The Dirty Duck (7 page)

“There's not much else I can do at the moment. I went with his sister, Penny, to Shakespeare's birthplace. He was supposedly on his way there when he disappeared—but no one remembered seeing him. Anyway, it's Lasko's case.”

They ate in silence for a while. Jury's mind turned from missing boys to other matters. “You never met Lady Kennington, did you?” He doubted his overly casual tone would fool Melrose Plant.

“No. I only saw her that one time, you remember. Attractive woman.”

“I suppose so. She's living in Stratford.”

“Oh? You know, she reminded me of Vivian Rivington.”

It hadn't occurred to Jury, but Plant was right. There was a resemblance between the two women. Plant was looking at him rather too closely; Jury looked away. The thought of Vivian Rivington still nettled. “Have you heard from her? Is she still in Italy?”

“I get some sort of postcard of a gondola now and again. She said something about returning to England.”

There was a short silence. “Pass the bread,” said Jury.

“How romantic. I mention Vivian and you say, ‘Pass the bread.' ” Melrose shoved the basket across to him.

“Oh, God,” said Jury, looking toward the door.

Melrose followed the direction of Jury's gaze. The dining room was thinning out, as one table after another left for the theatre. Standing in the doorway was a rather corpulent, sad man who was looking their way. He said something to the hostess and threaded his way through the departing diners.

“Speak of the devil—” Jury tossed down his napkin.

 • • • 

Detective Sergeant Sammy Lasko stood there looking, Jury thought, insincerely apologetic. “Trouble, Richard.”

“Sit down and have some wine or coffee. You look beat.”

Lasko shook his head. “No time. Looks good though,” he added, peering longingly at their plates.

“It was until you walked in. Something else about the Farraday kid?”

Sad shake of the head as Lasko turned his bowler hat in his hands. “ 'Fraid not. It's a little worse.”

Plant and Jury exchanged looks. “I daresay I'll be attending the theatre by myself this evening,” said Melrose, glumly.

“Look, Sammy . . .” Jury sighed, giving in. “What is it this time?”

“Murder,” said Lasko, still eyeing the cut of beef.

They both stared at Lasko, and then at one another. Finally, Jury said, as he got up. “Give me my ticket and meet me in the bar during intermission.”

Sam Lasko looked at Jury reproachfully. “I don't think we'll have the answers by the middle of
Hamlet.”

“Neither did Hamlet. Come on, let's go.”

 • • • 

“Gwendolyn Bracegirdle,” said Lasko, looking down at the spot in the ladies' toilet where the body had recently lain. He handed the pictures taken by the police photographer to Jury, together with Gwendolyn Bracegirdle's billfold. “It was a mess.”

In the bulb's white glow, the face of Gwendolyn Bracegirdle wore an expression of clownish surprise. When Jury opened the billfold, a little waterfall of credit cards spilled down in a long plastic sleeve: Diner's Club, Visa, American Express, one for petrol. And there was quite a bit of money, at least two hundred pounds.

“Not robbery,” said Lasko, eyes in the back of his head. He was scrubbing at the dirt in the walk with the toe of his boot. “Why would she have been walking out here by the public toilets at night?”

“When did you find her?” asked Jury, looking down at one of the photos, at that awful expression on the murdered woman's face—as if she had been almost laughing when the first cut came. Awful, given that the head was nearly severed from the body. As if slicing her from ear to ear wouldn't have done the trick, there was another deep cut beginning below the breast and running in a vertical line to the pubic bone. The blood must have gushed; in the photos, it looked as if it had dried, as on an artist's canvas, so thickly it might have been put on with a palette knife.

“A couple of hours ago. Been dead, according to the doctor, since late last night. All this”—Lasko gestured with his outstretched arm at the blood-painted world—“happened around midnight, or close to.”

“And someone
just
found her? The church is overrun with tourists in July.”

“Not using the toilets. There was an Out of Order sign outside.” At Jury's look, he shrugged. “They really
were
out of order, apparently.”

