Richard Jury: The Stargazey Part 35

"You're holding that gun like a martini. Put it down."

"Speaking of which"-she looked towards the broken bottles-"if that was the last of your vodka, I'll shoot myself. Just a figure of speech, Mildred." She dropped the revolver into Melrose's hand and made for the sideboard where the bottles were. "Who was that dreadful woman, anyway?" she asked, in a tone that was much less interested in the person than turning up another bottle of vodka. She was kneeling and rooting in the bottom of the sideboard, shoving bottles around. "Melrose, you don't try and get by with only one bottle?"

There were times, thought a dazzled Melrose, Diane's languor was a blessing. He was astonished that she'd moved so quickly. "My G.o.d, Diane!" Melrose went to her, pulled her up, and gave her a huge hug. "How did you manage to figure out that obscure message about Mildred?"

Diane raised a polished eyebrow. "Mildred? Oh, it wasn't that, exactly. No, it's in your horoscope, Melrose: Danger awaits in the guise of a new friendship. Don't answer the door. Well, I knew it wasn't Mildred you'd let in. Ah, here's one at the back! And the vermouth. Good. Care for a drink?" She measured vodka and a whisper of vermouth into a pitcher and stirred. "Where's the ice?" She found some in a bucket and put cubes in a squat gla.s.s. "I expect I'll have to take it on the rocks. Ugh."

"Just make yourself at home, Diane."

"Thank you," she said, sitting down in Melrose's favorite wing chair, martini and cigarette as firmly in place as her gun had been. "You never told me who she was. I must say, though, that she's got good taste in clothes."

"I don't know who she is. I'm calling the Northants police."

"Bit late for that. But what was she doing here? Honestly, Melrose." It was as if he'd been awfully careless in forgetting to screen the people he let in.

"Collecting a painting."

Diane's painted eyebrow rose fractionally. "Painting?" Her eyes roved the room in something like meditation and then snapped back to Melrose, standing with the telephone. "Not my painting, don't tell me!"

" 'Fraid, so. h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo?" He spoke into the receiver. "Listen, there's been an accident-well, more an incident here." He gave the constable the information, hung up, and dialed New Scotland Yard. Jury wasn't there, nor did they know where he was. Melrose got Wiggins, told him what had happened in short, succinct sentences, dropped the receiver back in the cradle. "A drink, a drink." He splashed three fingers of whisky into a gla.s.s and plopped down on the sofa. "My G.o.d." He was going for the cigarette box when he remembered. "Diane. Why'd you call me, anyway?"

Both her eyebrows went up now. "The pager. You called my pager, remember?"

Melrose slid down on his spine. "Thank G.o.d I did." He flashed her a smile. "You were brilliant."

"Yes, but next time, Melrose, be first through the door, will you?"

It was his eyebrows that rose now. "I thought I was."

47.

Jury fought his way upwards through currents that beat him back, would not relinquish their hold. As he drifted back and down, he felt he didn't want them to. Drifting beneath the surface was better, was, indeed, pleasant.

He had a dream; he was at a fun fair. Wiggins was astride a yellow horse on the merry-go-round. Chief Superintendent Racer was at the top of the big wheel, stuck against a black and starless sky. Melrose Plant had rushed Jury's dodgem car, given it a good crack, and knocked Jury out onto the floor. He was lying there with the cars wheeling around him, but in no danger. The cars came close, then receded like waves. He lay there until the cat Cyril jumped on his chest and put its paws over his eyes. He could not shake Cyril off.

Jury woke in the Redcliffe Gardens flat, saw that it was dark, and turned his head to look at his watch. He'd been out for nearly seven hours. It was morning-black morning, but morning nevertheless. He had a pulsing headache but seemed to have suffered no other ill effects.

She'd left the phone in working order, thank G.o.d. He called New Scotland Yard and told them to issue an All Points. He hadn't much hope of her turning up at Heathrow or Victoria, not after seven hours, but who knew for certain? She'd had plenty of time to leave the country. G.o.d knows she certainly had a pa.s.sport.

He called Fulham headquarters and got Ron Chilten, who told him he and Wiggins had tried every number they could think of to get hold of him and where in h.e.l.l had he been?

Wiggins got on the line and told him that Mr. Plant had called several hours ago and told Wiggins about the woman. He was all right, now. No damage done except the painting was gone.

Ilona Kuraukov had been wearing her fur and a long string of Russian amber beads when she opened the door of the Chelsea house to Jury and Wiggins. It was as if she'd expected them. Now, Ilona Kuraukov sat in the Fulham station smoking a cigarette, Wiggins and Jury sitting across from and beside her, the tape running. Sebastian Fabricant was in another room with Chilten and his sergeant.

"Neither Nikolai nor Ralph knew anything about this," she said.

"How could Rees not know? He painted them," said Jury.

