Vertigo 42 Page 7

  They sounded like ghosts. “I will. Were they all London children?”

  Macalvie nodded. “South Ken, Chelsea, Clapham, I think. North London, the little Hastings girl. The parents were friendly with the Williamsons to one degree or another. You want to talk to them, I mean the children who were there? There are no current addresses, but you can have the ones here. As I said, I made a copy.” He handed Jury the file from which he’d been reading.

  “Thanks, Macalvie.” He looked at one of the photos, one showing the six children in the front garden of Laburnum. They smiled dutifully as the picture was snapped. He pointed to one image.

  “Madeline Brewster,” said Macalvie. “I think they called her Mundy. Funny nickname. She’s the pretty one.”

  “Is this one Kenneth Strachey?” He pointed to the tall boy with brown hair and a confident look.

  “Right. The other one’s McAllister.”

  John McAllister was small and wiry-thin, wearing black-framed glasses, which he was adjusting as the picture was taken, as if they were about to slide down his nose. The glasses were awfully old-looking and heavy for a small boy. The sunlight caught at his hair and made runnels through it; it was a beautiful chestnut color with golden highlights. Jury could understand his appeal to someone like Tess Williamson; he appealed to Jury too.

  The other girls, Veronica D’Sousa, Hilda Palmer, and Arabella Hastings were nothing like Madeline Brewster. Hilda Palmer had black hair, cut sharply around her neck, and a fringe that looked razor sharp like the rest of the hair. Her chin was up, her arms straight at her sides, and she looked as if she owned the world. Veronica D’Sousa and Arabella Hastings were the same size, despite their difference in age, with the same pale faces and brown hair. Even their pouts were similar. Madeline Brewster was a beautiful child with a heart-shaped face and long tawny hair.

  “You want to see the house, don’t you?”

  Jury nodded.

  Macalvie went upstairs and Jury into the living room, where he was reminded at once of Watermeadows, the old and now unoccupied mansion not far from Ardry End. Watermeadows had presented more elaborate trappings, greater vistas, more Italianate tiered gardens.

  But there were the echoes, that sense of footsteps only just retreating when he walked into this living room, uncannily like the one in Watermeadows in its spartan display of furniture, or, rather, lack of it. A little bonheur du jour sat against one wall; on the right side of the door Jury had entered was an inlaid bureau. Then nothing else except for a large, comfortable-looking sofa square in the middle of the room, as if it had been stranded there. Yet there was a tall lamp at its back, a small belle epoque table beside it, a book on the table, and a scattering of silk cushions on the floor.

  That taken together with the imaginary footsteps, it truly looked as if someone had just now been sitting there and had hastily departed.

  The architecture of the room was quite formal: it was octagonal with three doors leading into what Jury discovered were a sitting room or study, a dining room, and the hall down which he had come. The walls were paneled and papered in pale yellow, wallpaper decorated in the manner of very delicately drawn Japanese prints.

  He could hear footsteps overhead, Macalvie’s, of course, but they still sent a momentary chill down his spine. He walked back to the wide hall that went from the front door to the bank of French doors at the rear of the house. Beyond those doors was the patio, wide and semicircular and beyond that the steps down to the ponds, the walks, and the gardens. He walked across the patio to stone stairs, and then down them. He turned to look back up and shook his head and went back into the house.

  The front staircase which Macalvie had climbed was actually a double staircase, one running upward against each wall to a landing where a tall window gave out over the gardens. The stairs turned and went up another half-dozen steps to the first floor.

  Jury called out to Macalvie, whose voice came muffled from one of the rooms. He counted six bedrooms, three on each side. He turned from the stairs, going to the room at the right, which overlooked the same scene as did the landing below. He assumed this was the master bedroom, given its size and position and very large, four-poster bed with a canopy. Unused, except for the infrequent visits of Tom Williamson, fewer and fewer over the years until, he supposed, none at all over the last ten. It was strange to think that no one had slept here for a decade. There was a very large Aubusson rug stretching nearly wall to wall, a dressing table, a bureau, a few scattered chairs covered in watered-green silk.

