Vertigo 42 Read online

  “Tell me about the children. What you remember.”

  Tom ran his thumb over the faded gilt lettering of his mug. “Not much, really. It’s a bit of a blur.”

  Jury shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t dismiss it.” When Tom Williamson remained silent, Jury said, “These were kids your wife entertained often. Even if your contact was limited to sightings in the garden or voices in another room, still, Tess talked about them. Six children, Hilda Palmer being one. You described her quite well. What about the boy who got sick?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. John McAllister, the littlest boy. Nearly poisoned himself eating seeds from the laburnum tree he’d climbed. He was Tess’s favorite. Possibly because he’d lost his parents in some kind of accident. Car accident, a collision on the M1 or M2.”

  “What about Madeline Brewster?”

  Tom leaned his head against the back of his chair, frowned up at the ceiling. “I think she was the pretty little girl with the odd nickname. Mandy . . . ?”

  “Mundy.”

  “You seem to know more than I do.” He said this ruefully.

  “Only what was in the police report.” He thought of the photo of the children and Madeline Brewster: hair in bunches, heart-shaped faced, a rather smart little pleated dress. “Commander Macalvie let me see them. But these are facts. What I’m interested in is impressions.”

  Tom nodded. “Madeline Brewster, as I said, was very pretty. The other girls were jealous of her, at least that’s what Tess said.” He was silent for a moment. “Especially the girl with the intimidating family name . . . Victoria? No, Veronica, her name was . . .”

  “D’Sousa.”

  Again, Tom nodded. “Funny how this comes back in bits and pieces. The D’Sousas were severely ‘arty.’ I wonder if the name was real.”

  “The other boy, Kenneth Strachey, what about him?”

  Tom seemed to be trying to drain tea from his empty mug, then said, “Strachey.” He sat thinking, then shook his head. “Oh, yes. Kenneth’s father claimed he was descended from Lytton Strachey. There was a drinks party and I remember being cornered by this neo-Bloomsbury set. There was much talk—but I imagine little reading—of Virginia Woolf and Clive Bell and Forster. He was fascinated by Dora Carrington—you know, the artist? She was mad about Lytton Strachey. She was living with him and a friend of his and she married the friend just to stay together with Strachey. That’s the most spectacular ménage à trois I’ve ever heard of.” He laughed.

  “These kids, were they close? I mean were they what you’d call a gang?”

  “I don’t think so. They seemed to be too different—” Tom frowned, thinking back. “But perhaps that was just Hilda Palmer who was different. The others—”

  “Why was she included in this trip, do you think?”

  Tom shrugged. “Tess’s kindness, I expect.”

  “I interrupted you. You were saying ‘the others’—?”

  Tom smiled. “I do seem to recall Tess remarking ‘thick as thieves.’ ”

  “That’s pretty much a gang, then, isn’t it? Now, this friend of your wife’s, Elaine Davies. She went along to help Tess keep an eye on the children. But according to the police report, she seemed to have spent most of the time reading Country Life.”

  Tom laughed briefly. “Elaine Davies is so unlike Tess, I can’t think what Tess saw in her. Probably Elaine invited herself along. She’s a bit of a social climber, a woman who spends a lot of time at Toni and Guy’s getting her hair done.”

  “Then she lives in London? I’d like to talk to her.”

  “I haven’t seen her in some time, but if she’s in the same house, she’s not far. Belgravia.” Tom rose and went to a small teak table, picked up an address book, wrote down the address, and handed it to Jury.

  “Thanks. Now I’m afraid I must go.”

  “This has been extremely kind of you, to go all the way to Devon and have a look round.”

  Jury got up. “I’ve an idea I’ll probably be going back.”

  At that, Tom smiled brilliantly. He rose too. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. You see, not being sure—”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” Tom Williamson retrieved Jury’s coat from the chair in the kitchen. As he was shrugging into it, Jury said, “I’ll let you know how this goes on.”

  Tom still held to the seaside mug he’d had when he’d come to the door. Now they were at the door again.

