The Blue Last (38 page)

“Okay. The other's a young lady—”

Both assumed their thinking positions, leaning over the counter. “Hmm.” Basil said, “What's her coloring?”

“Hers? Oh. Hair kind of fiery, eyes this color—” He touched the ribbon of glass winding around the vase.

“Ah!” Basil stood up and plucked a colored pencil from a cup of them and drew it across the pad. Then he did the same with another. “What colors does she like?”

“Emerald green, hot pink, lapis lazuli—”

“God,” said Tommy, with a wink, “she's lucky to have someone who notices and remembers. Can't ask a husband those questions; he wouldn't have a clue.”

Jury watched Basil with yet another colored pencil. He turned the notebook around so Jury could see it, and said, “This might look an odd combination, but believe me, she'll go for it.”

Jury was astonished that with so few strokes in so little time, Basil had drawn a complete arrangement of flowers.

“We've got the bells of Shannon, and we can get iris—can we, Tommy?”

“Absolutely.”

“And these coppery roses, they'd be perfect.”

Jury slowly shook his head. “No wonder Simon Croft didn't want to give you up.”

 

 

 

“I don't get it, Wiggins. Why the grocer but not the florists? Why would Croft admit Smith and not those two?”

They were waiting for two lorries and a Morris to pass in front of them. “You're assuming who he saw and who he didn't is significant. Maybe he just didn't feel like diving into the pool with those two on that day.”

Jury laughed. “Of course, that could easily be it.”

“Or maybe Simon found them a shade too you-know?”

They were crossing the street now. “Wiggins, they've been ‘you-know' for as long as he knew them.” Jury looked up the street. “There's the butcher's; I want a word with him. Come on.”

Gyp was just pulling down the grill in front of his window, preparatory to closing. Jury found him to be wiry and angular, his chin sharp, his nose pointed, his shoulder blades as thin and spiny as sharks' fins. He could tell that Gyp was cutting-edge mean. The bloody apron he wore did nothing to soften the portrait. Even his voice was reedy and ragged and without resonance.

“Sorry, gentlemen, but it's closing time. All work and no play makes Gyp a dull boy.” His laugh was more of a giggle.

“Prepare to bore us then, Mr. Gyp.” Jury flashed his identification. “And lead the way inside.”

Gyp was one of those people whose reaction to a policeman on the pavement was to run. All the little meannesses, the little tricks and swindles he had contrived to work on his fellows would leak from the corners of his mind and lubricate memory. Jury could see it in his black and oily eyes. And this was not to mention the fate of the benighted animals that fell under his cleaver. There was one in the window right now, a suckling pig scored with slices of orange and studded with cloves. If Gyp kept a cat it would only be to kill mice. Admittedly, Jury disliked butchers. He had seen their plump and smiling faces looking out from the pages of magazines, rosy and self-satisfied, as if they were choking on rubies.

“It's my closing time. Like I said. It's half-five—”

“That's good; we won't be disturbed. Come on.”

Muttering, Gyp led the way.

Several chairs lined the aisle between counter and wall and Gyp sat but Jury and Wiggins remained standing. More intimidating.

Gyp said, anxiety clotting his voice, “It's about that lad, ain't it? Benny? I knew I should've reported him not goin' to school.”

Jury said nothing. Let the man babble. He went on about Benny, school and “that mutt o' his” and the “thieving” that went on in the shop. “It ain't only school; it's where that boy lives, and with who. Headed for Borstal, he is, probably been there already.”

“Scotland Yard,” said Wiggins, “isn't here to track down truants.”

Jury said, “We're looking into the death of Simon Croft.”

“Croft?” Gyp's tallow-colored skin drew up in furrows. “That one from the Lodge? He moved to the City. Why'd you be asking
me
about Simon Croft?”

“You did know him.”

“So did everybody. But you think he'd come in and ask for a pound o' mince? Well, he didn't. People at the Lodge don't deal with the likes o' Gyp.” He hooked his thumb toward his chest. “Too high 'n' mighty for that.”

