The Black Cat

1

It was already in the bloody London tabloids, the case not yet three days old and his own face plastered all over the paper when it was really Thames Valley police, and not the Met, not he, who owned the case.

Superintendent Richard Jury, high-ranking detective with the Metropolitan police, but without much feeling for rank, and who’d climbed the ladder without much feeling for the rungs, found himself at the moment in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, in a mortuary looking down at the body of an as yet unidentified woman.

What had made it so fascinating, he supposed, was not simply that the glamorous girl (woman, surely, only “Glam Girl” made much better copy) had been shot dead in the grounds of a pub not far away, in Chesham, but that forty-eight hours on, they hadn’t discovered who she was.

Jury looked at her and wondered why the portrait of Chatter-ton came to mind; then he remembered Millais had also painted Ophelia, or his idea of her. And there was that larger concept that had looked so familiar-the Pre-Raphaelite period-that Romantic period of Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Millais, and rich fantasy, vibrant colors, and the death of youth. The Pre-Raphaelites were really into dying young.

Dr. Pindrop. Jury loved the name, although it didn’t suit the doctor. Silence was not the doctor’s milieu. He sputtered a lot, showing signs of being about to erupt but managing not to do so.

“Two shots,” said Pindrop, “one missing the vital organs-” Here he pointed at the badly wounded shoulder in case Jury was blind. “It was the second one in the chest that did for her.”

Jury nodded, said nothing, tried to memorize the woman’s classically sculpted face.

“Superintendent?”

Jury looked up.

“You’ve had a right good look. Can I cover her up now?”

Jury assumed the irritation was for the usual reason: why was New Scotland Yard sending people round? “No. Leave it for a moment.” Jury continued his “right good look.” A.38 had done the job, according to forensic. No gun had been found, a couple of casings had.

The doctor had shown him the clothes she’d been wearing, designer dress, shoes, small handbag.

“Label’s messed up. Looks like Lanvin. That’s the French chap.”

“No. Saint Laurent. The other one.”

Pindrop smirked. “Oh. You know this French lot, do you?”

“I know a lot of things.” Jury wanted to laugh.

The doctor gave a Dr.-Watson-as-played-by-Nigel-Bruce sort of grunt-laugh.

The dress was beautiful. It was sedate and yet not. The neckline consisted of layered ruffles. The sleeves were transparent as glass, reaching nearly to the elbow. The dress was the same color as her hair, a burnt orange. It was made of silk or air. He’d never seen a dress that looked so decorous and so sexy at the same time. The shoes were designed by Jimmy Choo. That name was writ large across the instep of a sandal of exquisitely crisscrossed, narrow leather ribbons of iridescent copper. The bag was Alexander McQueen. Jury didn’t know him but imagined he ran with the others, along Upper Sloane Street. All of this getup would run to a couple thousand quid, he bet.

“Expensive,” said the doctor. “Must’ve been well-fixed.”

“Or someone was.” He looked up. “Do you live in Chesham?”

“No. In Amersham. Old Amersham, not the one on the hill.”

A proud distinction, apparently. “You can’t say if she’s a local, then?”

Dr. Pindrop ran his hand through thinning hair. Jury figured him to be at the back end of his sixties. “I’d swear I’d seen her before.”

This surprised Jury, since the doctor brought this out with a bit of sympathy that he hadn’t shown until now.

“She looks familiar to you.” This at least was something.

“Yes, for some reason. Perhaps she is a local. If not Chesham, perhaps Amersham, Berkhamsted… well, you know.”

“I’m not familiar with the area.”

The doctor pulled up the sheet and dropped it over her face. “Then why did they want you?”

2

It was the same question Jury had posed and Detective Chief Superintendent Racer had answered, or rather half-answered. “Because they asked.”

Oh, well, thought Jury. He waited for Racer to embellish. Racer didn’t. “That’s it? That’s all? Who’s ‘they’? And why? Thames Valley is the best, certainly the biggest nonmetropolitan police force in the country, and they need us?”

Racer flapped his hand at Jury the imbecile. “No, no. Of course they’re perfectly capable. Chief constable’s a friend of mine. Discretion. You know how it is.” He started shuffling the papers on his desk, which wasn’t easy, as there were only three or four.

Again, Jury waited. The “why?” was still in abeyance, though he was the only one to realize this, apparently. He let it pass. “When did all of this happen?”

“You mean this woman’s murder? On the Saturday night, as far as they can make out.”

Jury looked at him. “Today is Monday.”

“I’ve got a calendar, man; I know what day it is.” Shuffle, shuffle.

And he also knew perfectly well how cold the trail was by now.

Racer glared. “I’m sorry we can’t have a perfectly fresh body for you, lad. But there it is. Enough time’s been wasted-”

As if Jury were the waster.

“So you’d better get your skates on. They’re putting her on hold.”

On hold. As if this poor woman had been making a phone call rather than being murdered.

“Chesham. Near Amersham in Bucks. I’ll give police there a jingle, have somebody pick you up.”

“That’s all you can tell me, then, about this murdered woman? But if Thames Valley police don’t know who she is, I fail to see the need to be discreet.”

“You’re no master of discretion yourself, man!” came the non sequitur.

3

Detective Sergeant David Cummins of the Thames Valley CID met Jury at the Chesham underground stop. The underground was a godsend for the residents here who worked in London. To be let off driving in London traffic was a miracle, in addition to the weary businessman’s being able to lead a bucolic life out here in almost-country.

DS Cummins had kindly darted into the café by the station to purchase tea for Jury. Cummins was obviously impressed, not only to get a CID man from New Scotland Yard, but a detective superintendent, no less. They don’t come much higher than that.

Jury didn’t bother telling him that his boss was higher than that. He wondered when the last time was that Racer had actually worked a case.

“What can you tell me?”

Cummins took a deep breath, as if he were going to let loose a long and intricate story. “Not much, sir. Taxi picked her up at Chesham station, said she had him drop her at the Black Cat. Told her he’d get as close as he could; it’s because the roadworks had burst pipes along the street and in front of the pub.”

Cummins went on: “According to him she didn’t say anything about a party or anything else. You’ll want to talk to him, I expect. The body was found by a woman who’d been walking this way with her dog, an Emily Devere.”

“A local?”

“No. She lives in Amersham.”

“But she was walking her dog in Chesham?”

“It’s a public footpath that she especially likes. And the Black Cat’s always been a favorite, she says.”

Jury guessed the attraction was more pub than path.

“Did you get anything helpful from her?”

Cummins shook his head. “She was pretty rattled by the whole thing. She couldn’t raise anyone in the pub, so she called police on her mobile.”

“What way did she come onto the patio and tables?”

“She often came round from the footpath, walked behind the pub, and then up to the back and the patio through the trees. It’s not really a wood, is it? Just the trees behind the pub. Said she saw a cat, a black cat, run off into the trees. Probably the pub cat.” Cummins plowed on. “Now, as to the party idea: a well-to-do couple named Rexroth were throwing a pretty big one at their home, and it’s near the pub. Deer Park House. According to them, they’d never seen the woman, didn’t know anything about her. I’m pretty sure they were being truthful.”

“Just how big a party?”

“Eighty or more, probably more. On that score they were a bit vague.”

Jury smiled. “If I had eighty people around, I’d be more than vague; I’d be dead drunk.”

Cummins liked the levity. “There was plenty of that, too, they said. Good-natured couple, the Rexroths.”

“Then they’ll be glad to see us.”

The Black Cat was on the Lycrome Road, on the edge of Chesham. They were by then pulling into the small car park. The pub itself was pale yellow-washed, pleasant and unassuming. “Do Not Cross” tape cordoned off the back of it.

“Place has been closed off since,” said Cummins, “but I expect that’ll be taken down now. No reason to interfere with business any more than’s necessary. Owners are on an extended holiday, and it’s being looked after by a friend of theirs. Name’s Sally Hawkins and she lives in Beaconsfield but helps out if they need it. Her niece, I think the child is, lives with her.”

Jury turned from the small collection of trees to look at the pub. “Is Ms. Hawkins in?”

“Should be. I called to tell her you’d want a word with her. She wasn’t happy.”

“They never are. Show me where the Devere woman found the body.”

They walked across the car park and a patch of grass, wet and in need of cutting, to a patio where several tables were set out for the use of the customers in fine weather. Each had an umbrella on it, furled now. On one of them lay a black cat, also furled, thought Jury, curled tightly and peacefully sleeping. Jury ran his hand along the cat’s back. “Hello, cat,” he said. To Cummins: “Pub cat?”

“I shouldn’t wonder. Well, they’d have to have a black cat, now, wouldn’t they?”

The place looked deserted, but any place would, thought Jury, with a streamer of police tape across its car park.

“It was this table here,” said Cummins, moving to the table farthest from the car park. “She must’ve been sitting at it, we can’t be sure, but she was found sprawled behind it. Body was lying mostly on the patio, shoulders and head on the grass. It was as if she’d fallen off the seat at the impact. Forensic say the shooter was probably standing, given the path of the bullet, the way it hit the victim.” Cummins raised his hand, simulated a gun pointing downward.

“Drinks on the table?”

Cummins shook his head. “No. Nothing.”

“It would seem, then, they weren’t friends sharing a quiet drink together.”

Cummins looked at him. “It would certainly seem they weren’t friends.”

Jury smiled; he liked the mild put-down. “Suppose we have a word with Ms. Hawkins.”

They went through the door at the side, near the stone terrace, into a little hall and then into the bar. The room was long, narrow, not especially large, but certainly pleasant. Jury heard the tapping of high heels on stairs and a blond woman came into the room.

She wasn’t bad-looking, only a bit hard. Her eyes were like slate, her blond hair brassy, weighed down with the extra color that came out of a bottle. “Saw you two messing about outside, so I thought I’d better come down.”

DS Cummins told Sally Hawkins who Jury was. “He’d just like to put a few questions to you about the Saturday night.”

She tossed a lock of yellow hair from her shoulder. “Well, I told you what I know, which is sod-all. I’m having a drink, me. You want something?” Without much interest in the answer, she went behind the bar, expertly flipped a glass down from a rack, and placed it under the optic that held one of the lesser-quality gins.

Jury wouldn’t have expected her to be drinking Sambuca with coffee beans floating on top. He sat down on one of the bar stools. Cummins stood. “I’m sorry to be covering the same territory that you’ve already gone over, probably more than once,” said Jury. “But things can always use a fresh perspective.”

Her grunt said she didn’t agree, but she drank her gin happily enough.

“You’re here just temporarily?”

She nodded.

“You have a niece who lives with you?”

“Not a niece; she’s by way of being a ward.”

A vague designation, he thought, for a little girl’s life. He waited, but she didn’t enlarge upon “by way of being.”

“Is she here now?”

“No. She’s in Bletchley at her cousin’s. She’ll be here later tonight. I sent her off when that happened.” Here, Sally Hawkins dipped her head toward the car park.

“Bletchley?” said Jury. “I’m going there with a friend. Bletchley Park. I expect you know it.”

“Place where they messed about with codes during the war? Sounds bloody boring to me. What I want to know is, when are they taking down that tape out there? Don’t I ever get the gawkers, though?”

Cummins said, “It should be down this evening, I expect. But you can understand the need for it; we don’t want people trampling up the scene.”

“Well, who’s going to trample it, I’d like to know, what with that roadworks out there mucking about? Business is down over seventy-five percent because of that lot. No one could park until today. They’ve had it blocked off for nearly a week. I tell you.”

She shook her head at a world bent on making her miserable; then, with nothing left to complain about, she sank further into discontent, pulling a cigarette out of a pack on the bar.

Jury asked, “Had you ever seen the woman before or had any idea who she was?”

“Course not. It’s what I told the bloody police. I don’t know what she was doing out there.”

“There was a party Saturday night at…” Jury looked at DS Cummins.

“Rexroths’. Deer Park House, just up the road.”

Jury went on: “Given the way the woman was dressed, the thought is she might have been there, or been going there.”

“Funny old way to be going,” said Sally, giving Jury a big helping of smoke right in his face. “In those shoes. I don’t think so.”

“You’re right there. Jimmy Choo,” said Cummins.

“Ha!” said Sally. “Would you listen to him.” Her glass standing empty, she turned back to the optics.

Cummins’s face flushed a little. “It’s the wife. She’s really into shoes. Loves them.”

“Well, let’s hope she loves you more, dearie,” said Sally, back turned. “Those shoes cost the earth.” She turned back to them, her glass holding two fingers of gin.

“She could have been at the Black Cat to meet someone. Was there anyone in the pub, any stranger, on the Saturday night?” But if the “stranger” was planning murder, he’d have avoided putting himself on display.

Sally tapped ash from her cigarette into the aluminum tray. “Ha! Any stranger? Not even the regulars were here except for Johnny Boy and his old dog and Mrs. Maltese.”

When Jury looked at Cummins, the sergeant nodded. “Police have talked to them. No joy, no one saw a thing. No one was in the car park, no one sitting at the tables outside.”

“Was there any other function around that might have called for dressing up?”

“Not bloody likely,” said Sally.

The woman must have been bound for the Deer Park House party, then, going to or coming back. Despite the hosts’ denying they knew her. It was quite possible they didn’t, but it was also possible she was a guest, invited or not, perhaps the lady friend of someone who was invited. It made sense. You don’t put on Yves Saint Laurent, Jimmy Choo, and Alexander McQueen, then take a train and a cab only to go to the Black Cat. Look: meet me at the pub before you go to the party. Or after, or during. Just slip away. I can’t go there, after all. Why would the killer want to meet the victim in a public place? Because the victim would not have agreed to meet otherwise? The Black Cat was a good venue. Even on a Saturday night, it wouldn’t have been crowded.

“Thank you, Sally,” said Jury. “I might think of something else and be in contact with you.”

“I’m sure you will; police always think of something else.” But she said it in a good-natured way, and they left by the same door they’d entered.

They crunched across the gravel, Jury saying, “My guess is she wasn’t involved; she hasn’t enough passion for it.”

“I dunno.” David Cummins sighed. “People can fool you.”

“Enough have.” Jury moved to the table and patted the cat’s head. “What about the Rexroths, then?”

“They own Deer Park House, as I said. There’s a Deer Park Road, but the house isn’t on it; it’s across Lycrome Road and back a bit. If the woman was headed there, the Rexroths say they’d no knowledge of it.”

“Let’s have a talk with them.”

Cummins got out his mobile.

The black cat looked up, its amber eyes staring intently into Jury’s gray ones.

Did you see anything?

Jury tried to send the cat a message.

Tell me.

The black cat closed its eyes and told him nothing.

4

The Rexroths, Kit and Tip (and it was a challenge to remember which was he and which she), were an elderly British couple in tweeds and cashmere and sensible shoes. One could tell they were given to stout walks along public footpaths, their complexions telling they’d been up and out, meeting every dewy morning of their long lives.

“You wouldn’t think, would you, I mean to look at us, that we’re the hub of Chesham’s social scene?” Kit Rexroth’s eyes were glittery as sequins.

The Rexroths were old and reed thin. Flutes could have been made of their limbs. “I can imagine it. You seem to be as lively as people half your age.” Jury hoped that didn’t sound condescending; people fell into condescension so often with the old, but not always with the old and rich, as if it were quite remarkable to find them alive at all and they had to be dealt with gently.

He was struck by the way Tip and Kit seemed to operate in tandem, a couple of tap dancers: their feet in perfect step, hats tilted forward, canes gliding smoothly over fingers. Jury smiled; he’d never seen a couple so synchronized. If one of them thought murder a good idea, both would commit it.

“You’re here,” said Kit, raising her coffee cup as if to toast the fact, “about the murder.”

“Yes, I am. Oh, no, thanks-” This was addressed to Tip, who was holding the coffeepot aloft. Cummins, though, accepted a cup.

“I know you’ve talked to Detective Sergeant Cummins, but I’d just like to get the picture clearer in my own mind. This woman was wearing a dress by Saint Laurent, an apricot color. Her hair was almost that same color, a darkish ginger. She was about five feet eight. Quite beautiful. The crime scene pictures don’t really do her justice. Are you up for having a look?”

They nodded with a rather inappropriate enthusiasm.

Jury set out the least morbid of the photos.

Kit Rexroth looked at it, bending across the hands hugging her knees and bringing her face nearly level with the table. Jury wondered if she was shortsighted.

“You know, she does look a bit familiar… Does she to you, Tip?” She pushed the photo toward him.

Tip grunted, looked again, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Don’t think so… still…” He turned the photo this way and that, looked hard at it. Then he shook his head. “No.”

Jury picked up the photo and said, “Yours appeared to be the only party in town, at least of the formal sort.”

“How enthralling,” said Kit Rexroth. “You’re thinking she was here.” Kit was shaking her head. “A woman like that, well, I think someone would have paraded her, not stuck her out on the terrace with a gin and a promise.”

Jury said, “How many people were here?”

“Oh, eighty? Something like that,” said Kit. “Though we only invited half that crowd.” She sounded extraordinarily pleased.

That comment only made it even more likely that the dead woman had been headed here, invited or not, for neither of the Rexroths seemed to be sure of who was at the party.

“We have the sort of brawl where people end up spilling out of windows.”

They both laughed.

“That could get messy, Mr. Rexroth.”

Now they looked startled, then saw Jury was joking and laughed again.

“What about the neighbors?” said Cummins. “Don’t you get complaints?”

“We would do,” said Kit, “except the neighbors were here!”

There was another peal of laughter. Jury wondered if the Rexroths were entertaining themselves to death.

“I wonder if I could have a copy of your guest list-”

Cummins broke in: “We’ve got that, sir. Sorry, I should have given it to you.”

Kit waved her hand. “Oh, that’s no problem. Here, I copied it for you.” She handed over pages that had been on the coffee table.

It was a sheaf of paper, rather than a sheet, with names written in longhand.

“It’s divided. Our friends and Tip’s colleagues in the City. He works in Cannon Street. First, there are the people we actually extended invitations to; next, the guests our guests asked if they could bring; next, the guests who brought people they hadn’t asked if they could bring; then, the people who dropped in that one or the other of us might have invited but couldn’t remember, or meant to invite… well, you know what I mean-”

Jury didn’t.

“-and then Tip’s drinking friends at every pub in the City; then, the people we didn’t know were coming but that we sighted in the course of the evening-” Here she put her hand over her eyes as if she were actually standing on a ship’s bow, searching the horizon.

Jury leafed through the pages. Were there this many people in London? “If this woman was bound for your party, perhaps she was in the category of a date invited by one of your guests. Was anyone looking out for someone who never came?”

Kit and Tip both frowned in thought. “No, I don’t recall… there was Neal, wasn’t there?” said Kit, looking at her husband. “Wasn’t he asking about some girl?”

“Um. Yes, I believe you’re right.”

Cummins said, “That’d be the Neal Carver you mentioned before.”

The Rexroths looked at Cummins. “Did we?” said Kit. “Well, then I expect that’s right. And Rudy… Rudy-what’s his last name?”

Tip thought about it but came up empty. “Should be on the list.”

Cummins said, “I believe you told me it was Lands, Rudy Lands.”

“Oh?” said Tip, eyebrows raised, as if it were Cummins, not he, who had invited Rudy.

Jury smiled. The Rexroths were a bit too vague and suggestible for his tastes. He glanced at Cummins, nodded. They both rose. “Thanks very much. We’ll be in touch.”

In the car, Jury said, “What about this Neal Carver and Rudy Lands?”

“We talked to both. The Lands fellow said his girl turned out to have gotten sick; Carver was supposed to have collected his date at her flat in Chelsea. A Miss Helen Brown-Headly. A short brunette who forgot completely about the party, et cetera. She’s not our girl.

“Also, I rang Emily Devere, the woman who actually found the body, and she’s happy to see you.”

