The Dirty Duck (10 page)

. . . Who hastily rose, collecting his cigarette case and stick. Lady Dew and murder did not seem at all convivial. He felt the need of a little talk with Jack the Ripper. “Thank you for your time, Lady Dew.”

“Call me Vi—oh, hell's bells, here she comes, the Lady with the Lamp.”

Cyclamen, headache better, was crossing the room, looking horribly determined. “Din-dins, Aunt Violet,” she fluted.

“Get me a gin.”

With a gracious farewell, Melrose left where he'd come in.

J
ury found George Cholmondeley in the Welcombe Hotel's dining room, his corner table bathed in a gauze of light streaming through the high window behind him.

“Mr. Cholmondeley?”

The handsome man looked up at Jury.

“Superintendent Jury, Scotland Yard CID. Could I have a word with you?”

Cholmondeley smiled a little coldly and indicated the chair across from him. “I expect if I said no, you'd turn right around and go away.”

Jury returned the smile with a genuine one of his own. “But you're not going to say no, are you? Sergeant Lasko has already talked to you.”

Cholmondeley nodded. “Care for something? Coffee? Tea?” he asked quite civilly. Dressed in an Italian silk suit, a watery taupe shade that matched his eyes. Cholmondeley was a very handsome man. The fair coloring, the artistically thin fingers now engaged in boning a trout, the languid air which was vaguely decadent—all of this would appeal to women. Iced in a bucket beside him was a Château Haut-Brion.

The man was clearly not a middle-class clerk who had to save up for a year for a two-week holiday in the summer.

Jury said no to the coffee and tea, and to the wine, when Cholmondeley raised the bottle to replenish his own glass. “How well did you know Gwendolyn Bracegirdle, Mr. Cholmondeley?”

“Hardly at all. Certainly I was distressed to hear what had happened to her, though.” The distress did not seem to affect his appetite. He ate the fish with considerable relish.

“What were her relations with the other members of your group?”

Cholmondeley looked up, vaguely puzzled. “Well, I couldn't say. She spent quite a lot of time with the Dew woman. The younger one, that is.” He broke off a bit of roll, dabbed it with butter. “Why do you want to know
that?”

Jury shrugged. He did not want to put Cholmondeley on his guard any more than he might already be. “Well, we've got to start somewhere.”

Cholmondeley frowned. “Then why not start with the seamier side of Stratford underlife? The Most Wanted list? Why start with Honeysuckle Tours? And, incidentally, why Scotland Yard? I should think Warwickshire has an adequate constabulary.”

“It's got a very good one. But to answer your questions. Stratford hasn't much of a seamy side. Of course, we're checking all possible sources—but one is inclined to believe that murderers are usually close to home.”

Perhaps, but we're none of us home, are we?” Cholmondeley polished off his fish, took out a cigarette case. “What I mean is, I'm surprised you would think—as you apparently do—one of us had something to do with it.”

Lasko must have made more of an impression than, perhaps, was good. “It's early days for us to be thinking much of anything, Mr. Cholmondeley—”

Cholmondeley gave him a sharp glance that said he didn't believe a word of this as he lit his cigarette and then leaned back, apparently all at ease.

“—but surely the members of a group with whom Miss Bracegirdle had been at pretty close quarters for a month could throw some light on her character, personality, habits, friends . . . ?” said Jury.

“Not I. I barely passed the time of day with the woman.” And he gazed off through the light-saturated window as if the only thing either of them had on their minds was a stroll through the hotel's gardens.

“Who did you pass the time with, then?” asked Jury pleasantly. “Mrs. Farraday, maybe?”

That got just the reaction Jury wanted: massive annoyance. The man had been too glib, too unconcerned up to now, and consequently, too confident. “I beg your pardon? And who's been saying that?”

The arrow must have struck home. Otherwise, Cholmondeley wouldn't have assumed that
anyone
had been saying “that.” Having seen Amelia Farraday, it would be hard to believe Cholmondeley wouldn't have had some attraction for her and she for him. A little tour romance, when Farraday was looking the other way. Jury smiled. “No one, really. It's just that Mrs. Farraday is a very attractive woman.”

“Also a very married one.”

