Jury smiled. “You were certainly a much-decorated bunch.” He rose and when Colonel Neame started up, Jury waved him back down. “Please don’t get up. You’ve been an enormous help, Colonel.”
“Seem to have left you with questions instead of answers.”
Jury smiled. “That might be what’s helpful.”
“What happened to Polly?” asked Jury, returning to Melrose’s chair. “Isn’t she having dinner?”
“Gone. We’re having breakfast tomorrow. She’s staying in Bloomsbury. I think she hopes the literary swank will rub off on her.” Melrose polished off his whiskey. “How about you? Ready for some more oxblood soup?”
“Any time.”
Having brought the wine, Young Higgins floated off like milkweed. The wine was a Bâtard-Montrachet, “the finest white wine,” Melrose had said, “in the world.” They raised their glasses and drank.
“What on earth were you into with Colonel Neame?”
“Bletchley Park. The Enigma code. Codes.” Jury smiled. “Neame isn’t just taking up space in Boring’s.”
“Did I say he was? He’s a nice old codger.”
“I expect that’s it; we tend to condescend to old guys like that.”
“What about Bletchley Park?”
Jury pulled Croft’s book from his pocket. “The book Croft was writing about the war. Since there was no manuscript, no laptop, no notes I could find, I had a look at a few of his books, presumably ones he used to research his subject. He wrote stuff in the margins-” Jury turned to the list on the last page, held it up for Melrose to see.
Melrose frowned.
“This is what I was talking to Colonel Neame about.” He told Melrose what Neame had said.
Melrose stared. “What are you making of this?”
“I’m not sure.” Jury picked up his wineglass, swirled the contents. “This might just be the best in the world.”
“It is.”
“How about Kitty Riordin, then?”
Melrose told him what he’d found in Keeper’s Cottage. “I think he’s right, your friend Haggerty.”
“I take your point about the bracelet. It’s unlikely she’d find it in the rubble.”
“She could have had another one engraved afterward. The only difference is the initial in the little heart. Links has them. I checked.”
“Links wasn’t around in 1940.”
“No. I simply mean such silver jewelry for babies is not hard to come by. She could easily have had the M engraved on the bracelet you saw, making it appear that’s what little Maisie had worn. I mean, she could’ve simply purchased a new bracelet. She didn’t have to dig it out of the rubble.”
“She didn’t really have to have it at all.”
“Well, its absence wouldn’t prove anything; its presence, though, suggests the baby really was Maisie.”
Jury nodded. “I see Mickey Haggerty’s point. All Kitty had to do was smash Erin’s hand. She thinks very quickly on her feet. I’d say she immediately sussed out the situation and in the noise and fright and confusion took little Erin somewhere and wham!-” Jury’s fist smashed down on the table, making the dishes and the remaining diners jump. His mind went back to that smile on Kitty Riordin’s face. “She’s cold-blooded enough.”
“There’s no way of proving any of this, though, short of finding the jeweler who engraved the bracelet and hope he’s still alive and has an elephantine memory. Pretty impossible.”
In silence, they finished off their dinners, bet on the dessert. Melrose said trifle, Jury said pudding. Young Higgins eventually produced Queen of Puddings, and Jury collected his fiver from Melrose.
“You always win.”
“I deserve it.”
They were silent, eating, until Jury looked up and said, “Why was she there?”
Melrose frowned. “Who? The Riordin woman?”
“No, Alexandra. Why was she at the Blue Last?”
Melrose shrugged. “Didn’t you tell me she and the baby visited there often?”
Jury folded his hands and rested his chin on his thumbs. Only his eyes were visible above the fingers. “Look, though: Why would she leave Tynedale Lodge to go sleep over in a pub, and haul the baby with her to boot? The blitz wasn’t a stroll through Green Park.”
“Those two families are addicted to each other. At least they were then.”
“I know. Which means Alexandra Tynedale Herrick and Francis Croft, they were too.”
Melrose set down his wineglass, dropped his spoon on his plate. “Are you suggesting-”
Jury nodded.
“Wait. You’re not saying little Maisie was Croft’s?”
“No, I’m not. Alexandra had an illegitimate child when she was- nineteen, I think. She took herself off somewhere. It was hushed up, not surprisingly; that sort of thing wasn’t all the fashion in the forties.”
“Money is, though. Money is always in fashion and Oliver Tynedale has enough to make anything go away. He could have taken care of a scandal in a dozen different ways. ”
“Oliver didn’t know,” said Jury.
“How in hell do you know that?”
“Because the baby was given up for adoption. His grandchild? Not in a million years. Tynedale wouldn’t give a damn for convention anyway. He’s the publish-and-be-damned type. Easier to be that way if you have money and, as you say, it’s always in fashion. My guess is Alexandra didn’t tell him because she was afraid Oliver would discover who the father was.”
“Thrash him within an inch of his life, you mean?”
“Wake up.” Jury snapped his fingers. “That Château-whatever is putting you under.”
Melrose looked at him. “Are you saying-”
“That Alexandra couldn’t have her father finding out Francis Croft was the father.”
Melrose sat back. “That’s pure speculation.”
“At least it’s pure.” Jury smiled. “Tynedale is a man who I think is very foregiving. But not in this case. In this case he’d have to be a fucking saint to forgive Croft. His best friend. His lifelong friend. A betrayal that would have ruined everything. Goddamn! It’s infuriating all of this had to happen a half century ago. But I’ll still have Wiggins go to Somerset House and do a record search.”
“And I still say it’s much too tenuous.”
“Tenuous is all I’ve got.”
They were back in the Members’ Room, Young Higgins having poured and deposited the French press pot on the table and Jury’s coat on the arm of the chair. Jury had asked him to bring it.
“My knowledge of the Second World War is shamefully small.”
“So’s mine. Except I do remember Dunkirk, the BEF being evacuated. I remember it mostly because it’s where my father’s plane went down.”
Melrose did not know whether to delve into this or not. “What was he flying?”
“A Hurricane. They were good planes. Except their engines weren’t fuel injected; they were carburetor driven. If they were forced into a dive, the engine quit. That’s what happened.” Jury looked away toward the part of Boring’s Christmas tree he could see, the tips of branches on one side. From one of them, a silvery angel hung precariously. “The RAF whacked the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk.”
They were silent for a while. Colonel Neame and Major Champs had gone upstairs. There was no one left in the Members’ Room save for them.
Melrose said, “Listen, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Come to Ardry End for Christmas.”
“That would be nice. But I really have to spend Christmas in Islington. You know.”
“Yes. Well, then come for dinner tomorrow night. Christmas Eve. You can spend the night and drive back to London the next morning. It’s not a long drive. Well, you know; you’ve done it often enough.”