The Dirty Duck Part 9

"Yes."

"Well, where is he, then?"

"In Italy."

"What the h.e.l.l's he doing there?"

"He's Italian." Short pause. "Oh, don't look like that. He's not a gigolo. He's not after my money."

Vivian had rather a lot of it.

"So you met him in Naples. How disgustingly romantic."

She shook her head. "Venice. And it was romantic. Is, I mean."

"Aha! Indecision."

She laughed. "No, not really. But why are you disturbed? After all, you never wanted to marry me."

Vivian's directness caught him off-guard. Was it something she'd picked up in Italy? The thing that got him about her was that she was a genuinely modest woman who could be, at the same time, straightforward. There was hardly any room to move in with Vivian. Nothing to stumble over, searching one another out in the dark. No play of sun and shadow. Vivian stood in the bright light of day.

"What are you smiling about?"

He quickly changed his expression.

"And what on earth are you doing in Stratford in July? You never went anywhere in summer, much less somewhere in summer, much less somewhere touristy."

"I still don't. But don't you remember-" He stopped suddenly. Of course Vivian would remember Richard Jury. More to the point, Jury would certainly remember her. Melrose was certain Jury's interest had been more than professional. And now there seemed to be this Kennington woman lurking somewhere offstage . . .

"Remember what?"

"Nothing, nothing. I came because had I not Agatha would have had her American cousins trooping through Ardry End."

Vivian laughed. "You've always been too nice to her, Melrose. And she's always been perfectly dreadful in return."

"I'm not nice to her, and it's interesting having someone perfectly dreadful about. You can practice reactions on them. It's sort of like being goalie in a soccer game. Anyway, it's wonderful to see you."

"Are you sure?"

Her eyes actually seemed to be twinkling at him over the rim of her gla.s.s. What was she drinking? Naturally, Campari and lime. Didn't they all, over there? He knew he was irrationally irritated with Vivian. Why had she come back now, all Gucci'd up in that glittery green dress, silky hair dripping down the sides of her face like an Italian ice, and probably saying awful things like Ciao? . . .

"When are you leaving?" he asked.

"Well, thanks. Might I just finish my drink first?" She looked at him again with cool amus.e.m.e.nt. "I'm picking up Franco at Heathrow tomorrow. He's coming in from Rome."

Franco. Heathrow. Rome. It all sounded so terribly international.

"And then . . . well, if you're going to be here, I'd like you to meet him-"

"Do you want the wedding at Ardry End? It's probably big enough to hold his entire family."

"That's nice of you, Melrose." She still smiled. "Agatha will like him. He's a count."

"A count?" Really, this was too much.

"They have t.i.tles over there too; you're not the only one."

"I am not t.i.tled. I dropped all of that nonsense years ago. Had I known that was what you were after, maybe I'd have hung on to the earl and viscount and the rest of it longer."

She looked away. "Don't be absurd. I'm not 'after' anything, and you know it. He just happens to be a count, that's all."

"No one just happens to be a count." All Melrose could visualize was this black-caped stranger. "Can he see his reflection in a mirror?"

Now Vivian was angry, and rightly so, he thought. "Oh, for G.o.d's sake . . ."

Melrose slid down in his seat, grabbing at his neck, just to annoy her more.

Then he thought of the look on Sergeant Lasko's face. That's all Stratford needed at the moment. More bloodletting.

15.

For a seventeen-year-old, Stratford-upon-Avon was not exactly Arcadia. No card clubs, no discos, no movies, not even any streetcorner activity. But Honey Belle Farraday could find the action if you put her down in a field of cows.

Tonight she was swinging down Wood Street as if it were the Vegas strip. And when Honey Belle swung, she swung-hips packed into Sa.s.soon jeans; b.r.e.a.s.t.s, not exactly hidden beneath a white Indian cotton top about as opaque as a fogged-over pane; bangle bracelets, loop earrings, and gold chains. Underneath it all she was stark. Honey Belle went in only for necessities.

Stratford. What a one-horse town. Nothing to do but boring plays and boring sightseeing. You couldn't even get a decent tan lying around the Hilton pool. But she still lay around it, because it gave her a chance to show off the white swimsuit she'd bought in Paris-nothing more than a few sateen patches held together by string-that old James thought was scandalous. Who did he think he was kidding? It gave Honey Belle a real kick to think her own mother was jealous of her. Nearly killed her after she found her and old James in the big bedroom at home, and Honey Belle only wearing those flimsy babydolls-well, they hadn't done anything, really. But you'd never convince Amelia Blue of that.

She crossed over the roundabout and pa.s.sed the Golden Egg and looked in the window at people stuffing themselves with eggs and pancakes. Of course, she didn't eat. You couldn't eat and have the kind of body she had, she thought, pa.s.sing fingers with plum-painted nails over her washboard tummy. Flat. The television commercial for some Chinese food jingled in her mind: "Take care of your beautiful bod-y; take care of your beautiful bod!" Boy, and didn't she ever take care of her bod. She sighed with pleasure at the mental picture of herself, as two women with shopping bags pa.s.sed her. They must have been forty-five, fifty, she thought, looking after them. She wondered how anyone could live that long and not kill themselves.

