The Blue Last (10 page)

His eye traveled to the portrait and back to her, trying to limn in the features of Alexandra Tynedale on Maisie. Maisie followed his line of vision. “Yes, I know,” she said. “Disappointingly unbeautiful.” She smiled.

So did Jury. “Not at all. I was merely wondering if you looked like your mother.”

Maisie looked again at the portrait. “Her coloring, her hair, possibly her mouth, but definitely not the eyes; the eyes are what count.”

In this case it was the coloring that did it. Black hair, falling straight just below the ears; ivory skin, a heightened color on the lips and cheekbones. A person who had no reason to suspect she wasn't Alexandra Herrick's daughter would think straightaway Maisie was her daughter.

The thing was, though, hair and coloring could always be altered, and hers had been. The black hair was not her natural color, and rouge had been artfully applied. But even so, she could still be Alexandra's daughter, wanting to look more like her.

“What about your father? Is there a picture of him?”

“He's around.” Her eyes turned to the serving table and the photographs there. “My grandfather might have him. He shifts photographs around—have you spoken to him?”

Jury shook his head. “No. He's quite ill, I understand.”

“He'll be crippled by Simon's death. You know, we might as well all be brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. The two families are that close. Simon might as well have been Oliver's son. I know Ian always thought of him as a brother.”

“I've got the impression all of you find the friendship of Francis Croft and Oliver Tynedale rather astonishing.”

“Unusual, at least. How it could go on like that, how it could go on since they were boys. Yes, perhaps ‘astonishing' is the right word.”

“Your relationship with—” Jury consulted his notebook as if searching for the name which he perfectly well knew “—Katherine Riordin goes back a long way, too.”

“Kitty. Yes, I suppose you know about that night the Blue Last was bombed.”

Jury nodded.

“Well, Kitty just stayed on.”

And stayed.
But, then, a lot of old nannies, family retainers, stayed on with their employers for a long time. And never having met the woman, Jury decided to drop that particular line of inquiry.

But Maisie continued. “Granddad gave her the cottage so she would feel more independent—”

“Which she isn't; she's completely dependent upon your family.”

Maisie grew somewhat defensive. “That sounds a little hostile.”

Jury raised his eyebrows. “I don't mean it to. I'm stating facts, at least, as I know them. The source of Mrs. Riordin's income could be important.”

“What are you hinting—?”

“Noth—”

“—that she murdered Simon for an inheritance?”

“That hadn't crossed my mind. Why would Simon Croft leave money to your old nursemaid?”

Angry, she started to rise.

“No—” Jury put out his hand. “Please stay seated. I have more questions.”

Reluctantly and with mouth compressed, she sat back, arms folded in a somewhat combative stance. He noticed the deformity of the hand, then, a skewing of the index and middle fingers, a dislocation of the thumb. He recalled the snapshot of the baby Maisie, her tiny hand on her mother's neck.

“You appear to be protective of Katherine Riordin.”

“She saved my
life;
yes, I suppose I am.”

Jury doodled on a fresh page of his small notebook. Doodles were the only thing in the notebook aside from a few telephone numbers and addresses. Wiggins saw to notes; he was the most thorough note taker around. Jury himself was afraid of impeding, muffling, the flow of speech. He didn't like tapes either.

“Why is it,” he asked, eyes on his notebook, “everyone I've talked to makes it sound as if Mrs. Riordin rushed into that bombed building and pulled you out? Coincidence saved your life, not Katherine Riordin. She happened to have taken you out in a pram. That hardly makes her a heroine. It was also coincidence—of the worst kind, I imagine, to her—that she had taken you and not her own child.”

Maisie sat back, looking stunned, almost despairing that someone would not see Kitty Riordin as a heroine. Why, he wondered, was this so important to her? He could understand it if Maisie was really Erin Riordin and Kitty was indeed Erin's real mother. Or could it be that the story of that night of the Blue Last's destruction had taken on mythic proportions of salvation, self-sacrifice and heroism? Maisie caught up in that period of her life, the baby who had lost mother and father and could have lost her own life without Kitty Riordin's intervention. Jury wondered if Oliver Tynedale was caught up in the same myth.

