else with access-staff, acquaintances. I mean that it wasn’t some stranger and the motive wasn’t robbery.” Mickey tented his hands, spoke over the tops. “I told you that: Simon Croft thought someone wanted him dead.”
“You did. ‘Out to get him’ was what you said. Why?”
“He didn’t know, did he? He wanted me around as some sort of protection.”
“He didn’t even hazard a guess?”
“I’m sorry to say I didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention. I honestly couldn’t take it seriously. Look: Croft was sixty-three. He had too much money and too much leisure. Apart from this book he was writing, he had little to do.”
“Yet he was a broker, a very good one, you told me. He probably still had clients. I would imagine that kept him pretty busy. This book he was writing on the war. He used to read bits of it to Oliver Tynedale.”
Mickey beat a short tattoo with two pencils on the edge of his desk. “He talked about it once or twice. British Fascism was some of it. Sir Oswald Mosley-how did he get to be a sir?-and his followers. Did you know that in 1940 police rounded up German nationals-all the men between sixteen and sixty? As if no female and no man over sixty could possibly be a spy?” Mickey laughed.
“She dismissed Aiden as a fool.”
“Yeah, well, our Kitty certainly wouldn’t’ve shot Croft to preserve the honor of the Riordin clan. Who would care if Aiden Riordin was goose-stepping all over Hyde Park?” Mickey winced.
“Anything wrong? Do you need something?” Jury was already out of his chair.
Mickey waved a shaky finger in the direction of the water cooler by the door. “Cup o’ that.” He took a vial of pills out of his desk drawer, shook a couple into his hand.
Jury handed him the paper cup. “I wish they’d fill the damned things with whiskey.” He sat down again as Mickey washed down the pills. Jury wanted to ask him about the pain, but thought such a question would be tasteless or morbid, much like the gathering of people around a smashed car. So he kept the question back.
Mickey tossed the pills back in the drawer, slammed it shut, letting off a mild amount of steam in the act. He went back to the subject of the manuscript. “But I agree: if somebody went to the trouble of taking the PC, the diskettes, the hard copy-there’s something in it someone doesn’t want broadcast.”
Mickey had risen again to go to the window. Jury wondered if the getting up and down helped to relieve the pain. The phone rang and he scooped up the receiver. “Haggerty. Yeah… Then do it.” He hung up. “No, I guess not everybody would say ‘publish and be damned.’ ” Mickey frowned.
“There’s someone you haven’t paid much attention to.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Ralph Herrick. Alexandra’s husband.” Jury sat forward. “Simon could have brought something up in his book connected to him, Herrick. I don’t mean necessarily about him, just something going on. Oliver Tynedale mentioned Bletchley Park. The decoding that was done there. Very hush-hush stuff.”
“Hmm. I remember Herrick was RAF. Decorated, too. Quite the hero. The Victoria Cross.”
Jury nodded. “Right. He also was quite brilliant in the reading of codes. He could take one look at a code and see the pattern immediately.”
“Christ. Most of the time I can’t even look at the alphabet and see a pattern. Now, I do seem to recall that Herrick was one of the Bletchley Park people.”
Jury nodded, grew thoughtful. “I wish to hell I could see that manuscript.”
Mickey ran his hand down over his face and said, tiredly, “Maybe this whole case is being looked at wrong. Everything’s there, and the answer with it, but our perspective’s just wrong.”
“Like a painting.” Jury smiled. “A friend of mine just got back from Florence. He was talking about fifteenth- century Florentine art. An architect named Brunelleschi. ‘Perspective illusion’ was the quality that was revolutionary.”
“Don’t know the chap. I should spend more time at the Tate.”
Jury looked at Mickey for a moment and then looked away. “Ian Tynedale is passionate about the art of the Renaissance.”
“Yeah, I know.” Mickey squeaked back in his swivel chair. “It’s one reason I know the motive for this murder wasn’t robbery. What thief would have left the paintings on the walls? Especially the one near the desk? According to Tynedale, who got it for him, it’s worth a cool quarter of a million.”
Jury smiled and got up. “Maybe whoever did it wasn’t much of a critic.”
Thirty-one
Angus Murphy looked up, suspicious. “Ya got t’ much education fer this job, is wha’ I think.” The gardener wiped his face with a bleached blue handkerchief that made his blue eyes look even more faded. “Why, there I’d go breakin’ ya in and off ya’d go the minute ya saw somthin’ ya’d be more ac-clim-ated to.”
Angus Murphy was short, wiry, ageless and (Melrose thought) loved impressive words. He had been dropping them in whenever he could with no real care for aptness. His slate blue eyes seemed to be permanently narrowed, as if the eyelids had been loosely stitched.
“-an’ ya’d be off like a bird, off like greased lightning, off like-” he paused.
“-a bat out of hell?” Melrose prompted. Angus Murphy was a man who liked his metaphor, no matter how worn. “But actually, Mr. Murphy, it would be very unlikely that would happen, as I’ve reached some
The eyes narrowed even more. “What was that ya said? ‘Daysomethin’?”
“That’s it. What’s that mean, then?”
“It means things at war with one another have reached some point of relaxation.”
“Ah!” said Murphy, nodding sagely, and then working it around in his mouth for a moment.
They were standing by an ornamental pond in the rear garden of Tynedale Lodge, following Melrose’s interview with the butler, Mr. Barkins. Melrose found it hard to keep from dropping the “mister” and calling him “Barkins.” He had had the foresight to bring a flat cap so that he could turn it around in his hands, occasionally squashing it, to make himself appear humble. He thought it was pretty rum that this oaf of a Barkins should have the privilege of hiring and firing staff. But Barkins clearly loved it, loved exerting what small measure of power he had in the household. As far as the new gardener, Ambrose Plant, was concerned, Barkins only thought he had the power. Oliver Tynedale was the one who had it after Jury had called him to explain what he wanted.
In the big, slightly chilly kitchen, Melrose had finally been invited to sit down and have a cup of coffee- elevenses, a brief respite from toil Melrose knew about only through the incessant visits of Agatha to Ardry End. Otherwise, he couldn’t tell a respite of toil from a tenner, nor, really, could his “staff,” a generalization he hesitated to use since, except for Martha, his cook, the only others were his butler, Ruthven, and his groundskeeper, Mr. Momaday. Ruthven did indeed work, but he didn’t toil. He carried out his duties as smoothly as an Olympic skater. On the other hand, Momaday was completely hopeless, walking all over the land with a shotgun broken over his arm, looking for something to shoot.
Melrose had thought about all of this in preparation for his morning interview with Ian Tynedale, which he thought was far more congenial than the one with Barkins. He’d be the first to admit he was lazy, but he didn’t care. Right now he was having his coffee at the long table where he supposed meals were taken by staff and he’d be one of them.
Sitting at the bottom of the table as Barkins was grilling the candidate for undergardener was a beautiful child with midnight black hair and skin so translucent one could almost see through it. She was eating a piece of bread and butter and keeping a close watch on Melrose. He wondered if this was the little girl named Gemma Trimm. No one had bothered telling him.
Barkins wondered how it was that if Mr. Plant had had as much experience as he’d said, he’d never been head gardener. Because, Mr. Plant had responded, he didn’t like administrative work. Barkins thought that an odd answer, but went to the phone and called the numbers given him, the recommendations Melrose had supplied. After
