Jury smiled. “I often do. Nothing speaks louder than money, certainly not conscience.”

“In this case, you’d be wasting your time. Everyone in the family has money.”

“What about Maisie?”

Somehow she hadn’t expected this, Jury thought. She flinched. “Maisie has money from her mother. She inherited also from Francis Croft.”

“Does it work that way with these two families? The Tynedales and the Crofts bequeath money not only to the immediate family, but to the other family, too?”

“Yes. After all, they don’t think of themselves as ‘other.’ ”

“Then Simon Croft would have left Maisie and Ian money?”

Exasperated with his seeming obtuseness, she shook her head. “Francis Croft left Alexandra a small fortune, which of course went to Maisie upon her mother’s death. He was as fond of Alexandra as her own father was. I expect my point is, again, that if Simon Croft were murdered for money, it wouldn’t be a member of the family who did it.”

“But upon the death of Oliver Tynedale, Maisie will be a wealthy woman-”

“She’s already a wealthy woman, Superintendent. That’s what I’m saying.”

“Ah, yes. So you indicated. What about you, Mrs. Riordin?”

Kitty Riordin cocked her head. “Did I murder him, do you mean?”

Jury shrugged. “Not to put too fine a point on it, yes. Would Simon Croft have left you any money?”

“I seriously doubt it. But I expect we’ll know one way or the other when his will is read and you can come and arrest me.”

Jury smiled. “Bargain. Actually, what I really meant was, how about your own history? Your husband?”

“My husband, Aiden, was a very silly man. He walked out on me- us-so that he could cavort with the Blackshirts. Oswald Mosley’s followers. How utterly absurd.”

“A lot of people don’t think so. If Hitler had indeed invaded Britain, he would have wanted someone here in place. Who better as a puppet dictator than Mosley?”

“Perhaps you’re right. Anyway, I came over to look for Aiden, found him, took what little money he had with an absolutely clean conscience and never heard from him again.”

“You don’t like foolish people, do you?”

“Do you?”

Jury laughed. “I expect not. I think I’m just trying to make a point about you, Mrs. Riordin. You’re a very competent person. When you came back with Maisie after the bombing and found the Blue Last was smoking rubble, did you search for them? Erin and Alexandra. And Francis Croft?” Jury sat forward, closer to her.

“Of course I did, as well as I could, as well as they’d let me. But the wardens kept me back. I went back, though; I went back.”

Jury regarded her, her look of determination. Then his eyes shifted to the photographs on the small table, to a small one of, he presumed, the baby Erin and Kitty. Then to a larger one of Alexandra and baby Maisie. How beautiful Alexandra was! But also, how pretty Kitty Riordin had been. He was surprised that another man hadn’t snapped her up. But it was wartime and a lot of things that should otherwise have happened, didn’t. Over the corner of Maisie’s silver frame, a little silver bracelet dangled. Jury picked it up.

“Identity bracelets,” said Kitty, smiling. “A bit of a lark, that was. The two were scarcely a week or two apart in age-of course you can’t see that in the photographs. Alexandra had the bracelets made up. The other one’s upstairs.” She picked up the small photograph of Erin, wiped the glass with her sleeve, smiled down at it, returned it to the table.

Jury found the smile extremely disconcerting. Someone kinder than he might have simply described what prompted it as “bittersweet.” What he had trouble with was that she could have smiled at all. She then picked up the one of Maisie and Alexandra, moving the bracelet to the table. “She was beautiful, so. Maisie looks like her, don’t you think?”

It wasn’t really a question put to Jury. He said nothing. But, yes, Alexandra was beautiful. No one would deny that. Jury wondered.

“She was bowled over by that flier of hers-handsome and a hero. Poor boy. They’d only been married a little over a year when he died.”

“How did he die?” Jury knew one answer to this. He wondered if it would be confirmed.

“Drowned, I think. He’d been out of the RAF for a bit. Got the Victoria Cross. He was somewhere in Scotland, I don’t know why.”

“Did you know him?”

“I met him. It was just that one time when he was at the Lodge.”

“Did you go back and forth with Alexandra? It sounds as if she lived in both places.”

“She did, so. I would sometimes go with her to the pub. Of course, I had my own place here. Mr. Tynedale is that generous.” She shook her head as if in awe of such generosity. She picked up the small photograph of Erin. “Both our daughters were sweet as lambs.”

But only one, thought Jury, was filthy rich.

Fifteen

Marshall Trueblood gave the saintly figure depicted in the painting an affectionate pat. The painting was propped on the fourth chair at the table in the window embrasure of the Jack and Hammer, the other two chairs taken up by Melrose Plant and Diane Demorney. The pub and all of Long Piddleton were in the festive mood occasioned by this pre-Christmas week. Up and down the High Street, shops and houses were festooned with wreaths and ribbons. Outside Jurvis the Butcher’s, the plaster pig wore a red stocking cap and a spray of holly. The mechanical Jack above the pub wore a tunic of red velvet and little bells around the wrist holding the hammer that made simulated strikes at the big clock. A scraggly pine sat beside the fireplace; winking white lights dripped from its branches.

“You came across it where?” asked Melrose.

“That antique shop, Jasperson’s, in Swinton Barrow. You know, the town that’s awash in antiques and art.”

Diane Demorney ran her lacquered nail around her martini glass and looked at Trueblood as if he’d just spilled the last gin in the bottle-in other words, with horrified disbelief. “Marshall, you’re telling us that you paid two thousand for this painting and it’s only part of a-what’d you call it?”

“A polyptych.”

“It’s from some church in Pizza, did you say?”

“Pisa,” said Melrose, who had rested his chin on his fists and was studying the red-cloaked figure in the painting. The panel was quite high, but also quite narrow, giving credence to the belief that there might originally have been another figure beside this one, which is what the dealer had told Trueblood, apparently. “This is St. Who?”

Trueblood pursed his lips and gave the picture a squint-eyed look, as if such facial exertion were needed to pin down St. Who’s identity. “Julian. Or Nicholas? Jerome? Perhaps St. John the Baptist. Nicholas, I think. Nicholas is one of the missing pieces. Or panels, I should say.”

“Marshall,” said Melrose, patiently, “just what are the chances that this panel was actually painted by Masaccio? One million to one, maybe? And if it is, no one in his right mind would be selling it for two thousand quid.”

“I like the red cloak,” said Diane. “I saw one just like it in Sloane Street. Givenchy, I think. But I still don’t understand. You’re telling us that this piece is only part of a poly something. Why would you bother with only part of it? It’s like buying the Mona Lisa’s ear, or something.”

“It isn’t at all. Triptychs and polyptychs were common back then. We’re talking about the Italian Renaissance, remember-”

Diane looked as if she’d as soon be talking about how many hamsters would fit in a vodka bottle.

“-They served as altarpieces, which the Pisa one undoubtedly is. Sometimes they were taken apart for one

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