The Black Cat (19 page)

“They’re calling them ‘the Escort Murders,’ subhead ‘Serial Killer on the Loose?’ At least they made it a question.” DS Cummins had turned the paper around so that Jury could see for himself the headline and the photos beneath it. There were two of the Valentine’s and Smart Set agencies, together with what looked like agency photographs, one of Deirdre Small and one of Mariah Cox using the name “Stacy Storm.” Kate Banks was missing, as was the King’s Road Companions agency. Beneath these photos was a smaller one of Rose Moss, who was “helping police with their inquiries.”

Jury and Cummins were sitting in the Chesham station.

Cummins went on: “I guess they’re all related, only…”

“Only what? I’m open to intuition.”

Cummins scratched his ear. He looked awfully young. Jury envied him the boyishness so close to the surface. He thought of Rosie Moss. He worried about her, to tell the truth. He hoped he wasn’t leading her on, making that date with her.

“Well, it doesn’t feel right, that it’s a serial killer.”

“Why?”

“I think it’s because… Mariah being murdered in Chesham, not London.”

“Exactly. Mariah Cox was murdered because she was Mariah Cox, or Stacy Storm, not because she was an escort. That it would be the same for the other two would follow, wouldn’t it? They’re connected, but not by escort services, by something else. We have to find out the something else.”

David Cummins smiled. “Chris thinks so, too, the escort business doesn’t have anything to do with the murders. Chris thinks it’s all about shoes.”

Jury really laughed for the first time in days. “Tell her I can send someone round to talk to Jimmy Choo.”

“And Louboutin, the red sole guy. Those shoes look like they stepped in blood.”

Edna Cox came to the door looking a little less worn out, but not much. She seemed, oddly, glad to see Jury, maybe because he was one of the few left who connected her with Mariah. He hoped he wasn’t the only one.

He was seated with a cup of tea, not speaking of her niece and the other victims until she’d stopped bustling around and was herself sitting down.

“These other two women, Mrs. Cox-Deirdre Small and Kate Banks-do those names mean anything to you?”

She shook her head. The paper, the same one Cummins had shown to Jury, was lying on a rust-colored ottoman. Edna Cox picked it up. “No. But I’ve seen her somewhere.” As Cummins had done, she turned the paper so Jury could see. Her finger was tapping the picture of Rosie Moss. “Adele Astaire, it says her name is.” A little hmpf! of disbelief followed.

Jury was surprised. “You’ve seen her where? I thought all you knew of her was the name.”

“That’s right. I’d never seen these girls. I mean, their pictures. No, Adele Astaire is a made-up name just like Stacy Storm is. You’d think”-pause for a sip of tea-“they could come up with better names than those, wouldn’t you?”

Jury thought he’d better not prompt her with Adele’s real name just now. “This Adele Astaire-do you recall where you saw her?”

She set down the cup and was prepared to really exercise her brain. “I’ve been trying to bring it to mind ever since I saw that picture.” She shook her head. “But I can’t.”

“Could she have come here at all, I mean, to Chesham, with Mariah?”

Edna Cox’s eyes shut tightly, as if squeezing the last drop from memory. “No. No, I’m sure not. At least that’s not where I saw her.”

Jury waited, but when she added nothing, he said, “Her real name is Rose Moss. Does that mean anything to you?”

Edna frowned down to study either the hands in her lap or the carpet of cabbage roses at her feet. Then she tilted her head a bit, as in the way of one trying to hear an indistinct or distant sound. Her eyes widened. “A film! There was a film long ago that I remember seeing with my sister, Mariah’s mum, when they lived in London. Mariah must’ve heard us talking about it, and laughed and said something like its being funny, the way the film had got the name the wrong way round. It was called Moss Rose. She thought it very funny.”

“You think Rose Moss was someone she knew?”

“Well, it must’ve been a school chum, maybe. Mariah wouldn’t have been more than eight or nine, I shouldn’t think. But you’ve talked to the girl; what did this Moss girl say? Did she recognize Mariah?”

“She knew her by Stacy Storm, you see. And when I told her the real name, she didn’t say she knew your niece.”

Edna Cox leaned her head on her hand, fisted round a handkerchief. A tear tracked slowly down her face. “My Mariah making up such a name. It’s a sad name, isn’t it? It’s so false. It’s so falsely like a film star, isn’t it? My Mariah.”

