The Case Has Altered Page 3

  Somewhere in the distance a door banged back and Jury heard what sounded like a tray of crockery approaching. Whoever it was made a noisy and clattering exit from the one part of the house to the other.

  It was (he supposed) Mrs. Suggins who came into the room like a stiff breeze, her white apron crackling, with a large silver tray in her hands. The tray she set on a rosewood table and offered them coffee. Both said yes with enthusiasm, and she poured. She was a small woman with well-muscled arms, testament to all of the heavily laden trays she had carried, all of the whippings, stirrings, and mashings she had given all of the cream cakes, potatoes, and puddings over the years. Her gray hair was pulled back from her face, stuck about with pins in some version of a chignon. It was probably a permanent flush that had settled on her cheeks from steam. Indeed, Mrs. Suggins seemed to exhale the steam of the kitchen.

  She greeted Chief Inspector Bannen with a no-nonsense authority, and pointed out she’d brought plenty of sugar. “Mr. Bannen here likes his sugar, he does.” Her smile was close to possessive as she handed him the bowl and the sugar tongs and watched as he plinked four cubes into his cup. Mrs. Suggins was one of that marvelous breed of kitchen personnel who assume that every visit, every occasion is a signal for the kitchen to tuck up its skirts, tie on its apron, and get to work. Then, realizing that Mr. Bannen had probably not come simply for a well-sugared cup of coffee, but for her master and mistress, she said, “Suggins is looking all over for Mrs. Owen, but we can’t think where she’s got to.” Stoutly, she drew herself up, clucked her tongue, and shook her head. Mrs. Owen might have been a pet or a child, an intractable one at that. Mrs. Suggins went on: “As the master’s in London, I’m the only one in the house, except for Suggins. Mr. Price is off in Spalding. Don’t tell me something else happened.”

  “Something has, yes. It’s your kitchen girl, Mrs. Suggins. It’s Dorcas Reese.”

  As if she’d guessed the errand, Mrs. Suggins took a step backward.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you, but Dorcas was found this morning, early, in one of the dikes in Wyndham Fen. I’m afraid . . . well, I’m afraid she’s dead.” Bannen stumbled a bit in his reporting.

  Mrs. Suggins, Jury thought, had that effect upon one; she was the image of the bountiful but strict nursemaid of one’s childhood, who would not put up with silliness and made-up tales.

  She looked as if she’d just been slapped. Her face reddened and she put a hand to her cheek. “Dead? Dorcas?” Her eyes were wide; she had to lean on the arm of the sofa. “Dorcas?” she repeated. She looked up at Bannen as if she hoped he might refute this.

  Bannen drank his coffee, looked at her over the edge of the cup, looked as if wishing he could take it all back. But he didn’t. He waited for the cook to compose herself a bit, then asked, “Did you see Dorcas around dinnertime last evening?”

  “Well, of course I did.” Back to the business of running a house. “She peeled the vegetables, cut them up, like always. Then we had our tea and she did the serving.”

  “Did Dorcas tell you whether she was going to the Case Has Altered?”

  “No, she didn’t. But that’s where she usually does go. Too often, to my way of thinking.” The chiding mentor part of her nature took firm grip and she drew herself up again, hands folded over her ample stomach. “Last I saw of Dorcas—nineish, it was. I was just arguing with her about the washing up, for dinner would soon be finished. More like nine-thirty, then. That’s supposed to be Dorcas’s job, but—” Mrs. Suggins’s face flushed brightly and she put her hand to her cheek. “Dead? I can’t quite take that in. Anyway, Dorcas was eager to leave, well, I didn’t mind doing it. There was only the three of them—”

  “The Owens and Mr. Price?”

  She nodded. “When I was finished, I went up to bed. I’d promised myself an early night.” Then, apparently in anticipation of Bannen’s next question, she went on: “There’s no use asking me what they did, for I’ve no idea.” And of yet the next: “And, no, I’ve no idea of anyone who disliked Dorcas, disliked or liked. She was so bland, Dorcas was. Not much starch to her; not much ginger. She whined a lot, you know, kind of felt sorry for herself.”

  “What about boyfriends? Anyone serious?”

