The Case Has Altered (35 page)

For some reason, Melrose was surprised she knew the name. “Yes, I expect so. You know we're neighbors?”

“Yes. That beautiful manor house. I'm sure I've walked on your land. It's hard to tell where one leaves off and—”

“Be careful!” Melrose threw up his hands in mock horror. “Wear those neon stripes that joggers do and keep a good lookout. I have a grounds-keeper. At least that's what Momaday calls himself. He thinks himself a dab hand at shooting. Walks around with a shotgun broken—I hope—over his arm. Occasionally, I hear shots. Distant shots. I worry.”

She laughed. “I'll watch out for him. Do you walk a lot, too?”

“Absolutely.” Melrose was prompt with his lie. Which he modified a little with a bit of truth. “To the Jack and Hammer, that's a pleasant walk.” It wasn't really; it was boring. He added, “For my daily saturnalia. Actually, I lead a comparatively quiet and generally worthless life.”

“How pleasant. But what's this investigation Trevor Sly says you're doing? You can't be a detective, can you?”

“Do not put too much credence in anything Mr. Sly tells you. No, I'm not a detective. That's a friend of mine, name of Jury, who's the detective. He's with New Scotland Yard. A superintendent.”

“Really! And does he come here, to Northampton?”

“Watermeadows is really in Long Piddleton. Yes, he comes here. He was here on the Simon Lean business. And years ago, when we had a string of murders. It all started with a pub called Man with a Load of Mischief.”

“I've seen it. It sits up on that hill overlooking the village. But it's closed.”

Melrose told her that story. She didn't move; she barely breathed. Riveted. She said, “He sounds brilliant.” She was speaking of Richard Jury.

“Oh, he is—” Melrose began, enthusiastically. Then thought, Hold it! Let's not shift what little limelight there is! He sucked in breath, thinking, and said, “—at least he was. That sort of life takes its toll. It ages one
pretty early on, I think.” He took out his cigarettes. “You can't keep your mind working at fever pitch and not pay the price. And going at the pace Jury goes at, well, you begin to look pretty haggard, too.”

“I saw his picture.”

The chair Melrose had been rocking back on two legs clumped down. “Where? When?”

“Telegraph
. I just now remembered as you were talking. He didn't look at all haggard to me. He looked quite handsome.”

“Jury's very photogenic. But what was it about?” Jury wasn't the primary—hell, he wasn't even the secondary investigating officer in the Lincolnshire business. For him, it was all unofficial.

She squinted, trying to recollect. “It was . . . something about a Soho restaurateur. But I expect you know about it.”

Melrose hadn't a clue. Why the devil was Jury leading this double life, when he, Melrose, sat around in pubs, un-impressing people? “Oh, something of it. Not much. But I can tell you this—” He leaned forward across the table, pushing the camel matchbook holder to one side. “Did you read anything about the double-murder in Lincolnshire? Near Spalding?”

“Oh. Yes. The woman was an actress, or something. And the other was a servant, wasn't she? You had something to do with
that?”

It had been in all of the papers; he was not divulging any information that had not been made public, except for his own role as “appraiser.” He told her the story, and, as he did so, drew a small picture, a diagram of house and pub on a page of his notebook. He continued on another page with the location of the Wash, trying to describe to her the events of that night.

She went silent for some moments, her head leaning on her hand, still looking at the notebook pages.

“Is something wrong?” Melrose asked, when the extended silence began to eat at him.

“No. I'm only thinking.” She sat back then and looked up at the ceiling.

Stared up. The magnetic pull of someone's staring at something was irresistible. Melrose had to look too, even knowing there was nothing there but a ceiling fan. “Do you have some idea, or something?” The big fan
turned slowly and creakingly. The white globe in the middle was shadowed with the corpses of dead moths.

“This murdered woman left the grounds of the house and drove to the Wash.” Her face screwed up in a frown. “Isn't that an odd place to go?”

“Distinctly odd.”

“Why do the Lincolnshire police think that place was chosen?”

