Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 11

"We're trying her out."

Melrose wanted to say white of you but refrained. "I hope you've another to put in its place."

Sebastian laughed. "He didn't paint several of the same kind."

He didn't? You could have fooled me! Melrose said, "I don't mean him, I mean her. I mean Beatrice Sloc.u.m."

Nicholas said, as he stood now with the big white painting, "Yes, we've two or three more of hers in the back. Would you want this delivered to-?"

Melrose gave him Boring's address. "It's a gift for a friend." (Diane's lucky day.) What Melrose couldn't understand was, having bought the Beatrice Sloc.u.m and having shown further interest, the brothers Fabricant didn't immediately go and trot out every painting they had of hers. If Ralph had any more white ones lying around, he bet they'd be off in a flash to get those. They were cl.u.s.tered round the desk in the short hallway now, and Melrose had his checkbook out. "Do you suppose I could see the other Sloc.u.m paintings? If they're handy?"

Sebastian Fabricant frowned slightly, as if he couldn't understand the request. "Well, yes, I expect so. Nicholas?" Just then, the telephone bleated its effete gallery tone, and Sebastian answered it and Nick went off towards the rear.

Nick, it appeared, was general dogsbody. Was that his punishment for being younger brother? Melrose wondered how the spoils here were divided up. There had been no more custom since he'd come in over an hour ago, but, of course, this wasn't Marks & Spencer. To shop in this place would require serious money. And how was he to endear himself to them to the extent he would be taken to the family bosom? What would it take to get on the matey side of these two, the why-don't-you-come-for-dinner side? Then Melrose remembered Ralph. While he was in the middle of this fresh idea, Sebastian was putting down the receiver and Nicholas was coming towards them, carrying Bea's other paintings.

Melrose knew, even before they were set in front of him, that he'd buy them. If anyone deserved a leg up, it was Bea Sloc.u.m. Yet buying both would leave that blank s.p.a.ce on the wall, so he decided on one. And as soon as he saw the smaller of the two, he knew which one that would be. It was a scene of a London street, a North London street, and Melrose recognized it even before Nicholas read from the card taped to the back: "This one's called Catchcoach Street. Nice, no?" Nicholas was peering over the top as if he could view it upside-down.

Melrose smiled. How much better could it get? "Nice," was all he said. Although she hadn't particularized this little bank of row houses, she had painted the pub at the end of them, the Anodyne Necklace, and he would swear those kiddies with their hoops and b.a.l.l.s-or were they rocks and hatchets?-were of the family Cripps. Whatever one might call the ambience of Catchcoach Street, Bea had nailed it: run-down houses behind gardens one tried to tend but which still withered. The amiable squalor, the d.i.c.kensian lucklessness of Catchcoach Street. He smiled. "This one I'll take with me, I think. Perhaps you could send the other round to my club with the-ah, Siberian Snow." Bea's was only three hundred, and it could have gone ten rounds with any other painting in the place-except for the other Sloc.u.m.

He made out his check, and it was a considerable sum to have change hands. Despite the waste of two thousand on the Rees painting, Melrose was only too happy to spend it. It was worth it just to see that Bea Sloc.u.m was succeeding. He felt she would have been succeeding more if more of her pictures had been hanging there. Why was this? he wondered again.

Melrose tore off his check and handed it to Sebastian, as Nicholas placed a square of cardboard on top of Bea's painting and then wrapped it up in brown paper.

"Look," said Sebastian, "it's getting on for lunchtime. Why don't we find a bite to eat?"

"Thanks, I'd be delighted! Do you have your favorite place?"

"We'll go to the Running Footman. Just up there a ways."

The Running Footman! Memories, memories. With Catchcoach Street under his arm, Melrose felt comforted; he had no idea why he should feel so. Perhaps it was so seldom demonstrated that justice was abroad in the world; that the deserving did get rewarded. He patted his brown-paper-wrapped painting and thought that whatever ills he might have to suffer at the hands of the Fabricants, it would have been worth it.

14.

Leaning against the bar, ordering up a half pint of lager, Jury was beginning to feel like a regular. How many times had he been here at this point? A half dozen, surely. The clock on the wall in the Stargazey said four-thirty. He wondered how Plant was getting along in the gallery. He was not very hopeful; as everyone was fond of telling him, there wasn't much to go on. Kitty, who'd been out for a couple of days, still hadn't returned. Jury shoved his gla.s.s towards the bartender.