“All that blood. The killer must have been covered in it—”

“Sure was. We found an old raincoat tossed in a dustbin. We're checking it for prints, but its one of those slick ones. Also, cheap. Kind you could get anywhere. Hell to trace.” Lasko stuck a toothpick in his mouth, and held up a small, white card, illuminated by his torch. “How about going along with me to the Diamond Hill Guest House? Have a word with the landlady?”

“I told you before, Sam, this isn't my—”

Lasko cut Jury off by asking, “What do you think of this?”

It was a copy of a theatre program for
As You Like It.
Across the bottom, two lines of poetry were carefully printed:

Beauty is but a flower

That wrinkles will devour.

“So what do you think, Richard? We're checking the original for prints. But for openers: think she wrote that?”

“No.”

“Me either. Looks more like a message to us.”

Resolutely, Jury handed back the copy. “You, Sammy. To you. I've got to go back to London, remember?”

But Sam Lasko still had his pièce de résistance to offer. “I think you'd better come along.”

“Sammy, no one's asked for our help.”

“Not yet. But I'm sure Honeysuckle Tours maybe could use it.” Lasko rolled the toothpick around in his mouth. “You know, the tour the Farraday kid was on.” Lasko put the theatre program back in its envelope. “So was Gwendolyn Bracegirdle.”

 • • • 

Sam Lasko let Jury stand there for a while and digest this information before the sergeant took out his notebook and flipped through the pages: “It's a terrific name, isn't it? Just makes you think of the Old South and Tara and all that stuff. You been to America, Jury?” The question was rhetorical; Lasko didn't wait for an answer before going on with his list.

“This guy runs it, Honeycutt—probably that's where they got the name—we've been looking for him ever since we found her. He's been bouncing
around all over Stratford. Anyway, we got the Farradays on this tour and, according to J.C., who's only just barely speaking, there were four others, leave out them and Honeycutt: a Lady Dew and her niece, Cyclamen—talk about names!—George Cholmondeley, he deals in precious stones; and Harvey L. Schoenberg—”

“Schoenberg?”

“You know him?”

“No. But the chap I was having dinner with does.”

“That so?” Lasko put his notebook away, and attempted to steer Jury down the path and—presumably—toward the Diamond Hill Guest House. “What I was thinking was, maybe after we get finished with this Diamond Hill—”

“We?” But Jury knew he'd go along.

So did Sam Lasko. He didn't even bother answering. “—I thought maybe you could go along and have a look into the Arden—that's Honeycutt's hotel—and have a word with him or find out where the hell he is—”

Jury turned in the dark walk. “Sammy, I told you before—”

Sam Lasko shook and shook his head, holding out his arms almost heavenward. “Richard. Look at that mess back there. You think I don't have enough to do—?”

“No, I don't.”

They were walking up the alley that made a shortcut from the theatre through old Stratford to the streets skirting the town, lined with B-and-B's like avenues of beeches.

“Casablanca.
Now there was a film. You've seen it, haven't you?”

Jury stopped, lit a cigarette, and said, “Don't get the idea this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship, Louie.”

M
rs. Mayberry, who ran the Diamond Hill Guest House, did nothing to correct Jury's impression of women who ran Bed-and-Breakfast establishments.

“I don't know, do I? She was on one of those tours. Had the room right at the top—small, but cozy. Hot-and-cold and bath down the hall. Seven pound a night it cost her, and full English breakfast, VAT inclusive.” The police might have been there for no other purpose than to rent Mrs. Mayberry's rooms.

Jury knew what the full English breakfast would be: tinned orange juice, cornflakes, one egg, bit of bacon if you were lucky, watery “grilled” tomato. Only Oliver Twist would have the nerve to ask for seconds.

“The last time you saw her, Mrs. Mayberry?” asked Lasko in his sleepy voice.

“Six-ish, I guess it was. Come back to the house for a wash before dinner. They usually do.” They were climbing the stairs now, preceded by the landlady with her ring of keys. The police photographer and fingerprint man brought up the rear. “Here we are, then.” Mrs. Mayberry stood aside and pushed open the door. “Shocking, it is.” Jury assumed she was commenting on the murder and not the state of the room, which was small and rather barren. “Terrible thing to happen.” But the comment seemed to be aimed less at Gwendolyn Bracegirdle's death than it was at the nerve of a Diamond Hill Guest House lodger giving the place a bad name.

