The Winds of Change (9 page)

Declan Scott walked in, handsome and haggard. He took everything over - the fire, the furnishings and Jury himself. Jury felt an immediate empathy; he liked Scott where he stood. Such empathy worried him for objectivity could go flying out the window; that kind of response to a witness could mean trouble. But he knew at a glance what Brian Macalvie had meant about the difficulty of staying in the same room with the man for more than a few minutes, although Jury thought he himself could last a good deal longer. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d come up against someone in whom emotion was so visceral. And this despite Scott’s strange air of insularity that could even pass as indifference if one hadn’t spent a lot of years learning how to read people.

Declan Scott stood inside the room looking at Jury as if Jury were one more disappointment in a long list of them. Police, private investigators - all had failed to find the child Flora. Yet Jury suspected that Scott’s manner was not fully explained by that dreadful event nor did it account for that look that said he knew Jury would miss everything by a mile.

Declan Scott reminded Jury of Angel Gate itself, its desolate gardens, echoing halls, opulent and frayed and nearly untenanted, as if its owner had already jettisoned part of himself and gone on with this remaindered half. He had a handkerchief in his breast pocket, and if it was there for show, it was doing a poor job of it, for the corner flopped over. But Declan Scott was not for show. Jury was sure of that.

Scott held out his hand. ‘I’m sorry you had to wait; I was in the rear gardens seeing to things. Well, that’s what I call it. I’m sure my gardeners wouldn’t agree. I saw you there before. I didn’t want to disturb you.’

Jury was reminded of the man’s respect for privacy. He smiled.

‘Didn’t you wonder who I was?’

‘Oh, I knew who you were. Commander Macalvie rang me.’

He paused. ‘1 must admit to some surprise that Scotland Yard would get involved, I mean, after all of this time. Why have you?’

‘Let’s say at the behest of Commander Macalvie.’

‘Okay. We’ll say it.’ Scott smiled.

So did Jury. He had the feeling that Scott would cut through anything that struck him as not to the point. Jury went on. ‘I’m working on a case in London that might be tied to -’ He hesitated over bringing up an issue so painful.

Declan Scott helped him. ‘My stepdaughter, you mean. Flora.’

‘Yes, that’s right. Flora. There could be a connection. There Was a little girl we haven’t yet identified -’ Jury’s mind seemed to widen, taking in vast possibilities. ‘It all seems to rest on identity, doesn’t it?’

Declan raised his eyebrows. ‘Not sure I follow you, Superintendent.’

‘I’m just thinking out loud. The connection between this murdered child and Flora could be Flora’s father.’

‘Viktor Baumann?’ Declan, after motioning Jury into an armchair, sat down heavily on a sofa as if to take the weight of Baumann off his feet.

‘Did you know him - I mean, had you met him?’

‘Yes. Right after Mary and I were married. He reared his ugly head about custody of Flora. It was as if Mary’s having married again would put Flora on the auction block or something.’ Declan looked off toward one of the high windows. ‘I wanted to adopt her and Baumann wouldn’t agree to that. But - sorry, that isn’t what you wanted to talk about.’ He reached into the fireplace with a poker, shunted burnt logs and coals about in there. On the fireplace mantel was the stone figure of an angel with a broken wing, his head bent, his hand above his eyes as if he were searching for something on the ground.

‘On the contrary, it’s just what I want to talk about. Do you mind telling me what happened that day? I mean, as far as you yourself know?’

Scott leaned forward, arms on knees; he seemed to be studying the faded figure in the carpet at his feet. ‘They went to Heligan you know, the Lost Gardens - a number of times. It’s a distance, so they took the whole day and had lunch sometimes in Mevagissey or St. Austell.’

‘Was there a pattern to these excursions that somebody else might have known?’

Declan shook his head. ‘No, not really.’

‘How was your wife? I mean, did she seem, well, her usual self?’
 

Sitting back, he grew thoughtful. ‘The thing is, Mary hadn’t been quite her usual self for a while. I don’t mean she was moody or acting differently so that anyone would notice except for me. Anxious, I guess you’d call it. I thought it might be her heart problem that’s finally what killed her, though we neither of us thought it was immediately life threat -’ He stopped. ‘Sorry.’