“Is she enjoying this as much as the Rexroths seem to be?”

Cummins laughed. “Oh, yes.”

It was getting on toward dinnertime, Emily Devere told him, but not to worry, that meant she could extend the cocktail hour, and would he like a drink? Her brown-and-white dog, like a box on legs, gave Jury a sour look that said he should refuse if he knew what was good for him.

Jury thanked her but declined. “Don’t let me stop you, though,” he added.

“As if you could.” Emily Devere poured herself a whiskey, plunked in an ice cube, and sat down across from him. Miss Devere had pointed out that this house was not in Amersham-on-the-Hill but in Amersham Old Town.

“I’m a snob, but still it’s a matter of history, you see. I prefer mine as old as possible. Like my whiskey.” She smiled and raised her glass. “Sometimes I feel like the boy with his finger in the dike. The modern world will come crashing through more and more.”

Emily Devere was closing in on her eighties, possessed a beautifully fine and roseate skin, and wore no-nonsense skirts and brown cardigans. Her graying hair was caught in a bun at the nape of her neck.

They sat in the front room of her small, cheery cottage off School Lane. The cottage was filled with flowery, chintz-covered chairs and sofa and hooked rugs and embroidered footrests. Her dog had folded himself on one of these and stared at Jury. The pulled-down face suggested he was part bulldog.

“One can’t stop progress, of course, but I’d really like to stick out my foot and trip it. The abominable mobile phones! The world is my call box.” One hand flew to her brow.

Jury smiled. Miss Devere was no stranger to drama.

But just as quickly she settled back into the matter-of-fact practical woman who’d recently found a dead body. “I’ve always been partial to that pub: I go there occasionally, though it’s a bit out of the way. I can’t say much for this woman who’s taken it over while the owners are on holiday. Sally someone. Looks a bit dodgy to me.” She drank her whiskey, pursed her lips. “But she’s only temporary, thank heavens. Anyway, I like to get out and take Drummond for a walk along that footpath near the farm. Drummond’s fond of it.”

Drummond, Jury thought to look at him, wasn’t about to be taken anywhere. Not against his will, anyway. “What did he do?”

“Pardon me?”

“Drummond. When he came upon this woman’s body.”

“Well… you know, I don’t know; I mean, I was so shocked by the whole thing, I wasn’t paying attention.” She leaned forward in her chair. “Do you think he knows something?”

Jury wanted to laugh. She sounded serious. “You’d never seen her before, Miss Devere?”

“No, of course not. I’d have said.” She cushioned her head on the small pillow that hung over the top of her chair and looked upward, puzzled, as if the ceiling were acting peculiarly.

“Is something bothering you?”

“Well, as I said, I don’t think I’d ever seen her, but it’s just that she looked familiar.”

Jury thought of the doctor’s comment “I’d swear I’d seen her before” and of Kit Rexroth’s similar impression.

“That dress,” she went on, “was crepe, a coppery color, with that swirly, leafy design. I bet it cost the earth. Quite beautiful.”

“You’re very observant, to take that in, in the circumstances.”

“When I was younger, I was fascinated by Upper Sloane Street. Harvey Nicks, the shops. You know.” A wry little smile.

“Police said you’d seen a black cat about. The pub’s cat, was it?”

“I expect so. It streaked off when it saw Drummond. One black cat looks rather like any other.”

Jury wondered. He got up. “Thank you, Miss Devere. I’ll be in touch.”

“I hope so. This is more fun than I’ve had in an age.”

It was getting dark as they pulled up to the High Wycombe train station. David Cummins said, “You could kip here overnight. Crown’s nice, or the King’s Arms. If we had room, I’d say stay with us. We’re on Lycrome Road, too, not far from the pub. You must meet Chris, my wife.”

“Thanks, but I’ve a few things to do in London. A friend in hospital to visit. Tonight, tomorrow morning.”

“Oh. Hope it’s not serious.”

“As serious as it gets. Thanks.” Outside, Jury tapped the top of the car in a good-bye gesture.

Jury liked trains, even this small kind that reminded him of Tinker-toys with its narrow seats, three across and barely demarcated and no armrests, but tonight he had the three narrow seats to himself. It was thirty or forty minutes to Marylebone, and God knew it beat scrabbling around on the M25. During peak hours these commuter trains were probably crowded, but the motorways were hell.

What he liked was one’s feeling of being in touch. They were all strangers, yes, but the looks-indifferent, sullen, distant, angry-at least they were the looks you chose, not the looks you were forced to trot out to negotiate social traffic. You could think your own thoughts and look what way you wanted, and all the rest could jolly well bugger off.

His mind should be on this young woman, richly gowned and shod, who’d come to meet someone, the wrong someone. He should have spoken to the driver of the cab at the station, but he could do that tomorrow. He thought she was a local, despite no one’s having come forth to identify her. Three people had said she looked familiar. There had been this spark of recognition, but nothing burning brightly enough to claim “Yes, that’s So-and-so. Known her all my life.”

And then, weirdly, London ’s iconic black cabs came to him, for now there was the occasional cab painted silver or blue. Any color other than black was the wrong one for a London cab. Thinking about this, he was led to wonder, had the dead woman been painted the wrong color? In a couple thousand quids’ worth of designer clothes?

He pulled out Kit Rexroth’s guest list, ran his eye down the first, the second page. There were six, no, seven pages, written in her large but precise hand. The invited, the uninvited (pages four, five, six); the sighted, the unsighted-well, no, the unsighted would be… unsighted. And Tip’s drinking friends at every pub in the City.

Jury thumbed back to the sixth page, thinking, surely, he must be wrong. No, he wasn’t. The name was there: Harry Johnson. Oh, but there must be dozens of Harry Johnsons in London. Jury smiled. Surely there was only one.

It was too short a ride for a tea trolley, which he missed, and surprised himself in that. The little clatter of its approach down the aisle was somehow consoling. It spoke of ritual. People needed that, we need grounding, he thought. We’re like tents that have to be pegged to keep from blowing off. Rituals, and the things that spoke of rituals. It wouldn’t be long before they’d be phasing out the double-deckers; it would soon be good-bye to the cranky conductors with their ticket rolls. Black cabs. It was okay to see the odd silver or blue or patchwork one, but not the lot, please. Not the lot of them. Instead of the absent tea trolley, he should be thinking about Lu in hospital-

Don’t go there.

He went.

5

St. Bart’s Hospital was in the City, near Smithfield Market and next to the beautiful St. Bartholomew’s Church. When he’d mentioned the hospital’s proximity to Smithfield Market to his upstairs neighbor, Carole-anne Palutski, she’d told him to stop in and get some decent sausages for a fry-up. Good, he’d said, I’ll back the truck in.

That made for about as much humor as he could muster.

The last time he’d seen Lu Aguilar, she’d told him that when she was released from hospital she was going back to Brazil. Her family, she said, were there, not here.

She said the same thing now she’d said then: “I don’t think you can use a detective in a wheelchair.”

Jury bent over the bed. “I’ll take the detective any way I can get her.” He was holding her hand, rubbing his thumb along the sheer bone that was left of her. Lu had lost weight she didn’t need to lose. Because of the damage the accident had done, she wouldn’t be walking again, not for a long time, and more likely never. It had been a simple traffic accident, two cars trying to make it through a yellow light, one straight on, one turning. The driver of the other car had died at the scene. In the short while since the crash on Upper Street-three weeks ago? four?-she must have lost twenty pounds, but none of her acerbity. To his compliment a moment ago, she said with a laugh, “Oh, no, you wouldn’t.”

Jury sat back. “Why? Do you think I’m so shallow?”

“Of course.”

He knew she didn’t think he was shallow; that was the easiest way of telling him he wasn’t being truthful.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “Police work has been done before from a wheelchair. We don’t prize you for your ability to hop in and out of zed-cars. It isn’t a cross-country race you’re doing; it’s investigation.”

“Oh, please.”

She turned away, and Jury felt as if she’d slapped him. At that moment, he hated her. But the feeling washed over him and washed away, a wave receding in a moment.

But not her hatred of her condition. The air crackled with it. Along with the weight, Lu had lost the edge that had made her such a dominant force. So much of Lu was presentation. She was, certainly, not your classic introvert.

The neurosurgeon who’d done the procedure had unquestionably saved Lu’s life. Phyllis Nancy had told him that. She herself had been the doctor at the scene of the accident. The imperturbable Phyllis Nancy. He wondered how she’d gotten through school with two first names. He could never think of Phyllis without smiling.

“What are you smiling about?”

Jury flinched. “What? Nothing.” He felt ashamed.

“That wasn’t a nothing smile and it wasn’t about me.”

“You’ve gotten a lot better at reading minds, Lu.” He smiled again, a reprehensible, lying smile.

“Oh, I could always do that. Especially yours.”

He felt her gaze.

“You’re off the hook, Richard.”

He wanted to feel that as another slap in the face, something he didn’t deserve. It made him a little sick to think that he did.

She caught the look, not able to read it precisely but seeing uncertainty and ambivalence. “Come on,” she said. “We didn‘t-we don’t-love each other, for Christ’s sake.” She tried to sit up, and it looked to him as if her fragile spine exploded in pain. “Jesus! Doesn’t anybody have a drink or at least a goddamned cigarette?”

Jury felt his walk down the white corridor must be almost as painful as hers, lying in that bed.

You’re off the hook.

He did not want to explore that rush of feeling, distinctly like relief. He had been on the hook all right. He realized now that the hook had been sexual. If she’d intended to stay here, maybe even go back to her job with the Islington CID, he honestly didn’t know what he’d have done. Marry her? Insist on taking care of her somehow? He couldn’t imagine Lu Aguilar accepting either of those proposals. She’d know that they were offered out of guilt or pity or obligation.

The long white corridor seemed endless, the bank of elevators, the bright red “Exit” sign never getting any closer.

The way out never did.

6

He had left the flat the next morning for a mere twenty minutes, to get milk for his tea. Upon his return, when he went to put the milk in his refrigerator, he found a message affixed to the fridge door with a little magnet in the shape of a banana.

In his absence, Carole-anne had answered his phone. Probably on her way to work this morning she had heard the ring and had just popped in to answer it. Jury rarely locked his door.

The message was written in Carole-anne’s inimitable style; if the angel Gabriel had delivered messages like Carole-anne, Christianity might never have gotten a toehold:

“S.W. c’d sed high w. ds rep. w’mn mss in Chess. Thought U should know.”

Jury pondered. Maybe “S.W.” had also called his mobile. He checked it to find the battery dead. He cursed himself for forgetting to charge it and pondered the message again. He left it to make his tea and look at the paper he had bought along with the milk.

The murder in Chesham should have been getting minor treatment at this point. But, no, the London paper even revved it up a little. Wasn’t there enough going on in EC₃ to make some murder in a Buckinghamshire village pale by comparison?

Apparently not. Jury supposed there was an element of fascination not only in the victim’s being beautiful and Jimmy-Choo-Saint-Laurent-clad, but also in being unidentified. His name in there, too; they were still milking it for all it was worth, once again going over the suspension because of the Hester Street affair a couple of months back, a boomerang effect, that had been. There had been a bit of a public outcry at this detective’s being punished for saving the lives of the little girls. So Jury was being fashioned the Met police paladin, champion of the unfortunate.

Christ. Jury tossed the paper on his coffee table, took a pull on his mug of tea as if it were a pint, and regarded the message again. “S.W. c’d…” Sergeant Wiggins called. That must be it. Well, he would see this Sergeant Wiggins in a few minutes, if he was the caller.

Jury finished his tea, collected his coat and keys, and left the flat.

Sergeant Wiggins, stirring his own tea with a licorice root, raised his eyebrows in question when Jury walked into the office. “Did you get my message?”

“Ah, yes. I got a message, or what passes for one, from Carole-anne.” He pulled it out and read, as phonetically as he could, “ ‘S.W. c’d sed high w. ds rep. w‘mn mss in Chess. Thought U should know.’ ” He looked up to see Wiggins’s deep frown. “I finally worked out that S.W. meant you.”

“Yes, but what-” Light broke. “Of course. That ‘w’mn mss in Chess’: that’s telling you a DS called from their High Wycombe HQ to let you know there’s a woman been reported missing.”

“Do they know who?”

“No. It was reported by an aunt who hasn’t seen the niece for three days, nearly four if you count this morning-”

Jury frowned. “That’s a bit of a wait.”

“Thing is, the niece that’s missing often goes into London for weekends, so the aunt thought that’s where she was. Anyway, this niece of hers wasn’t the victim. She’s a local.”

“And so might the victim be.”

“Not in this case.” Wiggins tapped the root against the tip of his mug. “The aunt-her name’s Cox, Edna Cox-called police yesterday and said her niece should’ve been home by Sunday night, that she’d never miss work on Monday, that she hadn’t rung. Then the Cox woman went to the morgue and said, no, it wasn’t her, and anyway, her Mariah-Mariah Cox being the niece-Mariah would never wear clothes like that. Police are using her costume to help with the ID. I mean, how many women round that area would be wearing that dress and those narrow-toed shoes by…”

“Jimmy Choo. And when did Mariah Cox disappear?”

“Well, she first missed her on the Saturday-but remember, she thought Mariah was in London for the weekend. It was on Sundays that Mariah usually came back, but she didn’t. Nor on the Monday-”

Jury was out of his chair. “I want to talk to the aunt.”

“But she said it wasn’t her niece, guv.”

“I don’t give a toss for that. One woman goes missing and a dead one turns up-what a bloody coincidence.” He pulled on his coat.

“But surely the woman would know her own-” The phone rang and Wiggins snapped it up, gave his name, and listened. After five seconds of listening, he held up a finger to Jury. “It’s DS Cummins again, guv, here-” He held out the phone.

Jury took it and sat on the edge of Wiggins’s desk. He listened, said he’d be there inside of an hour, and handed the receiver back to Wiggins.

“Apparently, they got someone else to identify the body, the librarian the niece worked for. According to her, the dead woman’s Mariah Cox.”

7

He spent some time in High Wycombe gathering what forensic evidence was available and being treated with remarkable amiability by Thames Valley police, given he was hardly a necessary adjunct to their deliberations. He said as much to the DCI to whom David Cummins had introduced him.

DCI Stevens only laughed. “Oh, I don’t know. We’re not all Morse here.”

Jury frowned, puzzled. “Morse?”

“My God, man, you don’t know Morse? Thames Valley police? Oxford?”

“Oh, that Morse. The TV one. Well, you can take it to the bank that I’m not him either. But I would like to talk to the aunt, this Edna Cox.”

“Sure. DS Cummins can take you. It’s rather odd, but what made me wonder about the Cox woman’s failure to identify the victim was that she was too abrupt in her denial. It was the way of someone who was refusing to face something unpleasant. Ordinarily, you’d register a huge relief, finding the body you’re looking at isn’t someone you love. That’s why we got the librarian in, the one who runs the place, name of Mary”-he looked down at a paper-“Chivers. She identified her. Of course, she said too that it hardly looked like Mariah, and no wonder the aunt didn’t recognize her: the ginger hair, the look of her, the clothes. D’you think Mariah was going off to London to work as a pro, weekends?”

“Could be. I want to talk to both of these women, if you don’t mind.”

“Mind? No. We’re always happy to have someone from the Met come round.”

Jury smiled. “No, you’re not.”

“Sorry,” said David Cummins as they piled into the car. “I tried your cell but got no answer. Then I tried the Yard, got your sergeant.”

“And he called my flat. The message was taken by a friend from upstairs. I’ve an answer machine that hasn’t worked since the day I got it, so if she’s passing and hears my phone, she goes in and answers.” Jury saw a red light coming up and pulled out the scrap of paper. When Cummins braked, Jury handed it to him.

The DS read it, frowned, laughed. The light changed. “My God. How did you sort that out?”

Jury pocketed the message. “She spends most of her time reading runes and translating from Old English. Never quite got the hang of it myself.” He looked out at the passing scenery. “You say the victim’s with the local library. So how would a librarian’s pay run to Yves Saint Laurent?”

“Wouldn’t.” Cummins laughed. “Nor the shoes.” They were approaching a roundabout. “Not unless she got a pair from my wife.”

“Your wife?”

“Chris has the lot: Jimmy Choo, Prada, Gucci, Tod’s, Blahnik, you name it.”

Jury couldn’t. He was simply surprised, given he imagined a policeman’s pay here might be only slightly higher than a librarian’s.

“Chris knew straightaway whose shoes they were. From the photo-” Realizing he’d said too much, Cummins cut it off.

Jury looked over at him. “Police photos?”

“Look. I just showed her the one of the shoes. I know I’m not supposed to-”

“No, you’re not.”

“It’s just… it’s just Chris…” Negotiating the roundabout, he stopped talking again.

The DS’s obvious embarrassment made Jury sympathetic. “So Chris has a shoe hang-up.” He laughed.

Relieved now, Cummins laughed. “God, yes. You’ve got to meet her.”

“I’d like to. She sounds fascinating. In the meantime, let’s stop by the library.”

Mary Chivers was one of those people who called all detectives “Inspector,” no matter what their rank: constable, sergeant, superintendent. Detective Sergeant Cummins was anointed with the same inspectorhood as Superintendent Jury.

Mary Chivers had been holding a book, blowing dust off its spine, when they walked in. Jury liked the act of blowing dust from a book, he could not say why. Miss Chivers was a little bundle of a woman with whom one could tell books would be safe. Indeed, the whole little library felt like a safe house or sanctuary in its whispery silence. The whispers were supplied by three women at a reading table sharing news or secrets.

DS Cummins, who had been one of those to question her before, introduced Jury.

“I couldn’t believe it at first,” she said in answer to Jury’s question. “I could not believe this dead woman was Mariah Cox. I don’t mean I didn’t recognize her, I did, despite that ginger hair-but I certainly had to look twice, let me tell you. It was the situation, where she was found, the way she’d been dressed, why it’s perfectly understandable that Edna would have made that mistake. Poor Edna.” Here Mary Chivers ran her hand over the cover of the book she still held, and her eyes over the high stacks of books, as if assuring herself they hadn’t run away.

She went on. “Mariah was plain, but she had good bones. Yes, with the right makeup, and a bit of artistry, she could make herself another face. Yes, I can see that…”

Jury said, “She got on well with your staff?”

“Of course.”

“No one appeared to dislike her or be jealous of her or have any reason you know of to harm her?”

Mary Chivers shook her head slowly, decidedly. “Understand, Inspector, that Mariah Coxwas as nice aperson as couldbe-completely dependable, conscientious, kind. She was quiet, retiring, one of those women, you know, who would more or less fade into the background. Mariah was not one to stand out.”

Not one to stand out. Mariah had scarcely disturbed the air around her and yet had morphed into a lovely, sophisticated, and-Jury was beginning to suspect-sex-for-sale woman. For Jury, it was not so much that she had done it, but why.

Edna Cox lived in the end one of a terraced row of houses, with lace curtains at the front window. The place was dispiriting enough on its own; with the additional blow of a death in the family, it was bleak as the North York moors.

Edna Cox still appeared to be denying the knowledge that the dead woman in the police photograph could possibly be her niece. “You know my Mariah, Mr. Cummins,” she said, as if that took care of it.

DS Cummins said, “It wasn’t like her, I agree, but…”

Edna Cox was having no buts about it. Given the way she was perched on an overstuffed chair edge, it wasn’t like sitting at all. If she moved half an inch forward, she’d be on the hooked rug.

“I said it once and I’ll say it again: Mariah does not own clothes like that. And her hair-it was never that color. Have you talked to Bobby? They got engaged hardly two weeks ago.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Jury. “Bobby-?”

Edna Cox looked away, apparently done with answering.