Understandable that she’d settled on the name instead of the whole charade. Denial, he supposed, our last refuge. “Why do you think Mariah went to such trouble to appear, well, plain, when she was clearly so striking?”

Or was the striking one, the escort, the real Mariah?

Was either identity real? Neither?

Edna Cox shook her head. “She was prettier as a child; she seemed to grow into plainness somehow. Even then, she was fairly quiet and uncomplaining, not a lot of energy. This other self of hers-I don’t know where that came from.”

“You’d have had no reason to think it, but is it possible she was suffering a mental illness, what’s thought of as a personality dissociation? You know-where the sick person splits into one or more other selves?”

The aunt frowned. “Oh, no. At least there’s no history at all of that kind of thing in the family.”

Jury nodded. If it were some sort of personality split, what would it mean to this case? It was certainly not one of Mariah’s selves that had killed the other two women. Mariah had been the first one to die.

Jury rose, thanked Edna Cox, and offered to do for her anything he could, which, they both knew, was nothing. Still, the offer. “I’ll be going back to London. You have my card? You know where to reach me. Please do, if you need me.”

She took some comfort in this and said good-bye.

Dr. Phyllis Nancy peeled off the skin-thin green gloves and dropped them into the gutter of the table where Deirdre Small lay, shrunken in death, hollowed out, deflated.

“I wanted another look at the bullet wounds, the trajectory of the bullet. Your suspect, the client she was meeting-if he is a suspect…” Phyllis looked at her notes.

Jury nodded. “Nicholas Maze. DI Jenkins doesn’t think he did it.”

“Then Jenkins is probably right. Maze, I believe, is very tall; the victim was quite short. The trajectory would have been different-”

“Even at close range?”

She nodded. “It would still make a difference.”

Jury looked at the face of Deirdre Small, wiped clean of all expression, and knew the expressions that had once played over it: it would have been a game face, a face put on to meet the demands of her world. Because of her background, her job, her small structure, she must have conceded a lot. More, he bet, than the intelligent and beautiful Kate Banks or the ambiguous Mariah Cox.

Three of you, he thought. Dead for no reason, died for nothing, killed because you were an inconvenience in some way, murdered because of someone’s greed, or rage, or fear, or guilt. How do you connect? How were you alike?

He looked up, nodded back to the body of Deirdre Small. “What did she tell you, Phyllis?”

“Not nearly as much,” said Dr. Nancy with a little smile, “as she told you. Dinner?”

He nodded. She took off her apron, went to collect her things, and they left the morgue.

“The neurologists,” said Phyllis, “aren’t very hopeful. But I expect that comes as no surprise.”

Jury studied his crispy fish, something Wiggins liked to order, but not he. It looked like a puzzle.

Phyllis was studying him. Did he himself look like a puzzle? He was stalling for a reply to the neurologists’ prognoses. He could think of nothing.

“You’re at a loss.” She tilted her head. “There was never anything you could do, Richard. There’s nothing now.”

He shook his head. “I know. It’s not so much what I could do as what I could feel. Should feel.” He looked up from his fish, then back again. He wasn’t very hungry.

“Ambivalence is-”

“It’s more than that. Or less than.” Jury leaned back and took in the room, crowded as always. Here the crowding didn’t bother him; the customers, perfect strangers, seemed familiar. In the familiar din and chatter, there was privacy. He caught sight of Danny Wu, bending over a table, being solicitous of the couple there. Danny could work a room as well as any politician. He smiled. “This place is comforting.”

“It is, yes. It’s one of those home places, a place that’s a stand-in for home, whatever that might mean. For me, there’s a chemist’s near my flat. It’s a little sort of run-down place, but I like to go in it. There’s even an armchair. I sit in it and read labels.”

“Phyllis-” He laughed, more delighted than surprised. This woman was so accomplished. Also beautiful, also rich. The source of her money was a mystery to him.

“For some people it’s a certain kind of shop, for some, book-stores-it doesn’t have to be a place, anyway-what we think of as home. For an artist it might be paint; for a writer, words.” She sighed and cut off a bite of fish.

“I was at the hospital this morning,” she continued. “One of her doctors is a good friend and he told me. It’s still possible she’ll come out of it, Richard. This makes it difficult to decide-well, Lu’s uncle was there.”

