Help the Poor Struggler (24 page)

The other car was halfway down the drive, its lights hazy in the middle distance. Molly started the engine and headed up the drive.
Ah, hell. You only die once.

They weren't more than a dozen yards apart, when the wheels of the Morris screeched and the car swerved and rammed into the wall. Then it went into a spin and rammed the front of the Lamborghini.

 • • • 

The Rolls was only a minute away from the Ashcroft drive when they heard the sound of tearing metal.

Macalvie jammed on the brakes at the entrance. The four of them piled out.

The Morris burst into flames as they ran.

Molly's car was a disaster, but it wasn't burning. It was a distance from the flaming Morris, and it was tougher.

And for the seconds it took Macalvie to pull her out of the wreckage, so was Molly Singer.

Blood trickled from her ear, and a tiny line of blood ran
from the corner of her mouth. But she did not look bruised or broken. She looked up at Macalvie, who was holding her in his arms. She smiled. “Damnit. Why do you
always
have to be right, Mac —?” She didn't get out the last of it. The long fingers that clutched his shoulder slid down his coat as slowly as a hand playing a harp.

Macalvie started shaking her and shouting:
“Mary!”
He shouted the name until Jury pulled him away.

Melrose Plant took off his coat and put it under her head.

Jury took off his own coat and covered her with it.

A trickle of gas from the Morris reached the Lamborghini. All Jury could think of was the log falling and sparking in Molly Singer's cottage.

J
URY
found her on the mechanic's creeper under the Zimmer. She was holding on tight to Henry.

Jessica did not want to come out.

“Please, Jessie. It's all over. It's okay now.”

Okay. It would never be okay, not for Divisional Commander Macalvie. He had disappeared into the trees and the fog.

“It's better here,” said Jess. There was a silence. “I don't want to get cut up. And I don't want Henry to, either.”

Jury sat down, there on the cold stone of the courtyard, cold as hell himself without his coat. She was silent. “Was Sara the ax-murderer?”

“No. There was never an ax-murderer, Jess. Sara —” He didn't know whether to tell her or not, then decided he might as well level. “Sara was sick, very sick. She was the one who killed the children.”

“But why me? Was she their governess too?”

“No. No, she wasn't. Why you? Because she was confused. A long time ago, much longer than before you were born,
someone hurt her and she wanted revenge. Someone killed her mother. You can see how terrible that would be.”

“But
we
didn't do it — I mean me and Davey and that other boy and girl! Stop it, Henry! Henry doesn't like it under here, but I'm afraid something will happen to him.”

She was crying, Jury could hear. “Nothing can possibly happen.”

“Well, he'd rather be
in
the car than under it. So you put him up in the seat. But don't let him
go
anywhere.” She said it pretty fiercely, as if she wanted to be sure, now Jury was there, that he stayed.

“Come on, Henry,” said Jury. He lugged the dog out and put him in the front seat of the Zimmer. Henry shook himself and seemed to open his eyes. A new world. Strange, but new.

And strange and new for Jessica Ashcroft too. “Well?”

“Sorry. Well, what?”

“You didn't answer my question. We didn't kill her mother.”

“I know.”

“Well?”

Jury thought she must be getting better. She was certainly testier. “Let me tell you something that's very — difficult to understand, Jess. I think what was wrong with Sara was she felt guilty. She was only five when her mother died. And she
saw
it.” Jury stopped for a moment. He remembered his conversation with Mrs. Wasserman, how he'd asked, without thinking, what the bolted door kept out. Him. To Mrs. Wasserman all the fears were focused on Him. Displacement, whatever a psychiatrist might have called it. “I think Sara felt, well, horribly guilty —”

From under the sanctuary of the dark car, Jessica said. “I know. She thought it was her fault. She thought she did it. And maybe she thought she was killing her own self when she killed Davey and that girl. And almost me.”

He could hardly believe his ears. Until he heard her crying
again, and then realized how much guilt she must have felt about the death of the most beautiful, the kindest woman Jessica had ever imagined, yet never known. And how she could easily have felt responsible. Barbara Allan had died so soon after her daughter was born.

Jury could think of nothing to say.

“How is that man who saved me?”

“He's fine; the ambulance just got here to take him to hospital.”

She rolled out. She got off the creeper. Her nightdress, her face, her hair were smudged with oil and grease. “Come on, Henry,” she said, her tone its usual testy self.

Henry clambered out of the car and followed them as they walked slowly across the courtyard. Jessie was holding Jury's hand.

“I'll tell you something,” she said grumpily.

“Yes? What?”

“I hope I never run up against Jane Eyre.”

When Robert Ashcroft and Victoria Gray were driving, a few minutes later, toward home, they heard the sirens, saw the whirring lights, saw the fire in the driveway.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” whispered Victoria.

Robert Ashcroft gunned the Ferrari up to seventy.

 • • • 

He jumped out of the car, threaded his way through police and ambulance crew, and ran in the house calling for his niece.

Jury had never seen a man look so terrified, with one exception, and then so relieved. No exception there.

Jessica stood, hands on hips, grease-smudged face and oil-bedewed hair, glaring up at her uncle. “I don't want any more governesses. Until I go away to school, I want a bodyguard. I want that man that saved my life.”

Ashcroft merely nodded. He had tears in his eyes.

“Come on, Henry.” They climbed the stairs slowly. But halfway up she turned to deliver her parting shot.

“You're always away when the ax-murderers come.” Then she and Henry continued their weary ascent.

T
HE
old char was singing in Wynchcoombe church and wringing her mop in a pail. Out of deference either to Jury or the vicar's lad who'd been buried only yesterday, she stopped singing and kept on swabbing the floor.

