The Black Cat

23

The old dog in the doorway was making a valiant attempt to keep his legs upright and steady, but the effort was too much and they buckled and he had to lie down.

The doorway belonged to a leather goods shop in the Farringdon Road, which Jury was passing as he walked through Clerkenwell. The metal gate was pulled across the store’s front. In the window was a host of hard-sided and expensive suitcases. There was a whole suite of cases in a dark red. Who would need all of those bags for a trip?

Jury knelt beside the dog. “Hey, boy.” Tentatively, he reached out his hand and ran it over the dog’s side. He could have counted the ribs. The dog’s coat, black and white with brownish markings, was dry, the hairs coming off into Jury’s hand. Perhaps the dog had mange; certainly he needed looking after.

He looked up and down the street, a busy street, for the nearest source of food and saw the McDonald’s he and Wiggins had stopped in not many weeks before. That at least would be quick.

Inside, he ordered three burgers and bottled water and asked the girl, eyes like dry ice, if they had any sort of bowl he could use for the water. She went on chewing her gum and looking at him as if she didn’t know what bowls were for. When he suggested soup, a little life came into her eyes and she scouted for one. He paid, took the sack, and left.

The dog still lay in the same place, shadows pooling around him. Jury started with the water. He poured some in the bowl and put it directly under the dog’s nose. When he began drinking and then slurping the water, Jury set the bowl on the stoop. The dog kept on drinking. Jury broke the meat up into small pieces and put it on a napkin. The dog sniffed but wouldn’t eat.

This lack of interest in the food worried Jury. The dog needed a vet and probably fast. He took out his mobile, hoping the battery hadn’t run down completely, which it had. Damn. Then he thought of the cabdriver who’d taken him to Bidwell Street. The Knowledge. He picked up the dog, the bowl, and the bottle of water, stuck the beef rolled in a couple of napkins into his raincoat pocket.

The dog weighed very little and was easy to carry. On Clerkenwell Road, Jury found a stopped cab and asked the driver about an animal hospital or vet that might be open this time of night.

“Your dog taken sick, has he?”

“Yes. Very sick.” Indeed, the dog seemed not to notice, and certainly not to reckon with, the forced ride in a black cab.

“Not to worry, mate. We’ll find one. Right off, I know there’s one in Islington along the North Road.”

That one turned out to be closed, but the driver knew of another he was sure was open all hours.

Jury certainly hoped so.

And thank God for “the Knowledge.”

It was the All-Hours Animal Hospital, and its lights were on, blazing in the darkness.

Jury thanked the cabbie, gave him a huge tip, and complimented him on his knowledge.

“Well, we’d be a sorry lot without it. Night, mate.”

Jury watched him speed off, not knowing, probably, how many people he had helped and would help, driving around with the knowledge of all of London in his head.

To the receptionist behind the counter, too young to look so sour, Jury said the dog needed attention right away. There were several people in the waiting room, and this girl wasn’t helping.

“Just take a seat.” She didn’t look up from her crossword puzzle.

“The dog’s in a very bad way; I-”

Now she looked up. “Why’d you wait so long to bring it in, then?”

“Because I had to comb all of the doorways in Clerkenwell before I found one with a sick dog in it.” Jury didn’t try to mute his voice. He heard a giggle behind him.

The girl was not used to back talk from a patient’s handler, considering she held sway over the appointment book, and gave him a frosty look. Then she backed off and went through a door.

Jury sat down with the dog by an elderly woman in a crisp black suit who was still keeping up appearances as if there were hope. After a moment or two, she laid a hand on the dog’s head and its eyes fluttered open. “Poor thing. Did you really find him in a doorway?”

Jury smiled, finding the source of the giggle. “I did. In Clerkenwell.”

“One can find just about anything there.”

He laughed. “I know what you mean.”

“And you’re right; he really does need attention. But he looks like a beautiful dog, really. A breed I’m unfamiliar with.”

The receptionist was now standing in the doorway to the back rooms and calling, “Mrs. Bromley!” as if wanting to squash any friendly interaction with this man. “The doctor can see Silky now.”

“My cat,” she whispered to Jury. But instead of rising, Mrs. Bromley called back, “This gentleman can have my spot. His dog needs a doctor more than Silky does.”

“But Dr. Kavitz-”

The lady rose. “Maureen-” She was no more than five one or two, but Maureen didn’t want to mess with her, that was clear. She had about her some granite quality Maureen would break her hand on if she tried.

“All right, all right,” said Maureen. Then she nodded to Jury, “Come on, then.”

Jury’s smile was genuinely brighter when he thanked Mrs. Bromley.

“I just hope your dog will be all right,” she said.

Dr. Kavitz’s temperament was considerably sunnier than Maureen’s as he set about his examination, palpating here, listening there, prodding, reflecting, sometimes squint-eyed, as if to see the outlines of an abstract painting or to hear a note of some fading music. There was artistry involved.

More probing, more puzzlement, turning to look at the blank wall. Dr. Kavitz nodded and stood right where he’d been leaning over the dog. “He’s quite sound, really. Terribly dehydrated-”

“I gave him water; he drank a lot.”

“Good. But he’ll need to take some intravenously. And he needs food.”

“He wouldn’t eat.” Jury pulled the minced beef out of his pocket. “Maybe this wasn’t the best thing.”

Kavitz smiled. “Not surprising he wouldn’t eat it; he’d have lost his appetite.” He was scratching the dog’s neck. The dog had his eyes wide open now. “What we’ll do is keep him overnight, get him hydrated and eating. We’ll see how he does. It was his brilliant luck, you finding him. I’m afraid he’d have been dead by the morning.”

It made Jury’s blood run cold, that it was so close. “He didn’t look like he’d last very long.”

“No. Well, you can be thinking of what to do with him. There’s the RSPCA, of course, or one of the animal refuge places. If you can’t keep him yourself, that might be the solution.” Dr. Kavitz regarded the dog. “You know, I’ve a person who’s been looking for one of these. I can get on to her about him.”

Jury was puzzled. “One of these?”

“He’s an Appenzell, you know, one of the mountain dogs. A cattle dog. But this one-the Appenzell-is the hardest of the lot to find.”

“You mean, he’s purebred?”

“Oh, yes. And as I said, they’re not common.”

“What would such a dog be doing in a doorway? And with no tags or anything?”

Dr. Kavitz shrugged. “Got lost, maybe. And he did at one time have identification. A collar.” The doctor indicated a line round the neck where the coat looked worn. “Somehow, he lost it. Or someone took it off. It’s possible his owner took off the collar and dumped him.” Dr. Kavitz shook his head sadly. “A dog like this.”

Anything’s likely, thought Jury. He knew what people were capable of. “But more likely he could have got away, as you said. I think I should put an ad in the paper, shouldn’t I?”

“Good idea.”

Jury patted the dog, said, “All right, then. I’ll be back tomorrow morning to pick him up.” He thanked Dr. Kavitz, turned to leave. Behind him, he heard a woof.

Dr. Kavitz laughed. “Appenzells bark like hell. Our friend here’s just warming up. Good night.”

“Good night, Doctor. Thanks.”

Jury left the building, stood on the dark street for a while, feeling a little better.

There were times when you just had to save something.

24

“A dog?” said Carole-anne, and then said it again. “A dog?” Her gaze slid around the room as if one would jump out and verify Jury’s announcement. When one didn’t, she said, “We’ve got a dog.”

“‘We’ do not.” Jury pointed to the ceiling and the flat over his head. “Stone is Stan Keeler’s dog. We do not have a dog.”

Carole-anne was filing her nails with a huge four-grain file. Jury had suggested she bake it in a cake in case he landed in the nick.

“But we don’t need another dog. Especially not one that’s washed up from God knows where.”

Jury had been drinking his morning cup of tea prior to going to Dr. Kavitz’s. Carole-anne was not one to accept change, any change, in the dynamic of their four-flat terraced house: four flats, four tenants. Five, if one included the dog, Stone. That was it, and thus it would remain. Forever.

“I’m surprised,” said Jury, “that you’re not more sympathetic to the plight of homeless animals.” No, he wasn’t. Carole-anne had to see homelessness in situ. An actual dog in trouble would arouse her sympathy. She was no good at dealing with abstractions, such as “homelessness.”

“You’re gone all day. What’s the poor dog to do?”

“Go on walks with you and Stone.”

She flounced on the sofa. Only Carole-anne could come up with a real flounce-sending up little tufts of dust, bobbing her ginger hair into waves and curls, derigging cushion arrangements. Jury enjoyed the flouncing.

“Don’t forget, will you, that I have a job, too,” she said.

“Yes, but it’s more haphazard than mine.” Could any work be more haphazard than his?

“Haphazard? That’s what you’re calling it? Andrew has us on a very tight schedule.”

Andrew was Andrew Starr, owner of Starrdust, the little shop in Covent Garden where she worked. “Andrew,” said Jury, “has the moon, sun, stars, and peripheral planets on a tight schedule, but not his employees.” Andrew was an astrologist, a very popular one. Possibly because he really was an astrologist, a meter-out of good and bad fortunes, but mostly good. “All I mean is, your schedule is more flexible than mine.”

Jury wondered why he was winding her up. He had just that morning put ads in the papers. The dog would probably never see this house or his flat. He would be taking it straightaway to the shelter that Dr. Kavitz had mentioned. He must be telling Carole-anne about the dog just in case. In case of what?

“Anyway, I’ve got to pick him up at the vet’s this morning.” He had his raincoat on and his keys in hand. Was she going to leave? Apparently not.

She sat there filing away. “Ta, then.”

“Don’t bother getting up. I’ll see myself out.”

Jury was surprised at the change in the dog: the coat was softer, with even a hint of shine to it. And the dog’s face, his whole head, was structurally beautiful. Jury didn’t know why he hadn’t seen that.

“Astonishing powers of recovery,” said Dr. Kavitz. “Incredible resilience. These dogs are extremely tough and hardy. But the thing is, they’re not meant to be an urban dog. They need a farm, something like that.”

Jury said, “I put an ad in the Times and Telegraph. I was wondering, if somebody answers the ad, how will I know they’re really the owners? You know the way dogs get stolen and sold for research. And I couldn’t put a price on him because I’m looking for his owner.” He felt absurd. A detective superintendent and he couldn’t sort bogus claims of identity from the real thing? Good Lord.

“Good question. In the ad you placed, how did you describe him?” The doctor was checking the dog’s teeth.

“Well, I said midsized, black, white, copper coat, collar missing. Found in the Farringdon Road.”

“You didn’t say he was an Appenzell mountain dog.”

“No.”

“That should do it, then. Anyone calls, ask them the breed. It’s rare, so if they’re guessing, they’ll never get it. And if they say they’re speaking for the real owner and don’t know the breed, well, you know where you can stick that one, I’m sure.”

Jury smiled. “I do.”

The doctor had placed the dog in a large dog carrier, holes cut into it for seeing out as well as for breathing.

Jury took it from him and thanked him again for all the trouble he’d taken.

“If I can’t take a little trouble, I shouldn’t be in this business, should I? Emergencies are common; I imagine you face the same thing-one emergency after another. Here’s the address of the place in Battersea, True Friends shelter. I’ll call them up and tell them you’re coming; that is, if you like.”

“Yes. That would be fine.”

“Okay, good luck, then.” He reached his finger in to let the dog give him one last lick. “Swear to God, if I didn’t live in a tiny little mews house, I’d take him, myself. But they need space. That might be what happened: dog got bored, couldn’t stand it, ran off, then couldn’t get back.”

Jury thought Dr. Kavitz seemed not to want to let go.

The girl in the reception area of True Friends was a great improvement over the one in Dr. Kavitz’s. Her pleasant, almost sunny disposition was more in keeping with animal rescue, thought Jury.

She was telling him Dr. Kavitz had rung and told her about the dog. “Hello,” she said to him, opening the carrier and running her hand over his back. “You found him in a doorway, he said.” She had the dog out, and his eves-they were a beautiful walnut color-almost sparkled. She picked him up and put him over her shoulder while she filled out some kind of form. On the counter beside the forms was a little stack of white caps with “True Friends” written along the side in dark blue.

“Did he tell you he’s an Appenzell mountain dog? And we think he might have just run off, looking for something interesting to do.”

She laughed. “Mountain dogs aren’t best kept in the city, or even the suburbs.”

“No. The thing is, given he’s pretty valuable, I’d think he had an owner somewhere looking for him, so I put ads in the papers.”

She nodded, raised her face a bit, and looked round at the dog. “He’s quite beautiful, isn’t he? Well, you did the right thing. This dog”-which was still across her shoulder-“will have no trouble at all in getting adopted. And also, he likes you.” She put another word down on her form.

“Me? Likes me? That’s not my shoulder he’s sprawled on. If it’s the dog’s happiness that concerns you, then you’ll have to come along, too.”

She blushed. Then she cocked her head and looked at Jury. “I know you can’t take on the dog permanently, but we’ve a foster program here where a person gives the animal-the dog or cat-shelter for a short time while we find a home for it.”

“The trouble is, I have a very irregular schedule and I’m out most of the time-”

She looked so pained, and so in extremis, he’d have felt like a heel not to fall in with this plan. “Yes, okay, I could do that.”

Beaming as if the sun had risen, she said, “That’s really nice of you, sir. I’ll just make arrangements.”

She was about to go off when Jury stopped her. “I can’t take him with me right this minute. I’m leaving town. It might be a couple of days until I can get back.”

The sun sank. “Oh.”

Again, he felt like a heel. But he hadn’t been lying. Somehow he felt this girl was always being lied to. He could imagine someone bringing in a great strapping animal who looked as though his last meal had been taken five minutes ago, claiming he’d “just found him in the streets” and dumping him.

Yes, she must have been through this time and time again. I’ll be back, but never coming back. He took out his ID. “The thing is, I’m a policeman and I have a case that takes me out of London.”

Her eyes widened as she looked at the ID.

“That’s all right, then, Mr.-Inspector…”

“Jury. Superintendent Jury. I really will come back.”

“Well, we’d be pleased to keep him until you do.” She had her arms around the dog now, lifting him off the counter. “He needs a name. I guess you haven’t named him yet. What can we call him?”

“I don’t know. What’s your name?”

She giggled. “Joely. But I’m a girl.”

“I can see that. What a gorgeous name. Well, how about Joey?”

Joely looked into the dog’s eyes, as if measuring him for this name. “Joey.” She nodded in approval. “He’s got his rabies tag now, but he needs a collar.”

“With his name on it, yes.”

She looked at Jury for a long moment, frowning and thinking. Then her face cleared and she said, “I know! Wait here.” She carried the dog off with her. In a moment she was back with a cigar box, which she plopped on the counter, together with the dog. “When we find dogs, sometimes they have collars that we take off and save-here!” She turned an old leather collar with a small metal plate on it so that Jury could see it.

“Joe, it says. Now, wait.” Here she took a small, sharp tool and scraped away on the end of the name, adding a “y.” “I use this for different things on metal. Well, it doesn’t look very professional, but-” She held it up for Jury (and Joey) to see.

Jury smiled. It was indeed not very professional, but the “y” was certainly workmanlike. “That’s brilliant.” The dog didn’t resist at all as Jury put the collar round his neck.

They both admired her handiwork. She asked, “Did Dr. Kavitz tell you about mountain dogs?”

“A little. He said this particular kind-Appenzell?-is rare.”

“It is in London, that’s for sure. Here-” She pushed the filled-in form toward him. “Would you just sign here? And date it?” As Jury did this, she said: “They’re herding dogs. You know, cattle, sheep, goats, and so forth. They’re very active. I can see if you live in a flat, you’d probably be better off with another kind of dog.”

She appeared to have forgotten what had landed him this one. He hadn’t been looking for a dog at all. When he finished, she took back the form, impulsively snatched up one of the white caps, handed it to him, and said, laughing, “I don’t suppose you know anyone with a lot of land and some sheep or goats, do you?”

