‘You have insulted my faith and you have insulted my husband, who — despite his weakness — was a good man,’ Mary said angrily. ‘And now I must ask you to leave.’
‘She’s right,’ Meade said to Blackstone. ‘You’ve insulted both Catholicism and Inspector O’Brien. And I think you should apologize.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Blackstone said contritely. ‘I expressed myself very poorly — very insensitively.’
‘Indeed you did,’ Mary agreed, not even looking at him.
‘I think we’d both better leave,’ Meade said.
‘Yes, I think that would be for the best,’ Mary concurred.
Alex Meade stood up. ‘But before we go, I must help you to clear away the tea things.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ Mary told him.
‘Nonsense!’ Alex Meade protested. ‘You must be tired out, now that you no longer have a maid, and the least I can do is help you clean up the mess that we’re responsible for.’
He brushed the crumbs from all the plates on to a single one, then stacked all the plates on the tray. That done, he collected up all the cups and saucers and lined them neatly along the other side of the tray.
‘Would you like to show me where the kitchen is?’ he asked, lifting the tray clear of the table.
‘Really, Alex. .’
‘I’ve picked it all up now. I might as well carry it through to the kitchen.’
Mary sighed softly. ‘It’s this way,’ she said.
Blackstone watched the two of them leave the room. Alex Meade’s style was very different to his own, he thought, but the young man was shaping up into being a fine detective — and in a few years he would be quite formidable.
Mary and Meade returned to the reception room. The expression on Meade’s face suggested he had quite forgotten the recent unpleasantness — and the expression on Mary’s clearly indicating that she hadn’t.
‘So Patrick confessed to you about what he’d done,’ Meade said, as if he were merely carrying on the earlier conversation.
‘Yes, he did,’ Mary replied. ‘And I forgave him.’
‘Just as I’m sure you’ve forgiven Sam for his stupid comments earlier,’ Meade suggested.
There was a slight pause, then Mary said, ‘Of course.’
‘Is there any of that whiskey left?’ Meade asked.
‘Whiskey?’
‘The whiskey that we used to drink a toast to Jenny. If memory serves me well, there was quite a lot still in the bottle when we’d finished.’
‘Well, I certainly haven’t touched it since then,’ Mary said, sounding slightly sulky.
‘Then why don’t the three of us — three friends — drink a final toast to Patrick, who, for all his failings, was still a great man?’ Meade said.
Mary walked over to the sideboard without a word. She poured three glasses of whiskey, and handed two of them — one for himself and one for Blackstone — to the sergeant.
Meade passed Blackstone his glass, and then took a sip of his own.
‘Wonderful,’ he pronounced, smacking his lips. ‘Just the thing for a man with a hangover.’ He paused for a moment to let the whiskey work its magic, then continued. ‘Since you knew that Jenny was pregnant, Mary, did you also know that Patrick went to Senator Plunkitt for advice?’
‘Yes,’ Mary said. ‘I thought that was a mistake from the start, and the moment Patrick began talking to Plunkitt, he realized for himself that I was right.’
‘And you knew about Dr Muller?’
‘Of course.’
‘One thing that’s been puzzling me is how his killer knew where to find your husband,’ Blackstone said.
‘Alex!’ Mary said, looking warningly at Meade.
‘It seems like a perfectly reasonable question to me,’ Meade said. ‘I can’t see why anybody would object to Sam asking it.’
‘You see, he’d probably never been to the Bayern Biergarten before in his entire life,’ Blackstone continued. ‘According to the witnesses we spoke to, he certainly acted as if the place was unfamiliar territory to him. And the only reason he went to it on the night he died was because he’d agreed to meet Dr Muller there. So I repeat, how did the killer know he would find him there?’
‘The man could have followed him,’ Mary said, her hostility to Blackstone reaching new heights.
‘That’s true, he could,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But if he had done that, he would surely have had countless opportunities to shoot the inspector before he went inside. So why prolong things? Why not just get it over with?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mary said.
‘I’m more inclined to the theory that the killer knew he would be there, and waited in ambush for him to come out,’ Blackstone continued. ‘But who did know about the meeting? Well, there were only two people — your husband himself and the abortionist.’
‘You must put a stop to this now, Alex,’ Mary appealed to Meade. ‘You must stop it, if not out of respect for me, then at least out of respect for my husband, to whom you owe so much.’
‘You’re forgetting the mistress, Sam,’ Meade told Blackstone.
‘Ah, yes, the mistress,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘When she went to see Dr Muller, to tell her that the abortion was no longer necessary, she must also have asked the doctor where she had been intending to meet Inspector O’Brien. But I have two problems with this whole “mistress” story.’
‘Please, Alex!’ Mary said.
‘And what problems are those?’ Meade asked.
‘The first is that the “mistress” said she’d miscarried. But it wasn’t the “mistress” who was pregnant at all.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Meade agreed. ‘It was Jenny!’
‘And the second problem is that O’Brien didn’t like women — his penchant was for young girls. So was there ever a woman in her twenties who went to see Dr Muller? Or was there, instead, a trained actress in her thirties, pretending to be a woman in her twenties?’
‘Just what are you suggesting?’ Mary demanded.
‘And then there was the killer,’ Blackstone continued. ‘The witness we talked to said he was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, judging by his size. But say he wasn’t a boy at all — say he was, in fact, a woman.’
‘Are you accusing me of killing my own husband?’ Mary asked.
‘It would have been wiser to wait until after the abortion had been carried out before killing him,’ Blackstone said. ‘But you couldn’t wait, could you? Your rage simply wouldn’t let you.’
Mary laughed. ‘This is ludicrous,’ she said. ‘Why should I have been in a rage with my husband?’
‘We’d like you to confess now,’ Meade said quietly. ‘It will make things much easier all round.’
‘I won’t confess to something I didn’t do,’ Mary said. ‘You can arrest me, if you like. You can even put me on trial — ’ her eyes blazed with anger and defiance — ‘but I’ll have the jury eating out of my hand before the trial’s half over, and they’ll never convict me.’
‘That’s probably true,’ Meade agreed. ‘That’s why I said we need you to confess.’
‘Why should I?’ Mary asked.
‘Because you’re a mother,’ Blackstone told her. ‘Because it’s your job to protect your brood. And you take that job seriously — or we wouldn’t even be here now.’
‘What in God’s name are you talking about?’
‘However much you might like to pretend that Jenny was your husband’s first young girl, we all know she wasn’t,’ Blackstone said. ‘There have been a succession of maids who have found their way into his bed, and, if necessary, we’ll track them all down. I suspect you knew what was going on almost from the start, and that you were prepared to tolerate it, because you loved and admired your husband — and you wanted to keep him. And, when all’s said and done, what did it matter if a few low-class girls — a few orphans — were made to suffer, as long as he stayed with you?’