The Blue Last

“Yes.” Jury smiled. “One of the great romances in film history.” (That’s who it was, he thought, Viven Leigh; that’s who Alexandra looked like, and the waitress in the cappuccino bar.) Jury smiled.

“Kitty used to say that’s just how they were, that Alexandra and Ralph were like Myra and Roy. Kitty-she was the au pair, or nanny, I suppose. I remember how it irritated me that Alex really did resemble Vivien Leigh with her smooth dark hair and ivory complexion and dark eyes. And the cheekbones.” She shook her head. “ ‘A silly comparison,’ I once heard Alex tell her. ‘Vivien was a prostitute and that’s why she didn’t marry Robert Taylor. And that’s why she jumped from the bridge. I don’t think I’ll have to do that,’ Alex said.”

Jury said, “Alexandra doesn’t sound like an incurable romantic.” He smiled. “She sounds more the practical type.” He drew the envelope from an inside pocket where he carried Mickey’s snapshots. He removed the one of Alexandra and Francis Croft and set it before Marie-France.

Surprised, she picked it up “Where did you ever… it’s the Blue Last. That’s my father and Alexandra. Where did you get it?”

Jury noticed she identified the pub before she did the people. “One of the CID men in the City.” He found the one of Katherine Riordin and her baby.

“It’s Kitty and Erin… wait, no, it’s Maisie.” She drew the snapshot close to her eyes. “No, it is Erin. All babies tend to look alike, don’t you think?”

Jury smiled again. “I’m sure the mothers would disagree with you. So Kitty Riordin stayed on with the Tynedales here.”

“Oliver kept her on after Alex was killed. And Erin, poor thing. God, but that was awful. Awful. Both Oliver and Kitty lost their child. I don’t know who was more heartbroken.”

“And Alexandra’s husband?”

It was as though Marie-France were trying to recollect him. “Oh, of course. Ralph was devastated.”

Had he really been, or was she simply mouthing a platitude? Ralph Herrick didn’t seem to be a person remembered for anything but his looks and the RAF. But, then, they’d been married such a little while.

Marie-France went on: “Ralph was killed in the war.” She dredged up memory. “Yes, that’s right. During the war. He’d left the RAF. Actually, he was awarded the Victoria Cross. Yes. How could I have forgotten that? He had something to do with those code breakers… Anyway, he drowned. Somewhere in Scotland.”

“You live exactly where, Mrs. Muir?”

“In Belgravia, in Chapel Street.”

“Is that where you were early this morning?”

“Mm?” She seemed distracted by the past. “Oh. Yes, of course, I’m always there mornings. I live alone.”

“No maid? Cook?”

“No, none. It’s quite a small house and I prefer not to have to be bumping into other people.”

Jury pushed back his chair and Marie-France rose as he did. “Thanks very much, Mrs. Muir. And if you could just give me your sister’s address-?”

They were standing at the door and she nodded, sadly. Must have been a beauty back then, he thought. Another one I completely misjudged. So much for police intuition.

When Maisie Tynedale entered the room elegantly suited in black, and sat down, Jury felt a sense of disquietude and thought it had been very poor judgment on his part to talk to the others first, but, then, Mickey had already planted an idea in his mind which had neither been reinforced nor dispelled by the others.

His eye traveled to the portrait and back to her, trying to limn in the features of Alexandra Tynedale on Maisie. Maisie followed his line of vision. “Yes, I know,” she said. “Disappointingly unbeautiful.” She smiled.

So did Jury. “Not at all. I was merely wondering if you looked like your mother.”

Maisie looked again at the portrait. “Her coloring, her hair, possibly her mouth, but definitely not the eyes; the eyes are what count.”

In this case it was the coloring that did it. Black hair, falling straight just below the ears; ivory skin, a heightened color on the lips and cheekbones. A person who had no reason to suspect she wasn’t Alexandra Herrick’s daughter would think straightaway Maisie was her daughter.

The thing was, though, hair and coloring could always be altered, and hers had been. The black hair was not her natural color, and rouge had been artfully applied. But even so, she could still be Alexandra’s daughter, wanting to look more like her.

“What about your father? Is there a picture of him?”

“He’s around.” Her eyes turned to the serving table and the photographs there. “My grandfather might have him. He shifts photographs around-have you spoken to him?”

Jury shook his head. “No. He’s quite ill, I understand.”

“He’ll be crippled by Simon’s death. You know, we might as well all be brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. The two families are that close. Simon might as well have been Oliver’s son. I know Ian always thought of him as a brother.”

“I’ve got the impression all of you find the friendship of Francis Croft and Oliver Tynedale rather astonishing.”

“Unusual, at least. How it could go on like that, how it could go on since they were boys. Yes, perhaps ‘astonishing’ is the right word.”

“Your relationship with-” Jury consulted his notebook as if searching for the name which he perfectly well knew “-Katherine Riordin goes back a long way, too.”

“Kitty. Yes, I suppose you know about that night the Blue Last was bombed.”

Jury nodded.

“Well, Kitty just stayed on.”

And stayed. But, then, a lot of old nannies, family retainers, stayed on with their employers for a long time. And never having met the woman, Jury decided to drop that particular line of inquiry.

But Maisie continued. “Granddad gave her the cottage so she would feel more independent-”

“Which she isn’t; she’s completely dependent upon your family.”

Maisie grew somewhat defensive. “That sounds a little hostile.”

Jury raised his eyebrows. “I don’t mean it to. I’m stating facts, at least, as I know them. The source of Mrs. Riordin’s income could be important.”

“What are you hinting-?”

“Noth-”

“-that she murdered Simon for an inheritance?”

“That hadn’t crossed my mind. Why would Simon Croft leave money to your old nursemaid?”

Angry, she started to rise.

“No-” Jury put out his hand. “Please stay seated. I have more questions.”

Reluctantly and with mouth compressed, she sat back, arms folded in a somewhat combative stance. He noticed the deformity of the hand, then, a skewing of the index and middle fingers, a dislocation of the thumb. He recalled the snapshot of the baby Maisie, her tiny hand on her mother’s neck.

“You appear to be protective of Katherine Riordin.”

“She saved my life; yes, I suppose I am.”

Jury doodled on a fresh page of his small notebook. Doodles were the only thing in the notebook aside from a few telephone numbers and addresses. Wiggins saw to notes; he was the most thorough note taker around. Jury himself was afraid of impeding, muffling, the flow of speech. He didn’t like tapes either.

“Why is it,” he asked, eyes on his notebook, “everyone I’ve talked to makes it sound as if Mrs. Riordin rushed into that bombed building and pulled you out? Coincidence saved your life, not Katherine Riordin. She happened to have taken you out in a pram. That hardly makes her a heroine. It was also coincidence-of the worst kind, I imagine, to her-that she had taken you and not her own child.”

Maisie sat back, looking stunned, almost despairing that someone would not see Kitty Riordin as a heroine. Why, he wondered, was this so important to her? He could understand it if Maisie was really Erin Riordin and Kitty