61

Chris Cummins wheeled herself to the door in what Jury thought was record time. Her husband had called her in that moment he’d gone for the photos. Jury knew he would; he wanted to see what his wife would betray if she thought her husband was in big trouble.

His guess was, nothing.

“Three more somber faces I’ve never seen. Be sure you leave your shoes at the door.” Chris Cummins’s laugh was just this side of combative.

Wiggins smiled. Neither of the other men did.

“Come on, I’m making tea. The kettle’s about to go.”

They followed her, even David, as if this were no longer his house, his wife. As if he were merely stopping by like the others.

In the kitchen, the tray was ready with cups and saucers, milk and sugar. So she’d been expecting company. Jury didn’t comment.

The kettle screamed and she reached for it, but Wiggins got there first. Wiggins would always get there first, thought Jury. And he was always undervaluing Wiggins. He felt ashamed about that, about a lot of things. Perhaps he was sharing in the general shame.

“Thank you, Sergeant Wiggins,” said Chris.

“My pleasure, ma’am.”

They moved into the room she called the old parlor, the “shoe room.” Glinting like jewelry, the shoes in their miraculous flashes of turquoise, rose, amber, red, made him see why women were seduced by them. One couldn’t have found a more alluring arrangement of jewels in all of Hatton Garden.

And Chris Cummins couldn’t walk in any of them.

They sat around the table in the comfortable floral armchairs. Chris poured the tea, Wiggins helped. David waded right in: “Police found the receipt for your book, the one I bought in Waterstone’s. It was found at the scene where Kate Banks was murdered.”

About to pick up her teacup, she frowned, looking from her husband to Jury to Wiggins. “What are you talking about? The receipt-”

Jury knew she would use the same argument her husband had, and she did.

“-must be someone else’s.”

And Jury made the same objection to this theory.

She stared at him. “This is ridiculous. It was in the book and I put it in the box where I keep receipts. That inlaid box, David. Go look.”

David got up and went to the heavy piece of furniture, pulled out a wooden box, inlaid, fancy for a receipt receptacle. He was riffling through the bits of paper. “It’s not here.”

“Here, give me it.” Impatiently, she had her hand out for the box.

Jury said, “He’s right. It’s not there.”

“How do you know that?” At Jury, she leveled a disdainful expression. It wasn’t very convincing. “Look. Look. If you’re… Look. David scarcely knew her, and nor did I. I’d-we’d forgotten all about her. The name really didn’t register.”

Wiggins spoke: “It registered a bit more than that, didn’t it?” Chris looked again at Wiggins, Jury, and came to rest on her husband. “David? What’s going on?”

The alarm, thought Jury, was pretty convincing.

“Kate and I met again. We met a number of times.” David had turned to gaze out the window.

From Chris came the standard proofs of surprise, thought Jury. He said, “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“What are you talking about? Of course I didn’t.” Her voice caught on the tightness in her throat, the unshed tears.

“That’s why you wanted her dead. It had already happened once before, when the three of you were young. In Brighton. To have it happen again would be unbearable.”

“Are you trying to say I killed her? I got myself to London, to that street she died on, and then back? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a wheelchair.” She slapped the arm of it, almost as if to show it was solid and she was in it.

“I’m not saying you murdered her. You had her murdered.”

Chris’s face was set in a convincing semblance of shock. “What? I paid someone-?”

“No. You’re too smart not to realize that if you hire a shooter, blackmail might soon follow; you’d be forever in the grip of a hired killer.”

“Well, then, I obviously didn’t do it myself, and I didn’t pay anyone to do it. How did I manage it? A curse?” She laughed.

It was the most unpleasant laugh Jury had ever heard. “You did the only thing that would secure the killer’s silence: you traded murders.”

David, if it was possible, went even paler, more drawn. His skin looked stretched. “What?”

Jury did not look at him; he kept his eyes on Chris, who lost, with this last statement, her careless laughter. “Your victim pretty much came to you; I mean, you didn’t have to go all the way to London. She was your half of the bargain: Mariah Cox. Stacy Storm.”

Her mouth worked, but she said nothing for a moment. Then, “What earthly reason…? I had no reason to murder Mariah Cox. The librarian?”

“I know you didn’t have a reason. That’s the point. There would be no motive. But the irony is, you thought you’d be killing a complete stranger. You didn’t know Stacy Storm would wind up being someone from Chesham whom you knew. You didn’t recognize her at first. But she recognized you. But at that point, facing her there in the Black Cat’s patio, you couldn’t think quick enough to rationalize the meeting. You didn’t have much choice, so you shot her anyway.

“Neither did Rose Moss have a motive for killing Kate Banks. But you did. Just as Rose Moss did have a motive for murdering Mariah Cox. For what I imagine was a very brief time, they were lovers, until Mariah called it off. Yes, it was all about to change, and not in Rose’s favor. And that, she couldn’t stand.”

The silence in the room was so dense, it was like a heavy material, weighted as the velvet curtains in Simon Santos’s living room. He stopped. No one spoke. Chris’s look of deep concentration told him her mind was working furiously to counter what he’d said.

So he said more. “That Waterstone’s receipt. You managed to get it to Rose Moss. What you were thinking was that David was the only person who could possibly have dropped it. You worked out the same thing I did: that probably no more copies of that book would be sold at that time on that day. But what you seemed to forget was that you were the only other person who possessed that receipt. You overcorrected, Chris. You tried to frame David, forgetting that you could also be pointing to yourself-”

“Chris.” David still stood, his head against the cold glass of the windowpane. He was not really speaking to her; the name came out as a breath, a sigh.

Jury went on. “But that was an easy mistake to make, since who would suspect you of murdering Kate Banks?”

Chris said, “This is all highly imaginative, but I don’t see any evidence at all.” As if to mock him, she made an elaborate survey of the room. She smiled.

Jury ignored the comment. “The Manolo Blahnik heel print was especially inventive.”

Her smile widened. She seemed to be enjoying herself now. “Then whose, if not his?”

“Well, it wasn’t a heel print, was it.” Jury walked over to the corner of the wall of shoes. “It was this.” He pulled out one of the crutches. “You could hardly ride your wheelchair to the spot where you killed Mariah Cox. So you had to use crutches-”

“What do you mean? I can’t manage on crutches!”

“Of course you can. Given your well-muscled arms, I’d say you’d gotten in a lot of practice. At first I assumed that came from getting the wheelchair about; stupid of me, as it’s electric, isn’t it? It was the one detail you didn’t think through. Strange the way the mind works: in solving one problem, we create another. You solved the problem of going to Lycrome Road in a wheelchair. If you used crutches, under that long black coat”-here Jury turned to the coatrack-“probably no one driving in a car would notice. And of course you had the advantage of the roadworks, didn’t you? Hardly anyone in the pub and no cars in the car park. But the crutches created a problem. You did a pretty good job of staying on the hard surface-the car park, the patio-but there was that one deep little print left in the earth.” Jury paused. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Chris. If anyone did think that print wasn’t the heel of a shoe, you’d be sunk, wouldn’t you? You think fast. Manolo Blahnik!