“You’ve been most helpful, Mr. Smith.” Jury rose and Wiggins stowed his notebook in his inside coat pocket and rose also.
Mr. Smith, however, remained seated, apparently prepared to stop there and answer questions through eternity.
“Mr. Smith?” Jury gently brought him back to his greengrocer business.
“Huh? Oh, sorry. Yes, I’ll just see you out.”
Pru seemed as reluctant to see them go as did her father.
Outside, Wiggins said, “A person might be suspicious of someone being that willing to answer questions.”
“Why so cynical?” asked Jury, intent on jaywalking and looking for an opening between a removal van barreling down the road and two Volvos coming from different directions. “There are still a few people who find this an opportunity for a good gossip and couldn’t care less if you’re police or the Queen Mother. Come on-” They made a dive toward the opposite pavement.
The shop DELPHINIUM was as colorful outside as in. The sign that stretched along one side of the building was decorated with flowers, mushrooms and little green people Jury took for wood sprites or aliens.
Inside, the smell was simply heavenly, the mingled scents of lavender, jasmine and roses. Odysseus could not have fared better among the lotus eaters. Jugs and tall aluminum flower holders sat on the floor and they had to negotiate down an aisle lined with camellia plants to reach the back of the shop. Tommy Peake and Basil Rice were well-dressed men who could have been nearly any age at all. They were arranging roses and oriental lilies in what looked like a cut-glass crystal vase and another of plain crystal, clear but for a ribbon of amethyst that wound vinelike around it.
“Mr. Peake, Mr. Rice, you may remember I stopped in a couple of days ago?” Jury introduced Sergeant Wiggins. One florist tucked a pale strand of hair behind his ear and the other tried to find seating for the two detectives. Both were rather thrilled. Jury told them not to bother, that they wouldn’t mind standing at all, that they would probably swoon anyway from the delicious scents in here.
“I wanted to talk to you about Simon Croft.”
Basil slapped his hand to his forehead.
Jury pegged him as the more histrionic of the two. “You made fairly regular deliveries to Mr. Croft in the City.”
“We can guess,” said Peake, “who told you that. That old gossip, Smith-” He nodded toward the greengrocer’s shop.
Basil showed more sympathy for the victim. “That poor, poor man. What a dreadful thing to have happen.”
Tommy Peake said, astutely, “But you’re from New Scotland Yard. Why would you be investigating this?”
“The City police have jurisdiction, of course. My part in this is a bit complicated.”
Basil asked if he might be allowed to continue arranging flowers as “Miss Bosley wants this tout de suite, and you know what she’s like!”
Jury smiled and said he didn’t, really. It occurred to him that Basil lived in a world where everybody knew everybody else. Basil flipped his hand and waved away police ignorance as if the Bosleys had often roamed the corridors of Scotland Yard and meeting up with Miss Bosley was merely a matter of time.
“What’s interesting is Mr. Croft continued to use your services even though there are plenty of florists on the other side of the river. He lived not far from Covent Garden.”
“We are quite good at this business,” said Basil.
Tommy shook his head. “Oh, we’re good, but that isn’t the reason. Simon was one of those people who hate change.”
Sententiously, Wiggins said, “But we all have to resign ourselves to it, don’t we?”
Tommy looked at Wiggins. “You’re talking about age and infirmity. Death. Yes, but there are things you can control. Such as where you get your bloody bouquets.” His smile, Jury thought, shimmered.
“Did Simon Croft have a standing order with you?”
Tommy nodded. “There were also times he wanted something particular. Otherwise, his instruction was to make up whatever we thought looked good and just take it along. But there were times he just hankered for a particular flower, you know?”
Jury could not remember the last time he’d even seen a bouquet, much less hankered for one. “When was the last time you made a delivery?”
Tommy pursed his lips and remembered. “That was just the week before he was shot.” He shivered slightly. “Got as far as the front door with ’em. That cook-the one who works at the Lodge and, I guess, went to Simon’s house, too-she’s the one took the flowers in.”
He seemed disgruntled; they both did. “Ordinarily he had you in?”
“Well, of course!” said Basil. “Usually made a real fuss over them. Right, Tommy?”
Wiggins said, “So you knew Simon Croft quite well?”
Basil backpedaled “Not all that well, no.”
“You were on a first-name basis with him?”
“Oh, we’re on a first-name basis with everybody.”
“Not with us, you aren’t,” said Wiggins. “Sir?”
Jury hid a smile. “I think that’ll be all, for now.”
As they started toward the door, Jury said, “You’re on a roll, Wiggins.” He stopped and turned. “Do you deliver to Islington, Mr. Peake?”
“We can do.”
Retracing his steps, Jury walked back to the counter. He looked at the cut glass, at the crystal with its ribbon of amethyst. “I’m afraid my policeman’s moiety doesn’t run to this.” He tapped the crystal vase.
“These-? Oh, good lord, Superintendent, don’t think we furnish vases like these. No, they belong to customers who bring them in each time for an arrangement. Particular, they are. What we usually do is furnish a glass vase and we can also do a very nice arrangement tied with twine. Or a box, of course. What sort of flowers have you in mind?”
Jury scratched his neck and looked at the cold behind the glass doors. “One is an elderly woman-”
“Lavender,” said Tommy and looked at Basil.
“And heather. And perhaps two of those roses-” He pointed to roses of an exquisite shade of lavender. “That’ll do for her, trust me. Perfect.”
“Okay. The other’s a young lady-”
Both assumed their thinking positions, leaning over the counter. “Hmm.” Basil said, “What’s her coloring?”
“Hers? Oh. Hair kind of fiery, eyes this color-” He touched the ribbon of glass winding around the vase.
“Ah!” Basil stood up and plucked a colored pencil from a cup of them and drew it across the pad. Then he did the same with another. “What colors does she like?”
“Emerald green, hot pink, lapis lazuli-”
“God,” said Tommy, with a wink, “she’s lucky to have someone who notices and remembers. Can’t ask a husband those questions; he wouldn’t have a clue.”
Jury watched Basil with yet another colored pencil. He turned the notebook around so Jury could see it, and said, “This might look an odd combination, but believe me, she’ll go for it.”
Jury was astonished that with so few strokes in so little time, Basil had drawn a complete arrangement of flowers.
“We’ve got the bells of Shannon, and we can get iris-can we, Tommy?”
“Absolutely.”
“And these coppery roses, they’d be perfect.”
Jury slowly shook his head. “No wonder Simon Croft didn’t want to give you up.”
“I don’t get it, Wiggins. Why the grocer but not the florists? Why would Croft admit Smith and not those two?”
They were waiting for two lorries and a Morris to pass in front of them. “You’re assuming who he saw and who he didn’t is significant. Maybe he just didn’t feel like diving into the pool with those two on that day.”