  “Dorcas?” The cook gave a humorless laugh. “Nothing much going there. I hate to say it, but Dorcas wouldn’t be the type to attract the men. No, too plain, not pretty at all. Oh, she talked about men, her being just a mite man-crazy, but I didn’t listen to half. Except—”

  “What?” prompted Bannen.

  “It was just that lately, she’d got into a real good mood, but that changed all of a sudden and she went sour. Depressed, or like that. Well, that made me think there was some man in the picture.” Mrs. Suggins shook her head. “Oh, but to see the poor girl murdered. Well, it doesn’t make sense.”

  “I didn’t say she’d been murdered,” said Bannen, with that off-centered smile.

  Mrs. Suggins looked at him blankly.

  “Thanks very much, Mrs. Suggins. Now, if you could have another look for Mrs. Owen, I’d very much appreciate it.”

  The cook sighed and turned away. “I’ll try. But if Suggins hasn’t found her by now, no telling where she might have got to.”

  As she left, Bannen drew a small notebook from his pocket and was thumbing the pages. “I want to call HQ. If you’ll excuse me.”

  Jury took this as a request for privacy and wandered out into the hall.

  • • •

  While Bannen was speaking to someone at headquarters in Lincoln, Jury looked at the bronze busts set into alcoves, a Sheraton escritoire, and a large semicircular sideboard with a mahogany veneer.

  Directly across from the doorway through which he had come was another with the same wide double doors, open. The room was bathed in shadows because the curtains were drawn. He supposed it was a sort of gallery; given the paintings lining the left wall. But the most interesting thing about the room was the collection of life-size statues assembled in no particular way. They were marble, the sort of thing one found ordinarily in a garden or at the end of a trellised vista or a columned corridor. Their marble wardrobe ranged from a mere drape around the hips to a full-skirted dress and bonnet. Jury assumed they were part of Owen’s collection, or else he’d inherited these modestly smiling women together with the house.

  Enough daylight seeped in through chinks in the curtains that Jury could see details that he was sure were not part of the sculptor’s vision: as he moved from one statue to another, he saw a slender rope of tiny silver links around one neck; around another’s wrist was a silver bracelet; and wound through another’s marble curls was a blue ribbon. A long-stemmed blue flower, a hyacinth, he thought, had been placed so as to seem part of one statue’s marble bouquet. He doubted these adornments were provided by Max Owen.

  “My lord! You weren’t supposed to be here until next week!”

  Jury whirled at the sound of the voice.

  She walked through bars of light made by the narrow openings of the curtains and undid the ornaments, one after the other, all the while keeping Jury in her line of vision as if he might pull something tricky if she didn’t watch him. Removing the silver bracelet from one lady, she said, “It seems silly, I know, but I sometimes feel as if they should be compensated for having to live so much of the time in the dark. Max doesn’t like opening the curtains because the window’s east-facing and the morning sun might damage the paintings. To tell the truth, I think Max has forgotten what he ever intended to do with either the paintings or these ladies.” The ribbon and costume jewelry now removed, she went to the last statue and scooped some coins from its upturned hand. “For the launderette. Our machine’s on the blink.” Then she stopped and studied Jury’s face.

  “You aren’t Mr. Pergilion, are you?” A suspicious note crept in here, as if Jury had misrepresented himself.

  “I’m not Mr. Pergilion, no.”

  Now, as if she’d lost interest in the transaction, she moved back a
nd dumped the coins into the upturned palm of one statue, rewound the ribbon carelessly in another’s hair, draped the bracelet back over a wrist, set the hyacinth back on the marble flowers. It was as if she were announcing Jury could take her as he found her, or not at all.

  “But I am somebody.” He smiled.

  This didn’t seem to stir her curiosity, for she only wanted to talk about who he wasn’t. “Mr. Pergilion is the appraiser, you see. Max is always getting one appraiser or another in to value his paintings and furniture. He’s thinking of selling off a few pieces, I can’t imagine why, we don’t need any more money. It’s all just his excuse to get somebody in here to talk about his collection. He does it all the time. He exhausted my small store of knowledge long ago.” She pointed to a fragile-looking writing desk and said, “This is one of the pieces Max wants to have valued. I love it. It’s bonheur-du-jour.” The satinwood table sat on long narrow legs, with small painted doors decorated with birds and flowers. “It’s worth a few thousand, but a lot more if the painter was famous. I imagine Max hopes he’ll find out the painter’s name.”