“Where were you between midnight and eight A.M.?”

“Across the river shooting Simon, perhaps?”

He smiled. “We have to ask everyone that question.”

“We're all suspects? I'm a suspect? What on earth would be my reason? I don't stand to gain by his death. I've got enough right now for a dozen people.”

Jury closed up his notebook and pocketed it. “I doubt the motive had to do with money. I expect everyone here has enough for a dozen people.”

“Then why? Why did someone shoot Simon?”

Jury just looked at her and repeated it: “Where were you early this morning?”

H
e wanted, after all of this sitting-still talk, to move about and told the butler, Barkins, that he was going to have a walk in the garden and that that was where he was to be found in case Detective Chief Inspector Haggerty called.

It was early afternoon. He left the dining room through a set of French doors to a terrace and a walk that stretched along the side of the house, the house being much deeper than it looked from the front. The walk was flanked on its outer side by a series of columns. It was, actually, a covered colonnade, along the length of which these white pillars caught the mellow light of the sun. Jury had never been of the peripatetic school; he was very poor at thinking while he walked; what he was good at was smoking and he was dying for a cigarette.
A year and nine months and two weeks—Good lord, and you're still dying for a smoke.

Across the grass at a distance of some twenty feet stood a line of cypresses along a garden path inside the high stone wall. This tree-lined path ran parallel to the white columns, and between them was the statue of a child reaching her hand down to a duck. He heard voices and saw, between the pillars and the trees, somebody walking there, as he was doing. No, just the one voice was what he heard. He could not make out the words. The cypress trees, themselves like gray columns, were set in counterpoint to these white pillars, so that they appeared, as he walked, in the space between the pillars. Thus between cypresses and pillars, he caught the barest glimpse of the person he had determined was a little girl.

Perhaps it was talk of
Waterloo Bridge
that caused Jury to keep walking and looking over at the child between the line of trees, enjoying the cinematic effect of all this. It was as if he were watching a shuttle weaving a tapestry, a picture of a garden. All of its discrete elements—the white columns, the cypresses, the girl, the statue, himself—coming together, locking into one another to form this picture. Jury liked this; it was something like the feeling he got when a solution to what had seemed an impenetrable mystery finally locked into place.

He had come to the end of the covered walk marked by two wide, shallow steps, going down to a pool or pond, in the center of which a maiden was pouring water from a jug. When he saw the little girl (why had no one mentioned her? A grandchild? A great-grandchild?) emerge from the line of trees, Jury crouched down and pretended to be tying his shoelace. He did not want her intimidated by six feet two of police. His head was down, examining this shoe as if it were as fascinating as the tapestry he had just woven in his mind.

She stopped and was watching.

Raising his head and, in a taken-by-surprise tone, he called to her, “Oh, hullo. I'm just trying to get this lace—do yours ever break?”

In response, she took a few steps closer and raised her shoe, which was a buckled sandal, and shook her head. Her sandals were not winterproof, but she did wear white socks with them. The rest of her was covered in a sprigged muslin dress (too long) and a heavy green coat-sweater the color of her eyes.

Pretending finally to have fixed the lace, he said, “You're smart to wear shoes without laces.” He saw now that what she had been talking to all along in her walk was a doll, oddly clothed in a lace-fringed bonnet and a dress also too long, which flowed over the doll's feet. When she stepped even closer (though not within handshaking distance) he took in her burnished black hair, pearlescent skin, dark green eyes. He did not know if Vivien Leigh had green eyes. If she didn't, poor Vivien.

“This garden is lovely, even in winter. I imagine you spend a lot of time here.”

