“You doing anything?” Jury asked.
“Playing with my dog.”
Jury crimped his mouth shut.
Melrose went on. “We were about to jettison the naming contest when Dick Scroggs, of all people, chimed in to complain about Lambert Strether: ‘Ain’t we got enough aggro round ’ere wiffout that Strether nosin’ about?’ Well, that was it, right there was the name!”
“Strether?”
Melrose blew his impatient curses into the air like smoke. “Of course not! ‘Aggro.’ It’s perfect. Listen: ‘Aggrieved.’ ‘Aghast.’ ‘Aggro.’”
Aggro. “That’s the stupidest name I ever heard for a dog. Besides, his name’s Joey.”
“That’s what the tramp called him, I guess.”
“It’s on the dog’s collar.” Jury bent another paper clip.
“So what? The tramp went off and left him and hasn’t been back.”
“We don’t call them tramps anymore.”
“Beggar? Ticket-of-leave man? Supplicant?”
“Homeless, as you well know.” Jury heard barking in the background. “Why isn’t Joey outside running around and herding your goat? All that open space to run around in, that’s the only reason I-”
“You what?”
“That I can see for having another dog. Where’s Mindy, anyway? I haven’t seen your dog in ages.”
“Hanging out at the Man with a Load of Mischief.”
“Well, you should take better care of her. She’s old. We’re all old. Look, I’m going to Chesham within the hour. Can you leave off playing and drive down to meet me? There’s something I’d like you to do.”
Melrose was suspicious. “What?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
Silence. “Well…”
Jury was fast losing patience. “Don’t give me ‘well.’ It’s hardly more than an hour’s drive. You can meet me at the Black Cat.”
“All right, then. ’Bye.”
Aggro. Jury smashed down the receiver.
Wiggins jumped.
“Sorry. The man ticks me off sometimes.” Jury wasn’t sure why, exactly. He folded his arms across his chest, hands warming in arm-pits. “What’ve you got?”
“About the case, guv?”
“Of course about the bloody case. Why else would I be here?”
Wiggins pursed his lips.
Jury regarded him narrowly. “The Smart Set escort service. You went there presumably with one of City police.”
“Right.” Wiggins pulled out his notebook and the plug of the electric kettle, which was roaring like a bullet train barreling into Kyoto. “A Mrs. Rooney. That’s the manager’s name. Alva Rooney. She was rightly appalled by Deirdre’s murder. As to Deirdre’s date the night before: she didn’t want to give me a name, client confidentiality, blah blah blah, sick of hearing that, I am. So I saved myself the trouble of nicking her and asked if she knew Nicholas Maze. Yes. That was the man Deirdre was to see. She recognized the name right away. And seemed genuinely shocked that he’d have shot Deirdre.”
“I don’t think he did. But she knew Maze well enough for that?”
“I expect so.” Wiggins shrugged.
“How about other men Deirdre Small had been seeing?”
“There were several.” Wiggins consulted his notebook and read off: “William Smythe, Clement Leigh, Jonathon Midges.”
Jury smiled slightly. “You mean you didn’t have to threaten her with a warrant?”
“Oh, no. She just reeled them off. Didn’t even consult her records. The woman has a prodigious memory, guv. And she pointed out that her clients often gave a name other than their own. So she couldn’t say if the names would do us any good.”
“Descriptions might, though. Had she any photos?”
“Of her clients? Well, no. The alias wouldn’t do you much good if there were a photo, would it?”
“I worked that out in my own mind, Wiggins. But that doesn’t mean there might not be any. I’m interested that this Mrs. Rooney is so attuned to her agency she can remember things that fully. If that’s the case, she might be privy to the girls’-women’s, I mean-confidences. Did she talk about Deirdre Small?”
“Not much. Not beyond the fact of her murder. She answered my questions, but we moved on from the girl to the client, Maze. ‘Nice, soft-spoken, polite gentleman, at least on the telephone,’ is what she said. Do you think it could’ve been jealousy on his part that Deirdre was going with other men? Even though that was, after all, her job?”
“I don’t think Nicholas Maze could get that worked up over any woman, not enough to kill her. He’s too self-serving. Perhaps we should talk to Mrs. Rooney again. When I’m back from Chesham.” Jury rose and unhooked his coat from the rack.
Wiggins was frowning. “Don’t you find it peculiar that one of these women was murdered in Chesham, while the other two were in London?”
“Of course I do. It’s the sticking point.”
Wiggins reflected. “Of course, there are serial killers that work over very wide areas. Offhand, though… the Yorkshire Ripper, his beat was pretty obvious. Then the Moors Murders, there again… No, I wouldn’t think he’d turn up in a place like Chesham.”
“I wouldn’t, either. It makes it appear that these three murders are both connected and not connected. I’ll see you later.”
Jury left.
In his car, he thought about what he’d just said to Wiggins, that the killings seemed both connected and not connected. The point was important, but he couldn’t go anywhere with it. What condition would explain both connection and lack of it? He sat at a red light, thinking about this until the cars behind him honked that the bloody light was green. Are you color-blind, mate?
Was that the driver behind him or the light talking?
42
The déjà vu experience was all there for Melrose in the Black Cat: the old man, Johnny Boy, at the small table in the center of the room, muttering, perhaps to his snarly dog, Horace; the stout woman drinking sherry and reading a racing form; and, of course, he himself, stationed at the same table before the same window.
And the girl, Dora, staring at him as he read his Times. He rattled the paper open to the inside pages.
“Why haven’t you found Morris yet?”
Melrose lowered the paper. “You seem to forget that you told your tale to a CID superintendent. He was supposed to do the finding.”
She shook her head. “You were to be one of the finders. Like him.”
“I see. Well, my friend is a Scotland Yard detective, whereas I am but a lowly landowner.” He wished in earnest the intense eyes would find something else to focus on. He shook his paper, knifed the centerfold with his hand, angry that he hadn’t been the brilliant finder himself.
She sighed and shook her head, fielding one more disappointment. “Then why hasn’t he found Morris? If he works for Scotland Yard, he ought to be able to find a cat. How does he keep his job?”
With as much condescension as he could muster, Melrose said, “He has missing people he has to look out for; he can’t just-”
“But if he can’t find a cat, how can he ever find a person? Finding people’s a lot harder.”
“I beg your pardon. It is much harder to find a cat than a person. A cat is much smaller and can get into places a person can’t.”
“A cat can’t read street signs, so it’s harder for her to know where she is.”
“Don’t be silly, cats find things by instinct; they don’t have to read.” What point was being made? He’d forgotten. He rustled his paper and gave it a snap.
Then, to his consternation another black cat emerged from behind the bar. Was this the one that had been there before? Was this black cat #2? It sat watchfully. Then black cat #1 sprinted by again, going for the gold.
“Wait a minute,” he said, clutching Dora’s shoulder. “Wait. One. Minute.” He pointed. “There are two black cats now; one of them’s new.” He thought this was the case; they looked alike, except for small differences one could pick out when they got close to each other, which they didn’t want to do. The new one (if he was right) was overzealous to the point of frenzy. He hurried here and hurried there as if he were looking for something.