Jury put on the cap, thought for a moment, and smiled. “Funny you should ask that.”

His mobile was trilling as he was letting himself into his flat.

“Jury.”

“It’s me, guv. We did the door-to-door, found three tenants home, but no one who knows who she is. I wonder if maybe this grocer made a mistake.”

“No. He was quite deliberate about her. She bought not just cigarettes but bread and milk and so forth. Not purchases you’d make if you were going to another part of the city. I could be wrong in assuming she must live in Bidwell Street, though. She could live several streets away.” He thought for a moment. “Or quite possibly she visits a friend who lives there.”

“That’s a distinct possibility. Or perhaps she takes care of someone. Anyway, I’ll keep checking. ’Bye.”

25

“You were right, guv; she worked as an escort.”

Jury had just walked into his office and was taking off his coat. “Tell me it’s the same agency.”

“No. Chelsea. King’s Road Companions, it’s called. Kind of sedate name for an escort place, isn’t it? Her name’s Kate Banks, and according to the manager, ‘Kate’s the best we had on offer.’ ”

Like a plate of cockles, thought Jury. “More or less what Blanche Vann said about Stacy Storm.”

Wiggins nodded. “This Kate was the most popular, always busy, could get five, six hundred an hour if she wanted. In one week, Kate brought in five thousand quid.”

“Do I hear a ‘poor Kate’ in there anywhere from this person? Did she spare a thought for Kate herself?” Jury creaked back in his chair and watched Wiggins stirring his tea. For once he was using a spoon, not a twig or a stick.

“No, Una was thinking more along the lines of‘poor Una.’ That’s the owner, Una Upshur.”

“A name nobody was born with.” He thought of Joey. Wiggins snorted.

“Did you squeeze anything else out of her besides Kate’s earning power?”

“Not an awful lot. Kate’s from Slough. There’s reason enough to go on the game.” Wiggins laughed into his tea.

“Why have people got it in for Slough? I like Slough. It’s a good place.”

Wiggins rolled his eyes. “Kate’s been in London since she was in her early twenties, according to Una. Well-educated, she was. Started at King’s Road a few years later.” He thumbed up pages in his notebook, looked at it. “Una says she’s been with her for about three years. But it’s not her regular job; she’s a steno typist days.”

“Who was last night’s client?”

“According to Una, there was no one on the books for Kate.”

“That must have been unusual, given she was the agency’s star. So she either wasn’t with a client or was doing a bit on the side. Given the clothes and given the money, I’d certainly subscribe to the second idea. Like Stacy. And I’ll bet Ms. Upshur wasn’t giving out any names, either.”

Wiggins stirred his tea. “‘Clients have my assurance of absolute confidentiality.’”

“Until such future time as Una might want to try a spot of blackmail. Get a warrant, Wiggins.”

“That might not be all that easy; there’s not much probable cause.”

“The hell there’s not. She was with one of the agency’s clients. Even if Kate was seeing this guy on the sly, he would still have been on the King’s Road whatever books.”

“Companions. Incidentally, Una made it clear that her setup wasn’t about sex.”

Jury made a blubbery noise of amused disbelief. “Then what, may I venture to ask, is it about?”

“Like it says: companionship.”

“Sure.”

“It’s just possible; I mean, it could be some blokes want just that, boss.”

Boss. Wiggins had started this more edgy mode of address. He was also rendering more opinions than was usual. He frowned more. He contemplated more. “I hope you’re not losing your common touch, Wiggins.”

There it was. Wiggins frowned. “What do you mean?”

“That you’re sounding more coplike. More Prime Suspect.”

“She’s a woman. Helen Mirren.”

“I’m aware Helen Mirren is a woman. Her team still calls her ‘guv’ and ‘boss.’”

“But that’s what we do, guv. There something wrong with that?”

“No. Not at all. Except you’re sounding more like you’re on our side.”

Wiggins’s frown deepened. “But… whose side would I be on if not ours?”

“The other side. The poor bloody public’s that’s got to put up with us. As I said, you could be losing the common touch.”

Now Wiggins was contemplating. “Losing the common touch? You’ve lost me.” He shook his head as if a child had been speaking. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

Jury smiled. “I know. That’s why you have it. Come on.” He was up and unhitching his coat from the wooden rack. “We’ll go and see what else we can drag out of the good Una.”

King’s Road Companions was housed in a sedate terraced house just off the King’s Road in Chelsea. The reception area was equally sedate and well-appointed-Italian leather, silk-and-damask curtains, the walls lined with fairly stunning photographs of, presumably, the agency’s girls.

“It’s a terrible thing, a great tragedy,” said Una Upshur, leaning forward over her desk. The wood was so fine that it looked warm, almost soft, as if it would have some give to it if you pressed down with your fingers. More give, thought Jury, than Mrs. Upshur had. She looked hard as rock, as if her frontage were not a well-spun gray wool but armor plate.

She kept flicking looks at Sergeant Wiggins, who was out of his assigned chair and moving about the room, taking in the wall of photos.

“You told my sergeant, Ms. Upshur, that Kate Banks wasn’t with one of the agency’s clients last night.”

“That’s quite right. Here, you can see for yourself-” She turned an appointment book, open to the day-or night-toward Jury.

Who glanced and glanced away, since Wiggins had already covered this territory. “You’re selling sex.”

As if this assessment astounded her, she fell back in her cushy leather chair. “We most certainly are not! These young women act as escorts to different events in London. It might be a society party, or an art gallery, or the opening of a play, or simply as a dinner companion or to go with a gentleman to a club.”

“What you told Sergeant Wiggins was that Kate Banks could bring in upwards of five hundred quid an hour. That’s one hell of a lot to pay for an arm to lean on as you wander through the Van Goghs and Sargents.”

Her small mouth grew smaller, tightening. Then she rethought her situation and said: “There are many wealthy, lonely men out there for whom five hundred pounds is, well, nothing.”

“Chump change.” Jury smiled. “Come on, Ms. Upshur. No man’s going to pay out that kind of money for simple presence.”

“You’d have to have known Kate.”

“I wish I had. But that’s not in the cards, is it?”

Wiggins was back and sitting down, apparently having made his selection.

Not caring for where Jury was going, she switched to Wiggins. “Charming, aren’t they? The most beautiful in London, I’d say.”

“I don’t see Kate Banks”-he hitched his thumb over his shoulder-“back there.”

“Oh. That’s because she’d had a new photograph taken and it’s not up yet.” Una Upshur was not meeting anybody’s eyes.

Jury said, “Then why take down the old one?” No answer, so he said, “She quit, didn’t she?”

“Certainly not!”

“She thought the kickback was excessive, especially given her remarkable earning power.”

“That’s absolutely untrue.”

Wiggins deflected the anger. “She lived in Crouch End, didn’t she?”

“Yes, she did.”

“That’s a long way from the West.”

“It is. But it suited her, I expect. She’d lived there years.”

“Did she also have a place in ECI in the City? Near St. Bart’s Hospital?”

Una shook her head, frowning. “No. At least not that I know of.” She looked at both of them. “That’s where she was found, wasn’t it?”

Jury nodded. “Getting back to your clients. Could it be that one of them was displeased with Kate? I mean, could any of the men she went with have reason to do this?”

“Oh, my, no. I never heard a bit of a complaint. No, I can’t imagine any of them wanting to hurt Kate.” At this point, a tissue was produced from a drawer. It went with a tearless series of sniffs. That was apparently the best Una Upshur could do in the grieving department.

“What about your other girls? Escorts?”

“They were all fond of Kate.”

“I seriously doubt that. Considering she was the high roller.”

Una Upshur said nothing, looking glum.

Wiggins said, “Well, maybe you avoided trouble because there’s not much occasion for the girls to meet, is there? They don’t work out of this office, do they? I mean, they don’t have to physically come in here.” His tone was nice and conversational, Wigginsy.

Her smile wasn’t sunny, but it was more smile than Jury had gotten. “Yes, you’re quite right. They do come in here, but not on a regular basis. I just call them with the information.”

Jury rose. They were getting sod-all from this woman. “We’ll need a photo of Kate Banks, if you don’t mind.”

“Very well. I keep pictures on file.” She turned and went through to another room.

He heard metal drawers opening and closing, then she was back and holding out a five-by-seven photo. “This is one she had taken a year ago.”

She was beautiful, for certain. She didn’t look hard, used, or unhappy. He pocketed the photo. “Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”

Wiggins rose and they left.

“A little impatient, weren’t you, guv? A bit dyspeptic, maybe.”

“More than a little.” When he found Wiggins looking at him speculatively, evaluating, no doubt, the state of Jury’s liver, he said, “No, I don’t want one of your bloody homeopathic medications, shoots, roots, vines, biscuits, powders, or gums from the sacred bolla-wolla tree.” Jury gestured toward the car. “Drop me off at the Snow Hill station, will you?”

26

“Two shots, one to the stomach and one to the chest.” Dennis Jenkins held up two casings in a plastic sleeve. “Recovered from the victim. A twenty-two snubnose. Tiny little gun, would fit in a rolled-down sock or a tiny little purse.” He held up the clutch that had been lying by the body of Kate Banks. “It doesn’t have much power, but at close range aimed at soft tissue, it’ll certainly do the job. As we saw.”

Jury frowned. “You think it was Kate Banks’s?”

Jenkins shook his head. “We haven’t traced it yet. But if she was on the game, it wouldn’t be surprising that she’d carry a weapon for defense. Which is how one of these snubbies is ordinarily used. The thing is, it’s very easy to conceal.”

Jury thought about this, shook his head. “Not in Kate Banks’s purse. Not with that wad of money in it.”

Jenkins nodded.

“Mariah Cox was shot with a thirty-eight. But I still think it’s the same shooter.” Jury smiled briefly.

“The escort-cum-librarian. That fascinates me.”

At first Jury thought Jenkins was being sarcastic. But he looked at Jenkins’s small smile and decided, no, he really was fascinated.

Jenkins continued: “A double life. Was that it? Was that the rush? Not the sex, not the money?”

“I don’t know. I certainly get a different picture from her boyfriend, I mean the one back in Chesham. He was pretty much blindsided by this. Not just her death, her life. Lives.”

Jenkins creaked back in his chair. “Remember Kim Novak? Vertigo?”

“You brought that up last night. You think Kate Banks was thrown off a bell tower?”

Jenkins frowned but not at Jury. “There was something really sick about that film.”

“You mean the Jimmy Stewart character?”

“The whole film. Her, too. She fell in with it.” Jenkins was rolling a pencil over his knuckles, back and forth. “You ever study obsession?”

“Aside from my own? No.”

“Yeah. Cops tend to be. It doesn’t have much to do with love or any other feeling. It has to do with the idea of it. Obsession has to do with itself.”

“You’ve lost me.”

Jenkins sighed. “Yeah. Me, too.” He tossed up the pencil and caught it like a baton twirler. “No… wait. I did have a thought there.” He paused. “Hitchcock was way off base with Vertigo. That character just wasn’t set up right. Now, take Norman Bates. Norman was completely mad-”

“Psycho?”

Jenkins nodded. “But the guy in Strangers on a Train, Bruno. Now, there was a characterization. Bruno was only half-mad. Both of those characters were more believable than the James Stewart character.”

A WPC rapped on the door frame-the door itself was open-came in, and handed Jenkins a folder. On her way out, she smiled at Jury.

Jenkins slapped the folder open. “Okay.” He muttered a few hmm’s.

“Is that Kate’s?” Jury thought he was picking up Wiggins’s habit of speaking of victims on a first-name basis.

Jenkins nodded. “No surprises. No cartridges found at the scene. Two recovered from the victim. There’s not really much to link these shootings other than the escort service angle.”

“And that nothing happened.”

Jenkins frowned, puzzled. “What?”

“Nothing happened aside from the two women being shot: there was no rape and, what was more curious, considering the seven hundred and fifty pounds-no robbery. They were both dressed up, as if for a party.”

“Yet where they happened, those places are completely different. It wasn’t as if they’d both occurred in a certain part of London. One in London, one outside of it. That’s what distances them. That would make you think this isn’t a serial killer; it makes you think the two killings aren’t related.”

“But you don’t think that?” said Jury.

“No. I think they’re related.” Jenkins sat brooding on something. Obsession, Jury guessed, and asked, “What did you mean when you said obsession ‘has to do with itself’?”

Jenkins chewed at the corner of his mouth. “Look at lago.”

Jury liked that trip from Hitchcock to Shakespeare.

“There’s nothing to explain Iago. The reasons given are absurd. No, it’s like Hamlet: nothing in the plays explains their actions. Iago didn’t act out of jealousy or rage or revenge. He was just being lago-you know what I mean.”

Jury smiled. “This is good, but can we get back to our own little drama? Can we talk about our two dead women?”

Jenkins looked genuinely puzzled. “I thought we were.”

“Meaning, you think our killer was obsessed with sex, or prostitutes, or…?”

But Jenkins was shaking his head. “I don’t think he knew what his reasons were.”

Jury gave a brief laugh. “This is getting away from me.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s lunchtime. I’m off to a pub to have a word with my own Iago. ’Bye, Dennis.”

27

“Where were you last night, Harry?”

In the Old Wine Shades, Harry Johnson was languidly smoking a small, thin cigar. Jury hadn’t bothered with a greeting, at least not for Harry Johnson. He did say hello to Mungo.

“Where did you want me to be, and at what time?” Harry blew a smoke ring. “There’s been another murder, I take it.”

“Just a hop, skip, and a jump from here.”

“A hop, skip, and a jump from here lies the part of inner London with the highest crime rate in the city. Could that perhaps explain your murder? Or do you have it in mind to tie the one in the City together with the one in Chesham?”

Mungo lurched up and froze like a pointer, as if Chesham had fallen somewhere out there in the fields.

“Something wrong?” asked Jury.

“Yes,” said Harry. “Stop trying to-”

“I’m talking to Mungo.”

“Mungo’s nerves seem to be in a state. God knows why.”

Mungo had defrosted but still sat up alert, all ears.

As if something spooked him, thought Jury. “You still haven’t answered me. Where were you last night?”

Harry sighed. “I was here.” He tipped his head in the direction of Trevor, who was serving a couple at the end of the bar. “Ask Trev.”

“I will. Were you here all night?”

“Did I doss down here? No.”

“You know what I mean. You came when and left when?”

“Came at nine; left at ten or eleven. Does that fit the killer’s schedule?”

“Close.” Jury smiled. “That ten or eleven’s a bit vague.”

Harry shrugged. “I can always change it. Have some wine. It’s a great Bordeaux.” Trevor had come along and placed a glass before Jury.

“You’re pretty cavalier about a double murder.”

“I can afford to be, given I didn’t do them.” Harry tapped ash from his cigar with his little finger, looked at the cigar, scrubbed it out.

“You were in Chesham. You’ve been to the Black Cat-”

Again, Mungo stood up between the two bar chairs and froze like a pointer.

Harry looked down. Ineffectively he gave a command: “Sit, Mungo.”

As if.

“You’re giving Mungo commands?”

“I like to see if it has any effect.”

“It doesn’t.”

“No.”

“The Black Cat, Harry?”

Mungo quivered.

“It’s interesting to me that there’s a black cat gone missing from the pub. I’m wondering if there’s a relationship.”

“Wonder away,” said Harry.

Mungo started turning in circles.

“Is Mungo trying to say something?” He reached down to the dog. “What’s up, boy?”

What’s up, boy? Mungo cringed.

Jury looked at him and then went on. “The little girl who lives at the pub thinks the cat was either murdered or kidnapped. Like the woman found outside. She claims that the black cat there now isn’t her cat, that it’s been put in the real cat’s place-” Jury frowned at Mungo, who was clawing at his leg, something he never did. Jury reached down to pet his head, and Mungo flopped onto the floor.