  Jury nodded toward the mug. “Do you like Burnham, then? It looks as if that mug has got some use.”

  “Oh. I told you I met Tess on the Norfolk coast. That’s where I met her.”

  “You were both on holiday?”

  Tom laughed. “Tess was. But me, far from it. I lived there for years. I worked there; I mean, I had a shop. Model ships.”

  Jury was surprised. He wouldn’t have thought of Tom Williamson as a seaside merchant. “You sold them?”

  “I made them.”

  Jury’s surprise was so great that his mouth fell open. He looked over Tom’s shoulder toward the table and the ship-in-a-bottle. “You mean you made all of those ships that I saw at Laburnum? Macalvie and I just assumed you’d collected them. And that’s one of yours? You made that?” Jury walked past him, back into the room to the long table. He bent and looked again at the Victory.

  “You like ships, do you?”

  “I’m completely ignorant of them. Except for this one. I thought Nelson was something.”

  “He was indeed. There’s a lot of Nelson history in Burnham. Or ‘the Burnhams’ as they say. There are several villages. Anyway, I made hundreds of ships. This was in the years before GC and CS. Tess just came into the shop one day and looked all around and took a long time doing it. That one she looked at for so long I wondered if she had some family connection to Nelson. It was rather expensive, but she bought it. And she seemed absolutely dazzled by the fact I’d made it. She asked me a lot of questions about the craft and I finally invited her to dinner, where she asked me a lot more.

  “I think I would give anything to go back to the old days. To be sitting with Tess over fish and chips talking about these ships.” He had picked up and now replaced the bottle. “Or any ships. Or anything at all.”

  It sounded as sad as anything Jury had ever heard.

  “Why didn’t you go back to Norfolk?”

  “Because she wasn’t there.”

  They were at the door again. “But this house . . . she isn’t here, either.”

  “No. But this is London. London tends to drown out things.” He stood there for a moment, hands in pockets, reflecting. “Do you know what she told me? She told me I was the one who made her dreams come true. It’s a line from another song,‘I Remember You.’ Tess loved old songs.” He looked away. “I can’t imagine I made her dreams come true.” Tom held to the mug and looked at the carpet.

  “I can. Good-bye, Tom.”

  Knightsbridge

  Thursday, Noon

  15

  * * *

  I located two of them,” said Detective Sergeant Alfred Wiggins, who shared Jury’s office at New Scotland Yard. “Kenneth Strachey and Madeline Brewster. I’m working on the other three. Where are you now?”

  “Knightsbridge.” Standing in front of a patisserie.

  “You’re in luck. Madeline Brewster lives in Clapham, but works in Knightsbridge. Harrods.”

  “I’m looking at it.” Jury was. He’d walked up to the Brompton Road to hail a cab. Harrods, with its usual swarm of people moving in and out, back and forth, crossing and recrossing before the building that stood like a mountainous honeycomb among bees, was directly across from him. “What department does she work in? Harrods is a city unto itself.”

  “In the Armani Col-ez-i-on.” Wiggins gave Armani his best. Jury thought he heard an air kiss in there somewhere. “Speak
ing of fashion, what about the Givenchy? Should I visit the salon on Upper Sloane Street?”

  “I imagine Brierly is trying to track that down. But go ahead, it wouldn’t hurt. What about Kenneth Strachey?”

  “Lives in Bloomsbury—”

  With a name like that, wouldn’t he just? Jury smiled.

  “—appears to dabble about in writing. Mostly for small, terribly intelligent periodicals. Lives with another dabbler, who wasn’t there. That one’s in the theater, maybe an—uh—actor, not currently working.”

  “You say ‘resting between roles,’ Wiggins.” Anyone not gainfully employed and following an artistic bent was, in Wiggins’s eyes, a dabbler. “Is the uh-actor male or female?”

  “Male. They’re probably, you know, matey.”

  Add to dabbling, men living together, and you get gay.

  “Strachey’s good-looking, but in a kind of arty, pretty, girl-y way. There was an author photo with one of the pieces he wrote; I looked up a couple of the periodicals.”