“How long did you know Mr. Croft?”

“Didn't I just say I hardly did?”

“Then how long did you hardly know him?” Jury itched to hit this man.

“Long as I had me shop here. That'd be, oh, twenty years about.” With long fingers he stroked a sunken cheek.

“He didn't like you, right?” Jury supposed this was a safe bet.

“I'm too busy to care who likes me and who don't.”

“Well, I'm not too busy, Mr. Gyp.” Jury moved to the chair, reached down and twisted the neck of the collarless shirt tightly enough it raised the butcher from the seat; he did this slowly, which made it even more threatening. “Now you listen to me, Gyp. If anything happens to Benny Keegan or his dog—
or
his dog—”

“You're choking me! I'm choking!” he declared in a strangled voice.

“—I'll be back, so you better work hard at keeping them healthy and out of traffic.” Jury suddenly released his hand and Gyp fell back against the wall. Jury nodded to Wiggins and they started toward the door.

Behind them, Gyp called out, “I'm reportin' this, don't think I won't!”

Jury took out his small cache of cards and flipped one in Gyp's direction. “Just in case you forget my name.”

 

 

 

Jury liked the musty air of the Moonraker Bookshop, the slightly acidic smell of ink, the thought of brittle old paper crumbling like memory. Dust, poor light and nostalgia, these were his notions of places like the Moonraker. Or perhaps this was just his romantic notion; God only knew Water-stone's didn't fit the image. He liked the wooden sign above the steps that led down to “garden” level, too. MOONRAKER BOOKSHOP, S. PENFORWARDEN, PROP.

“He was very interested in the war,” said Sybil Penforwarden, speaking of Simon Croft. “Prodigiously interested. I must've ordered a dozen books for him. The last ones were—” She stopped and considered. “
Fourteen Days,
that was one, and
Solemn December
—an unfortunate try at assonance, don't you think? At any rate, Simon had a high regard for both. The
December
one, of course, is the one set in 1940. We talked about the war, we talked about it quite a lot. We'd both been children then, seven or eight, I believe I was. He'd have been a bit older, and we both had memories which we tried to pin down.” She took a sip of tea. She had kindly invited Jury and Wiggins to join her for tea. “I always have my tea around five o'clock and I've just baked a seed cake.”

Which Jury was tucking into with his second slice, as was Wiggins. A longcase clock ticked somewhere at the end of an aisle of shelves; except for that the room was deathly quiet. Had some customer been reading back there in the shelves, one would have heard the pages turn.

Jury eased down a little farther in his slipcovered chair, careful not to lean his head against it for fear of dozing off, and feeling for the first time that day completely comfortable, and hungry and thirsty, too. He slid his cup toward the pot and Miss Penforwarden poured out tea, adding a measure of milk.

“Croft's interest wasn't just historical, then. It was personal.”

“Oh, yes. Very.” She held the pot aloft, signaling Sergeant Wiggins, who, of course, wanted a refill. “You see, his father, Francis Croft, owned a pub named the Blue Last. It was in the City. It was demolished during the London blitz. That would have been—” She closed her eyes and calculated.

Jury did it for her: “December 29, 1940.”

Miss Penforwarden was astonished. “You're certainly a student of history.”

Jury smiled. “Not really. I was told about the Blue Last.”

“Of course. There was that item in the paper about its being the last London bomb site. Some developer had bought it up and in the course of digging they unearthed bones. Well, they could have been anybody, couldn't they?”

Jury ignored this. “This book Mr. Croft was writing. His interest was personal, you agree; did he ever discuss the particulars?”

Sybil Penforwarden sat back with her cup that trembled ever so slightly in its saucer. She thought. “Now, that's a very perspicacious question, Superintendent—”

(Jury would've enjoyed hearing her talk to Angus Murphy.)

“—very. ‘A family thing,' I recall he said. It's coming back to me in bits and pieces. I'll just toss them out as I recall, shall I?”

“Absolutely.”

