Martha Grimes - The Black Cat

“Two other people, Wiggins. I was just over in Piccadilly. Water-stone’s sold three copies that day. Not many people would be that interested in a glamour book about shoes on any one day. It’s coffee table, a lot of photographs, pricey. On top of that, do you think one of the other two buyers, he or she, just happened to drop the receipt at the spot Kate Banks was murdered? I might be able to stretch coincidence that far if the book had been a best seller-but not this book.” He took out and held up the glossily jacketed book he’d just bought at Waterstone’s. He’d been standing since he’d come in; now he sat down.

“What does it mean?”

“It means the killer did a stupid thing-went back and planted the receipt.”

“You mean to make it look like Cummins-”

“Yes.”

“So what you’re saying is, Cummins didn’t kill Kate Banks.”

“No, he didn’t kill her; he loved her. According to Shirley Husselby, he was besotted with her.” Jury paused to look at Wiggins’s cup. “You must have added eye of newt to that tea instead of sugar the way you’re stirring. Get your skates on.” Jury opened the door and was through it before Wiggins could ask where they were going.

He didn’t drink his tea; he frowned at it. Eye of newt rather put him off.

Not much over an hour later, they pulled into the car park beside High Wycombe police headquarters. Jury had called David Cummins from the car and asked to see him there.

Cummins was in the muster room with a dozen other detectives and uniforms when Jury and Wiggins walked in. He looked pleased to see them, which wrenched Jury’s heart, really. He liked Cummins; he was sorry about what was going to happen.

“What’s all this about?” Cummins’s smile went from Jury to Wiggins. He pulled a couple of chairs around to the desk for them.

In proximity were three or four other detectives at their desks. Jury said, “Can we find someplace a little less public?”

The smile dimmed, but Cummins said, “Come on.”

They walked down a hall to an interview room, went in, and sat down, Wiggins off to one side, notebook out.

Jury said, “Have a look at this, will you, David?” He’d pulled out the copy of the receipt and placed it before Cummins.

“Yeah. For that book I bought Chris the other day. About shoes-but why…?”

“Police found this yesterday at the crime scene, on the pavement where Kate’s body was found.”

The head that had been lowered to look at the bit of paper didn’t rise. Jury left it for several seconds. He knew it was the mention of Kate. Cummins wasn’t a controlled-enough actor to put on a blank face at that.

Finally, Cummins picked up the receipt again, as if it would change by alchemy into a thing that would explain all of this. He just shook his head. “You lost me; you’ve completely lost me. But the receipt, I didn’t lose that. It’s at home. There’s a box Chris keeps receipts in.”

“No, I don’t think it’s there, David.”

There was a silence except for Wiggins’s pen scratching on paper.

David looked up at Jury. “You think I was there-where Kate was…” But he didn’t seem able to say “murdered.”

“How could this receipt have got there?”

David made the same point that Wiggins had earlier. “It belonged to somebody else who bought the book. That’s obvious. At least to me.”

“You were in Waterstone’s, weren’t you, on the Friday? You went to London on Fridays.”

He nodded. He was too much a detective not to see where this was going. Where, he knew, it had already gone.

“Two other copies of the book were sold that day, later in the afternoon. Of the three of you, how many would happen to be at the spot where Kate Banks was murdered?”

Cummins shook his head. “No matter how improbable, it must have been one of the others because I know I wasn’t there.” He became agitated, running his hands through his hair, down his tie, fiddling with a pencil.

Jury leaned across the table and put his hand around David’s arm. “David, you knew Kate Banks when she was Kate Muldar; you knew her much better than you’ve led us to believe. And Chris knew her, too.” He leaned back. “Why don’t you tell me about back then?”

David nodded. “The truth-”

That would be nice, thought Jury. But he didn’t say it. Cummins was having a bad time, and it was soon to get worse.

“It was in Brighton. Chris and I were going together, more or less. But when I saw Kate”-his smile said he was seeing her again-“I forgot everything else. I forgot I was just a grocer’s son; I forgot I had no career and no prospects. I forgot I had no money. I forgot Chris. That sounds impossibly exaggerated, I know, but it’s literally true. Nothing I did could set Kate aside. It wasn’t her looks, though God knows they were grand. Kate was the nicest person I ever knew.”

“That’s what I’ve heard from her godmother. She was a very good person.”

David nodded. “I can’t explain except to say I was dazzled, if you know what I mean.”

Jury knew about dazzle. The first time he’d seen Phyllis Nancy, that night of the Odeon shooting, coming toward him holding a black case, wearing a long green gown and diamond earrings that hung beneath her dark red hair. That was dazzle.

“Yes. Go on.”

“I was working for my dad, filling bags with onions, lettuces, potatoes. I can’t imagine a job less… sexy. I can still remember wishing I were a copper, a CID man.” He laughed. “God. Has anybody got a cigarette?” He looked at Jury, then around at Wiggins.

Jury said, “Wiggins, go out there and see if you can scare up some smokes. And matches.” As Wiggins left, Jury said, “How did Chris react to this? To Kate and you in Brighton?”

“You can imagine. We broke up. They-Kate and Chris-were in school; it was their last year at Roedean. I didn’t see Kate after that. I think Chris got rid of her. I think she told her something that really put her off. I don’t know. Kate just seemed to dissolve into the past.”

“And then she was back in the present. Maybe sitting in that coffee bar in Waterstone’s.”

“How did you know that?”

“You liked books. She liked books and the coffee bar there. Her godmother, Myra Brewer, told us.”

“I thought I was seeing things. Nearly twenty years and Kate Muldar hadn’t changed, not by…” He looked round as if searching for some measuring device to explain to Jury how much she had not changed by.

There was gut-wrenching pathos in it.

“Not by a hairsbreadth.” He settled on a cliché. Sometimes starved language was all you had.

The door opened then, and Wiggins came through with the smokes, a half-pack of Rothmans. He set this on the table, a book of matches on top.

David thanked him, shook out a cigarette, and sat smoking.

“Not all of these London trips were undertaken to visit the shoe emporiums of Upper Sloane Street, were they?”

David was silent, flicking ash from his cigarette into a dented metal tray with “Bass” written across it. He looked at Jury. The look was the answer.

“How many times did you meet with Kate Banks?”

“I can’t say exactly, a dozen, maybe.”

Jury smiled. “You can say exactly, David. You could recite it as surely as a prisoner of war giving name, rank, serial number.”

Weakly, David smiled. “I expect so. We met a dozen times in the last four months.”

“And before that? In London? Three years ago?”

His head went down again, as if dodging a blow. “What makes you think I was seeing her then?”

“Because of the way you’re acting right now. I was merely guessing before. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the reason you left London.”