She nodded. Solemn and beautiful. Who did she belong to? With her black hair and translucent skin, of course she resembled Alexandra Tynedale. “My name's Richard Jury, incidentally.” There was no name response from her. He said, “Your doll is all covered up. Is she cold?”

The little girl shook her head. “She always wears this; it's her baptismal clothes. I saw one once.” Her look at Jury was slightly challenging as if he might contest the kind of clothes worn to a baptism.

He assumed she meant she'd seen a baptism. “I never have.”

This was a comfort as now he couldn't dispute the details she offered. “They pour water on your head. It's like they do in beauty shops except in baptisms they don't have soap and you don't wash your hair. It just gets rinsed.”

This was a place of metaphor, certainly. Jury smiled. “So is your doll baptized, then?”

“Not until I find a name. I've been looking for a long time. I'm all the way to the
R
s right now. I just can't decide. I'm thinking about Rebecca.” She glanced at him to see if he was thinking about that, too.

Jury said, “Could we sit down over there?” He motioned to a white bench enclosed on two sides by vine-covered lattice.

“Okay.”

They settled on the bench—the three of them, the doll sitting between—and Jury said, “Are you sure your doll is a girl?”

Gemma looked at him wide-eyed. “What?” It had been wearing this dress when she found it. No matter what she told others, she believed the dress meant it was a girl.

Jury shrugged. “I was just wondering why you're having a hard time finding a girl's name. Maybe it's really a boy and doesn't want to walk around with a girl's name. I wouldn't either.”

She had often wondered on this subject, but never knew whom to ask. Turning away a little, she lifted the doll's christening dress and looked. Then she turned it so Jury could see. But said nothing.

Jury said, “Oh, you're in luck. It could be either a boy or girl, you have your choice. Not many people do. You've got the evidence right there in case anyone disputes it.”

Gemma thought this wondrous.

“Speaking of names, you haven't told me yours.”

“Gemma Trimm.”

“You live here, Gemma?”

“I'm Mr. Tynedale's ward. A ward is different from being adopted. I'm not related to anybody; I'm kind of left over. Mr. Tynedale's sick, and he likes me to read to him. I do that every day, nearly. I read
The Old Curiosity Shop
and I'm a lot like Little Nell, he says. But I don't think so. She's kind of sappy.”

“You're young to be reading complicated books like that. Even adults sometimes find it hard to read Charles Dickens.”

“I'm nine.” She seemed pleased with herself, being able to read what adults couldn't. “I skip the hard parts, but it doesn't hurt because he wrote so many pages about everything.”

“He did, that's true.” After a few moments' contemplation of Gemma and Dickens, Jury said, “I'm here because of Simon Croft. Did you hear what happened to him?”

“Yes. He's dead. He got shot.” She pulled the bonnet down over the doll's head, hiding the eyes. “What did he do? It must've been bad to make somebody shoot him.”

“We don't know yet. I'm a detective, incidentally, and I intend to find out.”

Her look was one of utter astonishment. “
You
are? Did Benny send you?”

“Benny? No, he didn't. Is he a friend?”

“My best one. He argues a lot, though. If you're a detective, you should work out who's trying to kill
me.
”

“
Kill
you? Why do you think that?”

“Because they already tried a bunch of times. Once was in the greenhouse.” She pointed to it. “They tried to shoot me when I was thinking about planting something in a pot. Mr. Murphy takes care of the garden.

Next time when I was asleep in my room somebody tried to choke me and smother me.
Next
time it was trying to poison me and Mrs. MacLeish nearly quit because she was afraid they blamed her cooking.”

Jury did not shock easily. But this compendium of crime, delivered by such a small person, in such a matter-of-fact tone, shocked him, although he doubted it had all happened. He could appreciate the melodrama in all of this. Take a child with apparently no family and put her down in the midst of one who wasn't hers and perhaps indifferent (except for the elderly Oliver), and it would not be surprising that she might concoct this story of these attempts on her life. Still . . . “Tell me more about these incidents, Gemma. I mean, give me more details.”