Help the Poor Struggler (7 page)

“I wouldn't know about that.” Green turned to Jury with relief. “I've seen her a few times when I was making my rounds. I know that cape. Only, I couldn't make up an Identikit on her. That's how much she shows her face.”

Macalvie's chair slammed down. “I don't believe it, Green. I just don't
believe
it — that a person you think could be a witness, could be even the chief suspect —”

“I never meant to say that.” Green's voice rose in alarm. “It's just she won't talk to police.”

Macalvie looked at Green and shook his head. He leaned across the PC's desk and his blue eyes sparked like matches. “We're talking murder, and all you can say is the chief witness is incommunicado.” Macalvie got up. “Come on,” he said to Jury, heading for the door. He looked over his shoulder at Wiggins, who had now grown as sluggish as the orange cat that had oozed its body straight out, paws fore and aft, stomach to glowing bar. That it was lying across the feet of Scotland Yard did not impress it at all.

“Wiggins,” said Macalvie. “You going to toast crumpets or move?”

“You think the three of us are going to the Singer woman's house?” asked Jury.

“Of course.”

“Kick in the door? Is that it?” Jury was putting his coat on. Macalvie had never taken his off. “Try to browbeat someone who's agoraphobic and see how far you get, Macalvie. I'll go by myself, thanks. This is Dorset, remember? Not your patch; at the moment, it's mine.”

Macalvie was still sucking on the Fisherman's Friend. “Pulling rank. Well. And would you mind if I went out on my own and had a word with the Thornes? The dad and mum? And as long as you're going on your own, can I borrow your sergeant?”

He didn't wait for permission. The door of the station slammed after Macalvie and Wiggins.

J
URY'S
idea of eccentricity might have been Hazel Wing. It wasn't Molly Singer, in spite of her off-the-rack Oxfam clothes: a shapeless sweater, a long and equally shapeless skirt. Jury guessed she was in her thirties; he had expected someone much older.

The fire and a napping cat were the only things that gave the room a semblance of warmth. It was a typical holiday cottage, furnished with remnants that could have been washed up from a shipwreck — mismatched sling chairs, a small cabinet whose open shelf held several bottles of liquor, a lumpyish love seat now occupied by the cat. In front of the window was an all-purpose table. Nothing here but the bare essentials.

Probably she was following the drift of his thoughts. “In the summer, this place costs the earth. It's right on the Parade, has an ocean view, and the landlord cleans up.”

“I can imagine,” said Jury.

“I even had to buy the lamp —” She nodded toward a small, blue-shaped lamp, useless for reading or anything but giving off a watery light. “I hope you don't mind the dark. I'm used to it by now.”

Jury looked down at some books of poetry on the table and wondered if there was a double meaning in the comment. Emily Dickinson. Robert Lowell.

“You like poetry? I've always liked those lines of Lowell: ‘The light at the end of the tunnel / Is the light of an oncoming train.' ” She seemed to be talking out of sheer nervousness. “You could say I rent the cat, too. It wanders in every day and takes the best seat.” The cat could have been mistaken for a black pillow, it was so motionless. It opened its topaz eyes, looked at Jury warily, and went back to dozing. Molly Singer's black hair and amber eyes were like the cat's.

They still had not sat down, and she was turning the card he had slipped under the door round and round in her fingers. “You took a chance, didn't you, writing this message? ‘What fresh hell can this be?' ” Her smile was strained. “Who said it?”

“Dorothy Parker. Whenever she heard the bell to her flat.”

“Sit down, won't you?”

The cat glared at Jury as Molly Singer picked it up and put it on one of the cold sling chairs.

She offered him a drink and, when he accepted, reached down into the cabinet by the couch and brought out another glass and a whiskey bottle that was three-fourths empty. She gave him his and replenished her own glass.

Jury felt strange in this room that had housed so many guests, like a room full of ghosts. A log crumbled and the fire spurted up, one of the ghosts stirring the ashes.

“It's the cape, I guess.”

Jury had been avoiding this sudden plunge into the death of Angela Thorne. He nodded. “Constable Green recognized it.”

“Which puts me in the thick of it, doesn't it?”