Harry looked at Mungo, shook his head, and set another cigar on fire. A tiny flame leapt up when he put his gold lighter to it. “You’ve read E. A. Poe, I expect. Have you read ‘The Black Cat’?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Interesting tale, and a very sick one, but it’s Poe, after all. Narrator has a black cat. They’re inseparable. Cat follows him around all the time. The fellow starts drinking and is soon deep into an alcoholic mind-set. He does something horrible to the cat and eventually hangs the animal. The story’s pretty ghoulish.”

“Why does he do it?”

“The narrator’s idea is that one does things just because they’re perverse. No motive other than that.”

What came to Jury’s mind was the conversation he’d just had with Jenkins. Vertigo.

Harry continued, “I think it has more to do with the man’s psychological state, not his spiritual one. Perversion for the sake of perversion. Interesting. The black cat, of course, comes back to haunt him in particularly nasty ways. The only thing I don’t like about Poe is the payback. There’s always a payback, a punishment. I find that unconvincing.” He mused. “This little girl at the pub you mentioned, she could be making it up about the kidnapped cat.”

Mungo was off the floor and turning in circles again.

“It’s just too strange a story,” Harry went on. “Why would someone kidnap a cat? It’s ludicrous. Like the other one.”

Jury turned full face to stare at him. “Oh, you mean the one you told me about Mungo disappearing and magically coming back? That story you stuffed into me over drinks and dinners, and me, idiot that I am, believing it? That story?”

Harry blew another smoke ring and said, “Get over it, will you? It’s going on your tombstone, ‘The dog came back.’”

On the floor, Mungo seemed literally to have his paw over his eyes.

With an energetic shake of his head, Jury said, “No, it’s going on your tombstone, Harry. I’ll carve it out myself.”

Harry sighed. “You just won’t let that go, will you? Did it ever occur to you that your memory might be equally faulty? Like that child’s memory? That incredible story might never have happened.”

Jury looked at Harry Johnson, holding his glass of wine in the path of light cast by the pendant above their heads. “You’ve got so many versions of stories, it’s hard to tell which one you’re referring to, which story, and which of its dozen lives. If you’re talking about the Tilda version, surely you’re not resorting to that old cliché: the witness’s memory is faulty.”

Harry turned the glass as if it were prismatic, a diamond. “Why not? Proust did.”

“Oh, please. First Poe, now Proust?” Jury took a long drink of his wine.

Harry set down his glass and turned to him with a faint, ironic smile. “You’ve read him, have you?”

“Of course, the same as most people have. Swann’s Way. I stopped around page thirty, where he’s dipping the cake in the tea.”

“It was a bit of a madeleine in a spoon that was dipped in tea. And from that taste, an entire world blossomed in his mind. That’s all you read, is it? Too bad. At least you ought to read Time Regained. You can hardly grasp his purpose on the basis of thirty pages. And all along the way, there are episodes similar to the madeleine bit. In one of these, he’s in a salon at a piano recital and he hears a phrase-only that, two notes-and he has a similar experience. The ‘little phrase,’ he calls it. Then in Time Regained he’s about to enter the home of the Guermantes when his toe hits one of the stones in the walk, and that calls up a memory. When he’s seated inside, waiting, a starched napkin is the next trigger. It’s fascinating.”

“But that’s the exact opposite of what you’re saying-that memory can be faulty. Proust is talking about lost memory, not fabricated memory.”

“My word, Richard, you got a hell of a lot out of your thirty pages! But that’s only part of it, you see. There must be some action that precipitates memory-the madeleine, the little phrase of music, the napkin-the buried memory-”

Jury interrupted. “This isn’t buried memory, damn it, you’re talking about faulty memory. And on the basis of this you’re deconstructing the girl Tilda’s entire account of that afternoon!” He was going to hit him in a moment. Sourly, Jury contemplated his glass.

“Then look at this other little girl’s story-what’s her name? So I can keep them straight?”

“Dora. Keep them straight? That’s all it is to you, a story, two stories.”

Harry ignored that. “Look at Tilda’s story from another point of view.” He was again moving his glass around until light sparked it. “On this one afternoon, a child is playing in the grounds of a large, untenanted country house, playing with dolls or stuffed animals, and she looks up and across this desolate and untended garden-”

“Oh, stop editorializing. You weren’t-” Jury stopped. He wanted to cut out his tongue.

Harry laughed. “You nearly said ‘weren’t there.’ That’s good. Especially since it should be obvious that the so-called editorializing would show that I was there.”

“You were.” Jury tried not to break his wineglass over Harry’s head. “Don’t try and pull this again, Harry. Don’t try dazzling me with your agile arguments. I’m not falling for it a second time.”

“I wasn’t. Let me finish, will you? The little girl looks over these silent gardens toward the terrace, where she sees a man-no, there were two children. I forgot the boy-”

“Timmy.”

“Yes. Two of them. This is beginning to sound like The Turn of the Screw. With me as the sinister Peter Quint.”

“You’d make a poor Quint. He hadn’t your personality. And he was dead.” Jury finished off his wine.

Harry laughed and signaled to Trevor. “Then the girl claims that this man chased the two of them, caught them, and kidnapped them. Now, does this Jamesian spin really sound like an accounting of events free of fantasy?”

“You’re leaving out the blindfolding and keeping them captive in his cellar.”

“Oh, yes! How could I have forgotten? That lends such a note of realism to the story.”

Trevor had come down the bar with a bottle. He winked at Jury. “Mr. Johnson telling you another tall tale, Mr. Jury?”

“That’s just what I’m doing,” said Harry. “Only it’s not my tale. It’s someone else’s.” He turned from Trevor to Jury. “That’s all you have: the testimony of a couple of kids who can’t even describe their captor.”

“They do have names: Timmy and Tilda.”

“Hansel and Gretel, more likely.” Harry shrugged. “Well, I wouldn’t know, would I?” He smiled. “Never having met them.”

28

Joey launched himself out of the car the moment Jury opened the door. He made off across the wide green grass of Ardry End and ran round the corner of the house, with Jury following.

What was he heading for? Nothing and anything. The stable? The hermitage? There was no sign of Mr. Blodgett, resident hermit. But Jury (and presumably Joey) did see Aggrieved, Melrose Plant’s horse, and his goat, Aghast, out there beyond the stable, their heads down, grazing.

Jury had by this time reached the rear of the house and the wide kitchen garden and an unfamiliar man standing before the kitchen door. Had the man been a professional clown or a music hall hold-over, Jury would have said he was dressed in motley. He wore a faded purple velvet jacket, probably once a smoking jacket, a bright scarf round his neck, and a satin waistcoat. Checkered trousers completed this outfit. In his pocket was what looked like a half-pint of Cinzano.

Joey was running a circle round the horse and goat, barking. It sounded like a measured, tempered bark, as if it had a specific purpose.

The tall man inclined his head by way of acknowledging Jury. Jury returned the gesture, and at that point the door was opened by Ruthven, Melrose Plant’s manservant. Ruthven was taken aback by this duo at the kitchen door, seeming to have come here together.

“Superintendent Jury! Why-please come in.”

Ruthven did not appear surprised at the sight of the other visitor, who must have been here before. “And Mr. Jarvis, come in.”

On his way through the door, Jury said, “You might want to see to the dog out there harassing the other animals.” When Jarvis was out of earshot, Jury said, “Must be his, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. Lord Ardry’s expecting you; he’s in the drawing room. If you’ll just follow-”

“Oh, don’t bother, Ruthven, I know where it is. Go and see to your visitor.”

Ruthven bowed and went off toward the kitchen.

In the handsome drawing room, Melrose was situated at one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and talking to someone on the outside of it-Mr. Blodgett, probably. Blodgett came up to the windows regularly, either to make wild faces at Melrose’s aunt Agatha or to make a request or to keep Melrose abreast of estate happenings. Today’s happening (as Jury well knew) was the presence of a dog.

“My word,” said Melrose, mostly to the sky and earth, as he was leaning out the window. “Damned if you’re not right, Blodgett. D’you think it’s rabid, or what?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jury, joining them at the window. “It’s just an old dog. Must belong to the man in the kitchen. Jarvis? That his name? I told Ruthven about it.”

“I didn’t hear the front door. How long have you been here that you know more than I do?”

“That’s not hard.” Jury was leaning out the window now, elbowing Melrose aside. He could see Joey running herd on Aghast while Aggrieved looked on with seeming indifference. Jury couldn’t see the horse’s expression, but indifference figured in the tilt of his large brown head. Aggrieved would watch for a moment, then go back to chomping grass.

“The dog’s just enjoying himself. Hello, Mr. Blodgett.”

“‘Lo, Mr. Jury. Nice t’see ya ag’in. Well, I best be goin’, fer I got things to do. Just thought mabbe you’d want to know ‘bout the dog.” Blodgett, who wasn’t going off at all, went on, “’E looks a bit like one o’ them sheepdogs.”

Ruthven came in then, and Melrose motioned him over to the window. “There’s a dog out there, Ruthven. Know anything about him?”

Ruthven seemed to sail when he moved, gliding smoothly over the Turkish carpet. “I expect he belongs to the man in the kitchen, Jarvis.”

“Oh, I see. First I’ve got a dog in the garden, and now I’ve got a man in the kitchen. Good Lord, the place could be taken over by an army of elves and I’d be the last to know-there he goes!”

The three of them-or four, if one included Mr. Blodgett on the outside-moved to another window on the other side of the fireplace that gave them a better view of the stables. Joey was still attempting to round up the goat, Aghast. Aggrieved watched.

“Look at him! He’s barking at Aghast. Who in hell does he think he is?”

“A dog,” said Jury. “Looks like he’s herding.” Melrose looked at him. “Herding?”

“Well, as Blodgett said, he looks like a sheepdog. Aggrieved and Aghast don’t seem to mind him.”

“If he’s a border collie,” said Ruthven, “he’ll probably carry on-” Then, mindful that it was not his place to be standing here giving his opinion, Ruthven swanned off.

“Wait. Who’s in the kitchen?”

Ruthven turned. “It’s Jarvis, sir. You remember.”

“Oh, him. So it’s his dog?”

“I’d say so. Martha’s fixed him a meal.”

“Well, bring us a bottle of that Médoc and tell Jarvis to collect his dog before he leaves.”

Joey and Aghast were lying down now. Aggrieved stood, still munching quietly. The grass he nibbled at was such an evenly bright green, it looked enameled; the maples and willows shone in the brilliant light of early afternoon.

Melrose still leaned against the wall, peering out the window. “I can’t tell if he’s wearing a collar.”

Ruthven was back almost immediately with wine and glasses on a tray. “Mr. Jarvis says he knows nothing about the dog. But if you like, he could take the dog with him, get him off your hands.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’d want to do that,” said Jury rather quickly. “Probably he belongs to some tourist who was passing through and the dog got away from them.”

Ruthven had uncorked the bottle and was pouring the wine. “I agree with Mr. Jury, m’lord.”

“When’s the last time you ever saw a tourist pass through? Long Piddleton is not exactly a destination village. But you’re probably right.” They both accepted a glass of wine from the tray Ruthven passed.

Melrose thanked Ruthven and told him to see the dog got his dinner along with the goat and the horse.

“And use the good silver,” said Jury.

Ruthven allowed himself a brief snicker and sailed off.

Melrose plopped himself down in his wing chair. From the corners of the ceiling molding, unconcerned cupids observed. “I should put an ad in the paper, shouldn’t I?”

“That’s what I’d do,” said Jury. “He’s got tags, at least a rabies tag.” Dr. Kavitz had seen to that. But how would Jury know it? “I saw him up close when I was waiting. And he’s got a name tag, too. His name’s Joey.” Jury smiled.

A little later, done with wine and talk about the dog and Jarvis-a homeless soul who stopped by from time to time (which struck Jury as even more unlikely than a tourist)-they walked down the drive and crossed the Northampton road after a party of cyclists, all in black leather, gunned on by.

Jury thought he was caught up in a dream. Motorcyclists were even more unlikely than homeless men.

Melrose watched them out of sight, looking thoughtful, then said, “You know, I read a poem by some American poet. He’s describing the coming on of night, comparing it with an onslaught of cyclists on a blacktop road. I used to hate motorcycles, but after reading that, I’ve never looked at them the same way. Now they have a kind of exotic beauty. Now they look as if they’re ushering in something we should know about.”

“The next big thing. That’s what poetry should do: usher in the next big thing.”

They were passing Lavinia Vine’s cottage and stopped to admire the garden, a late May idyll.

“Look at those apricot roses,” said Melrose. “And those tulips.” With a riot of colors from pale blue to a red so strong they looked dipped in blood, a large square of tulips shouted down the flowers around them. Jury wished he’d stop thinking about death. The next big thing.

A couple of drunken butterflies were sorting through the yellow blossoms of some shrubby plant. Against the low wall on the left was a border of peonies and clouds of white hydrangeas.

“The fragrance is sleep-inducing,” Jury said. “That must be what put the cat down.” He was referring to a big cat sleeping atop one of the stone pillars set by the walk.

“Desperado’s a nasty piece of work. I’ve seen him take down dogs.”

They walked on.

“Speaking of dogs, the new one should have a name,” Melrose said, ignoring Jury’s earlier comment. “We’ll have to have a naming competition.”

“I told you, his name’s Joey,” said Jury. He was getting irritable. They were near Long Piddleton’s center, if it could be said to have one. It did have a pleasant green, where a shallow little lake served as home to an extended family of ducks, a few of which were, like the butterflies, drunkenly floating around. Why, Jury wondered, lifting his face toward the sky, couldn’t humans get drunk on air?

“You know, you haven’t mentioned your friend Detective Inspector Aguilar. I assume she’s still in hospital?”

“Yes. Not good. She’s in a coma.”

Melrose stopped. “Good Lord. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

Jury nodded.

They resumed their walk. Through the window of the local library, Miss Tooley, the librarian, waved at them. Melrose raised his hand in a dispirited way to return the wave. “What’s the chance she’ll come out of it?”

“Just that-a chance. But if she doesn’t, she’s signed a paper saying she doesn’t want what they call ‘heroic measures’ instituted. The doctor says a person usually comes back from a coma in a couple of weeks, or not at all.”

Melrose shook his head. “I’m really sorry.”

Across the village green sat Vivian Rivington’s house. “That place is beautiful,” said Jury. “I wouldn’t mind a house like that.”

“Then marry her. I bet she’d be delighted.”

How dense can you be? thought Jury. “I bet she wouldn’t. I proposed once and got turned down.”

Melrose stopped again. “You didn’t!”

“She was engaged, if you remember, to Simon Matchett. Didn’t love him, though, that was clear.”

“I’ve never understood her.”

“I know. That’s because you’re as thick as two planks.”

29

Melrose tapped on the leaded window of the Jack and Hammer, and the group sitting at the table in the bay window peered out and waved. Except for Marshall Trueblood, apparently not finished with his morning calisthenics, who stood and threw his arms about in meaningless gestures.

Inside, Melrose asked, “What in God’s name was all of that semaphore about?”

“To warn you off,” said Trueblood. “Theo Wrenn hyphen Brown saw the two of you and is now leaving his shop and coming here. Hell.”

Jury said hello to the four-no, five, for here was Dick Scroggs the publican, bringing fresh drinks; no, six, for here was Mrs. Withersby, Dick’s char, who was slapping her slippered feet toward them. She had a cigarette behind her ear and was hoping for another, along with her free favorite pint.

“Wrenn hyphen Brown? What’s that about?”

“He thinks a double-barreled last name has more cachet.”

Said Melrose, “I have the care of a new dog. A homeless man came to the door and I’m sure he had the dog with him, but he denied it, so we don’t know where the dog came from. He’s lost or something. Maybe got free of his owner.”

“What kind of dog?” asked Diane Demorney.

“Sheepdog.”

“Mountain dog,” said Jury, who had remained standing.

Melrose looked at him. “You know the difference?” Nonchalantly, Jury shrugged. “You can just tell about this dog.” Melrose frowned, then said, “For heaven’s sakes, sit down, will you? You’re making us nervous.”

