“Blanche calls us-that’s Blanche Vann, did I say?-and tells us who and where to meet the bloke. He’d already have paid. So any money changes hands between me and him, that’s a tip.”

“And what about you? Ever met anybody who’s like that? The man Stacy met?”

“Ha! Not bloody likely.” Again, she looped a strand of hair round her finger, curled it and uncurled it.

“Still, it’s possible.”

But as he was the police and fairly out of bounds as a client, she said only, “Yeah.”

Jury said, “Her aunt didn’t know about Stacy Storm, either. Mariah kept the two identities separate.”

“You know, I always did think-”

Jury sensed hindsight coming down the road.

“-she was worried about something, something was bothering her, and I asked, but she never would say. I don’t think it was him, though, causing whatever the trouble was. Not him-he was ever so generous.” She sighed. “Stacy, she was always a bit of a mystery, wasn’t she?”

He wasn’t expected to answer that. He said, “Did he buy her the Saint Laurent she was wearing when she died?”

“He must’ve bought it all.”

Yves Saint Laurent was on Upper Sloane Street; so was Jimmy Choo. He rose. “Thank you so much, Rosie. You’ve really been a big help. I may want to talk to you again.”

“All right,” she said. Saddened by the death of her friend or by his leaving or both, as if he’d brought Stacy with him and was now taking her away, Rosie got up and walked with him to the door.

In the hallway, he gave her his card and told her to get in touch if she remembered anything else. He looked down at her.

Rosie Moss, in her candy-cane-striped dress, her furry slippers, and her hair in bunches, and felt as if he’d weep, and turned away.

17

The door buzzed as Jury entered; a salesperson in a knockout draped black dress came toward him. The dress would look stunning on Phyllis, but then again, what wouldn’t?

“Sir?” Her smile was wide, but it faded when he showed her his ID. She looked stricken, as if he’d slapped her.

Then Jury smiled and all was well again, the waters calm. “I just need to ask you a few questions, Miss…?”

“Ondine-”

Did she work for Valentine’s, too, with a name like that?

“-Overalls.”

No. “Miss Overalls-” He bit his lip to keep from smiling.

“Just Ondine.”

“Ondine. Thank you. Is this the main Yves Saint Laurent in London?”

“Of course. We’re not a chain.” She whipped out a “just kidding” smile.

“Ah. I’m interested in a dress purchased by this woman-” Jury hated showing morgue shots, but the only others would have been of a very different-looking Mariah Cox. The photographer had managed to polish this one so that she didn’t look, well, too dead.

Ondine picked up narrow glasses with metal frames and put them on. Her head bent over the photo, she nodded. “I remember. I thought she was a model; I mean, the way she moved. She looked wonderful in our gowns.”

She gestured toward the mannequins stationed side by side in one area, as at the rail of a luxury ocean liner, watching, blind-eyed as they were, the coast of some country fall away.

Ondine looked like a model herself, makeup perfectly applied in little dots of cream-something, gray dust whisked across her eyelids with a supple brush, lipstick drawn on.

“You mean she’s-dead?”

“I’m afraid so. She was shot to death.”

Ondine looked a little wildly around the shop and at the mannequins, as if some guilt might attach to them. Then, sensibly, she placed her hand on her breast and took a deep breath, then another. She said, “Yes, that’s one of ours. Poor thing, she’ll never wear it again.”

Jury smiled a little at this summing-up of the good life.

“When was she here?”

“It was… Tuesday week. I remember it very well. She tried on several dresses and looked, I must say, delicious in each. That”-she looked again at the picture as she spoke-“was the best of them. Well, given the price”-she looked round the room, blameless and empty except for the mannequins-“it should have been: three thousand seven hundred pounds.”

Jury gave a low, appreciative whistle. “Was she alone?”

“Oh, yes, quite alone. But she did make a call. I didn’t hear what she said.”

“Did she use a mobile phone?”

“Yes. The battery was down in hers, so I let her use mine.”

“You did? Do you have it here?”

Ondine moved over to a counter, reached behind it, and came back and handed the mobile phone to Jury. He brought up a list of phone calls; there were probably a good fifty of them. “Have you erased any outgoing calls here?”

“Not lately. I forget to do it, anyway.”

Jury handed back the mobile, saying, “Take a look at these and see if there are any numbers you don’t recognize.”

Ondine ran her eyes down the list and was about to say something when the door chimed and a couple walked in, probably in their seventies, clearly rich and rather fragile. They moved with their torsos slightly inclined, not bent, just forward, as if trying to get somewhere ahead of themselves. They both wore light gray capes, his part of his coat, hers a coat in itself. They made Jury think of shorebirds.

“Excuse me just a moment,” Ondine whispered before she went to the couple to offer assistance. Jury couldn’t hear what she said; he thought it rather pleasant that nothing got above a murmur in this elegant, graceful room. As moneyed as these people seemed to be and as expensive as the clothes that were sold, the atmosphere still wasn’t steeped in materialism.

Ondine was back. “Let me look at this-” She took the mobile and pointed out a number. “I think it was this one: I don’t know it, and it was placed just about when she was here.”

Jury pulled out his notebook, wrote it down, a London number.

At this juncture, the gray-haired couple, who appeared to act always in concert, raised their hands to beckon Ondine over.

“Sorry,” she whispered again. “There’s just me here today. Charlotte ’s sick again.” She sighed. As if Jury knew Charlotte and her sham illnesses.

Jury watched her glide over to them. Murmurs again.

Honestly, the place would do for a meditation center; he smiled at the idea of several monks sitting around the room on the silk and satin cushions. He watched Ondine go to the counter, where she seemed to be checking something, possibly the price of the gray gown the two of them-the man and the woman-were holding between them. Folds of gray chiffon and silk. The man seemed perfectly at ease in this room sacred to women.

Wiggins walked through the glass door at that moment. “Guv. Blanche-”

Wiggins got on a first-name basis very quickly with witnesses.

“-was pretty cooperative, and it may be you were right about the names: there were no matches with the Rexroths, but Blanche did turn up two Simons-a Simon St. Cyr and a Simon Smith.” He was looking at his notebook and thumbed up a page. “According to the Valentine’s records, Simon Smith was down with Stacy Storm five times. I’ve got the dates. Five isn’t much for a hot romance, but he was down in the book those five times, and something tells me that’s not every time that he saw her.”

Jury nodded. “According to Rose Moss, she was seeing some fellow off the books. I don’t suppose Blanche Vann could describe him.”

Wiggins shook his head. “Their clients don’t call round; they ring and set up times according to Valentine’s schedule. The office isn’t much, just a room. But it’s nicely fitted out: big, airy, fresh flowers and fruit. The girls come round every so often. ‘My girls,’ she calls them. Bit of a mother hen, you ask me. I got the impression she was genuinely fond of Stacy. Pretty broken up about her death. And very surprised about this double life Stacy and Mariah led.”

“How’d she find out? Papers?”

“No, from your Adele Astaire. Blanche said she rang up and told her. Blanche doesn’t read the papers a lot.”