Jury waited.

“He’s the closest relation she has or, at least, according to him.”

“You saw him?”

She nodded. “Yes, he was there with Dr. McEvoy. My friend.”

“Lu told me a little about him, the uncle. She was very fond of him. Other than that, she never talked about her life.” He picked up the chopsticks, moved them awkwardly. “Now, what’s left of it?”

“I’m really sorry, Richard.”

She was, too.

It wasn’t, thought Jury, one of Phyllis’s “home places,” the hospital, but he thought the nursing staff made an effort to keep it from being absolutely foreign.

A grandmotherly looking nurse, small and rotund, whose uniform badge gave her name as Mae Whittey, came round from behind the nurses’ station to tell him Ms. Aguilar had been moved earlier that day and that she would take him to her room. He did not want to know to what section, for he was afraid of the answer. It might be the Hopeless Ward.

Nurse Mae Whittey’s crepe-soled shoes made gasping little sucks at the floor as she walked. She told him that one of the rooms they passed was being “refurbished,” hence the thick plastic across the doorless doorway. The heavy plastic put Jury in mind of one of those temporary tents thrown up at an archaeological dig.

“Mind those tools,” she said, indicating a bucket and equipment left lying against the wall. Her role seemed less nurse and more guide through an excavation, seeing to it that Jury didn’t put a foot wrong.

Their steps echoed in the soundless corridor. He didn’t understand the silence, given many of the doors to the rooms were halfway open.

“Here you are,” she said, but it was apparently “Here we are,” for she went in with him.

And as if she were a member of their tiny family, she stood beside him to look down at the still form of Lu Aguilar, as composed as an effigy in a church. Yet Nurse Whittey’s presence was oddly unobtrusive. Jury had to admit to himself he was even grateful for it. He remembered the heavy weight of aloneness he had felt two months ago, back in March, when his cousin Sarah had died up in Newcastle. He had walked around London for several hours, unable to settle on a park bench or a coffee bar or in his thoughts. There was an orphaned quality to loneliness.

This room looked just like the other room, except for the addition of fresh flowers, sprays of the most gorgeous orchids he had ever seen, sitting in a vase on the bedside table. They reminded him he had always come empty-handed. “Someone’s been to see her. Was it her uncle?”

“Oh, no, it was Dr. Nancy brought those. Aren’t they gorgeous? So many shades of red. Brazilian orchids, she said. Ms. Aguilar’s from Brazil, apparently. Dr. Nancy said something from her own country to keep her company.” Nurse Whittey smiled. “That’s just like her. Doctor Nancy, I mean.” She turned to him. “You know Doctor Nancy, don’t you? I believe she mentioned you. I thought myself that perhaps she must be a friend of the patient, but she said, no, just the good friend of a good friend.”

“Yes.” Jury didn’t know what to say.

“Well, I’m just terribly sorry,” Mae Whittey said. She looked down at Lu. “She’s so terribly young.”

Of course, all rules of protocol should have had the nurse leaving, and leaving him alone. Yet they stood there together for some moments in a companionable silence for which Jury was grateful, but which he didn’t understand. Perhaps Nurse Whittey always had that effect on people.

While she made microscopic adjustments to the bedclothes, Jury went to the window and looked out. A view different yet the same. He looked around to see the nurse rearranging the orchids that blazed in the colorless room. Prometheus returning fire to benighted mortals.

He said, “You know, there was a great actress named Dame May Whitty. Same name, spelled differently.” He smiled at her.

“Oh, my, yes. I remember her well. There was that one where she was on a train-yes, and just disappeared, didn’t she?”

“Hitchcock,” said Jury. He looked off through the window that gave out on the same square of land as the one Lu had been in before. “The Lady Vanishes.”

Alice Dalyrimple.

How could one take seriously as an escort a woman with such a Victorian name as Alice Dalyrimple?

“Miss Dalyrimple will be your escort.” Alice Dalyrimple, so snobbily intoned by a Miss Crick of the Smart Set escort service. Miss Crick had been entrusted with the appointment book. Melrose felt he had landed in the middle of a Jane Austen novel.

“Now, Mr. Plant, a bit more information. What is your given name?”