"He painted four of them and only thought he'd painted the fifth. For heaven's sake, I'm a painter too. Do you really think it would be difficult to mimic Ralph's 'style' in those paintings? Sebastian, of course, would be able to tell, but not Nicky. So leave him alone. Please."

Please, yes, but it sounded more like a soft-spoken order than a plea.

She went on. "I will certainly say this for your country-before you kill a king, you try him. But in Russia? The czars were murdered by gangsters. Nicholas, Alexandra, their children were executed by the Cheka, nothing but gangsters. Russia was always run by gangsters until Stalin died."

She sat there talking Russian history. She had made no move to deny that it was she who had instigated the theft of the Chagall and that it was she who had paid the woman called Dana. As far as the murder of Kate McBride was concerned, she'd had nothing to do with that. "That Dana did on her own. Quite a remarkable woman." Ilona had smiled.

Jury had not returned the smile. "Simeon Pitt?"

She shrugged. "He threatened to expose Sebastian and the gallery." She paused. "It was the October uprising and its aftermath that murdered the men in my family. These revolts are usually carried out, and quite stupidly, by fanatics. Lenin, going around in disguise, could never keep his wig on; he kept dropping it, and on the night of the uprising he forgot his makeup. Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, and that utterly mad policeman, Dzerzhinsky-that's what it needs for a revolution: craziness and fanaticism and sadism. The storming of the Winter Palace?"

As if they had asked. They let the tape run. Jury was in no hurry. Wiggins kept getting up and sitting down, but he didn't interrupt.

"It was completely haphazard. The ministers thought it laughable and did nothing; the Bolsheviks didn't know what they were doing. My husband, Michel, was there. He was a young man then. Much later, when he was one of the curators of the museum, he partic.i.p.ated in crating and sending off all these works of art to save them from destruction during the siege. He was taken from the Winter Palace and executed. Do you know why? Because he knew these paintings so well and could describe them so vividly he could make you see them. Art was his life.

"The revolutionaries replaced murder, plunder, looting, rape, pillage, and riot with murder, plunder, looting, rape, pillage, and riot. Rioting by mobs, who are on no side but their own. The Reds committed atrocities; the counterrevolutionaries-the Whites-committed atrocities, perpetrated pogroms. Russia has sp.a.w.ned generations of ignoramuses. In the Great War, my father was a cryptographer. Telephone wires were scarce, so orders were pa.s.sed by radio. Code books were also scarce, so the orders were sent in clear. Russians by the thousands, the army, had no weapons and had to wait until one of their comrades died to pick up his.

"There were ma.s.sacres and more ma.s.sacres. Lenin loathed the kulaks, the peasants; Stalin loathed everybody. He had anyone executed whom he perceived as a threat. Kirov, the Leningrad Party boss-his murder was of course ordered by Stalin, who then wept publicly over what he called an atrocious act. It was the excuse for the purges that began then. My uncle was one of Kirov's bodyguards. He was mysteriously killed in an unexplained crash.

"My brother was convicted in one of Stalin's show trials, the Shakty trial. There were a dozen others with him, all innocent. Confessions extracted under torture. Those trials! When you want to deflect the blame from your own failure-and it was certainly Stalin's failure-stage a trial."

Wiggins interrupted. "This Dana. How did you get hold of her?"

Ilona Kuraukov looked at Wiggins as if he were a simpleton. "I knew her. I didn't know her as Dana, of course, but I'd known her as a girl."

"What's her name?"

"I imagine you mean her real name? Anna Kerensky. I don't expect it will do you any good to know that, though."

"She's Russian?"

"Belorussian. She was orphaned when her father was publicly interrogated and whipped and shot by the NKVD as a spy. Her whole village was exterminated. Her uncle was a priest who gathered his parishioners inside this small church. Sanctuary? He must have been simpleminded. The Bolsheviks took everything we had, all our furnishings, certainly our art. I steal one painting and think it's hardly recompense.

"Try them, beat them, torture them, murder them. My father, my husband, my brother, my uncle: all murdered." Ilona Kuraukov inhaled deeply of the cigarette she had twisted into the long ebony holder, exhaled a thin stream of smoke.

"The trouble with such plans is that they often involve more than was intended. Kate McBride. Simeon Pitt. An old Russian cleaning woman. Justice begins with one person, doesn't it?"

Her eyes slid away from his face and back again. "Ah, that sounds good, Mr. Jury." She shook her head.

"Mother Russia." And she fell silent.

48.

I can't believe it," said Jury, who had pulled up the same chair that Trueblood had pulled up only two mornings before. He had not, however, commented on its provenance.

"Everybody seems to be visiting me in bed these days. Can't even wait until I've had my tea," said Melrose testily.

Jury had appeared early this morning. Good Lord, eight? Surely the clock had stopped. Melrose picked it up and banged it down a couple of times to get it running. "You must've left London at dawn."

"I did. Would have been here sooner if I'd got the message."

"Where in h.e.l.l were you? n.o.body knew where you were."

