The Blue Last

to me?” His eyes widened, not with awe, but anxiety. They’ve found out, that’s what. They found our place, mine and Sparky’s. Benny looked down at Sparky, who was looking up at him as if absorbing this bad news and wanting to show support. He banged his tail on the floor several times.

“Maybe we could talk somewhere, Benny.”

Miss Penforwarden, eyes fixed on Jury as if he were a rock star, made no move to leave.

Looking for means of controlling this situation, Benny said to her, “I think maybe he needs to talk to me in private, Miss Penforwarden.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, I’m so sorry. Yes, well, you go right ahead. I’ll just pop back to my room and if you need anything… perhaps, Superintendent, you’d care for tea?”

Jury said, “That’s kind of you, but I’ve had my quota.”

“Then I’ll just go along to wrap some books.” She left.

“There’s a couple chairs right back here.” Benny led Jury to the armchair by the window and pulled up a straight-back chair for himself. “It’s okay that Sparky’s here, I guess?”

Soberly, Jury nodded. “He looks as if he can be trusted.”

“Hear that, Sparky?”

Sparky made no sound; he was concentrating on Jury.

Jury said, “I’ve talked to several people you work for-the florists, the newsagent-I mean, in trying to find you. They all know your schedule, so you must be very dependable.”

“I am. It’s what you gotta be, right? I mean I guess you’re dependable or you’d never catch anybody.”

Jury could tell Benny was pleased and trying not to look it. When he, Jury, was this age, he remembered how important it was to appear cool and detached. When you were on your own, you needed to seem in control, otherwise things could start coming apart fast. The glue that held them together could too easily dissolve. And Jury was pretty certain this boy was on his own and didn’t want people knowing it. He thus skirted the issue of where Benny lived. Jury felt a moment of melancholy. He remembered what being alone was like. He had never had the courage to strike out on his own, at least not until he was older-sixteen, maybe. But there hadn’t been much choice, had there? The only relation remaining then was his cousin, the one who lived up in Newcastle now. She had grudgingly offered to have him come live with her when he was young, and he had refused, with thanks that he felt she never deserved.

What lay beneath this calm exterior was desolation. It was an emotion no kid should have to feel-not Benny, not Gemma, not himself back then. Yet he wondered if it wasn’t the legacy of childhood. At some point in the game, you would come to it, no matter how you were raised, no matter if you had a big family around you, desolation was inevitable, it ran beneath everything, the always-available unbearably adult emotion that clung to one’s still- breathing body like drowned clothes.

A curtain shifted, spinning light across the windowpane and the faded blue of the rolled arms of the easy chair where Benny sat, his light blue eyes fixing Jury with unchildlike patience.

“Benny, you make deliveries for Miss Penforwarden sometimes to Tynedale Lodge?”

“That’s right-hey, wait a tic. That’s why you’re here! It’s about that Mr. Croft that got murdered!” How stupid he’d been, thought Benny, thinking this police superintendent came about him. “He was shot to death over in his house on the Thames. I saw it a few times, me and Sparky delivered some books to him. And Sparky likes to have a look round there at night…” Benny stopped, looked off.

“He does? But then you must live near the river, right?”

“Oh, not too far, I guess. Sparky, he just likes a bit of a wander nights.”

Sparky looked from one to the other, seeming ready to contravene any unfavorable account.

Jury didn’t push for the address. Benny didn’t want to give it out, clearly.

“Had you been to Simon Croft’s lately? Within, say, the last month or two?”

Benny shook his head. “The last time I think was September.”

“Was he, well, friendly?”

“Him? Sure. Why?”

“Nothing. Listen: tell me about Gemma Trimm. I just met her yesterday and she mentioned you.”

“Oh, aye.” Benny sat up straighter. “Talked about me, did she?”

Jury smiled. “She did, yes. She thought that you’d sent me.”

His mouth gaped. He seemed at a loss for words. “Me send you?”

“She needed a policeman, she said. She said somebody was trying to kill her.”

Dramatically, Benny slapped his hand to his forehead. “Gem’s not going on about that with you, is she?”

“I thought you might know something about all of this. Do you?”

“Yeah, I do: I know it’s her imagination, is what I know.”

“What else do you know about her?”

Jury thought from the way the boy wouldn’t meet his eyes that Benny was a little ashamed of not knowing more about Gemma.

“All I know about Gem is, she’s what you call a ward of old Mr. Tynedale. Kind of like being adopted, only it isn’t. Mr. Tynedale really likes Gemma.”

“The others don’t?”

“It’s more that they don’t pay any attention to her. Like she’s invisible.”

“You don’t think that’s her imagination, too?”

Benny shook his head. “No, because that’s even what Mr. Murphy says. He’s head gardener. ‘Like she’s invisible, pore gurl.’ That’s what he said. Cook likes her; so does the maid. And Mr. Murphy, of course. Gem goes up to Mr. Tynedale’s room-he’s sick, see, and keeps pretty much to his bed. She reads to him, reads a lot. Gem’s only nine, but she’s a good reader. She could read this stuff-” he extended his arms to take in the bookshelves “-as good as I could, and I’m pretty good.”

“Does she ever talk about her parents?”

Benny shook his head. “No, never. Sad, that.”

Benny, thought Jury, probably knew a lot about sadness. “None of them so much as mentioned her.” Jury looked around at the shadowy walls, the dull yellow of the wall sconces. This was a very restful little place.

Benny spread his hands. “Like I said, because she’s invisible.”

“I hope not.” Jury sat back, thinking, resting his eyes on the dog Sparky, who had been lying motionless beside Benny’s chair. Sparky, feeling eyes on him, looked up at Jury. Jury thought of the cat Cyril and wondered, not for the first time, if animals weren’t really the superior species.

Benny looked down at Sparky, too, and then at Jury. “I don’t know where she ever got this harebrained idea.”

“Your dog?”

“No, of course not. And he’s not a she.”

“Sorry.”

“I mean Gem. About somebody trying to kill her. She even has them doing it different ways.”

“I know: shooting, smothering, poisoning.”

“Well, it’s daft. I mean, I guess she could be, a little. Then I wonder if maybe it’s something she saw or maybe something that did happen to someone and she made all this up from scraps.”

Jury thought “Sigmund” mightn’t have been a bad name, after all, for Benny.

“Or maybe,” Benny went on, “being ignored or being invisible, well, being shot at or poisoned is just the opposite. You know, the most attention getting.”

“That’s a very smart diagnosis, Benny, except you’re forgetting another possibility.”

“What?”

“Maybe it’s true.”

Seventeen