The Case Has Altered (25 page)

Wiggins sighed. “Yes, I
can
see, sir.”

For the next few miles, they drove in silence past dark furrowed fields. Against a skyline that looked as hard and gray as a band of steel, the isolated house or barn sprang up like a mirage. Jury's eyelids felt like lead. It was true that he'd had very little sleep in the last few days; nonetheless, this gray singularity of land struck him as hypnotic. In that far field, an abandoned plowshare could as easily have been an artifact, some ancient instrument heaved up from mere or bog. He was inclined to agree with Wiggins; it wasn't a place he'd care to live in. It lay too heavily upon the soul. It would take a greater subtlety of mind than his to appreciate it, the nuances of light and shadow, wind and weather. He laid his head back against the leather seat and wished he had a cigarette.

“We passed one of those new Happy Eater motel-like places outside of Spalding,” said Wiggins, alerting Jury to a possible break for tea. “Another should be coming up soon. One of them got the ‘cleanest toilet' award.”

“That's a treat,” said Jury who had turned his head to gaze out of the passenger window.

It didn't surprise Jury when Wiggins's fast-food-prediction turned out to be correct. In another mile appeared the bright orange sign of a Happy Eater. Enthusiastically, Wiggins told him, “Now the Happy Eaters do a really good plate of beans on toast. See, there's one just coming up—”

“An oxymoron, Wiggins. It's impossible to do something ‘good' with beans on toast.”

Undaunted, Wiggins stuck to his guns. “I could fancy some, anyway.” He slowed the car, though not substantially, merely dropping the speed to some point around fifty mph. He did this so that Jury could tell him to pull over. “I could use a cuppa, how about you?” When Jury nodded, Wiggins made for the exit.

Jury had to admit that the Happy Eater was the most garishly clean place he had ever seen outside an intensive care unit. It certainly could have deserved “cleanest toilet” award hands down. Painted to within an inch of its life in bright orange, daffodil yellow, and emerald green, it was a toast to all of childhood's colors. Indeed, it appeared to cater for kiddies, as one section of the room was cordoned off and furnished with downsized chairs and a table and baskets of blocks and games. Two children were playing in it now, bonging one another with brilliant blue blocks of wood, a pastime that would no doubt escalate into acrimonious battle and police—meaning Jury—would have to break it up.

After the pretty waitress had appeared at their table with their tea and beans on toast and gone crisply off again, Jury said, “What about Jack Price? I didn't see him when I was at Fengate. According to Plant, he said he left the living room around ten-thirty. The drive to the Wash wouldn't have taken more than quarter of an hour, twenty minutes. Time for him to get there and back. Indeed, any one of them could have got there. Price, after ten-thirty; Parker, after eleven; the Owens also after eleven.”

“Not him, though, sir, not Max Owen. This gardener, Suggins, said he took some whiskey up to him, didn't he?”

“Um.” Jury fell silent, drank his lukewarm tea, watched the kiddies with the building blocks. Then he said, “Let's stop off first at the pub and then I want to see that footpath. Plant mentioned this chap, Emery, who works for Major Parker.” Jury looked at his watch. “I'm meeting with the solicitor in the morning, so we'll have to get back to London tonight.”

Wiggins looked mildly unhappy. “Night blindness” (whatever that was) was one of the many entries on his roster of ills. Jury's better judgment demanded he not inquire into this scourge, but the temptation was always too much for him. “What the hell's that? ‘Night blindness'?”

“Surely, I've mentioned it, sir. It's what happens to my vision after a
long time having headlights of other cars shining in my eyes. My vision becomes impaired.” With that haughty comment, he went back to his beans on toast.

Why argue? thought Jury. “Then I'll drive.”

Wiggins gave him a speculative look. “You've been looking kind of peaked. Night driving is more tiring than people know.”

Jury knew that Wiggins was always up for a motel. He loved motels. “If worse comes to worse, Wiggins, we'll stop somewhere along the way.”

Happily, Wiggins filled him in on the state of the mattresses in the Raglan chain (“lumpy”), the quality of the air (“awful close and humid”) in the Trust House Fortes, the sad state of the breakfasts in most B&B's (“burnt toast, thimbles of juice”).

“We're looking for a bed, Wiggins, not an experience.”