  She stopped in the act of replacing the silver necklace and held it twined in her fingers, lost in some sort of difficult thought, judging from her expression. The necklace looked much like a rosary and she looked meditative as a nun. A dove gray dress with a soft white lace collar, straight and shining hair, and that imperturbable face. Now she moved over to the windows. “Whenever Max goes up to London, I open the curtains, which is why I’m here—” It was almost as if she needed to justify her turning up in her own house. Saying so, she pulled the cord on the curtain nearest her. “—because I think it’s sad always having to stand in shadow.” She proceeded down the wall, opening each curtain in turn. Until she stopped in front of him. “I’m Grace Owen.” She held out her hand.

  Grace Owen could only improve with light and proximity. “Richard Jury.” He took her hand, cool as marble. Then he removed his identification and held it out. “Scotland Yard CID.”

  Her smile disappeared and it made him feel oddly sad. “You mean Scotland Yard’s investigating Verna’s death?”

  Jury shook his head. “I’m here only at the sufferance of Chief Inspector Bannen. It’s not my case. I just happen to be a good friend of one of your guests—your guest when it happened, I mean. Lady Kennington?”

  “Jennifer Kennington. Oh, yes. This awful business about Verna has been—hard on her, I’m afraid.” Speculatively, she regarded Jury, as if wondering whose side he was on. “But she’s back in Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s been two weeks since—” She pulled a tissue from her skirt pocket and was rubbing at a spot on the statue’s arm. “The inspector talked to everyone; what else is there to discover?”

  “What happened.”

  Again, her look seemed to be assessing the situation. “Didn’t Jennifer tell you?”

  Jury almost started himself to rub at a place on the statue’s other arm. “We’ve not—I haven’t seen her actually, I mean—well, police work. You know.”

  No—he thought her look said—she didn’t. That this detective friend hadn’t gone to the trouble of at least asking Jenny what had happened . . . Jury imagined this particular guilt-trip to be one of his own devising.

  But Grace Owen made no comment; she dampened the tissue with her tongue and rubbed at the arm again. It was strangely erotic. “I can tell you what I know, if you like.” She pocketed the tissue and walked over to the window. “They’d both gone outside, to that little wood—” She stopped. “Isn’t that him? The chief inspector from Lincoln police?”

  Jury joined her at the window. Bannen was standing at the edge of the trees, talking to the gardener.

  “Why is he here, anyway?” she asked.

  Jury suddenly realized that he hadn’t told her about Dorcas Reese. “He’s here because he has some bad news, I’m afraid.” Having said that, he felt he could hardly refuse to tell her. “One of your staff, a woman named Dorcas Reese, was found in one of the canals on that National Trust property. Wyndham Fen, I think the name is. She’s dead.”

  “What?” Her hands flew to her face. “That poor girl. But how? What happened?”

  Jury hesitated. It wasn’t his place to supply details. “We’re not sure. The pathologist isn’t finished. Chief Inspector Bannen came to talk to you and your husband.”

  “I expect he wants to ask me more questions.”

  Jury nodded, relieved that “more questions” didn’t appear to cause her any anxiety.

  She said, “Well, I expect I must go and talk to him.”

  As they started for the door, Jury looked again at the bonheur-du-jour. He smiled a little, thinking. “Are the other pieces as nice as this? That your husband wants valued?”

  “What?” Muddled, she brought herself back from the death of her servant and said, “Oh, yes. I don’t know all of what he says he wants to sell—he won’t sell them, of course—it’s all a kind of ritual he goes through when he gets bored.” They were at the door and she pointed at an escritoire. “Here’s another. Do you like antiques, then? Old rugs and things? There’s an Ispahan carpet in the living room that’s apparently ‘of doubtful provenance,’ as my husband would say.”

  “Don’t know a thing about them. I have a friend who lives in Northants who’s an appraiser, though.”

  “Don’t tell my husband or he’ll have him down here in a heartbeat.”

  “Really?”

  “He threatened once he was going to sell off the cold ladies.”

  “Who?”