‘You don’t have to apologize, Mr. Scott.’ Jury waited for a beat and then asked, ‘Do you think there’s any chance at all she was afraid that Flora might be in danger?’

Scott looked at Jury, surprised. ‘I certainly wouldn’t think so, no.’

‘We have to take into account even the most unlikely possibility. You understand. I’m sure the police questioned you pretty thoroughly.’

Scott nodded. ‘Yes.’ He ran a hand through his dark hair, then brought the hand down to the back of his neck and rubbed, as if a muscle were cramped. Then he crossed his legs and smiled. He had one of those killer smiles, especially wrenching because he didn’t often turn it on. Women must drop in their tracks when he smiled.

Jury had taken one of the police photos out of his coat pocket before removing his coat. He reached it across to Scott. ‘I don’t think you’ve seen pictures of the body -’

‘No, and I haven’t missed them, either,’ he said dryly, taking glasses out of the same pocket the handkerchief drooped from. He looked at the photo without saying anything and then returned it to Jury.

‘Have they identified her yet?’

‘Not yet. You told police she was a friend of your wife’s.’

‘That’s not exactly what I said.’ As if weary of being misquoted or misunderstood, Scott slid down a little in the chair so as to rest his head against its back.

‘An acquaintance, then?’ Jury knew what the man had told police; he just wanted to hear him say it. Things that might have been missing in the first telling (or second, or third) might turn up in a later version. People recall different things at different times and, of course, for different reasons.

‘I’m not sure; I’d definitely say acquaintance more than friend. But I had no way of knowing. I saw this woman’ - he nodded toward the photo Jury was holding - ‘only once and that was in the lounge at Brown’s Hotel. It’s one of the most popular places in London for tea and is usually crowded. She was with my wife, Mary. They were sitting across the room, in a corner. At first I thought I’d go over and say hello, but then I didn’t.’ He said this as if he wondered about his action-or inaction - and if it had made a difference, possibly even a fatal one.

Jury asked the question aloud. ‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I suppose I didn’t want to barge in, you know.’

‘Not even on your wife?’

Declan smiled. ‘Especially on my wife. She liked her privacy and she got too little of it. But the other reason was purely practical; I’d bought a painting for her as a Christmas present and I didn’t want her to know it.’ He went on. ‘Besides, they seemed to be so ... engrossed, I guess I didn’t want to disturb them.’ He ran his thumb over his forehead, moving it back and forth, as if he meant to press in some thought, or retrieve it. He looked up at Jury. ‘Perhaps that’s the reason I didn’t interrupt. I read the situation as something a little odd. Mary did not look especially happy. I simply decided to wait until she told me.’

‘But according to what you told police, she didn’t.’

‘No. She didn’t even mention it; I was the one to bring it up. All Mary said was that the woman was an old acquaintance, an old school friend. Roedean, that’s where Mary went to school. But she offered no name, and she said nothing else. Had I not said I’d seen them, I doubt she would’ve told me at all. It was disturbing because now it seemed furtive or secret, and that wasn’t like her. She was always very open with me.’

‘This woman was a classmate?’

‘I don’t know. She didn’t elaborate.’

‘The woman must have been important in your wife’s life.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s been murdered.’ It was the same thing he’d said to Viktor Baumann.

‘Yes. Of course.’ Declan looked chagrined, impatient with himself. ‘Mary’s secretiveness about her should have made it obvious something about her was important. None of this makes any sense to me, Superintendent.’ His eyes were sparked by the firelight. ‘The Devon and Cornwall police went through everything belonging to my wife, even the pockets of her silk dressing gown, looking for some link to the woman. All of her papers, her old correspondence, Mary kept everything. Once a little paper fluttered to the floor from the things she was carrying and I picked it up.’ He smiled and sat back, as if comforted by the memory. ‘It was an old note I’d written to her about a dinner party: ‘Let’s go. Gilbert is serving Dover sole.’ Can you imagine holding on to such nonsense?’

It was clear the note itself might have been nonsense, but not the holding on to it. Jury smiled.

‘I mean,’ said Scott, ‘it was hardly a love letter or a ticket to Aruba.’

