Say I’m growing old, but add
Jenny kissed me.”
They all gazed at Wiggins, astonished, none more than Jury. He had never known his sergeant to quote poetry. “That’s beautiful.” Then to Jenny, he said, “No wonder you liked him.”
“He was Gemma’s and my favorite.”
And it occurred to Jury, and saddened him, that Jenny seemed to be putting herself in a category with Gemma Trimm. They were friends, Jenny had said, as if they were of an age together. Maybe that’s what characterized Jenny Gessup: she seemed like a little girl.
When the others had drunk their tea, largely in silence, Jury thanked them and rose. “You’ve been very helpful. I hope we can clear things up.”
“Where to, sir?” Wiggins had started the car.
“The village. I’d like a few words with the trustworthy grocer and the florists.” After a few moments of driving, Jury said, “Rather remarkable you knowing that poem. Written by-” Jury snapped his fingers “-one of those poets with three names.”
“Sir? Walter Savage Landor.”
“Ah. Anyway, it’s not the best known poem. How do you come to know it?”
“Jenny was my sister’s name.”
Again, he surprised Jury. “But I didn’t know you had two sisters. I’ve heard you speak of only one, the one in Manchester.”
“I don’t have the other anymore. She died.”
Never had an announcement of death been uttered with such restraint. “I’m sorry, Wiggins, really.” He felt the inadequacy of such a statement. “Awhile back, was this?”
“Twenty-two years. This Christmas.”
Jury felt doubly inadequate. “She died on Christmas Day?”
“Yes, sir. We were all in the parlor, around the tree, opening our presents, when Jenny said she felt sick and went upstairs to lie down. Mum went up with her and then Mum came down, saying she had a high temperature. You can imagine how eager a doctor would be to come out on Christmas Day. One did, though. It was meningitis and she died at midnight.”
“My God, Wiggins. How awful. Was she younger than you?”
Wiggins nodded. He said nothing else.
Forty
“That’s the shop, right up there.”
When they pulled up, Mr. Smith was weighing potatoes for a customer, a tall woman with shrapnel eyes which she kept trained on the scales. Jury wondered if any shopkeeper had ever got away with giving her bad weight. The grocer spun the brown sack around to close it and exchanged the potatoes for coin. The woman took herself off, casting suspicious glances at Jury and Wiggins.
“Mr. Smith?” Jury took out his identification.
“Oh, my! Scotland Yard. My, my.” He wasn’t displeased. “This must be about Mr. Croft. I had City police with me just yesterday. My. Well, just who owns this case, anyway, you might ask.”
“Technically, the City police. That’s where the victim lived-and died. But there was a lot of spillover-” Jury left the explanation hanging. “Could we have a word with you, Mr. Smith?”
“Of course, of course. I’ll just have my girl down to keep an eye on the place. Come along.”
The three of them went inside where the grocer opened a door at the bottom of some steps and yelled upward for “Pru” to come on down. “Make it snappy now, girl!”
Pru, a stout, sullen girl in carpet slippers, could no more make it snappy than fly to the moon. Slap slap the slippers sounded on the stair. When Pru finally emerged from the staircase and saw Jury, she lightened up a bit. One hand went to her hair and the other to the bottom of her rust-colored jumper, arranging both more satisfactorily.
“ ’Lo” was all she said, tongue wetting her lips, but it was clear she wanted to speak volumes of clever repartee. Her eyes slid off Wiggins like water over stone and wended their way back to Jury.
Her father told her, “You take care of customers here while I talk to these detectives.”
Pru’s skin pinked up beneath a plump face full of freckles. “Wha’s it about, then? You done somethin’ you oughtn’t, Dad?” Even her smile was pudgy.
“Never you mind.”
Like a manservant escorting his visitors to an audience with royalty, Mr. Smith extended his arm and briefly bowed. “This way, gentlemen, back to my office.”
The office consisted of a desk and four chairs, old black leatherette with aluminum arms and legs. There was a strong smell of cabbage and damp wood.
Mr. Smith pulled two chairs around. Not until he himself was seated behind his desk did he ask, “Now, gentlemen, what can I do for you?”
“I don’t want to waste your time (meaning mine, Jury thought), so I’ll tell you what I understand. You continued to deliver groceries to Simon Croft even after he took up residence across the river. That’s quite a lot of trouble to go to for a pound of potatoes.”
Even as Jury spoke, Mr. Smith was shutting his eyes against the thickheadedness of Scotland Yard. With a superior little smile playing about his lips, he said, “That’s how much you know, Superintendent, as to the ways of Mr. Croft-or any of the clans, the Crofts and the Tynedales.”
“Well, then, enlighten me.”
Mr. Smith was glad to do so. He sat forward. “Mr. Simon Croft was one of the people who hate changing anything at all. Even where he gets his groceries. Why, he even laughed about it. ‘You’d think I’d grow up, wouldn’t you, Mr. Smith?’ See, he even had the Tynedale Lodge cook come twice a week and do for him. Mrs. MacLeish, she is. She’d cook up several days’ dinners at once. He was that attached to the Lodge.”
“Then why did he move?” asked Wiggins, who had his notebook out and was frowning to beat the band. “Why did he leave Tynedale Lodge?”
“He wanted to be nearer the City. That’s what he told Mrs. MacLeish. It’s where he worked.”
Not satisfied with this reason, Wiggins wrote it down, nonetheless.
Jury asked, “How often did you make these deliveries, Mr. Smith?”
“Once a week, dependable as clockwork. And other times if he needed more for dinner guests or drink parties, though I’m sure there weren’t many of those. And he’d get Partridges to cater for him, too.”
“Mrs. MacLeish must have talked about him to you.”
“Mrs. Mac’s never been one to gossip about her employers, and I admire that.”
“So do I,” said Jury, smiling wryly, “but it’s not much help to us now. Both of you must have remarked on Mr. Croft’s life-as they say-‘style.’ ” He did not want to put ideas in the grocer’s mind, nor words in his mouth.
Mr. Smith’s chin was resting in his hand, his elbow on the desk. Narrowly, he regarded Jury, as if gauging his trustworthiness. “I recall being there in the kitchen with Mrs. Mac when she had to go to the front door and tell that Maisie Tynedale that Mr. Croft couldn’t see her as he wasn’t feeling well, but it wasn’t so, for he was in his library working away.”
Mr. Smith set about recalling. “It must’ve been back the end of October-no, hold on a minute, beginning of November, that’s it, for I recall talking about Guy Fawkes and fireworks and wondering if we’d see them along the river there. Around the time that somebody was shootin’ away up at the Lodge. Well, it was all over the manor, wasn’t it? Nasty, these kids are today, some of ’em. Everyone was talkin’ about it, the Daffs was all over it.”
“Daffs?”
“The toy boys, the daffodils, the two that own that flower shop across the street. You talked with them?”
“Briefly, yes.”
“Well, Mr. Croft got his flowers from them to the day he died-pardon that, it’s just the expression. Very particular he was about his flowers.”
“Mr. Peake and Mr. Rice?”
“Aye, that’s them. Now they might be able to tell you somethin’ I don’t know.” From his expression it was fairly clear Mr. Smith didn’t think this even remotely possible. Then he stretched back in his chair and ran his hands over his bald pate in quick succession. “As I recall now the Daffs made a delivery just before the man was murdered.” He smiled and waited for the next question.