Jury laughed, looking at the group slouched comfortably round the table. “Yes, I can see all of you are a bundle of nerves.”

Diane Demorney, taking precious time from her martini, asked, “Does the dog have a name?”

“No,” said Melrose.

“Joey,” said Jury at the same time.

They stared at Jury; they wanted evidence.

“It’s on his collar.”

“When did you ever see his collar?” said Melrose.

“I told you. When he went by, I got up close to him.”

Vivian Rivington frowned. “He stopped for you?”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

They were all frowning at Jury now. He knew why, too. They wanted to have a name contest and he could be throwing a spanner into the works with his “Joey.”

Right, Trueblood apparently decided. He said, “We’ll have to name him.”

Theo Wrenn-Brown had come and pulled a chair round as if he were welcome. He shoved it in between Trueblood and Diane. He called over to Dick Scroggs, who was reading the Sidbury paper, leaning over it on the bar. Theo called for a gimlet. He could have called for his fiddlers three with more success.

He then settled in to get attention paid him. “Superintendent! Solved any cases lately?” “Hee-haw” was precisely and phonetically what Theo’s laugh sounded like. Hee-haw. “Where’s my drink? Dick!”

Dick blew his nose with a big handkerchief and went back to his paper.

“Oh, for God’s-” Theo shoved back his chair and stomped over to the bar.

“Should we do the naming the same way we did for Aghast?” said Joanna Lewes, who wrote books that were a commercial success.

“Nobody won that,” said Diane. “Melrose rejected all of our suggestions and went with his own name.”

“Well, it was my goat. Anyway, it was really Agatha who came up with it, by accident, of course. She was ‘aghast’ that I had a goat.”

“All right, all right.” Trueblood leaned over the table next door and plucked up a few small paper napkins. These he dealt out like a card shark.

Jury sighed. “I don’t have time to stay through another one of your contests. I’ve got to get to Chesham.”

“You mean Amersham?” asked Trueblood.

“No. I mean Chesham. Thanks.” The thanks was for Dick Scroggs, who had just handed Jury a pint of Adnams. “Besides, the dog’s already got a name: Joey.”

Diane said, “Yes, but you don’t know if it’s really his name.” On the edge of her glass, she tapped the toothpick that had lately speared the olive in her martini.

Jury knew better than to use reason with this crowd, but his line of work condemned him always to try. “Then is ‘Aggrieved’ real? Is ‘Aghast’ the goat’s real name?”

“Well, of course. We named him.”

That made sense. Jury drank half his pint and set it down. “I’ve got to get going. I’m meeting my sergeant in Chesham.”

“Yes, old scout. You didn’t tell us what was going on in Chesham.”

“A killer-naming contest. See you later.”

They stared after him openmouthed, clearly wondering, and he let them.

30

Mungo had paced for so long, he felt he’d worn his paws to nubbins.

Morris was lying on the carpet in the music room, watching him. She yawned and slowly closed her eyes; all that pacing tired her. Most things did.

Mungo stopped. Why is it all down to me? This is your fate we’re talking about. I’m not the one who wants to get back to Amerslum.

Amer-sham. Anyway, it’s Chesham. I told you, more than once.

More than once. More than once. He lay down and tried to curl his legs into his chest. Do you have more joints than me?

I don’t know. Morris yawned again: How are you going to get me back to Chesham?

Mungo didn’t answer. He went over to the walnut bureau and its bottom drawer, looking at the pile of kittens, looking for Elf. He needed to relax. The kittens were piled on top of one another. Was there nothing but black cats in this whole wide world? No wonder Mrs. Tobias thought Morris was Schrödinger. It was amazing that the two cats could coexist in this house without anyone’s knowing.

Mungo rolled two kittens away from the pile. They spat at him. Then he unearthed Elf.

What are you doing with that kitten? Morris asked.

Nothing. Mungo had Elf in his mouth, looking around for a hiding place. This activity relaxed him a bit; he could do it and think about a problem at the same time. He looked over the music room. Not the grand piano; he’d done that, along with the coal scuttle, the umbrella urn, the planters.

Put that kitten down, said Morris.

Boss, boss, boss, boss. Mungo didn’t care; he wasn’t all that interested in hiding Elf, so he dropped him.

Elf made his way fuzzily back to the drawer, trying to think nasty thoughts about his tormentor, but he couldn’t, as he was too little and his mind was formless and without messages.

The Spotter had been talking about Chesham and a case. Then he’d gone on about the “two kids”-oh, what an adventure that had been! But if there was a “case” in Chesham, was it possible it was Morris related? Mungo stopped his pacing and stared at Morris (who was taking a nap, no help there). Morris had been witness, if not to the murder, then certainly to the dead body.

Mungo hitched up one paw, set it down, picked up the other paw, set it down, the other up, down, up, down. Nervous excitement. He paced again, head down as if he meant to ram through a-Wait! Morris might not have known what she was seeing. How could you see a murder and not know?

He trotted over to Morris and gave her a shove where she lay.

Wake up!

Morris shifted and recurled herself.

Wake up! Listen-Think! Did you see a murder? Did you see anything at all that might have been a murder?

Morris narrowed her eyes. Of course not. I saw this person lying there, and then the woman and dog came along.

Mungo paced again and wished he smoked cigars. He could stand reflectively by the bay window, tapping ash. All right, maybe she hadn’t seen anything. What if she had? What would they do with the knowledge? Go to the local station and fill out a report?

Pacing. Stopping. But… what if the Spotter were to see Morris?

Well, maybe…

What did they have to lose?

Nothing at all.

Mungo went over and plopped himself down beside Morris. Listen: Here’s what we’ll do. There’s this pub called the Old Wine Shades Harry’s always going to. The Shades, for short.

I’d rather go to my own pub.

Don’t go all weepy on me. Life’s hard enough.

It is for Dora.

Oh, God, thought Mungo, I’ll run away and be a hobo dog. But he knew he wouldn’t. The food was tasty here, and the beds were good. And there was Elf and the rest.

He said, The Shades.

31

Was Sally Hawkins so hopelessly blind that she really thought she could pass this thug off as the real Morris? Either she did or she didn’t care.

Waiting in the Black Cat for Wiggins, Jury drank his beer and thought about Joey. Joey would sort out Morris Two in an eyeblink. In his mind’s eye he saw his friends in the Jack and Hammer, casting their votes for a name that would no doubt be absurd.

His mobile trilled its tune. He nearly stubbed his finger racing to turn it off.

It was Wiggins. “I’m in a cab on my way to the pub. I did find out something from Mr. Banerjee; he was very helpful. That’s an interesting shop. Very Indian-like.”

“That could be because Mr. Banerjee is Indian, Wiggins.” Jury was keeping his eye on Morris Two, as the cat had jumped up to the table and was eyeing the mobile pressed to Jury’s ear. “Next time, I’ll make it a conference call, okay?”

“Conference call? What?”

“Sorry. I wasn’t talking to you, Wiggins.”

“Is there someone there with you?”

“No. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” Morris Two was having a wash. A ruse, Jury knew. He was really waiting for Jury to take his eye off his pint and his phone from his ear.

“Right,” said Wiggins.

Jury clapped the mobile shut and set it on the table.

Morris Two stopped licking his paw and glared at it. From it to Jury. As the cat seemed to be thinking over the mobile’s tune, David Cummins walked in.

Looking, thought Jury, drawn and not very happy.

“David.” Jury motioned him over.

“I thought that car might be yours,” he said.

“You mean the unmarked Hertz rental with the bullet holes in the windscreen? Yes, I can understand why you’d hit on me straightaway.”

David laughed; the laugh made him look a little less ashen.

Jury pushed out a chair. “Sit down. You look like hell. Want a drink? I’m waiting for my sergeant.”

He sat down, extracted a cigarette from a pack of Rothmans, and looked at Jury, but Jury’s expression was noncommittal. “I can light one for you, too. Now, Voyager.” Wanly, he smiled, looked over his shoulder for Sally Hawkins, and, not seeing her, shrugged. “We were wondering if you could stop by the house? Chris wants to talk to you. She has an idea-well, let her tell you it.”

That was puzzling. “All right, sure. We’ll come round as soon as Sergeant Wiggins gets here. Twenty, thirty minutes?”

David rose. “Good. Thanks.” He sketched Jury a small salute and was out the door.

Ten minutes later, Morris Two was back at the window, straining to see the latest arrival.

It was Wiggins, who walked through the door, looked around, sussing out the place as if you couldn’t see daylight through the smoke and the people. There were only the three at the other table and a man at the bar, thoroughly juiced.

“There you are, boss.” Wiggins pulled out a chair, and Morris Two, who had just claimed it as his own, spat and jumped down.

“That cat’s a treat.”

“I told you about Morris, didn’t I? I think this particular incarnation of him once belonged to the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Morris hates people. All people.”

“Abused as a kitten, it could be.”

“He’s certainly going to be abused as a cat. Want a beer?” The old Wiggins was more of a lemon squash guy.

“Bit early for me.”

“It’s after five.”

Wiggins made some sort of rocking hand gesture, sending what message Jury couldn’t imagine. Then he slid his notebook from an inside pocket, flipped it open. “This shopkeeper, Benjarii, told me he’d given some thought to the photo you’d shown him and remembered Kate Banks had come in a number of times over the course of the last year and that she’d bought staples, you know, bread, milk, butter-staples. Very pleasant, he said, but she wasn’t one for chatting people up. But once she’d bought ajar of curried pickle which he’d remarked on as being a favorite of his. Kate Banks said it was also a favorite of her friend’s. The implication was, he thought, that this was who she was buying for. It’s not much, but it means there is someone around there who knew her well.”

“Yes. And someone who might need seven hundred and fifty quid. I know I’m reaching here because the money could have been paid her that night after her escort encounter. But it also could have been cash not earned that night that she was taking to someone. How large an area would that shop encompass for people who shop there regularly? Not very big, I shouldn’t think.”

“No. There’s another shop three streets over and a Europa three streets north. People closer to those would be using them. So I’m guessing a three-block parameter, all four sides. I could narrow that because Mr. Banerjee said she came from that direction, in his case, north. He saw her once or twice cross St. Bride’s, coming to his shop, so the area to cover would probably be three blocks each direction.”

Jury turned his unfinished pint glass around and around. “It does sound as if Kate were taking care of someone. Some relation?” He turned the glass. “Has anyone ID’d the body yet?”

“They got Una Upshur in. But no one related to Kate Banks. They haven’t found any relatives. Sounds as if Kate was pretty much on her own.”

“Except for the one she was possibly helping. Maybe that person will go to police. Come on, Wiggins. We’re going to see DS Cummins and his wife.” Jury, standing, finished off his beer.

As Wiggins got up, Morris Two shot out of his lethal nowhere and streaked between Wiggins’s legs, almost tumbling him.

“Bloody cat!” he said as he grabbed the back of the seat for balance.

32

With cups of tea served all round, Chris Cummins fairly beamed at Jury and Wiggins, as if they might be as proud of this collection as she herself.

It certainly could have been said of Sergeant Wiggins, who found her aggregation of shoes even more fascinating than Jimmy Choo’s. He appeared to be drawn to these rows of shoes as much as he would have been to a medicine doctor’s strange roots, palliative powders, or dried animal parts. At the moment, he had helped himself to a shelf and had pulled down and was studying a sandal with a heel as tall as an Alp and a red sole. The vamp was made up of grass green foil rings twisting up to the ankle. He just stood and stared.

“Sergeant,” said Jury mildly, knowing he could not dehypnotize Wiggins, short of shooting him in the back.

Was this what she’d wanted to see him about? To talk about shoes?

But Chris Cummins short-circuited whatever extraneous topic Jury might have been going for by saying, “Christian Louboutin. He’s my favorite.” Then she reached up and took down one of the high-heeled shoes, this one of blue satin, then its mate, perhaps the better to make her point, turning both over for Wiggins to eye. “Red soles,” she said. “Louboutin always does red soles.”

“I wonder what it’s like to walk on,” Wiggins said.

“That,” said Chris with perfectly good humor, “I couldn’t tell you.”

Unmindful of his gaffe, Wiggins plowed on, pulling out one of another pair, the last in the bottom row. They weren’t nearly as comely as the others, just unembellished black patent.

“Oh, not those. That’s Kate Spade; I never did like her shoes. They’re so… uninteresting.” She turned to look at her husband. “Sorry, dear.” Then back to Wiggins, with whom she seemed to have formed a sort of shoe bond. “David brought those back by mistake. He was supposed to get Casadei and he got Kate Spade.” She shoved back the uninteresting Kate.

David Cummins didn’t seem to appreciate his wife’s joking tone. Indeed, Jury thought he went a little pale.

Wiggins, sensing some condition in another he should attend to, changed the subject and said to Cummins, “You were with London police, were you?”

He nodded. “South Ken. I was a DC. Got a promotion when I came here.”

Wiggins sighed. “Be careful what you wish for,” he said darkly.

Jury raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m only thinking of all the extra responsibility. I mean, that’s what I found.”

Jury rolled his eyes.

“Come on, love,” said David. “Let’s get to the point.” To the other two he said, “Chris is one for the drama.”

“You bet I am.” She wheeled over to the end of the shelf, reached up, pulled out a chunky-looking dark brown snakeskin shoe.

“Manolo Blahnik!” she said, as if she’d been waiting all her life to cry the name.

Wiggins looked blank.

“Manolo Blahnik, the famous shoe designer.”

It was Jury, not Chris, who said this, earning a look from her of admiration and from Wiggins a look that wondered if his boss was daft, knowing stuff like that.

“My upstairs neighbor,” said Jury, “has a pair and cited chapter and verse on his shoes.” Carole-anne gave him bulletins on her wardrobe changes, too. To Chris Cummins, Jury said, “I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Mrs. Cummins.”

“Chris, please. Lost you?” She looked from one to the other, including her husband in her head shake. “And you call yourselves detectives. All right, give us the photo, love,” she said to David.

Jury looked at Cummins.

David opened the same folder that had held the photo of the Jimmy Choo shoes and took out another. He passed it to his wife.

“Now, you see this?” She pointed to the imprint of a shoe, or rather the heel of a shoe. The rest of it was lost in the earth and leaves. “This,” she said, tapping the heel, “could have been made by this shoe.” Again, she held up the chunky Manolo Blahnik shoe.

David Cummins already had out a magnifying glass, which he handed to Jury wordlessly.

Jury compared the imprint with the heel he held in his hand, then passed glass and photo on to Wiggins. “Has a cast been made of this?”

Cummins nodded. “Yes.”

“If it is a shoe, where would the imprint of the rest of it have fallen, do you think?”

“I’d guess the sole was on the hard surface of the patio. The stone is pretty much flush with the ground.”

“Forensic thinks it’s a heel print?”

“It’s certainly possible. They’ve been rather stumped by it, think it might have been done by the roadworks equipment.”

Chris sighed impatiently. “It’s a Manolo Blahnik, I’m telling you.”

Jury was doubtful, but he smiled at her nonetheless. “Good for you, Chris.” Seeing how delighted she was with the results of her detection, he didn’t add that there were probably a dozen other things, including shoes, that could have fit the image in the photo. Actually, he was impressed; the lady had a very good eye for detail.

“You think the killer was a woman?” said Jury.

She said in a tone heavy with irony, “We do all sorts of things, Superintendent. Scrub floors, make cookies, kill people. Yes, that’s what I’m saying: a woman wearing Manolo Blahniks.”

Her husband said, “It’s not as tidy as that, Chris.”

“Still…,” said Jury, picking up the shoe. “Could we borrow this?”

“Yes, of course.” She looked over her wall of shoes, smiling. “I knew this lot would come in handy someday.”

“London, would you say?” He was rocking the shoe slightly in his hand.

“You couldn’t buy them in Amersham. I’d try Sloane Street first. There’s his shop there. Besides that, you might find shoes in some designer knockoff place or one of those consignment places. I’ve found several pairs myself at a shop called Design Edge. It’s in Kensington High Street. You could try those places.”