  Again, the wallpaper caught his attention. It could have been very old or looking as if it had the patina of age, an antique paper. The pattern was so eerily like the scene outlined in the window, one would suppose that the outside had come inside.

  He saw by his watch that it was after three on this October afternoon. October can sit well or ill on an unoccupied and neglected country house. On this one, it sat well. The house belonged here.

  Jury left this room and went to the one down the hall, the one he thought Macalvie’s voice had issued from.

  “He usually kept this locked,” said Macalvie, without preamble. “I had to get a key from the housekeeper.”

  “Why did he want it locked?” It was a comfortable, very lived-in study or library. There were shelves holding ships-in-bottles.

  “Because of those.” Macalvie nodded toward the ships. “It was the kids, he said. He didn’t care who else came in here, but he was afraid the kids might get too interested in ships, mess with them, break something.”

  “He was a collector?”

  Macalvie shrugged. “Looks like it. Understandably, he wasn’t talking much about ships-in-bottles at the time.”

  Jury moved to the back of the room where a glass-fronted armoire held three models, one on each shelf. In the bottle on the top shelf was a three-mast wooden schooner; on the second shelf, a freighter with tiny strips of paper—twenty or so—replicating hatches and with dark smoke coming out of its stack. The blue water on which it sailed was probably some sort of putty. A third bottle looked like a whisky decanter. In it was a schooner and a lighthouse, colorfully detailed. “I used to wonder as a kid how anyone ever could get a boat into a bottle.”

  “ ‘Impossible bottles,’ ” said Macalvie.

  “What?” Jury moved over to the desk where he was standing, inspecting a wooden carving.

  “Things like that, I mean getting objects, not only ships but stuff like playing cards, stuff that really couldn’t go through the neck of a bottle—they were puzzles; they were called ‘impossible bottles.’ ”

  In several bottles, including the one on the fireplace mantel, were tightly rolled pieces of paper. Probably identifying the ship or telling its history or stating the provenance. The bottle on the mantel was larger, containing not one ship but several, a harbor scene. There were tiny buildings, tiny copper lights. Jury was once again at the top of Tower 42 listening to Tom Williamson talk about the lights along the Embankment. “I like to imagine they’re harbor lights.”

  “You remember a song called ‘Harbor Lights’?”

  Macalvie came up to look at the ship on the mantel. “Hm. ‘They only told me we were parting.’ I remember that line.”

  Jury stared at him. “You’re getting sentimental, Macalvie.”

  “Always have been. Well, if you mean to get back to Northants this afternoon, I guess we’d better leave.”

  “Yes,” said Jury, with a curious reluctance to do so.

  ____

  He made one stop at a Welcome Break along the M5 to have coffee and another look at the file Macalvie had given him. He liked the picture of the children, standing in an awkward row, trying to blend for the photograph, and of course not blending at all. Children somehow refused to.

  Madeline Brewster, Mundy. “She’s the pretty one.” She was indeed pretty, beautiful even, even with her hair pulled
to the sides in bunches, and the sun causing that squint to her eyes. Girls wore dresses then, and hers had a pleated skirt, a top with slightly ruched sleeves, all quite smart for a little girl. Kenneth Strachey in his sleeveless sweater and checked shirt, held his chin up and his eyes at a slant, as if he were finding the picture-taking pretty silly. Kenneth felt superior to the little operation. Veronica didn’t, though. She wasn’t quite in the line, but a half-step backward. Hilda Palmer was quite the opposite. She’d stepped forward. With her square face and bobbed hair, Hilda was not pretty at all. Yet she posed like the belle of the ball, as if she knew all of the steps.

  Tess Williamson. A photograph the police had collected, not the one Jury had seen, but one done in a studio, probably, a head-and-shoulders pose. Hair long and light, eyes possibly light blue. It was a black-and-white photo. Much of her beauty lay in her expression—good-natured and empathetic.