“That’d be Bobby Devlin,” said Cummins. “Bobby has the flower stall next the station. Nice fellow.”

Edna Cox blurted out: “Mariah wouldn’t be caught dead in those pointy-toed sandals.”

Unfortunate choice of words, thought Jury.

“And she didn’t have the money for them, neither. Shoes like that or that dress. That lot’d cost her half a year’s wages.”

Jury had picked up a framed photo of Mariah Cox and sat now looking at it. Here was a plain girl with straight dark hair to her shoulders, untidy bangs nearly eclipsing her eyes. But Mary Chivers was right: you could still see the bones, and they were very good. It was exactly the kind of face that someone trained in the art of makeup could do marvels with. Perhaps Mariah herself had the talent; perhaps there’d been a lot of practice in putting on another face. He set the photo on a glass-topped coffee table that didn’t fit the rest of the furnishings and said, “She’d been gone before, hadn’t she?”

“Well, yes, most weekends, and sometimes she’d stay over in London with this friend of hers she knew at school…” She looked down at the rug at her feet as her voice trailed away.

“Mrs. Cox, has it ever occurred to you your niece was leading a double life?” Jury was leaning forward, trying to make that sound the most natural thing in the world, a double life.

Her head came up smartly. “Whatever are you talking about?” Clearly unconvinced of her own judgment, she sounded like a person desperately wanting to avoid something.

“Maybe you simply didn’t want this woman to be Mariah.”

Her shoulders went back as if about to take Jury on. “So you’re saying I lied.”

“Not at all. I believe you made a mistake, that’s all.” He picked up the picture he’d set on the table. “Straight brown hair and a fringe almost covering her eyes. No makeup. The exact opposite of the young woman who was murdered. It’s what I mean by a double life. They look like two different women. The doctor, who’s a local, thought the dead woman looked familiar. So did another witness. You understand what I’m saying.”

By now, Edna Cox had the handkerchief she’d pulled from her sleeve wadded against her mouth and shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

But she did. She had. Jury sat back, giving the poor woman some space. He looked around, struck by the room’s insipidity-its mushroom browns, its rainy-day grays. It fit the girl in the photo on the table. No, that was wrong: the girl was not insipid at all. And the room was more sad than insipid. The air around them seemed weighted with sadness. Or perhaps it was his. He was sorry he couldn’t leave Edna Cox with her fantasy and her denial.

There were ample means to establish the two women were one: DNA, dental work, fingerprints.

“You mentioned the London friend. Do you know her name?”

“Oh, dear, I just can’t get my mind round all this. Angela, I think… Adele-the last name, I think it’s Astaire. It’s like the dancer, I think. Yes, that’s what she calls herself. Silly of her.”

“Then that’s not her real name?”

“No. Mariah said it was just her business name. Whatever that means.”

Jury took out his small notebook, wrote down the name. “I don’t imagine you have the address, do you?”

“I don’t, no.”

“Any idea what part of London it is?”

Mrs. Cox put her fingers to her temples, massaging them. “Parsons Green, it could be. Or Fulham. Well, somewhere around that part of London. There might be something in Mariah’s room, an address book or letters or something-”

“Yes, I’d appreciate it if you’d let police go over the room. Not now, of course, if you don’t want us bumbling round the house. Detective Sergeant Cummins might do this later, when it won’t be so disturbing for you.”

Sadly, she nodded. “If you’re right, then what was it she was doing dressed like that? Her face made over? Her hair that color?” She wadded the handkerchief in her hands. “She worked at the little library, you know. I always thought it was the perfect job for Mariah.”

“Why’s that?”

“She was such a quiet person, and she liked being around books. It’s the kind of job that’s not such a strain if you have to deal with the public. You don’t have them complaining a lot or demanding too much. Checking out books, they’re contented, somehow. Mariah didn’t like dealing with the wide world. She kept herself to herself.”

Like bandages coming off a patient’s eyes, sighted or blind; or unwound from a burn victim’s ruined face, Edna Cox’s defensive covering unwound more and more. Jury felt very sorry for her.

“I know all of this must be a terrible mystery to you, but anything you can tell us would help. Things that might not have signified at the time.” He paused, thinking. “Why did you report her missing, Mrs. Cox? I mean, she went off any number of times, yet those other times didn’t appear to worry you.”

She looked puzzled, as if this hadn’t occurred to her before Jury said it. She sat thinking and worrying her handkerchief. “It was because she would have let me know, and she didn’t.” More pulling at the handkerchief, as if it were a knob of taffy. “I mean, Mariah would never just not come back on the Sunday without letting me know. And there was work, too. She worked on Monday at the library. You’d have to know her, how dependable, how considerate she is.” She looked away. “Was.”

“How long had she lived with you, Mrs. Cox?”

“Ten years, about. She came to me after her mother died-my sister. Mariah had been taking care of her; it was a long illness. Lungs. Emphysema. They lived up north in Tyne and Wear. Old Washington, where George was born. You probably don’t know it…”

Indeed he did; he knew it well.

“Her dad worked in Newcastle. You know, it’s always been hard up there, jobs, I mean, and money tight. First her da died and then her mum. We didn’t see each other often, well, hardly ever, really. Christmas and the long school holiday, that was about all.”

“Did Mariah look then as she does in this photo?” He tapped the silver frame.

She frowned. “Not really. When she was younger, she was prettier. She seemed to just grow plainer, though usually it’s the other way round, isn’t it? I don’t understand it; I don’t understand any of it.” She started crying in earnest now.

Jury moved over to the small sofa, put his arm round her shoulders, said, “I’m truly sorry for your loss, Edna.”

He was beginning to feel sorry for his own, too.

8

“This Devlin, the fiance. You know him?” Jury asked as they pulled away from the terraced house.

DS Cummins nodded. “A bit. Bobby’s the flower guy.” “Sweet. But what does it mean?”

“He grows flowers and sells them. He’s got a fabulous garden-a few acres outside of town.”

Jury powered up his window; it was getting into evening and much cooler. “Any joy there? With Devlin?”

Cummins shook his head. “I’d guess not. I mean, if you’re asking whether Bobby’s a suspect. I know well enough he’d never have hurt Mariah. Never.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Bobby? He’ll be in Market Square. Tuesdays and Fridays he keeps a stall. I can take you there. Do you want me along?”

“No. That’s okay. Just drop me there.”

Cummins was pulling up by a curb outside of the square that had been marked off for pedestrian shopping. He told Jury where he’d find the flower stall, adding, “Listen, if you’ve nothing better going, come round to our place for a drink. Chris’d be glad for the company. Seriously.”

Jury didn’t feel like it, wanted to get back to London, but he hated turning David Cummins down for the second time. “That’d be nice, David. Can you pick me up back here in an hour?”

Looking pleased, Cummins nodded. “Right here, and if you’re not, I’ll wait. You can always call me on my mobile.”

Jury inspected the sky. “Yes, well, let’s just say an hour, okay?”

Cummins drove away.

Jury assumed it was Devlin, the intense, dark-haired young man with an armful of daisies and purple irises, talking to an elderly woman, apparently giving her advice about the care of a plant she was holding. She thanked him and left.

“Mr. Devlin?” said Jury.

He turned, still holding the shock of flowers.

“You’re Robert Devlin?”

“Bobby. What can I do for you?” He submerged the flowers in a tub holding several inches of water.

“My name’s Richard Jury. I’m with Scotland Yard CID.” He held out his ID.

“Oh.” The syllable was weighted with sadness.

He was pale and handsome and so wistful-looking, Jury wanted to clap him on the shoulder and tell him to buck up. Jury had never told anyone to buck up in his life.

Bobby Devlin looked down, up, down again. “It’s Mariah, isn’t it?” He pulled over an old crate and sat down, hard. His face was drawn, his body strained. “Sorry. There were two detectives just here…” He shook his head.

“This must be hard for you. I understand you and Mariah Cox were engaged.”

Bobby nodded. Then, becoming aware that Jury still stood while he sat, Bobby rose and pulled out one of the folding chairs leaning against the side of the stall. He opened it up, set it down for Jury, and sat back down again.

Jury thought it was an uncommonly thoughtful thing to do, in the circumstances. He sat down between daylilies and floribunda roses.

Bobby said, “We were going to get married in the fall, probably, and were going to live in my house. It’s small, but fine for a couple. I bought it because of the gardens. There’s over three acres. The old woman who lived there finally had to go into a nursing home. I felt really sorry for her because she loved the gardens. I told her-” He looked up. “Sorry. I’m talking to fill up space, I guess.”

“Go on. I want to hear it.”

Bobby sat back and relaxed a little. “I told her I loved flowers and plants and all that, that I did it for a living. She asked me if I knew anything about primulas, and I told her I know everything.” He looked at Jury and smiled slightly. “Sounds conceited, but I do know an awful lot. When she took me out to the back, to the gardens, I was stunned by the variety of plants. Camellias dripping over old stone walls, a blue forest of hydrangeas and lavender and bluebells, even a rock garden. You don’t see those much because they take such a lot of work. A huge spread of bright orange poppies. Even some mother-of-pearl poppies-a long sweep of them; it was lustrous.

“The thing was I’d visit her a couple of times a week for a few months, and she said it was such a relief knowing the house would be in my hands. I took flowers to her in the nursing home until she died. It was only a few months later that she died. I felt awful when she did. And I know I’m talking too much, but it keeps me from thinking.” He stopped and regarded Jury.

“Where are you from, Bobby?”

“ County Kerry. When my parents died I came to England. I worked at this and that, finally for a nursery, and then a series of nurseries. The last was in High Wycombe. I seem to have a natural bent for this kind of thing. I seem to speak the language of flowers, if that doesn’t sound too sentimental.”

Looking at all of these glowing colors and green leaves that seemed to want to burst beyond their crate and bucket boundaries, Jury believed it. “Did Mariah share your love of all this?” His gesture took in the stall.

“Yes, very much so. She knew a lot about flowers-” He stopped suddenly. The dead Mariah blotted out memory of the living one.

“You didn’t know anything about a double life that Mariah might have been leading?”

“Double life?” He leaned down to reposition a large pot of hydrangeas and didn’t look at Jury.

“Wouldn’t you describe it that way? She was gone regularly to London and…”

Bobby put his hand on his forehead and pushed back his hair, as if he had a raging headache he couldn’t get rid of. Probably he did. “The woman police found… she’s just not like Mariah.” He shook his head. “Mariah was so… retiring, that’s the word I think of.” He picked a few yellowing leaves from the stem of a lavender rose. “Funny about Edna. I would have known.”

“Mrs. Cox? You mean you could have made the identification?”

He nodded. “I’d have known,” he said again. “I know I just said she wasn’t Mariah; I meant the idea of it. If I’d seen her, without hearing any of this, I’d have known her.”

“Her aunt did know, on some level. It was a case of denial. I expect Mariah looked quite different, with that ginger hair, to allow anyone who didn’t want to believe it, not to believe it.”

Bobby nodded again. “Well, then, maybe I’d have done the same as Edna; I don’t know. Nobody I know wanted to hurt Mariah, but the thing is, it might not be Mariah they wanted dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“You spoke of a double life. It might’ve been the other one-that other self-the one you found. It could be the person who killed her didn’t even know Mariah existed. Because I can’t imagine anyone would want to hurt Mariah. That’s it, plain and simple.” He sat forward, elbows on knees, hands limply clasped, staring at the little bit of pavement not taken up by flower containers. He opened his mouth to say something but said nothing.

He looked helplessly at the big container of blue hydrangeas near his leg, as if their language had finally failed him.

9

Prada, Valentino, Fendi-Jury found himself in DS Cummins’s house holding a whiskey and looking at a wall of shoes, cubbyhole after cubbyhole, designer after designer. In the corner beside this collection was a wooden coatrack holding a short red jacket (hers), a down-to-the-ground black wool coat (hers), and a rather worn-looking raincoat (either hers or his)-and all of them decidedly undesigner.

The shoes, though, would cover a painter’s palette: rose red, blues that ran the gamut from cerulean to sapphire, silver straps of snakeskin, carmine straps of satin. There must have been a hundred pairs.

“It’s an obsession, I expect you could say,” said Chris Cummins with a good-natured laugh at herself.

David Cummins rolled his eyes. “It’s her obsession all right.”

But it can’t be your money, thought Jury. If Mariah Cox’s one pair of Jimmy Choos had been six or seven hundred, what must this collection be worth? DS Cummins couldn’t afford this on his detective sergeant’s salary; perhaps he was independently wealthy. Or she was. That was more likely.

Their modest cottage and its fittings were nowhere in line with Chris Cummins’s shoes. The three-piece suite in front of the tile fireplace in the living room was covered with the rather clammy feel of microsuede. The curtains at the front windows were cotton splashed about with dahlias, gray blue on blue. Stuck about like matchstick displays were specimens of old reed chairs with turned or spindle legs that might have been antiques and possibly valuable.

That had been the front room-parlor (to the husband) or living room (to the wife). Jury detected the south of England in her speech, the north in his. Pretty far north, Newcastle north, possibly. He sounded much like Jury’s cousin by marriage, Brendan. Someone here had money, he thought.

The shoes were in a small sitting room containing a large round table and four maple captain’s chairs. It might have doubled as a dining room, with a wall of shoes in place of a wall of wine. Jury smiled.

“I knew it was Jimmy Choo,” she said, “without seeing the label.”

It was hard for Jury to fault Cummins’s taking a police photograph out of the station, seeing that Chris would never wear any of these shoes to a policeman’s hip-hop, or to tea at the Ritz, or on the Eurostar to Paris. Or skiing in the Alps. Chris was in a wheelchair. In the corner of the room, where those skis might have been leaning against the wall, were crutches instead.

She saw his look, looked herself at the crutches, and said, “I’m afraid I haven’t mastered those. But I will.” Her tone was exceptionally sad, but she quickly short-circuited this by wheeling over to the shoe collection. From her chair, she reached midway up the wall and took down a high-heeled shoe, a glittering nude-colored extravaganza, sequined and peep-toed. “Christian Louboutin. He’s my favorite designer.” It was actually quite beautiful, thought Jury.

“See the sole?” Her forefinger tapped it. She pulled down another, this one of black suede, its vamp consisting of a twist of material running like a lattice up and above the ankle. “Red, always red,” she said. “I think that’s clever. It’s his signature-Louboutin’s.”

“They look pretty pricey.”

“They’re pricey all right.” She shoved back the black-and-sequined numbers and dragged out another, a jeweled slingback. “Over a thousand pounds, this one.”

Her husband winced. “Hell, Chris, the superintendent’s going to think I’ve been on the take.”

“What take? Is there anything around Chesham worth taking? There’s nothing to take.” As she pushed the red-soled shoe back, she sighed. “That murder is the most excitement we’ve had all the time we’ve been here.”

“How long have you?”

David Cummins stretched out his long legs and then pulled them quickly back. It was as if he didn’t want to call attention to his perfectly workable legs in front of his wife.

She hadn’t noticed anyway, sitting in her wheelchair, drinking her tea.

“Just three years. I was with uniform before. South Ken. I expect I liked London a lot more than Chris-”

“I expect you did,” said Chris with a small laugh. “It was never much good for a wheelchair.”

There was no rancor in her voice, but there was still a message there.

And the expression on his face was oddly like that on Bobby Devlin’s, as if David Cummins, too, missed a language that had meant a lot to him.

The cabbie who’d picked up Mariah Cox at the station told Jury no more than Cummins himself. Cummins had organized a meeting at the police station in Chesham.

“All dressed up like a dog’s dinner, why, right off I thought she was headed to that swank party at Deer Park House. Took several fares there from other parts of town. So I was a mite s‘prised when she said the Black Cat. Course, like I tol’ ’er, I couldn’t get to the pub’s door. There’s that roadworks out in front. Gone now, but it was a mess for a couple days, cars detourin’ and business at the pub a shambles, and how she could walk in them high heels-” He shook his head, and that was all.

It was on the way to the train that Cummins told Jury about Chris. “It happened in London, Sloane Square. There are a lot of zebra crossings there, and drivers just bloody hate them. You can’t assume they’re going to stop. Chris doesn’t assume, she insists. Pedestrians have the right of way, after all, so Chris just walks right on. Well, she did it this time, and the car didn’t or maybe couldn’t stop. It was going at a good clip. He hit Chris. But he did stop and call for an ambulance, so it wasn’t a hit-and-run. He got nicked for it, huge fine and served some time. The thing is, Chris was pregnant and she had a miscarriage.”

“God. How awful.”

“Worse, we can’t have kids now.” He sighed and pulled up to the station. “Why can’t drivers see that car crashes can be absolute bloody hell?”

Jury thought of Lu.

“We got a fairly hefty settlement out of it.” Wanly, he smiled.

“Does that explain the shoe collection?”

“Oh, no. Or not wholly. Chris’s family had money, quite a bit. She was always indulged, being the only child: nannies, good schools-that pricey one on the coast-and when she left there she could have gone to Oxford, Cambridge, you name it, but she chose not to. Instead, she married me.” Bleakly, he smiled. “Some trade-off, right?”

“I’d say she got the best of the bargain, David.”

That Jury’s saying this pleased DS Cummins no end was very clear.

They sat in the car awhile, a no-parking zone in front of the station. Jury asked him if he’d lived all of his life in London. Was that why it seemed home to him?

“No. Northumberland’s where I was born. We moved to the south, first to Portsmouth, then to Hastings. Mum loved the coast. Bit of a gypsy she was, liked moving. Hastings, Brighton, Bexhill-on-Sea, and back again. Drove poor Dad crazy.” Cummins laughed, apparently in tune with the craziness.

“What kind of work did he do?”

“Greengrocer. Funny, isn’t it? Back then I’d have done anything to get away from aubergines and apples. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“You made the move from London because of Chris, then?”

Without answering directly, David said, “Well, you have to make small sacrifices, don’t you? Like giving up my pack-a-day habit.”

Jury gave a short laugh. “That’s no small sacrifice. I know; I stopped three years ago myself.”

David said after a pause, “I’m afraid I haven’t done it yet. You know, the odd fag out behind the dustbins? Did you use any of the crutches-I mean, like those holders that let you down gradually? Or nicotine patches?”

“No. I always figured it was more than nicotine.”

“Me, I’m waiting for a Stoli patch. Or a Guinness one. Something that’ll really do me some good.”

Jury laughed.

David went on, apparently fond of the subject. “It’s hard for a woman, I mean, another person, a nonsmoker, to be around a guy who smokes. I guess a kiss doesn’t taste right; it tastes of cigarettes.”

Jury smiled. It sounded like a song by Cole Porter: Your lips taste of cigarettes… He said, “How romantic we once were about smoking. Remember Now, Voyager? Paul Henreid lighting up the two cigarettes? One for him, one for Bette Davis?” He looked at Cummins, assessing his age. “You probably weren’t born yet.”

“I’m no kid; I’m thirty-seven. But I’ve seen that film all right. It’s great, except in the end. She could have had him; why didn’t she take him?”

Jury thought but couldn’t remember. “Well, as I remember it had a pretty grandiose moral tone. Most films did back then. Probably it had to do with honor.”

“Bugger honor,” said David with a grim smile.

10

Fifteen minutes later, Jury was on the Metropolitan Line train bound for London and talking on his mobile to Wiggins.

“Somebody’s been spending a lot of money on Mariah Cox,” said Jury. “There’s got to be a well-heeled man in this mix somewhere.” He hadn’t meant the pun. “I’ve just been introduced to a world of shoes, Wiggins. By DS Cummins’s wife, Chris.”

“Shoes.” Wiggins said it contemplatively rather than with curiosity. “You mean the Jimmy Choos?”

“His and others. I had no idea there were so many gorgeous women’s shoes.”

“Some are rather extreme.”