Behind the bar was a long mirror, and when he looked in it he saw a blond woman in a black coat making her way through the crowd towards the door. He wondered if he was drunk on only a pint of lager, for he had a queer feeling of seasickness, watching her walk, as if the pub had turned into the Fulham Road and she was once again walking the pavement and he was on the bus, following her. Her transit through the room was only a matter of seconds, with Jury holding his fresh lager up, transfixed. Then he pulled himself together, dropped some coins on the bar, and moved quickly to the street.

Out in the waning light and a gauzy rain that felt like cobwebs on his face, Jury looked up and down the Fulham Road, saw nothing, went to the corner: still no sign of her. But there was no sign of a departing bus, either, so she must be somewhere; either that or she'd jumped into a cab.

And then he saw the black coat, the pale hair some distance off at the nearest bus stop, with a bus just coming. He could not make it to that stop in time, but if he ran he could get to the one farther up. He broke into a jog and got to the stop just after the bus, which still idled by the curb.

She was not sitting on the lower level, so he hopped up the steps to the upper level and sat down several rows behind her. The only other pa.s.sengers up here were a group of teenagers in uniforms, late from school, probably.

They meandered through South Ken and Brompton and Knights-bridge; he watched to see if she showed signs of getting up. Harrod's was in this block of buildings; rather, Harrod's was this block of buildings. No. The bus joined the procession of buses making their way to Hyde Park and Piccadilly.

Why he hadn't simply gone to the front and sat down beside her and produced his identification, he didn't know. One part of him told the other part, Well, he didn't want to embarra.s.s her. Embarra.s.s how? The teenagers wouldn't care if the conductor came through and announced the next stop was Red Square. It took more than a lone policeman to get their attention.

So, why? He hated to admit that he didn't know, really, what to do. He had grounds for detaining her, for taking her in. Reasonable grounds. She had been at the scene. He went over and over this as the bus made its way around Piccadilly Circus.

She got up.

Jury looked out of the window and saw the bus was traveling up Shaftsbury Avenue, and, after she'd descended the stairs, he did too, waiting halfway down until the bus stopped. He jumped off just as the bus moved away from the curb.

A number of theaters lined one side of Shaftsbury Avenue, so perhaps that was her objective. It was too early for the evening's performance; perhaps she'd come to buy tickets, though in this computerized age it was hard to believe someone would make a trip simply to purchase tickets.

She was on the other side of the street, going through the doors of the Lyric, where an American play had just opened. He didn't enter the lobby but waited just outside the gla.s.s doors while she transacted her business. In a few moments, it was done and she was returning things to her bag; the tickets she inspected as she walked slowly towards the doors beyond which Jury stood, and which she now pushed open, unseeingly, for her eyes were on the tickets.

"Madam."

She started, took an involuntary step backward, b.u.mped into the door. "What?"

Jury had his identification ready, held it out. "Superintendent Jury, CID. I'm with New Scotland Yard."

She seemed to be utterly horrified, a reaction Jury had seen more than once, usually on the faces of the innocent. Some of them thought he had come to accuse them; some, that he had come to inform them. In neither case was it a happy meeting.

"If you could just spare me a few moments to talk?" Closer now, he could see that her eyes were hazel, changeable in the changing light. She was wearing makeup this evening, a coppery shade of lipstick, very light brown eyeshadow.

"Talk? I'm sorry, but-why would I-?"

She shook her head, and her pale blond hair, which was not pulled back this time, swirled as if they were dancing and he had just spun her away.

It was different from the dead woman's hair only in the shade of its blondness, its sheer luminosity. Which meant it was altogether different, only it might take a long time looking at it to see that. Jury had been a long time looking.

That disbelieving look he was getting-he could see he was in for a time. "There's an investigation going on, and I was hoping you could help us with our inquiries. I've reason to believe you might be able to."

"What reason?"

It had started to rain again, or perhaps it had never stopped; it was the sort of rain one gets used to and hardly notices. "Look, there's the St. James pub right over the road. Would you have a drink with me?"

"I didn't know policemen did that-bought drinks for people 'helping with inquiries.' " Her smile was a little sly. "You really say that, do you?"

At least he was hearing a hint of humor. "I don't, not usually."

"You're sure you are a policeman?"

"I'm sure."

She seemed to be taking the measure of his smile. "All right, then, why not?"

The pub looked invitingly warm and intimate, windows showing bronze light through smoke, the smoke of endless cigarettes.

