The Blue Last

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“How the devil could I do that? I didn’t even know Florentine art was in the fifteenth century. I didn’t even know it was Florentine, for that matter.”

“Very funny.” Melrose sighed and put down his fork. “Let me tell you something-” He leaned toward Jury as if he meant to grab his tie. “If you’ve got some notion I can impersonate some leading expert in the field of Italian Renaissance art, forget it. I know next to nothing.” Finished, Melrose sat back and took out his cigarettes, having no mercy on Jury at all.

“What are you talking about? You’ve just held forth for a half hour on the art of Florence.”

“Oh, come on. That was a Diane Demorney half hour. The only difference being that Diane takes a half minute to get across her single nugget of knowledge about anything on earth. What you’ve just heard me say is it; it’s all I know.” He flicked his temperamental old Zippo, lit his cigarette and dropped the lighter in his pocket.

“You know a lot more than you think you know.” Jury watched the thin ribbon of smoke stream upward.

“I know a lot less than I think I know. Get Trueblood to do it.”

“He’s too volatile.” Jury sipped his wine. “Take that painting along, then. That would be plausible as a reason for paying a visit. You want Ian Tynedale to look at it.”

“Ian Tynedale? Is he your authority?”

“Yes. He’s Tynedale’s son, and Italian Renaissance art’s his particular love.”

“Richard, I’d never be able to wrench that painting away from Trueblood.”

Jury drank his wine and thought for a moment. “Okay, then we’ll go to Plan B.”

“Yes, Plan A was such a hit, I can hardly wait. So tell me.”

Jury told him.

“No,” said Melrose. “I’d look stupid.”

“Well, yes, but when has that ever bothered you?”

Melrose blew smoke in his face. Jury laughed.

A meal with Plant was one of the few things that could penetrate the ozone layer that Jury sometimes felt masked his ability to think clearly.

He thought about this as he walked along the Victoria Embankment, delaying his homeward journey. He could get the Northern Line at Charing Cross. Or he could keep on walking. It was a good way to order his thoughts. Sometimes he would pretend that he was seeing the problem for the first time, had come upon it suddenly, by accident, and heard the story anew. Rarely did this approach to a case turn up fresh ideas, but it occasionally did work. He liked that paradox of the vanishing point. You find the answer, but the answer dissolves before-what?

In the case of the Tynedales, fresh ideas weren’t surfacing now. He did wonder about Kitty Riordin’s husband. Had he been more or less expunged from her consciousness? All of her energies were directed toward Maisie Tynedale… or Erin Riordin, whichever she was. That smile of Kitty’s, that infernal little smile. He couldn’t let go of it.

Even this short distance from the Strand, traffic noise dwindled to near nothing and there was a strange stillness. He had passed behind Charing Cross station and Somerset House, and now stopped to look down at the Thames, dark and unmoving, or at least it gave the illusion of being motionless. Yet the middle of this river moved at an incredible speed, he had heard.

Down below he could see the brief spurt of flame, someone lighting a cigarette. A muffled shout, laughter, disembodied. An undercurrent of voices and sounds curling upward like river mist. He knew Waterloo Bridge was a favorite haunt of the homeless, even with the Thames police at the bridge only a stone’s throw away. But they tolerated it, the police, turned a blind eye as long as everything was cleared out by morning. What a life, thought Jury, to have to take down a shelter every morning and run it up again every night.

Jury stopped and leaned against the railing to look at Waterloo Bridge and the South Bank brimming over with lights. It would not have looked that way to Myra before she jumped. It would not have looked that way to Roy either, as he stood in fog thick as fleece and lit a cigarette (Jury was sure of that), and smiled that bittersweet smile, and thought about Myra in her cold Thames grave…

He thought of Alexandra Tynedale, that benighted young mother, and Liza Haggerty, another benighted mother. Liza had been a very, very good detective. She could read in a crime scene signs and portents that baffled others as if they were hieroglyphics carved on cave walls. Probably, she had known before Mickey that something was wrong. But, then, he guessed most wives had such instincts about husbands. You didn’t need to be a scene of crimes expert to know that.

Really, he should call her, ask her out for a meal or a drink. It might be a sort of relief to her to talk to somebody on the Job. She was bearing up wonderfully, but what must it cost her to know that she’d be left alone with four kids?

He would do that.

Thirty

Mickey Haggerty leaned against the filing cabinet overflowing with folders and documents. It was the next morning. They were continuing their discussion of Kitty Riordin, begun in the Liberty Bounds.

“I didn’t get any sense of loyalty toward the Tynedales, which, really, I thought she’d make an effort to project,” said Jury.

“She’s obsessive. The only subject she’s interested in is Erin Riordin, a.k.a. Maisie Tynedale.” He slammed the drawer he’d been searching through shut and went back to his chair, in which he sat down heavily.

Jury said, “How long did your dad know Francis Croft?”

Mickey tilted back in his swivel chair and ran his hands through his hair. “A long time, long as I can remember.” He looked off into space. “Croft was a really good man. So is Oliver Tynedale. Both of them would do anything for a friend, no matter how tough. When I was a kid, Mum was in Scotland once, driving from Ballantrae to Stranraer. She meant to catch the ferry across to Belfast. Just as she was taking the car onto the ferry, she passed out. They got her to a hospital and into the CCU. Dad couldn’t be reached, he was out on some case. But Oliver Tynedale’s name was in her address book, so police got in touch with him. He sent a car for me right away to take me to the Tynedale Brewery airstrip, dragged his pilot out of bed and flew me to Stranraer. If he hadn’t done this, I’d never have seen her alive again. He didn’t leave either; he stayed with me. Oliver knew how to talk to kids. I always thought he should’ve been a teacher or something like that. There’s this way he has-a manner, a tone of voice-that calms you down straightaway. It’s not a quality you see very often. After she died-” Mickey looked down, scraped at his tie. To avoid looking across at Jury. When Mickey finally did, tears stood in his eyes.

“I can understand your not wanting Kitty Riordin getting away with this, if Tynedale is a man like that,” said Jury. “What else did you find out about her?”

Mickey pulled the top folder from the pile on his desk, slapped back the cover. “Not much, and not easily. I guess fifty years can do that to a case.” He managed a grin. “Katherine-always been known as Kitty-Shea. When she was eighteen she married Aiden Riordin. He had trouble getting work in Ireland-where it was worse than the North-and came here. I get the impression he was to send for her, but then the war happened. Aiden Riordin got caught up-this part’s interesting-in the British Union of Fascists.”

“The Blackshirts.”

“That’s right. Pretty hard to take them seriously.”

“Hmm. I don’t think I’d rush to judgment there. East London got pretty worked up when Mosley was released. But go on.”

“There’s not a lot about Kitty Riordin to be going on with. She left Ireland, came here, but not, I think, to find her husband. I think she hoped opportunity was more likely to come her way here than in Killarney. It did.”

“It did indeed.” Jury paused.

Disturbed, Mickey rose, tossed down the pencil he’d been fiddling with. “Croft’s murder was an inside job meant to look like an outside job, some unknown intruder. By ‘inside’ I mean either a family member or someone