Martha Grimes - The Black Cat

He said hastily, “Chris didn’t know…”

Jury just looked at him. “Yet Chris insisted you leave, didn’t she?”

The nod was the barest movement of his head.

“Did Kate know you were married?”

The nod was more emphatic. “But not to Chris. I didn’t tell Kate that.”

“Why not?”

David blew out his cheeks. “Kate would think it was happening all over again, and she wouldn’t’ve let it.”

“It was happening all over again.” Jury leaned closer to him across the table, so close they might have breathed each other’s breath. “And Chris knew it.”

His alarm all too evident, Cummins looked at Jury and then past him, as if his wife might be waiting there in the shadows. Then he was consumed with panic-anger: “That’s ridiculous! Where do you get that idea, for God’s sake?”

“For one thing, to state what’s a cliché, wives seem to sense these things; they know if their husbands are straying. But more than that: you were careless. Which isn’t surprising, given your feelings for Kate. You said it earlier: she shut everything else out. Nothing else mattered. If she could do that to you at age eighteen, how much more could she at age thirty-seven?”

“But what do you mean by ‘careless’?”

“You’d have to have been; you were besotted. You’d have come home with perfume on your coat, lipstick on your shirt-”

“Of course I didn’t-”

“Not that precisely, maybe, but you were so preoccupied, you couldn’t have taken great care in rubbing out all of the signs of another woman. Kate Banks was lovely. And other things. I saw her. Dead, there was still something ineffable. I wished when I saw her I’d known her.”

David Cummins sat looking at his hands, fingers laced on the table.

“How did you feel when you found out she was working for an escort service?”

“It wouldn’t’ve made any difference; nothing made any difference except being with her. This one service wasn’t really a sex thing. There are men who really do want companionship. But, still, it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

“You were going to leave Chris, weren’t you?”

He nodded, wiping the wetness from his face with the heel of his hand. He sniffed. “But I didn’t know what to do. I mean, with Chris in that wheelchair.”

Wiggins heard the tears even though he didn’t see them. He was on his feet in an instant with a fresh handkerchief, which he laid on the table before Cummins, who picked it up, shook it open, and held it like a flag of truce.

Wiggins sat down again, tilted his chair against the wall, and reclaimed his notebook and pen.

Cummins picked up the copy of the receipt, tossed it down. Jury scraped back his chair. Wiggins rose, too, but David still sat. “Next you’re going to tell me Chris killed her.”

“No, I’m not going to tell you that. She could hardly have managed to get herself to the city, could she? Though God only knows she’d have wanted to.”

“She didn’t know it was Kate.”

Poor sod, thought Jury. “Yes.”

“I don’t think-”

“And you’re wrong. Bring the crime scene photos of that shoe impression.” Jury got up. “Come on.”

“What?”

Jury knew Cummins had heard him, but probably any answer he gave at this point would be “What?”

“I want to talk to your wife. Bring the photos. Chris might recognize something.”

David nodded. “The photos are in the incident room.” He went off.

Wiggins watched Jury. “It really looks as if you think-”

Jury cut him off. “I do.”

In another moment, David was back. He held up the photos. “I still say she didn’t know.”

“The moment you made the mistake of bringing home the despised shoes by Kate Spade, I’ll bet she knew. My guess is she hated Kate Spade just because of the name. You must have been out of your bloody mind, David.”

Chris Cummins wheeled herself to the door in what Jury thought was record time. Her husband had called her in that moment he’d gone for the photos. Jury knew he would; he wanted to see what his wife would betray if she thought her husband was in big trouble.

His guess was, nothing.

“Three more somber faces I’ve never seen. Be sure you leave your shoes at the door.” Chris Cummins’s laugh was just this side of combative.

Wiggins smiled. Neither of the other men did.

“Come on, I’m making tea. The kettle’s about to go.”

They followed her, even David, as if this were no longer his house, his wife. As if he were merely stopping by like the others.

In the kitchen, the tray was ready with cups and saucers, milk and sugar. So she’d been expecting company. Jury didn’t comment.

The kettle screamed and she reached for it, but Wiggins got there first. Wiggins would always get there first, thought Jury. And he was always undervaluing Wiggins. He felt ashamed about that, about a lot of things. Perhaps he was sharing in the general shame.

“Thank you, Sergeant Wiggins,” said Chris.

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

They moved into the room she called the old parlor, the “shoe room.” Glinting like jewelry, the shoes in their miraculous flashes of turquoise, rose, amber, red, made him see why women were seduced by them. One couldn’t have found a more alluring arrangement of jewels in all of Hatton Garden.

And Chris Cummins couldn’t walk in any of them.

They sat around the table in the comfortable floral armchairs. Chris poured the tea, Wiggins helped. David waded right in: “Police found the receipt for your book, the one I bought in Waterstone’s. It was found at the scene where Kate Banks was murdered.”

About to pick up her teacup, she frowned, looking from her husband to Jury to Wiggins. “What are you talking about? The receipt-”

Jury knew she would use the same argument her husband had, and she did.

“-must be someone else’s.”

And Jury made the same objection to this theory.

She stared at him. “This is ridiculous. It was in the book and I put it in the box where I keep receipts. That inlaid box, David. Go look.”

David got up and went to the heavy piece of furniture, pulled out a wooden box, inlaid, fancy for a receipt receptacle. He was riffling through the bits of paper. “It’s not here.”

“Here, give me it.” Impatiently, she had her hand out for the box.

Jury said, “He’s right. It’s not there.”

“How do you know that?” At Jury, she leveled a disdainful expression. It wasn’t very convincing. “Look. Look. If you’re… Look. David scarcely knew her, and nor did I. I’d-we’d forgotten all about her. The name really didn’t register.”

Wiggins spoke: “It registered a bit more than that, didn’t it?” Chris looked again at Wiggins, Jury, and came to rest on her husband. “David? What’s going on?”

The alarm, thought Jury, was pretty convincing.

“Kate and I met again. We met a number of times.” David had turned to gaze out the window.

From Chris came the standard proofs of surprise, thought Jury. He said, “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about? Of course I didn’t.” Her voice caught on the tightness in her throat, the unshed tears.

“That’s why you wanted her dead. It had already happened once before, when the three of you were young. In Brighton. To have it happen again would be unbearable.”

“Are you trying to say I killed her? I got myself to London, to that street she died on, and then back? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a wheelchair.” She slapped the arm of it, almost as if to show it was solid and she was in it.

“I’m not saying you murdered her. You had her murdered.”