When she’d reseated herself, Jury said, “Please go on about Kate.”

“She was very smart, intelligent, and just a very good person, liked, as I said, by everyone. She was the sort who could settle disputes-you know, who could act as go-between. The girls trusted her, and deservedly so.” Miss Husselby sipped her coffee, then sat back. “It was too bad her mother was so flighty. Undependable. The very opposite of her daughter. Kate was simply a rock. One could lean on Kate, young as she was.”

Jury said, “There was another girl, I believe a friend of hers. Crystal North.”

“Oh, Crystal.” The tone changed, suggesting that Crystal North was an entirely different kettle of fish. “I don’t know that I’d call her a ‘friend’ of Kate’s, though she certainly wanted to be. She wanted to be best friends-in fact, I think she wanted to be Kate, if you know what I mean. Kate didn’t like her very much. But Crystal generally got what she wanted; unfortunately she had no tolerance for frustration. And she would play with other people’s lives.”

“How?”

“I remember once she cheated on a test; she copied answers from the paper of a girl beside her. The girl came to me about it. It came down to one of them, one of them had to have copied, but which one? The tutor favored Crystal; Crystal was a great manipulator, see. The tutor gave them an ultimatum: if one of them didn’t admit to cheating, he’d have to fail both of them. And Crystal let that happen. She was going to fail in any event, so telling the truth gained her nothing. It’s one thing to act stupidly when the only victim is you yourself; it’s quite another thing to make someone else, some innocent person, pay.”

Jury thought of the zebra crossing. The hand stretched out to stop traffic. The car unable to stop. The miscarriage.

Miss Husselby continued: “There was a boy here in Brighton. Crystal had been going out with him. He was only the son of a greengrocer and had no money at all, whereas the Norths, Crystal’s family-well, they had plenty. I was surprised Crystal took to him, but she did. He was charming. I used to buy my vegetables at their shop. Charming and handsome.” She looked at Jury as if to include him in the little circle of charm and looks. “A number of the girls were mad about him. Which probably was the reason Crystal wanted him. No one else could gain a toehold-

“Until he saw Kate. And that was the end of Crystal. Kate didn’t do anything; she wouldn’t have. But even though she wouldn’t go out with him, he was still a goner. She was like a field of lavender. One whiff and you were out cold.” Miss Husselby laughed, rather liking her analogy.

“When he broke it off with Crystal, she was beside herself. But there was nothing she could do.” Miss Husselby sighed and sat looking at the mantelpiece. Or, rather, the painting over the mantel. “There it goes again.” She rose and walked to the painting and adjusted its slight imbalance with the tip of her finger. She walked back. The minute her back was turned, it resumed its uneven keel. “Forgive me,” she said. “What was I saying?”

“About Kate and this young fellow.” He didn’t reintroduce the lavender field.

She sighed and poured them both some more coffee. He knew it would be tepid but didn’t mind. “Thank you.”

“I did keep up with Kate until a few years ago. But I lost all trace of Crystal.”

Jury took out the photo, the snapshot of the girls on the pier. “Is Crystal among these girls?”

She took the picture, looked, nodded. “Right there. Frowning. These are Kate’s friends. But I don’t see… Oh, of course, Kate would have been the photographer, wouldn’t she? That explains the frown on Crystal’s face.” She handed the snapshot back to Jury.

“Then you don’t know about the accident.”

“What accident?”

“Crystal’s.” Jury told her.

Her eyes widened. “That’s terrible. But what foolishness, to cross when traffic’s coming. Just because the pedestrian has the right of way doesn’t mean a car’s going to stop. Those crossings can be treacherous. There, you see.” She spread her hands wide. “There you have it. Playing with her unborn child’s life. Just to make a point. What happened to Crystal? I assume she must have been hurt.”

“Yes, rather badly. Almost completely paralyzed from the waist down. She pretty much lives in a wheelchair.”

“I should feel sorry, you know. I wish I did.” She leaned toward Jury, imparting a confidence. “She’d have done anything, beg, borrow, or steal, to hold on to Davey-”

“Davev?”

“The greengrocer’s son.”

For a long moment, Jury just stared at her. Then he asked, “His name wasn’t Cummins, by any chance?”

“Why, yes. Do you know him?”

“I do.” Jury sat silent, thinking. Then he rose. “You have no idea how much this has helped, Miss Husselby. I can’t thank you enough.”

She reclaimed his coat from the small closet, saying, “I’m glad I could be of help. I’ve so little to do these days. I do hope you can untangle things.” She made to open the door, but it was stuck. “Oh, blast this door. It’ll get me in the end.”

Jury opened it, smiling. He doubted much would get Shirley Husselby down.

58

It was the anonymity of train rides that Jury liked. The presence of other people who didn’t know you and didn’t want to. No one felt obligated to speak. A train ride was a small-talk vacuum.

There were only ten or a dozen other passengers traveling to London, all engaged in reading or gazing out of windows at the Sussex countryside, or else plugged into earphones or mobiles.

Across the aisle sat a pretty woman in her late thirties or early forties. It was hard to guess ages anymore, especially of children, who these days seemed to peak at thirteen or fourteen and go downhill from there. Children looked older than they were, adults younger.

It wasn’t the woman’s face that had caught his attention, but her shoes. Strappy. What a great word. He wished there were some quality in a person that word would fit.

Strappy sandals. Jimmy Choo? Tod’s? Prada? No, he didn’t think so. She was nicely but not richly dressed, not enough to be wearing Jimmy Choo. The shoes were sea green, very graceful. He had never noticed women’s shoes before, unless he’d a reason to look; the ones he’d seen of late, the shoes, he had to admit were quite beautiful. More works of art than shoes-which was, of course, what the designer meant them to be. He shut his eyes and pictured Carole-anne’s shoes.

What he was doing here was deliberately distracting his attention from the case. He was trying not to go over the conversation with Shirley Husselby because he thought he should leave it for a while; if he could let it settle, maybe something would surface. It had certainly been worth the trip to Brighton: that Chris, or Crystal, Cummins had gone to school with Kate Banks yet hadn’t admitted how well she had known her.

There was a point in a case when Jury felt it was all there and finding it was rather like shooting a pinball machine; like a series of steel balls in the channel of a pinball machine, all waiting for someone’s hand to shoot them onto a field of possibilities, targets, numbered holes, rubber bumpers, and the players needing to exert just the right amount of pressure to send the balls into the holes.

Chris, or Crystal, had, in the end, married Davey.

Jury’s question was, why hadn’t David Cummins been more forthcoming about their having known Kate Banks, and known her well? David was a policeman; he knew that kind of information could be vital.

He must not have wanted it to be.

At Jury’s signal, the porter stopped and Jury asked for tea and a jam roll that he eyed but did not eat.

He rested his head on the headrest and sipped his tea while the train throbbed into Redhill station. A few people rose to get off, looking bleary-eyed, as if they’d just been hauled by the Trans-Siberian express instead of the Southern Railway from Brighton. A few got off, a few got on. He tried not to notice, trying to hold on to the pleasure of anonymity.