The Blue Last

“Right now I think they should go home, have some Horlick’s, go to bed. That poor little girl must be in a state.”

Mickey turned away from the phone; Jury could hear Gemma’s voice quite clearly, and clearly objecting. “She hates Horlick’s, wants a cup of black coffee. And they want to stay here until you come.”

“Okay, but tell them they’ve got to lie down somewhere in the house and get some sleep.”

Mickey laughed. “It’s obvious you don’t have kids, Richard.”

Jury felt oddly stung by that comment. But he didn’t answer, Yet it’s me they want to talk to, Mickey. All he said was good-bye.

Melrose Plant was not only awake, but dressed and with a pot of coffee when Jury got downstairs. “Ruthven told me it was the police.”

“Haggerty. Thanks.” Jury drank down the coffee in one go. “Gemma Trimm was abducted-”

Melrose started up from his chair.

“-but she’s perfectly okay now. She wants to see you and me.”

Melrose collected his car keys and his coat. “Let’s go, then.” He stuck his arms into the sleeves of his black cashmere overcoat.

Jury said, “You’ve got your black clothes on again.”

“Ah! But these are different black clothes.”

“Cool. Let’s go, dude.”

They headed out into the frosty predawn morning.

The house flooded the river with light and a strong police presence in the form of a dozen or more men and women, uniformed and plain clothes, stood near the house and down on the dock.

“Where’s DCI Haggerty?”asked Jury.

“Gone to Tynedale Lodge to collect the Riordin woman,” said a detective sergeant whose name was Knobbs and who didn’t like Jury. Or, at least, didn’t like New Scotland Yard’s presence.

Jury wondered-but not aloud-if picking up Kitty Riordin was premature.

“The kids are in the library. Here, I’ll show you-”

“No need, Detective. I’ve been here before. Thanks.”

Knobbs was giving Melrose Plant a careful scrutiny. Jury didn’t bother with introductions. “He’s mine.”

“Your what?” asked Melrose, as they moved off toward the library.

When they walked in, Gemma and Benny bounced up. Gemma was flinging black looks at Jury, sweet ones at Melrose.

Benny started in: “I never heard nothing like it, Mr. Jury. How Gemma here got off that boat-”

Jury knelt down and put his hands on her arms. “What happened, love?”

Looking mad as a hornet, Gemma said, “They were going to kill me is all. They made me their prisoner and gave me bread and water.”

“And cheese, you said,” said Benny.

“Benny, I’m telling it. It was only a little cheese. I was on that boat out there-” she pointed “-and I’d probably have died except for Richard.”

Jury smiled. “I’m glad I was some kind of help, though I can’t see-”

“You? You didn’t do nothing! You’d have just let me be killed. I mean Richard here. She stuck the doll in Jury’s face, and then, thinking better of it she started slugging Jury, giving him some whacks in the chest, then yelling, “You knew something bad could happen to me and you just left, you just left!” She was flailing, kicking Jury’s legs, pummeling his chest. Crying, tears flying everywhere. “You’re not any good. Ambrose helped me more than you did. Even Sparky helped save me!”

Hearing his name (what he recalled of it) Sparky rushed over and barked at Jury.

Jury pulled Gemma to him, arms around her, patting her back, saying she was right to be mad and he was sorry. He was terribly, terribly sorry he hadn’t been here, and yes, he should have been looking out for her. Finally, she quieted down, and he gave her his fresh handkerchief.

Melrose said, “I wasn’t here either, Gemma. How did I help?”

She shoved the doll Richard out again as testament to either success or folly. “You got him new clothes.”

“Black,” said Jury.

“And that helped?”

“Well, of course. Before he only had that awful old gown to wear. But his new black clothes make him think.”

“Cool,” said Jury, smiling.

“Way cool,” said Melrose.

And then they all sat down (including Sparky) and Jury and Melrose heard a whale of a good yarn.

Fifty-four

Mickey had taken her to the Snow Hill station. When Jury got there, the two of them were seated in a room furnished with a table and two chairs of tubular steel. The room was painted white, walls and ceiling. The effect was slightly disorienting: a bright, white, scarcely furnished world, absent of warmth, color, kith, kin. A vacancy.

Jury stood against the wall, arms crossed. Kitty Riordin looked up at him with an unreadable expression.

Mickey shoved his pack of Silk Cut toward her, at the same time telling the tape recorder that Jury had just entered. Then he asked, “When did you tell her? How long ago?”

“I didn’t; she found out, she suspected something-call it intuition shored up by old photos and maybe more important, the suspicion that Oliver Tynedale didn’t much like her. For him not to like his own grandchild would be simply impossible. No matter what he or she did. He was like that.”

She spoke not with the lilting grace of an Irish girl, but with the assurance of one long bred to wealth and privilege. It had rubbed off on her, the authority granted by money and power. Ironic that Oliver Tynedale didn’t see money and power in that light at all.

“He didn’t like Erin?”

“He didn’t like her much. Not the way he dotes on that child Gemma, who just walked in off the street.”

“That’s why you took a shot at her? You were afraid she would supplant Maisie-Erin, that is-as a major inheritor of your employer’s money?”

Jury smiled. Nice shot, Mickey. But he didn’t think it was the inheritance altogether; Kitty’s wanting to get rid of Gemma was prompted as much by Gemma’s supplanting Maisie in Oliver’s heart as it was by the Tynedale fortune. Imagine all of that effort-the initial danger of this impersonation, the ongoing anxiety that she might be discovered, the grooming of her daughter Erin, turning her into Maisie Tynedale and breaking into the Tynedale dynasty. The effort of proving that Kitty Riordin wasn’t “pig-track Irish.” Where do we get these notions of who we are? Jury wondered.

“Yes,” Kitty said in answer to Mickey’s question. “All Oliver Tynedale wanted was a granddaughter.”

“So Gemma Trimm comes from nowhere-”

Wryly, Kitty smiled. “What difference does that make? Gemma, you should be able to see, is more of a Tynedale than my Erin would ever have been. Gemma’s tough. I mean really tough. It would take a force of nature, a tidal wave, a tornado, to bring that child down.”

“That’s why you tried again tonight to get her out of the way?”

“She heard me talking to Erin. She heard the name. I had to see Gemma didn’t tell anyone, didn’t I? Erin’s too soft. She really hated leaving the child on that boat. She should have made sure the rowboat was unhitched and let it drift away. That’s what she should have done; instead, she rationalizes it, says there was no way that Gemma could have used it.”

Mickey was silent, looking at her. The silence lengthened; Mickey could be unnerving that way.