Jerusalem Inn (17 page)

She unscrewed her small bottle of nail varnish and started painting her little fingernail blood-red. Since Jury wasn't going to make free with any salacious information about Helen Minton, she had lost interest in her, alive or dead.

“You said that she was friendly with one of your other guests.”

“Aye. Miss Dunsany.”

“And where is Miss Dunsany?”

“In the parlor, I expect. Maxine'll be along with their coffee about now. They like it in there after the evening meal. Think the place was the Ritz in London, wouldn't you?”

At that moment, a slatternly girl in an apron — Maxine,
presumably — came down the corridor with a tray. “ 'Ot water, 'ot water,” she said, as if she were hawking it, one of the old London streetcriers. “Makes me sick, Glo, the way I got to run back and forth for 'em.” Apparently, she was addressing the desk clerk, who must have been used to the complaints of Maxine, as she didn't bother to look up from her glistening thumbnail. All she did was shrug as the other girl toiled into the parlor.

“Would you mind pointing out Miss Dunsany to me?” asked Jury.

Glo made no move to rise from her stool-perch. “You'll see her. She's the one always sits in the chair by the fire.”

 • • • 

Miss Dunsany might have been occupying the fireplace seat, but it was doing her no good if she were seeking warmth. The grate looked as if it had not been lit in recent history. The logs piled up there Jury took at first to be a display piece, unlightable.

The room appeared chillier yet in the dusky light playing across the clumsily arranged furniture, the sofas and chairs of murky brown, some slipcovered in faded linen.

The old lady, perhaps with a young woman's memory that fires were lit and parlors warm, sat in a wing chair by the hearth. She was dressed in dark blue crepe de chine with a shawl round her shoulders. As Jury approached she was picking up her cup with both hands to steady it. There were two other people in the room, a birdlike woman and a wheezing man whose stomach hung over his belt. He was inspecting his fresh pot of hot water. None of them spoke to one another.

“Miss Dunsany,” said Jury, sitting down in a lumpish chair opposite her. “My name's Richard Jury, I'm with Scotland Yard C.I.D.” When she looked at him, startled, he added quickly, “and an acquaintance of Helen Minton.”

That did not reassure her. “Helen. Something's happened, hasn't it?”

“I'm afraid so, yes.”

She looked at the cold grate, a woman used to bad news. “Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. —? I'm awfully sorry. My memory isn't quite so good as it used to be.”

“Jury. But call me Richard.”

“My own name is Isobel. What is it that's happened?”

“An accident. Helen's dead.”

She looked away from Jury, her eyes traveling about the room with a brittle look that suggested this was just the sort of news one would expect in the Margate. “I'm terribly sorry. I liked Helen. What happened? I know she took medicine for a heart problem. But you wouldn't be here for that?”

“We're not sure what caused it. Her neighbor said Helen knew you.”

Isobel Dunsany stared into the cold grate. “I thought it, you know, very odd that Helen would come to a place like this. It's rather awful, isn't it?” The face was old and lined, but the smile was young. “I suppose I stay here out of habit. It didn't always use to be this way. Of course, I could afford something better.”

For a moment Jury thought this was defensive, in the manner of the old who resent their reduced circumstances, relegated to lives of slender means — the awful furniture, indifferent service, empty rooms telling them,
This is what your lives have come to; this is what you deserve.
But observing her clothes — the quality of the crepe de chine, the fine wool of the shawl — to say nothing of the silver brooch and the rings on her hands, it was obvious that she was telling the simple truth. She could easily have afforded better.

Fiddling with her empty cup, she went on: “I remember this place from when I was a young girl. My parents brought me here. You'd be surprised how very popular it was then. And how gay.” Her eyes — that sort of blue which a younger person always finds surprisingly bright in the old — roved the room. “The furniture in this room was Louis Quinze, burgundy
and gilt . . . there are still one or two small chairs over there,” — Jury's eye followed hers to the faded side chairs set between two windows — “and in the middle of the room was a large circular couch on which I loved to sit. Pretend I was waiting for my young man to come and claim me. There were dances. There is a ballroom in the back. Closed off now. Too hard to heat.” She drew her shawl more closely about her shoulders and looked at the cold hearth. “But how I
do
wish they'd light that fire, at least.”