Jury heard the sound of metal on metal. Spoon on kettle? No, Wiggins had gone off spoons. “Extreme? Which designer are you thinking of?”

Wiggins was silent for a few seconds. “Well, Jimmy Choo, for instance.”

Slowly, Jury shook his head. “As I was saying, some man’s been very generous with Mariah Cox.” Too bad she hadn’t just stuck to Bobby Devlin, he thought. “Or men.”

“A bit sexist of you, guv.” Before Jury could scathingly reply to that, Wiggins told him to hold on. “I’ll be back in a second.”

The train lurched for a moment, forcing the whey-faced child across the aisle back in her seat. She was probably eleven or twelve, and her empty brown eyes fastened on Jury like leeches. She should have been wearing a sign round her neck: “Nobody home.” Jury stared back at her. He wasn’t in the mood. “Wiggins? You there?”

No answer. The girl was chewing bubble gum and blew a big bubble right toward him, probably in lieu of sticking out her tongue.

The train shuddered to a stop at Rickmansworth. Wiggins came back from whatever expedition he’d been on. “I’ve liaised with all the divisional people. Talked to vice in case she’s a pro-”

“Bit sexist of you, isn’t it?” He smiled, and the smile accidentally took in the bubble-gum-blowing child, who stopped blowing and did stick out her tongue. “Anyway, I’m bound for London, going back to my flat. It’s gone seven, Wiggins; why are you still at the Yard? Go home.”

“Right, guv. I’m off. And you be sure and check your messages.” There came a snuffling laugh.

Ha-ha, thought Jury as the train finally pulled away, heading into the City.

In the doorway of the small living room of Jury’s Islington flat, Carole-anne Palutski, upstairs neighbor, stood rubbing her eyes as if he’d just dragged her down here from a deep sleep. The fact that she was dressed not in pj’s and bathrobe but for a night on the tiles undercut the sleepy winsomeness. Her dress was a sapphire blue that matched her eyes; the neckline, low enough to sink a ship, was studded about with tiny bits of something flashy. In oilcloth and gum boots, Carole-anne would look sumptuous; the dress was gilding the lily. And in place of gum boots, she was wearing strappy sandals. They seemed to be the only thing on the streets these days.

Jury had called her in.

“Sit down, sweetheart. I want to read you something.”

Daintily, she yawned and took her time arranging herself on his sofa. He thought of the gorgeous drift of hydrangeas in Bobby Devlin’s flower stall. Gorgeousness, however, was not about to get her off. Jury unfolded the by now heavily creased scrap of paper and read phonetically: “ ‘S.W. c’d sed high w. ds rep. w’mn mss in Chess. Thought U should know.’”

Carole-anne just blinked at him. Then she said, “ ‘Thought you should know’ what? The first part’s gibberish. The way you read it, nobody’d know what it means.”

“That’s the way it’s written.”

“Don’t be daft. Here, give it to me-” She reached out her hand. Her eyes, beneath eyebrows that fairly twinkled, scanned the scrap of paper. In a tone one might use for the recently comatose, she read, “ ‘Sergeant Wiggins called, said High Wycombe DS’-detective sergeant that means, I’d think you’d know that, at least-‘reported woman missing in Chesham. Et cetera.’ Perfectly clear.”

“Of course it is to you. You wrote it. Let’s begin with ‘S.W.’ Now how am I supposed to know who that is?”

Adjusting a couple of pearly bangles round her arm, she said with more than a little impatience, “Well, how many S.W.’s do you know, anyway? ”

Hopeless, but Jury soldiered on: “The odd thing is you took the trouble to spell out ‘Thought U should know,’ but what I ought to know is written in code.”

She rooted in her blue satin clutch and came out with a nail file. “The idea was this-”

No, it wasn’t; there’d been no idea until she’d had these few moments to come up with one. “If by some chance a person-an unauthorized person-”

(That was good.)

“-were to get in here looking for classified information-”

“Like Jason Bourne, you mean.”

“Him I don’t know, but, okay, there’s an example. If Jason were to get in here, he’d make straight for your personal phone book and message pad. He’d know all your business.”

She seemed satisfied with that explanation, so he said, “Why did you leave it on the fridge door?”

There was a pause as she filed away at a troublesome bit of nail. “Well, I took the added precaution of taking it off the message pad; see, no one would think, with the other stuff on the fridge, that there’s an important message they’d want to read.”

“Brilliant.” He sat there looking at her looking smug. Then he said smoothly, “You forgot something.”

That raised her eyebrows. “Such as what?”

“The impression.” Pleased with her confusion, he got up and went to the phone table, returning with the message pad. “See this?” He tapped the blank page on which there was a faint image of penciled words. “Right there. Spies always do that; they look at the imprint left on the page underneath.”

“They do?” The news did not bother her.

“Absolutely. Jason would have this sussed out in five seconds.” Carole-anne sighed, dropped her nail file into her bag, clicked the bag shut, and rose. “And you said no one could understand it.” Then, in a swirl of sapphire and scent, she sashayed out of the room.

Jury listened to her strappy sandals tapping down the steps, got up, and, accompanied by his sturdy six-year-old self, stomped to his door and yelled down the stairs: “I’m not bloody Jason Bourne, am I?”

11

The little girl standing uninvited by his table in the window was the untidiest Melrose had ever seen. More of a scrap than a girl, as if she were among the leavings of material cut away from a gown, a ragged piece, mere oddment. Her doe-colored eyes, large and clouded with tears either past or to come, were fastened on him as if he were expected to do something.

What could he do? He was only a middle-aged man-granted a rich one, he reminded himself, in case she wanted a house of her own in the Highlands or Belgravia so she could get away from this pub and her parents (of whom he’d seen no sign). So in what way could he serve this child who got left behind when Charles Dickens shut the book? She got tossed out of his pages, left to wander the narrow streets ofChesham, to pop in and out of pubs with a sign on her back: “Waif.”

He had, amid these reflections, gone on reading-or pretending to-while the little Dickens revenant eyed him. Well, he should at least be nice enough to say, “Hi there,” or, “And you’re staring at me because…?” No, that didn’t set the right tone. How about, “My name is Melrose Plant, and you are…?” But he was saved from coming up with something when she said:

“My cat was murdered.”

That dropped his Times down! Surely it was not the child who had spoken. Surely it was the old woman at the corner table with the racing form, whose hand crept toward her half-pint. Or the old, rough-looking fellow with his equally rough-looking dog at one of the side tables.

“She got murdered or kidnapped.”

He was forced to acknowledge her. “Well, that’s rum, isn’t it? You mean your cat died, is that it?”

A shake of her mousy brown head. “Murdered.”

“That’s really bad. How did it happen?”

She was full of the details, and having scored a listener, she said, “Maybe Sally took her to the cat hospital and they-” Here, she made a gesture of a hand with a needle plunging into flesh. The small finger came down hard on Melrose ’s jacket sleeve. “That’s what.” She stepped back.

The Black Cat, in Chesham, was short on customers save for he himself and the horse-betting woman and the surly man and dog, but then it had just gone eleven a.m. He had been finding this lack of custom supremely restful-this lack of complication-until the little girl dropped her cat on the table.

“Well, but that’s not really murder,” Melrose said loftily.

“If it happened to you, you’d say it was.”

He frowned, looking for reason where there likely was none. “Was the cat sick?”

“Yes. I’m sick, too. You’re probably sick. Everything’s sick. Everybody is sick, but we don’t get murdered for it.”

That was on a lofty philosophical level Melrose didn’t choose to ascend to. “The thing is-”

“She didn’t want to die. She looked and looked at me and her eyes said it. She didn’t want to.”

This was getting to be a bit tangled. “So it did happen at the cat hospital.”

Again she shook her head. “No. That was another time. Whoever killed her should go to jail and so should Sally.”

“For how long?” That was an intelligent question.

“Forever. That’s how long Morris will be gone. I have her picture. Here-” From a pocket of her too-long skirt she pulled out a snapshot, much creased, and handed it over.

The cat was bunched up on a table outside in the garden. The eyes, caught in the glare, were like white flames in the black face. The cat was all black. Of course, he thought, the pub cat, the Black Cat.

“Anyway, that’s not the only way it could’ve been done. And don’t forget the ‘kidnapped’ part, either.”

There was no end to the cat’s dreadful fate.

“Why would someone kidnap your cat?”

“Kidnapped or murdered.” Her eyes looked feverish with this knowledge of thievery and murder.

Melrose hoped his smile wasn’t too superior. “As for the murder, what you really mean is your cat was in an accident. Car ran into him or something?”

Again the pained eye squinch, the head shake. “No, I mean murdered.” She was holding a soft stuffed animal, an unidentified primate of some sort, and now squashed it as if to demonstrate what mischief a pair of strangling hands might get up to. “Just like that lady they found.” Her head tilted back. “Out there.”

Ah! That explained it. She was extrapolating, extending the murder horizon to take in her cat. Just what a child might do. “But why would someone intentionally murder your cat?”

“Maybe because Morris saw what happened. I want a policeman.” She stopped kneading her stuffed animal and dropped her sad eyes. “He got away.”

Melrose was having difficulty following her constant shift of gears. “But then the cat must be alive somewhere.” No letup of the staring eyes. “When did this happen?”

“Last night. Morris must’ve seen what happened on Saturday night and the murderer took her.”

“Morris is a female?” He frowned.

The cat’s gender was clearly not the point here. More was expected of this grown man. When she looked at him, Melrose knew just how one must have felt trying to get by the Sphinx without knowing the answer to that damned riddle.

Looking not a little Sphinx-like herself, she walked off to the bar and then behind it. Melrose watched her, or, rather, the top of her head, as she was too short to be seen on the other side. She rummaged, moved along, and rummaged some more until she found what she wanted; whereupon she marched back and solemnly handed over a chunky, cheap mobile phone. “I can’t get anybody else to do it. Call the police.”

Just then a band of sunlight struck the door now opening, as if God had tossed down this spear of light to make sure men would listen to the little girl, God’s minister for Truth and Justice.

Melrose smiled and put down the phone. To the child he said, “It seems you’ve come to the right place.”

12

Fate rarely returns from holiday. Coincidence seldom lives up to its name, but today, they did. Richard Jury walked in.

“Over here,” Melrose called, as if the pub were teeming with customers and he were looking over a sea of faces.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Jury. Then to the girl, “Hello.” He stood there, very tall, looking down at her, very small, and closed the gap between them. “I like that monkey. I used to have one, but mine was blue.” He removed his coat and sat down. “My name’s Richard.”

With hardly a blink, she took in the blue monkey, as if all monkeys were blue, save for hers, which earned it a doubtful look. “My name’s Dora. Do you have a cat?” She moved closer.

“No, but there’s one where I work.”

Melrose was a bit miffed. She hadn’t asked him if he had a cat. He did have a goat. “I have quite a good goat. Her name’s Aghast.”

They both looked at Melrose. What was he doing here?

Then away. Jury said, “I’ll bet you have a cat. I saw one go by when I came in. A black cat in a huge hurry.”

“That’s not Morris. Sally wants me to think it is, but it’s not.”

“Did something happen to Morris?”

“Yes. I need a policeman.”

“I’m a policeman.”

Her mouth dropped open. She suddenly looked alight, as if a bulb inside her had switched on.

“So sit down here”-Jury pulled out a chair-“and tell me about it.”

Dora was only too pleased to wrench herself up beside him, holding tight to the monkey.

It was a long story, longer than the one she had told Melrose, to whom she’d told only the salient facts. Salient fact, actually: Morris was either kidnapped or murdered.

With Jury, she was not so stingy. Children seldom were. Melrose checked his watch occasionally, in case the Ancient Mariner wanted to know the time.

She got round to Morris’s replacement. “Anyone could tell that one’s not Morris. Morris loves to lie and nap. The other one just runs around all the time.”

At that moment, the outside door opened and several customers walked in. Then the blond woman, Sally Hawkins, whom Jury had talked to on the Monday night, emerged from an arched opening and went behind the bar. The customers all looked at each other as if they were wondering what beer was, while Dora continued to talk about her missing cat, Morris, and insisting the black cat who’d just crisscrossed the pub was not the real Morris.

“It’s a fake.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Melrose, “seems like a perfectly serviceable black cat.”

Both Jury and Dora stared at him.

“Can you find him?” Her small face was a study in worry.

Jury appeared to be considering this. He said, “I think so.” Then, seeing Melrose tapping his watch, said, “I’d like a beer.”

“I’ll get it,” Dora chimed. “What kind?”

Jury inclined his head toward Melrose ’s pint. “Whatever he’s drinking.”

“Guinness,” said Melrose.

Dora flew to the bar.

The black cat, Morris Two, who’d come back in from the nowhere he seemed to inhabit, flew after her.

“Are we still going to Bletchley Park?” asked Melrose. This had been the reason for their meeting here.

“I don’t see why not. It’s only a half hour away. We can take the A₅.” It was Sir Oswald Maples that had got Jury interested in the code-breaking machines. “We can leave when we’re done here.”

Sally Hawkins, having served the group at the bar, listened to Dora’s order and drew the beer. She stood hands on hips, waiting for the top on the Guinness to settle, then knifed the surface and carried the pint to the table.

Dora’s disappointment at not being allowed to serve Jury was evident. She set about getting crisps.

The blonde was still pretty in middle age and would have been prettier still had she a more pleasant temperament.

“Has Dora been telling you that story about her cat?” She set down the pints.

“Yes. What happened?”

She lowered her voice. Perhaps she could feel Dora behind her. “Nothing happened. She’s got it in her mind that Morris isn’t Morris. I honestly don’t know what to do about her.”

And why, wondered Jury, are you bothering to tell us this?

Dora, several feet behind her, clamped her lips shut and, looking at Jury and Plant, slowly shook her head back and forth, back and forth. When the blond woman turned and saw her, Dora smiled and held up the crisps. “It’s salt-and-vinegar ones.” She distributed the crisps and left again on another mission.

“Anything else, gentlemen?” asked Sally Hawkins. They shook their heads, and with her tray under her arm, Sally left.

“Is she the owner?”

Jury shook his head. “Sally Hawkins. She’s taking care of the place while her friends are on holiday. Her relationship to Dora is somewhat vague.”

Now Dora returned and placed before Jury a different dog-eared little snapshot of the black cat curled asleep atop one of the tables in the garden. “This is Morris.”

They both looked at the picture.

“That’s Morris’s favorite spot-on that table outside. She likes to sun herself. Sometimes she even likes it out there at night.”

Jury smiled. “I believe I must’ve run into Morris the other evening.”

Dora was wide-eyed. “You did? How-” But she was interrupted just then by the other black cat (if it was indeed the “other”) hurrying by. “That cat’s a lot thinner than Morris. You can tell from the picture, Morris is fatter.”

“How can we?” said Melrose. “The cat’s bunched up like a doughnut.”

After telling them both he’d be back in a second, Jury went to the bar where Sally Hawkins was talking to a thin reed of a man. “If I could just have a word, Miss Hawkins.” To the man he said, “Sorry to interrupt.”

“Go on, Reg,” said Sally.

Reg was quick to move off to a table on the other side of the room.

Jury said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard about the identity of the dead woman-”

“We was just talking about it,” she whispered. “Mariah Cox, is what police said. I never knew her, except she works in the library.”

“You saw her at the library.”

“Only just.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, Dora and me, we checked out some books, right? And it was her, at least I think it was, only she had dark hair and was kind of plain, then.”

“You saw her just that once?”

Sally was obviously hard put to answer. “Maybe another time, yeah; I went with Dora a couple times, I guess.”

“Nothing wrong with that. And you didn’t recognize the dead woman as Mariah Cox?”

“God, no! I’d’ve said, wouldn’t I?”

“I’m sorry. We ask questions again and again in the hopes of a witness recalling some detail. I know it’s tiresome.”

She was prepared to be generous. “I expect you’re just doing your job.”

Jury leaned toward her, put his hand on her arm. “Look, Sally-keep your eyes and ears open, will you? The way you’re positioned here, I mean in the pub, you might hear something. You know the way people talk after they’ve had a few.” He took a card from his pocket and placed it in front of her. “Anytime, don’t hesitate to call.”

This increase in intimacy was not lost on Sally Hawkins. She ran her hand over her hair and smiled at him.

Jury returned the smile, patted her arm, and went back to the table where Melrose was talking to Dora, or rather arguing with her, given the frown on her face. She looked relieved when he sat down.

“You’ll find her, won’t you?” said Dora, her two fingers pleating the arm of Jury’s jacket.

“Morris? We’ll do our best.”

That didn’t sound like top-notch investigation to Dora, who reluctantly left their sides at Sally’s insistence.

Melrose said, “I can tell you right now what happened: A woman’s been murdered right on Dora’s doorstep, so to speak, and young Dora, unable to accept this awful event, substitutes her cat as the victim. She can handle the thing that way; she sublimates the actual killing because it’s too frightening to be believed. It’s called displacement. You take something out of its usual context and put it down in another context. In this case: Morris. Morris takes on all of the dread that would have been felt for the murdered woman.” Melrose was rather proud of this theory. “So what do you think?”

“About Morris? Morris was either kidnapped or murdered.” Jury drank his beer.

13

They took both cars, and Melrose insisted that Jury follow him.

“Why?”

“In case my car breaks down.”

“Your car is a Rolls-Royce. My car is a Vauxhall of questionable provenance with a million miles clocked. Now, which car is more likely to break down?”

“Mine.” Melrose turned on the engine. It thrummed like Yo-Yo Ma’s cello.

“Oh, my, yes. The rattle and clang’s enough to deafen you.”

“I’ll wait for you,” called Melrose to Jury’s departing back. And again: “Don’t forget we’re stopping if we see a Little Chef.”

Twenty miles on, well past Leighton Buzzard, they came to one, and Melrose pulled off the road and into the car park.

The Little Chef was crisp and bright as if the whole place had just been polished. It looked pleased with its black-checkered self.

Melrose studied the menu.

Jury didn’t bother. “I can tell you what’s on it; I’ve seen it often enough.”

“I like looking.”

“While you’re doing that, let me tell you about the Rexroths’ party, where, I’m pretty sure, the murdered woman was going.” Jury did so, including the guest list.

“You’re kidding. Harry Johnson was at that party?”

“He was on the list. Whether he was actually there is in question.”

“The house isn’t far from the Black Cat?”

“I’m not jumping to the conclusion that he knew her.”

“No, you’re merely jumping to the conclusion that he murdered her.”

“Don’t be daft.”

“Daft? You’re absolutely delighted you have some reason to go after Harry Johnson again. Ah, here’s our waitress.”

The waitress, whose name tag said “Sonia,” came over on squeaky rubber soles and with a huge, not-meaning-it smile. “Ready, are we?”

“No.”

“Yes.” Jury pointed to the paint-bright picture of the plate he wanted.

Melrose said, “I’ll have pancakes with sausages.” The waitress left and he said, “As you are now confronted with a murder and a vanished, perhaps murdered, cat, why are we going to Bletchley Park?”

“Because of Sir Oswald Maples.”

“He asked you to go?”

“No. Because the mysterious workings of code breaking in World War Two interest me, and he’s an expert on the subject, and I’d just like to be able to talk about it.”

Jury watched a family of at least a dozen people enter and secure three tables pushed together. They were all fat. “If you didn’t want to see Bletchley Park, why did you come?”

“Simple. Because it’s near Milton Keynes, and that’s only fifty miles from home, and I thought we’d be spending most of the day at Ardry End swilling my single malt whiskey, after which we’d go to the Jack and Hammer and swill some more.”

“Sorry, but I can’t take you up on that invitation. I’ve got to get back to London.”

Melrose was disappointed. “It’s a long time since you’ve been to my place.”

“Yes, a whole month.”