 • • • 

T
he sullen barmaid in the Case Has Altered confirmed that they didn't do rooms, didn't cater for overnighters, and that they ought to try back in Spalding. The girl had short-cut brown hair and dull eyes the color of peat. Still, there was a sort of prettiness in her heart-shaped face and tilted nose.

Jury ordered lager; Wiggins, a Diet Pepsi.

“How long have you worked here?”

She shrugged. “Off 'n on, couple a months. I'm in charge when they're gone.” Vigorously, she started wiping down the bar. Having been left in charge, she was going to exert her limited authority and flaunt what sexuality she could muster. It wasn't much, despite the short red skirt, the black jumper. She left off rubbing the bar down to reach inside the neck of the jumper and reposition a strap.

“Then you knew Dorcas Reese?”

She didn't answer immediately. When she got the gray lump of rag going again, she said, “What if I did?”

“Because
if
you did, you might be able to help us, love.” Jury shoved his ID up to her face, an act she might have thought hostile, had it not been accompanied by his disarming smile. “Dorcas worked here part-time,
didn't she? Like you.” It seemed to quiver in air, the implication that the fate of one could be the fate of the other.

The girl swallowed hard, got even paler. “I'll get your drinks.”

As she moved away to the beerpulls, Jury looked at her flamboyant tights. A motif of black vines and leaves coiled up her thighs, disappearing under her very short red skirt. In a moment, she was back with the drinks. She certainly wasn't slow. She set the drinks before them, said rather haughtily that she'd got to get other orders too, and rolled off again to the end of the bar, where sat the two men who'd been trying to get her attention by banging their pints on the bar. She called to the one named Ian to shove it.

“A bit snippy, wouldn't you say, sir?”

“Never mind. I expect she wants us to know this is her manor.” Jury drank his lager and looked at an old newspaper clipping thumbtacked to the wall. It was dated January 1945 and showed photos of the Ouse and Welland rivers, their banks overflowing and land under water as far as the camera-eye could see. There was a picture of the tiny town of Market Deeping, its streets turned to rivers. As he read the captions, he caught himself smiling and wondered what he was finding in this report to smile about, given that this flooding of the fields must have spelled difficulty if not disaster for the land's inhabitants. Perhaps he was relieved to see that Nature, once again, had refused to roll over for man.

She was back. Stubbornly, she folded her arms across her breasts and studied the bitten nails of one hand.

Jury still smiled as he asked, “What's your name, love?”

Truculently, she answered: “Julie. Rough.” When she saw Sergeant Wiggins getting out his notebook, she added, “R-O-U-G-H. It's not the way it's pronounced. That's ‘R-O-W,' like ‘Row, row your boat.' My first name's actually Juliette, you know, like in ‘Romeo and.' ”

Here was a name that certainly did not fit an imagined face. There was no hint of the tragic about Julie Rough.

“Age?” asked Wiggins.

You could tell she was considering her answer. “I turn twenty-one Christmas. I'm twenty, if you must know.”

Jury bet eighteen, tops. He asked, “So tell us what you know about Dorcas Reese, Julie.”

She shrugged. “Seein' her around . . . you know, the shops and all. Mebbe have a coffee, tea in the Berry Patch. That's a caff in Kirton.”

At the end of the bar sat a tableau of what could only be regulars—an old man flanked by two younger ones, but so fascinated by the strangers that they all seemed to stare and breathe as one. Jury asked Julie who they were.

“Them? Oh, that's just old Tomas and Ian and Malcolm. Always here, them three.”

Jury told Wiggins to have a talk with the customers, starting with Ian or Malcolm. Wiggins moved off down the bar. The only other customers were a gray-haired woman reading what looked like a racing form, and a fellow throwing darts.

“Did Dorcas talk about herself at all?”

“Now and again, I s'pose. She worked over at Fengate. But you know that.”

“Tell me what you know about it.”

“I know she didn't much like all that choppin' and peelin' she was set to do. But she was ever so keen on the lady.”

“The cook?”

“Nah.” Julie made a face. “Mrs. Owen. She called her ‘Grace' but I expect not to her face.”

“What about the others? Max Owen and Jack Price?”