Why, wondered Melrose, had he used his last name? Men seeking the services of escort agencies gave out fictional names, surely. At least he could make up a first name: “Algernon. That’s my first name.” From Jane Austen to Oscar Wilde.

“Algernon. Very good.”

Did the name have to meet with her approval?

“Now, we were to decide upon a meeting place.”

His mind ranged over venues, from the Hole in the Wall underneath Waterloo Bridge to Buckingham Palace, where he fantasized presenting Miss Dalyrimple to the queen. In the midst of these unfruitful thoughts, Melrose looked round at the several sluggish old gents in various stages of slumber and said to her, “Boring’s. My club in Mayfair.”

“Oh. And this is permitted by the club, is it?”

Miss Crick’s question was the first indication that they knew Smart Set wasn’t turning up in Burke’s Peerage. It encouraged him to be fulsome: “Oh, my, yes. Yes, we’re quite an open and wide-awake group here.” He decided this after one of the old men snuffled himself out of a coma. The only thing less awake would be the burial vaults in Westminster.

“Yes,” he began, “all she-”

“Miss Dalyrimple?”

Ah! Had he shown bad escort manners in his overly familiar use of “she”? “Miss Dalyrimple need only present herself at the reception desk and they will inform me.”

“I see. You will not be at the door yourself?”

Only if I’m the doorman. “I’ll be in the Members’ Room.”

“And now, could I just verify your credit card number?”

“I believe I gave that to someone already.”

“But not to me.”

Good God, isn’t that what police said when one objected to being asked the same questions over and over? The woman should work for the Met.

“You know, I’d always thought the payment would be made at the end of things.”

“That’s true. But this is just in case, you know.”

In case of what? A heart event in the middle of things? Miss Dalyrimple’s discovering she had walked not into an exclusive club but into a tattoo parlor? London’s being overrun by rivers of rats? He pulled out his wallet and thumbed through his little stash of cards and recited the number. He and Miss Crick then parted.

Now here he sat in the sleepy environs of Boring’s with a book he was trying to force himself to read, waiting for Miss Alice Dalyrimple. They would have dinner here, drinks and then dinner. There was no quieter place to have a conversation about the murders. Surely it would be on her mind, escorts being murdered. How did she know he wasn’t the one? Here these women were, going out with and having sex with potential serial killers, and seemingly careless of it. Had the snarky Miss Crick shown any concern? No. But then, she wasn’t the one going out.

Well, Jury didn’t think the danger was in the escort business itself.

If the women in this kind of work weren’t being murdered because of that work, and if it wasn’t coincidence they happened to be in it-then what did that leave? It meant, didn’t it, they had something else in common-

“My God! If it isn’t Lord Ardry!”

“Colonel Neame.” Melrose got up to shake the hand of the elderly, pink-cheeked former RAF pilot. “I was just wondering if you were around.”

“Always am, dear boy, except for my brief walks to the Ritz and Fortnum’s.”

Ritz for tea, Fortnum & Mason for silk-worsted suits and caviar counter. “Your itinerary must be the envy of London. And this,” Melrose went on, his arm out flung to take in the Members’ Room, “is the only way to live.”

“Well, it’s restful, of course. But I think a bit more animation wouldn’t go unappreciated. My, my!” He was looking toward the entrance to the Members’ Room.

A buxom blonde in a flimsy dress that looked to be made up of chiffon scarves stood at the entrance. The slowly turning fan of bamboo and palm fronds above her set the multiscarved garment in motion. The rest of the motion of bouncy breasts and churning hips was taken care of by the woman herself.

“Who, in God’s name, is this?” The tone was not unappreciative.

This could only be Miss Dalyrimple.

Melrose answered Colonel Neame, “This would be my guest, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Oh ho, my boy! Well done, well done!”

Melrose wanted to tell him he could do it himself, if he’d just yank out a phone directory. If anything could awaken the Rip van Winkles in the room, it was surely Alice Dalyrimple maneuvering herself toward him in her silver sandals.

“Miss Dalyrimple? I’m Algernon Plant.” He caught the colonel’s raised eyebrows.

“How j’ya do?”

