The Case Has Altered (26 page)

Julie laughed. “Not her, never. I heard her say several times she could hardly get by from one payday to the next. Said she was glad they were different days or she'd be skint five days outta the week.” Then Julie's dull
brown eyes brightened. “
I
know what you're thinking. You're thinking: Where'd she get the money? From him, maybe?”

Jury smiled. “You're a mind reader, Julie. Now, do you have any ideas about him?”

Julie didn't hesitate. “I know one thing; I
don't
think it's who some do. That Mr. Price.” She shook her head, emphatically. “Whatever would he do with someone like Dorcas?”

“That's what people around here think?”

“It's only because she fancied him at one time. He'd walk her back to Fengate, and why not? They both lived there. That don't mean they was . . . you know. He was nice to her; he's nice to me too but that don't mean he's looking for you-know-what.”

“What? Police are terribly literal, miss,” said Wiggins.

Julie rolled her eyes, shook her head in a wondering way. These policemen clearly lived in the sexual Dark Ages. “Dorcas might of 'ad her faults, but she was generous. You can't say better than that about a per—”

Julie looked beyond Jury toward the door of the pub, which had opened and shut, admitting icy air and a tall, thinnish man, together with a tall woman. The two stood speaking for a moment and then separated, the woman taking a seat at the bar. She looked vaguely familiar; Jury couldn't think why. Julie had started wiping the counter vigorously, as she looked up from under her lashes at Jury and gave a tiny nod in the direction of the man, who had taken a seat at a table. She whispered, thin-lipped, “That's him, Jack Price. Let me just get his pint for him. Always has the same thing, pint o' Ridleys.”

Jury finished off his pint and rose, saying he'd take Price's drink over to him. He thanked her for all of her help, produced a card, and told her that if she remembered anything else to call. When she'd drawn the pint, she handed it to Jury and he and Wiggins moved away from the bar, while Julie went to wait on the woman.

The man who'd been the object of Julie's speculation looked up at Jury and Wiggins, his expression registering an unasked question. Or what Jury could see of his expression, coming as it did through a haze of smoke.

“Mr. Price? I'm Richard Jury, this is Sergeant Wiggins. We're with Scotland Yard CID.”

Price nodded, said nothing, and looked only mildly surprised when Jury produced his identification, but even more when Jury set his drink on the table. “Do you mind—?” Jury pulled a chair around and sat down. So as to make his note-taking less obtrusive, Wiggins seated himself at a short distance from the table, farther back in the shadows. This turned his naturally pale face even more starkly white.

“No,” said Price, his sardonic smile suggesting that, since they were already in chairs, he hadn't much opportunity to object. “Thanks for the drink. I must say I'm surprised the Lincolnshire police would ask for help from Scotland Yard. The man in charge—Bannen?—dosen't strike me as the type to ask for help.”

“He isn't and he hasn't. He's just letting me look round. You're certainly not compelled to tell me anything.”

Price started to reply, but started coughing. “Actually, it's not the smoking causing this, it's the damned trees, the stuff that comes off the alders.” He slid the packet of Players toward Jury. “Smoke?”

“No thanks. I've stopped. Wiggins never started.”

In a gentlemanly gesture, Price stubbed out his own cigarette. “This must be a kind of hell, smelling the stuff.”

“Go right ahead. I have to learn to live with it.”

As if setting the shadows alight, Wiggins moved in. Literally, as well as metaphorically. He dragged his chair closer to the table and said, “It's the spoor, sir. It can get in anywhere. It seeps; it's airborne. Now, the catkins off the alders don't bother me for some reason. I've got an allergy to just about everything else, though.” Wiggins drew a small envelope from his inside pocket and shook out a few white pills. “Right here's what you need; works every time for me. It's a new thing called ‘Allergone.' Couple of these, you'll be fine.”

Jury rolled his eyes. Wiggins came prepared with nostrums the way others came prepared with a murder bag. He waited for Wiggins to get through prescribing before he introduced the main subject of conversation. “You knew that Lady Kennington and Verna Dunn weren't strangers to one another?”

Jack Price worked a little pile of ash into a pyramid. “I knew, yes.”