  Jury put the papers back together, and drove on.

  Jack and Hammer

  Wednesday, 7:00 P.M.

  11

  * * *

  Thinking Melrose Plant would be there, as he often was before dinner, Jury stopped in at the Jack and Hammer on his way back from Exeter.

  They all sat in the pub, heads together, scratching on bits of paper or napkins, drinks forgotten momentarily.

  When Jury saw Melrose was not there, he turned to go, but then thought better of it.

  “Superintendent!” said Trueblood. “You’ll never guess!”

  “No, I won’t. We could play charades.”

  Vivian laughed. Trueblood wrinkled his brow, as if considering it, then said, “Murdered. Our lady in red.”

  He noticed the lady in red was theirs. “You got this report straight from Northants police did you?”

  “No. Basically rumor,” said Joanna Lewes.

  “And the rumormonger was?”

  “Melrose.” Vivian said this. “He was just here. He’s gone home.”

  “Thanks. See you later.” Jury left.

  ____

  He slammed the door shut, turned the key, and woke up the engine. He slowed the car when he found himself near Lavinia Vine’s cottage. In her front garden was what looked like a laburnum tree, no longer golden, most of the foliage shed. He stopped the car and got out.

  Lavinia was talking across her fence to Alice Broadstairs. Miss Vine and Miss Broadstairs, archrivals in the field of botany and champion blooms, were otherwise the best of friends.

  “Miss Vine, Miss Broadstairs,” said Jury, approaching the cottage. “How are you keeping? Or I should ask, how are the peonies, the pansies, the roses keeping?”

  “Why, Mr. Jury,” said Lavinia, as Alice Broadstairs thumped up an “Hello!” They were both in their eighties and gave the impression of two sweet, elderly women whose common interest was gardening. They were annual fixtures at the Chelsea Garden Show. But Jury knew gardening was a vocation, not an avocation for them. Their minds were rigorous, their dispositions determined.

  Jury nodded toward the tree. “That’s a laburnum, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. We English do love our laburnum trees, don’t we? The golden chain tree it’s often called. Absolutely gorgeous in spring. Not so interesting now.”

  “Is it true everything about the tree is poisonous?”

  “Leaf, seed, root, bark,” Alice Broadstairs said. “Lavinia has to watch out that cats don’t use it as a scratching post. When they wash their faces they ingest it. That cat of yours, Lavinia; I’ve caught him at it!”

  “Desperado? He’s proof against anything. But children, you know, sometimes take the pods for pea pods and open them and eat the seeds, or try to. They’re very bitter, so most children stay away from them. But there have been accidents.”

  “How toxic is it? How much would it take to kill a person?”

  “Um.” Lavinia Vine thought a moment.

  Alice Broadstairs jumped into the breech. “Fifteen to twenty seeds might do it. On the other hand, I heard of one death occurring when a gentleman used the leaves for tea.”

  “If the taste is so unpleasant, why would one keep on eating the seeds?”

  Alice shrugged. “Depends on the child, I expect. Some children are just slow-witted—”

  Lavinia stepped in. “The laburnum’s dangers are overstated. It’s quite true that all of its parts are toxic and a little child’s eating the seeds, I’ve heard of one’s becoming ill. Yet, I haven’t heard of any deaths resulting from it. Are you sure about the tea, Alice? It sounds unlikely.”

  “Quite sure, Lavinia.”

  Jury nodded. “Thanks for the information.” He said good-bye, gave them a brief salute, returned to the car.

  As he drove on and across the Northampton Road to Ardry End, it occurred to him that the little McAllister boy hadn’t looked at all slow-witted. Far from it.

  Ardry End

  Wednesday, 8:00 P.M.

  12

  * * *

  Melrose Plant was standing at the top of the drive with his hands in his pockets when Jury’s car pulled up.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Jury, getting out of the car. “I stopped in at the Jack and Hammer. I thought you might be there. They told me you were passing around a rumor that the woman who fell from the tower didn’t fall. She was pushed.”