“No, she never talked about Mr. Owen. He was hardly ever around to speak to. And Jack Price, he's a regular here, nice enough bloke. Comes in all the time, stops here the way other people do at home.” She looked toward the shadowed rear of the room. “Sits back there, 'e does, hardly makes a sound. But he's quite nice. Gentleman-like.”

“Did the two of you, you and Dorcas perhaps exchange confidences?”

“Opinions, more like.”

Jury thought this to be a nice distinction. “Opinions about the people at Fengate?”

“Yeah. Except I didn't know them only to see, like. I been over there a few times when Dorcas and me was goin' out, maybe to the pictures or there's a disco in Kirton.”

Julie and Dorcas were clearly closer friends than she'd allowed, but he let that go. “Did you ever happen to meet this Dunn woman, the one who was murdered?”

Julie's natural bent toward the salacious overcame any misgivings she had about involving herself. “I never did, but Dorcas did, said she thought 'twas ever so peculiar, Mr. Owen having his first wife there. I mean right in front of Grace. That's Verna, the one you say got herself murdered.” Having been coerced into cooperating with police, she seemed only too eager to keep Jury listening. She lowered her voice: “There was talk, see. About Dorcas. It was goin' round she was—you know—had a bun in the oven.”

“Pregnant, you mean.” He lowered his own voice to match hers. The regulars at the other end of the bar were clearly fascinated by Wiggins, who had his notebook out, but seemed to be doing more of the talking than they. Prescribing, probably.

Julie flushed. For one who apparently wanted to be considered to know her way around, if not actually libertine or wanton, she got embarrassed easily.

“Did Dorcas herself tell you?”

She nodded, absently wiping the cloth over the bar.

“Ever say anything at all that would connect any particular man to this pregnancy?” When she frowned, Jury said, “It's important, so think, Julie.”

“Thinking” was apparently a rather novel act for Julie, and an intensely physical one. She folded her arms and scratched her elbows, squinting up at the ceiling; she drew her mouth back revealing teeth as small as a child's, then pursed the mouth, repeating this process several times. She might have been indulging in some of Fiona's facial exercises. Her neck seemed to strain upward as if there were a rarefied air up there necessary for cerebral activity. Jury had to give her this: that unlike most people, Julie took thinking damned seriously. Then, chewing at her bottom lip, she said, “There was a bloke she must've been goin' with, secretive she was about him. Never told me the name, though. Well, that surprised me, it did. Anyway, she was goin' to London, she said.”

“London? Did the boyfriend live there?”

“No, no. I think he was from round here. Dorcas was acting pretty la-de-dah about it.”

“No name, no description?”

Julie shook her head. Finished with the three at the end of the bar, Wiggins came back, asked for some more Diet Pepsi as his throat was scratchy. He nodded toward the three men. “It's all that smoke blowing right in my face. . . . ” Sadly, he shook his head. Julie refilled his glass.

“How much did she make here?” Jury asked Julie, wishing Wiggins would stop breaking his rhythm.

“Same as me, I wouldn't wonder. Four quid an hour. It's only part-time. 'Course, Dorcas had the other job at Fengate. So that'd give 'er another forty or fifty quid, on top of the regular job. Then she got her room and meals there and that counts for a lot, especially the way Dorcas liked to eat. I'm not one to talk, me . . . ” Julie giggled and pulled her jumper down, whether to expose more of her figure or hide it, Jury couldn't say. “We were both slimming.”

Jury smiled. “Was Dorcas as popular as you with the men?”

Julie giggled. “Now, how'd you know I am? But Dorcas? No, not at all. She just was too plain-as-a-pudding. Hardly anyone'd look at her. That's why I was so surprised about this bloke she had. Whoever he was.” Julie giggled again and then leaned across the bar and crooked her finger at Jury to draw him nearer. In a low voice she said, “Now, keep this under your hat, will you?”

Dryly, Wiggins said, “Mum's the word, miss.”

“—but she was going to London to get a you-know-what.”

Jury guessed correctly that the you-know-what was an abortion.

Julie righted herself, adjusted her jumper once again, having delivered the coup de grâce. “She wouldn't ever want it done around here, it'd be all over the place.”

“Like London, abortions can be expensive. She might have been earning double, but she'd have to have saved up a tidy sum for a doctor. Was she a saver? Did she put money by?”