“You must have known the cape would be traced to you. Why'd you do it?”

“You mean, kill her?” Her equanimity was more disturbing than a screaming denial would have been.

“I didn't say you killed Angela Thorne. It would be stupid to do that and leave that sort of evidence behind. What happened?”

“I was walking along the Cobb somewhere around ten or ten-thirty. I heard a dog barking. It sounded rather terrible, you know, panic-stricken. I followed the sound to the rocks and found her. I returned the dog; I couldn't return Angela,” she said with some bitterness.

“Did you know her?”

Molly shook her head. “I think I saw her once or twice. I don't actually know anyone.”

“How do you live?”

Her smile was no more happy than her laughter. “I bolt the door, Superintendent.”

“You've lived here nearly a year. Why? Do you like the sea, then?”

“No. In a storm the waves crash over the walls; sometimes even drenching the cottages. Throwing up seaweed, rocks, whatever. It's all so elemental.”

“So you found the body, covered her with your cape, took the dog to the Thorne cottage. Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“But you rang up the police anonymously. Why?”

“I didn't want to get involved, I suppose.”

“Then why did you leave your cape? You must have been freezing.”

“I have another one,” she said simply, as if that explained everything.

“Where did you live before?”

“London, different places. No fixed address. No job. I've got some money still. I used to be a photographer. My doctor advised me to find some nice little seaside town. I was taking pictures of Lyme.”

Jury looked at two fine photos above the mantel: the Lyme coast, the Marine Parade, with its lonely strollers.

She left the couch and walked over to those pictures. “Don't bother looking; I'm not much good anymore. The sea, the sea — it's so elemental.” Her glass was empty, and she poured herself another double. “I drink too much, you've noticed.” She shrugged and went back to the mantel. The light from the fire suffused her face, sparked the strange dark gold eyes and gave her an almost daemonic look. He thought of the women of myths whom the ill-fated stranger — knight or country yokel — was constantly being warned to steer clear of.

“Have you been reading the papers?” Jury asked. She shook her head. “Where were you earlier today?”

“Here. I'm always here. Why?”

“There was a boy killed in Wynchcoombe. And two days ago, one killed in Dorchester. You didn't know about the Dorchester business?”

Her eyes had a drowned look. “My God, no. What are you saying — that there's a mass-murderer running round the countryside?”

“There could be. Look, there's no way you can avoid talking to police. You don't want to go to the station. Then come along to the White Lion in the morning.” He was silent, looking at her, all sorts of sham comfort trying to form itself into words:
it won't be bad; Macalvie is a nice chap; there'll only be the three of us.
All of it lies. It
would
be bad; Macalvie was
not
a nice chap. And “only three of them” might as well be the whole Dorset police and Devon-Cornwall constabulary together, as far as Molly Singer was concerned.

The silence waited on her. “Nine?” was all she said.

“All right.”

Jury picked up his coat, once again dislodging the cat from its slumbers — and Molly went with him to the door.

She was still holding the card, folded and refolded, as if it were a message in a bottle that might give some report of land.

“G
EORGE
Thorne.” In the dining room of the White Lion, Macalvie speared a sausage and shook his head. “One and the same. Witness for the prosecution.”

“That doesn't make it look good for Sam Waterhouse, does it?”

“He didn't do it. Pass the butter, Wiggins.”

Both Wiggins and Macalvie were having the full house. Jury, who couldn't stick looking at sausages and bacon and eggs, had ordered coffee and toast. “Who'd have a better motive?”

“Someone else,” said Macalvie, with perfect assurance.

“But, sir —” Wiggins began and then stopped when Macalvie shot him a look.

“Both of you seem to have forgotten one salient detail. It wasn't Waterhouse that found the kid and tossed a cape over her. Oh, sure. Thorne was ranting on about Waterhouse out for revenge, et cetera. The guy looked like he'd just risen from the grave. Serves the bastard right. Big-deal solicitor.” Macalvie was busy with bacon and a reappraisal of the waitress whose Edwardian looks — black hair rolled upward, slim
figure in ruffled white blouse and black skirt, and porcelain skin — he had already commented upon. “Yesterday, Angela Thorne was ‘acting up' — her mum's words — and trying to plead off school by saying she was sick to her stomach and being a pill nobody wants to swallow. Her teacher said the kid had got into a fight because some other girls were making fun of her. They made up this song: ‘Angela Thorne, Angela Thorne, don't you wish you'd never been born? Kids are so cute, aren't they?”