“You shop in London?”

“Oh, you mean this?” She gave the wheelchair a slap and smiled. “No. But Davey goes to London when he gets days off. Remember, he’s the one who brought back the Kate Spade.” She laughed.

And David, once again, looked grim. The Kate Spade shoe episode was wearing thin.

Chris wheeled back to the center table and picked up a largish book with a glossy cover sporting a pair of high-heeled emerald green shoes, looking as if they’d been carelessly stepped out of, one lying on its side.

The title was, Jury thought, pretty forced: Shoe-aholic. He said, smiling, “I take it you identify with shoe-aholicism?”

She laughed. “You rolled that right out, Superintendent. Yes, I do. Davey brought me this from Waterstone’s Friday. It’s luscious.”

“Not nearly so much as the real thing,” said Jury, looking at the wall of shoes. Then he got up. “Thanks so much for the Manolo Blahnik insight. And the tea, of course. We’ll look into it.”

She sighed. “My theory is being dismissed, I can see that.”

“Absolutely not. You ready to go, Wiggins?”

His sergeant was back at the shoes again, looking broody.

“What do you think of that heel business? Just her passion for shoes?”

“That’s a great deal of money tied up in that collection. Eighty pairs, I counted. Say between five hundred, a thousand a pair, you’re looking at around sixty thousand.”

Jury smiled. “You counted them. I thought you were just admiring them.”

“Don’t be daft. This”-he pointed to his head, presumably the brain-“is always ticking over. Where to next?” Wiggins tested the acceleration by gunning the motor and then releasing the pedal.

“The Rexroth house. The people who threw the party. It’s not far. It’s on this road just a short distance past the pub.”

As they pulled away from the curb, Wiggins said, “Speaking of shoes…”

Jury rolled his eyes. Were they again?

“I must say, I’ve a friend who’d look smashing in that sequined number.”

Jury wasn’t aware Wiggins had a “friend,” much less a friend who’d look smashing in sequins.

Wiggins went on: “A DS doesn’t make that kind of money.”

“No. But his wife’s family apparently has that kind.”

“Oh.” Wiggins frowned and drove on.

33

They found Kit Rexroth on her own, Tip, the husband, absent in the City, performing whatever financial wizardry had made them rich.

Wiggins produced his warrant card, holding it close enough to Kit’s face that she could have kissed it.

“Something else, Superintendent? I can’t imagine anything we didn’t tell you the other night. Will you sit down? Will you take tea?”

The question barely had time to leave her mouth before Wiggins stepped on it, saying, yes, they would.

“Not if it’s any trouble,” Jury tacked on, loving the accusatory look he got from his sergeant. Traitor.

“Not for me, it isn’t. I’m not fixing it.” From the table between them, she raised a tinkly little bell.

Jury thought the summoning bell was a fairy story, but apparently not. A maid entered as if she’d been at the door just waiting. Kit asked for tea and some of “those little cakes the cook is hoarding.”

A slight bow. An exit.

The myth of the English country house and its workings seemed to be right here in the flesh. But of course it didn’t really exist. Staff should hide their dissatisfaction, unlike the maid, who looked as if she were sucking a lemon. Would she spit in the tea?

“What is it, then, Superintendent?”

There was no hostility in the tone, just honest curiosity.

“Your party, Mrs. Rexroth…”

She looked off, bemused. “You mean the night of the murder? Whether I saw that young woman? Whether she was here?”

“No. You’ve answered that. This is about another guest: Harry Johnson.”

“Harry Johnson.” She again looked bemused. “I don’t believe… well, there were a lot of people here, as you know, friends of my husband or even friends of friends.”

“Still, you claim the dead woman wasn’t.”

“No. What I claim is I would have known her had she been. A very striking woman. But this Harry Johnson-”

“He was on your guest list. He’s tall, about my height, very blond hair, very blue eyes. He said that your husband often lunched in a pub in the City called the Old Wine Shades.”

She rubbed the tips of her fingers against her chin, eyes narrowed. “I can ask Tip.”

“Johnson said he was here, that he knew you, albeit slightly.” Why would he lie about something so easy to check up on? Perhaps because it wasn’t really that easy. He’d been here only an hour, Harry had said. Given the large number of guests, it would have been possible that his hosts hadn’t seen him. They were an easygoing couple to the point of being vague. Well, if Kit was vague, Harry could always be vaguer.

Tea arrived and was drunk, heartily by Wiggins, despite his earlier three cups. Following this, they left.

“Was he at that party or not?” Jury said, more to himself than to Wiggins. They were sitting in the Black Cat, eating pub food.

“He was invited, that’s clear. But Harry Johnson likes to play games.”

Jury let out a half-laugh. “You’re right there. He certainly likes to tell stories.” He called to mind that Gothic tale of Winterhaus, that story within a story within a story. It was Melrose Plant who had pointed out all of those concentric rings moving away from the center each time a fresh stone was skipped in the widening water of Harry’s story.

“Plant wonders if Harry Johnson’s elaborate story really had anything to do with the murder of Rosa Paston.”

Wiggins was having fish and chips. He stopped a limp chip on its way to his mouth. He thought for a moment, said with a shrug, “Maybe he’s right.”

Jury dropped his knife on his plate. “Don’t be daft, Wiggins!” He went back to his bread and cheese and Branston pickle.

“If he wasn’t at that party, why would he say he was? Does he want you to suspect him?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s winding me up. He wants to see how I’d work it out.”

“So much that he’d have you think he had something to do with Mariah Cox’s murder?” Wiggins shook his head. “The man must be barmy.”

Jury smiled. “Right. That point’s already been settled, Wiggins.”

34

Mungo trotted out to the kitchen and trotted back to the music room. She’s out of the kitchen, so let’s eat dinner; we have a lot to do.

Morris was slow to follow him; Morris did not want to do a lot, especially his, as Mungo’s “lots” were so complicated.

“Come on, Mrs. Tobias could be back in a minute.”

Morris moved quicker.

In the kitchen, across the granite countertop, a profusion of white packages and little white tubs were lined up and open. A stool stood conveniently placed before this cold collation. There were herring, two kinds of cheese, wafer-thin slices of Westphalia ham, smoked salmon, wild Alaskan salmon (or what was left of it), thinly sliced summer sausage.

Morris picked up her paws, one after the other, set them down, again and again. Where had all this food come from?

From that stuck-up deli on Sloane Street, where you drop a week’s wages just going through the door. Harry’s rich; he doesn’t care. Come on, don’t just sit there. Get up on the stool. Mungo was earnestly glad for cat-agility. He disliked bounding up to the counter.

But like a fan unfolding, Morris went from floor to counter in a single shake. Amazing how cats could do things-fold their paws in, spring from floor to table.

Go on, toss some food down. I’ll have a piece of sausage and some ham and some of that salmon.

Almost on tiptoe, Morris went down the line, here and there stopping to sniff. Umm! Which? Smoked or plain?

Either, I’m not fussy. Don’t bother with the white tubs, they’re mostly salads.

This one’s chopped liver. She slid in her paw and spooned out a bite. Um-um!

Sausage? My sausage?

Oh. Sorry. She slid two summer sausage slices from the paper to the counter’s edge.

Mungo caught both pieces, together, in his mouth.

That was brilliant!

He thought so, too. He chewed and thought about his plan for the evening before them. It should work.

This is really good herring. Here-A piece went over the counter and sailed through the air; Mungo swatted it down.

They ate in silence for a minute. Then Mungo’s ears perked up. We’d better get out; I think I hear her… What’re you doing?

Straightening up so she won’t suspect-

Never mind, she’ll blame it on Schrödinger.

Footsteps sounded on the staircase, and Mungo said, Out! Morris slid from counter to floor like water spilling. Didn’t even bother with the stool, thought Mungo wonderingly.

They sped from the kitchen and through the dining room just before Mrs. Tobias hove into view.

And right on her heels was the cat Schrödinger.

The kitchen door closed behind them.

“Look what you’ve gone and done!” came shrieking from the other side of the kitchen door.

Mungo, lying under the living room sofa with Morris, enjoyed the sight of a screeching Schrödinger hurled out of the kitchen. It was almost as much fun as watching Jasper land on his arse.

Then he got down to business:

Harry will be back soon. He’ll take the car tonight to go to the Old Wine Shades. The idea is to get you into the car-

Why?

You’ll see. The window’s stuck on the passenger side, stuck about halfway up. Once you’re through the window, just climb over into the back and lie down on the floor. When we come to the car, he’ll never notice.

You haven’t said why we’re going there, said Morris.

Because the Spotter might be there.

How am I going to get out of the house without Harry seeing me?

Simple. When he comes in, I’ll bark and bounce around as if I’m really glad to see him-that’d make a change-and he’ll have all his attention on me. All you need to do is stay close to the wall behind the door, then when he opens it, you slither round the edge and out. Even if he sees you, he’ll think you’re Schrödinger. She’s always running outside.

They had managed to work the blue collar off by pushing at its Velcro tabs so that Mrs. Tobias couldn’t tell the difference between the two cats. The only way Harry could tell the difference (and Harry didn’t pay much attention, anyway) was when Schrödinger was with her kittens. That meant the extra cat was Morris. Harry put the collar back on, puzzled as to why it didn’t stay.

Mungo had pulled it off again. No one around here really took a blind bit of notice; Morris could have been sporting the Union Jack and no one would see. That’s what happened when you were too caught up in yourself-Mrs. Tobias with her pies and poached salmon; Harry with, well, Harry.

For another hour they waited side by side on a window seat behind Harry’s desk in the living room.

Finally, the Jaguar pulled up at the curb. It was not yet dark, but getting there, the light softer, bluer, diminished.

Come on! Positions! said Mungo.

They bounded off the window seat, ran toward the front door with Mungo squarely in front, Morris against the wall. When the door opened, Mungo barked up a storm and Morris flat-bellied herself around the edge of the door. All she saw was a foot shod in cordovan brown calf leather.

Bark. Bark.

Harry frowned. “What?”

Wouldn’t you like to know? Harry couldn’t pick up this message, of course, he being human (although Mungo thought that far from settled). Mungo then rushed to the living room and hopped up on the window seat to watch Morris, who was not yet in the car but trying. One try-Whoa! Cat didn’t make it. Another-Oops! Almost, but not quite. Then he saw Morris gather herself in that way cats do, every little muscle concentrated, focused… There! Morris got her paws hitched over the window and she was in. Mungo wanted to applaud.

Harry was back with the ridiculous lead that Mungo allowed to be snapped onto his collar. Ho-hum. As if he needed one. As if it controlled him. But Mungo tried to “scamper” off the seat, thinking scampering more befitting Harry’s idea of dogdom. He stopped short of tail wagging. He wouldn’t lower himself.

Off they went out the door, down the white steps to the car. Back door opened, Mungo hopped up to the seat and looked down at Morris lying placidly on the floor, paws tucked in.

All the work. All the work falls to me, thought Mungo. He sent a message to Morris:

When we get there, just repeat what you did in reverse-wait for us to get out of the car, ease yourself out the window, and follow.

No answer came from Morris.

Was the cat asleep?

The Old Wine Shades was in the City, but Harry treated it as his local, despite its being a bit of a drive. It took Harry less than fifteen minutes given the hairsbreadth distance he allowed between his car and the rest of the world: hairsbreadth from other cars, people, curbs, cats, and dogs. Mungo was glad just to get there alive. Harry wound between Embankment and the river as if the car were a zipper, then funneled off into King William Street and then into Arthur.

The Jaguar stopped in a no-parking area right beside the pub, Harry thinking it was his God-given right to park anywhere he chose.

Mungo sent Morris the message to wait, wait until they were out.

You already told me that.

The tone was truculent. Mungo could have done with some appreciation.

Inside, seated at the bar in his favorite place, Harry engaged in one of his winey talks with Trevor.

Mungo stared at the door, wondering where Morris was; Morris must have missed the opening of the door and was stuck outside. For heaven’s sakes.

Trevor had gone off somewhere and returned with a bottle, and the two men spent more valuable minutes talking about it.

O Boredom, I salute you!

Where was the Spotter? Mungo knew he was-There! Coming through the door, followed by Morris. The Spotter didn’t see her. My God! Couldn’t even detectives suss out they were being followed by a cat? Mungo hoped his faith wasn’t misplaced.

“Hullo, Harry. Mungo.” Jury tossed his coat on a stool and reached down to give Mungo’s head a rub. Then he saw Morris. “What the hell’s your cat doing here, Harry?” Jury laughed.

Harry looked down. Frowning deeply, he said, “Schrödinger? That’s not Schrödinger.”

Right! thought Mungo. Right! It’s not.

Harry turned and looked down, frowning. “At least I don’t think so.”

Wrong! Trust Harry not to know his own cat.

“Schrödinger,” Jury said with a laugh. “The cat’s dead; the cat’s alive.”

No! thought Mungo. NO no no no no no. Don’t go off on that quantum mechanics stuff!

Harry was nonplussed. “How the devil did you get in here, Shoe?”

No oh no oh no!

Morris stuck by Jury’s leg, staring up at him. Staring, sending him all sorts of messages, each tumbling over the one before, hoping by sheer volume to penetrate the dense mass of the human brain. I’m not Schrödinger, I’m not Shoe, I’m Morris, Morris, Morris, from the Black Cat in Chesham…

“What is this?” asked Jury, drinking the wine Trevor had just poured. “It’s good.”

Trevor, wine expert, rolled his eyes. “Surprise, surprise, Superintendent.”

Mungo sat hard by Morris and joined in: Look, look, this isn’t Schrödinger, this isn’t Shoe, no no, not Shoe, it’s Morris, Mor-risss, MORRIS, M-O-R-R-I-S…

Harry, cat completely forgotten, was winding up one of his interminable paeans to the good grape and saying, “So, are you getting anywhere with these two murders?”

Standing on his hind legs, Mungo placed his front paws on the edge of Jury’s chair. It’s not Shoe-Listen! The Black Cat, the Black Cat, the pub the Black Cat…

Morris joined in: Black Cat Black Cat Dora Dora’s cat…

Jury frowned. “What’s with Mungo? He seems distracted.” He rubbed the dog’s head.

A woman on the other side of Harry bent down to look at the cat and cooed, “What a pretty kitty. What’s his name?”

“Schrödinger. It’s a she.”

Not Schrödinger, she’s Morris. Morris. Mungo kept it up.

The woman frowned. “That’s a funny name. Whatever does it mean?”

Jury could hear Harry testing the point of each word before he flung them at her like a handful of darts.

“It means ‘cat’ in quantum physics,” he said this without looking at her.

“Well. We’re not very friendly, are we?” She sniffed and moved from the stool to a table.

Free of her, Harry went back to the subject. “Be careful, or you’ll have another Ripper on your hands. Was she, as they say, ‘interfered with’?”

“You think I’m going to give you the details?”

Mungo turned in circles at his feet, while Morris was close to clawing her way up his leg. Mungo thought in a minute he might even bark. Why couldn’t the Spotter sort it?

“I don’t see why not,” said Harry. “The tabloids will dish up details.”

Mungo wondered how to spell “Black Cat.” Morris was supposed to be staring, staring at the Spotter. It looked as if she were sleeping on her feet. That better hadn’t be so.

Jury was looking down at Morris, looking from Morris to Mungo. Mungo watched his face, his expression of real consternation. The dog could almost see the tumblers of the lock clicking: Something about this black cat-and Mungo, Mungo trying to tell me something?… Click. Wait. The Black Cat, that pub… Click. Dora. Dora’s cat… Click, click, click. My God! Could this be Dora’s-?

Yes yes yes yes. The Spotter was thinking hard, even if Mungo had to make up his thoughts. Mungo waited for the words that would get Morris back to Dora-

Jury said, “Is a dog a lot of trouble?”

Mungo crawled under the bar stool, went down with his paws over his eyes.