“And didn't tell Chief Inspector Bannen. Why is that?”

“Because Jenny didn't, that's why. I mean didn't tell him.” Price continued to sculpt his ash-pyramid. “If she didn't want anyone to know—” He shrugged.

Jack Price, at this moment, appeared to know more about Jenny than Jury did. “Didn't the whole thing strike you as distinctly
odd?
Here are two women who are related—not friends, certainly, but cousins—and they keep it a secret?”

“It struck me as odd, yes. For Jenny, it did. Jenny's a very candid person. But for Verna? That sort of charade was typical of Verna. The woman loved secrets, mystery. . . . ”

“What about Max Owen?”

“What about him?”

Impatiently, Jury said, “Surely he knew the two women were related.”

Price shook his head. “No, I don't believe he did. Jenny steered very clear of Verna. I don't think she'd seen Verna Dunn in ten or fifteen years. She read about her in the Arts section of the
Sunday Times
, knew Verna had married—and then divorced—Max, but that was years ago. She was completely taken aback to find Verna here that weekend.”

“How do you know?”

Price looked puzzled. “I don't—”

“Lady Kennington must have done a masterly job of hiding her feelings. No surprise registered. Nothing was said. She displayed
lack
of surprise, from what I hear, as if she'd never seen the woman before. So how do you know?”

Price said, simply, “Oh. She told me.”

Jury knew he was irrationally angered by all of this. “And when was that? That she told you?”

“We were having drinks, cocktails, before dinner. We were off from the others, chatting.”

“I can't understand anyone's withholding information like that from police. Not her, not you.”

“I've already said that since she didn't acknowledge Verna, I certainly wasn't going to give the show away. I told you that I have a great deal of affection for Jenny—”

“No, actually, you didn't. You knew her well?”

Price shrugged. “Depends what you mean. In a friendly way, certainly. I've seen her half-a-dozen times, I expect. I knew her husband, James.”

Some moments ticked by until Jury broke this uncomfortable silence (uncomfortable for him alone, he was sure) by bringing up Dorcas Reese. “Did you perhaps know
her
better than you said?”

“Superintendent, you seem to be taking this rather personally, if you don't mind my saying—”

Jury could barely keep from saying
“I do.”
He said instead, “Only as a policeman. You people are obstructing our investigation, you know.”

Wiggins turned a page of his notebook and looked at Jury. He wasn't used to hearing such pronouncements from the superintendent. Much too cool, was the superintendent, too clever to “stoop” to such procedural maneuvering, though he was right. That sort of thing put witnesses off.

Price asked, “Did I know Dorcas ‘better'? Are you going to allow yourself to be taken in by all of this twaddle? A bunch of yobs sitting round in a pub or little old ladies round their teapot, talking a lot of nonsense? I walked Dorcas back to Fengate sometimes. After all, we both lived there.”

“Dorcas told several people she was pregnant. Did she tell you?”

“Dorcas did not confide in me; anyway, according to the Lincs police, she wasn't.”

“Why would she say she was?”

“I have no idea. I assure you, I was not the suspect father.”

“Julie says she fancied you. But Julie doesn't, let me add, believe you're the man responsible.”

“Bless her heart.” He raised his glass in Julie's direction. “Look, I dislike saying unkind things about a girl who's dead, but Dorcas wasn't exactly a knockout.”

“So everyone seems to agree.” Jury thought for a moment about this, then said, “You usually take the public footpath, do you?”

Price nodded. “Always. Makes a nice walk before and after. It gives me a couple of miles' walk, the only exercise I'm likely to get, every day. The thing is, though, that a lot of people take the path, even Max and Grace.
It's a pleasant walk. So if you're asking whether I took it the night Dorcas was murdered, the answer's yes.”

“Your only connection with Dorcas was seeing her at Fengate and here in the pub, then?”

“And I scarcely saw her at all at the house.”

Softly, yet in a tone like lead, he said, “You knew Jennifer Kennington had a motive.”

“To kill Verna?” Price snorted with laughter. “Didn't everyone? She was a bitch, a vicious, conniving woman, and we're better off without her, Superintendent.”