  “It’s not my rumor, it’s Inspector Brierly’s.”

  “Detective chief inspectors are not rumormongers. You were talking to DCI Brierly?”

  “Of course not. I was talking to Owen Archer. The owner of the place. Brierly spent some time questioning him, apparently. But then he would do, wouldn’t he, seeing that Archer is the owner of the property.”

  “Where was he?”

  “London. Auction at Christie’s. Archer’s into antiques; has a shop in the U.S.”

  “I take it he also has an alibi?”

  “A dozen people can vouch for his whereabouts.”

  “And he has no idea what she was doing there?” When Melrose shook his head, Jury went on, “Did he tell you anything else of interest?”

  “Meaning, did the police tell him? Why don’t you just ring DCI Brierly? He’d tell you.”

  “I hate being seen as an interfering CID guy.”

  “Hell, you are an interfering CID guy. You’ve already stuck your nose in, and Brierly didn’t bite it off. Probably glad of the help.”

  Jury smiled. “No he isn’t. It’s his case.”

  Melrose shrugged. “He seemed perfectly happy to have you at the crime scene. He didn’t mind your interviewing the victim’s aunt.”

  “If she wasn’t staying with her aunt, where was she staying? Did Brierly give up that information?”

  They were by now sitting in the living room. Melrose looked up at the beautifully detailed cupids and garlands around the ceiling molding. “Brierly asked Owen Archer if he’d ever been to the Sun and Moon Hotel; Archer said yes, a long time ago. I inferred from this discussion the Sun and Moon must have been the place where the victim was staying. It’s about two miles farther along the Northampton Road from here. Calls itself an hotel, but it looks rather scruffy. It’s really just a pub with rooms and bar food.”

  “Belle Syms was there with somebody?”

  “She was?” said Melrose.

  “That was merely an assumption. She comes here from London, stays overnight, yet doesn’t do the obvious thing, which is to doss down with Aunt Blanche. From this, I assume she was sharing her room at the hotel with somebody.”

  “Ask Brierly, for God’s sake. You’ve got your mobile? Ring him.”

  “Battery’s down.”

  Melrose got up, went to the fireplace, and pulled the tapestry bell pull that hung beside it.

  Ruthven appeared a few seconds later.

  “Could you bring Mr. Jury a phone, Ruthven? Thanks.”

&nbs
p; The battery was for once charged in Jury’s mobile. He just loved the ritual of a landline being brought to him where he sat, and in less than a minute, he had it. While he waited he went through several bits of paper in his pockets until he found DCI Brierly’s number. “Thank you, Ruthven,” he said when the butler placed a black telephone on the table before him and then plugged in the cord.

  “Sir.” Ruthven bowed himself out of the living room.

  After informing Jury that DCI Brierly was right there, a PC at the Northampton station handed the phone over, and Brierly asked Jury what he could do for him.

  Given that Jury had been permitted to question Blanche Vesta, he didn’t think it would be taken as interference if he asked Brierly about Belle Syms’s stay at the Sun and Moon. “Was she with someone?”

  “Most definitely. They arrived separately, though. Mr. and Mrs. Guy Soames went down on the register. He later returned to London for something involving business. He of course would have been the reason she didn’t stay with her aunt.”

  “But she stayed after the boyfriend left?”

  “Oh, yes. He’d told her he’d be back in several hours, but that was apparently the last she saw of him.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “The owner, who’s also bartender. She told him.”

  Jury paused, then said, “Listen, would you mind if I stopped by the Sun and Moon and had a chin-wag with this owner?”

  “Help yourself. His name is Whorley. He chatted her up, so you might get some more out of him. He’s pleasant enough, albeit a little nervous about police popping in and ransacking a room.”

  Jury smiled. “Funny how people usually are. Thanks very much.”

  “Wait a tic: forensic found prints—I mean shoe prints—leading up to the door of the tower made by a shoe that was definitely not that high-heeled sandal. The only other fresh ones.”

  “What sort of shoe?”