Sonia was back setting down their plates.

Jury started in on his eggs.

“Um, um,” murmured Melrose, mouth full of syrupy pancakes. He ate a few bites and said, “I’m intrigued by your murder victim’s clothes.”

“So am I.” Jury picked up a triangle of buttered toast and wondered which point to start on. Sonia, he noticed, was watching them as if they’d both walked in with tire irons and nasty intentions.

“Well, if our unidentified victim could afford that dress and those shoes…,” Melrose began.

“Jimmy Choo. How can women wear heels four inches high? These shoes, according to Detective Sergeant Cummins, would have cost around six or seven hundred quid.”

“And that’s a sandal?”

“All straps.” Jury smiled. “Strappy, you say.”

“I don’t say it. How does Detective Sergeant Cummins come by such arcane knowledge?”

“It’s hardly arcane. Jimmy’s popular. It’s Mrs. Cummins, our sergeant’s wife, who knows this stuff; she’s a woman who’s really into designer shoes. The dress cost-get this-around three thousand quid. That’s Yves Saint Laurent. The handbag by Alexander McQueen cost another thousand. It’s mind-boggling.”

“Astonishing. What item of clothing could possibly be worth it?”

Jury looked at him. “What did that jacket you’re wearing set you back?”

Melrose looked down as if surprised to see he wasn’t wearing sackcloth and ashes. “This rag?” He shrugged.

“Bespoke. Your old tailor. Don’t tell me it didn’t cost as much as her dress.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The point is: is prostitution so well paid a woman can buy that stuff?”

“Who says she’s that?” Jury bit down on his toast, nearly cold and slightly burnt.

“Come on. Woman leading a ‘second life’ in London, goes from Chesham librarian to London Saint Laurent?”

Jury reached across the table and speared one of Melrose ’s sausages.

“Hey! Get your own! You should have a look in this woman’s cupboard to see the rest of her wardrobe. Is she filthy rich? Even so, what does it say about her that she’d spend that kind of money on shoes? Self-indulgent, spoiled, egocentric…”

Jury chewed slowly and looked at him.

“What?… What?”

“Well, there you go, working up a stereotype.”

“I’m not stereotyping; I’m… profiling.”

“Then you’re one sorry profiler. Typical of the male ego, he would find such extravagance joined either to prostitution or to a spoiled, shallow, self-indulgent woman, when there are certainly other viable interpretations, the least of which would explain this behavior. We’re making too much of the lady’s extravagance. After all, some women spend money like they’re minting it. If they didn’t, the entire fashion industry would go down.”

“Then you don’t think these Jimmy Choo shoes are important?”

“Of course I do. The shoes and the dress are very important. But I wouldn’t think twice if I saw them at the Albert Hall. It’s finding them in the grounds of the Black Cat that’s interesting.”

“And everything points to her having been killed where she was found? I mean, that she wasn’t transported there?”

“Everything: beginning with lividity, to the arterialblood-splatter, to the onset of rigor mortis, to an examination of the ground beneath the body to determine the amount of blood that soaked into it-everything.”

“Oh, you’re just guessing.”

In Bletchley Park, they stood looking down at this machine that was no bigger than a typewriter, the genius machine that had broken the German Navy’s Enigma code.

“Imagine,” said Jury, “billions of possibilities-”

“I’d rather not, I’m having a hard enough time imagining dinner. So this could encipher messages?”

Jury nodded. “Scramble plaintext into ciphertext.” He bent his head closer to it. “This machine had been commercial, you know, I mean used for other purposes. It was just that the Germans realized its potential for encrypting messages.”

“So this was what Oswald Maples worked on.”

“This or those.” Jury turned to look at the other machines housed here in what used to be the huts occupied by experts in codes and ciphers. “That’s what this arm of the War Ministry was called: GC &CS, Government Code and Cypher School. Cribs were largely guesses, guessing a word would appear in a message because past messages had used it so much. Say you sent a lot of messages to Agatha where the word ‘idiot’ popped up all the time.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“Anyone then reading a new message from you to Agatha would figure that the word ‘idiot’ would appear in the message. Thereby making it easy to decipher the message.”

“It sounds extremely complex.”

“It is. The Enigma machine had the capacity to make billions of combinations.”

“You’re really into this code and cipher stuff; you and Sir Oswald must get along like a house on fire.”

“We do.” Jury was by the large machine called the bombe, bending down to read the explanatory material. “This is interesting; this one didn’t prove a particular Enigma setting; it disproved every incorrect one.”

Hands behind him, Melrose leaned back on his heels and thought about it. “But wouldn’t it amount to the same thing? Wouldn’t you be doing that anyway?”

“What?”

“Proving. To prove a thing is, you’d be disproving what it’s not.”

“No. If that were the case, this bombe wouldn’t be disproving other possibilities.”

“Hold it.” Melrose pushed out his hand like a traffic cop. “You’re begging the question. You’re saying the bombe disproves because it disproves. That’s no argument.”

“It isn’t the way you’re putting it.”

“Okay, forget that. I don’t see how you can disprove something without assuming a proof. Take the black cat, for instance-”

“Which one?”

“Ah! That’s my point. Right now, to our knowledge there are two black cats.”

“Oh, I believe that, but-”

“Let me finish.”

Jury folded his arms across his chest. “Are you going to wipe out two years of Alan Turing’s work here?”

“The cats are Morris One, Dora’s cat; Morris Two, the pretender cat. To our knowledge, there are two because we’ve been told there are. Anything else is deduction. In order to prove Morris One is Dora’s cat, we have to disprove number two is not.”

“Can we continue this argument later? I’ve got to get back to London.”

Melrose threw up his hands. “A detective superintendent and you don’t get it!”

They were walking toward the door. “I don’t get a lot of things. I particularly don’t get how it is you know more than Alan Turing.”

“It’s a cross I bear. So, in your greater wisdom, was Morris murdered or kidnapped?”

“Kidnapped.”

“Just how do you work that out?”

“How would I have worked my way up to detective superintendent if I couldn’t?”

14

Mungo, sitting several feet from a kitchen door in a house in Belgravia, listened to the voice of Mrs. Tobias coming from the kitchen. Yelling from the kitchen was more like it.

“Look what you’ve done, my lad! Ruined my good cake! Haven’t I told you-”

Here, “my lad” came running from the kitchen, giggling, chocolate cake still in his hand and on his mouth.

This was the ignominious Jasper, who was the most loathsome child Mungo had ever known. He was twelve, and if Mungo had anything to do with it, he’d never see thirteen. Jasper had been visiting for a week while his mum and new stepfather were on their honeymoon-a romantic getaway to Blackpool-and now it was to be another week relaxing at home in Bayswater before collecting Jasper. So the boy was destined to stay here another week, but a new destiny could always be arranged, thought Mungo darkly.

The kitchen door swung open again, and Mrs. Tobias came into the dining room, one of his little Matchbox cars in her hand. “And get these things out of my kitchen!” She stood in the dining room, calling into empty air, “One more of your tricks and you’ll be out of here, my lad, honeymoon or no honeymoon!” The silver car, like a gauntlet, was thrown down. “Why, if Mr. Harry ever slid on one of these, you’d be out of this house quick as a wink.”

Jasper had a dozen of these Corgi cars. They were always underfoot, and Mrs. Tobias, walking upstairs, had stepped on one and nearly landed downstairs on her head but just managed to grab at the banister in time. Jasper liked to roll them at Mungo and the cat Schrödinger when they slept. Mungo was sick of cars hitting him on the nose.

Jasper Seines. The name was like a sneeze or a hiss. Yes, he was going to have to do something about Jasper Seines.

He sloped off to have a dekko at Schrödinger’s kittens, still sleeping in the bottom drawer of the bureau in the music room. They were all sprawled out, including Elf, who was Mungo’s favorite, but now almost too big to be carried around by the skin of his neck, although Schrödinger managed to do it.

It was time Jasper Seines went. What surprised Mungo was that Harry hadn’t bumped him off. He had seen Harry cast truly malevolent looks at the boy, but Harry was taking the gentlemanly approach (and Harry was always that) by merely suggesting to Mrs. Tobias, his housekeeper and sometime cook, that Jasper Seines must be missing school. Hint, hint, nod, nod, wink, wink. But Mrs. Tobias wasn’t one to pick up a hint and a nod, so Harry might hand her a broader message by kicking Jasper Seines down the cellar stairs.

Mungo looked over the kittens as if they were licorice allsorts. He saw one was even smaller than Elf and was about to pick it up when Schrödinger padded over to scotch that particular bit of fun. Schrödinger was as black as squid’s ink and with almost as many appendages, or so it seemed, when she started routing Mungo.

He sent her the message Don’t be daft. I’m not doing anything. She stared at him round-eyed, refusing to return a message, probably feeling it beneath her.

So into this voiceless habitation came Jasper Seines. “Well, well, well, wot’s all this, then?” doing his imitation of some beat copper. Then suddenly, like a magician grabbing an object out of the air, he yanked up one of the kittens by its tail. The little thing screeched, and this earned Jasper Seines an attack from both sides: Schrödinger clawing his leg and Mungo sinking his teeth into the boy’s ankle.

“You little fuckers! Get offa me!”

The kitten dropped back into the drawer, and Jasper Seines yelled and, unable to shake off Mungo, yelled some more. Finally released, he ran crying to Mrs. Tobias; tears went flying from his doughy face as if even they wanted to get as far away from Master Seines as they could.

Neither Schrödinger nor Mungo subscribed to that old saw about my enemy’s enemy. Nonetheless, Mungo thought, if they worked together (for once), they might be able to get rid of Jasper Seines.

Schrödinger jumped into the drawer to see that no other devilment befell her brood; Mungo left the music room and went clicking across the gorgeously polished hardwood floor to sit near the kitchen and take in what was going on.

Tearily, Jasper Seines was denying any action on his part. “No, I never done nuttin’…”

“My patience is wearing thin, my lad.”

Mungo sighed. Mrs. Tobias was nobody’s fool.

“Aw right, I’d as soon go home! I don’t like it here!”

What a nasty nephew. But what a promising bit of conversation. Now all Mungo had to do was give this beastly child a little nudge out the front door.

Afternoon was drawing in and Mungo had his eye on his favorite spot, underneath a small wrought-iron bench in the rear garden. There was a doghouse, too, but he wouldn’t bother himself.

Trotting toward the bench, he could already feel the cool grass against his stomach, the feathery shade made by the thin and delicate fronds of a willow, moving in the breeze.

That’s why he was brought up smartly by finding his spot occupied by a black cat calmly snoozing there, not bothered by the traffic blaring its way along Upper Sloane Street. The cat lay with its front paws hooked around its chest, in that deft way of cats. It looked like a loaf of pumpernickel.

Carefully, Mungo crept closer to the bench and sat down far enough away that the cat would miss him if he woke suddenly and took a swipe at Mungo. The cat slept on, sensing nothing. For one crazy moment, he thought it might be Schrödinger. It was just as black, certainly, and looked just like her, except for the bright blue collar round the stranger’s neck.

Mungo pulled a pebble from beneath a tree and aimed it toward the cat. The pebble rolled against a paw, but the cat only twitched its nose before it resettled itself even more deeply into pumpernickel posture. This was irritating. If someone hit him, Mungo, with a pebble, he’d be off the ground and flailing. He jumped onto the bench, from which position he could watch the cat through the wrought-iron interstices of the seat. There were large openings in the fussy scroll-work through which he could reach his paw, but he couldn’t reach the cat.

He could bark to wake the cat up, but he didn’t like to bark; barking was a last-ditch effort. Mungo hopped down from the bench and moved around to where he was before. He lay down, his head on his paws, his gaze level with the cat’s closed eyes. When the cat woke, he would be startled; it would be fun.

The cat’s eyes opened so slowly, they seemed not to move. Mungo raised himself to a sitting position, leaned on one paw, then the other, back and forth as if getting ready to make a dash.

The cat yawned.

That annoyed him. Mungo was, after all, a dog. He pricked up his ears: the cat was sending him a message:

I hope I’m not dead and you’re not heaven.

Mungo took a startled step back. He wasn’t at all sure that message was complimentary. He sent a message back: No, it’s not heaven; it’s Belgravia, though some here would argue there’s a difference. Who are you?

Morris.

The cat shoveled its rear end back and assumed one of those sloping Zen-like stretches that cats were so good at. Even Schrödinger looked agile in that butt-to-sky pose.

Do you live around here? asked Mungo. I mean in one of these other houses? Because this is my garden.

Morris lay back down in the paws-to-chest position that Mungo envied.

No, I live off somewhere.

That’s not going to get you far. You don’t even know the name of the place?

Never thought I’d have to know. I never thought I’d be kidnapped before. The slow-blinking eyes blinked again.

Kidnapped! Wow! That was supposed to have happened to Mungo once, but it hadn’t. That story was Harry’s invention. If there was one thing Harry was good at, it was making up stories and otherwise lying.

You mean honest-to-God kidnapping? Or do you know Harry?

Harry who?

Never mind. (Less said the better.) You don’t know where you were kidnapped from? Or to?

It’ll come back to me. I know it’s a pub. One minute I was on my table in the pub gardens, having a kip. There I lay until someone jerked me up and started roughing me around. Then I was in a car. Then I don’t remember.

What pub is it?

I think it’s called the Black Cat. Once in a while a customer would remark on me being the pub’s cat and wasn’t that clever? Clever. I ask you. Anyway, I’m not. My owner’s name is Dora.

Go on.

Well, I’m wandering about outside looking for field mice, and I come across a person lying on the patio where the tables are.

Mungo sat straight up, big-eyed.

It didn’t move, this person. I sniffed all around and smelled something like blood, I think.

Blood! Mungo could feel the small stiff hairs rise along his spine. He would like to be a bloodhound.

It must’ve been a dead body.

I expect so. Then I saw an old woman coming along with a fat dog and ran back inside the pub. Do you have anything to eat? I’m really hungry. A nice piece of fish would go down a treat. Of course, I’d take anything.

Mungo was thinking furiously. I’m going in for a bit.

Back to the house? Will you come back?

Yes. I’ll bring some food. You stay here. I won’t be long.

The rear door was open, as it often was off the latch in good weather. Mungo hated the dog door because he was afraid of getting stuck in it. All he needed to do here was get a paw in between door and doorjamb and pull.

Mrs. Tobias was busy arranging thin cucumber slices on a cold salmon. “Mungo! Where have you been?”

Mrs. Tobias always sounded surprised to see Mungo was still living here. “This is for your master’s dinner. Doesn’t it look nice?”

My what? Was she kidding?

“He does like his bit of salmon.”

I’d like my bit, too.

Mrs. Tobias went twittering on about cooking this and that and sounded settled in forever with the cucumber decoration. She was opening ajar of pimiento when the telephone rang from somewhere deep in the house.

The blessed telephone! That should keep her busy, she was such a talker.

He raced out to the dining room, knowing exactly where that Corgi car had fallen when Mrs. Tobias had flung it. He picked it up in his teeth and made his way back to the kitchen. From the hallway came the sound of Mrs. Tobias on the phone: talk, talk, talk, talk.

Back to the kitchen he went. He was up to the chair, then to the stool, and then to the kitchen counter. Mrs. Tobias’s cold salmon lay on a long china plate on the counter. Its eye was a circle of black olive; its scales, the overlapped cucumber slices.

He deposited the little silver car with its nose to the pepper grinder, then knocked over the grinder for good measure. Delicately, he put his teeth around the lower part of the salmon with its cucumber garnish. Carefully, he slid down to the floor and carefully held his head high so as to keep the salmon intact. Then, just as carefully, he was out the back door.

He dropped the salmon and a cucumber slice in front of Morris. They were in a little clearing within the bushes defined by a box hedge. Morris had been eyeing two wrens having a clamorous talk. When Morris saw the fish, she nearly fell on it, eating as if she were inhaling it. Including the cucumber.

Mrs. Tobias had, of course, returned to the kitchen and half a salmon and was yelling for Jasper, calling out, “This is it, my lad! You go in the morning!”

Who’s Jasper? asked Morris between bites.

A thing of the past, answered Mungo. He was mightily pleased. Hello, Morris. Good-bye, Jasper.

When she’d finished the salmon, Morris thanked Mungo with great enthusiasm and began washing her face. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, which was the best he’d heard since Harry tried to convince the Spotter-Oh, but that was for another time.

Now, tell me the rest. You stopped when this old woman came along. Mungo settled in to listen. He tried to fold his paws into his chest and couldn’t. So he just stretched his legs out.

Morris lay down, easily curving her paws. Well, she didn’t scream, exactly, but she made some kind of noise. Her dog was yapping; it was enough to wake the dead. Then she put a leaf against her ear and-

A leaf? What do you mean?

Everybody has them. You’ve seen people with leaves; they’re always talking to them. People just can’t let leaves alone. Sometimes I’d be on my window seat, napping, when customers would sit down and right away pull out a leaf and talk, talk, talk-

I get the idea.

– talk, talk, talk. Do you think there’s anybody on the other end?

I think maybe it doesn’t make any difference to them. Mungo stretched out, feeling quite philosophical. Back to the pub: what did the old woman say to the leaf?

She said for someone to come quick. There was a body.

Was she talking to the Spotters? You know, the ones who go nosing around whenever there’s a dead body. Some of them are Uniforms and some of them are something else. I call them Spotters.

I guess that’s who came, finally. There was a big commotion around the body. They took a lot of pictures. Why anyone would want pictures of a dead body, I don’t know.

Then what happened?

Nothing until the cars came. People messed about.

How did you get here, then?

In a car, I guess, but that was days later. I think I was gassed.

Mungo would have said it was the strangest tale he’d ever heard, except for what had happened to him, or at least what was supposed to have.

Now, the only person who really notices Schrödinger is Mrs. Tobias. Harry is too bogged down in his own mind to pay any attention. So there’s no reason why you couldn’t live here and pretend you’re Shoe. After all, one black cat looks pretty much like another.

Morris wasn’t sure she liked that. But what if we appear together at the same time? And I have this collar, too. Does your cat wear one?

No. We’ll be on the lookout, won’t we? Anyway, Mrs. Tobias is old and she’d just think she was seeing double. You can make anyone think they’re bonkers except for the ones who really are.

Morris sat up, paws placed neatly on the grass. Mungo sat up too and tried to get his paws that way, but he couldn’t. Come on.

But Morris didn’t move except to pick up a paw and set it down, pick up the other one and set it down, in the way Mungo himself had done if he didn’t know what to do.

I want to go home, said Morris.

Mungo felt sad, as homesickness seemed to fill the place that hunger had just left.

Really, said Morris.

Mungo didn’t know how to send a message back, with that.

15

Wasn’t it possible, Jury wondered, looking down at his telephone message pad on this late Thursday morning for Carole-anne Palutski to write in the King’s English? And hadn’t they pretty much exhausted this subject? Apparently not, for here was another one:

“S.W. c’ld t’ tell you the b.c. w’mn was i.d. by o’nr of ag’cy c’d ♥.”

A heart. Was something called “Heart”? No. Was Valentine’s Day coming up? No. It was May. “Sergeant Wiggins called to tell you-” That much was clear. Of course, what wasn’t clear was the point of what S.W. called to tell you, right?

Hell. Jury picked up the receiver and punched in his office number. No answer. He mashed the receiver into the cradle (he had a telephone left over from the Pleistocene age), collected his keys, and left the flat.

“ ‘Heart.’ That’s funny, guv.” Wiggins gave a spluttery laugh.

Jury stitched his lips shut to keep from yelling. “Then do you think you could enlighten me as to what ‘heart’ means here?”

