Help the Poor Struggler (8 page)

“I think no.” Jury would have laughed had Macalvie not looked so serious. Disagree with Macalvie's theory?

“Why the hell
not?”

“Aren't you overlooking the obvious?”

Macalvie gave Wiggins a
can-you-believe-this-guy?
look, got no reassurance from Jury's sergeant, and turned the sparking blue eyes back to Jury. “I never overlooked the
obvious
in my entire life, Jury.”

“That's swell. You do think Angela was killed by the same person that murdered the other two, don't you?”

“Probably,” said Macalvie, cautiously, like a man being led into a trap.

“Then you'd have to assume that the murderer was friendly with
all
of the victims. That's possible, but not very probable. I don't think the murders are indiscriminate or arbitrary, but at the same time, I don't think the killer took the
chance of ‘befriending' these children. Simply because it would have been a hell of a chance to take —”

“True. Especially for a man just out of prison.”

And since Macalvie's theory left only one candidate for the string of murders, it was perhaps less than fortuitous for her that Molly Singer chose that moment to appear in the doorway of the White Lion's dining room.

It wasn't love at first sight when Molly Singer met Divisional Commander Macalvie.

The sparks between them made Jury think of a high-speed train braking. She could sense Macalvie's hostility, even before he opened his mouth.

Jury offered her breakfast, and Macalvie offered her a grim-reaper smile, which was enough to kill anyone's appetite. Jury doubted she had one to begin with. She asked for coffee.

Today she looked different. Her eyes were less molten gold and more honey-colored. That might have been because of the gold cape she wore. Her dark hair was pulled back, but the shorter ends clung to her face as if they were wet with seaspray or rain.

“I just wanted to have a little talk with you about last night,” said Macalvie. “Your handling of the situation was kind of odd.”

“Yes, I suppose it was. Though at the time I wasn't thinking too clearly —”

“Did you panic, or something?” His tone was almost friendly.

“Panic. Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

“That's why you threw your cape over the girl?”

She nodded and looked away.

“Not because you wanted to hide the body.” The tone was simply matter-of-fact.

Quickly, she looked at him again. “That's ridiculous. If I'd killed her, I certainly wouldn't leave my cape behind to lead police right to my door.”

Macalvie shrugged. “You're not the only one in Lyme or hereabouts who owns a cape.”

“You think I'd take a chance like that?”

“I don't know. Do you know the Thornes?”

She shook her head, looking down at the coffee brought by the patrician waitress, but not drinking it.

“How did you know where to take the dog?”

“The name of their place was on the tag.”

“Very humanitarian. There's a pub in Dorchester called the Five Alls. Ever been there?”

“No. I don't go to pubs.”

“Not a drinker?”

“On the contrary, I drink a lot. But alone.”

Wiggins, who seemed to have taken a liking to Molly Singer as another victim of life's vicissitudes, looked sad. Jury was afraid he might take them all for a stroll down Gin Lane.

“As I'd guess,” Molly went on, “you already know.”

Macalvie's eyes grew round as a cat's. “How would I know that?”

She looked at Jury. “The superintendent might have told you. More likely you've already been at the dustbin men.”

Macalvie laughed. “You're pretty smart.” He made it sound like an indictment. “Where were you early yesterday morning? Around six, say?”

“In my cottage. Asleep. Why?”

“And where the afternoon of the tenth?”

“In my cottage. Or walking on the Cobb.”

“Like last night?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone see you?”

“Probably not.”

“You don't go out much.”

“No.”

“You don't see people.”

“No.”

“Funny way to act.”

“I think I'm agoraphobic.” What there was of an embarrassed smile was quickly erased when Macalvie slammed his fist on the table.

“I don't care sod-all about some phobia. If you've been to psychiatrists, I'll subpoena their records if I have to. You don't go out, don't see people, and yet —” Macalvie pointed toward the street “— in that short-stay parking lot by the ocean you've got a great little Lamborghini that's clocked up over sixty thousand on a ‘C' registration. You do a hell of a lot of traveling, don't you? In that car you could make it to Dorchester and back in a little more than an hour and to Wynchcoombe in two, I'll bet — provided a cop didn't get in your way. What's a little stay-at-home like you doing with a Lamborghini?”