Is a dog a lot of trouble?

35

The bloody traffic light had decided its changing days were over. Jury sat behind the wheel, waiting.

I’ve ‘ad enough o’ you lot, thinking I’ll go red-yellow green at a moment’s notice just t’ please you. Well, see ’ow you like sittin’ ‘ere for several minutes…

Jury hit the steering wheel. Was he going insane? Imagining what was rattling through the head of a traffic light? Next it’d be British Telecom over there in that forlorn-looking telephone box, trying to get a message across to him-

Which made him think of Mungo and Schrödinger…

Finally the light changed (reluctantly?), and he turned onto Upper Street. No, there was no doubt in his mind that those two had been trying to tell him something. It didn’t surprise him that Mungo had done this, but the black cat?

The black cat.

That cat seemed to be getting along famously with Mungo. They were like conspirators.

Frowning, he pulled up in front of his building, got out and locked the car, and took the steps two at a time. He didn’t feel up to a conversation with Mrs. Wassermann tonight and hoped she wasn’t looking for him through the window of her basement flat.

He watched the moon through the window of his flat and thought about it.

The black cat wasn’t Schrödinger.

Schrödinger and Mungo didn’t get along, according to Harry, and that black cat and Mungo were getting along so well, they seemed to be on the same wavelength.

That cat wasn’t Harry’s cat.

All right, so the cat was a stray. Ridiculous. Harry Johnson taking in a stray cat? And pigs might fly.

Jury knew where he was going with this. Harry had been in Chesham; Harry had been in the Black Cat. And Harry would steal a blind beggar blinder, if it served his purpose.

What was his purpose? What in the world would Harry want with Dora’s cat?

His first impulse was to drive to Belgravia and make Harry turn over the cat. How could he-or why would he refuse to-let the cat go if it wasn’t his cat?

In the middle of this thought there was a knock. He said, “Come in,” and Carole-anne appeared in his doorway like a vision, red gold hair glowing as if the moon hung behind her. The light actually came from the wall sconce in the hallway. It was hard enough dealing with Carole-anne when the light was off, much less on.

“Well, come on. We’ve a date, remember?”

Jury did not, and his expression showed it.

She sighed deeply, still in the lit-up doorway. She checked the small circlet of a watch on her wrist. “It’s nearly gone ten. It’s not very flattering you forgot.”

“I agree. If I had forgotten. But I didn’t forget. We don’t have a date.”

“Yes, we do. Down to the Mucky Duck.”

“I didn’t forget we had a date to go to the Mucky Duck, either.” He bit back a smile. “You’ve stooped to this, have you? Manufacturing dates. And get out of the doorway, will you? The glow hurts my eyes.” He shaded them.

Frowning, she moved into the room.

The view from there was pretty good, too. A sea green or sea blue dress, depending on the way she moved. A mouth of pearly coral lipstick that seemed to have been kissed by that same sea. Long, very thin silver earrings, which darted with shivery little colors as the light hit them.

“Making it up, honestly.” She sank down on his sofa and drew a little mirror from her purse, looked in it, saw nothing apparently, snapped it shut, and said, “Friend of yours called.” She pointed at Jury’s phone as if the friend were trapped inside.

“And…?”

“What?”

“Who was the friend?”

“Well, I don’t know, do I?” She had taken a nail file from her bag and sat filing away.

“Actually, yes. As you were the one who took the message.”

“Oh. Someone named… Fiona?… No… Felicia?…”

“Phyllis?”

“Could’ve been. You ready?” File back in purse, she was up and dusting off a self that needed no dusting.

“Did Phyllis want me to call her?” Of all the forensic pathologists, medical examiners, or coroners in the British Isles, Dr. Phyllis Nancy was the one Jury would always choose. She was the most able, the most accommodating, the most dependable. If Phyllis said she would have the results of an autopsy back to him at a certain time, it was always there, spot-on. Greenwich could have set the clock by her.

Jury had unhooked his jacket from a chair and was shoving his arms into it, the Mucky Duck clearly his destination one way or the other.

“Not really.”

He collected his keys. “Not really, but then what aspect of unreality was she interested in?”

“Just something about dinner. Or lunch.” Carole-anne yawned. It was all the same to her. “Maybe you were supposed to have a meal with her? Or not. Anyway, she was just reminding you of whatever it is. I couldn’t make it out.”

They were on their way downstairs now, Carole-anne wearing, he was almost certain, her party pair of Manolo Blahniks. This heel wasn’t chunky, as was the heel on the pair in Chris Cummins’s collection.

“She sounded,” added Carole-anne in her assessment of Phyllis’s call, “just as flighty as you do.”

The Mucky Duck always lived up to its name (though not the “duck” part), sodden with beer and smoke.

Every man she passed eyeballed Carole-anne, probably hoping Jury was her father. She sat down at a table and asked for a pint of Bass.

“Half-pint is more ladylike,” he said, secretly applauding her refusal to participate in the gender issue.

“Half-pint’ll get dumped over your head, too.”

“You know, you really are crabby tonight,” said Jury.

“You’d be too if you had to spend most of it reminding someone they had a date with you.” The little mirror came out again and she was inspecting her face for forgotten flaws.

Might as well inspect Rossetti’s Beatrice, which she greatly resembled. The compact shut. “You still here?”

“I don’t want to forget what you look like while I’m gone.”

Her eyebrows squiggled. She had a lively frown.

As he left the table, Jury could have sworn six men got up to move on it. When he quickly turned, he could also have sworn they all sat back down again.

Probably just his imagination. But he kept his eye on her off and on while he waited for the barman to take the order.

He returned and set the two pints on the table and then sat himself down.

He folded his arms and leaned toward her. “Now that we’re on our date, what shall we talk about?”

Carole-anne took a ladylike sip of her beer and said, “Who’s Phyllis?”

36

Wiggins had been here before; he already knew his way around the kitchen and seemed to have made himself invaluable to Myra Brewer. Wiggins had the touch: that’s what Jury had been trying to tell him.

It was the next morning, and they were visiting Myra Brewer.

“We’re out of biscuits,” called Wiggins.

We. Jury loved it.

“Yes, but there’s Choc-o-lots fresh. The ones with marshmallow.”

“Found them.”

Then there was the sound of water running, a kettle being filled. This attention to tea in the midst of death didn’t bother Jury, nor did it make Myra Brewer less sympathetic. For it was clear she missed Kate Banks greatly and was very much affected by her death and the manner of it.

So tea, especially with Wiggins on the job, was an antidote as good as any Jury could ever muster. He thought sometimes it was the rituals that got us through.

Jury sat in a heather gray, rough-textured chair in the small flat in St. Bride Street, barely two blocks from Mr. Banerjee’s corner store. Myra Brewer, Kate Banks’s godmother, lived on the second floor and had trouble, she’d said, with stairs, stairs shamefully inadequate, for the handrail to the first flight had been broken and never mended. She was in her eighties and not “spry,” as she’d told Jury, an understatement if ever he’d heard one.

“There was never any young person good as my Kate. She was a gem, that girl. Come all the way from Crouch End every week, rain or shine-sometimes more than once-and did my bit of shopping for me. Never a cross word, always wanting to help, like ‘Myra, let me Hoover that old rug for you.’

“Well, you wouldn’t think I’m the luckiest person in the world, but I was lucky in Kate. Sometimes I don’t think it’s sickness nor being penniless that’s hardest; it’s being forgot. The worst thing about getting old is people don’t look in.”

It was one of the saddest testaments to age Jury had ever heard. And a heartfelt epitaph. She was thinking, he supposed, that no one would be looking in now, but she kept that thought to herself. There was little self-pity in her talk.

Wiggins, jacket off, in shirtsleeves, had done himself proud with the tea tray, which he was putting down on a small coffee table. “Here you go, Mrs. B. Done and dusted.”

Mrs. B. Jury plucked a Choc-o-lot from a plate.

“Did some bread and butter, too. That’s a nice loaf of granary bread.” Wiggins separated teacups and saucers and poured a measure of milk into each, then raised the sugar bowl in question. Myra took two spoons, Jury one, Wiggins four.

“Thank you, Mr. Wiggins. Thank you very much,” she said, bringing her cup to her mouth and drinking a bit noisily.

Jury set down his cup. “Now, Mrs. Brewer, you said Kate was a friend’s daughter?”

“That’s right,” said Wiggins.

Jury gave him a look, but he knew it failed to temper Wiggins’s apparent conviction that he was now one of the Brewers.

“Eugenie,” said Myra Brewer, “Eugenie Muldar.”

“Kate Muldar, then. What about Kate’s husband? Is he in the picture?”

“Oh, my, no, they’ve been divorced for over a decade. Johnny Banks was his name.”

“And with the divorce, was there ill will on his part?”

Myra Brewer shook her head. “No. They’d gotten married so young, they both seemed relieved to be out of it.”

“I see.” Jury paused, wondering how to ask the question. “Did Kate do any other work you knew of?”

She looked puzzled. “You mean besides her steno job? No. Why?”

“Moonlighting, maybe. You know, lots of women with that sort of job do private work-”

Wiggins carried on: “Like typing up manuscripts, or for businessmen who want documents typed, or letters, things like that. A hotel often offers stenographic services to businessmen. Your Kate might have taken on extra work for the extra money. Reason we’d be interested in this is to look at anyone she might have worked for to see if there’s anyone who might have wanted to harm her.”

“Oh. But you don’t think it was someone she knew? I expect I was assuming what happened to Kate was a-what do you call it?-a mugging?”

Jury said, “She wasn’t robbed. She had money on her. Tell me, would she have been bringing it to you? Do you need money?”

That was a bit of a twist in the account. Myra gave a short laugh. “I always need money.”

“Any particular amount? I mean for a scumbag landlord or British Telecom raising its rates? Something generally making your life hell?”

Again, she gave a sharp, joyless laugh. “I should say so. The property manager-that’s what they call themselves, these greedy landlords-he’d been trying to get two months’ back rent that I don’t owe him. I’ve been to the counsel about it. He says I must pay up or I’ll be tossed out with the rubbish. Nice way of putting it, isn’t it?”

“That must be extremely worrisome. How much does he claim you owe him?”

“Seven hundred pounds.”

Jury nodded. “Had Kate told you she’d bring you the money?”

Genuinely shocked by this, Myra said, “Kate? Kate hadn’t that kind of money.” She thought for a minute. “Though she was certainly generous with what money she did have. She’d do my shopping for me, like I said, and refuse to take a penny. Kate was a good girl.”

“Sounds like it,” said Wiggins, pouring himself another cup of tea, adding milk, thoughtfully stirring sugar into it. “We found-”

Jury gave him a kick under the coffee table.

“Found… only she appeared to dress quite well.”

“Yes, she did. Kate was always nicely turned out. She got those designer clothes at Oxfam.”

Wiggins couldn’t help himself. “Those shoes? Christian Louboutin? Oh, I shouldn’t think Oxfam would have those.”

Jury shot Wiggins another warning look. “Maybe they were knockdowns.”

This talk of dress bewildered Myra Brewer.

Jury said, “You knew Kate all her life, did you?”

She nodded. “Though I wouldn’t see her for long periods. They were here and there. Her mum, Eugenie, never stayed put for long. Restless, poor thing. She’d just go off sometimes, take the kids, sometimes not. She’d leave them with me, usually. We were still best friends even though I thought she didn’t do right by the kids. Well, I was Kate’s godmother and I should act the part.”

“What about Kate’s siblings?”

“There was just the one, a brother. They called him Boss, for some reason. He had an unusual name, anyway: Brent. I never did know where that came from. I don’t think it was a family name.”

Wiggins had his notebook out, which necessitated putting down his cup. “And where might we find them, your friend Eugenie and her son?”

“No joy there, Mr. Wiggins. They’re both gone. Eugenie to lung cancer, and the boy, Brent, was in a car crash. Probably joyriding with his friends. His mum had warned him about that.”

The voice faded out, as if that had been more than she wanted to say and she was looking through a mist that had collected over tea. She said, “You know, I felt shocking little when they went. It’s as if I had just let go?” She was posing the question to the room, not expecting an answer. “Carelessness, I mean. It’s like I should’ve held on to the string tighter. It would be nice to see them again. I expect a lot of us only come to that when it’s too late.”

There was a silence. Then Jury said, “Probably all of us find the feelings we’ve misplaced when it’s too late. It’s not you; it’s inevitable; it’s the human condition.” He was silent for a moment. “That’s the whole of her family, then?”

She nodded. “Now there’s just me. Maybe that’s one of the reasons Kate came round so much.” She brought her hand to her forehead. “Well.”

Jury gave her a moment, then asked, “What about men? Was there anyone in particular?”

“Not that she ever said. No, she didn’t talk about any men friends. I told her, ‘Katie, you should be going out, having a bit offun.’ She’d just laugh. She said, ‘I haven’t yet found a man who could sit alone with a book for half an hour without getting jumpy.’ Well, I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. I do know Kate was a great reader; she loved books. Her favorite place in London was that big Waterstone’s bookshop in Piccadilly.”

Myra took the handkerchief from her face and looked anxiously from the one to the other. “But you’re suggesting… what are you saying? That it was some man she knew? She was all dressed up, you said. Like she was on a date? But then why would she be coming round here?”

“It could be,” said Wiggins, “that she’d left someone-her date-and then come round.”

“Then it wasn’t just some stranger. He must’ve been here with her. That’s shocking, shocking. It’s as if it happened right on my doorstep.”

“It could have been someone who knew where she was going. That’s why we need to know about her friends.”

Jury thought they were finished here, at least for now. He took a card from an inside pocket and passed it over to her. “Call me anytime at all if you think of something that might be relevant.”

Wiggins put away his notebook and rose, too, lifting his teacup one last time and finishing off the tea. “Thanks for this, Mrs. B.” He gestured toward the tray.

“Well, you fixed it, Mr. Wiggins. Come back sometime when you have a minute to spare.” She trailed them to the door.

“I might do that. I might just look in sometime.” He smiled at her.

The old Wiggins, thought Jury, was back.

37

Mungo wanted to know why Harry had brought out the cat carrier-or dog, he supposed, but forget that; he wasn’t going anywhere. The carrier was sitting on the piano bench. He eyed it with suspicion. He realized Harry knew there were two cats in the house; he’d put the blue collar on one of them. And that, Mungo supposed, was to tell the cats apart. All of this puzzled him.

He pulled Elf out of the bottom drawer and carried him around the living room, looking for a drop-off. Maybe he could lift up the top of the window seat bench and drop him in, except Morris was lying on it, like a loaf.

Why are you doing that? said Morris.

It helps me think, Mungo said. It didn’t. Mungo was doing it just for the laugh. Elf was hissing and flailing his tiny paws. He’d just started this only in the last week or two.

This isn’t getting me back home, Morris said.

Mungo stared at the cat and shook his head (and Elf with it). Nothing but complain, complain since last night at the Old Wine Shades. He gave up trying to find a new place and just dropped Elf in the coal scuttle. The kitten was as black as the lumps around him. That was funny. He said, I don’t get it. The Spotter should have sorted it out. He’s smart; at least, he once was.

If you think about it, it would take a mind reader to work out what we were doing. Stare, stare, stare, you said. How could the Spotter tell from that? Morris put her head down on her outstretched paws (a posture she’d picked up from Mungo). I just want to go home.

Whine. Whine. Mungo paced, nails clicking on the hardwood floor, stopping when he heard a scuffle in the kitchen and Mrs. Tobias’s raised voice. Probably Schrödinger jumping up on the counter and nicking food. More noise.

Quick! he said to Morris. Hide!

Morris jumped from the window seat and slid slick as a whistle beneath the desk. That’s the way with cats, thought Mungo, quicker than time; they made time shrink and clocks run backward.

His bit of philosophizing was broken by Shoe erupting through the kitchen door with a kipper like a knife in her mouth.

Mrs. Tobias was fast on the cat’s trail and waving a skillet.