  “Not necessarily gay, Wiggins. See if he’s at home.”

  “Right. Shall I tell him you’re coming?”

  “No. Tell him you’re coming.”

  “Me? What is this case? Not one of yours. And I was about to have my elevenses.”

  Jury was regarding a tray full of doughnuts, some powdered, some glazed, some leaking a custardy sauce. He looked at his watch: 11:56. “It’s noon. Too late for elevenses and, anyway, I’ll take you to lunch at Ruiya’s.”

  This Soho eatery always had a half-block queue and Wiggins loved it for the crispy fish and because he got to bypass the queue.

  Wiggins perked up immediately. “Right, boss.”

  Boss. “Say one-thirty at Ruiya’s. That gives us both an hour and a half. If Kenneth Strachey takes up more time than that, ring me on my mobile. Same for me. Otherwise, one-thirty. Oh, and get hold of Armani and see if Madeline’s there today and ring me back.”

  “Will do. ’Bye.”

  “And what about Andrew Cleary? Did you find him?”

  “You mean the photographer chap?”

  “The very same, Wiggins. He lives in Paris now.”

  After Wiggins assured him he’d ring Cleary, Jury pocketed his mobile and stood looking at the doughnut tray, deciding. He glanced over his shoulder at Harrods and its endless flow of people. Having tanked Wiggins’s elevenses, he really shouldn’t go into the patisserie.

  He went in.

  Jury was drinking excellent coffee and eating a custard doughnut, remembering that Oswald Maples lived not ten minutes away in Chelsea. Sir Oswald had known Tom Williamson, but he had not been at Laburnum, and Jury wanted to talk to those who had first.

  When Wiggins called, Jury was just polishing off a sugar-glazed doughnut, drinking a second cup of coffee.

  “Sorry for the delay, but getting round Harrods on the phone is almost worse than doing it in person. Takes effing forever. She’s there now. And I got Andrew Cleary too. He’s going to be in London this weekend and can see you whenever you like.”

  “Okay, good. Tell him Sunday. Well, getting that information ate up”—he ran his finger over a dribble of sugar—“enough of your time that we better change Ruiya to two o’clock.”

  “Right. Two o’clock at Ruiya. And Madeline Brewster, she’s modeling Armani. That might be worth a look.”

  Knightsbridge

  Thursday, 12:30 P.M.

  16

  * * *

  It definitely was worth a look.

  After the initial squash and holler of Harrods, Jury found the designer collections: Armani, Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Sonia Rykiel, and others together and yet apart. Jury went to Armani.

  He saw her almost immediately. She still looked, in some odd and lovely way, like the little girl at that fatal party. Her hair was no longer in bunches, but thick and long, and looking unmanageably curly, a look he supposed was very well managed. She wore a silk cinnamon-­colored dress with long sleeves, slightly ruffled at the wrists. She turned, walked, turned, hand-on-hip turned again. Behind her were a half-dozen glass doors, reflecting a half-dozen girls in cinnamon dresses.

  A tall woman in black, no doubt Armani black, who appeared to be overseeing all of this, Jury took to be the manager. He alarmed her by pulling out his ID. Her heavily brown-shadowed eyelids flew up.

  “Police?” She was not so far gone she forgot to whisper.

  Jury smiled and whispered back. “Nothing to do with Armani. And you are—?”

  That her own name would get into this possibly sordid affair gave her pause. But she answered, “Artimis. Joyce Artimis. I’m in charge of the collection.”

  “Fine, Miss Artimis. That dress is gorgeous. I’d simply like to speak to the young lady modeling it. I believe her name is Madeline Brewster?”

  “Mundy? What’s she done?”

  Clearly, police wouldn’t be standing here if something hadn’t been “done.” And if Armani hadn’t done it, Mundy must have.

  “Nothing at all. I need to ask her a few questions, that’s all.”

  Mundy Brewster had finished her turn in the cocktail dress and gone through one of the mirrored doors. Miss Artimis followed and went through it too.