“Sorry. What that refers to is Valentine. Valentine’s Escorts. Mariah wasn’t exactly soliciting the curb crawlers in Shepherd Market, see. She was with an escort service. A little more respectable, maybe, but still pros. Valentine’s has offices in Tottenham Court Road.”

At last. “Good for you, Wiggins. I forgive you the message.”

“Nothing wrong with the message. It’s the one who took it you should have a word with.” Wiggins said this self-righteously.

“I have had a word. A word does not penetrate. How did you work it out about this escort agency?”

“Well, I didn’t, did I? It was her flatmate called us-”

“Adele-I think Edna Cox said.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Wiggins whipped out his notepad. “Adele Astaire. There’s a name for you. Adele said she’d only just now seen the paper and that she was sure it must be Stacy.”

Jury waited. But Wiggins didn’t continue. “Stacy? Is there a surname to go with that?”

“What? Oh. Stacy Storm. There’s another name, right? That’s Mariah Cox, when she’s at home. I mean, literally. ‘When she’s at home.”’

Wiggins thought this extremely funny. Jury didn’t. “Look, can you just stick to it?”

“Sorry. I bet Adele Astaire’s not her real name, either. Maybe working for an escort service, they don’t want to give out their names.”

Jury didn’t comment. “Where’s Adele live? Mariah’s aunt said Parsons Green or Fulham.”

“Fulham. You want to go and see her?”

“Of course.” Jury extended his hand. “Give me that.” When Wiggins handed over the paper on which he’d written the address, Jury said, “You get onto this Valentine’s place. Take that list of names the Rexroths gave me with you. The person who runs Valentine’s-”

“That’s a Blanche Vann. But she’s going to scream client privilege and make me get a warrant.”

“Probably. Nevertheless, what you’ll want to do is match up names, the names of the men at the Rexroths’ party who came without women on their arms, against any such names on Valentine’s list.”

“Her clients would likely change their names, wouldn’t they?”

“Some would, yes. Assuming that Ms. Vann is helpful at all, if the full names don’t ring a bell, then try just the first names. A person might change the last name but leave the first in place.”

Wiggins had the list out and studied the names. He said, “Here’s a Simon; Simon’s a common name. She’s bound to have a few of those.”

“Depends how many clients she has. But if a surname is being disguised, it could be the person comes up with an absurdly common substitute, like ‘Jones.’ So ‘John Jones’ would be a red flag.” Jury was up and getting into his raincoat, which he liked. He liked rain, too. “Adele…,” he said in a musing way. “Doesn’t she know that was Fred’s sister?”

Wiggins was dropping a teabag in his mug as the electric kettle hissed and burbled. His lunch waited beside his tea mug. It was something peculiar-looking wrapped in what appeared to be a cabbage leaf and purchased at Good Earth, a tiny healthy-eats place nearby that Jury had never patronized and never would. “Guv?” He frowned.

“Fred Astaire. His sister was his dancing partner for years.”

Wiggins poured steaming water into his mug. “We used to do the same thing.” He was sitting down, reflecting, stirring his tea like the old Wiggins.

“What?” What was he talking about?

“My sister. Me and my sister, B.J.-Brenda Jean’s her name. We used to dance a lot.”

Jury stood in the doorway, trying to get his mind around that. Or trying not to. “Wiggins, this is Fred Astaire we’re talking about.”

“Right. The tap dancer,” said Wiggins.

Jury chewed his lip to keep from talking. Then he was out the door.

16

“A dele Astaire?”

Over the key chain, she nodded. Or the half of her face he could see did. The half looked rather young to be employed by an escort service. “I’m Richard Jury, Scotland Yard CID.” He held out his ID.

She slid back the chain and opened the door and took the ID as if it were a calling card. She studied it, frowning, as though trying to memorize the fact of it before she handed it back.

Jury found the close scrutiny amusing. Rarely did people do more than glance at it.

“Well, you better come on in, then.” Her tone was more friendly than resentful of this detective on her doorstep.

Now he could see all of Adele Astaire-not her real name, as she was quick to tell him, apparently embarrassed by her made-up one-and she still looked a lot younger than she must be. She wore her brown hair in bunches, with an uneven fringe that she scraped this way and that on her forehead. Her cotton dress was pinaforelike, pink and white stripes that made it a little hard to discern the figure beneath it. He hadn’t seen anything like it in years; she must buy her clothes at some retro shop. On her feet were furry slippers.

Her flat was neat and furnished with worn chairs and a small cream-colored sofa. On the shelves of a built-in arched bookcase were some Beatrix Potter figurines-he recognized Benjamin Bunny, for he had had one as a child. On a small table by a chair stood a Paddington Bear lamp.

“It’s really Rose, Rose Moss,” she said. “People call me Rosie, mostly.”

Jury smiled, thinking of one of the little girls they’d rescued from the Hester Street operation. And then he stopped smiling, remembering the cupboard full of little clothes, miniature versions of the costumes he imagined this Rosie might have in her own cupboard. Hester Street had been a pederast ring. That tiny girl’s name had been Rosie, too.

Rosie said, “Blanche Vann-she runs the place where I work-says we’re to have phony names to make us untraceable. Like we couldn’t have clients coming round or ringing us in the middle of the night, could we?”

Untraceable. No matter how clear the prints of the Jimmy Choo shoes, they might not lead to the killer.

Rosie was giving him a great deal of unasked-for information. He’d said nothing about where she worked. Now she continued.

“I just thought, you know, Rosie was kind of unsophisticated. You know, childish.”

Which fit her perfectly, for it was the way she looked, childlike, and the way she coiled an errant lock of dark hair round her finger. No makeup. Skin as pale and smooth as sand left by receding waves. Startled brown eyes; small, neat nose.

“Thing is,” she went on to say after they were seated on the sofa, and as if she’d read his mind, “I’m popular with the clients who’ve got these little-girl fantasies, you know what I mean.”

Yes. They’re a step away from pederasty. Again, he thought of Hester Street.

“I can dress up-I’ve got like schoolgirl costumes-”

Jury thought she would have been a knockout as a child. He felt himself flush at such a thought. And he wondered if pederasts saw the woman in the child, the child holding the woman at bay. A strange inversion of woman and child.

“But of course, I can be an adult, too, if required.” She lit a cigarette.

What a bleak statement. But he had to smile at the way she was processing her cigarette, blowing smoke out in little puffs, off to the side so as not to blow it his way. She did this in the way Bette Davis did it. No one smoked the way Bette Davis had smoked. All About Eve. “I ran all the way.” Phyllis Nancy, rain-soaked, in his doorway, saying that. Lu Aguilar. The crashed car. Jury tried to shut it all out.

“… nervous. You know.”

He’d missed her first few words. “Nervous?”

“You being Scotland Yard. Being here.”

“Please don’t be. It’s only routine. We just need your help with information about Stacy-the name she was using, Stacy Storm.” What sadly affected made-up names. “Mariah Cox was her real name.”

“I know. But I can’t see how I’ll be much help.”

“Your friendship with her could be important. You’d be surprised at how sparse the information has been on her.”

Rosie picked up her glass, whiskey or tea, rattled the ice cubes in it. “I don’t know as I’d call it friendship, exactly; I mean, she never talked, well, hardly ever talked about her other life.”

“Well, mates, then.”

Her accent was a little rough around the edges, a little nasal, a far cry from Chelsea or Knightsbridge, more Brixton, perhaps. She could relate to “mates.”

“Yeah, mebbe. You could say. We worked together, I mean for the same firm.”

“This is Valentine’s?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. Nothing to tell except that I think they treated the girls fair. I been working there years.”

“You don’t look old enough.”

“Now, how old do you think I am?” She stubbed out her cigarette.

Jury shrugged, generously guessing, “Twenty?”

That went further than two dozen roses would have. “Listen to you. I’m thirty-one years old.”

She was, too. The eyes always give it away. In hers was a kind of flatness, inexpressiveness, weariness. “My Lord, Rosie. Where’s the fountain of youth? I could use a glassful of that stuff.”

Now, she’d be on his side. “Oh, I don’t know. You look okay to me.” Fetchingly she said this, as she let one leg slide off the sofa.

Before a full-blown flirtation could get under way, he said, “How did Stacy feel about her job? Did she ever mention any of the men she dated?”

Rosie leaned forward and shook another cigarette out of a pack, lit it, then minded her manners and pushed the pack toward Jury.

“No thanks.” Jury thought everyone in Britain must smoke except him, Dora, and Harry’s dog, Mungo. And he wouldn’t take bets on Mungo.

Pulling over a tin ashtray that advertised a pub named “Batty’s” or maybe it was a beer, she said, “Thing is, she never told me their names.”

“Whose names?”

“There was this one bloke she really liked; she dated him awhile-I mean, off the clock. Well, we’re not supposed to, you know.”

“Was she serious about him?”

Rosie looked away and out the window behind them. “Not really. I think she just liked him better than the others.”

“Did she describe him? Do you have any idea what he looks like?”

She shook her head. “Only he was handsome, is all. He bought her things. ‘Like a prince,’ he was, she once said.”

Was it the Cinderella story in Jimmy Choo shoes? Or Snow White’s story, the men always charming, handsome, rich? The women always in jeopardy? He didn’t imagine any of Valentine’s clients would have qualified as Prince Charming. In any event, Prince Charming wouldn’t have needed Valentine’s.

“Funny thing, though. He wanted her to dress a certain way and change her hair.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stacy said it must be someone in his past. He wanted her to color her hair red. So she did. I mean, I did.”

“You did?”

“See, I used to be a stylist. I was in that real chic shop in Bayswater. I was good at color. Good at makeup, too.”

Jury asked, “You mean every weekend she’d have you color her hair?”

She nodded. “With this semipermanent color I use, it’s not so hard on the hair. But her real hair was darkish brown, and it’s tricky turning that coppery color back to brown. You have to use an ash brown to get it that shade. Her clothes, though, he must’ve paid for most of them. Those shoes alone cost seven, eight hundred quid.” Rosie stretched out one leg and moved the furry slipper up and down. “Me, I got myself a pair of Christian Louboutin for a tiny price at one of those consignment stores. It’s called Go Around Twice.”

Jury had a feeling it was hard enough for Rosie to go around once. “How does it work? How do you meet up with the clients?”

“Blanche calls us-that’s Blanche Vann, did I say?-and tells us who and where to meet the bloke. He’d already have paid. So any money changes hands between me and him, that’s a tip.”

“And what about you? Ever met anybody who’s like that? The man Stacy met?”

“Ha! Not bloody likely.” Again, she looped a strand of hair round her finger, curled it and uncurled it.

“Still, it’s possible.”

But as he was the police and fairly out of bounds as a client, she said only, “Yeah.”

Jury said, “Her aunt didn’t know about Stacy Storm, either. Mariah kept the two identities separate.”

“You know, I always did think-”

Jury sensed hindsight coming down the road.

“-she was worried about something, something was bothering her, and I asked, but she never would say. I don’t think it was him, though, causing whatever the trouble was. Not him-he was ever so generous.” She sighed. “Stacy, she was always a bit of a mystery, wasn’t she?”

He wasn’t expected to answer that. He said, “Did he buy her the Saint Laurent she was wearing when she died?”

“He must’ve bought it all.”

Yves Saint Laurent was on Upper Sloane Street; so was Jimmy Choo. He rose. “Thank you so much, Rosie. You’ve really been a big help. I may want to talk to you again.”

“All right,” she said. Saddened by the death of her friend or by his leaving or both, as if he’d brought Stacy with him and was now taking her away, Rosie got up and walked with him to the door.

In the hallway, he gave her his card and told her to get in touch if she remembered anything else. He looked down at her.

Rosie Moss, in her candy-cane-striped dress, her furry slippers, and her hair in bunches, and felt as if he’d weep, and turned away.

17

The door buzzed as Jury entered; a salesperson in a knockout draped black dress came toward him. The dress would look stunning on Phyllis, but then again, what wouldn’t?

“Sir?” Her smile was wide, but it faded when he showed her his ID. She looked stricken, as if he’d slapped her.

Then Jury smiled and all was well again, the waters calm. “I just need to ask you a few questions, Miss…?”

“Ondine-”

Did she work for Valentine’s, too, with a name like that?

“-Overalls.”

No. “Miss Overalls-” He bit his lip to keep from smiling.

“Just Ondine.”

“Ondine. Thank you. Is this the main Yves Saint Laurent in London?”

“Of course. We’re not a chain.” She whipped out a “just kidding” smile.

“Ah. I’m interested in a dress purchased by this woman-” Jury hated showing morgue shots, but the only others would have been of a very different-looking Mariah Cox. The photographer had managed to polish this one so that she didn’t look, well, too dead.

Ondine picked up narrow glasses with metal frames and put them on. Her head bent over the photo, she nodded. “I remember. I thought she was a model; I mean, the way she moved. She looked wonderful in our gowns.”

She gestured toward the mannequins stationed side by side in one area, as at the rail of a luxury ocean liner, watching, blind-eyed as they were, the coast of some country fall away.

Ondine looked like a model herself, makeup perfectly applied in little dots of cream-something, gray dust whisked across her eyelids with a supple brush, lipstick drawn on.

“You mean she’s-dead?”

“I’m afraid so. She was shot to death.”

Ondine looked a little wildly around the shop and at the mannequins, as if some guilt might attach to them. Then, sensibly, she placed her hand on her breast and took a deep breath, then another. She said, “Yes, that’s one of ours. Poor thing, she’ll never wear it again.”

Jury smiled a little at this summing-up of the good life.

“When was she here?”

“It was… Tuesday week. I remember it very well. She tried on several dresses and looked, I must say, delicious in each. That”-she looked again at the picture as she spoke-“was the best of them. Well, given the price”-she looked round the room, blameless and empty except for the mannequins-“it should have been: three thousand seven hundred pounds.”

Jury gave a low, appreciative whistle. “Was she alone?”

“Oh, yes, quite alone. But she did make a call. I didn’t hear what she said.”

“Did she use a mobile phone?”

“Yes. The battery was down in hers, so I let her use mine.”

“You did? Do you have it here?”

Ondine moved over to a counter, reached behind it, and came back and handed the mobile phone to Jury. He brought up a list of phone calls; there were probably a good fifty of them. “Have you erased any outgoing calls here?”

“Not lately. I forget to do it, anyway.”

Jury handed back the mobile, saying, “Take a look at these and see if there are any numbers you don’t recognize.”

Ondine ran her eyes down the list and was about to say something when the door chimed and a couple walked in, probably in their seventies, clearly rich and rather fragile. They moved with their torsos slightly inclined, not bent, just forward, as if trying to get somewhere ahead of themselves. They both wore light gray capes, his part of his coat, hers a coat in itself. They made Jury think of shorebirds.

“Excuse me just a moment,” Ondine whispered before she went to the couple to offer assistance. Jury couldn’t hear what she said; he thought it rather pleasant that nothing got above a murmur in this elegant, graceful room. As moneyed as these people seemed to be and as expensive as the clothes that were sold, the atmosphere still wasn’t steeped in materialism.

Ondine was back. “Let me look at this-” She took the mobile and pointed out a number. “I think it was this one: I don’t know it, and it was placed just about when she was here.”

Jury pulled out his notebook, wrote it down, a London number.

At this juncture, the gray-haired couple, who appeared to act always in concert, raised their hands to beckon Ondine over.

“Sorry,” she whispered again. “There’s just me here today. Charlotte ’s sick again.” She sighed. As if Jury knew Charlotte and her sham illnesses.

Jury watched her glide over to them. Murmurs again.

Honestly, the place would do for a meditation center; he smiled at the idea of several monks sitting around the room on the silk and satin cushions. He watched Ondine go to the counter, where she seemed to be checking something, possibly the price of the gray gown the two of them-the man and the woman-were holding between them. Folds of gray chiffon and silk. The man seemed perfectly at ease in this room sacred to women.

Wiggins walked through the glass door at that moment. “Guv. Blanche-”

Wiggins got on a first-name basis very quickly with witnesses.

“-was pretty cooperative, and it may be you were right about the names: there were no matches with the Rexroths, but Blanche did turn up two Simons-a Simon St. Cyr and a Simon Smith.” He was looking at his notebook and thumbed up a page. “According to the Valentine’s records, Simon Smith was down with Stacy Storm five times. I’ve got the dates. Five isn’t much for a hot romance, but he was down in the book those five times, and something tells me that’s not every time that he saw her.”

Jury nodded. “According to Rose Moss, she was seeing some fellow off the books. I don’t suppose Blanche Vann could describe him.”

Wiggins shook his head. “Their clients don’t call round; they ring and set up times according to Valentine’s schedule. The office isn’t much, just a room. But it’s nicely fitted out: big, airy, fresh flowers and fruit. The girls come round every so often. ‘My girls,’ she calls them. Bit of a mother hen, you ask me. I got the impression she was genuinely fond of Stacy. Pretty broken up about her death. And very surprised about this double life Stacy and Mariah led.”

“How’d she find out? Papers?”

“No, from your Adele Astaire. Blanche said she rang up and told her. Blanche doesn’t read the papers a lot.”

“Okay, get onto Thames Valley, to DS Cummins, and get this Simon Smith’s address, or, rather, get him to find out if the Rexroths have any idea who the ‘Smith’ might actually be.”

Wiggins nodded, turned away while punching in the number on his mobile phone.

Finding Ondine free of the gray-winged couple, Jury walked over to the counter. “Ondine.”

She looked up with a slightly mischievous smile.

“How did Stacy Storm pay for the dress?”

Ondine pulled over a large black ledger, opened it, and ran a red-coated fingernail up and down columns. “Barclaycard.”

“That must have been quite a credit line she had.”

“I don’t know, except it was approved.”

“All right. I won’t take up any more of your time. You’ve been a world of help, Ondine.” He handed her his card. “If you remember anything at all-”

“Including my name.” Big smile. “Believe me, I will.”

What a flirt.

“I have a friend who’d look terrific in that black gown in the window.”

Again, Ondine whispered, “Tell her to pop round. I might be able to give her a very nice price.”

“I’ll do that,” Jury whispered back.

The doorman or security guard or greeter at the door told them in chilly tones that the shop was just closing.

“No, it isn’t,” said Jury, holding up his ID and pushing past him into the light, bright air of Jimmy Choo.

Whereupon the man immediately went to get someone else, a lithesome-looking woman who had a way of standing with her feet crossed and her hands crossed inside out before her. He thought this difficult pose came naturally to her, and he wondered if she had been a model. Models seemed able to accomplish the most unusual and uncomfortable-looking postures.

In this clear and uncluttered interior, Jury thought he might be reassessing the common attitudes toward wealth and materialism. In the cathedral-like quiet, in their little niches, the artfully arranged jewel-toned shoes covered the walls like stained-glass windows.

These shoes looked both impossibly rich and flyaway at the same time. They were displayed, in their lit-up little alcoves, as works of art. And rightly so, Jury thought as he took in that metallic silver sandal with the jewels running all the way up the instep, or that silver snakeskin with its four-inch heel and straps twining up the ankle, or that glittery leather with its narrow straps impossibly entwined. The architectural detail of these sandals was remarkable. Wiggins was nearly inhaling them, he was so close to the wall. He was getting down with the shoes.

Jury made a guess and asked the saleswoman if she recalled a woman purchasing the shoes in the photo he held out, perhaps a week ago? He thought after buying the dress, Mariah might have walked across the street to Jimmy Choo’s.

He was right. The purchase had been made, but there was no phone call that she remembered. Yes, she’d paid with a Barclaycard.

He walked over to Wiggins. “You thinking of buying a pair for that cousin in Manchester?”

“Not bloody likely; do you see what these things cost? That’d be-” Wiggins’s mobile sounded, and he flipped it open, spoke his name, and listened. Then he thanked the caller. “That was Cummins. Simon Smith is probably Simon Santos. He knows Timothy Rexroth from his work in the City. Simon’s in mergers and acquisitions. And we’re in luck; he lives right around the corner.” Wiggins inclined his head in that direction. “ Pont Street. I’ve the number; should I call?”

