“EXEMPLARY lives, sir. Exemplary lives!” said Sir Miles Bodenheim in response to Jury’s question about the letters. And the tiny smile that accompanied Miles’s modest evaluation of the Bodenheim family did double duty: Scotland Yard could take it as gospel or Scotland Yard could take it as proof of Miles Bodenheim’s ability to have a little joke on himself. Either way, the Bodenheims won the Littlebourne Character Sweepstakes.
From the moment of entering the Bodenheim drawing room, it had been fairly clear to Jury why Polly Praed was writing The Littlebourne Murders. Three heads—those of Miles, Sylvia, and the daughter—had turned toward him as if he were royalty’s looking glass; the fourth didn’t turn much at all. It was too busy looking bored. Derek Bodenheim sat slouched in a chair, his fingers slowly turning a tall glass of something, his expression insolent, as if he were already disagreeing with whatever Jury might say.
Having offered Jury a thimbleful of sherry, Miles Bodenheim sat down and reclaimed his cup of tea. He was wearing a fawn jacket and black ascot with tiny white polka dots and that morning’s egg hardening in its folds. When Jury declined the sherry, Sylvia Bodenheim must have felt it incumbent upon her to make an offer of tea. But the voice trailed off so weakly and the hand fell so short of the pot that Jury didn’t even bother to say no.
“Who was she, d’ya know yet?” asked Derek, slouching down in his chair. Having inherited what there was of his father’s looks, Derek managed to dissipate them across a face that looked so soft and malleable it could have taken the imprint of a thumb.
“That’s what we’re trying to establish. No one seems to have seen her here in the village.”
“Except for Daddy and that silly birdwatching group, no one goes into the wood,” said Julia. She managed to lift her head as if it were quite the handsomest thing Jury would be likely to see in Littlebourne. Ever since he’d got there, she’d been having trouble arranging her expression and her person. She had tossed him enigmatic glances and thrown her long hair about as if he were a fashion photographer.
“Silly? Nothing silly about the Royal Birdwatchers, my dear. Do you good to join it yourself,” said her father.
Julia rolled her eyes upwards and tried to find an even more striking pose on the velvet couch, chosen, no doubt, because the blue matched both her shirt and her eyes.
Sylvia set aside her teacup and reclaimed her knitting needles. Her thin hands flew as she said, “There’s no earthly reason for the woman to have been in the Horndean wood. None.” Ergo (she made it sound), the woman wasn’t there.
“It’s been suggested this person was on her way to Stonington.”
Sylvia gave Jury a smile as thin as the cucumber on the sandwiches. “Why on earth would she be going there? And not through the wood. That’s absurd. And not to see Lady Kennington, I daresay. I was at Stonington not three days ago to see if she wouldn’t do something for our church fête. But as always it was quite useless. The woman’s a veritable recluse. Now her husband, Lord Kennington, seemed pleasant enough. . . . You heard, I expect, about the theft of that jewelry about a year ago.”
“Yes. Apparently the secretary came under suspicion.”
Sylvia sniffed. “And no wonder. Not a nice sort, at all. You knew him a little, didn’t you, Derek?” She turned to her son, who did not bother to recognize her. “Yes, police assumed he must have done it, though they could never prove anything because they never found that emerald. It was extremely valuable. Egyptian, I believe. One of the old ones.” Sylvia somehow made it sound as if the Bodenheims had all of the new ones.
“Clever chap,” said Derek, determined to say whatever might upset the rest of the family. “Always did think so. It’s never turned up, you know. And he’s dead. So there’s nearly a quarter million quids’ worth of emerald gone missing, and the fellow who knows where it is got hit by a car. What an irony.”
“Clever?” said Sylvia. “I thought him quite common.”
“You met him?”
Sylvia sniffed. “Lord Kennington had one small gathering to show off his collection. Egyptology seemed to be his forte. She is certainly no hostess.”
“How did Tree come to work for Lord Kennington?”
“I understood he’d been employed by Christie’s. Now we have always dealt with Sotheby’s. We find them much more satisfactory.” Jury only smiled and looked at the reproductions, the japanned screen, the ornate moldings. They had managed to stamp out elegance without the help of either of the famous auction rooms. She picked up her narrative along with a couple of dropped stitches. “I can’t think how the widow runs the place anyway. When I was there no one was about and I was finally forced to tap on panes and peer through the French doors when no one answered to my knock. Finally, she appeared. A rather drab person. Of course, we never see much of her because she does her shopping, I expect, in Horndean. I explained to her about the fête and asked her to take the Jumble table. The woman simply has no community spirit.”
Derek yawned. “Why the hell should she, as she’s not right in Littlebourne?”
“She’s close enough,” said Sylvia, and returned her damp gaze to Jury. Her eyes were the color of fungi one is always afraid of picking in the wilds. “And do you know, the woman had the nerve to open her purse and hand me twenty pounds! As if I were out doing collections! The odious person had the nerve to say that twenty pounds would be as much as the whole Jumble would bring and why go to the trouble of carting dribs and drabs of junk about when here was the case and we could just forego the table. My dears!” Sylvia spread her arms wide, taking in everyone, even “her dear” Jury. “We always have a Jumble!”
As far as Jury was concerned, Lady Kennington’s reasoning seemed imminently sensible, and he tried to bring them back to the matter of the murder. Sylvia was too quick, though.
“And I, who already have too much to do—I’m President of the Women’s Institute, after all—I’ve already the Bring-and-Buy and I suppose now I shall have to take over the Jumble.” She looked to her husband for support, but Miles did not appear to be listening, busy as he was with trying to scratch the dried egg from the ascot.
Derek said, “Same thing, nearly. Shake ’em up together and see which falls out first.”
“They are decidedly not the same, Derek. And remember, you have charge of the Bottle Toss.”
“Christ, not again.”
“Julia is to take over the phaeton rides—”
“Not I. Emily’s doing that. I’m not about to do rides for whining kiddies.”
“I merely meant to supervise, my darling. Just be there to see Emily doesn’t get up to something. Polly Praed is to handle the tea tent—”
“Glad it’s not the Pennystevens person. She shorted me ten pence last year. And what’s old Critchley to do?” continued Miles. “After all it’s his church. Should think he’d do some work instead of standing about looking holy.”
“I hope Ramona Wey isn’t to have a stall,” said Julia. “I don’t think it’s right the antiques people from Hertfield just come along and use our fête to do business.”
“Ah, but that’s not really why, is it, old girl?” said her brother, hands clasped behind his head. “It’s because of Riddley, isn’t it? You don’t—”
“Shut up!” yelled Julia.
“Children, children,” said Sylvia, blandly. Jury wondered if she were about to suggest they go out and play. There were times when he was glad he had no children. And then a real one would come along and he’d be sorry once more.
“As to those letters, Superintendent,” said Sylvia, needles clicking faster. “I can see why Ramona Wey got one. Calls herself a ‘decorator’ and has that tarted-up little shop on the Row, but the woman’s nothing in the world but a jumped-up little secretary from London. There is talk, too, about her and Freddie Mainwaring, but I’m sure he’s got too much sense—”
“I find her rather jolly,” said Derek. His soft face split in a mocking smile.
“I have always been able to keep an open mind on such subjects,” said Sir Miles, his face turned to the ceiling as if about to receive the angels’ blessings. “I suggest you would all do well to follow my example. I do not approve of the woman, no, but at least she does keep herself to herself, even to drawing her shades. Mrs. Pennystevens told me, when I inquired, that the Wey woman must keep a poste restante somewhere, for she receives no mail through our carrier. I’m surprised we any of us get our mail, as he is none too quick either. But we must suffer fools gladly, I expect.” He smiled benignly, and opened his mouth to say more.
But Jury cut him short with a smile even more benign, having as it did the blessing of the Metropolitan Police Department. “Where were all of you on the Thursday night? Two nights ago, that is?”
