Martha Grimes - The Black Cat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jury chewed slowly and looked at him.

“What?… What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, you’re just guessing.”

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

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

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

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

“So this was what Oswald Maples worked on.”

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

“I’m with you so far.”

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

“It sounds extremely complex.”

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

“It isn’t the way you’re putting it.”

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

“Which one?”

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

“Oh, I believe that, but-”

“Let me finish.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Kidnapped.”

“Just how do you work that out?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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