  “This lot.” She looked back at the marble statues. “That’s what I call them, ‘the cold ladies.’ ”

  4

  The day was cold and monochromatic, which suited Melrose Plant perfectly, for he wanted to brood. As much as he looked forward to seeing Richard Jury, Melrose simply couldn’t think of the right approach to take regarding Jenny Kennington.

  For the last twenty minutes or so he’d been walking through the grounds of Ardry End, pondering the call from Jury, and was now surprised to find himself far from his house in a stand of sycamore trees that were part of the woods Ardry End shared with Watermeadows. Difficult to know where one stopped and the other started. He stopped and looked at Watermeadows through the openings in the trees and thought of Miss Fludd. For the last couple of days, he’d been almost wholly caught up in this Lincolnshire business, but she’d been tucked away behind some door in his mind which she only occasionally opened to see if he was occupied—He was? And the door closed softly again.

  He shook his drooping head.

  A shot rang out.

  Melrose turned quickly: what the devil? He thought he’d caught a glimpse of a dark-coated figure making a dash through those pines over there. He knew who that was, all right. It was Mr. Momaday, Ardry End’s self-appointed “groundskeeper.” The man had actually been hired to do what gardening there was; but Momaday insisted on calling himself “groundskeeper.” He’d done precious little “keeping” if one were to judge from the weedy flowerbeds and the untrimmed herbaceous borders. What Momaday did do was patrol the grounds like some damned Nazi and let off salvos at squirrels, rabbits, pheasant—whatever came within his gunsights. Melrose had told him to stop it. He did not believe in shooting for sport, and the Ardry End larder provided enough food that they didn’t need to kill it on the hoof or on the wing. But the property was so extensive that Momaday knew he could blast away without anyone’s being the wiser, since Melrose rarely roamed his distant acres or sought shelter in his darkling wood.

  Fortunately for the animal life, the man was a wretched shot. Melrose had decided the only way Momaday would ever pick off squirrel or rabbit was if one was bent on suicide and strode purposefully into the gunman’s path, shouting, “Come on, Momaday, you’d be doing me a favor, man!” Only then would he (who seemed to consider himself a killing machine) bag any game.

  Melrose sighed and continued his walk. He was not sure why walking in the open air was more conducive to sor
ting things out than sticking to one’s armchair and fireplace and port. Perhaps the thoughts themselves being punishing, the body must follow suit. Thus a frigid, sunless day was a better environment for troubled thoughts than a soft, sunny one. One must dress for the occasion, too. Stout boots were a must, and his green Barbour jacket. And it was always a point scored if one were to carry a shotgun broken over one’s arm. Mr. Momaday had the only shotgun, though, and he was using it.

  He stopped to inspect a tiny white flower, a mere drop of a flower, and wondered if it was a snowdrop. The name made sense. A bit farther along, he paused to run his finger along a long tendrily vine growing up the side of a tree. Was it ivy? Most vines were, so he left it at that and went back to brooding over Jury’s impending visit.

  The next moment he heard his name—“Melrose!”—being bruited about in the dim distance. He knew it was Agatha, no doubt come for her tea. There was one thing Melrose had learned long ago: Never underestimate his aunt’s skill in ferreting out information. His butler Ruthven was total proof against wiliness, threats, and lies, so Melrose’s whereabouts were safe with him. Might she decide to enlist Momaday’s aid—?

  Another shot rang out.

  He was going to kill someone some day, Momaday was.

  What a lovely fantasy.

  • • •

  The all-clear having been sounded by Ruthven (the old dinner-gong put to this use), Melrose found himself back in the sitting room with the port and walnuts he was sorry he’d left in the first place. Agatha had, of course, left more than one message in his absence, none of which he paid any attention to.

  For now he was much more interested in Richard Jury’s forthcoming visit. And what he would have to say about Jenny Kennington. He felt guilty, he supposed, about that day in Littlebourne, innocent though it had been. Besides that, he’d given rather short shrift to Polly Praed, whom he hadn’t seen in years. He sighed. Was this the sort of man he’d become, ogling every good-looking woman, flitting from one to another like a bee or a butterfly? He sat there feeling morose, picking at the paper napkin beside the dish of walnuts. Finally, he took out his pen and, unfolding the napkin, wrote a list of names: