The Blue Last (11 page)

“I was in the greenhouse, like I said. I was looking at the cuttings Mr. Murphy had in there. I was wondering when he'd plant the snowdrop bulbs. Those over there.” She pointed at the drift of snowdrops he'd noticed before, white petals with a green spot positioned with such regularity in each petal they looked painted. “They're called Tryms. Like my name, only it's spelled different. They're very unusual. I planted one in a pot and looked around for the Day-Gro. I was holding my doll in my other hand, that's when I heard the glass shatter and felt something whiz by me. I thought maybe somebody threw a rock. That's
that
time.

“The second time I was in bed asleep so I can't tell you more than I did. Something woke me up; I guess it was because I couldn't breathe. I yanked open a window and stuck my head out. They got a doctor and they called the police again. I saw a film with a murderer in it who used to put pillows over his victims' faces.” Gemma stopped to move her doll to a sitting position and then went on for a fascinated Jury.

“The
third
time I was eating spotted Dick that Mrs. MacLeish made with custard sauce. I got really sick and the doctor had to come again and said I was lucky I threw up and got rid of it. I said it was poisoned, but he didn't think it was. That's all.” She sat back and picked up the doll again.

Jury was winded, as if he'd been doing all the talking. “That must have been terribly frightening.”

Her silence as she looked at him suggested any fool could see that.

“The police came, did they?”

She nodded energetically.

“And did they find any bullet casings?”

“I guess that's what you call it. It was outside on the ground. Or maybe stuck in a tree.”

“Are you sure the shooter was aiming at
you,
though?”

“You mean maybe they were trying to shoot the Trym bulbs?” This was said with more acidity than a nine-year-old could usually muster.

“No. I mean, what about the gardener?”

“He wasn't there. Anyway, why would anybody want to kill
him
?”

“Why would anybody want to kill
you
?”

“
I
just don't know, Mickey,” Jury said. “I certainly think it's possible.”

They were in Mickey's office and Mickey wanted to get out of it. He was up and pulling on his coat. “Pub?”

“Liberty Bounds?”

“Nah. Too far. Let's walk, then, find a coffee.”

Jury said, “I know the perfect place. I've got kind of a crush on a waitress there.” It would give him more material to irritate Carole-anne with, too.

Mickey smiled. “Okay, we're out of here.”

 

 

 

The cappuccino-bar-restaurant was barely three blocks from headquarters. There were more customers this morning than there had been at the weekend, but the place was large and still two-thirds empty.

The pretty waitress had taken their order, lattè for Jury, house coffee and a fruit Danish for Mickey; she had been sincerely glad to see Jury again, almost as if she'd worried about his getting safely home on Saturday.

Mickey watched her walk away and smiled. “You've got good taste, Richie; if I weren't a happily married man—” He held his hands out, palm upward. Then he said, “When I felt better yesterday afternoon I sent Johnny and a uniform over to pick up Kitty Riordin. Just for some friendly questioning. I didn't want to go to Tynedale Lodge; I thought the two of us might be too much ‘police presence,' if you know what I mean.”

“You've talked to her before, haven't you?”

“Oh, yeah. Anyway, she didn't overdo it as far as Simon Croft was concerned. She found it ‘regrettable.' She'd known him for a long time, ever since he was a kid, but at the same time felt she didn't
really
know him. ‘He was never terribly outgoing. He had his secrets.' ”

Jury told Mickey what he'd learned yesterday from his talk with family members. “Marie-France Muir and her memories of the Blue Last—she seems to feel it was home. She loved the place. I got the feeling she thought of that pub as a living, breathing organism. But I suppose you can never attach too much importance to a place. It filled you up when you had it, left you empty when it was gone. We're all orphans when it comes to that.” He thought of Gemma.
Left over.

“We're all orphans anyway. You are, I am, so's Liza.” Mickey mused. “I was lucky when it came to foster parents. It's hard to remember they weren't my own flesh and blood. Liza was lucky, too.” He looked at Jury. “You weren't.” He sighed. “Had a good time, though, the three of us, didn't we?”

“We did indeed.” Jury had forgotten that—that all of them were orphans. He wondered if that was one thing they had in common.

Mickey raised his coffee cup, half in salute and half to summon the waitress.

“Did anyone mention Gemma Trimm?”

“I don't remember anyone named Trimm,” said Mickey, puzzled.

“I guess that's the point, Mickey. No one said a word about her. She's old Oliver Tynedale's ward. She's nine. I found her walking in the garden.” Jury told Mickey Gemma's story.

“She was making it up, I hope.”

“Not all of it, anyway. Police found a bullet casing after it had gone through the greenhouse.”

“Thanks,” Mickey said to the waitress who refilled his cup and set down his pastry. She asked Jury if he'd like another lattè.

“Just pour me some of that, thanks.”

She did, and smiled at him, and walked away.

“I'd say she's the one that's got the crush,” Mickey said, absently. He leaned across the table, over his folded arms. “We can't clutter this case up with threats that don't exist, Rich.”

“Every case is cluttered until you sort it. And stuff like this girl has to be sorted. You're much too meticulous a cop to ignore Gemma's story.”

Mickey took a bite of the pastry and said, around a mouthful of crumbs, “Okay, okay. I guess I'm just in a hurry. What could the motive be for killing this little girl? Who is she? She's a ward, which keeps the Social at just beyond breathing distance. What's her history?”

“I don't know because I haven't talked to Oliver Tynedale. I expect he might be the only one who does.”

Mickey frowned over his cup. “You don't think she's actually related to Oliver Tynedale, do you?”

“I thought about that. She could be. Her resemblance to Alexandra Tynedale is marked.”

“But not to Maisie. It couldn't be.”