  Jury entertained himself while he waited by walking from the Artimis-­Armani gang to a less-heady selection a few steps away. Clothes here were cheaper, but showier. He inspected a mannequin dressed in a hot pink knitted skirt topped by a fiery orange cap-sleeved T-shirt down the front of which spilled a thin strip of glittering zircon. This ensemble, by an outfit called Juicy Couture (what a wonderful name!), was just biding its time until it found its way to Carole-anne Palutski. He was searching around for a price tag when a voice at his elbow said, “That’s all the rage, you know.”

  He looked around at Mundy Brewster. “Do the rich actually have rages when it comes to this? I thought it was only middle-class-me.”

  Mundy laughed. The sound sparked the air far more than the faux-diamonds on the shirt. “Why do I have a hard time seeing you front and center at a Juicy Couture show?”

  “Can’t imagine. You should hear me on the subject of shoes. Such as your Christian Louboutin.” He looked down.

  She was genuinely surprised. “Wow!”

  “Red soles.”

  She wowed again.

  “Miss Brewster, I just wanted to talk to you about the past. Could we go somewhere and sit down?”

  “Certainly. But could we do the sit-down outside of Harrods?”

  “I can think of nothing I’d rather do.”

  “Good. There’s a Pret just down the Brompton Road I go to a lot. Just let me take off this thousand-quid rag and I’ll be with you in five.”

  He watched her walk away. The cinnamon silk looked like a thousand quid, not a rag.

  ____

  They sat in the Pret A Manger’s slick and silvery environs, she having a heavily garnished cheese sandwich and a glass of wine; he having coffee.

  He spoke about Laburnum and the party.

  “Of course, I remember.” She set down a piece of the sandwich, which she’d cut into neat quarters, and picked up her wine. “How could a person forget something like that?”

  “Fairly easily. Because you were little children then, or because it was a traumatic event you might have suppressed.”

  Mundy picked up the quarter of sandwich and bit into it. In a moment she asked, “Did anyone tell you about Hilda Palmer?”

  Jury nodded. “That she was good at finding out things and using the information. Blackmail.”

  Mundy nodded and drank some more wine. “Remember that old movie called The Children’s Hour? Shirley MacLaine. One of the students in the school, boarding school, I think starts a rumor about the two women who run it, that they’re lovers. It destroys the school; one of the teachers, the Shirley MacLain
e character, commits suicide.”

  “Was that the sort of rumor Hilda started?”

  Mundy half-shrugged. “I don’t know. But that’s the sort of girl Hilda was. I think she was the most vicious person I’ve ever known. On the surface, she was sweet. But underneath, she was really cruel. She’d pretend to save things—you know, chipmunks or birds. It would be some creature she’d hurt in the first place and then set about fixing it. Imagine the ruination that lay in her wake if she’d ever gotten to our age now.”

  “And do you think she knew something, or was some kind of a threat to Tess Williamson?”

  Mundy regarded Jury with her deep brown eyes. “Hilda was a threat to everyone.”

  He hadn’t expected that. “Including you?”

  She nodded. “Hilda saw me take something once. It was a school outing to Hampton Court. All of these stately homes have souvenir shops. I picked up a ring, just junk, I expect. I put it in my shirt pocket.” Here she touched her heart, where the pocket must have been then and blushed and looked down at her plate.

  The child never dies in us, he thought. “We all did stuff like that, Mundy. I know I did.”

  She looked up in surprise at him, a copper. “You did?”

  “In Brighton, when we visited the Prince Regent’s palace. I slipped a pen into my pocket.” He patted his jacket, where there was no pocket, and nor had there been one then.

  She smiled. “A bent copper.”

  He smiled too. “Right.”

  “What Hilda did was wait until we were on our bus again, when there’d be no chance of my putting the thing back. ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked. I was really scared.

  “ ‘Nothing, at least not now.’ That was even worse.”

  “To think the axe might fall at any time.”

  Mundy said, “I wasn’t sorry she was dead. I could have shoved her myself into that pool. Only I didn’t.” Her smile was swift and bright.

  He noticed a dimple in only one cheek. “And do you think Tess Williamson did?”