Martha Grimes - The Black Cat

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

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

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

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

Cummins laughed. “Oh, yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jury smiled. Miss Devere was no stranger to drama.

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

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

“Pardon me?”

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

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

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

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

“Is something bothering you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh. Hope it’s not serious.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t go there.

He went.

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