Molly Singer got up slowly. “I think I've answered your questions.”

“No, you haven't. Sit down.”

“Wouldn't you rather finish your breakfast?” Before anyone could stop her, she tipped her side of the table, sending plates, food, cutlery crashing and rolling, and most of it into Macalvie's lap. Then she walked out.

“God! What a temper.” Macalvie seemed perversely pleased, looking at his stained suit and the wreckage all around them: cups, kippers, broken glass.

It even broke the porcelain pose of the waitress in black and white.

Lyme Regis was one of many coastal villages whose beauty was reckoned in proximity to the sea. It had been two centuries ago so much the object of Jane Austen's affections that it now had, where the Marine Parade ended in a narrow
street, a pretty boutique called Persuasion. Thought Jury, If Stratford-upon-Avon wants to put Shakespeare on sugar cubes  . . . why not?

Macalvie came out of the newsagent's at the top of the street, at the triangle where Broad Street and Silver Street ran together down to the sea, taking tearooms, greengrocers, Boots, and banks with them. Wiggins had been left to see to the wreckage at the White Lion.

Just as Macalvie appeared, a Mini went speedboating down the narrow street. He wrote the registration number in his notebook. Macalvie would do dog's duty just so long as it gave him the pleasure of collaring some miscreant.

He slapped the notebook shut and said, “Nothing there. She knew Angela because Angela would stand around reading
Chips and Whizzer
without paying. The old broad in there hated her. She chased her off yesterday evening somewhere around six. She was closing up late.”

Macalvie was turning a stile of postcards and removed one that showed the confluence of the streets they were on. He stuffed a stick of gum in his mouth, and said, “You're a minder, you know?”

Jury looked at Macalvie, who was frowning down at the postcard. “Meaning what?”

Macalvie shrugged. “A minder: kind of cop who watches over frails. Defenseless women.”

Jury laughed. “You see too many American films, Macalvie.”

Unoffended, Macalvie said, “No, I'm serious.”

Indeed he did look it, staring from the picture-view of the street to the real thing. One would have thought he might be an artist, studying light and angles. “I'd like to know what she's doing in Lyme,” he said, almost inconsequentially.

“Molly Singer?”

He shook his head. “Her name's not Molly Singer. It's Mary Mulvanney.”

Macalvie slotted the card back in the rack and started up the street.

T
HE
Lady Jessica Mary Allan-Ashcroft looked from blank square to blank square on the calendar hanging in the kitchen and with her black crayon, stood on tiptoe so she could reach
FRIDAY
: 14
FEBRUARY
. She drew a giant
X
across that square, knowing she was cheating, since it was only teatime and the awful day was not yet over. Another day as blank as the square. There were now five
X
's in a row. The picture above them showed some Dartmoor ponies doing what they always did — chewing grass. She looked at the picture for March. It showed the giant rock-formation of Vixen Tor and a few hardy pilgrims on their way up the rocks. Another stupid pile of rocks they walked for miles to see.

Just last August she had been driving out with Uncle Robert and had seen a lot of people with boots and back packs at one of those tourist centers, all kitted out to walk to one of those tors in the middle of Dartmoor. Jessie and her uncle were driving with the top down in his Zimmer, and she thought those people out there must be crazy, walking when they could be driving. She told him this and he burst out laughing.

 • • • 

“Eat your tea, my love,” said Mrs. Mulchop. Her husband, Mulchop, served as groundskeeper and sometimes as butler and looked no more like one than he did the other. He sat now at the kitchen table eating a mess of something.

Mrs. Mulchop moved a pot in the huge inglenook fireplace, in the huge kitchen, in the huge house, in the huge grounds. . . .

Jessie's mind drifted like a veil of rain over all of this hugeness that was the Ashcroft house and grounds. “It's too big,” she said, looking at the egg on toast on her plate. Its sickening yellow eye stared back at her.