“Does that mean anything these days?”

Cholmondeley did not answer, just kept looking, turned to one side, out the window.

Jury dropped the subject of that possible liaison. “Did anyone on the tour appear to dislike Miss Bracegirdle?”

“Not to my knowledge. To me she wasn't the sort one likes or dislikes, really. I found her a bit too . . . effervescent. You know. Too much talk, too many bubbles.”

“So you
did
talk to her?”

“Well, of course. Chatter about the weather, that sort of thing.” Impatiently, he flicked cigarette ash toward the glass tray.

“Were there any bad feelings among certain members of the group?”

“Only the usual spats and minor jealousies. What one might expect.”

“I've never taken a tour. I don't know what one might expect.”

“You're being awfully literal, Superintendent.”

“I never saw a murder solved through metaphor.”

Cholmondeley sighed heavily. “Oh, very well. Naturally, there was trouble with the boy—there always is with children. The Farraday boy—James Carlton, I think his name is—liked to wander off.”

“Um. He seems to have wandered off again.”

Cholmondeley did not seem especially surprised. “They're used to it, the parents. Had a hard time rounding him up once or twice. Funny boy.” Cholmondeley shrugged the problem off; it was none of his. “And then of course there is the generally quite hideous Lady Dew. Lady Violet Dew.”

“I haven't had the pleasure.”

“No pleasure, I assure you. She lives in Florida and comes back once a year to whip her relatives into shape. They must love her having control of the pursestrings.”

“She confided in you?”

“She confided in
everybody.”

“What about Schoenberg?”

Cholmondeley poured himself another tot of wine. “Queer duck. Really, it's rather hard talking to him, since he talks mostly in computerese. RAMS and ROMS and so forth. But he gets on like a house-afire with the Farraday boy. A very intelligent lad, actually; I'm not surprised he outsmarted his parents so often.”

“Farraday?”

“What about him? Pleasant, I suppose. Too loud for my tastes. A lot of money which he probably made too quickly and doesn't know how to
spend fast enough. The two daughters loathe one another, of course. I feel rather sorry for the ugly duckling.”

“Do you mean Penny?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, obviously not Miss Peaches-and-Cream.” And he looked at Jury as if his taste in women probably matched his taste in ties: dull.

“Have a bit of trouble with Honey Belle?” Jury smiled.

“Now you think I'm a child molester?”

“I was thinking of the molesting coming from the other side.”

At least Cholmondeley offered a more genuine smile than before. “A little, yes.”

“But not Miss Bracegirdle? She didn't give you any trouble?”

Cholmondeley gave him a look of absolute astonishment. “Well, good lord, no. You mean no one's twigged that but me?”

“Meaning what?”

“Gwendolyn is—I mean was—as they say in America, queer as a three-dollar bill. So's Cyclamen Dew.”

 • • • 

It took Jury a moment to digest this information. “Is that why, do you think, they went off together at times?”

Cholmondeley obviously enjoyed having just thrown a spanner into the works. “If Miss Bracegirdle had a heavy date, it wasn't necessarily with a man. That's all I'm suggesting.” He looked out of the window again, unconcern written all over his face. “Certainly, I'm not trying to implicate anyone.”

The hell you're not
“How are you so sure of all this, Mr. Cholmondeley? I mean, that both are—were—lesbians.”

“My dear fellow,” said Cholmondeley, in that has-your-naiveté-no-bounds tone, “you'd only got to
look
at them—”

“My first sight of Gwendolyn Bracegirdle wouldn't have told me that,” said Jury coldly.

Cholmondeley had the grace to redden slightly. “No, I realize that. Well, besides . . .”

“Yes? Besides what?”

“It sounds terribly vain, I realize, but . . .”

His voice seemed to drift away on the tendril of smoke from the cigarette he stabbed into the ashtray. And he had the grace to blush again.

“Neither of them was interested in you, you mean?”

Cholmondeley nodded. “Look, I don't mean to suggest I've got the charisma of Mick Jagger—”

Jury smiled. “A bit long in the tooth now, isn't he? Mick Jagger?” He couldn't decide whether he liked Cholmondeley or not. The man kept slipping through his fingers, like the fine Italian silk suit Cholmondeley was wearing.