Death did not stop the stone from getting dirty or flowers from wilting, and the ones on the altar looked in need of changing. He watched her running the grubby mop over the stone floor and wondered how something that made such an enormous difference to so many — all of those deaths — could make little more than a dent in the daily round of cleaning.

The old woman with the mop and pail paid no attention to him, one of the many who came to see this little marvel of a church that towered cathedral-like over its valley in the moor.

Jury dropped some money in the collection box, listening to the charwoman, who couldn't resist her bit of music, change to humming. He thought of Molly Singer and imagined that somewhere in Waterford or Clare or Donegal, a clear-voiced Irish girl might be doing her washing-up, maybe humming from the boredom of it.

Damn it, why are you always right, Mac?

Jury looked at the painting of Abraham and Isaac, the knife near the terrified boy's face. His father ready for the sacrifice. All God had to do was say
Go.

To Macalvie, who had been right all along about her, she was Mary Mulvanney.

To Jury, she would always be Molly Singer.

He felt the old char watching him as he walked out of the church.

When he got to the Help the Poor Struggler, it was almost a relief to hear Divisional Commander Macalvie shouting over the noise of the jukebox that he'd tie Freddie to a tree in Wistman's Wood if she didn't stop singing along with Elvis. It was the version of “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” where Elvis forgot the words and was laughing at himself and the audience was joining in. What rapport, thought Jury, Elvis Presley had had with his audience. It was a song he must have sung a hundred times, yet he'd forgotten — probably because of his failing powers — the words. But his fans hadn't. They never would. There were some things people never forgot. Like his last concert.

“Y'r a rate trate, no mistake. He be dead, man. Hain't yuh got no respect fer the dead?”

Macalvie was silent for a moment. Then he shouted back, “If I did, Freddie, I'd have some respect for
you.
Hullo,” he added grudgingly to Jury. Melrose Plant was sitting with Macalvie. It was a drunk Brian Macalvie. “How about one of your fancy cigars, friend?” he said to Plant. And to Wiggins, who had opened his mouth, Macalvie said, “Shut up.”

Freddie, who must have heard something and was being halfway human to Macalvie, set his pint on the table and said
to Wiggins — or all of them — “No use to argie-fy with Macalvie.”

“How's Sam?” asked Jury.

“Fine. He's fine. Be out of hospital in a couple of weeks.” Macalvie smoked and stared at his pint.

“How'd he know, Brian? That Jessica might be in danger?”

Turning his glass round and round, Macalvie said, “The bloody coat-of-arms. The letter Plant wrote to you. That and the picture. You remember, he went through her desk. The unidentified man. Sammy saw Robert Ashcroft at the George in Wynchcoombe. James and Robert looked a lot alike. At first he thought Robert was simply a man who looked a hell of a lot like the one in Rose's snap. It was seeing the coat-of-arms that he'd seen on a piece of notepaper in the desk that finally did it. Anyway, he thought he should keep an eye on Ashcroft.”

“You were right. There
was
something he knew that hadn't surfaced. James Ashcroft was indiscreet, writing to Rose Mulvanney.”

“To say the least. He let Sammy waste his life in prison. Bastard.”

Plant said, “I think Robert Ashcroft will try and make up for that in some way.”

Macalvie glared at him. “Buy him a car, maybe. Sam told me he watched that house from a spot on the moor where he set up camp. He figured something would happen.” Another silence. “It happened.”

A big, beefy man was plugging money into the jukebox. “Play a few Golden Oldies, or something, you will?” yelled Macalvie.

The perfect stranger looked around, and not in a friendly way. “Play what I like, mate.” He rippled muscles as best he could under the leather jacket. “Who the hell you be, anyway?”

Macalvie started to get up.

Jury pulled him down. “Forget it, Brian.”

Having to yell at someone, Macalvie turned again to Freddie. “Bring us four more and try and keep the tapwater out of it this time.”

“A course, me ‘anzum,” said Freddie, over the double-din of the music and the casuals off the road. Considering the usual lack of custom, the pub was almost jumping. Even the dartboard was getting a workout.

And then an Irish voice from the jukebox, thin and silvery, was singing. Apparently, leather-jacket was a sentimentalist.

“O, man, dear, did ya never hear

Of pretty Molly Brannigan —”

The cigar stopped halfway to Macalvie's mouth. His expression was blank.

“She's gone away and left me,

And I'll never be a man again —”

Macalvie had taken out his wallet and checked the contents. “Being an earl,” he said to Melrose, “and probably owning a big hunk of England, I don't suppose you'd be good for a loan of, say, eighty quid, would you?”

Without any questions, Melrose took out his money clip, peeled off four twenties, and handed them over.

“ . . . Now that Molly's gone and left me

Here for to die.”

Macalvie walked over to the bar where Freddie was singing along and spread a hundred and thirty pounds in front of her.

“Oh, the left side of me heart

Is as weak as watered gruel, man;

Won't ye come to me wake

when I make that great meander, man. . . ?”

Freddie, watching him, shouted, “ 'Ere, Mac, wot be yu on upon?”

Macalvie had already positioned himself, taken aim and shoved his size ten straight into the jukebox.

The song splintered like a broken windscreen, flying into pieces, shivers of metal and glass. It caught the entire room in a freeze-frame. No one moved

Except Macalvie, who walked back to his chair and snatched up his coat. He looked around the table and said, “Macalvie, nil. Mulvanney, nil.”

Then he turned with his coat slung over his shoulder and walked out into the dark where, not far away, the prison rose through the mists of Dartmoor and hung over Princetown like a huge raven