The Dirty Duck Part 17

Melrose's smile was sour. "Thanks awfully. You don't suppose they're alike, do you? Can you imagine talking with two of them?" Melrose replaced his teacup. "You know there's something I've been wanting to mention-" He shrugged. "I don't know. It can wait."

"I'm going back to the Yard. I want to talk to Lasko, among other things."

Jury left.

Melrose sat there wondering if perhaps he should have, indeed, mentioned it after all. But it seemed a bit frivolous to be talking about the relations.h.i.+p between Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe at this point; Jury would think Plant had been driven slowly mad by Harvey Schoenberg. Perhaps, thought Melrose, I have.

"Nothing," said Lasko, talking to Jury from Stratford-upon-Avon. "We've been over this whole area ten times, checked all the buses, trains-everything we could think of. No sign of the kid."

Even over the telephone, the hangdog look of Lasko was visible. Jury told him what had happened to Amelia Farraday. There was something slightly less-than-sincere in Lasko's reactions. Jury still thought Sammy was glad it hadn't happened in Stratford. He could hardly blame him. "Keep checking on Jimmy Farraday." It was all Jury could think to say before he replaced the receiver. Racer's cat (they had all come to think of the cat that patrolled the halls that way) had narrowed a pa.s.sage through Jury's office door and around Jury's spartan furnis.h.i.+ngs and between his legs and, finally, streaked up to his desk as if it were following a beam of light.

Perhaps they took one another's measure until midnight. The doc.u.ments in the case he had already sifted over and sifted over and come up with nothing new-there was nothing new.

Unless one could count the dispatch sent that afternoon from Chief Superintendent Racer with its usual perfunctory address: "Jury. Although I haven't heard from you in the last several hours, it has come to my attention that another murder has taken place and that you have not seen fit to report to me immediately. Why I find this unusual is, perhaps, due to my own thwarted idea of-"

And there followed-fortunately, Jury thought, not in Racer's actual person-the usual castigations, imprecations, and variations upon the theme of Jury's fallibility, ending with a command to report in at dawn. The firing squad will have loaded up by then, he supposed, tossing the paper aside.

The cat, finished was.h.i.+ng, cast its eyes on the memo and yawned.

Jury read the poem and reread it. That he could not make out its connection to these murders made him feel an utter fool. Nothing beyond the fact that they had all been women, and the pertinent stanza certainly dealt with that sad knowledge. But he could add to that something else: the stanza dealt with the pa.s.sing of Beauty. Fair queens. Helen of Troy. The dying flower. The death of beautiful women. Jury looked up from the poem to the blank wall. Gwendolyn Bracegirdle had not been beautiful at all-well padded and permed, middle-aged at thirty-five. Had it not been for Gwendolyn, Jury would have been certain someone had it in for the Farraday family.

From the papers on his desk he pulled the pa.s.sport of James Farraday and looked at the tiny picture. From that he looked to the blow-up of that part of the pa.s.sport which contained James Carlton's face. He looked again at the pa.s.sport-Jimmy with James Farraday and Amelia-and thought how intelligent the kid looked. He stared at it for a while longer, then picked up the telephone again.

"Airports?" said a sleepy Lasko. "Well, h.e.l.l, no. Why'd he ever be taken out of the country? . . . Look, Richard. I hate to say it but you know and I know that kid must be lying dead out in some field we just haven't stumbled into yet-"

Jury interrupted. "No, he isn't."

Lasko sighed. "Just how in the h.e.l.l are you so sure of that?"

Jury wasn't. "The victims have all been women, Sammy."

"But they'd need doc.u.ments, Richard, to get out of the country."

"It's not impossible to come by pa.s.sports, Sam. Anyway, if you want me, I'll be at my place." He gave Lasko his number in Islington, hung up, and swiveled round to stare at the black pane of his window.

It had to be the Farradays. The Farraday women. There was only one left. Penny.

"Mr. Jury-"

It was Mrs. Wa.s.serman from the bas.e.m.e.nt flat in Jury's building, standing in his doorway, clutching her dark robe together at the neck, and holding out that day's-or yesterday's-news.

Her hand, Jury saw, was shaking. "Come on in, Mrs. Wa.s.serman." He did not ask her why she was up at this (for her) unG.o.dly hour. He already knew. Probably she had been watching from behind her dark-curtained window through the long day and longer night for the policeman who lived upstairs to come home. She often did.

She stepped in, still bunching the robe together, and quickly shut the door, keeping the other hand behind her on the k.n.o.b as she leaned against the door.

Jury hid a smile. It was so like a bit from an old Bette Davis film, an actress's pose. But Mrs. Wa.s.serman wasn't acting, Jury knew, as he looked down at one of the racier London tabloids where even the usual front-page undressed girl had had to give place to news of "The Slasher." If Mrs. Wa.s.serman, somewhat deshabille herself, could walk up two flights of stairs at one in the morning, then she was nervous indeed.