“That's easy enough,” said Jury, taking matches from his pocket. The paper and kindling caught and in another few minutes the logs began to spark.

This totally unexpected event caught the attention of the room's two other occupants, who now rose arthritically from their chairs a distance away and claimed other chairs nearer the fireplace. They all sat rather still, as if paying silent homage to this marvel, this blaze in their cold chamber.

The warmth inside the parlor must have leaked out into the hall, for it had caught the attention of Mrs. Krimp — if this was Mrs. Krimp, the manageress — who came churning through the doorway to see what in heaven's name was going on, and which of her guests she could blame for this infraction of the rules of the house.

From the look of her, Mrs. Krimp carried her own heat with her. Over electric blue pants she wore an orange jumper. Her newly permed hair was red, and lay close to her skull in fiery little licks. Her odd, yellow cat's eyes flared with indignation. “Here now! Mr. Bradshaw,” — as if he had been the fire-lighter — “you know the fire's not lit after the evening meal. Too near your bedtime to make it worth it. Miss Gibbs, I'm surprised —” Seeing a stranger stopped her. Perhaps it wasn't good business to be castigating her old guests in front of a potential new one. She shut up and licked her lips slightly at the thought of a new infusion into the old
blood of the hotel. There was something mildly vampirish about Mrs. Krimp.

Her illusions were, however, soon smashed by Glo who, apparently having heard the beginnings of a row (and any action was better than none at all), came up behind her and whispered in her ear, while the two of them looked at Jury.

“Police!” said Mrs. Krimp. “Well, that don't give you the right to come into
my
hotel and upset routine —”

Slowly, Jury rose from his chair. He never strained much for effects, but he had cultivated a way of getting up that seemed to stretch his six-feet-two another couple of inches; and of softening up a voice already disarmingly soft, which could sound simply deadly — the shadow that followed you down the street and up the steps. Mrs. Krimp took a step or two backward when he said to her: “You know, Mrs. Krimp, that there are certain standards hotels must maintain. That fire — if it's been lit in a
week,
much less after breakfast, I'd be surprised.” He took out his notebook, thumbed over a couple of pages (as if he'd already made voluminous notes on the horrors of the Margate), and added a few squiggles. “Granted, I'm not an hotel inspector. But I intend to get one out here” — he smiled charmingly — “bloody quick.”

The old man, Bradshaw, wheezed with strained laughter. Miss Gibbs, the tiny woman, cocked her birdlike head at Mrs. Krimp, as if asking her, Well, how do you like that, you old she-devil?

In a kind of spontaneous combustion, Mrs. Krimp's face reddened. Her mouth worked speechlessly.

Seeing her advantage, Miss Dunsany put in, in the manner of one used to speaking to servants: “Yes, Mrs. Krimp. And whilst we're about it, could we have something other than
tinned
tomato soup for our dinner?” Then in a grand way she added: “And we would all like a glass of port.”

“Port? Whatever do you mean? The bar's not stocked in winter —”

“My dear woman, I'm speaking of
my
port. The case of Cockburn's that I left in your care, to be put in the cellars.”

The Cockburn's, Jury bet, had been keeping Mrs. Krimp contented for some time, judging from the cobweb of tiny red veins on her face. Cockburn's and gin.

Mrs. Krimp fumed and flamed, all of her separate parts — the orange jumper, red hair, yellow eyes — blazing but not blending. She marched from the room like a tiny patchwork hell.

In a few minutes, Maxine, stepping a bit quicker, and looking at Jury as if he might slap the cuffs on her there and then, appeared with a tray containing mismatched glasses and a bottle of Bristol Milk.

Miss Dunsany smiled. “Her private stock, I daresay. I can imagine what happened to my Cockburn's.”

During the next half-hour, they all had two glasses apiece (though Jury saw Bradshaw cadge another while Miss Dunsany gazed at the fire) as they sipped and talked in turns. Bradshaw and Miss Gibbs eventually nodded peacefully off as Miss Dunsany reflected about her old life here at the Margate Hotel. The boardwalk (long since gone), the bathing machines, the ladies with parasols and gentlemen in white trousers and striped coats. As she talked, Jury could hear the wind roaming about the building, slamming a distant shutter, creaking an unlatched screen door, seeking a way in. As she spun out her past, the room rattled with memories.