Schrödinger streaked through the living room and then into the great nowhere.

Mungo enjoyed the little chase; it was such a cliché. He’d seen it over and over again in The Beano.

“Where’s that cat?” came from the hallway. “I’ll kill that cat one day.” Mrs. Tobias shouted up the stairs: “You’ll be out of house and home faster’n you can pinch a kipper, my girl!” She stormed back into the living room, saw Mungo sitting by the kitchen door (to which he’d rushed in order to distance himself and, thus, Mrs. Tobias from the desk). She waved the pan. “Took one of my kippers, Shoe did, stole your master’s dinner!”

Master? Who did she think she was kidding?

“And where is he, I’d like to know? It’s gone half-seven and him not here yet when he said he wanted to eat then?” Back to the kitchen she marched, muttering.

Mungo knew something was up with that cat carrier, something unpleasant for someone. Oh, not him. Although he wondered sometimes how he’d lasted so long around Harry without getting cuffed or kicked or worse, then told himself not to be modest. But the point was that Harry would no more take a cat to the cat hospital than he’d adopt a disabled orangutan. And much less would he transport Schrödinger himself. So what was going on?

Mungo looked up and saw Shoe coming down the stairs, looking pleased as punch, then giving Mungo an evil look and going into the music room to inspect the kittens. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. One missing. She dashed into the living room, went from one hiding spot to another, found Elfin the coal scuttle, and dragged him out. She then carried him into the music room, dropped him in the drawer, and swayed over to her favorite spot beneath the little sofa near the bureau, where she promptly went into one of her comas.

Mungo stared from Schrödinger back to the carrier, back and forth, back and forth, working it out. Then he loped back to the desk and told Morris to come out.

Something’s going on.

What? said Morris.

I think-He looked at Morris’s blue collar, and the penny dropped. Take that off! Morris looked puzzled, so Mungo hit at it, then bit the end and pulled it free from the Velcro tab. Then he rushed into the music room, stealthily made his way to the sofa, stopped to see that Schrödinger was indeed asleep, and dropped the collar near the cat’s head. Schrödinger wouldn’t wake if it were a hand grenade, pin pulled. Mungo turned and hurried to the bureau, grabbed up Elf again, and trotted across the hall and into the living room just as the door opened.

Mrs. Tobias apparently heard Harry’s approach too and came like a little warhorse from the kitchen, talking all the while. “So there you are, Mr. Johnson, just let me tell you what that cat…” Her voice dropped to a quieter wrangle out in the hall.

Mungo dropped Elf. Act really mad, he whispered to Morris. Why?

Just do it, just do it!

As Elf ran off, passing Harry and Mrs. Tobias, Morris hissed and clawed at the air around Mungo’s head.

Mungo could hear him telling Mrs. Tobias he’d be having dinner out anyway, so it hardly mattered. Here was Harry saying to Morris, “So you ate my dinner, did you?” He said to Mungo, “For God’s sakes, can’t you leave that damned kitten alone?”

But he didn’t seem really bothered by it all. He grinned wolfishly.

Oh, how Mungo longed to grin back. Wolfishly.

Mrs. Tobias, in her brown wool coat-too hot for this weather, but she wore it year in and year out-sailed through the living room. She didn’t glance at Morris, not minding and not knowing there was another black cat sprawled beneath the sofa in the music room.

“I’ll be off, then, Mr. Johnson.”

Oh, do be, thought Mungo. All he was waiting for was the next act.

When that act came, it involved a good bit of effing and blinding. Harry was having a hard time of it.

Eventually Harry left, cat carrier in tow. Mungo hopped up to the window seat beside Morris. They watched Harry in the arc of light cast by the sconce beside the door as he descended the stair, and then in the blurry light of the streetlamp. He opened the car door and stowed the carrier before getting in the car himself.

They watched.

Then, pleased, they looked at each other with what would have been smiles had God seen fit to give them to dogs and cats.

Never mind, their minds hummed along as one.

38

The glossy-haired, raven-haired young woman in short skirt and high heels stood outside the Snow Hill police station (almost just around the corner from the spot where Kate Banks was murdered, and didn’t that ever give a chill!). She was chewing gum (which she would toss out before she met her client, who hated chewing gum) and wondered why she should volunteer her information to police. What had the Bill ever done for her or her friends, except as good as call them whores? Looking up at the black word “Police” painted on the soft lantern light, she debated the wisdom of going in.

She wouldn’t even have thought of coming except it had been Kate, and she’d quite liked Kate. She was a good person, always ready to do you a lunch or a loan or whatever help you needed. Yes, you could count on Kate.

At first it hadn’t made sense, and then it had. There was nobody that would’ve taken a blind bit of notice, except herself. And the sodding cops were of course on the completely wrong end of the stick, barking up the wrong tree, hadn’t a clue that just because it was an escort service, that didn’t mean it had to be sex and nothing but.

She turned away as two of these police came out of the door and gave her a look. God, she thought, a girl can’t even stop a bit before she’s accosted.

“Hello, sunshine,” said one, cuter than the other.

The other said, “Time to move it along, love.”

Fuck you. That’s what she wanted to say. Just fuck you and the horse you came in on. You want to keep running around this murder with your pants down, go ahead, arseholes.

Standing there, leering, they quite put her off. But not being one to back away immediately from any uncomfortable situation, she reached into a slim shoulder bag made of silvery disks that lapped over each other like fish scales. She removed her compact and opened it. She didn’t need to study herself, her eyes or lips or stylish haircut that cost a fortune; she just wanted to assert her right to stand on a city street.

The two uniforms stood there with their big bland smiles and looked at her as if no matter how good she looked, she’d never get invited to the party.

If only they knew. If only they knew that with what she knew, well, she could be a career changer for them, move them right up to captain or inspector or something. If they knew what she knew, she’d be at that party pronto; she’d be ushered in, sat down, and served a glass of Champs straightaway.

She checked her watch-small, platinum, a face circled by some kind of stone she didn’t know, except to know they weren’t diamonds. A gift from one of her clients.

She couldn’t stop here, nor did she want to, with these two buffoons with their truncheons and guns and grins and City of London police insignia on their uniforms, thinking they were special or better than the Met.

Yet there was something-a conscience?-a little brightness in her she couldn’t put out that had her taking a step toward the station door before the two seemed to form a wall against her entry. But she thought of Kate, the best among them she knew, who worked days as a stenotypist and was happy doing just that. Kate hadn’t liked being with King’s Road Companions, but she’d wanted the money to put aside for the future and to take care of an old lady, not even family but a godmother or someone. Whoever paid any attention to godparents, anyway? Well, that was Kate. Kate had loved the very ordinariness of her steno job, liked having to catch the tube every morning, liked being jolted and crushed before erupting into the “antic air” (as she called it) of Piccadilly. Kate had loved almost the dullness of the job. Who could love the dullness of things? she wondered. But if you liked it, did the dullness then shine? She stopped at that thought, thinking she must have a little philosophy in her.

The two coppers still stood there, leering.

So she turned and walked away into the night. The days of the Smoke were long gone, and she wasn’t old enough to have seen it anyway, but there was still the heavy mist that slid in from the river, which wasn’t far off.

A lot of the girls had stopped temporarily when police said they might be in harm’s way, given the two recent murders, that a killer was targeting escorts, and they’d brought up Jack the Ripper-or, more likely, the newspapers had done that.

She stopped in Newgate Street to adjust one of the straps of her sandals. They weren’t what you’d choose for walking, but she hadn’t far to go, only to St. Paul’s. She wondered if her guy’d got religion or something. That was a laugh.

They were to meet round the west side of the cathedral, and he’d said that if she got there before he did, just to wait on a bench in the churchyard, wait by the Becket statue. He was always late, but what did she care? He had to pay for the missed time anyway.

She had started walking again, shoes now under control: beautiful shoes, awful walking. St. Paul’s loomed before her. Made her shudder, almost. Someday she would really have to go up to the Whispering Gallery. She’d lived in London all her life, in Camden Town and Cricklewood, and not done a tenth of the things tourists did.

He wasn’t there, no surprise. She wandered into the churchyard, found the statue-whoever Becket was, they didn’t keep him in very good condition, as he looked to be falling apart in these bushes. As she looked at the statue, there came the bells. The reverberation shocked her and she clamped her hands over her ears. Nine o’clock. Five more strikes.

Into the din, or rather through it, came a voice: “DeeDee.”

Deirdre turned and got another shock.

There was a gun. There was her scream. There were the bells.

39

The unflappable DI Dennis Jenkins from Snow Hill station said to Jury, “We pulled her up straightaway only because she had form-soliciting four years ago in Shepherd Market. Name’s Deirdre Small. ID in the bag-” Jenkins gestured toward a clutch of silver scales now with one of the technicians. There were several others scouring the walk on their knees.

Deirdre Small lay in the center of them on the walk, a small ship adrift in her own wake.

“So here’s another pro working for an escort service.”

“Same agency?”

Jenkins shook his head. “This one’s called Smart Set. Has the ring of upmarket sophistication, no? Anyway, I guess it is a leg up-pardon the pun-from the street. Although Shepherd Market… well, if you’re going to trawl the curb, might as well choose Mayfair, no?”

Jury’s smile was slight, almost apologetic, as if Deirdre Small had opened her eyes and caught him at it.

“Same MO, it looks like. Close range, chest. Whether the same weapon, we won’t know till later. It must have happened at nine.”

Jury frowned. “Then you got here fast. It’s only nine-forty.” The bell marking the half hour had rung ten minutes ago.

“That’s because the person who found her got to us fast. He’s over there-tall guy, balding. He was her boyfriend, or client, I should say; he said he was to meet her here at nine and he was seven or eight minutes late. So he found her at nine-oh-seven or -eight. He must have been breathing down the shooter’s neck, assuming Deirdre Small was on time. He says she always was. Now, my guess is the killer took advantage of the bells”-Jenkins looked upward toward St. Paul’s bell tower-“to muffle the shot.”

At this point, one of the SOCO team put something in Jenkins’s hand and walked off.

Jury frowned. “But the client could have walked right in on the shooting.” He paused. “Unless, of course, he was the one.”

“My instinct says…” Jenkins squinted at the tall man with the half-bald head. “No. He was pretty quick off the mark calling emergency. He could simply have walked away, left the body to be found by one of these good people.” He nodded toward the ring of onlookers being discouraged from coming closer by the crime scene tape and the half-dozen uniforms in front of it. “But, then, on the other hand, he might have thought his name was down on the books and he’d be picked up later and in much hotter water. Still, I think, no, it wasn’t him.”

“If someone else, whoever it was had to be pretty nervy. That is, unless he knew.”

“Knew what?”

“The boyfriend’s habitual lateness.”

Jenkins turned to look at Jury. “That would mean someone who knew them.”

“Friend of hers? Friend of his?”

“He’s married. Unsurprisingly.”

“Jealous wife?”

Jenkins shrugged. “It’s possible. Possible he was followed, too. Or she was.”

A metal gurney was being loaded onto an ambulance.

“I think I’ll have a word with the boyfriend if you don’t mind.”

DI Jenkins spread his hands in a don’t-mind gesture. “Nicholas Maze is his name.”

Jury thanked him and walked over to the bench past the ambulance whose horn was now being brought into play. It wailed out.

“Nicholas Maze? I’m Superintendent Jury, New Scotland Yard CID.”

“Look, is there any way to keep this business from getting into the papers?”

Always the first concern. Keep my name out of it. “It’s hard to say. But I’m sorry about your friend. How long had you known her?”

Nicholas Maze looked uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than sad. Collar unbuttoned and tie pulled off to one side, but still constricting his neck, he looked like a man who’d just tried to throttle himself. “Over a year,” he muttered.

“Then you’d met her often before this?”

A nod that was more a nervous tic came from Maze. “A dozen times, well, more like two dozen times. It was, you know, a convenience.”

Maybe for you, thought Jury. “You’re married?”

Again, that puppetlike nod, a jerk of the head, as if the movement cost him.

“Does your wife know about the escort service?”

“You mean about DeeDee? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not.”

“You’re sure of that? That she had no suspicion?”

“Yes. She didn’t know-” Quickly, Nicholas Maze looked at Jury. “Ann? You’re thinking my wife-?” The man gestured around the courtyard. “Could have done this?” His laugh was short. “She’d be the last woman in London to shoot somebody in a jealous rage.”

“What did Deirdre Small tell you about herself?”

“DeeDee? More than I cared to know.”

This chilly response made Jury wonder.

“She was a chatterbox, DeeDee was.”

Jury waited for more, but it didn’t come. “If you could be more specific, Mr. Maze. What did she chatterbox about?”

“Well, she was born in London. Lived all her life here, she was fond of telling me. Cricklewood, I think she said. Not much education; she left school around sixth form.”

“Anything about her friends?”

“Look. Dee was a talker. Nonstop sometimes. I didn’t listen to most of it, frankly.”

“The thing is, you see, information about people she knew could be vital-”

Maze interrupted, surprised. “You’re saying you don’t think this was just an opportunistic killing? I mean, some crazy just murdered her because she was here?”

“That’s what suggests it was planned. Someone knew she’d be here. St. Paul’s isn’t the most obvious venue for a spontaneous shooting, is it?” Jury said nothing about the other murders in Bidwell Street and Chesham.

Nicholas Maze shook his head. “Can I go now? You’re the second one I’ve told all this to.”

“You’ll try to think back on what she said, won’t you?” Did they ever? Try to forget it as quick as possible, was more likely. “I’ll have to check with Detective Inspector Jenkins about your leaving.”

“Who’s he?”

The man really didn’t have the attention span of a flea.

SOCO had gone or was going, and only Jenkins and his young WPC and the uniforms keeping order remained. Most of the onlookers had dispersed. The crime scene tape remained. It would require police presence here tomorrow; St. Paul’s was a tourist draw. St. Paul’s and a murder even more.

“Cut him loose, Ruthie,” said Jenkins to the woman constable. “Tell him we’ll probably have to talk to him again and for him to stay close.”

“Guv.” She nodded and left. Pretty. Jenkins thought so, too, Jury guessed, from the way he watched her go.

He said, “Right now, I know sod-all.” He stashed a notebook in his coat pocket. “I’m sending my men round to this Smart Set place tomorrow. You’d say this was done by the same shooter, right?”

“I don’t know. The same as Bidwell, yes, but Chesham? If I could only work Chesham into the mix.”

“They all worked for escort agencies.”

“Yes, but it’s location that doesn’t make sense. Mariah Cox was in London nearly half the time. Why not kill her in London like the others? Then we’d get the serial killer syndrome.”

“I hope the newspapers don’t get hold of that angle. I can just see the dailies-” Jenkins drew a banner in the air: “‘Escorted to Death.’ That kind of thing. ‘Death Has an Escort.”’

Jury smiled. “You’re probably right. Did you notice her shoes?”

Jenkins frowned. “Shoes? That again?”

“Strappy sandals.” Jury checked his watch, although he didn’t need to, as the bells were hammering away at the hour of ten. Jury was thinking of the Old Wine Shades. It wasn’t far from here. It wasn’t far from Bidwell Street, either. He thought he would stop in for a drink. “You know a pub called the Old Wine Shades?”

“Hm. Yes. Martin’s Lane, near King William Street. The river?”

“That’s the one. Care to stop for a drink? I’d like you to meet a friend of mine.”

“Thanks, but I’ve got to get home. Take you up on that later, may I?”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to meet your friend.”

“I think you really would. Good night.”

Jenkins gave him a small salute and they parted.

“Supposed to be here around nine. I mean, he usually is on a Monday night, but not tonight.” Trevor said this as he poured out a measure of wine into Jury’s glass. “On the house, Mr. Jury.” Trevor watched carefully to see how Jury’s mouth would receive this Haut-Médoc.

Jury definitely responded to “on the house,” considering what this glass would cost him if it were on him instead. “That’s very generous of you, Trevor.” He raised the glass. “Here’s to you.” He tasted the wine. “Wonderful.”

