Wiggins stoppered up the little bottle and tilted his head forward to hurry the draining process. “There’s complications, they say. The victim, name of Gemma Temple, according to someone in Rackmoor, was actually somebody else.”

  Jury wondered how he could scale the warts off that message to see if some pointer would emerge. “Do you think you could explain that?”

  “Yes, sir. What they meant was, there’s some question about who the woman actually is. She’d been in Rackmoor only four days, staying at a pub. Said her name was Gemma Temple. But according to this family named Crael, she was really some relation of theirs. Incognito, something like that.” Wiggins flipped through his notes. “Dillys March. That was the name the Craels gave her. Did a moonlight flit, oh, fifteen years ago. And then just resurfaced. And got herself murdered.”

  “They aren’t sure who she is?” asked Jury. Wiggins shook his head. “Well, but surely this Temple woman can be traced—”

  “The Yorkshire police know she came from London, sir. Kentish Town was her last address. I don’t know much more than that.”

  “The body?”

  “In the mortuary in Pitlochary. That’s about twenty miles from Rackmoor.”

  “And everything cleaned up and dusted. Probably hoovered the spot.”

  Wiggins’s laugh was more of a giggle.

  “Why the hell do I always seem to get these cases cold? Suspects?”

  Wiggins shook his head. “Nothing much said there, except some crazy painter-type was mouthing off about murder in the pub on the same night. Saying something about Rasputin.”

  Jury looked up from his cup of tea. “Rasputin? What’s he got to do with it?”

  “Some Russian or other. Talked about superior types doing murder.”

  Jury thought a moment. “Raskolnikov?”

  “They all sound alike, those Russians.”

  Jury checked his watch. “Have you got us a train?”

  “Yes, sir. Not till five from Vict
oria, I’m afraid. We’ll be met in York.”

  · IV ·

  Rackmoor Fog

  1

  THE car heater of the little Ford Escort thunked despairingly, blasting out heat on the floor but nowhere else, so that Jury’s feet were hot and his nose cold.

  The North York Moors stretched endlessly to the right and left, white and frozen. Far off, the horizon loomed in near-translucent shades of gray. They had passed some dry walls, but mostly the land was unenclosed and uncultivated waste. No roads nor railways, no farms, no hedges, no walls nor steadings. The moors stretched away like another country.

  For sixty miles they had driven straight as a shot from York, stopping at Pitlochary to give Jury a chance to see the body of the murdered woman and to talk to the doctor who had performed the autopsy. Jury and Wiggins had managed a few hours of sleep, and now it was early morning, the earliest morning Jury thought he had ever seen.

  They were now crossing Fylingdales Moor where the geodesic domes of the U.S. Navy’s early warning system rose incongruously in the distance. Coming towards the car, straggling along the side of the road, were a half-dozen moorjocks, the black-faced sheep of the moors. Thick rolls of curly wool scaled with frost, all supported by spindly black legs. They had long, black, and (Jury thought) sad faces. As the car passed the sheep, Jury wound down the window. The last in line had stopped to scratch itself against an ancient cross and looked curiously after the car.

  Jury thought of the body of the young woman he had just seen lying on a slab in the Pitlochary morgue room and wished himself out there in the vast indifference of Nature.

  “My God, sir, close that window, will you?” This plaintive wail came from Wiggins, who was doing the driving.

  Jury rolled up the window and settled back and stared out at the desolate, forsaken landscape, the untrammeled expanses of snow, and he sighed.

  • • •

  Rackmoor lay in the hollowed-out cleft of the rocks, the North Sea beyond and the moors behind. It looked secretive, almost guilty.

  They were forced to pull into a parking lot strategically placed at the top of the village. A hundred yards down Rackmoor’s plunging High Street, an articulated lorry had got itself wedged, its cab stuck round the crazy jackknife turn, its trailer up the narrow street.

  Jury looked down at the sea and the red-tiled roofs huddled in uneven tiers along the cliffside. Out on the gray horizon a ship hovered, stuck in the morning. The village was smoky with fog and morning fires, monochromatic except for the dull red-brown of the rooftops. Jury felt, as he had on the moors, as if he were caught up in some loop of time, going nowhere.

  “Well, I guess there’s nothing for it but to walk,” said Wiggins, sniffing unhappily at the sea air. There must be better climates than this, his nose seemed to say.

  As they passed the Bell, a pub on their left, they could hear the shouts of the driver, who was leaning out of the cab, yelling at a clutch of villagers. Jury wondered what faith in the laws of gravity had ever got the lorry even a short way down the High Street in the first place. Squeezing between the cab and a fishmonger’s — he had come out, white-aproned, to find himself cheek to jowl with the lorry — they rounded this heart-stopping turn and went right. The road leveled off for the length of a block of shops: newsagent’s with stiles of postcards which not many tourists would be buying in January; greengrocer’s where an iron-haired woman was setting out swedes and giving Jury and Wiggins a businesslike stare; a little building on the right where a gray brindled cat slept in the window — the Rackmoor Gallery. And next, a small shop showing frocks as plain and brown as the cobbles underfoot.