 • • • 

“Helen Minton,” said Miss Dunsany, finally, having put it off as long as she could. “She wasn't the sort of person you'd expect to find here at the Margate.”

“What sort was she, then?” Taking out his packet of cigarettes, one of which Miss Dunsany accepted, he lit them.

“An unhappy one. I believe she found out far more about
me
than I ever did about her. She hadn't much family, I know that. A cousin she saw little of, an artist, I believe. I don't know exactly what happened to her parents. The father, I gathered, was caught out in something rather unsavory. Embezzlement, perhaps?” Her eyes questioned Jury, as if he might deduce the facts in the case from whatever meager evidence she offered. “Anyway, the mother died shortly thereafter, as though the scandal had killed her. She must have been a weak type if that were true. My own husband — well, we needn't go into
that.
Helen went to a boarding school that she hated. I daresay it would be hard to take the deaths of one's parents and then wake up one morning and find you'd got nobody. She said that it never fails, when people find out you're alone, they'll set about making you lonelier. The way she talked about school, you'd think she'd dreamt it, rather than lived it. The other girls were cold; the corridors a confused tangle. And then when she was sixteen or seventeen she was suddenly taken out. By the same uncle who put her in.”

“Why was that?”

“I don't know.”

Jury thought for a moment. “You say she wound up knowing a good deal about you? Did she ask a lot of questions?”

Isobel Dunsany looked a little puzzled, as if she hadn't thought of it that way before. “Helen was certainly not nosy. She did exercise a considerable amount of patience when I went on about myself. But then,” she added, “so have you.” She chucked her cigarette into the fireplace as if it were now hers to do with as she liked.

Behind them Bradshaw and Gibbs were having a minor quarrel over the sherry bottle.

“Could she have come here looking for you, Miss Dunsany?”

Her cool blue eyes regarded him. “It's possible, now I think back. Although it seemed ordinary enough at the
time — with my rather tiresome way of going on about the old days, my family, and such — she seemed quite interested in the servants. I had a maid, Danny. Danielle was her real name. Either a French mother or a rather silly one to give her such a jumped-up name.”

“How did the girl come to you?”

“She'd been in service for years before she married. Very fine references, and a good girl she was. Her husband had scarpered, as they say, and there was a child to support. As a matter of fact, I think what had happened was that he'd taken Danny's money with him. Money she'd saved. I don't know, and that's why she had to go back into service.”

“When was this?”

Her laugh was vague, a bit embarrassed. “I'm not too good on dates. A dozen years ago, more perhaps.”

“And Danny, what happened to her?”

“I lost track. I'm sorry.” She pressed her fingers to her head, looked up and said, as if the caverns of memory had shown some way out, “Lyte. That was it.”

“L-y-t-e?”

“That's it, yes. Danny Lyte.
Now
I remember. It was an old Washington family name. Funny, Helen would be interested in her.”

“Do you remember anything about her child?”

Miss Dunsany was, perhaps, too contented with sherry and firelight to remember too much now about her past. “She lived in Washington — I mean the old village. I never saw the little boy but once. Now, what was his name?”

Jury waited, but Miss Dunsany only shook her head.

“Robin?”

She looked at him in some childlike amazement at the second sight of Scotland Yard. “Robin. You're quite right. Now, I remember: named after her father. Robin.” The name seemed to call forth a clear vision of brown hair, brown eyes, a slack and aimless look. That was the way she described him
to Jury. “It was sad. The boy was a bit, well, backward. Yes, it was sad.”

“And Helen Minton. Was she interested in the boy, too?”

Score two for Scotland Yard. “Why yes. How would you know that?”

Jury smiled. “No way, really. Just guessing.”

Mr. Bradshaw and Miss Gibbs had so increased their familiarity with the sherry bottle that a little Christmas songfest had taken hold. They each had chosen separate songs, however, a discordance of carols.