"You think it was the same person, don't you? Then why didn't he try and kill her the same way he killed the Binns woman? Drag her out to the Horndean wood or somewhere not so public? Seems a chancy thing to do, hitting her here."
Jury shook his head. "I don't know, except that he hadn't the time to get at her someplace else. My guess is he was desperate." Jury was staring absently at the Evita poster, at the crudely drawn hammer and sickle. "I'm going to the hospital in the Fulham Road to see her."
Beneath them, on a lower level, there was the dull rumble of another train; closer the tightening of brakes taking hold as one stopped at the Wembley Knotts station. It stirred more of the dirty air and blew the detritus of another week's commuting along the bottom of the tiled walls.
"Might as well work down the mines," said Wiggins, coughing.
"Umm. It's nice we have such healthy jobs, isn't it? All that fresh air."
Wiggins, quite seriously, agreed.
"If she could only talk," said Jury, nodding toward the picture of Evita.
"You'd think," said Wiggins, "kids would have something better to do than to be always mucking up the posters. Looks a treat, doesn't she?"
Diamond points of light sparked Evita's necklace, rings, bracelets, hair-even the microphones bristling around her.
It was then that Jury recalled Ernestine Craigie's remark, the one he had been trying to think of as he left the cottage. Bedizened and bejeweled. Evita certainly was that. Bedizened, beringed and bejeweled.
What a mug, said Jury to himself. Why didn't I see it before? "Wiggins, get over to this Smart Girls agency and dig out the manager. Find out about this interview Cora Binns had and call me at the hospital."
"Do you think anyone will be at the agency? It's gone six. If I have to rout whoever runs the place out at home, it might take longer."
"Okay. Why don't you take the car. As long as I'm here, I'll take the tube. Faster, anyway. It goes from here to South Kensington station." They were out on the platform now and in the bowels of the tunnel; Jury could hear the approach of the train. There was an overpass across the tracks, leading to another exit in another street. The mesh had been broken and patched temporarily with a couple of boards. The train pulled in, and Wiggins sketched a salute and left.
Jury settled himself between a couple of Times readers. He liked the anonymity of the tube; it helped him think. His eyes traveled across the line of ads over the heads of the passengers opposite. Beside the map of the Underground was a sign warning passengers about pickpockets. It showed the rear end of a body in jeans-the shapely hips making it clear the victim was a girl. There was a hand lifting a wallet from her rear pocket. He especially liked that little touch-the fingernails of the hand were varnished.
As the train swayed through the black tunnel, he thought it was nice that equal rights for women predominated even among dips.
TWELVE
I
AS if disease and death were only one more commodity in the Fulham Road, the Royal Marsden Hospital melted into its surroundings. Across from it were the usual shops, launderettes, pubs, boutiques, restaurants.
The nurse who finally led Jury to Katie O'Brien's room could not disguise the fact that she was very pretty, despite her uniform-striped dress, black stockings, a white cap and apron that might have taken a dent, but not a wrinkle. Starched right down to her voice, she said, as she pushed open the door to the room: "Don't be too long, Superintendent." She walked off, uniform crackling.
He was not prepared for the way she looked-porcelain skin, black hair brushed to such a shining neatness it might have been painted against the pillow. Her small, delicate hands were folded across the top of the sheet updrawn over her breast. To one side of her bed stood an oxygen tent, and it made him think of a glass bell on which leaves would drift in autumn, petals in spring, snow in winter. On her face was the memory of a smile.
"Hello, Katie," said Jury.
Against the wall by the night stand rested the black-cased violin. Odd it hadn't been removed, taken home by her mother. He wondered how long it had taken her, standing in some windy tunnel-Victoria, Wembley Knotts, Piccadilly-before she ever could have earned enough money to buy those jeans and that shirt. Months, probably.
Jury walked across to the window to look down at the darkening Fulham Road. Across the street was a pub on the corner whose lights painted its windows with a mysterious burgundy glow. Directly across was a greengrocer's, striped awning rolled in for the night. Beside that sat a launderette. Did Jury really remember this street from the war years, when he was a boy, or only imagine he did?
