constituted it, or for some other, perhaps more mundane reason. Certainly it couldn’t be because she hadn’t the opportunity. She was too attractive, too intelligent and too rich. The money alone would be an inducement.
She had risen and was leaning against the desk, her ankles crossed, her face turned down. “My father was in the RAF; he was decorated. The Victoria Cross.”
Jury felt himself once again pulled back into something he did not understand. “So was mine. I mean, in the RAF. He was shot down over Dunkirk.”
“I’m sorry.”
It rather surprised Jury that she seemed to mean it. “It was a long time ago.”
She nodded. “I don’t like sounding sorry for myself, but I feel really cheated, not only having lost both my mother and father, but having no memories of them either.”
“It would be just another version.”
“ ‘Version’?”
“Of what really happened. Of reality, I suppose I mean. How well do we remember anything? How well do we remember yesterday?”
She smiled for the first time. “That’s sophistry, now. Or you find consolation in thinking that.” She had left the desk and now stood by the bow window behind it.
“Oh, I’m unconsoled,” he said. Feeling more tired than he knew he should, he rose and went to the window himself. They stood there. The ground was spongy with morning rain and the beech tree, the one with the wood plank between its thick branches, seemed still to bear the weight of the rain.
Jury watched as the gardener, Mr. Murphy, leaned a hoe or rake against the garden wall and bent over a small plot of some delicate-looking white flower. His hand went to the small of his back as he stood upright. Arthritis, rheumatism, probably. He was too old, Jury thought, to take care of this garden all by himself. He wondered where Gemma Trimm was. Had he been more fanciful (but “fancy” he tried to relegate, like whiskey, to his off hours) he might have supposed his encounter with Gemma was imaginary. She seemed so unrelated to this house, so fairy light.
“What are you thinking? You’re smiling.”
“Tell me about the little girl.”
Maisie looked, just for a second, puzzled. Was it possible that Gemma made such tiny inroads on the family consciousness that they really had to stop to think? How could any child living here-much less one as interesting as Gemma Trimm-make so little impression? Further, a child beloved of the patriarch, the man with the money? Did none of them view the child as a threat? How much
“She’s Granddad’s charge.”
An interesting way of putting it. Just as she said it, Gemma appeared at Mr. Murphy’s side. It was as if she had physically to appear to remind them all of her existence.
“She has no family? None?” Jury asked. That had a ring of fatalism.
“None I know of. Granddad notified the authorities and tried to find out where she belonged for a good two or three months.”
“Even if he had located her relations, I’m sure he could have made some sort of arrangement to keep her.”
Her smile was wan. “I’m sure you’re right. But don’t sound so righteous about it.”
“Do I? Sorry, it’s just that money makes so many problems go away. Anyone who says it can’t buy happiness obviously doesn’t have any.”
“My goodness, Superintendent, you never struck me as a cynic.”
“But I’m not.”
Mr. Murphy had wandered beyond their line of vision while Gemma and her doll waited by the flower-bed. He soon returned pushing a wheelbarrow with what looked like a great deal of effort.
“Poor man,” said Maisie. “Angus is too old and too rheumatic for all of this work. But we’ve tried out several gardeners to help him, and none of them seemed very dedicated to the work and only irritated him to death. The last one, Jenny Gessup, just up and left. Now, I expect I’m going to try again. The agencies send such rubbish. But he really needs someone for the hard work.”
“Really?”
Twenty-eight
“I was wondering,” said Oliver Tynedale, lying back among the cushions of his very large bed, “when you were ever going to get around to me.”
“I’m here in a-what? A semiofficial capacity?”
“Well, hell, if you don’t know, be sure I don’t. I don’t know what semi gets you these days.” He reached around to pummel his cushions. “Me, I’m the whole of the Tynedale Brewery.”
“I’m doing this because Michael Haggerty asked me to help. If I tax your patience just toss me out.”
Oliver Tynedale lay back. “Throw out a Scotland Yard superintendent? That sounds like fun. I don’t mind talking to you and I’m not as weak as I look.”
“You don’t look weak. But they wouldn’t let me talk to you when I was here before.”
Oliver waved that aside as nonsense. “Bunch of pansies. Who kept you out? Barkins? Not that nurse because I fired her after twenty-four hours. Last, I hope, in a string of them. I’m stuck in bed right now. Worse luck. Wait a minute, I’ll show you-”
Jury was rather surprised with the man’s alacrity in getting out of his bed. He was very tall, easily as tall as Jury himself, thin (but hardly emaciated) and didn’t walk with a stoop or as if he were in pain. He was into his bathroom and out again, pulling his oxygen equipment on a wheeled, stainless-steel trolley. “Don’t you wish you had one of these?”
“Lord, yes. Wish I had those pajamas, too.” They were printed all over with Mickey, Goofy, and Tweetie Bird.
Oliver had left the trolley behind Jury and come back to sit on the edge of his bed, whereupon he looked down at his pajamas. “Well, you’re not getting these, unless I decide at some point I need to bribe you. I know the commissioner, by the way. Word to the wise and so forth.” He swung his legs up and under the covers and sat back again among the cushions with a sigh.
No wonder his son Ian was so easy to deal with. He’d inherited his father’s pleasant nature and springy genes.
But then Oliver’s expression changed and he looked off toward the wide window which showed nothing but a bleak, oyster-colored sky, a few black branches tapping the glass. He had gone lax.
“Mr. Tynedale?”
Oliver looked around at Jury and said, “What happens is, for a moment you forget. You forget what’s happened. Maybe that’s the merciful side of life. Simon really was like a son. He really was.”
Jury leaned toward him and put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. It seemed so natural a gesture that he didn’t hesitate. “I’m sorry. I’m honestly sorry.”
Oliver sighed and pulled the blanket up toward his chin in the way children do. He looked around the room as if something of Simon Croft had materialized there, sitting in that chair, or standing by that window looking down, or pulling a book from those shelves. Jury wondered if the air would grow so thin with desolation they would all need oxygen.
“If you’re going to ask me do I know of anyone who could have done this? No.”
Jury thought for a moment. “Simon Croft was writing a book, I understand. Did he talk about it?”
Oliver seemed surprised at this turn in the inquiry. “The book about the war and the pub being bombed? His father, Francis, you see, owned a pub-”
“The Blue Last. Yes, I know. I know it was bombed in December of 1940. Mickey Haggerty told me.”
“Yes. His father was one of Francis’s very good friends. I knew Haggerty, too, but not so well. I don’t really know his son, except for the one time I tried to help him out, but I have it on good authority he’s a very good