"I was . . . out cold, you could say." Jury studied the ceiling molding.

"Ha! At least you're getting your sleep. More than I can say." Melrose made a production of yawning and then neatened the sheet and blanket across his chest. He felt a little like royalty, felt as if supplicants were paying obeisance to him in his bedchamber as he couldn't himself be bothered to rise.

"You look like Wiggins."

That was not the effect he was striving for. Even more testily, he said, "All I can say is, where are the police when you need them?"

"Believe me, I'm really sorry." Jury put his hand on Melrose's shoulder. "If there'd been any way-" He dropped his hand.

Jury's tone was so totally heartfelt and sincere that Melrose felt ashamed. He dropped the act and swung his legs out of bed. "Aargh." He dropped his head in his hands. "Diane and I had a drink or two. One Demorney martini is the equivalent of a year's worth of Absolut ads."

"Well, it's obvious she wasn't aiming at the vodka. Too bad she missed."

"Want some tea?" Melrose tugged at the tapestry bellpull beside his bed.

Jury nodded. "Breakfast, too. I didn't get any."

"Oh, Martha will be cooking up a repast for both of us, make no mistake." Melrose was up and tying his robe.

Jury regarded its texture. "Cashmere?"

"Isn't everything? I've got to wash." Melrose padded into his bathroom.

"If we dawdle, it'll be time to go to the Jack and Hammer."

"It's only a little after nine," answered Jury, tucking into his second plate of eggs and bacon. He looked over at Melrose, who was tap-tap-tapping his boiled egg. "You're not going to do soldiers again?" Jury pointed his fork at the oblongs of toast Melrose had cut.

"I always do. Now that we're settled down, answer my questions."

"Answer one for me first. You left me a message-"

"Ah, yes. Did it help?"

"It might've done, except you gave it to Carole-anne. This is tantamount to not calling in the first place. It was something about futons. I was to look them up in Fodor's. According to Carole-anne, that is."

Melrose dropped his head in his hands and moaned gently. He sat up. "Not futons, for G.o.d's sake, Fauchon's."

Jury studied his eggs for a moment. "I should have been able to work that out, really."

"You shouldn't have had to work it out." Melrose picked up a soldier.

Jury looked at him. "Well?"

Melrose crunched his toast, swallowed. "Oh. According to this travel guide, Fauchon's is one of those sw.a.n.k stores whose policy is 'Hands off the goods!' You know, it's like squeezing pears or something at Fortnum. The customer does not help himself."

"And so Sophie . . . "

Melrose nodded. "And so Sophie. Little Sophie couldn't have been-"

Jury leaned back, shook his head. "-bagging potatoes."

"Now, tell me: What about the coat? What about the body? Being moved, I mean."

"The reason she wore the sable was the same reason she got off and on the bus. She wanted to be remembered. But she didn't want her face engraved on anyone's memory, so that ankle-length, sw.a.n.ky, and highly controversial fur would be what stuck in people's minds. She was right, too. That's what the witnesses recalled. And the two of them certainly looked enough alike that there'd be no jarring note there. As for the body, she hid it for a couple of hours so that she could establish an alibi, if Kate McBride-that is, herself-ever came under suspicion. She wouldn't have, not if I hadn't been on that bus."

"You remembered the face as well as the coat." Melrose dipped an oblong of toast in his egg and regarded Jury keenly.

Jury nodded but said nothing.

"You knew it was she." Melrose prompted him.

"Say I knew it was someone."

"You know what I mean."

Jury spoke then as if he hadn't heard. "But not Kate McBride. Not her because she was dead."

Melrose paused. "This woman-what does she call herself?"

"Dana."

"She wanted the police to work out that she was the dead woman, that the dead woman was Nancy Pastis, and that Nancy Pastis was actually Dana. That way she could go her merry way and not be hunted. Why, then, did she make it difficult for you to discover this? I mean, why not leave ID on the body-like Nancy Pastis's pa.s.sport? Did the dead Kate McBride not resemble the pa.s.sport picture enough?"

"Oh, she did. Amazing what a few tricks with hair and makeup will do to blur the line between one woman and another, if the fundamental similarity in looks is there to begin with. No. It's a good question. I'd say the answer is because identification on the body would be too obvious. This woman has a super-subtle mind. She likes to play games. And she is very, very cool." Jury rose and went to the sideboard, where he removed a silver dome and plunked a rasher of bacon on his plate. "Also, I think she was bored."

Melrose swung around to regard Jury. "Bored? Am I to suppose she murdered my friend Pitt out of boredom?"

"No." Jury reseated himself. "Because Pitt knew and told Fabricant he knew. The Fabricants-Seb or Ilona Kuraukov-got in touch with Dana." The name was as foreign to his tongue as the taste of some exotic honeyed melon on one of those Pacific islands. He shook his head as if to loosen the name. "I'd say it was Ilona Kuraukov's idea; she got it when she saw what Rees was doing in St. Petersburg."