  A second and (Jury was sure) essential carpark had been formed from a plateau on their right. The next turn left was another steep drop. At the end of it Jury could just glimpse the sea like a picture placed at the end of a green tunnel in a sort of trompe l’oeil effect. Off to left and right were little courts and tiny alleys. One narrow lane called Bridge Walk had a few steps leading up; a small stream ran beside them. Pavements were staircases; rooftops looked down over other rooftops.

  At the end of the High Street was a cove; this morning the waves were breaking far out, and though there was no sunlight, the sunless glare of the sea cast its own light upon rocks and standing pools. Small craft— cobles and other fishing boats — were beached at the land’s edge and painted in startling colors: sapphire blue, aquamarine. Breakwaters made part of a seawall.

  The sign of the Old Fox Deceiv’d swung from iron, whipped by a sharp wind. It showed a fox looking a bit battered from too many chases, but now lolling by bushes in the filtered sunlight, eating grapes. Peering out on the poor unfortunate creature from bushes and trees were hounds, probably a whole pack of them.

  Jury and Wiggins walked around the cove and up to the pub. Parked in front of it was one of the nattiest little sports cars Jury had ever seen. A Lotus Elan.

  Wiggins let out a low whistle. “Look at that, would you? Set me back a year’s salary, that one would.”

  “Wonder how it got round the artic?” said Jury. “Probably sprouted wings.”

  • • •

  Mrs. Meechem — “Kitty,” she said to Jury, looking wonderingly up at him, either at his height, his smile, his identity card, or all three — led them back to a small dining room to the rear of the pub, separated from the saloon bar by a beamed doorway with a low lintel. Jury had to stoop to get under it.

  A slim, youngish man rose from the table. He had to be the owner of the Lotus. And considering he was here, he had also to be Detective Inspector Harkins of the Pitlochary C.I.D. There was, sitting beside him, a short, rotund little fellow who looked as if he wanted to sink out of sight.

  “I’m Harkins.” He shook Jury’s hand, having carefully removed a pearl-gray glove. “Good of you to come lend a hand, and so quickly.”

  That, thought Jury, was a lie. Harkins did not look at all as if he thought it were good. One could hardly blame the provincial police if they were angry at having their authority usurped. But it was still a problem.

  Harkins introduced the other man as Billy Sims. “He’s Wakeman here.”

  “Wakeman? And what’s that, Mr. Sims?”

  Billy Sims mashed his cap between his hands and looked everywhere in the room except at Scotland Yard. “Ah be Wakeman these ten year. Colonel Crael, he pays me t’do it.”

  Harkins, clearly more from a desire to get the explanation over with rather than to help out, said, “It’s an old tradition. The Wakeman was once responsible for the safety of the village. Not Rackmoor. I don’t think they ever had one before Sir Titus got it into his head. But there used to be one in Ripin, I think. Billy found the body.”

  “I see. When did you come upon the woman?”

  Billy Sims studied the floor at his feet as if the hideous vision might reappear on the boards. “ ’Twas near midnight on the Angel steps . . . ”

  “Hear or see anything?”

  He shook his head violently. “Ah, no, sir.”

  “It would be a help if you’d just go along with us to these steps —”

  He honestly thought poor Billy might go down on his knees to clutch at Jury’s coat. “Ah, if you please, sir, t’would be I’d ruther not. Such a sight ’twas.” Billy looked quite terrified.

  “All right then. You’ve been very helpful.”

  Harkins looked as if couldn’t agree less as they watched Billy Sims’s departing back.

  Jury tossed his coat over a chair and sat down. He noticed that Harkins had not removed his incredibly expensive camel’s-hair coat. Harkins appeared to be rather unwilling to stay a moment longer than duty absolutely warranted.

  “You’ve been to Pitlochary? Seen the body?” asked Harkins. Jury nodded. Harkins handed over a manila folder, labeled and very neat. “It’s all there, Chief Inspector.” The folder just missed being tossed on the table by a hair.

  “Richard,” said Jury. He passed over his packet of cigarettes. “Have one?”


  Harkins shook his head, permitted Jury a thin-bladed smile and took a leather case from his coat pocket. “I smoke only these. Cuban, very good. Care for one?”

  “Sure. Thanks.” Jury lit them both and then opened the folder. He looked down at the pictures the photographer had taken. “Who does your camera work? It’s extremely good.”

  “Local chap.”

  “Describe the scene, will you?”

  There was a short silence. “It’s all in the folder, Chief Inspector.”

  “Yes. I’m sure the report’s very thorough. But hearing it would give me a better perspective on things. You’ve the advantage of me, see. You saw it all and I didn’t.”

  “ ‘Advantage’? I hope that doesn’t mean we’ll be left to carry the can back.” He faked a smile. There was no question that Harkins felt he was the Little Red Hen who baked the bread while this Jury was the turkey who’d come along to eat it.

  Kitty Meechem brought in coffee and Jury was saved a reply. As the cups were passed round, Wiggins looked at Kitty rather mournfully and asked for tea. He must becoming down with something, he said; sea air never did agree with his sinuses.

  Holding her tray against her breast like a bundle of love letters, Kitty said, “Ah, and it’s not tea you’ll be needin’, sir. A buttered beer, that’d be just the thing.” She flounced out, an attractive woman, Jury thought: middle-aged, plumpish, satin-brown curls.

  “What’s buttered beer?” whispered Wiggins.