Given Miss Crick’s rather hesitant description of her escort, Melrose had formed a cloudy image of a passable imitation of gentility. But Miss Dalyrimple, in her gait and her guise, did nothing to present a picture of good breeding. (The last horse to win the Gold Cup had done far better there.) And any hope of even passable credentials was blown to smithereens when she opened her mouth. Melrose wondered if even Marilyn Monroe, before her voice coach got to her, had sounded something like this. Alice’s voice was a breathless squeak.

He introduced her to Colonel Neame, who was staring so hard that his eyeballs looked as if they were on stems. Gruffly, he said, “Yes, yes, so nice.”

“Pleased, I’m sher,” answered Alice.

They all sat, Alice in a flounce and a flutter of the scarf dress. Melrose hoped she wouldn’t start in immediately stripping and settling the scarves round Colonel Neame.

“Miss Dalyrimple-”

“Oh, for heaven’s sikes, call me Alice.” Seated beside him on the sofa, Alice tucked her hand through his elbow and gave the arm a pat. “We’re going to ’ave some fun, sweetie, ain’t we?”

Her eyelids were so heavy with dustings of gold and green, they came down like little shutters. She was wearing a multitude of perfumes, scents that were fighting for prominence.

“Care for a drink?” Melrose asked.

“Wouldn’t say no, would I? I’ll ’ave a tequila and lime.”

Colonel Neame thought this laughable. “Doubt you’ll get anything quite that involved here, Miss Dalyrimple.”

“Involved?” Her eyebrows danced.

“Oh, we only mean that Boring’s runs more to the straight offerings of whiskey and gin.”

“I’ll be a monkey’s. Gin, then.”

Melrose wasn’t surprised as he ordered up drinks for all of them. He and Colonel Neame had been drinking that old standby, eighteen-year-old Macallan’s. The little redheaded porter took their order and whisked himself off.

Opening his mouth to express a thought that hadn’t yet formed, Melrose shut it when he saw Polly Praed standing in the entryway, not looking at all like Alice Dalyrimple. Polly was wearing her old standby mustard-colored suit, a color that Melrose had tried to get her to jettison long ago. It hardly did justice to her eyes, the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. They were a limitless, bottomless purple blue, staring at him-he was sure-accusingly, though too far off to really tell.

Polly was here not by accident, but by design. Melrose had called her and enlisted her help. A mystery writer, he had said, might be expected to grill someone associated with an escort agency as the three murdered women had been.

Yesterday, he had said, “You’d be doing me a great favor, Polly.”

“Good. Then you’ll owe me.”

He hadn’t counted on that. Being in Polly’s debt could result in having to read a new manuscript, a chore she’d asked him to perform in the past. This was a chore he’d always managed to get out of; it was bad enough reading the published books. Or not-reading them. The new book he was not-reading was the one on the cushion beside him. Not-reading required an inventive mind: how to convey to the author he’d read a book when he hadn’t. That usually involved reading the beginning and making it up from there.

He quickly stuffed the book between the cushion and the arm of the sofa. The title alone was enough to kill off brain cells: Within a Budding Grave. The last one he had not-read was The Gourmandise Way. In her personal Search for Lost Time (and he hoped she didn’t find enough of it to write another dozen books), Polly had gone on this Proustian rant. The dust jacket of the latest had disclosed that the plot turned on a mistaken burial-they’d buried the wrong man. God only knew what would follow from that. He wondered why she was squandering her talent, for she was genuinely talented. Why was she messing it about? Letting it drift like a baby Moses into the bulrushes?

“Polly! Over here!” as if they were on the loading deck of the Queen Elizabeth.

Polly made her way over-suspicious, he now could see.

Before Melrose could try to lighten the atmosphere, Colonel Neame was on his feet, pumping her hand, saying, “Miss Praed! We met last time you were here, and I just want to tell you how very much I enjoyed The Gourmandise Way.”

Melrose shuddered. The book about a chef’s deadly dinner, with that nod to Proust.

Polly thanked Colonel Neame and tucked herself into the wing chair beside him. She was staring from Melrose to Alice, who had now received her gin and was downing it. The porter handed over the other two drinks and waited for this new guest’s order.

“Nothing… Oh, no, wait, I’ll have a sherry. Whatever kind you have.”

“Wonderful to see you, Polly. You’ll have dinner?” Turning to Alice, Melrose said, “You won’t mind, will you, if Miss Praed joins us?”