“To delay discovery of the body. People don't go there; it's not a beauty spot trod by tourists. For one thing, it's rather dangerous because of the mines still left from the Second World War. But also, it's a good spot because of tides and shifting sands. The body might well be covered.”

She looked at the diagram again. “What do you think? Could she have done it?”

It was his turn to be silent, now. He felt he should have been able immediately to dismiss such a question as too ridiculous. But he couldn't. Chief Inspector Bannen certainly didn't find it ridiculous. “To be honest—I don't know.” He was looking toward the bar and saw the big clock with its palm tree hands. He was amazed that it was nearly seven. He turned to her. “Look here, would you like to have dinner?”

Her smile lit up her face. “Oh, that's very nice of you, but I've already cooked dinner and it's rather special. It's a friend's birthday.” She started gathering her coat and scarf together.

“At least,” said Melrose, “let me offer you a ride.” Why did he feel slightly miffed he wasn't being invited to this party? Nor had there been mention of the sex of this “friend.” He rose and started around the table as she struggled out of the chair, but held back from actually putting out an arm for her to lean on. Instead he took the coat from her, helped her on with it.

“I'm saying no to that, too. See, I've got to walk. One reason I come here is for the walk.”

It was hard to feel slighted. But he did.

“May I take this page?” She picked up the notebook. “It's a puzzle I'd like to think more about.”

“Of course.” Melrose tore off the page, handed it to her.

She turned the page over. “There's notes on the back; do you need them?”

“No, they're not much use to me now.”

She frowned slightly, reading: “ ‘The Red Last.' What's ‘The Red Last'?”

“A pub in Lincolnshire. I mean it was a pub once, must've been. Now it looks like a private home. Just one of those weird inn names we like so much. Nobody seems to know what it means. Something to do with shoes, probably. The ‘last' of a shoe.”

She stared into the gloom for a moment. “Or ‘end.' ”

“What?”

“ ‘End,' you know, ‘final,' as one might say ‘women first, men last,' or ‘the white first, the red last.' ” She was looking at the piece of paper.

Melrose was astonished. “My lord. Of course. Why didn't I think of that?”

She shrugged. “We get set on a certain answer and it's nearly impossible to dislodge it, I think. If someone asks you to give the opposite of ‘left,' you'd say ‘right.' But the answer could as easily be ‘taken.' ‘Left,' ‘taken.' ”

“Well, that's certainly a turn-up.” It reminded him of something, but he couldn't think what. They walked to the door and outside and she bade him good-bye. Melrose stood leaning against the doorjamb, watching her make her slow progress along the unmade road. And then he stood straight, realizing he still didn't know her name. He called to her. She turned. “Do you mind if I call you Nancy?”

She seemed to be thinking about this. “No, I don't mind. My name's Flora, though.”

C
hief Inspector Bannen, would you kindly tell the court what you found when you arrived at the scene—” Here, Oliver Stant turned to a segment of a blowup of the Wash and another of that section where Verna Dunn's body was found.

The air outside Lincoln Castle where the court convened had the softness of a near-spring day, which contrasted with the building's bleak and cold interior. The place took its emotional coloring from the tensions, frustrations, sadness of the beleaguered whose business was conducted there. Melrose had begun to feel a sadness emanating from the corridors as soon as he'd walked in.

Bannen nodded. “We found the body of a woman lying in the saltings in that part of the Wash called ‘Fosdyke Wash.' It's the area nearest the village of Fosdyke. The ‘Wash'—as it's commonly known—is a shallow bay on the Lincolnshire and Norfolk coastline. Technically, a ‘wash' is the area between water and bank which permits an inrushing of water, and in this way prevents flooding, or tries to. The body was found on the sand, lying facedown in a small pool of water. She'd been shot in the chest.”

“The weapon was—?”

“A rifle, twenty-two caliber.”

“And you deduced the victim, Verna Dunn, had got there—?”

“By car, her own car, a Porsche. We found tread marks up beyond the seawall, back some distance. The killer left the body there and then, presumably, drove the car back to Fengate. At least”—Bannen hastened to add before Apted was fully on his feet—“that same car was seen back at
the bottom of the drive around twelve-thirty. It had been moved, according to the gardener, moved, that is, from its original position.”