"Where that grocer's is," he said more to himself and the windowpane than to Katie, "there used to be a sweet shop. I spent most of my time looking through its windows during the war. Long before your time, that was. I remember one of our neighbors had her basement stocked full of tinned stuff, soup and golden syrup and tea. It was just like a shop, her basement, and she even had sweets down there. I used to visit her all the time and she'd take me down and show me all this stuff-shelves and shelves of things. . . . "
Outside the launderette, a little girl stood rocking a doll's carriage to and fro. Waiting for her mother, probably. She picked the doll up from the carriage and held it in the air. There was a pram there, too, waiting for one of the women within to collect it after the wash was done. He could make out the forms of women sitting, probably watching their wash, like little worlds, go round. Momentarily, his vision was blocked as one held up a sheet or blanket like a curtain against the glass.
Jury saw himself again in his room standing with his face pushed up against his bedroom window. The black-out curtains should have been drawn, but since there was no light in his room, he supposed it would be safe to look out. There was nothing to see, though, except a big, pale moon. There had been no noise and no warning before there was no wall and no window. He could remember being thrown through the air, as if he'd been trying to do a high jump. How he had escaped with only a few cuts, he had never understood. His mother hadn't escaped.
A woman came out and collected the pram, pushed it past the covered vegetable bins. Clean clothes and food: life went on in the Fulham Road. In the burgundy light of the pub called the Saracen's Head, a young man seemed to be waiting impatiently. He was carrying a guitar, looking up and down the street.
Not even the air stirred above Katie O'Brien's bed. She lay outstretched like an effigy in a marble dress. The tape recorder her mother had brought in sat on the bedside table. He wondered if the nurses bothered playing it for her. Jury flicked the On switch, and the tinny strains of an old music-hall rendition of "Roses of Picardy" filled the room.
Dusk was coming on in the Fulham Road. The little girl and her doll carriage were gone.
"Good-bye, Katie." Jury left the room.
The pretty nurse, in a vexed tone, said to him, "You've got a telephone call, Superintendent." It seemed to make her cross, the notion that police were not only tramping through her corridors but receiving calls from dangerous places beyond the fastness of the hospital walls.
II
"It's in King's Cross, sir," said Wiggins, who had called Jury to tell him he'd found the Smart Girls Secretarial Service. "And you'll never guess what I found out." Wiggins paused as if he were, indeed, waiting for Jury to guess. "Miss Teague-she's the one who runs it-went back through her files to check on Cora Binns's jobs. It seems the last job was arranged, not by Lady Kennington, but by Mainwaring."
"Mainwaring?"
"That's right. And checking back, Miss Teague found he'd used Cora Binns before."
"Did he specifically ask for Cora Binns?"
"She doesn't know. The call was taken by one of the girls. She's supposed to be on sick leave, but Miss Teague doesn't think she's sick at all. Thinks she's gone off with the boyfriend. Bunny Sweet, her name is."
"See if you can find her. Get some help from ‘H' Division. But let's not tell Miss Teague where we find her. With a name like Bunny Sweet, I'd say the girl's got enough on her platter."
THIRTEEN
I
"CORA Binns?"
Freddie Mainwaring looked extremely puzzled that Scotland Yard should put the question to him.
"The woman in the Horndean wood, Mr. Mainwaring."
"Was that her name? No, I don't-didn't know any Cora Binns. I've already told that Inspector Carstairs I didn't know her."
"Inspector Carstairs didn't know her name when he talked with you. A couple of months ago you engaged the services of Cora Binns as a shorthand-typist." Mainwaring didn't respond, apparently waiting for Jury to go on. "You called the Smart Girls Secretarial Service and asked for a typist to go to Stonington."
"You're not telling me . . . ?" When it became all too evident that that was what Jury was telling him, he said, "I think I'll have a drink."
As Mainwaring unstoppered the whiskey decanter, Jury said, "You didn't recognize her from the picture Carstairs showed you?"
Freddie Mainwaring thrust the stopper back into the decanter, rather careless of its cut-glass elegance, and turned to glare at Jury. "No. Of course I didn't or I'd have said so, wouldn't I?" That the question was not rhetorical didn't seem to occur to him. "For God's sakes, I only must have used her the one time and that was months ago. They all look alike, anyway, don't they? She wasn't important."