“True. I wasn't trying to charm anyone. Women like me, that's all. But those two didn't even know I was alive.”

It seemed a simple statement of fact: women liked him. Jury wasn't surprised. He only wondered how much advantage Cholmondeley took of that fact. “That doesn't extend to Amelia Farraday, though? Or even her daughter?”

He snorted. “For God's sakes, I don't need to rob cradles. And as for Mrs. Farraday, I really don't see as how it makes any odds—”

“It might. I appreciate your sense of delicacy; however, it could be important—your relationship with Mrs. Farraday.”

“Why? What's that got to do with anything?”

Jury shrugged. “I guess that's for us to decide.”

“I wish I knew what the hell you're getting at. Should I have my solicitor present?”

Jury bestowed upon Cholmondeley a perfectly innocent smile. “Beats me. Should you?”

“You know, Superintendent, you're an unnerving man. You don't
seem
to want to intimidate me. And yet—”

“I'll bet your nerves can hold up under pretty strenuous questioning. Look, Mr. Cholmondeley,”—Jury leaned forward, shoving aside the napkin-covered basket of rolls—“I'm simply asking for your help. I don't give a damn what was going on between you and Mrs. Farraday” (if Cholmondeley believed that, he was a fool) “but I think it's important we understand the relationships between the people on Honeysuckle Tours—”

“Terrible name, isn't it? And have you met Mr. Honeycutt, our guide? Our amanuensis?” His look at Jury was somewhat apprehensive, although he tried to hide it beneath this overlay of superciliousness.

“Yes. He didn't say anything about you.”

Nor could Cholmondeley hide his relief beneath his offhand comment: “Guess I'm just not Honeycutt's cup of tea.”

“Maybe. But why were you on the tour in the first place?”

That caught him off guard, as Jury meant it to. “I beg your pardon? Because I wanted a bit of a holiday.”

Jury took from his pocket what appeared to be scrolls of paper, managing to give the impression that each had Cholmondeley's name at the top. “You're a dealer in precious stones?”

“Yes. It looks like you've a good deal of information there about me.”

“This tour went to Amsterdam.”

Cholmondeley frowned. “Many tours go to Amsterdam.
Most
tours that do this sort of London-Paris circuit. It's one of the easiest and nearest places on the Continent to get to. Directly across to the Hook of Holland—”

“Do you happen to have your passport handy, Mr. Cholmondeley?”

Now Cholmondeley looked utterly confused. Apparently ready to refute or refuse confidences about his new lady-love, this new line of questioning had taken him aback. He drew out his passport, tossed it on the table.

Jury looked at the visa stamps. The pages were full. Passing it back to Cholmondeley, all he said was, “Thanks.” He returned the passport.

Cholmondeley sat there turning a silver knife over and over, looking at Jury. “I don't know what you're getting at. As far as this tour's concerned, all I can say is, we come from different parts of the world, have never met before, know nothing about one another—and you're making it appear that one of
us
is lurking about, waiting to get at the others.” He tried to smile, but his smile seemed to break in two. Apparently it was a novel and most unwelcome notion: “One of
us?”

M
elrose Plant sat morosely in his seat in the Dress Circle wishing he were out there looking at a real bloody corpse rather than waiting for Hamlet to litter the stage with fake ones.

The theatre was as full as it had been last night. He was fortunate to have got a seat in the first row; he was damned if he was going to miss the second half again—

Was that his name being called? As he peered over the brass railing at the stalls, he also thought he heard the name echo from behind. The Memorial Theatre was supposed to be an acoustical marvel: his name seemed to be coming from all directions.

“Hey, Mel!”

Ah, yes. About a dozen rows up sat Harvey Schoenberg, waving frantically. Melrose returned the wave with a vague gesture.

“Melrose!”

Good God, there was Agatha down there, standing in front of her seat also waving, but with both arms, as if she were directing the lift-off of a 747.

Had he known she was coming to this evening's performance, he would have torn up his ticket. His attempt to ignore her only resulted in her trying harder to get his attention, and now the people around him were giving him chilly looks. Would his performance be competing with Hamlet's?