Both women looked at him uncertainly. He gave them both a fool’s grin. What did you expect? I’m an idiot. Polly, he knew, would be happy to subscribe to this, but Alice might feel it a bit insulting.

Alice Dalyrimple, who certainly would mind, shrugged and said, “Suit yerself.” She rearranged her décolletage-would that neckline sink any farther? Could that cleavage be yet more pronounced? Yes to both. Sitting forward with her small hands on her knees, she looked grimly at this mustard-suited woman who was now taking her sherry from the porter. But suddenly and impishly, she returned to her original cuteness level and gave Polly (who jumped) a swat on the knee. “Oh, I get it! Ain’t you two a riot?”

Melrose and Polly, dumb to her meaning, only looked at each other.

Then Alice leaned toward Colonel Neame, laughed as if bubbles were coming out of her nose, and said, “Come on now, sweetie, make it a foursome!” Then, “O’ course, it’ll cost ya!” The laugh was almost silvery, for there was money in it.

The three managed to get into the dining room without further incident (or making it a foursome). Dinner had an impromptu feel: a patched-together quality, insofar as Boring’s could ever seem patched together.

Young Higgins, Boring’s oldest waiter, would never permit it. If Miss Dalyrimple had floated scarves about him, Young Higgins would remain as resolutely unflinching as any of the Palace Guards.

“We have escargots tonight, my lord.” At Alice’s wrinkled nose, he put in, “Snails.”

It was a relief to find Young Higgins was as much of a class artist as he himself. Melrose smiled. “I’ll have them.” Remembering his manners, he said, “Oh, sorry, Polly. What’ll you have?”

“Soup,” she said curtly.

“Me, I don’t think I want a starter,” said Alice. “Watching my weight.” She twinkled. “So just bring me another one of these, love!” She held out her gin glass, which Higgins took with a sniff.

“Madam.”

They all ordered the roast beef.

Enough of this, thought Melrose; let’s get down to it. “Polly, here, is a mystery writer,” he said, leaning over the table toward Alice.

Alice was impressed. “That book the Colonel was talkin’ about, you wrote it? I never!”

Melrose said, leaning even closer into Alice’s disturbing neckline, “Polly’s really good at murders.”

“Oh, Jesus Christmas! Are you going to write about us?”

Young Higgins was slipping soup and escargots before Polly and Melrose and a fresh gin before Alice, then going soundlessly off. It gave Polly a few seconds to take in the “us.”

Alice said, “You know, us escorts.”

“I might,” she said, sotto voce. “That’s what I’m thinking of doing; that’s why I’m in London: research. How lucky to meet you.”

Spearing a radish from the small plate of complimentary crudités that looked hard as enamel, Alice said, also sotto voce, “Well, if you ask me, this crazy person’s nothing but a sex maniac.”

An interesting conclusion, thought Melrose. “Why do you say that? It would appear sex mania is what he’s against. Although, to think it’s sex at all is making an assumption.”

“That’s so true,” Alice said, leaning toward Polly. “People think the wrong ideas about escort services. They think they’re just about sex.”

They are, thought Melrose. For a few minutes, they ate in silence.

“But aren’t they about sex?” asked a braver Polly as Young Higgins appeared with their entrées.

Alice said in a sharpish way, “They most as-sur-ed-ly are not. Just look at the three of us, we’re ‘aving a meal, ain’t we? Whatever comes later, that’s up to you two. Oh, what nice-looking beef! D’ya ’ave any tomato sauce, dear?”

Young Higgins was not used to being called “dear,” nor did the icy look he gave Miss Dalyrimple suggest he was inclined to get used to it. Or perhaps what called forth that stony expression was, rather, the request for tomato sauce. He set down the other two plates and turned to the wine cooler.

Melrose and Polly paid no attention to the Pinot Noir being poured because they were back there a beat, with the “whatever comes later” remark. To keep from laughing, Melrose snatched up his glass and gulped. The wine came out his nose. He coughed.

Polly recovered. “Why do you call this killer a sex maniac?” “Prob‘ly he can’t-you know-perform. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s one of Valentine’s, or one of the others. DeeDee-Deirdre Small, the one got herself murdered-didn’t agree, though. Said he’d probably turn out to be her steady.” Alice giggled and quickly stopped, probably recalling what had happened to Deirdre Small.