They all looked at one another and then at Jury, as if he were rather a rude child inquiring into his elders’ affairs. After a moment of improvised dismay, however, Derek seemed to enjoy the question immensely.
“It appears the Super thinks one of us had a hand in the dirty deed! As for myself—let’s see—I was in the White Hart in Hertfield. Must be able to scare up some witnesses, though we were all so pissed—”
“Derek! Really! I’m quite sure the superintendent is suggesting nothing at all. I was at my Women’s Institute meeting. We meet at eight-thirty, first Thursday of the month. I was a wee bit late because I had to come back and get my records.”
The victim’s bus had stopped at 8:05. What held you up? thought Jury, smiling. Sylvia hadn’t got the time frame of the murder fixed, or she was innocent of anything. “Alone?”
“Yes, of course. I do drive, Superintendent.” That was to be listed among her other accomplishments—like knitting and raising children.
When Sir Miles saw that Jury’s notebook was open, he was moved once again toward speech-making. After all, one never knew what mortal form the recording angel might take. “As is always my custom on Thursday evenings, I have a jaunt down to the Bold Blue Boy. I say it never hurts to have a bit of a laugh and a drink with the locals. One must keep the common touch. You can ask there. Anyone will vouch for me. Ho ho, there’s an alibi for you, Superintendent!”
“It closes at eleven, doesn’t it?”
Sir Miles winked. “Well, you know country pubs. Cheat a bit. Eleven, eleven-fifteen. Not that Mary O’Brien would keep open after hours—” Since he’d just accused Mary O’Brien of precisely that, the comment seemed irrelevant. “And, of course, since that accident to the girl—”
Julia, apparently seeing a way to get back at Derek, said, “Too bad, Derek. No more grope and grapple in the stableyard.” She laughed unpleasantly.
Derek went beet-red. “Sod off!” His soft face hardened.
“Are you talking about Katie O’Brien?” asked Jury. They turned once again to stare, except for Miles, whose eyes were riveted on some point in space, devising or revising his next speech. The others looked uncomfortable, even Julia, who had brought it up in the first place.
“You, Miss Bodenheim. You haven’t told me where you were on Thursday evening.”
“Out in the stables.”
Derek giggled. It was an unpleasant sound coming from a twenty-four- or twenty-five-year-old man. “That’s a laugh. You working.”
“Well, I was!”
“Getting back to the O’Brien girl. Did you know her well?”
“No. She exercised my mare sometimes.”
“I was given to believe that this little girl, Emily Perk, took care of the horses at Rookswood.”
“She does. Only my mare is nearly sixteen hands and too big for Emily to do properly, so we got Katie to do it.”
“She’s in hospital,” said Sylvia, snipping a strand of wool. “A great pity, but if guhls must be roaming the streets of London . . . Not only that—” Sylvia glared at Jury—the streets of London were, after all, his responsibility, “she was attacked in an Underground station. Playing her violin, good gracious, for money.”
Sir Miles looked over the church steeple of his fingers and intoned, “Really, my dear, we mustn’t be too hard on the girl. After all, given she was raised in a pub, and hadn’t the advantages of our. . . . ”
Jury listened as the angels looked down.
It was after three when Jury got back to the Blue Boy to find Sergeant Wiggins already there spooning up soup.
“Oxtail,” said Wiggins. “Mrs. O’Brien gave me some. She just left for the shops in Hertfield. But I’m sure there’s more in the pot—”
Wiggins had made himself right at home. “No, thanks,” said Jury.
“You don’t eat right. You didn’t have any lunch. If I ate on the run like you, I’d have no resistance at all. This is good soup.”
“Aside from the quality of the soup, what did you learn?”
Unoffended, Wiggins quartered and buttered a breadroll. “Mainwaring didn’t know the murdered woman, and couldn’t imagine why she’d be out in the woods—”
“No one can. Go on.”
“He works part of the time in London, in the City, in insurance. Then he’s got a part-time estate agency in Littlebourne.”
“He commutes to London some days?”
“That’s right.”
“He saw the pictures of the murdered woman?”