Jury looked at his watch. It was nearly six, a good time for drinks before dinner. From whatever he did in the City, Simon Santos might just be relaxing over one. “No. Let’s surprise him.”

18

He answered the door with a drink in his hand, whiskey by the look of it, and in a cut-glass tumbler that cost a hundred pounds by the look of it. It was, after all, Pont Street, just steps away from Beauchamp Place and Harrods, high in the Knightsbridge heavens.

Simon Santos had his French cuffs rolled up, his silk jacket casually tossed over a rosewood banister, and his Italian leather shoes polished to mirror brightness.

Jury and Wiggins pulled out their IDs simultaneously, and Simon Santos regarded them, apparently unsurprised.

And, Jury noticed, apparently unresentful.

Holding the door open wider, Santos said, “I just got in.”

Not from work, surely, Jury thought. Nothing he could thus far see in this house looked as if it had done a day’s work in its life.

Santos invited them to sit down in a room that could serve as a template for any voguish magazine spread. A massive fireplace with all sorts of baronial brass fittings, above which hung a portrait of a truly beautiful woman dressed in green velvet with white skin against which her dark red hair burned. On the hearth lay two chocolate Labradors, their heads raised, and so alike that they could have been a pair of andirons. Well-mannered, too. After a brief scrutiny of the interlopers, they yawned and lowered their heads to their paws and resumed their snooze. Jury reached out his hand and ran it over the silky head of one, which made the dog sigh.

There was a lot of butter leather interspersed with damask furniture and a ton of dark green velvet dripping down the long windows and puddling on the floor. Jury and Wiggins sat in club chairs from which Jury wondered if they would ever rise. There was something to be said for money.

It was one of those rooms one could only describe in accents of taste: luscious, delectable, ambrosial, scrumptious. The room’s rich brown walls and creamy moldings made Jury feel as if he were sunk in a chocolate mousse.

“What can I do for you? Care for a drink?”

“No, thank you, Mr. Santos. We’re looking into the death of a young woman named Mariah Cox.”

Jury saw a muscle tighten in Santos ’s handsome face, then relax when he heard the name, which Jury supposed meant nothing to him.

“I don’t know anyone of that name.”

“No, but you do-or did-know Stacy Storm. That was Mariah’s professional name, so to speak.”

Tightness returned and went to every muscle, not just the one in his face. He killed a little time by rising to get himself a fresh drink: a cube of ice plinked; a siphon hissed. He returned to the sofa.

Jury wondered if he’d be stupid enough to deny all knowledge of Stacy Storm.

No. Santos took a couple of swallows of his whiskey, then he returned to the sofa and said, “That was terrible. Awful. I was…” He had been leaning forward, glass dangerously loose in his fingers (considering the plummage-swept rug beneath it), and now he sat back to consider what he was: “Devastated.”

Jury studied the man’s expression and what it told of devastation, but he couldn’t read it.

It was Wiggins who asked, “How well did you know her, sir?”

Santos ’s smile was tight as he looked from Wiggins to Jury and back again. “I expect you know, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“No, actually, we don’t, other than that you, ah, engaged her on several occasions as a Valentine’s escort.”

“I did, yes.” The tone was bitter, and he looked away.

“What we’re interested in, though, is whether you saw her at other times; that is, as Ms. Storm’s flatmate put it: ‘off the books.’ Not as a Valentine’s escort.”

“Well, I expect she won’t get in trouble now with Valentine’s.”

“No, Stacy’s in as much trouble as she’ll ever be in again.”

Santos regarded him. “You say that, Superintendent, as if you sympathize.”

Jury said nothing, just went on looking at him.

“So, yes. We saw each other any number of times ‘off the books,’ as you say.”

Wiggins said, “What’s ‘any number’?”

“Every week in the last three months. She was only in London on weekends. Now I know why. I mean, if she was also, or really, another woman. Mariah?”

“Mariah Cox. So, getting down to it, Mr. Santos, you went to a party given by a couple named Rexroth last Saturday night, is that true?”

He nodded. “And you’re wondering, of course, how that’s connected to Stacy. She was to meet me there. I wanted to pick her up-wherever she was. You see, I didn’t know where the devil she was during the week. She’d never tell me-”

“You didn’t know she lived in Chesham?”

“No. She told me nothing.”

“When she was found, when Stacy Storm was found, she was wearing a dress bought at the Yves Saint Laurent shop on Sloane Street. And Jimmy Choo shoes, also Sloane Street. Did you buy her gifts like that?”

“Not gifts like that, but those very ones. That costume, those shoes. It was actually my idea. I wanted her to feel no woman in the room could touch her. Stacy was rather… I don’t know…”

Jury waited, but Santos still didn’t know.

“She was to meet you at the Rexroths’, was she? How did she come to be at the Black Cat?”

“Christ!” The dogs both looked up, disturbed, first glancing at Santos, then at the two strangers, as if they, the dogs, were making up their minds about them. They resettled themselves when Simon Santos spoke in a quieter tone. “Do you think I haven’t asked myself that a hundred times? I’ve no idea.”

“No idea?”

He shook his head. “The Black Cat must’ve been part of her other life…” He shrugged. Then he sat forward, rolling the whiskey glass in his hands, forearms on knees. “I could never quite take her measure. There was something I didn’t get about her. What I thought was that there was somebody else, some other man. Which she denied.”

“What time did you leave the Rexroths’ party?”

“About ten, I think. When she didn’t come and still didn’t, I had no reason to stick around.”

“You came back to London? To here?”

Santos looked a mite surprised Jury would even wonder about this. “Yes, of course.”

“I only meant you might have stopped off someplace, to have a drink, get a bite to eat, somewhere along the way.”

Santos shook his head, looked at the dogs, sleeping soundly, looked up at Jury, puzzled. “I’m being stupid, aren’t I?”

Wiggins half-smiled. “Are you, sir? About what?”

“Well, for God’s sake, I’m a bloody suspect!”

Dogs awake again, looking worried.

Looking at the anxious dogs, he sat back and lowered his voice a little. “A suspect without an alibi. To answer your question: No, I didn’t stop off to eat or for any other reason. I came directly home, had a nightcap, and went upstairs to bed. No telephone calls, nothing. Just me alone.”

The way he said it, without self-pity, held an awful poignance.

Jury said, “Is it correct to assume Stacy meant a lot to you? Your meetings… well, they were more than a casual arrangement.”

Santos glanced up at the portrait, then looked away. He nodded. “Much more. At least on my part. Stacy-as I said, Stacy was difficult to read. She was extremely kind, and I might have misinterpreted the kindness as love.” He paused, then said, “Mariah Cox, Stacy’s other self, what was she like?”

Jury told Simon Santos about Mariah’s rather circumscribed life, lacking glamour, lacking Saint Laurent, lacking those bejeweled shoes that lined the walls of Jimmy Choo. But he left out Bobby Devlin.

Then he rose, nodded to Wiggins. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Santos. We’d appreciate it if you’d stay in London for a time.”

Simon Santos had risen too as Jury said this and stood, hands in pockets, looking uncertain and rather bereft. He was directly beneath the portrait over the fireplace, and Jury could see the resemblance.

Santos followed his glance and turned to look back at the portrait. “My mother, Isabelle. Beautiful, wasn’t she?”

That needed no confirmation. “I see the resemblance between you,” said Jury. But one not nearly so strong as the resemblance between the woman in the portrait and Mariah Cox.

This must have been Simon Santos’s obsession.

Jury thought of Lu Aguilar; he knew about obsession.

“What do you think, sir? Here’s what I can’t understand: a man like that, got everything going for him and a ton of money besides. Must have women lined up on his doorstep. So why does a man like that go and hire an escort, a tart? Doesn’t make sense.”

She wasn’t a tart, Jury wanted to say yet knew he had no business saying. “You saw the photo of Stacy.”

“Yes-”

“You don’t see the resemblance to Isabelle Santos? Stacy Storm was solace.”

They were standing by the car in Pont Street. “You want me to drop you in Islington? Then I’ll take the car in.”

Jury shook his head. “I’m taking a cab. I want to go to the City.”

“It’s near seven. What for?”

“The Old Wine Shades.” Jury pulled the Rexroths’ guest list out of his pocket, smiling.

Wiggins snuffled up a laugh. “Harry Johnson.”

“Right. I can hardly wait to hear him on this.” Jury held up the list.

“Do you think you’ll ever get him in the frame?”

“Oh, I’ll get him, never you worry. In the frame and in the end.”

Wiggins had the car door open. “Let’s hope it’s not.”

“What?”

“The end.”

They said good night, and Jury hailed a cab.

19

Dickens, as history had it, drank here. But more important (at least to Jury right now), so did Harry Johnson; this was his favorite place. He was sitting in his usual bar chair, drinking some bloodred vintage and talking to Trevor, barman of the Old Wine Shades.

“Hello, Harry,” said Jury, sliding into the chair beside him. “How’ve you been keeping?” As if he cared.

“Well, for Lord’s sake, it’s the Filth. I haven’t seen you in a whole couple of weeks.” Harry had drawn out his silver cigarette case and was now lighting up.

What Jury had drawn out was the Rexroth guest list. He assumed a patently insincere smile and tapped the folded pages against Harry’s arm.

“Ah! You finally got a warrant, did you? High time, as it saves you looting my house illegally. But go ahead and search away.” Harry’s smile put in its own claim for a patent on insincerity.

That Jury had never been able to get a warrant because there was no probable cause-nada, nil, nothing, zip-really stuck in his craw. Harry had done that murder in Surrey, and Jury meant to prove it.

But at the moment he had this list of names. “Where were you last Saturday night, Harry?”

“In Chesham. At a party. As you know or you wouldn’t be asking. It’s your case, isn’t it?” Harry tried on the smile again, then a woeful look, just as insincere: “I’m sorry about the wretched girl-”

No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t care less.

“-lying in the cold outside of the Black Cat in nothing but Yves Saint Laurent.”

“How do you know that, Harry? That detail wasn’t in the paper.”

Harry looked at Jury with the sort of indulgence one reserved for little children. “Are you dim just one night a week and is this the night? The Rexroths, of course. The Rexroths were in a frenzy of excitement. They would have steeped themselves in the details. Not much happens in Chesham. I called them when I read about it.”

“How do you know the Rexroths?”

Harry sighed. “Is this what tonight’s conversation will be? A lot of ‘how do you know’ questions? I know Timothy, or Tip, as he’s called, because he comes in here for lunch.”

“Where did you go after you left the party?”

“Home. Would you care for a glass of wine? It’s a Cote de Nuits.” He pointed to the bottle that Trevor had rested in a wine bucket and that Harry now pulled out in invitation.

“How long were you at the Rexroths’?”

Harry thought. “Got there around nine, left around ten. I didn’t stay long because I had to allow enough time for meeting up with and murdering your victim.”

Jury managed to suppress his desire to throw Harry off his bar chair. It wasn’t easy.

Harry blew a perfect smoke ring. “It’s getting tiresome. Any woman murdered within thirty miles of London you think is down to me.”

Jury pulled over the bottle of Burgundy, looked hard at the label (as if he’d know). “Are there any witnesses to place you at any stop on your journey back to Belgravia?”

“No stops. I got home before eleven. That’s it.”

“You didn’t stop in at the Black Cat?”

Harry frowned. “In Chesham? No, of course not.”

“You’ve never been there?”

Harry sighed. “To save you the trouble of taking my picture so as to show it around-or stealing one from my house-I have been to the Black Cat. Back in… March, or early April. I’ll say this-” His smile was gleeful. “The motive is going to be bloody hard to pin down-I don’t mean my motive, as I didn’t kill her, and consequently had no motive. No, you’ve got not one, but two victims, haven’t you? The glamour girl escort and the plain Jane librarian.”

“How do you know about the librarian?”

“Well, it just so happens I can read.” Neatly, Harry folded the tabloid at his elbow and slid it in front of Jury.

Who, irritated again, ignored it. Instead, he spoke to Trevor, who had come down the bar from the crowded far end. “Couple of fingers of something incredibly strong, Trev.”

“Right.” Trevor moved away.

Harry said, “This young woman-and this is all according to the Daily News, whose rigorous journalistic practices leave no doubt as to the truth of their reporting-”

“Shut up, Harry. Thanks,” he said to Trevor, who placed a glass of tar-dark whiskey before Jury.

Harry did not shut up; he smiled at the idea of it. “The paper showed pictures of her-beautiful woman, wouldn’t you say? And then today, of a picture of that lovely girl looking much plainer. But she was clearly not working as a librarian in that dress she was wearing.”

“You didn’t know her, then?”

“I didn’t know either of them.”

“Then who was your date?”

Harry looked puzzled. “My ‘date’? I didn’t have one.”

“I believe the Rexroths think you did,” Jury lied.

Harry studied the very devil out of his cigarette. “Am I to be responsible for everybody’s errant thinking? If they thought it, they were wrong.” He paused and blew another smoke ring.

Their perfection annoyed Jury no end.

Then Harry said, “We always think of disguise as elaboration, for some reason.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“No. I suppose you don’t, as you’ve been hopeless sorting my own case.”

“I can’t imagine why, given you’re a pathological liar. It’s hard to put two and two together when in your case they make three.”

“Trevor…” Harry raised his voice but kept it under a shout. “Give me a bottle of the Musigny. You know the one.”

“I’ve a nice half-bottle of that,” said Trevor, coming nearer.

“Not a whole one?”

“Well, yes, I could dust one off if you want to spend the extra hundred quid.”

Harry swiped ash from his cigarette off the counter. “Nothing is too good for my friend here. So bring it on.”

Harry was heavily invested in wine.

“Don’t do it for me,” said Jury, raising his glass of whiskey, of which only a shadow remained.

Harry was busy with another smoke ring. “It’s all about you, isn’t it?”

“You bet.”

“So, tell me. Have you sorted it?”

“What?”

“My God, but you have the attention span of a flea. Mungo would have worked it out by now.”

Jury looked around. “I know. Where is Mungo?”

“Home, being extremely busy about something. He gets like that.”

“Tell me, do you keep Mungo around because he’s so independent? Or is he independent because he’s stuck with you?”

“Both.”

“Do you have to hedge every bet? Can’t you just pick one or the other?”

“And you a detective superintendent. You can’t go much higher. What’s above you?”

“Chief superintendent.”

“What’s above him?”

“Divisional commander. London ’s divided into areas. But you know that.”

“I don’t know nuffin’, mate. I do know the City of London has its own police force.”

“A friend of mine, Mickey Haggerty-” Jury stopped. He had no idea why he’d brought Mickey up. Jury had returned to that dock many times in dreams. In dreams he and Mickey would walk back from the dock, toward the lights of the City, arms flung around each other’s shoulders.

“Something wrong?”

“Sad end of a friendship. One of us died.”

“You sure it wasn’t both of you?”

Jury flinched. Harry could be nerve-racking at times in his prescience. He wondered if it was true, that part of him had really died on that dock on the Thames.

Trevor was back with the wine and the glasses. He poured a mite into Harry’s glass, and Harry raised, sniffed, and tasted. “It’s worth every penny, Trevor.” Trevor filled both glasses.

“Now, let’s get back to it. You’ve got a story-”

Everything was a story to Harry. It wasn’t a case Jury was dealing with, but a story.

“-about a young woman found murdered in the grounds of the Black Cat in Chesham, dressed in a gown by Yves Saint Laurent and shoes by Jimmy Choo-”

“And the shoe designer was not in the paper, either. There was a picture of the dress and the shoes, but Mr. Choo was not mentioned.”

Harry’s sigh was dramatically Harry’s. “I live on the fringes of Upper Sloane Street. I’ve often walked by Jimmy Choo and stared at his shoes enough to think I’d recognize them. Like you, I found the way she was dressed fascinating. All I had to do was go online-it’s called the Internet-and there were the shoes. Six, seven hundred quid, I think. Okay, now, we’ve got the resplendently dressed young woman, who is also the quite unsplendid little librarian. That’s the backstory-”

“I’m aware of the backstory.” Jury signaled Trevor.

“Good. The question, your question: why would a plain little librarian keep going off to London to work for an escort service, trick herself out in expensive finery, and go to a lot of trouble to keep her London life a secret?”

Jury twisted the stem of his glass around in the accumulated condensation on the bar. “I’m waiting for you to tell me.”

“Well, I don’t know, do I? The thing is, you’re not looking at this problem the other way round.”

“What other way?”

“It’s as I said before: we always seem to look at disguise as elaboration-the fright wig, the chalk white face, the painted face. Makeup. Remember what Hamlet said to Ophelia?”

“I’m trying my level best.”

“‘God gave you one face and you paint yourself another.’ We speak of making ourselves up, not down-simple librarian turns into gorgeous call girl. How do you know it wasn’t the other way round? That it wasn’t the librarian hiding herself in the hooker, but the hooker hiding herself in the librarian? The librarian was the disguise.”

Jury looked at him. “If that’s the case-”

“The librarian wasn’t keeping the escort secret; the escort was keeping the librarian a secret. The face that was kept plain and unadorned-that was the life to be kept secret.” He turned in his chair and looked at Jury. “So you’d better get your skates on, pal. You could have a long way to go.”

20

At ten-thirty the next morning, Jury was standing in the door of his flat, waiting for the clump clump clump of Carole-anne’s Tod’s. Tod’s, she had told him (as if he wanted to know), were really hot at the moment and sturdy enough for work. Her job at the Starrdust in Covent Garden hardly needed “sturdiness,” but he let that pass.

Clump clump clump. Here she came.

“Super! You waiting for me?”

In that sunrise misty yellow getup with one sleeve off the shoulder, anyone would be waiting for her. The Tod’s were ankle boots with a pointed toe. Jury said nothing; he merely held up her unreadable telephone message with the heart.

She took it. Her pearly pink lips moved as she mimed the words. She handed it back, her aquamarine eyes (sunrise over the sea, this morning), said, “Better get Jason.”

Then down the stairs, clippity-clippity clop, quick as could be before Jury’s mouth could close around, “Get back here!”

Again in his flat, he tossed the bit of paper in the trash and sat on the sofa. Before him on the coffee table, in addition to his mug of tea, he’d laid out the photo of Mariah Cox, the snapshot of Morris that Dora had pressed on him, the Rexroths’ guest list, and the rough map he’d made of the area of the Lycrome Road between the Black Cat and Deer Park House. An easy walk, he’d make it inside of ten minutes.

Jury picked up the guest list again, noted the other names of men who’d gone unaccompanied by women, wondering if any of them had had experience with the Valentine’s escort service. Even though Simon Santos had already agreed that he himself was to meet Stacy Storm, still…

Still, nothing. He picked up the phone and rang Wiggins.

“Meet me at Valentine’s Escorts in half an hour, will you? The other men on the list, the single men Cummins said he’d spoken to. They’d been at the party all night from nine to midnight.”

“Why are you interested in them? She was there to meet Simon Santos.” Wiggins’s voice was frowning.

“I know.”

“He’s really the prime suspect, sir.”

“If he killed her, he was being pretty stupid about it, about not covering his tracks and not seeing he had an alibi somehow. Pretty stupid.”

“Most murderers are pretty stupid.”

“Right. Meet me there.”

Maybe they were, as Wiggins said, pretty stupid. He dropped the receiver into its cradle; he refused to trade the old black phone for one-as Carole-anne suggested-“you can take with you round the flat.”

“I’m not going anywhere; I don’t want to take a phone round the flat. I want to sit and talk or at least stand in one place. I don’t want to be in the kitchen frying up sausages whilst I’m talking about a serial killer.”

