Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 12

Her look told him nothing that she was thinking, as if he were a blank wall.

Jury watched her move through the crowd and the smoke and watched the door swing shut behind her. He did not know what he'd expected, only that he was hugely disappointed.

He did the only thing he could do: had another drink and watched the smoke weave upwards, collecting over the heads of the people at the bar.

Less than an hour later found Jury at Fulham Police Headquarters.

Ron Chilten would have been surprised by Jury's encounter with this woman, had the Fulham police not turned up the victim's ident.i.ty just that afternoon. "Nancy Pastis, that's the dead woman's name. We're running it through records."

"How'd you find her?"

"A little lady by the name of Verna-no, Vera." Chilten thumbed up a couple of papers. "Vera Landseer lives in the same building and recognized the photo in the paper, or thought she did. Got a flat in Mayfair-Shepherd Market-in the same building as Ms. Pastis's. That's what we've got so far. I've got two of my men going over the flat now. Sharing it with C Division. Milderd, you know him?"

"Slightly."

Chilten leaned his chair back on two legs, rubbed at the ankle hooked over the other knee. "I'll admit I thought you were wrong about the woman you saw on the bus. At first, remember, you identified the dead woman as the one you followed, so I figured-" Chilten shrugged.

"Now we know there were two of them. Nancy Pastis, Kate McBride."

"Yes. But the one you saw still could have been the victim. Otherwise, Kate McBride, if it's Kate McBride you saw. . . . Why was she wearing the Pastis woman's coat? Unless there are also two sables in the picture."

"The McBride woman had to have switched coats."

Chilten looked down at the darned place in his sock. "Sometimes the most obvious explanation-"

"Don't do the Holmes quote on me."

Chilten shrugged again. "Okay, but then why take off her coat and dress the dead woman in it?"

"Good question."

Chilten brought the chair down with a thud. "Jury, eyewitnesses are, more times than not, wrong."

"I guess I'd know that, having questioned so many wrong ones."

15.

It was the same woman," said Jury.

At a little after nine o'clock, dinner at Boring's was winding down, or at least the half-dozen diners spotted about at tables seemed to be dozing over their cheese and biscuits.

Jury was drinking coffee and Melrose was drinking a superior whisky and wondering if he was drunk. He and the Fabricants had downed several drinks at the Running Footman that afternoon. Now here he was, listening to Jury claim the dead walked in the Fulham Road. He said it sounded like a genteel version of a John Carpenter film.

"I didn't say the dead walked; pay attention," Jury said, a bit testily. "She looks like the woman found at Fulham Palace is what I said."

The two of them were sitting in front of the fire in the same wing chairs Colonel Neame and Major Champs had occupied. Melrose was beginning to feel right at home in Boring's. Crusty, almost; almost giving those mumbled responses of Champs or Neame to Jury and the ancient porter. He upended his gla.s.s for the last morsel of whisky, the "moiety" he had instructed Higgins to bring him. What was left now was the very dew this excellent whisky advertised itself as being soft as.

Jury sat back, a little depleted from the day's activity. "At least you haven't told me I'm hallucinating. Which is what Chilten did: 'This whole business, it's got right up your nose, Jury.' What a strange metaphor." He sipped his coffee and p.r.o.nounced it cold.

Melrose signaled Young Higgins, who steered in their direction and took the order for another whisky and another coffee. Melrose wanted a cigarette badly but felt it would be gracious of him not to light up. It would be, but he took out the cigarettes anyway. Jury had often said he didn't want people abstaining from smoking just because he'd stopped. Said it made him feel like a funeral parlor. All of that suspended animation, that artificial hush, that dying-to-be-gone-before-last-orders.

"All right, then," Melrose went on, as he watched a wizened old gentleman lever himself up from the depths of one of the leather sofas. "The two women are either related-twins, even-or they're look-alikes. Well, that's obvious. Doppelgangers."

Jury nodded.

"Let me review the scene: she-the woman you saw that night-leaves this Stargazey pub, boards the bus, rides it for ten minutes or so, then disembarks at-where?"

"Fulham Broadway. Roughly a mile from Fulham Palace, or rather the palace grounds."

Melrose nodded. "And you observe her walking. She gets on yet again, and the bus then arrives at the intersection with Fulham Palace Road. Whereupon she gets off again and you leave the bus and follow her on foot to Fulham Palace. How far was that?"

"A short distance. No more than a five-minute walk."

"You see her go through the gates." When Jury nodded, Melrose repeated it. "You did see her go through the gates?"

"Yes. The gates weren't closed. Apparently, they're open nearly all the time."

"Thus far the only question this raises, aside from your behavior-" Melrose smiled.

"Thanks."

"-is why she walked when she could just as easily have ridden. First possibility: She wasn't sure where Fulham Palace was and got off at the wrong place. Second possibility: She changed her mind about something and left the bus, changed her mind again, and reboarded."

"Third possibility: She wanted to be remembered. I mean, she wanted the victim to be remembered."

They were silent for a moment.

Melrose said, "The woman on the bus and the dead woman aren't the same person. There's not one but two women. Anyone who might have come forward to help police with their inquiries, as you say, would have said, 'Yes, that's her, that's the one I saw walking along the Fulham Road. I remember the coat.' No one would ever have known there were two women. Right?"