Wiggins retrieved his notebook from the little end table where he'd deposited it when the tea and cake had arrived.

She went on. “Now, I recall that he talked about Oswald Mosley—you know, the dreadful Fascist? Simon was interested in him because he'd discovered that Mrs. Riordin's husband—she lives at the Lodge, you know—was one of Mosley's followers. He said to me that many people took Mosley to be a cartoon character, a laughingstock, but, he said, ‘the man was dangerous, extremely dangerous. People have forgotten that.' Simon wondered why Riordin would desert his wife just to join up with that ‘rascal'—which is what he called Mosley. Simon could be old-fashioned in his choice of words.” Miss Penforwarden smiled.

Jury wondered how well she knew Simon Croft. “But he didn't ask Katherine Riordin herself?”

“That I don't know.”

“Could he have been upset or incensed by things that we come to take almost for granted anymore? Abortion, divorce, unmarried couples, homosexuality. Things that—whether rightly or wrongly—the public finds more acceptable now?”

“Yes, he was old-fashioned in that respect. But not sanctimonious or sermonizing, if you know what I mean. It's just that he believed so fervently in—attachments.”

“Loyalty, for instance?”

“Absolutely. Yes.”

“To king and country?” Jury smiled.

“You might laugh, but—”

“I'm not laughing, Miss Penforwarden.”

“He was very fond of Alexandra's husband, Ralph Herrick. Ralph was in the RAF. Simon himself was quite young and Ralph was his hero. Ralph Herrick really was a hero, too. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for valor. I don't remember precisely what he did; Simon said he was a daredevil pilot.”

Jury thought for a moment, absently regarding Wiggins, who was faithfully taking notes. There was loyalty for you: sitting there with his third cup of tea (having poured himself another) and his notebook on his knee. Jury smiled. He knew how he'd feel if Wiggins was shot and killed. He'd get the bastard who did it. One could not, however, get the entire Luftwaffe.

“Simon talked about impostors,” said Miss Penforwarden.

“What?”

“You know, the enemy posing as someone else, the ridiculous notion that the Germans would pop up everywhere in England disguised. Such as the idea circulated about German parachutists—that they'd fall to earth disguised as nuns. That and the fifth column idea. Traitors out in their gardens signaling to the German planes with electric torches. Silly stuff. But once such an idea takes hold, he said, it's very hard to disabuse one's mind of it.”

“Yes. He would not like the idea of betrayal.”

Wiggins put in, “Would you, sir? Would any of us?”

Miss Penforwarden pursed her lips and returned her cup to its saucer. The tea was cold, anyway. “You know, I sometimes felt there was something other than the war that urged him on to do this research.”

“But he didn't say what it was.”

“Outright? No.”

“You say you saw him two weeks ago. Did you notice a difference in his behavior?”

She looked puzzled. “No. He was the same as always. He'd talk about the forties, the devastation. Hitler would send over five hundred planes a
night.
Simon had a journal, or notebook he kept, and he'd tell me facts such as that. I wondered how he remembered them and he held up the journal that he always carried. ‘Never be without this,' he said.”

“Some people seem to think he'd grown a little paranoid during the last weeks of his life. To the extent that he wouldn't let family members come into his house. And the owners of the flower shop weren't admitted when they brought flowers he'd ordered.”

“But how did they know, these people who were turned away?”

“How did they know?”

“That he'd changed; that he'd grown a little paranoid.”

“Perhaps because he wouldn't see them. He appeared to be afraid.”

She was obviously doubtful. “I can only say he seemed the same to me.”

“Well, perhaps that's because he felt far more comfortable around you than he did around others.”

She waved a self-deprecating hand. “I can't imagine that's so.”

“I can.” Jury rose and gathered up his coat. “I think we'll be going. You've been extremely helpful, Miss Penforwarden. You ready, Wiggins?”

“Sir,” said Wiggins snappily.

 

 

 

A moment ago he'd looked rather dozy. Jury said as they ducked under the low lintel, “That's what three cups of tea and three pieces of cake do to a person, Sergeant.”