“Your egg, lovey?”

“No. The house. I'm all alone.” Jessie rested her chin in her hands.

Mrs. Mulchop raised her eyes heavenward and shook her head. She did not realize that beneath this surface melodrama, a true drama of heartsickness was playing itself out. “You're ten years old, not a baby. Wouldn't your uncle be annoyed to see you so sorry for yourself?”

Jessie was shocked to think that anyone would believe Uncle Robert would ever be “annoyed” by Jessie. “No! He'd understand.” Now Jessie felt the threat of real tears. Real tears she could not contend with.

“Your uncle's only been gone a few days, lass. No need to get fidgety about it —”

“Four
days! Four and a
half!
See —” Jessie scraped her chair back and marched to the calendar. “He didn't leave me a note. He didn't give me a Valentine, either.” She went back to her chair as if she'd just proven all theories of a clockwork universe defunct in the face of this outrage against reason. But what she felt was more worry than outrage.

“He's probably only gone up to London to see to another governess for you.” Mrs. Mulchop glanced at her husband, but his face was too near his bowl to return the look.

Jessie heard the slight sharpness in that
another.
She ran through governesses like a shark through a salmon-fall.

“And you're not all alone. There's me and Mulchop and Miss Gray and Drucilla.”

The Dreadful Drucilla, Miss Plunkett, the present tutor-governess. Not a proper one, though. More of a minder Uncle Rob had settled for when he had discharged the Careless Carla, who was absolutely brilliant at maths, but a little absentminded about keys and spectacles. Out walking across the moor, she had lost Jessie one day, though there had been, in the confrontation with Robert Ashcroft, some doubt as to who had lost whom.

Battalions of governesses. How they sat so neatly and nicely when he was interviewing them. Uncle Rob questioned them closely about their former posts, their credentials, their ability to respond to emergencies; but now and then he would throw one in from left field, such as
And do you like rabbits?

Jessie liked to see the corners of his mouth twitch and the bewildered look on the face of the prospective employee.
Well, yes. That is, I expect I've nothing against them.
 . . . He had explained later to Jess that it was a matter of honesty, and Miss Whatever-her-name wasn't being honest. She was from Portland (where the Ashcroft stone had come from).
In Portland, one is never allowed to mention rabbits. They all hate them,
Uncle Rob had told her.

Thus that one had lost out on a very well paying post, as did most of the prospective women who applied. They sat there saying,
Oh, yes, Mr. Ashcroft,
when they meant No; or
Oh, no, Mr. Ashcroft,
when they meant Yes. And a lot of them would try to snuggle up to Jessica until they realized she wasn't much good for a snuggle, and call her stupid things like “Poppit,” and pet her dog Henry, to show how much they liked animals.

Robert Ashcroft could not go on forever relentlessly pursuing
the perfect governess, so in the end, he left it up to Jessie, as she was the one who would have to put up with the woman. Uncle Rob often asked her why it was she avoided the nicer ones and chose the worst. There was the Hopeless Helen (who kept the key to the drinks cabinet in more or less constant motion); the Mad Margaret, who had trembled during the interview with a severe case of stage fright, but ended up roaring like a lion, acting being her field of expertise; the Prudent Prucilla, who left rather quickly one night, along with the Crown Derby. Of all of them, the Dubious Desiree had lasted the longest because she had done nothing absolutely wrong, short of hating her pupil, a fact that she kept very well hidden from everyone but Jess herself. Jess put up with the cold-blooded treatment because she knew Desiree was going to do herself in anyway, eventually. In the meantime, she did make Jess a little nervous because of her looks: she was dark and sleek and always winding herself on the couch like a cobra when he was around. But Uncle Rob was not easily fooled; the Dubious Desiree lasted a month.

It seemed a great puzzle to Uncle Rob — his niece's choices. Why Miss Simpson instead of Miss James?
Miss Simpson seemed a bit stiff to me. But Sally James was, well, rather smashing,
he said, before he had returned to the reading of his morning paper, the jamming of his morning toast.