The Anodyne Necklace(43)

"It's the best I can do," said Jury, handing round the photo he'd brought with him. "That's who you're looking for."

After they'd all had the picture, Graham passed it back. "Nasty, very nasty. I'd sooner suspect my old gran."

"Be glad it isn't your old gran. You might wake up with no fingers."



They were standing around the curve from the Evita poster, out of sight of the grate. Macenery had the violin-it was Katie's-tucked beneath his chin. He plucked a string, stared at the wall, and said, "She's dead."

They had just been talking about what Macenery would play as a signal to the men on the platform if he saw the person they were looking for. Jury had turned to walk back down the corridor and thought he couldn't have heard him correctly. "What?"

"She's dead. Katie. She died just before you called."

Jury swallowed. "I don't believe it."

Macenery plucked a string of his violin. "Neither do I."

As he drowned himself in music, Jury stared for a moment, and then walked back down the corridor towards the platform.



They sat, Wiggins and Jury, in a murky corner at the end of the platform.

"You're kidding," said Wiggins, in as plaintive a voice as Jury had ever heard him use.

"I guess not. I wish I were." Jury took out his packet of cigarettes.

Wiggins was mournfully silent for a while and then he said, "But aren't you afraid Macenery will lose his head the minute he sees-?"

"No. If he could come here and do what he's doing, no, I don't. He's disciplined, see. I expect that's why he's so good."



The two passengers who got off the next train seemed to think he was good too. They stopped and listened before they started through the exit that led up to the little bridge and out the other side of the Wembley Knotts station.

And so it went for the next half-hour-Jury chain-smoking and studying the gray floor of the platform; Graham and Tyrrwhitt pacing; the others in the far corridor or the stair; Macenery playing the violin.

"What's he playing now, Wiggins?"

"I never heard it done except on a piano," said Wiggins gloomily. "It's called ‘Pavanne for a Dead Princess'."

"Oh," was all Jury replied.

After another ten minutes, and thinking that he must be wrong, that nothing was going to happen that night, he heard the sound of the beeper. He pushed the button and over the speaker of his small radio he heard the quiet voice of the sergeant on the stair telling him the subject had just been spotted.

In a couple of minutes, they heard the first strains of the song Macenery had said he'd play-one of Katie's favorites-"Don't Cry for Me, Argentina."

Now they had to allow enough time for retrieval of the necklace. Jury gave it another three minutes and then signaled to Graham and the other detective sergeant. T.D.C. Tyrrwhitt was stationed in the corridor, ostensibly to listen to the violin and then to follow the suspect at a respectful distance.

The four of them-Graham, the D.S., Jury and Wiggins-went through the archway to the short flight of stairs and down.

Jury heard Tyrrwhitt commanding, "Hold it right there, mate."

The person frozen in a crouch by the grate was now looking from Tyrrwhitt behind him, gun leveled, to the others bearing down on him.

"Hello, Peter," said Jury.

Peter Gere had the handkerchief-wrapped necklace in his hands and said, "I should have bloody known. The minute I heard that goddamned song, I should have known. It was the same one she was playing, that afternoon."
 
 

 

Jury did not know where Cyril Macenery was. The music had stopped. But he was glad Macenery hadn't heard Gere say that.

In a voice so cold it could have frozen hell over, Detective Inspector Graham issued the usual warning to Gere. The provincial policeman-one of those whose incorruptibility was legendary. Apparently, Graham wanted to think they still existed.

Jury asked, "Why did you kill Katie O'Brien, Peter? Did you think she knew what that map meant?"

"I didn't kill her, did I? Just roughed her up a bit." Jury said nothing. "She found it when she was cleaning one day. Like a bloody idiot, I forgot to lock the desk drawer. Nosy little lass, that girl was. I overreacted. She gave me a funny look and went away. But then she came back: she got at it again by taking out the drawer on the other side. Well, I couldn't have her see me in Wembley Knotts station, could I?"

"And you wanted to take everyone's mind off Katie's accident, so you wrote those letters."

"It worked, didn't it? Anyway, I didn't kill her. She's in hospital."

"She's dead."

Gere went ashen. Jury knew, while the awful news was sinking in, that he had the advantage. "What about Cora Binns? Did you know she was Tree's lady friend? Or was she wearing some of Kennington's jewelry?"

