The Blue Last

I must’ve ordered a dozen books for him. The last ones were-” She stopped and considered. “Fourteen Days, that was one, and Solemn December-an unfortunate try at assonance, don’t you think? At any rate, Simon had a high regard for both. The December one, of course, is the one set in 1940. We talked about the war, we talked about it quite a lot. We’d both been children then, seven or eight, I believe I was. He’d have been a bit older, and we both had memories which we tried to pin down.” She took a sip of tea. She had kindly invited Jury and Wiggins to join her for tea. “I always have my tea around five o’clock and I’ve just baked a seed cake.”

Which Jury was tucking into with his second slice, as was Wiggins. A longcase clock ticked somewhere at the end of an aisle of shelves; except for that the room was deathly quiet. Had some customer been reading back there in the shelves, one would have heard the pages turn.

Jury eased down a little farther in his slipcovered chair, careful not to lean his head against it for fear of dozing off, and feeling for the first time that day completely comfortable, and hungry and thirsty, too. He slid his cup toward the pot and Miss Penforwarden poured out tea, adding a measure of milk.

“Croft’s interest wasn’t just historical, then. It was personal.”

“Oh, yes. Very.” She held the pot aloft, signaling Sergeant Wiggins, who, of course, wanted a refill. “You see, his father, Francis Croft, owned a pub named the Blue Last. It was in the City. It was demolished during the London blitz. That would have been-” She closed her eyes and calculated.

Jury did it for her: “December 29, 1940.”

Miss Penforwarden was astonished. “You’re certainly a student of history.”

Jury smiled. “Not really. I was told about the Blue Last.”

“Of course. There was that item in the paper about its being the last London bomb site. Some developer had bought it up and in the course of digging they unearthed bones. Well, they could have been anybody, couldn’t they?”

Jury ignored this. “This book Mr. Croft was writing. His interest was personal, you agree; did he ever discuss the particulars?”

Sybil Penforwarden sat back with her cup that trembled ever so slightly in its saucer. She thought. “Now, that’s a very perspicacious question, Superintendent-”

(Jury would’ve enjoyed hearing her talk to Angus Murphy.)

“-very. ‘A family thing,’ I recall he said. It’s coming back to me in bits and pieces. I’ll just toss them out as I recall, shall I?”

“Absolutely.”

Wiggins retrieved his notebook from the little end table where he’d deposited it when the tea and cake had arrived.

She went on. “Now, I recall that he talked about Oswald Mosley-you know, the dreadful Fascist? Simon was interested in him because he’d discovered that Mrs. Riordin’s husband-she lives at the Lodge, you know-was one of Mosley’s followers. He said to me that many people took Mosley to be a cartoon character, a laughingstock, but, he said, ‘the man was dangerous, extremely dangerous. People have forgotten that.’ Simon wondered why Riordin would desert his wife just to join up with that ‘rascal’-which is what he called Mosley. Simon could be old-fashioned in his choice of words.” Miss Penforwarden smiled.

Jury wondered how well she knew Simon Croft. “But he didn’t ask Katherine Riordin herself?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Could he have been upset or incensed by things that we come to take almost for granted anymore? Abortion, divorce, unmarried couples, homosexuality. Things that-whether rightly or wrongly-the public finds more acceptable now?”

“Yes, he was old-fashioned in that respect. But not sanctimonious or sermonizing, if you know what I mean. It’s just that he believed so fervently in-attachments.”

“Loyalty, for instance?”

“Absolutely. Yes.”

“To king and country?” Jury smiled.

“You might laugh, but-”

“I’m not laughing, Miss Penforwarden.”

“He was very fond of Alexandra’s husband, Ralph Herrick. Ralph was in the RAF. Simon himself was quite young and Ralph was his hero. Ralph Herrick really was a hero, too. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for valor. I don’t remember precisely what he did; Simon said he was a daredevil pilot.”

Jury thought for a moment, absently regarding Wiggins, who was faithfully taking notes. There was loyalty for you: sitting there with his third cup of tea (having poured himself another) and his notebook on his knee. Jury smiled. He knew how he’d feel if Wiggins was shot and killed. He’d get the bastard who did it. One could not, however, get the entire Luftwaffe.

“Simon talked about impostors,” said Miss Penforwarden.

“What?”

“You know, the enemy posing as someone else, the ridiculous notion that the Germans would pop up everywhere in England disguised. Such as the idea circulated about German parachutists-that they’d fall to earth disguised as nuns. That and the fifth column idea. Traitors out in their gardens signaling to the German planes with electric torches. Silly stuff. But once such an idea takes hold, he said, it’s very hard to disabuse one’s mind of it.”

“Yes. He would not like the idea of betrayal.”

Wiggins put in, “Would you, sir? Would any of us?”

Miss Penforwarden pursed her lips and returned her cup to its saucer. The tea was cold, anyway. “You know, I sometimes felt there was something other than the war that urged him on to do this research.”

“But he didn’t say what it was.”

“Outright? No.”

“You say you saw him two weeks ago. Did you notice a difference in his behavior?”

She looked puzzled. “No. He was the same as always. He’d talk about the forties, the devastation. Hitler would send over five hundred planes a night. Simon had a journal, or notebook he kept, and he’d tell me facts such as that. I wondered how he remembered them and he held up the journal that he always carried. ‘Never be without this,’ he said.”

“Some people seem to think he’d grown a little paranoid during the last weeks of his life. To the extent that he wouldn’t let family members come into his house. And the owners of the flower shop weren’t admitted when they brought flowers he’d ordered.”

“But how did they know, these people who were turned away?”

“How did they know?”

“That he’d changed; that he’d grown a little paranoid.”

“Perhaps because he wouldn’t see them. He appeared to be afraid.”

She was obviously doubtful. “I can only say he seemed the same to me.”

“Well, perhaps that’s because he felt far more comfortable around you than he did around others.”

She waved a self-deprecating hand. “I can’t imagine that’s so.”

“I can.” Jury rose and gathered up his coat. “I think we’ll be going. You’ve been extremely helpful, Miss Penforwarden. You ready, Wiggins?”

“Sir,” said Wiggins snappily.

A moment ago he’d looked rather dozy. Jury said as they ducked under the low lintel, “That’s what three cups of tea and three pieces of cake do to a person, Sergeant.”

“But it was worth it, wasn’t it?” They walked toward the car. “We got a different picture of Simon Croft.”

“So eating all that cake was a kind of martyrdom that paid off?”

“You could say that. I’m pretty full. Now where to?”

Jury shoved himself into the cramped seat, thinking he’d be just as comfortable riding in the trunk. “Drop me off at the Croft house.”

“What would you expect to find? The crime scene people did a thorough check-”

“Yes. But sometimes it helps to look at things on your own.”