Honey Belle was scared of only one thing: losing her looks, getting old and wrinkled. She could see her own mother's looks beginning to erode, though she had to admit Amelia Blue did a pretty good job of taking care of herself. Thank G.o.d Amelia Blue at least once had been a real looker; and thank G.o.d, too, her own daddy had been tall and blond, a real lady-killer. She guessed Amelia couldn't stand it anymore, being second-best to his latest tart, and had finally had to dump him. Honey Belle giggled as she wondered if her mother knew just how much of a daddy's girl Honey Belle had been.

She pa.s.sed the alleylike opening of a small street crowded with little shops, thinking how they'd kill her-Poppa James and Amelia Blue-if they really knew about her, and what she was doing for the money to buy stuff like gold chains and Sa.s.soon jeans. Dancing in a topless bar. Posing for a photographer friend who'd tried a h.e.l.l of a lot more with her than just taking pictures. It wasn't the s.e.x Honey Belle liked; it was the power. My G.o.d, the power it gave her over men. Being up there on a platform with those blue and pinky lights splas.h.i.+ng over her; or posing on couches and cus.h.i.+ons in those positions. It wasn't the s.e.x, no, it wasn't that. She hated actually doing it. It was the making-men-think-about-it. Think about doing it with her. What made her own body tingle was watching them watching her, was thinking about the men who bought those pictures raking her with their eyes. Her career was pretty well set. When James talked about school, about her grades, she nearly laughed in his face. She was either going to be a model or it was going to be movies. . . . Almost as if the thought of all those movie producers after her had taken some concrete shape, she heard feet behind her.

Honey Belle stopped in a dull pool of light outside a small bookstore and lit a cigarette. The thin stream of smoke rose upward, evaporating into the blue phosph.o.r.escence of the streetlamp. She smiled. What she was actually doing was stopping the sound of her own clogs to see if the feet behind her stopped too. Because Honey Belle could tell when she was being followed even if you dropped her into the middle of a regiment of marching feet. And she was right. She had not seen, she had sensed, back there in that narrow alley of shops, a shadowy form, just standing, looking in a window. Until whoever it was saw her. And that was enough. Still smoking her cigarette she walked on. There was this underground place near the train station where she'd heard there was dancing, drinks, pot, and maybe even a couple of snorts of c.o.ke. Honey Belle could sniff out the action-she giggled at her own little joke, swinging along the walk.

But the giggle caught in her throat as the hand clamped down on her mouth and she felt the breath on her neck.

Oh, s.h.i.+t! was her last thought: Come all the way to England just to get raped! And who'd'a thought it in this s.h.i.+tty little place-but in those few seconds while her little brain was still connecting with the world beyond her body, she also thought, Why not? It was the kind of s.e.x where you didn't have to do anything-and then there was that cold thing on her skin, her India s.h.i.+rt just gone through and everything else like a knife through b.u.t.ter.

When they found her, Honey Belle would have hated to see what the hands sliding over her had done to that beautiful bod.

" 'Brightness falls from the air,/Queens have died young and fair.' " Jury looked up from the theatre program on which Lasko's torch shone and then down at the mutilated body of Honey Belle Farraday.

It was ten-thirty and dark on Wood Street, except for the lights from the torches and the dull blue of the sodium streetlight. The blood, and there was a lot of it, had not had time to congeal. They had to be careful where they stepped.

She had been found by a couple coming from the other end of the block who had been having a late snack in the Golden Egg. The woman had had to be sedated and taken to hospital; her husband had just managed to ring up the police before he got sick all over the telephone kiosk. He was at the Stratford station.

"The doctor says she's been dead about an hour," said Lasko. "We got the call twenty minutes ago. That means she was lying here forty minutes, and no one saw her?"

Jury looked up and down the street. "Nothing open but the Golden Egg, no pubs nearby, no traffic. It's not surprising. Did you check her for prints? The neck? The throat?"

"What neck? What throat?" said Lasko, peevishly. "Look at her, man."

"I've looked," said Jury. "I was thinking more of under the chin. Which is how she was probably held, chin pulled back. The rest of the stuff came later."

Stuff was probably the right word. After the throat had been slit, laid open back to the cartilage, the torso had been slashed from breastbone nearly to the thigh.

"So there it is again, then," said Lasko, wearily, handing the theatre program back to the Scene of Crimes man.

They watched as the remains of Honey Belle Farraday were placed onto a polyethylene sheet. Jury didn't envy the police photographer. The bright flashes made blurred and misty arcs in the air like tracers and illuminated the night and the white faces of the curious who had gathered at both ends of the street. Police cars, red lights whirring, were stationed at either end and barricades erected. Jury could just see the Times and Telegraph people racing down the M-1.

"This poem . . . it reminds me of the first one," said Lasko.

"It is the first one. Part of it, I mean." Jury took out the facsimiles of the theatre programs and read: "Beauty is but a flower That wrinkles will devour; Brightness falls from the air, Queens have died young and fair . . ."