They both contemplated the fire. Then Jury turned the conversation back to the Fabricant Gallery. Melrose told him about Rees's series of vacuous paintings labeled Siberian Snow.

"That whole display is simply too awful. Nicholas might see genius there, but then he's Ralph Rees's special friend, I think. His significant other. Love is blind. But Sebastian, he's certainly shrewd enough about painting." Melrose shrugged. "It's fishy."

"I imagine a lot of people thought Jackson Pollock was fishy at first. It could simply be taste." At Melrose's dubious look, Jury said, "So how do you account for this fis.h.i.+ness?"

"I don't know. How does one flummox the art world?"

"Easily?" Jury shrugged.

"But here's a surprise: Guess who else they're representing? Beatrice Sloc.u.m."

"You're joking!"

"Her painting was hanging right there between two awful ones."

"I thought it was her old significant other, Gabe Merchant, who was the painter."

"So did I. So did everyone. I did, before I had dinner with her-" Melrose hadn't mentioned this before and was sorry he had now.

"Dinner? Where?"

"Bethnal Green. It was when you went rus.h.i.+ng off to Santa Fe." Melrose glanced over to see if Jury was smiling in some supercilious fas.h.i.+on. He wasn't, but then he never did. "She talked about her painting, called it her 'blue period.' Not, however, like Pica.s.so's. Said she was depressed, but depressed with no talent." Melrose laughed. "You wouldn't think it to either look at or listen to her, but she's extremely modest, or maybe"-Melrose thought this to be true-"being very good at what she does, she doesn't have to showcase her talent. Like you." This prettily framed compliment Melrose meant to get him off the hook about Beatrice Sloc.u.m.

Of course, it didn't. "She was on the list, as I recall."

Melrose feigned ignorance. "What list?"

"The one you were making at Ardry End, with the names of all the women you knew who you said would make convincing witnesses."

Good lord, didn't the man ever forget anything? "Oh, that. Anyway, they had two other paintings of hers stuck in the back among the ones they keep in reserve. One's a painting of Catchcoach Street. That brings back old times, old memories, doesn't it?"

"Not really. Since we saw the whole lot of them, the Crippses, only this past February."

"I had no idea you were so literal."

Jury smiled.

"It occurs to me"-Melrose placed his drink on the piecrust table between their chairs and sat forward-"Beatrice must know something about the gallery and Ralph and the two brothers. I called her before you came, but she wasn't in. I'll try again tomorrow."

"Try the Crippses. She spends a lot of time there."

"I will. But just what are we trying to find out?"

"I don't know."

"That's helpful. Look"-Melrose spoke with some earnestness-"the only tangible thing connecting the Fabricant family and the Dresser person with your mystery woman, or women, is this sable coat."

Jury nodded, looking sleepily at the fire.

"That sounds extremely ten-"

"Tenuous. Yes. I often hear that word." He yawned.

"What will your Fulham CID man do?"

"Drag her in for questioning, which he may already have done." Jury looked at his watch. "I'd better call him."

"Since you told her you saw her, we couldn't spring it on her that there was a witness, could we?" Chilten's tone was acerbic.

Fulham police had picked her up earlier, at her flat in Redcliffe Gardens. Chilten told Jury she had stopped in Soho for dinner and hadn't got home until after eight. She was, understandably, shocked.

"And she has an alibi, Jury. She was having a cuppa with the old lady upstairs."

Jury thought about that. "You checked it yet?"

"I'm sending someone now."

"She was on that bus at nine o'clock, Ronnie."

"The victim might have been on that bus, Jury. McBride insists you were wrong."

"I'm not wrong, Ronnie. What's this old lady's name?"

Chilten turned away from the phone and said something to somebody. "Laidlaw. A flat on the first floor, right above McBride's."

"Do you mind if we talk to her, this Mrs. Laidlaw?"

"Suit yourself."

"What about the McBride woman's flat?"

"You got a subpoena? Neither have I, yet. Kate McBride lives a pretty quiet life. Widowed. No family, except for some in-laws, relations of a husband who she never sees; they live in the States-'upstate New York' is what she said. She doesn't work; she doesn't need to because the husband left her provided for. Not rich, but enough to live on. He was with the emba.s.sy, and they lived for several years in Paris." He shrugged. "That's the lot. She wants to talk to you."

Something gripped him. It felt almost like fear. "Why?"

"Well, Jury, she didn't favor me with that information. Can you get down here in the A.M. tomorrow?"

"Yes." He thought for a moment, then asked, "Why didn't she come forth when that photo was published?"

"Probably thought it would implicate her. The thing is, it hangs more and more on you, Jury. You're the one who places her at the scene." There was a rustle of papers on Chilten's end. "The only one," Chilten added. "You're pretty positive that it wasn't the victim herself you saw."

Jury hesitated. "I hear a question in that. I am pretty positive."

"No room for doubt?"

Jury sighed. "There's always room for doubt."

Chilten gave a small explosive grunt. "You sure as h.e.l.l aren't making any. Look, R.J., we can't hold her for effing ever, not without charging her. And we've got sod-all for reasonable grounds."

Jury smiled. "Oh, I don't know, Ronnie. You've got me."

Chilten made a noise deep in his throat and rang off.

16.