The St. James was fairly large, with a long oval bar and tables sitting in pools of shadow or, at the rear, actual darkness; Jury took one better lit, then went up to the bar. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, and she seemed calm and unsuspicious. He set the pint of lager and half of Guinness down on the small damp table and, after seating himself, said, "Let's begin with your name."

This surprised her. "You don't know it?"

"No. I'll explain in a moment." But the point wasn't his explanation; it was hers.

"It's McBride. Kate."

"And you live-?" Jury had his small notebook out.

"South Ken. In Redcliffe Gardens. It's on the edge of Fulham. Would you please tell me what this is about?"

"If you've been reading the papers, you know about a woman who was shot in the grounds of Fulham Palace?"

"Yes, I saw something about it. It struck me as strange, bizarre. But what-"

"You frequent a pub in the Fulham Road called the Stargazey?"

She frowned, even more perplexedly. "I've been there, yes. Did this woman-?"

"And do you recall going there on the night in question?" He was retreating behind this stiff formality.

By now, she had her chin planted firmly between her fists, eyes leveled at him as if she had just discovered he was fascinating. "What night is in question?"

"The night of November fifteenth. On the Sat.u.r.day."

"No."

"You weren't there, at the pub?"

"No. I mean, I don't recall."

"It's less than a week ago. Could you try?"

She seemed quite sincerely to be trying as she sat back and squinted at the ceiling. "Let me think. It was the evening a friend of mine called about a dinner party . . . and then I had dinner. . . . Later I had tea with an elderly lady who lives upstairs. . . . Yes, it was Sat.u.r.day. Last week."

"But you don't remember going to the pub?"

She shrugged. "I might've. The Stargazey is quite near my flat. It wouldn't have been until later, though."

"Later?"

"Oh, around ten, I expect."

"And then?"

"I would have gone home."

"You didn't board a bus?"

She shook her head. "I didn't, no."

Jury let a few seconds pa.s.s. He said, "Somebody who looks enough like you to be your twin did board a bus outside of the Stargazey and ride down the Fulham Road."

"Then that's who you should be talking to, the someone who looks like me." She had removed her black coat and adjusted the neck of her pearl-gray suit. Its cut was elegant, Jury thought.

Jury smiled a trifle grimly. "Yes. Well, the point is, it was you, Ms. McBride."

"I shot this woman and then ran off?"

"I hadn't got that far in my mind yet."

She opened her mouth, but it was as if she'd come only on empty air. Her hand went into her leather bag, felt around, came out with a cigarette case. The hand was slight and fine, thin-skinned, the fingers long and almost delicate. The case was silver, fine too. The great settler and mind-clearer, a smoke. Jury felt an awful longing.

She did not open the case, though. She said, "To be as certain as you are that I was on some Fulham Road bus, you'd need an awfully dependable eyewitness. You have one?"

"Yes. Me."

The effect of this was to turn her fine ivory complexion chalk white, thin across the bones. It was the first indication that this conversation was affecting her. Her posture shifted; she bent slightly, as if she were a reed in the wind. But her expression didn't shift at all. It was perfectly composed, as fixed as the marble face of a statue.

Jury wondered if she'd trained herself not to react.

"You're mistaken." She said this flatly, without any inflection.

"Do you own a fur coat? A sable, a mink?"

She laughed. "Good lord, no. Is that what whoever you saw was wearing? It certainly wasn't I, Superintendent. Look," she said earnestly. "You've simply made a mistake. A glimpse of someone on a bus, or getting on or off a bus; it would be easy enough-"

"It was more than a glimpse. You got off the bus-"

"She got off the bus. Why are you so set on discarding the obvious explanation for one so unlikely?"

"Because it isn't unlikely."

"Then what in G.o.d's name is your theory?" She turned the silver case over and over in her hand.

"I don't have a theory. But the fact you were there certainly needs looking into."

"If I was there-which I wasn't-what would it mean? That I shot her because she looked like me?"

"I've no idea what the motive for the shooting was."

Jury could see in her movements now her intention to leave.

She said, "I expect this is the point at which I say I need a solicitor."

He said nothing, watching her stow her cigarette case and lighter in the leather bag. As she moved, the light that had fallen across her pale hair spilled like water over the shoulder of her gray silk suit.

She gathered up her coat and said, "Well, I'm leaving, Superintendent. You know where I live. Indeed"-here she held up the ticket she had just purchased-"you know where I'll be this evening. Good night."

Jury rose as she did. "You might expect we'll be in touch with you. Or the Fulham police will."