British newspapers had always done a creditable job of cooperating with police by keeping the gorier details of killings out of the news. It was necessary for the simple reason that there were too many potential Slashers out there, waiting for a modus operandi to be disclosed so that they could grab a piece of the publicity. But this particular paper was skirting much too closely around the edges of that pool of blood in which lay the body of Amelia Farraday. Oh, it left something to the imagination, granted. But constant repet.i.tions of "mutilation" would set even a less-imaginative person than Mrs. Wa.s.serman on the edge of her seat.

" 'The Slasher'-what a terrible name. Somewhere, Mr. Jury, somewhere he's out there. Walking about, someone who looks like anyone. . . ."

Jury was afraid it would simply add to her storehouse of fears to learn that The Slasher might well be a woman. Mrs. Wa.s.serman knew the dangers of men, or so she thought. So entrenched in paranoia was she, that Jury had helped her again and again with new bolts for her door, new grilles for her windows, new locks, keys, chains. And new lies. He did not know how many stories he had made up about the infallibility of the Metropolitan Police Force when it came to protecting women walking down the street.

He knew she heard, barricaded there in her bas.e.m.e.nt flat, an army of marching feet in the occasional step of the pa.s.serby on the pavement, and in that army was always her pursuer, the Feet that stopped, the form that lurked, the shadow on the pavement. Jury could see in her mind all of the carefully chosen paraphernalia symbolizing safety-the bolts, the locks, the chains-all melt in some Daliesque landscape and run like dark blood down her door.

His expression had given something away. "I'm right, Mr. Jury. So dangerous it is, even to walk out-"

Firmly, he took her arm and sat her down in his leather chair, the one good piece of furniture in the room. "No. You're wrong." He tossed the paper in which one could almost smell blood mix with newsprint over to his desk, out of her reach. "I'll tell you why you're wrong, but only if you promise not to buy another paper tomorrow. Promise."

She clasped her hands in her lap and nodded. "I promise." Then she smiled her sad, schoolmistressy smile and shook her finger at him. "But we both know, don't we, Mr. Jury, how you can't tell me anything. Even though it's you in charge. The paper says so." This last she said almost proudly, as if Jury were the young relative who'd finally proved he wasn't a good-for-nothing.

"Forget about that. I can tell you this much: this person they're calling The Slasher and trying to make out is prowling all over London-absolutely untrue. He's not going about indiscriminately killing wom-people. He knows exactly who and what he's after, and it's got nothing to do with strangers, or all of London, or anyone else."

She believed him. She always did. Only this time, he was happy to report to himself, it was all true. It almost made him feel the truth was coming closer. Jury smiled his first genuinely felt smile of the day.

At that her face wore the look of the drowner finally breaking the surface of the water.

Air, it seemed to say. Thank G.o.d.

29.

Jury winked at Fiona Clingmore, who stopped in the act of showing herself her recently varnished nails, to show Jury something more important. Fiona repositioned b.r.e.a.s.t.s and legs and rested her carefully made-up face on her interlaced fingers. "You're late." She slid her glance toward Chief Superintendent Racer's door.

"As far as he's concerned, I always am."

Jury shoved the door open (just in time to see Racer apparently adjusting his hairpiece, which didn't help the entrance), strode across to the chair near Racer's desk, settled himself more or less on his spine, smiled, and said, "Hi."

Racer, even the hairpiece forgotten at this, stared at Jury as if he'd gone mad. "I beg your pardon, Superintendent?"

"Why?" Jury looked at Racer out of innocent eyes-clear, soft, dove-gray. He knew it wasn't worth it to try to drive Racer a little farther round the twist, but the temptation was hardly one he had to go looking for.

"Why?" Blood the shade of his carnation boutonniere suffused Racer's face. "We do not address our superiors with a 'Hi.' "

"Oh. Sorry. Sir," Jury added as a well-timed afterthought.

Racer leaned back, regarding Jury with the suspicion a police officer generally reserves for somewhat more criminal game, and said, "You'll go too far one of these days, Jury."

Since Jury had gone too far too long ago even to remember, the comment seemed somewhat redundant. "You wanted to see me?"

"Of course I wanted to see you. Yesterday. This Farraday woman. Another American cut down in the streets and the American consulate wants to know what the h.e.l.l's going on. Understandable. So what's going on, Jury?"

"If you're asking me, have I solved this series of crimes? No."

"I am asking, Superintendent, for a report," said Racer through clenched teeth.

Jury gave it to him, the state of Amelia Farraday's corpse, in b.l.o.o.d.y detail. ". . . somewhere between eleven and shortly after midnight. Twelve-thirty, perhaps."

"Motive?" snapped Racer.

"If I knew that, I'd be dancing in the streets."

"Wiggins?" Racer had of late taken to this elliptical manner of speech, no doubt to frustrate those under him even more.

Jury frowned. "What about him?"