“And would it have been possible to make this trip, murder the victim, return to Fengate within, say, fifty minutes?”

“Yes.”

“An unlikely place to choose for murder, wouldn't you say?”

“Yes. That's what makes me wonder—”

Oliver Stant was quick to cut this line off. “Could one explanation be that—?”

Pete Apted got to his feet: “We'd prefer to hear any explanation come from the witness alone, Your Honor, rather than from the prosecution.”

His Lordship agreed.

Stant put the statement as a question. “Why might this place have been chosen?”

“I'd say because of the tides and the shifting sands. The tide would certainly have carried the body out to sea, or the sands prevented its ever being discovered. Neither happened.”

“Now, the defendant has claimed that after leaving Verna Dunn outside in the drive, she took the public footpath which runs past Fengate to a pub called the Case Has Altered.”

Bannen nodded. Anticipating the next question, he said: “The pub is somewhat under a mile from Fengate, about seventh-eighths of a mile.”

“The defendant claimed that, in order to ‘walk off her anger,' she took the footpath, intending to stop in at the pub. Would you consider that reasonable?”

Bannen permitted himself a ghost of a smile. “It's not totally unreasonable. The hour was late, though, and the pub would have been closing before she got to it.”

“You say the Case Has Altered is approximately a mile—”

“A little less, seven-eighths,” said Bannen with a trace of impatience. Hadn't he been exact?

Oliver Stant nodded. “Now, could you tell us how far the Wash is from Fengate?”

“Perhaps three miles.”

The prosecutor continued: “Mr. Bannen, had Jennifer Kennington ever walked this public footpath before?”

“Oh, yes. Twice, I believe she said, with the Owens. The second time had been that very afternoon. After lunch, she—Lady Kennington, that is—told me. The Owens confirmed this.”

“So the defendant knew how far it was and how much time it would take to get there?”

“Presumably. As to time, that is. Walking at a not-too-energetic pace, twenty minutes, or so. It's impossible to gauge with any precision how long it would take a certain person to walk it.”

Melrose listened as Bannen recounted the events of that night, a methodical retelling of the actions undertaken by police. An ideal witness. Calm, methodical, unimpressed by his surroundings or himself. Melrose had an idea that the only thing that did impress Bannen was the moment when he came upon the truth of a matter. Something told Melrose that the chief inspector, in this case, wasn't certain he had stumbled upon it yet. Melrose turned his attention to Jenny, seated in the dock. He felt an absence, her absence. She was there but not there. As if she had come and gone, said hello and good-bye all in an instant.

“—so that time it took to walk to the pub and back would have been only a little less than the amount of time it would take to drive to the Wash and return to Fengate. And, in between, to shoot the victim.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Bannen, what particular circumstances led you to charge Jennifer Kennington with this crime?” Here, Oliver Stant turned, rather dramatically, to look at Jenny.

“Well, of course the evidence isn't conclusive—”

Apted rose quickly. “Isn't material, don't you mean?”

This time the judge was sincerely aggrieved and Oliver Stant made the most of Apted's interruption. Bannen, however, smiled and answered the charge. “
In
conclusive evidence is almost necessarily not material. It's circumstantial. I didn't think I needed to say that the circumstantial evidence is inconclusive. That's a bit redundant.”

Melrose's heart sank. Bannen was as cool a customer as Apted.

“Continue, please,” said Stant.

“Jennifer Kennington had opportunity, had motive—the only one with motive, insofar as we know—and was the last person we know of to see Verna Dunn alive, and witnesses—the Owens—can tell us they were having quite a heated quarrel. I felt this sufficient evidence to charge the defendant with Verna Dunn's murder.”

“Now, Chief Inspector: since Mr. Apted has raised this point, perhaps we can address it: the matter of ‘circumstantial' evidence and its dependability. What is it that circumstantial evidence neglects to provide? What does it fail to bring forth?”