The room was on the top floor and the tiny dormer window seemed designed to keep out the summer breezes rather than to let them in. A bed—really more of a cot—with a chenille spread flanked one wall. A washbasin sprouted from the other. Besides this there were only a chintz-covered
slipper chair and an old oak bureau. On the top of the bureau, Miss Bracegirdle's things were neatly arranged: a couple of jars of cream, a comb and brush, a small picture in a silver frame. Jury was standing in the doorway so as to keep out of the way of Lasko's team, and thus couldn't see the face in the picture. But it struck him as sad, this attempt to carry some small part of home around with her. The rooms of a murder victim always struck Jury in this way: perhaps because he had been trained to observe objects so closely, they became sentient to him: the bed ready to receive the weight of a body, the looking glass to see the face, the comb to touch the hair. The presence of Gwendolyn Bracegirdle clung to these things like scent, even though she'd been in this room for only a few days.

Before Lasko started going through the drawers, he said to Jury. “Why don't you have a little talk with the landlady?” His eyes were imploring.

“Sure,” said Jury. As long as he was here . . .

 • • • 

Mrs. Mayberry was fortifying herself with a cup of tea in the breakfast room-cum-parlor. One weak bulb glowed thriftily in the rose-shaded lamp on the sideboard. The sideboard told him he'd been right about breakfast: cereal boxes sat in a row beside a brace of tiny juice glasses that would provide one large swallow apiece. There were three round tables, each with its complement of mismatched chairs, and each with its centerpiece of mismatched condiments. Mustard for breakfast?

“On the Saturday she came,” said Mrs. Mayberry. “Came at the same time as the man and wife in Number Ten. I don't mean together; she didn't know them.”

“Did she get friendly with any of the others while she was here?”

“Well, now, I don't know, do I? I don't mix with my guests. In the morning I'm in the kitchen. One's got to look sharp these days to see breakfast's done proper and the rooms cleaned and so forth. We've got to do the cooked breakfasts up in advance, the eggs and such, as they
will
all come in at the same time, won't they? Even though we serve from seven-thirty. Spot on nine they all troop in—” She pushed her frizzy hair off her forehead and shook and shook her head. “My checkout time's eleven and the linen's got to be changed—”

Feeling as if he were being interviewed for a job, Jury cut in on her: “I'm sure it's very difficult. But there must have been someone here who passed the time of day with Miss Bracegirdle.”

“Maybe she talked with my Patsy who waits at table and does some of the upstairs work. Called in sick today, she did, and I felt like sacking her.”

Jury interrupted this recounting of domestic problems: “Did she take any phone calls while she was here?”

“No, none I know of. You might ask Patsy that. She answers a lot of the time.”

The guest register, which Mrs. Mayberry had been rather proud to bring in from the little hall table, was open in front of Jury. Looking down at the small but florid signature of Gwendolyn Bracegirdle, he said, “Sarasota, Florida.”

“That's right, Florida.” She fingered the bottle of catsup. “I get lots of them from Florida. Of course, lately there've been a lot of British
going
to Florida. It's ever so cheap, they tell me. I wouldn't mind a bit of a holiday myself, but as you can see, there's so much business here that I never do get away—”

“We'll have to talk with the other guests here, Mrs. Mayberry. There's evidence that Miss Bracegirdle was with someone when she met with her, ah, accident.”

Her face was a sheet of horror. “Here? You're not saying—”

“Not saying anything. We're just gathering information.”

But the thought that she might be giving bed and breakfast to a murderer was, to her, not the issue: “The Diamond Hill Guest House isn't going to be in the papers, now is it? Nothing's ever happened here . . .”

It brought back to Jury his own consoling words to Farraday that nothing ever happened in Stratford.

“We try to keep things out of the papers.”

“Well, I should certainly think the Diamond Hill Guest House shouldn't have to have its good name besmirched . . . It certainly wouldn't do my business any good. Even with travel so expensive these days, the Americans still come. Stratford's just as popular,
more
popular, than ever. In tourist season, it's—excuse my language, it's hell.”