“But general dislike doesn't usually add up to a specific motive. And there's the question of opportunity, too. Lady Kennington had both motive and opportunity, apparently.”

“Perhaps.” Price continued calmly to smoke. “But if that's so, well . . . maybe she did it. What do they say?” He dribbled ash onto the pyramid and it broke apart. “If it walks like a duck—”

“Don't say it.” Jury got up. “Thanks. Perhaps I'll see you later.”

Price gave Jury a mock-salute. “I'll keep myself available, Mr. Jury.”

Jury returned the salute, but his expression was grim. As he and Wiggins started toward the door, Jury said, “I want you to go to Fengate, Wiggins. See what you can find out, probably the servants would be a good starting point. Take the car; I'll meet you there.”

“Seeing it isn't our case, sir—” Wiggins's tone registered discomfort with what was clearly not proper police procedure.

“Don't worry. They're extremely cooperative people. They certainly have been with me. Take the car. I'll meet you there in an hour or two.”

“What about you, sir? Where are you going?”

“I'm going to take a walk,” said Jury.

I
t was that ambiguous hour in the afternoon before dark, before dusk even, when the fens seemed to smoke beneath a layer of marsh gas. In the west the sky was an icy transparency, the early-risen moon was colorless as mist.

Out from under the roof of the Case Has Altered and the branches of old birch and one young oak showing its first green leaves, Jury stepped onto the public footpath. At this point it was muddy and lined on either side with buckthorn and sallow; it stretched before him across straight-furrowed fields to the left and the waterlogged pasture to his right. Across the field light itself was like water filling the furrowed grass. He wondered how near a river was—the Welland, the Ouse—and if its banks still overflowed. He wondered further if these flooded pastures showed him what the ancient marshlands had been like. No clouds, no wind. A vast emptiness. Except for Jury's footsteps, there was a complete absence of movement, as if he were the only sign of life in a becalmed universe. He might have been in a boat drifting without sails or rudder, without breezes. Then suddenly a tempest of birds blew upward from distant scrub or water. He felt as if he were setting off on a journey whose destination was not a shoreline glimmering with lights, but the edge of a continent shrouded in fog. Jury could not shake free from the notion of a painful foreshadowing of unhappy events. Looking up at the blank white sky and the limitless fields beyond, he felt all of this strongly.

The path was straight as a die and he wondered if it had once been a drove used by fenmen who cropped the sedge. He had been trudging for perhaps a quarter of a mile before he saw what could have been Wyndham
Fen off to the left. In all of this flatness, it looked as landscapes do in dreams, appearing suddenly and inexplicably.

He was wondering about Jack Price. And what he was wondering was whether his relationship with Jenny was more than either one of them—Jenny or Jack—had acknowledged. It told against her, he thought, more than anything else, that she had failed to disclose to the Lincolnshire police (failed to tell
him
, even) the nature of her relationship to Verna Dunn and about having known Jack Price. She would not keep such secrets from Pete Apted, that was certain. The evidence against her was circumstantial, true, but circumstantial had been known to convict defendants before.

He left this part of the public footpath and veered off to walk the roundabout way to the Visitors' Center. From there he took the boardwalk to the dike nearest the building where the body of Dorcas Reese had been found. Jury had seen it before, but still he stood in an almost reverent silence, prompted not only by the end of Dorcas Reese, but also by the place itself. What a poignant setting for murder, he thought, looking down at the quiet water, the marsh violets and yellow bladder-wort that blossomed above the water, the rush grass and marsh fern. He heard the reeds clicking at a little distance and saw a heron flapping upward, disturbed, perhaps by himself. Jury walked back along the boardwalk.

Like some ossified, prehistoric beast, stranded after the flood waters receded, the rusty white police caravan—the temporary incident room—sat at a little distance from the Visitors' Center. Its small squares of window glowed with a greenish light. He headed for it, through the reeds and grasses, past a willow holt where a gull swayed atop a willow pole and whistled away at his approach. Somewhere an owl cried. The water of the dikes lay dark gray and motionless as lead. None of it was congruent with the bright yellow crime scene tape that stretched around this part of the fen. There were of course no visitors today. He imagined anyone coming would have been turned back by police up nearer the A17.