Jury liked the consequence of that. He smiled. ‘It might have been to her.’

Scott looked over at the fireplace, either the fire or the photograph on the mantel.

Jury said, ‘Police found nothing?’

‘Not as far as I know. They eventually found her diary, which I thought I’d hidden rather well. I stuck it in the airing cupboard. Who would look in there for such a book?’

‘The CID.’

Declan laughed and it seemed to draw him out of his melancholy mood, at least for now. ‘And I thought I was being so damned clever. See, I really couldn’t stand their reading her diary. It seemed such an invasion of privacy.’

‘It is. But in a murder investigation, there really is no privacy.

The diary didn’t say anything about this woman? Not even about the chance meeting at the hotel?’ If it was chance, thought Jury.

‘Apparently not; the police didn’t say.’

‘Didn’t you read it?’

‘No.’

A man who was dead serious about privacy. ‘Did you consider leaving here - you know, finding yourself a house in London, that sort of thing? Because it must be painful, living here.’

Declan looked at Jury as if the police must be dim. ‘Of course not. This is my family home. I couldn’t stand leaving here and trying to live somewhere else. I hate change. It’s like death, isn’t it?’

It was not a rhetorical question. Jury didn’t know how to answer, so he didn’t. Scott’s feelings about change accounted for the trees and paths and furnishings remaining in disrepair; it was why he kept all of his wife’s things, Jury imagined. Declan Scott was like his wife; if Jury asked him to produce the little note about Gilbert’s Dover sole right now, he bet Scott could have done so on the spot.

Declan rose and went to the bureau and the soda siphon. Turning with the decanter held aloft he said, ‘Superintendent?’

‘Yes, I think I will.’ While the drinks were being made, Jury looked at Scott and thought perhaps it was the way one comes to feel warm in freezing water. Or that Macalvie, for all this, was right and Jury had just hung on beyond that fifteen minutes, long enough to relax in the man’s company.

‘Tell me, who would get this place if you died?’

‘Now? Flora, of course.’

‘But she’s -’

‘Please don’t say she’s dead, Mr. Jury. I know that’s the most likely explanation. I hold out hope, which isn’t unreasonable, is it?’

‘No.’

He handed Jury his drink. ‘I mean, it depends on why she was taken, doesn’t it? For instance, if the villain here is Mary’s ex, then Flora’s somewhere safe and sound. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d heard of that sort of thing.’ Declan returned to the sofa.

‘Do you think that’s what happened?’

He studied the fire for a moment. ‘No.’ He tossed back half his drink.

Jury was surprised Scott said that. Viktor Baumann had struck him as exactly like the sort who would be behind such a plot.

‘Why not?’

‘Baumann never wanted children in the first place according to Mary.’

‘It could have been power he wanted. I don’t think the Baumanns of this world give up so easily.’ Jury wondered if Declan Scot had a clue about Johnny Blakeley’s investigation of that house in Hester Street. Or knew anything about the pedophilia charge. He doubted it, and Jury certainly wasn’t going to tell him.

‘Do you have some pictures I could see of Flora?’

Declan said, smiling, ‘Only a few hundred.’ He rose and went around the sofa to the table behind it and opened a drawer. He took out a couple of dozen and spread them on the table between them. Then he picked out a snapshot. ‘This was the latest, I took on the day’ - Declan cleared his throat - ‘she disappeared. She loved this blue dress; it was brand new and she was so afraid she’d get a spot on it she didn’t even want to sit down.’ He laughed, and picked out another snapshot. ‘Flora was three here. It was taken in Exeter at Debenhams where they had installed a Father Christmas for the kids.’

Jury studied it. Her hair was golden and curly and she had that near-ethereal beauty which seems the provenance of tiny children, a beauty unmarked and uncorrupted. Father Christmas, of whose face one could see only the eyes above the billowy white beard, looked as if, at least at the moment, he shared in this too. Jury sat back with this picture and looked at it, trying to work out what it was that was so affecting. It was the essence of childhood, even his own, though his own had been so knocked about. But there had been moments, yes, he was sure there had been moments, and moments in everyone’s life like this, a childhood distilled.