"What's he doing, man? Besides infecting everything in sight." Racer looked down at the papers on his desk-seldom were there any-and gave Jury a kind of side-swipe grin, like a misthrown punch. "All of these s.n.a.t.c.hes of poetry. The plague. Sergeant Wiggins is well suited to the case." Racer sat back, prepared to instruct. "Been reading up on it. 'Lord, have mercy upon us' was something they wrote on doors." Racer made a movement with his index finger, as if the air were his door and he wished Jury behind it. "Did you know there were signs, they thought, that signified the coming of the plague? Same sorts of signs I see when Wiggins walks down the hall-toads with long tails, great numbers of small frogs, that sort of thing." Racer coughed.

"Hope you're not getting-"

Jury stopped short of condolences. Some buried thought had almost surfaced during Chief Superintendent Racer's lecture. Was it possible Racer had actually said something helpful?

"A bit snide, I thought," said Wiggins, as they drove down Piccadilly. They had been talking about Jonathan Schoenberg. Wiggins fell silent, squeezing the car between two double-decker buses that seemed to be racing each other past Green Park.

"Well? What do you think of him?" Jury prompted.

Wiggins was taking out his small tablecloth of a handkerchief. His nose was twitching, rabbit-wise, though not (Jury feared) on a scent. "Who, sir? Harvey or the brother?"

"We know Harvey like a second skin. Jonathan, of course."

"He looks like-" Wiggins was overcome by such a violent attack of sneezing that Jury had to grab the wheel to keep the car on course.

"Sorry, sir. But have you ever noticed how Green Park sets off an allergy this time of year?" Wiggins blew his nose and turned up Albemarle Street.

"Can't say I have. Go on about the brother."

"I was just saying they look alike, but they certainly don't act anything alike. Harvey spends a lot of time waving his fork; the brother eats with his. You know what I mean."

Jury smiled. "Yes. What did Mr. Plant think?"

"Same as I did. He thought this Jonathan seemed a bit of a cold fish. The brother's contemptuous of Harvey. I don't think they go down a treat with each other. Professional jealousy, I'd say."

"Hard to think of anyone's being jealous of Harvey. Professionally or otherwise."

"I'd say the jealousy part's the other way round. This Jonathan's a professor of English literature. Teaches at a college in Virginia called St. Mary's. And spends most of his time over here in the British Museum reading old ma.n.u.scripts." Wiggins pulled up to the curb in front of Brown's, stuck his head out of the window, and shouted a silver Mercedes out of the way.

They sat in the car for a few minutes. "How did Schoenberg react to these murders?"

Wiggins shrugged. "Like I said, pretty cold-blooded. Ivory tower sort. He said he thought it was shocking, of course. Frankly, I think it'd take a lot to make him worry about his brother. Or anyone else, for that matter."

As they slid out of their respective doors, Jury said, "I can hardly wait to meet him."

"I think it's revenge," said Jury, in Melrose Plant's sitting room at the hotel.

Plant frowned. "Why not gain?"

"The psychology's wrong. These killings are all too-I don't know-ritualistic."

"Revenge against which of them, though, on the tour? It would be a pretty clear-cut case against the Farradays-or James Farraday-except for the murder of Gwendolyn Bracegirdle. That's the facer, wouldn't you say?" asked Plant.

Jury nodded. "I would indeed. Maybe she got in the way."

Plant grimaced. "Sloppy."

Jury shrugged. "Nothing's perfect."

"Revenge. It makes me think of what Harvey said, a rather stupid comment-well, perhaps not so stupid-about Hamlet. 'Revenge tragedy. One's just like another. You go round killing off all the wrong people until you finally manage to kill the right one.' Hard to think of our murderer trying to work up the nerve to kill his own particular Claudius." Plant smiled grimly. "If all of this were directed at the Farradays, I'd be very nervous for Penny."

Jury felt cold. "Mind?" He helped himself to a tot of brandy from Melrose's decanter. "Want some?"

"Yes, I could use one." Melrose looked at his watch. "Well, it is at least afternoon. Agatha thinks I'm racing toward alcoholism. The only positive side of all this is that it's made her afraid to come to London. Cheers." Melrose raised his gla.s.s.

"Where's Schoenberg? Did you see him this morning?"

"In Deptford, naturally . . . oh, you mean the brother?" At Jury's nod, Melrose said, "The British Museum, of course. They left together."

"What'd you think of brother Jonathan?"

"Icy. He certainly doesn't take his brother seriously."

"Have you seen Penny?" When Plant shook his head, Jury said, "I don't want Penny leaving the d.a.m.ned hotel."

He said it with such vehemence that Melrose almost jumped. "If you don't want them moving about, you'll have to place them in what-do-you-call-it? Protective custody."

"Penny I should lock in a closet." Jury drained his gla.s.s and stood up.

"Where're you going?"

"To see Jonathan Schoenberg."

As he walked toward the door, Plant's voice stopped him. "Look, there's a small thing-"