"Where's it from, anyway? Shakespeare?"

Jury shook his head. "I don't know. It sounds familiar, but I don't know." He watched the sheet containing the young girl, shrouded on a stretcher, shoved into the waiting ambulance. He thought of Farraday. The poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Jury hurt more for the stepfather than for the natural mother. Amelia Blue Farraday, he bet, could be counted on for a royal case of hysterics.

"I'll tell you what worries me," said Jury.

"What?"

"How long is this poem?"

16.

Jury had been right about the hysterics.

If there was ever any doubt about Amelia Blue's having been an actress, it was quickly dispelled by her performance over her daughter's murder.

Because that's just what Jury thought it was-a performance. And it was not because he had grown callous in his twenty-odd years with Scotland Yard. After recovering from her initial swoon on the love seat in her Hilton sitting room (or near-swoon: it hadn't put her out of action long), there was a flying at Farraday with fingernails unsheathed, as if she were blaming him for having brought them to this murdering town in the first place; there was a raging at Lasko and Jury, the messengers who had brought the bad news; there was a stalking of the room, as if she'd got the stage blocking down pat. Go to window. Stare out. Move to table. Pick up picture of Honey Belle taken last summer. Only last summer, with her pack of boy friends at the beach. Clasp frame against bosom.

And she had the bosom for clasping. Perhaps the seed of Jury's suspicion of Amelia's maternal feelings had been planted by Penny as they sat by the River Avon.

If Farraday was a self-made man, Jury could see why. His control was far more convincing than the mother's lack of it. Danger, a statue that had suddenly decided to move and speak, had subdued his former anger over the boy's being missing, his loudmouthed demands for more and better police investigation, his threats regarding the American Emba.s.sy. His generally throwing his weight around.

It was instead Amelia Blue who had thrown one or two things; it was her husband who had restrained her.

"Hush up, Amelia. It won't do no good, acting this way-"

"You! What do-well, maybe you just don't care! Maybe except only that pore, sweet li'l thing's not around anymore for you to-"

Farraday hit her. Not hard, but a backhanded slap that didn't budge her from where she stood, hands on hips, cheeks flaming. Her brightly rouged lips smiled one of the nastiest smiles Jury had ever seen.

They had all seemed to have forgotten Penny. She had gone outside to sit on a hard little bench in the shadowy darkness of the balcony, as if shadows and darkness were her lot in life. Leaving Lasko to referee and try to question the Farradays, Jury went out to sit beside her.

Penny was staring straight ahead at nothing or at some unspeakable scene being played out in her mind. Her long hair had been done in an awkward, loose braid up on top of her head, and it was spilling down now, the small flower that had been wound in it dead. The hairdo and the shapeless cotton dress at whose folds she was absently plucking Jury a.s.sumed had been donned for that night's performance of Hamlet, from which she had come back to find this news.

It was odd. It was Penny who really would have made the actress. Her silence was heavy with tragedy, but real tragedy. In her ill-fitting gown and disheveled hair, he half-expected her to say, again, "Here's rosemary . . . that's for remembrance."

But she didn't. He felt he must break her silence, for he knew it had a lot to do with guilt, and he put his arm around her.

In a whisper worse than a scream, she finally said, "Where's Jimmy?" And she started to sob, covering her face with her hands, leaning against Jury.

He knew what connection she was making. It was what Jury had been wondering too, ever since they'd found Gwendolyn Bracegirdle. Someone seemed to have it in for the people on Honeysuckle Tours.

Jury pulled her closer and said, "We'll find him; not to worry." How often had he uttered those empty words today?

Penny leaned away from him and wiped her hand indelicately under her nose and down her dress. He pulled out his handkerchief, which she took and held but didn't use, except to twist it in her hands.

"Oh, Gawd! I feel so guilty. All them awful things I said about Honey Belle . . . well, but I can't take them back now. And there was times I just wished she'd-die."

The stricken glance at Jury told him she knew she'd have to pay for that searing bit of honesty. "The Lord will strike me dead for all them things I said." And she looked away, quickly.

Unintentional verse, he thought, like an amateur's attempt to imitate something like the brilliance of that poem which he had just read: Brightness falls from the air, / Queens have died young and fair.

Jury increased his hold on Penny Farraday.

And wondered, as she had wondered, where her brother was.

Fifteen minutes later Lasko and the Chief Superintendent were arguing in the lobby of the Hilton, while Jury, smoking a cigarette, looked on.

"Unless we arrest them all-and on the basis of what evidence?-I don't see how we can keep the whole d.a.m.ned tour in Stratford if they want to go to London. Except Farraday. He wants to stay here till the kid's found, but with the wife hysterical and wanting to get out . . . I mean, it's not like Stratford-upon-Avon has fond memories for her-"

"She's crazy, then. Either crazy or guilty." Then Sir George, apparently not wanting to neglect Scotland Yard altogether, invited Jury to join the argument. "According to what you told me the other girl said, the woman was jealous as h.e.l.l of her daughter-"

Lasko tipped back his bowler. "But to do that to her own daughter-"