“Yes. Said he’d never seen her before. Also said he was with the Wey woman on Thursday night. Which she confirmed. You want him to go along and have a look at the body?”
“No more than any of the others. What about Mrs. Pennystevens? Anything else there?”
Wiggins shook his head. “Just as Carstairs said. She got the packet, thought it was some sort of joke. So did the others. Mainwaring and the Wey woman.”
“They’d need to, wouldn’t they? Since they were accused of being lovers. Do you think they are?”
For Wiggins, who had shoved his soup plate aside and was in the process of medicating himself, this was a two-cough drop problem. Or, at least, the cough drops were stuck together and he popped both of them into his mouth. “Hard to say. She’s good-looking enough.”
“What was her reaction to the murder?”
“Same thing. Didn’t know anything about it, didn’t know why the woman would be out in the woods, et cetera, et cetera. Carstairs had been there before me.”
“Has Carstairs called here?”
“No, why?”
“Augusta Craigie thinks the woman might have been on her way to Stonington, the Kennington estate just outside of Littlebourne.” Jury looked ceilingward. “Do you know which one of the rooms is the daughter’s?” He knew Wiggins would have inspected them all, briefly, to see if he could find a more comfortable mattress.
Wiggins nodded. “First on the right. Lots of flounce and stuffed animals.”
“I’m going to have a look.”
• • •
It was a pleasant room with a slanted ceiling and creaking, crooked floor, white furniture, and, as Wiggins had said, ruffled spread and pillows. It faced the Green; a row of tiny casement windows over a window seat were rolled out, disturbing the climbing roses wandering up the side of the building. Jury looked at the row of books above the window seat: untouched tomes, largely, of classics like Middlemarch; very well-fingered Heartwind Romances wedged between and behind them. A poor ruse if the mother were doing a cleaning. But perhaps the neatness here was Katie O’Brien’s own. Jury looked in the closet and saw carefully hung dresses. He checked the labels, found two of them were Laura Ashleys, expensive. The mother would have had to sell a lot of pints to buy them.
There was an album lying on a little desk, which Jury leafed through. Snapshots recording the life of Katie O’Brien and her family. One of them he removed. It showed a pale girl with a heart-shaped, but unsmiling, face. A lot of dark hair had been rolled away from the face, probably collected in back in a bun or plait. It was an old-fashioned hairdo above an old-fashioned dress, a lace-collared gingham. Did the small, beautiful face look so mournfully out at Jury because the hair was too heavy, the collar too tight? Jury took the picture and closed the album.
“Cora Binns,” said Inspector Carstairs. “It was shortly after you called that we got an identification. Not from Lady Kennington—we’re checking that out—but from a Mrs. Beavers. That’s the Binns woman’s landlady, who got worried when Cora never came home on the Thursday night. Cora Binns told Mrs. Beavers she was off to see someone in Hertfield. Said she’d be back that night and probably get home round eleven. Cora has the upstairs flat in the Beaverses’ house and the landlady apparently keeps an eye on her tenants. When Cora didn’t show up again on Friday, she was really concerned. Nosy’s more like it. She put in a missing-person and a call came through not long ago from ‘H’ Division. Not much doubt it’s the same person. Description, clothes, everything fits. I guessed you’d want to talk to her straightaway. Address—” The voice dimmed as Carstairs turned from the telephone, and then came back again. “Number twenty-two, Catchcoach Street.”
“What section’s that?” Jury asked as he made a note of the address.
“Somewhere around Forest Gate, isn’t it? Wait a tic. . . . Yes, here it is. Well.” There was a brief silence. “Wembley Knotts. Coincidence, that. That’s where the O’Brien girl got coshed on the head. Odd.”
When Jury dropped the receiver back into the cradle, Sergeant Wiggins was studying the photograph of Katie O’Brien.
“Yes. Leave a note for Mary O’Brien, will you, that we’ll be back later this evening. Tell her to tell Mr. Plant. I can’t think why he’s not here yet.”
Wiggins looked surprised. “Where are we going, then?”
“London.”