Jury laughed. “You're pretty certain of that. But I tend to agree. There's something about Maisie—”

“Hell, yeah, there's something about her. Like not being Alexandra and Ralph Herrick's daughter. That's something.”

“Odd, how she's got the black hair, the dark eyes . . . and yet. She doesn't look like Vivien Leigh. Gemma does, in miniature.”

“Like Liza.”

“What?”

“Don't you remember you used to tell her that. People think she looks like Vivien Leigh or else Claire Bloom.”

Jury frowned. “Vivien Leigh and Claire Bloom don't look
anything
alike. Our waitress looks like Vivien Leigh, in case you didn't notice.”

Mickey turned around and looked at her. From across the room, she smiled at him. Or them. “She looks like Claire Bloom.”

“Hell, she does.”

This bickering went on.

Finally, Mickey asked, “When will you talk to dear old nanny Kitty? A.k.a. Maisie's real mother?”

“Today. You talked to her. How did she strike you?”

“As the mother of an impostor.”

“That was your objective assessment, was it?”

Mickey's hand squeezed Jury's shoulder. “That's what you're here for—objectivity.” He removed his hand and shrugged. “You'll see.”

A laugh caught in Jury's throat. “I'll
see?
You mean I'll agree that Maisie is really Erin Riordin and that Kitty Riordin is her mother? Mickey, all you've got to go on are those old snapshots—”

“And instinct. You said yourself my instincts are good.”

“I did? I'll bet the instinct here is just a by-product of those pictures. Mickey, what if I don't agree with you? What if I find out Maisie Tynedale really is who she says she is?”

“Then I'll drop it.”

Jury flinched, surprised. It was true he wanted Mickey to be open to this possibility, but he wasn't sure he wanted Mickey to put so much faith in his, Jury's, ability.

“Look, Rich, you're the best cop I know. You're certainly the best with witnesses. Look at how much you got out of these people that I didn't. I didn't know this little Gemma Trimm even existed, for Christ's sake.”

“I only found her by chance, by luck. I was outside, walking.”

“Still . . .” Mickey sighed.

“How
is
Liza?” She was Mickey's wife when Jury met her. Liza had been with the Met herself, detective sergeant, and a very good one. She'd gotten pregnant and given up the Job.

“Wonderful. Liza knows what it is, what it's like. She
knows.
It's almost like she can read my mind; her intuition is almost magical. She knows what this is like, too.” Mickey fisted his hand and made light hammering blows against his chest. “And she doesn't go on about my smoking. People do, my mates do, as if stopping the fags would save my life. They've given me a new painkiller which is an improvement on the other.”

Jury would have thought the doctors at least could eliminate pain, if nothing else. “Do you get a lot of pain?”

“Some.” Mickey swirled the dregs of his coffee.

Some,
of course, meant a lot. As if, as if.

“Nothing's gonna stop this. It's everywhere now, in blood and bone.”

“I'm sorry, Mickey. I really am.” Jury felt it, too. What a loss it was going to be. What on earth would Liza and the children do without him? “How are the kids with all this?”

“They're great. I'm proud of them, too.”

One of Mickey's children was grown and married and gone to another country. Then there were the twins, a boy and a girl who'd lived after a car crash had killed both their parents, Mickey and Liza's daughter and son-in-law. That had happened two years ago. Jury supposed the twins were no more than six or seven now. In addition, there were two others, one in her late teens, a boy readying himself for university. Mickey had too many responsibilities.

“Peter is going to Oxford next year. I'm really happy about that.”

Although you couldn't easily tell it, Mickey had read literature there. He loved poetry, was always pulling out a line here and there.

“Beth, she's already talking about London University. Clara and Toby—the twins—are in public school.” He moved his gaze from whatever lay outside the window to Jury. “Liza will probably go back to the Met; well, she'll have to do something because my bloody pension sure won't do it. Not as far as Oxford goes, that's certain. I don't like being forced to think about all this, know what I mean? Of course, I'd think about it anyway, but in the abstract, kind of. I'd think but I wouldn't have to feel everything ending.” He pushed his cup away. “I really need a drink.” He barked out a laugh. “Well, at least I can stop worrying about whether I have a drinking problem. ‘Drinking problem.' I love that euphemism. That last round I did with the chemo they thought might have stopped it. I went into remission for a while. I thought I might even have it licked. I didn't.

“There's a chilling side effect to this cancer. People don't want to be around it; they feel they should do something but don't know what the something is. They steer clear; they cross the street, metaphorically, and maybe even literally. It amazes me that my mates, my colleagues, who've seen every form of violent death, who walk with it every day—they can't take this.”

“Because it's a lot closer to home, Mickey. Because they're your mates, your friends.”

Mickey looked at him, smiling. “You're my friend, too, Rich, but you're here. I love this fragment:

Written on the wall of an Irish pub, that was. The three of us should've been there together.”

The expression in Mickey's eyes when he said this was so utterly confident of Jury's friendship, Jury knew he would do whatever it took to help him.

K
eeper's Cottage was small but comfortable. Jury was standing in the living room beyond which he saw a kitchen; upstairs (he guessed) would be one large bedroom and a bath, not en suite.

Kitty Riordin invited him to sit down and offered to get him tea. He thanked her but declined.

A table at Jury's elbow held several silver-framed pictures, together with a few pieces of milky blue glass. The pictures were of the Tynedale family, the largest of Maisie herself.

“You're here about Simon Croft.” It wasn't a question. Her expression went from soft to sober. “I was . . . I couldn't quite take it in.” Her hand clenched and pressed against her breast in a gesture that was very much like Mickey's had been. As if she were in mourning, she was dressed in black; around the collar of the dress was a bit of ocher ruffle, which softened the effect. The dress was old-fashioned, as was she herself, a cameo of a person.