He was grumpy even in fantasy. He pulled his jacket from the back of a chair, picked up his keys, and left.

Mrs. Blanche Vann was gracious. Jury doubted many of the owners of escort services would be offering them bananas and cups of coffee, coffee made, for heaven’s sake, in a cafetière. Jury was never sure how long to wait before you pushed down the plunger. He didn’t much like these devices; he wanted to see coffee run from the little tongue of a pot.

“Thank you, Mrs. Vann. You’re very kind.” He left his banana on the small table she had pulled over between Wiggins and him. Wiggins had started in on his own banana.

Jury said, “I talked to Rose Moss-or Adele Astaire, as she calls herself-”

“Silly name,” said Blanche Vann. “I told her she might just do well to think up another.”

“Fred Astaire’s sister, that was,” said Wiggins. “Married the son of the Duke of Devonshire.” He peeled his banana down another inch.

Jury fixed him with an icy smile.

Said Mrs. Vann: “No? I didn’t know that!”

Neither did Wiggins, yesterday. Jury said, “I’ll call her Rose. She said Stacy had been living in her flat with her most weekends for the last six months.”

“That’s right, as far as I know.” Mrs. Vann stirred cream into her coffee with a tiny spoon.

“Rose has been with the agency how long?” he asked.

“Quite a few years. Six, eight. She looks younger than she is. One or two clients like a girl on the young side.” She sipped her coffee, showing no embarrassment at all at the implications of that statement.

“Were Rose and Stacy good friends?”

“Were they? Well, I’d think so, sharing a flat and all that.”

“But only on weekends. Did you know that Stacy lived in Chesham?”

Her mouth tight shut as if to emphasize her point, she shook her head, then said, “I did not. The address she gave was in Fulham, same as Rose’s. Well, I’d have no reason to doubt that, would I?”

“You would have had to reach her at times she wasn’t there, though, to set up appointments.”

“That’s right. Usually the girls called in. But if I needed to ring her, it was all done on her mobile; indeed, all the girls worked that way, since they’re so often not at home.”

“That makes sense.” Jury looked around the room again, at the dark moldings, the restful pale gray walls, the comfortable furniture, surprised the room could be so pleasant here in this nondescript office block in the Tottenham Court Road.

She said, looking thoughtfully at her cup, “Adele once said she thought Stacy a bit of a mystery.”

“I’d say that Adele is right.” Jury smiled at her and got up. “Thank you, Mrs. Vann. We’ll be talking to you.”

Walking to the car, Jury said, “You hungry, Wiggins?”

“Yes. That banana didn’t really fill me up.”

As if it were supposed to.

“It’s nearly two. I have to make my weekly check on Danny Wu.”

Wiggins broke out in a big smile as he opened the car door. “I’m with you; but it’ll be bloody crowded now.”

“Ruiya’s always crowded.”

“Right, boss.”

Jury rolled his eyes. So now it was “boss.”

21

The queue even at this late hour stretched out the door, nearly to the corner. Jury and Wiggins didn’t bother with it but went straightaway to the front.

When the old waiter saw them at the door, he held up his hand, fingers crooked, bidding them come back to where he was. The waiting lunch crowd, those who saw this, acted as if it were some sort of guerrilla takeover and objected strenuously until Jury whipped out his ID and said, “Police business.” That struck some of them as a poor excuse, and their reproaches followed the two detectives on the way to their table. Jury was used to it; it happened nearly every time he’d been here.

Theirs was the only table in the room with a “Reserved” sign. Ruiva didn’t take reservations; hence the crowd beyond the door.

“You’d think they’d learn, wouldn’t you?” said Wiggins, looking disdainfully at the line.

“Learn what? What choice have they unless they want to get here at five a.m.? Like a Springsteen concert, this is.”

The old waiter, who might or might not have understood these words, smiled and swept the plastic sign from the table, motioning for them to be seated. He bowed and went away. Jury and Wiggins sat down. Wiggins began immediately looking at the long, thin menu as he always did before he would order the crispy fish as he always did.

A little elderly woman replaced the old waiter now, probably kin. She came with tea and to take their orders.

Jury said he’d have the shrimp tempura.

Wiggins was still concentrating on the menu, brows knit together in rapt thought.

“And he’ll have the crispy fish.”

Annoyed eyes regarded Jury over the menu’s edge. “You might allow me to order my own lunch.”

“Might, but won’t. You always eat the crispy fish.”

The little woman looked amused, which was reward enough for the bulletlike glances still zinging their way, the long queue looking as if it hadn’t shortened at all. No one had moved a foot forward.

“I wasn’t planning on ordering that this time.”

“Sure you were.” Jury sipped tea from the thimble of a cup.

Wiggins was silent, put down the menu with a martyred sigh. “I’ll have the crispy fish, I think.”

The woman’s nod was closer to a bow. She padded off.

It was a little like their own private cabaret, for the next person to show up was Danny Wu, the owner. Today he was wearing Hugo Boss, more constructed than Armani, another designer Danny favored. He was as good as any model. With his dove gray suit he wore a shirt the shade of a blue iris, a tie several shades darker. The only person Jury knew of with such sartorial elegance was Marshall Trueblood. Trueblood, though, sometimes tipped the scales into flamboyance, which Danny didn’t. Both of them made Jury think that perhaps he should revisit his own wardrobe, until he thought, What wardrobe?

“Are you here professionally?”

“No, we’re here amateurishly. We seem to have caved completely in discovering who left the dead man on your doorstep.” That investigation had been going on for months now, booted over to the drug squad, then back to CID, given the Met’s conviction that Danny was a serious contender for London ’s drug king-a conviction Jury had found dubious at least and ridiculous at best. Danny was too smart for that crown (which would rest extremely uneasily on one’s head); he was also too fastidious to shoot a man in his own restaurant. Jury went on: “No one’s sussed it, Danny, why he was killed here.”

“This is Soho, remember? You’ll find bodies on a lot of doorsteps. Soho is no stranger to murder.”

“Thanks for that lesson in social dynamics. I hadn’t heard.”

Danny sported a smile.

Jury started to say something, then stopped when he saw Phyllis Nancy shoving past the queue and coming toward them. “Phyllis!”

She looked worn. It would take a lot of wearing to make her look that way.

“Ah, the beautiful medical examiner,” said Danny, who immediately pulled a chair round from another table.

Phyllis thanked him, and Danny bowed out gracefully. It would have been clear to him that Phyllis had something to report.

“I thought you’d be here,” she said. “I’ve just come from hospital. I’m sorry, Richard, but Lu Aguilar has sunk into a coma. It happened this morning.”

Jury looked at Phyllis, shocked, but the shock was not only for Lu’s condition; some was for his own response to it. In that brutally honest moment when one first hears of someone’s misfortune and before one can throw up defenses against one’s own selfishness and insensitivity-feelings that constitute a person’s image of himself as a good and caring person-in that single swift moment, what he felt was relief. That moment had to be drowned, sunk from consciousness. He was on his feet.

Phyllis clamped her hand around his wrist. “There’s nothing you can do; she won’t know you’re there.”

No, he thought in a cold assessment of this new picture of himself, but I’ll know.

Then the old Jury slipped back in place; he reconstructed his old self, his self of ten seconds ago, a caring man who deeply wanted Lu Aguilar to recover and take up her old life, or at least manage the new life in another country.

He left Ruiya and the car to Wiggins and flagged down a taxi.

At the nurses’ station, the doctor had told him that the prospects of Lu’s coming out of the coma were not especially good. “Still, don’t lose hope; people do come out. Usually within two or three weeks. If not by then, well, it’s a safe bet they won’t at all. It can be less or more devastating.”

Less or more. For God’s sake, that about covered it, didn’t it?

And the doctor told him something else: “She did not want heroic measures taken.”

“What do you mean?” Jury knew exactly what the doctor meant. But he wanted to distance himself from the meaning. He literally stepped back.

The doctor was kind-eyed and rather young. He had slid a paper from a folder and passed it to Jury. “She doesn’t want to be kept alive by machines.”

Everything in him rebelled against this. “Heroic measures.” What a stunning euphemism.

White. That was all he could see, as if he had stumbled into some polar country: the corridors, the walls, the sheets, her face.

The silence in her room was all there was. Except for the steady ping or hiccup of the monitors and machines, there was nothing.

He took her hand and found it marble cold. He thought for a panicky moment she must be dead and leaned close to her face and felt her frail breath. Cordelia. The broken Lear and Cordelia. “Come on, Lu. Come out of it. Come on.” He shook her hand in a way he remembered someone doing to him when he was a kid; some adult, seeing his attention wavering, shook it back again.

Jury sat for a few minutes watching her before he rose and walked round the room, back and forth, stopping to look at her. An effigy was what she reminded him of. The incomparable, commanding, relentless detective inspector Lu Aguilar, still as stone and helpless. What he felt now was that he would never be able to understand his feelings for her, what they had been. Or hers for him. That part of his mind would be still as stone and helpless, too.

Jury turned to look out the window, seeing shadowed grass in the distance, thinking, It should be covered with snow; there should be the blankness of snow to render shapes null and void, the way the sheet did her own shape, the way it was drawn up to her shoulders.

Nurses in white entered from time to time to adjust tubes and check fluid levels and look at the machine. They smiled and left. One-but they might all have been the same one-said something about visiting hours. Jury nodded, although he hadn’t really heard her, and stayed. He didn’t know how long.

Finally, he got up from a chair, bent, and kissed her forehead. He was surprised to find it was not marble cold, but warm.

“Wake up, Lu.”

He meant it, too.

22

He left St. Bart’s, near Smithfield, and after that didn’t look up, walking down one narrow street then another, all snaking into some center and making him feel pleasantly claustrophobic. He felt as if he’d wound himself into the center of a ball of string. Tired, he’d been walking for hours. It was dark now.

When “Three Blind Mice” started up, he yanked out the bloody mobile (what Orpheus should have had instead of string). “What?”

“I’m in Bidwell Street. Near St. Bride. There’s been a woman shot.”

Jury frowned. “St. Bride. That’s not us, Wiggins; that’s City police. Right near Snow Hill station, isn’t it?”

“I know. They’re here.”

Jury could hear the background noise. “All right. But why are you there?”

“I was trawling for information about the Mariah Cox murder. I’ve a friend at Snow Hill, and I was there when he caught this one and came along. Thing is-this woman, put her in her early thirties, very good-looking, and dressed to kill, you might say-well, I’m probably wrong, but it seems similar to the Chesham murder.”

“Okay. I’m in…” Where? He looked up to see the very familiar area in Clerkenwell in which he and Lu Aguilar had spent so much time. He could see the Zetter hotel down there at St. John’s Square. Why was he here? As if he didn’t know. “Clerkenwell. I’ll find a cab and be there in five minutes.”

There were a couple of cabs moving along the Clerkenwell Road directly in front of him. He flagged one down, shoved the mobile back in his pocket, and opened the door. “You know Bidwell Street? It’s near-”

The driver smiled. “I know it.”

Jury pulled the door shut and fell back against the seat. Or gravity pushed him back. Yes, they knew all of them, these drivers, every last inch of street, road, alley, courtyard-all of it. Plus every shortcut.

“It’s amazing. What you drivers know.”

The driver laughed. “It’s called the Knowledge. You know.”

Jury nodded. “There ought to be a pub by that name. The Knowledge.”

“Maybe there is.”

Even if the driver hadn’t got “the Knowledge,” it wouldn’t be hard finding Bidwell Street. Not given all of the activity-lights and vehicles, CID, uniform, fire brigade, ambulance, photographers, forensic, medical. It was astonishing what one murder in the streets of a city could call out.

The doctor was a man Jury didn’t know, maybe pulled over from Bart’s, which was nearby. He was kneeling beside the body.

Wiggins said, nodding in that direction, “Pathologist got here ten minutes ago. His name’s Bellsin.”

Dr. Bellsin rose at Jury’s approach. He was a small, sad-eyed man who looked as if he were permanently stationed in the outskirts of regret. The first words out of his mouth were “I’m sorry.” He shook Jury’s hand as if the loss had been personal. To one or the other or both.

Jury looked down at the body and then knelt. The doctor did so, too.

The woman was young-in her thirties, as Wiggins had said, which surely must still qualify as young. And she was pretty- beautiful, when there’d been life in her. Her hair was dark and wavy, her eyes now shut.

“The shot that killed her caught her just under the right breast, made a messy exit out the back. A twenty-two, probably. Second or probably the first shot to the stomach. Well, let’s get her in and I’ll nip round to the morgue.” He paused. “Looks like she might have been partying.”

Jury looked around at what he could see of the street. No pubs, no restaurants, but a few shops. “Doesn’t look much like a partying street, though it’s not far from a lot of partying places. She’s dressed up, certainly.” The dress was a midnight blue of some crepey material. More strappy sandals, these a dark satin. He rose, motioned to Wiggins. “Has she been ID’d?”

Wiggins shook his head. One of the uniforms handed Jury a bagged purse. “Sir.”

Jury thanked him and asked for gloves. Through the plastic, he saw a small black bag, an evening bag with a silver clasp. He snapped on the plastic gloves given to him, removed the bag, and opened the little silver catch. Inside were lipstick, comb, pack of fags, and bills: 750 pounds.

“I know,” said Wiggins, reacting to Jury’s look. “That’s a lot of money to be carting around dark and silent streets. I mean, in that small bag, at night. It’s suggestive.”

The notes were held in a silver money clip. He closed the purse, handed it to Wiggins, who had been joined by someone Jury didn’t know.

“This is Detective Inspector Jenkins, sir.”

Jenkins smiled and put out his hand. The smile was sardonic, but Jury didn’t think its mood was aimed at him.

“Dennis Jenkins,” the detective said, setting things on a first-name basis.

There was something about Jenkins that made one relax. And, Jury imagined, that went for suspects, too. Probably foolish of them. Jenkins’s manner was too laid-back not to be dangerous.

“And you’re,” Jenkins went on, saving Jury the trouble, “Superintendent Jury. I’ve heard about you.”

“Not, I hope, from the tabloids.”

Jenkins smiled his sardonic smile. “That, too. But I meant from Mickey.”

That “Mickey” was Mickey Haggerty was crystal clear. Jury would rather not have to keep up one end of that conversation. He said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” said DI Jenkins, actually looking it.

Jury nodded. “And I’m sorry to be stepping into your patch. Hope it’s okay.”

“Walk all over it, if you like. Your sergeant here told me there’s the possibility that this is connected to a shooting in Chesham.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s the connection?”

Jury hesitated, then said, “Age, appearance, possible occupation, and clothes.” He looked down at the victim’s feet. “Shoes, for example.”

Jenkins turned to look, too, then turned back. He said nothing. He waited.

“Christian Louboutin. It’s the red soles. They’re his trademark.” Jenkins looked again. “Right. I know sod-all about women’s footwear. Was the one in Chesham wearing the same kind?”

“No. Those were Jimmy Choo.” Jury added, “Both of them dressed for something: party, big date, or client. The victim in Chesham worked for an escort agency.”

Jenkins frowned. “Tell me more.”

Jury hesitated again. He knew he could be completely wrong about any connection. “The Chesham murder: we had a hard time ID’ing the victim, eventually discovered she was indeed a local named Mariah Cox, but was working under the name Stacy Storm, working for an escort service. She was to meet a man at a party in Chesham named Simon Santos, but she didn’t show up. There was a difficulty in identifying her; not even the aunt she’d been living with recognized her. The clothes, the hair, the cut, the color.” Jury didn’t know why he went on to tell Jenkins about Santos and his mother, Isabelle, and the portrait.

“I think that’s why Santos was so adamant that Stacy be his escort. Santos had asked her to change her hair color so that she looked even more like the woman in the portrait-”

“Vertigo,” said Jenkins.

“What?”

“Kim Novak. You remember Vertigo, don’t you?”

“Oh. You mean the Hitchcock film?”

Jenkins nodded. “Look, I know you probably agree the connection is kind of wobbly-” He rocked his hand to demonstrate. “But I will say this: she was carting around a hell of a lot of cash for just cab fare. Seven hundred quid”-he nodded toward the black clutch-“in that little bag. It’s the kind of money a high-class pro might get, and just to look at her, I’d say very high class. She was dressed for something, certainly. A party? Coming or going? Early to be coming back from one; it’s not gone ten yet. Where might she have been going? This is hardly party land or the sparkling center of the West, is it?”

Bidwell appeared to be a street of small enterprises, shut down for the night: a leather goods store selling mostly luggage that probably wasn’t leather; a launderette on the corner; a jeweler, probably not doing much trade in diamonds; an electronics shop; a small grocery. That and the launderette were the only businesses open now. Inside, Jury could see a customer, a woman, staring out the window at the general tumult, the cars and lights and uniforms.

Jenkins scanned the areas over the shops. “I’ve told my men to visit the flats over these shops. If there’s a grocer and a launderette, there are residents. Those two places wouldn’t be depending on the shops themselves for business. And she’ll need talking to.” He indicated the woman in the launderette.

“I think I’d like a talk with that shopkeeper at the end of the street, the grocer.”

“Go ahead. I’m about finished here.”

“Could I get one of your photos for an ID?”

“Sure.” Jenkins went up to one of the crime scene technicians and asked him if he’d got a picture. He handed it to Jury. “Keep me posted. I’ll do the same.”

The grocer was Indian, a tall, thin man with brilliant brown and anxious eyes. Ordinarily, this part of London was not an immigrant enclave. That was more the makeup of outlying areas, East Ham, Mile End, Watford.

His name was Banerjee. Jury asked Mr. Banerjee if he’d seen anything at all, heard anything.

The grocer shook his head, hard. “No. Never.”

“Does this woman look familiar to you?”

Mr. Banerjee didn’t dismiss the photo out of hand but studied it carefully. Nor did he flinch from the face of the dead.

Jury expected an immediate no, but he got a thoughtful “I believe so. I think I see her here in the shop. More than once.” He looked off through the black window, as if something in the dark had caught his attention. But it was only the dark.

“You’ve seen her? Did she live here in Bidwell Street?”

“I would think so, though I do get customers from other streets, mainly. But more likely, yes, she lives in this street. Lived.” He looked sadly at the photo. “A pretty woman. Maybe that’s why I remember. She bought cigarettes. Yes, and food-milk, eggs, bread-basic things.” He handed back the photo. “I’m sorry I do not know her name. I can’t help you more.”

“You’ve been an enormous help already, Mr. Banerjee. Thanks. If you remember anything at all later…” Jury handed over one of his cards.

“I will call you, certainly.”

As Jury left the shop it started to rain, but gently. He saw up ahead fewer cars angled along the street. SOCO had packed up; the body had been transported. Wiggins was there with DI Wilkes, another detective, and several uniforms.

“Nothing so far. We’ve been to two houses, figure four or five flats. We can’t be sure if the lack of a name card means a flat is empty or just that the resident’s out. There was one old lady who clearly didn’t want to know anything about anything. No joy there.” He flicked his notebook shut.

“Never mind. We have more to go on now. The grocer’s seen our lady more than once, so she lived either in this street or close by. Keep at it. One of the flats might well have been hers.”

“Will do.”

“I’m going home. I’m tired.”

Wiggins nodded toward the small clutch of officers. “One of them can give you a lift.”

“No. I feel like walking. Clear my mind. When I’m tired of that, I’ll grab a taxi. ‘Night.”

“Sir!”

Jury turned. “What?”

“It might do to show that photo around. To the streets.”

“You could do, but I’m pretty certain the victim wasn’t on the streets. Not the way she looked. And not with that much money.”

“You think may be…?”

Jury nodded. “Escort service.”

Wiggins’s smile was grim. “We should be so lucky.”

“I wouldn’t call it luck.”