Gere looked at Jury almost blindly. With Katie dead, it was a little late for denials. "I knew he had a girlfriend. Men like Trevor Tree always do, don't they?" he added. "What a fool he was to give her those rings. She'd got off the bus and was searching for Stonington. Said she had business with Lady Kennington. How the bloody hell was I to know what her ‘business' was. I didn't know how much she knew or how much Tree had told her. And there she was with that jewelry that Kennington's widow was bound to recognize-I could hardly talk it off her fingers."

All of this was brought out in a rush, like a man fighting for oxygen, before he seemed to realize how much talking he himself was doing.

"What about Ramona Wey?"

Gere didn't answer.

Jury thought perhaps he could appeal to Gere's vanity. "You must have been damned shrewd, Peter, to get Trevor Tree to trust you."

"That's a laugh. Other way round, I'd say." He fell silent again.

"Get him the hell out of here," said Jury, turning away.

With false heartiness, Detective Inspector Graham said, "Well, Mr. Gere. We might just as well take the tube." Jury knew he was joking, and the joke didn't pay off.

As Graham was about to put cuffs on Peter Gere, the train stopped, disgorged a couple of passengers-a woebegone woman with hair to her waist and a gypsy skirt dragging a four- or five-year-old girl. Late for a kid to be up, thought Jury, his mind on Emily Louise. The mother seemed all unaware of this phalanx of men and commenced plowing straight through them.

Jury could not see how anyone could have been that quick, but Peter Gere grabbed up the little girl and backed off with her. A look of surprise and then unspeakable horror crossed the woman's face.

Automatically, Tyrrwhitt went for his gun, realized that with the child as a shield, it was no good. He stood there, mutely staring. No one was close enough to Gere to get him before he was out of the exit door leading up to the bridge. Jury raced after him and reached the bridge as the doors of the train sucked shut and it began to move. He yelled to Peter Gere over the noise of the train and the sudden rush of wind to put the girl down, he hadn't a prayer, there were police at the other exit too. He made a grab for the little girl's skirt.

Gere looked desperately both ways-back at Jury, forward to that other exit-and thrust the child from him. Jury grabbed her back as Gere went crashing through the makeshift barrier across the broken wire mesh, hoping, apparently, to ride the top of the train.

Peter Gere's hands scrabbled wildly for purchase, but there was nothing there now to give it. He missed the last car by inches and hit the track.

Jury looked down, the little girl shoved against his shoulder, and was glad William F. B. Potts hadn't mentioned the voltage on the outside rail.





TWENTY-FIVE


I

WHEN Jury found Melrose Plant at two o'clock in the morning, he was sitting with an overflowing ashtray, a bottle of Remy, and a book of French poetry.

"There's a message from Mainwaring. He wants to see you, no matter what time you get in."

Jury sat down heavily. "Let me have some of that, will you?"

Melrose shoved the bottle toward him. Then he told him about Emily Louise.

"Oh, my God," said Jury. He was silent for a moment. "And how's Mary O'Brien?"

"Dr. Riddley gave her some sort of sedative and I suppose it worked for a while, since he managed to get her upstairs and into bed. I was about to go to bed myself when she came down in her nightdress with a terrible blank sort of look on her face. Do you know, she was carrying an oil lamp. She made a slow circuit of the place; she held it up to all the windows, looking out; she might have been looking for some late traveler. . . . It was eerie." He lit a fresh cigar. "I think I know now what's meant about someone's being ‘a ghost of his old self.' She was flesh and blood turned to vapor. Really, I thought I could put my hand through her." He was silent for a moment, and then added: "There's no such thing as being prepared for death. I'm glad I never saw her. . . . " He looked at Jury, as if half-afraid Jury might tell him about Katie O'Brien. Jury said nothing, and Melrose went on. "When Riddley told me about Peter Gere-I was baffled."

"How'd Dr. Riddley find out?"

"That music teacher of Katie's-what's his name?"

"Cyril Macenery."

"He called Riddley. Apparently, this chap had to have somebody to talk to who knew Katie. Very broken up."

Jury drew out the necklace, still wrapped in the handkerchief, and dropped it on the table. "The people who had to die for that little lot-" He shrugged unhappily. "Go ahead, you can touch it. It's not needed in evidence anymore."