“One of Mr. Johnson’s favorites.”

“You’ve known him a long time, have you?”

Trevor had pulled out another bottle and was wiping it down, giving it a good rub. There were few customers tonight in the Old Wine Shades, two couples at tables and three men down at the end of the bar. He took Jury’s question to be rhetorical, it seemed. He said, “Knows his wine, Mr. Johnson does. He once rattled off the names of every premier cru vineyard in Bordeaux.”

The cork was now out of the bottle he’d just rubbed down, and he was taking it down the bar with two glasses he picked up along the way.

For the one millionth time, Jury would have given an ear for a cigarette. He could really understand van Gogh if the man had quit smoking.

Think. Three women. Three escort agencies. If the paper tried to make the case for a serial killer, if someone pulled in the Chesham murder to make three, the police would be faced with panic. The two women in London looked to have been done by the same person, but he wasn’t at all sure that this person had killed Mariah Cox in Chesham.

Trevor was back, refilling Jury’s glass.

“I can’t afford this, Trevor.”

“Oh, not to worry. Mr. Johnson told me to have this out for him tonight. Though he should have been in before now-and speak of the devil,” said Trevor, and Jury looked around. “You’re quite late, Mr. Johnson. What’ve you been up to?”

Harry slid into the tall chair beside Jury, smiling. “Nothing I wouldn’t want to run in the Times tomorrow, Trev.” He turned the bottle round. “Good. The St. Seurin. I see he’s had half the bottle.”

“Two glasses, Harry.”

“Set me up a glass, Trevor.” To Jury, he said, “God, but you’re looking less than lively.”

Jury thought Harry appeared to be the exact opposite. “Death does that to me. How about yourself?”

Harry had taken out his cigarette case and extracted a cigarette, which Trevor lit for him with a match from an “Olde Wine Shades” matchbook. Jury had never noticed the “e” on the end of that fussy “Olde” before. The pub was, however, very “olde.” It dated back to the Great Fire. Not many buildings standing in London could claim that antiquity.

Harry blew smoke away from Jury and said, “Yes, I’d say death puts a damper on things. But it’s cheering to know you’re on the case.”

“What case is that?”

“Whatever case you’re on.” Harry lifted his glass, sniffed, and tasted it.

“I’ve just come from St. Paul’s,” Jury said, then asked himself, annoyed, why he had told him that. Hoping for some reaction. If Jury had said he’d just come down from the space shuttle or the Pleiades, it would make no difference. It was impossible to surprise a response out of Harry Johnson.

Harry looked at his watch. “They still hearing confessions at this late hour? Maybe I should go.” He smiled at Jury. “But I won’t. So what happened at St. Paul’s?”

“You’ll find out soon enough from the tabloids.” Jury twirled his wineglass, asked, “Where were you an hour ago, Harry?”

Harry shook his head. “Let’s see. An hour ago I was just going through Watford, I think.”

“Why were you in Watford?”

Harry said, “No reason, except I was out for a drive. I like to get beyond the Ring Road. Clears my mind.”

“Talk to anybody? Anybody see you?”

Harry signaled to Trevor, who came down the bar with a bottle wrapped in a napkin. He presented it as if it were a baby in a blanket. “Very pleasant Chassagne-Montrachet.”

That’s right, give yourself time.

Harry nodded, and Trevor set about uncorking it. He said to Jury, “Now. Did I talk to anyone? No. Next question: Do I have an alibi for the designated time? Alibi for what? There was a murder in the Lady Chapel? Was this another woman? Another tart-pardon me, escort?”

Jury didn’t answer. He shook his head when Trevor set a clean glass before him. “No, I’ve got to be going.” Trevor poured Harry’s.

Harry said, “So now it’s a serial killer. Superintendent Jury: do you honestly think I’d murder three women just like that?”

Jury smiled and slid off his chair. “I wouldn’t put it past you, Harry. Night.”

He headed for the door.

40

Early the next morning, Jury was in the Snow Hill station talking to Dennis Jenkins.

Jenkins said, “What else do we know about the first victim? Kate Banks? You talked to this woman”-Jenkins flipped open a folder on his desk-“Myra Brewer?”

“Right. But I still don’t think Kate Banks is the first; I think she’s the second. Stacy Storm-I think she was the first.” Jury produced a folder, copies of documents brought from Chesham. “Escort services, all three, and it seems different agencies. We can’t find the client who-I’m guessing here-Kate Banks was with. Anyway, according to the record, Kate hadn’t an appointment with a client that night. That’s what King’s Road Companions claimed. What about this Stacy Storm?”

“Also no client booked for the Saturday night. Of course, the usual blather about ‘client confidentiality.’ You’d think these women were all high-powered attorneys. Like what’s-his-name-Cochran? O. J. Simpson’s lawyer. He was guilty.” Jenkins rocked back in his chair.

“What?”

“O.J. He was guilty.”

“Probably, but unless he was Kate’s date, I don’t much care. The trouble is, I’ve got nothing when it comes to motive.”

Jenkins had come down in his chair and was leafing through the folder, stopping at a page. “You don’t think this might have been more than one killer?” Head still bent, he looked up at Jury from under his eyebrows. “No?”

“No. All three were working in the same job, and the killer used the same MO. They were all shot at close range.”

“Different guns, though, thirty-eight revolver, twenty-two automatic.”

“True. But it’s the range that suggests the victims were standing very close to their killer.”

Jenkins nodded. “As if the shooter’s body were pressed against Deirdre Small’s. If it wasn’t the boyfriend, or, rather, the client, then who?” Head down, arms folded tight across his chest, he considered. “Double Indemnity. Fred MacMurray shoots Barbara Stanwyck in the middle of a kiss. Great scene. But here…” He was tapping the folder Jury had just given him. “It wouldn’t have been that close.” He held up a morgue shot of Stacy Storm. “No, with the first victim there’d have been daylight between them.”

Jury liked that. “Not an embrace, then? Not close enough to kiss? But close enough to suggest the victim knew the killer. I mean, that these women would let the killer get that close.” He rose, said, “I’m going to have a word with our pathologist. Thanks.”

“What do you think? About the proximity of the two?”

The pathologist in this case was Phyllis Nancy; she looked up from the body of Deirdre Small and drew a sheet over her. She seemed puzzled.

“I could demonstrate what Jenkins is talking about if it would help.”

Phyllis gave him a look. Grow up.

Ashamed of his glibness in the presence of this girl, Deirdre, who would never stand close to anybody again, Jury said, “Sorry. I don’t seem to be on the right track lately.”

“I don’t see how you could be, what with worrying over Lu Aguilar. As to this…” She was looking at the police report. “‘You could have seen daylight between them’-what a lovely way of putting it. I think I see what he means, though: one bent over the other. Say the man’s already there, sitting at the table, when the woman comes along from the car park. ‘Hello. Hello, sweetie-’”

Jury smiled.

“I don’t mean you. I can see this Mariah Cox or Stacy Storm coming along to the Black Cat, walking over to him, saying hello, bending over to kiss or embrace him. The gun comes up and at an angle and fires into her chest. It’s a hypothesis, of course. But if it happened that way, yes, there would have been daylight between them. I see this Detective Jenkins’s point. Except it was nighttime. The shooters of these three women, then, were also their lovers.”

“Not necessarily. If the wounds suggest that kind of proximity, there are other people who might do the same thing: friends, relations. The wife of the Chesham detective claims that a heel mark was left by a Manolo Blahnik shoe.”

Phyllis was surprised and skeptical. “She thinks a woman did these killings? Well, of course a woman could shoot as well as a man, but somehow the psychology just doesn’t seem to fit.”

“I agree. And the heel print isn’t much evidence. But the embrace, if there was one, could’ve come from a woman. I’ve had friends clap me round the shoulders and hug me.” Had he really? He was trying to think up somebody-that is, besides Phyllis and Lu-and that thought pinched his eyes shut in a brief spasm.

“Richard? Something wrong?”

Phyllis was regarding him out of concerned and blameless eyes. That was one thing he liked, no, loved, about her. She didn’t judge people. He smiled a little and shook his head. “Thanks. I’ve got to get going.”

“All right. ’Bye.”

At the door he turned. “Good-bye, sweetie.”

41

All the while between the morgue and his office, Jury was trying to think of someone. Carole-anne? No. Mrs. Wassermann? Never. One or two children he knew. Gemma? Abby?

On his way into the office he grunted a hello to Wiggins, who was plugging in the electric kettle. Jury sat down without removing his coat. He picked up a paper clip and started bending it. He was feeling rather ill-used in his hugless universe.

Wiggins was looking at him, eyebrows dancing.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Jury punched in Melrose Plant’s number.

Ruthven answered in his most stentorian tones, then greeted Jury as if he’d been lost in a small craft off the coast of Scotland. The call was then overtaken by Melrose.

“You doing anything?” Jury asked.

“Playing with my dog.”

Jury crimped his mouth shut.

Melrose went on. “We were about to jettison the naming contest when Dick Scroggs, of all people, chimed in to complain about Lambert Strether: ‘Ain’t we got enough aggro round ’ere wiffout that Strether nosin’ about?’ Well, that was it, right there was the name!”

“Strether?”

Melrose blew his impatient curses into the air like smoke. “Of course not! ‘Aggro.’ It’s perfect. Listen: ‘Aggrieved.’ ‘Aghast.’ ‘Aggro.’”

Aggro. “That’s the stupidest name I ever heard for a dog. Besides, his name’s Joey.”

“That’s what the tramp called him, I guess.”

“It’s on the dog’s collar.” Jury bent another paper clip.

“So what? The tramp went off and left him and hasn’t been back.”

“We don’t call them tramps anymore.”

“Beggar? Ticket-of-leave man? Supplicant?”

“Homeless, as you well know.” Jury heard barking in the background. “Why isn’t Joey outside running around and herding your goat? All that open space to run around in, that’s the only reason I-”

“You what?”

“That I can see for having another dog. Where’s Mindy, anyway? I haven’t seen your dog in ages.”

“Hanging out at the Man with a Load of Mischief.”

“Well, you should take better care of her. She’s old. We’re all old. Look, I’m going to Chesham within the hour. Can you leave off playing and drive down to meet me? There’s something I’d like you to do.”

Melrose was suspicious. “What?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.”

Silence. “Well…”

Jury was fast losing patience. “Don’t give me ‘well.’ It’s hardly more than an hour’s drive. You can meet me at the Black Cat.”

“All right, then. ’Bye.”

Aggro. Jury smashed down the receiver.

Wiggins jumped.

“Sorry. The man ticks me off sometimes.” Jury wasn’t sure why, exactly. He folded his arms across his chest, hands warming in arm-pits. “What’ve you got?”

“About the case, guv?”

“Of course about the bloody case. Why else would I be here?”

Wiggins pursed his lips.

Jury regarded him narrowly. “The Smart Set escort service. You went there presumably with one of City police.”

“Right.” Wiggins pulled out his notebook and the plug of the electric kettle, which was roaring like a bullet train barreling into Kyoto. “A Mrs. Rooney. That’s the manager’s name. Alva Rooney. She was rightly appalled by Deirdre’s murder. As to Deirdre’s date the night before: she didn’t want to give me a name, client confidentiality, blah blah blah, sick of hearing that, I am. So I saved myself the trouble of nicking her and asked if she knew Nicholas Maze. Yes. That was the man Deirdre was to see. She recognized the name right away. And seemed genuinely shocked that he’d have shot Deirdre.”

“I don’t think he did. But she knew Maze well enough for that?”

“I expect so.” Wiggins shrugged.

“How about other men Deirdre Small had been seeing?”

“There were several.” Wiggins consulted his notebook and read off: “William Smythe, Clement Leigh, Jonathon Midges.”

Jury smiled slightly. “You mean you didn’t have to threaten her with a warrant?”

“Oh, no. She just reeled them off. Didn’t even consult her records. The woman has a prodigious memory, guv. And she pointed out that her clients often gave a name other than their own. So she couldn’t say if the names would do us any good.”

“Descriptions might, though. Had she any photos?”

“Of her clients? Well, no. The alias wouldn’t do you much good if there were a photo, would it?”

“I worked that out in my own mind, Wiggins. But that doesn’t mean there might not be any. I’m interested that this Mrs. Rooney is so attuned to her agency she can remember things that fully. If that’s the case, she might be privy to the girls’-women’s, I mean-confidences. Did she talk about Deirdre Small?”

“Not much. Not beyond the fact of her murder. She answered my questions, but we moved on from the girl to the client, Maze. ‘Nice, soft-spoken, polite gentleman, at least on the telephone,’ is what she said. Do you think it could’ve been jealousy on his part that Deirdre was going with other men? Even though that was, after all, her job?”

“I don’t think Nicholas Maze could get that worked up over any woman, not enough to kill her. He’s too self-serving. Perhaps we should talk to Mrs. Rooney again. When I’m back from Chesham.” Jury rose and unhooked his coat from the rack.

Wiggins was frowning. “Don’t you find it peculiar that one of these women was murdered in Chesham, while the other two were in London?”

“Of course I do. It’s the sticking point.”

Wiggins reflected. “Of course, there are serial killers that work over very wide areas. Offhand, though… the Yorkshire Ripper, his beat was pretty obvious. Then the Moors Murders, there again… No, I wouldn’t think he’d turn up in a place like Chesham.”

“I wouldn’t, either. It makes it appear that these three murders are both connected and not connected. I’ll see you later.”

Jury left.

In his car, he thought about what he’d just said to Wiggins, that the killings seemed both connected and not connected. The point was important, but he couldn’t go anywhere with it. What condition would explain both connection and lack of it? He sat at a red light, thinking about this until the cars behind him honked that the bloody light was green. Are you color-blind, mate?

Was that the driver behind him or the light talking?

42

The déjà vu experience was all there for Melrose in the Black Cat: the old man, Johnny Boy, at the small table in the center of the room, muttering, perhaps to his snarly dog, Horace; the stout woman drinking sherry and reading a racing form; and, of course, he himself, stationed at the same table before the same window.

And the girl, Dora, staring at him as he read his Times. He rattled the paper open to the inside pages.

“Why haven’t you found Morris yet?”

Melrose lowered the paper. “You seem to forget that you told your tale to a CID superintendent. He was supposed to do the finding.”

She shook her head. “You were to be one of the finders. Like him.”

“I see. Well, my friend is a Scotland Yard detective, whereas I am but a lowly landowner.” He wished in earnest the intense eyes would find something else to focus on. He shook his paper, knifed the centerfold with his hand, angry that he hadn’t been the brilliant finder himself.

She sighed and shook her head, fielding one more disappointment. “Then why hasn’t he found Morris? If he works for Scotland Yard, he ought to be able to find a cat. How does he keep his job?”

With as much condescension as he could muster, Melrose said, “He has missing people he has to look out for; he can’t just-”

“But if he can’t find a cat, how can he ever find a person? Finding people’s a lot harder.”

“I beg your pardon. It is much harder to find a cat than a person. A cat is much smaller and can get into places a person can’t.”

“A cat can’t read street signs, so it’s harder for her to know where she is.”

“Don’t be silly, cats find things by instinct; they don’t have to read.” What point was being made? He’d forgotten. He rustled his paper and gave it a snap.

Then, to his consternation another black cat emerged from behind the bar. Was this the one that had been there before? Was this black cat #2? It sat watchfully. Then black cat #1 sprinted by again, going for the gold.

“Wait a minute,” he said, clutching Dora’s shoulder. “Wait. One. Minute.” He pointed. “There are two black cats now; one of them’s new.” He thought this was the case; they looked alike, except for small differences one could pick out when they got close to each other, which they didn’t want to do. The new one (if he was right) was overzealous to the point of frenzy. He hurried here and hurried there as if he were looking for something.

She turned and regarded the new black cat. “That’s not Morris either.”

Tossing down his paper, Melrose thought, This is where I came in.