“It was after one when you talked to the Thornes. When did you get a chance to talk to the teacher, for God's sakes?” Jury imagined Macalvie was one of those cops who never slept.

“Afterwards. Let me tell you, the Thornes don't go down a treat. The teacher I knocked up around three —” Macalvie's blue eyes glinted “— you know what that means in American? Anyway Miss Elgin — Julie — didn't especially enjoy having her door busted down by the Devon-Cornwall constabulary, not with her dressed only in a flimsy wrapper —”

“You make it sound like a gang rape, Macalvie. Maybe Wiggins could just read the notes.”

Disinclined as he was to stop eating his boiled egg, Wiggins put down his spoon and took out his notebook.

“Put that away, dammit,” said Macalvie.
“I
know who said what. So, the kids made up this silly song, mostly, I imagine, because
The Thornbirds
has been putting everybody to sleep for days now on the telly. You know; it's that mini-mind soap opera series. Julie —”

Macalvie could get on a first-name basis pretty quickly, Jury thought.

“— said Angela got a real going over with that pun on her name. None of the kids much liked Angela Thorne. Why?” Macalvie answered his own question. “Because she was sullen, bad-tempered, plain as pudding, wore thick glasses, and was so good at her lessons it even tired out the teachers. Julie
said the headmistress just wished Angela'd take her O levels and get the hell out. Pretty funny.” Whatever Macalvie was remembering from the night before obviously delighted him.

“Not very funny for Angela. Wasn't this Julie Elgin a little cut up over Angela's murder?”

“Sure. Scared witless, like everybody else. News travels fast. At midnight parents were calling her to say their kids wouldn't be going to school. But the point is, nobody liked Angela, including her parents.”

Jury put down his coffee cup. “Her teacher said that?”

“No. And she didn't have to, did she?” Again he answered his rhetorical question. “Mummy's eyes were red, but more from booze than from tears. George was more worried about his own neck than his kid's death, though of course, he put up a front — but it was all pretense, no pain — and the older sister, the one who got the looks, kept talking about being in shock, as if she'd like to go into it for my sake, but couldn't get the electrodes in place. In other words, it was all an act. I asked them for a picture of Angela. Mum and Dad kind of looked at one another as if they couldn't quite place their youngest, and finally Carla — the sister — had to go off and
look
for a picture. Funny. There were certainly pictures of the bosomy rose Carla all over the mantel. But not even so much as a snapshot of Angela.”

“Then she must have been a lonely little girl. Let's get back to your theory of what happened.”

“Well, it's the dog, isn't it?” Macalvie watched Jury lighting a cigarette as if it were a daemonic act, meant to trap Macalvie into reaching for the packet.

“The dog? Macalvie, if you say something about the dog in the nighttime, I'll do just what you want — leave.” Jury smiled.

Macalvie's hopeful look vanished when Jury didn't actually get up. Then he shrugged: stay or leave, it was all one to Macalvie. “The person who killed the kid must have had
some connection with her or Lyme Regis. How the hell did he or she know where to drop the dog?”

“Dogtags, maybe.”

Macalvie looked pained. “Oh, for Christ's sake, Jury. A perfect stranger wandering all over Lyme carrying a terrier looking for Cobble Cottage? No way. So it was either someone who befriended the Kid and the Poor Kid's dog,” (Jury could just feel the sympathy welling up in Macalvie's breast) “someone not from Lyme, or someone who's been
living
in Lyme and knew the kid's habits.”

“But Angela Thorne didn't habitually go against the rules, you led me to believe.”

Impatiently, Macalvie stuffed a sourball in his mouth, sucked on it awhile as he hankered after Jury's cigarette, then tossed the candy in the ashtray. “Wonder how Kojak stood it.  . . .Look at little Angela's feelings about Mum and Dad and school and so forth. Somebody could have befriended her and then hung around Lyme, waiting for a chance. What do you think?”