I Am the Only Running Footman (22 page)

T
HE
woman who came to the door was tall and attractive, with taffy-colored hair that fell smoothly from a center part to her chin. Once the hair might have been as light as that of the girl in the newspaper clipping. Her blouse was mustard-colored, good silk, but flattering neither in shade nor in fit. She had the diffident air of one who doesn't know how good-looking she is, or hasn't been told it often enough. Most of life no doubt lived in the shadow of her beautiful sister.

“Kate Sandys?” asked Jury, showing her his warrant card. As if uncertain whether to admit to her name, silently she looked from Jury to Macalvie and back to the warrant card. “We need to talk to your sister, Miss Sandys. Is she here?”

“Dolly? No. No, she isn't here. What do you want?” She looked over her shoulder at the hall behind her. It was as if the house belonged to someone else.

Macalvie was standing to Jury's left, leaning against the doorjamb. “To come in, for starters.” He put his hand flat against the door and shoved it back.

Her eyes widened. “Why? What's happened? Has something happened to Dolly?”

“We don't know yet.”

Nervously, she gestured for them to come in. She pushed one sleeve of her silk blouse up, ran a hand over the light brown hair, silky as the blouse. Macalvie brushed by her, stood in the hallway looking round, his hands shoved in his pockets as if he were observing the scene of a crime.

Kate Sandys led them into a large, chilly drawing room. Jury noticed a photograph album lying open on a library table, a coat and scarf across the arm of a sofa, a letter on the mantel above the unlit fireplace. Over the years, Jury had grown more and more aware of the way in which some houses, some rooms seemed to bear witness to the end of something — a death, an imminent departure. Perhaps it was the closeness to the sea here that intensified that image. The sea, the photographs of old Brighton on the wall, the water-color of the deck of an ocean liner, dim figures by the rail waving, an attempt to be gay and lighthearted amidst the flutter of colored streamers. He glanced around him, almost expecting to see the furniture sheeted, the steamer trunk packed, the cab at the door in the fog.

In answer to a question from Macalvie, Kate said, “She's gone out.”

“Out where?”

“I don't know.”

“Think.”

She didn't answer; instead she kept her gaze fixed on Jury's face, as if it were the more hospitable of the two. “You still haven't told me why you want her, or what's happened.”

“Your sister Dolly may be in big trouble, a lot of danger,” said Macalvie.

“What
danger?” Her hand went to her neck, fingers worrying the thin gold chain on her breast.

Jury told her about the Hays Mews murder. “We think
your sister might have seen something, might have seen the killer even —”

Kate sat down suddenly. “You mean he's come
here,
to Brighton? But how would he know who —?”

“Easy,” said Macalvie. “Dolly Sandys walks right into his living room every weekday night. Three days ago she calls in sick to the studio, packs a bag, and comes here. It was your name and address they had in case of emergency. And we weren't the only ones that had come inquiring after her. So you'd better think very hard.”

“That's why she's been so moody; ever since she came I've been wondering why and what's wrong with her.”

“Have you seen anyone hanging about, Miss Sandys? Any strangers?”

She looked up anxiously. “No. Well, yes, in a way. There was a man in the Spotted Dog, that's a pub not far from here. We got to chatting; he mentioned he was looking for a room . . . .” She spread her hands. “I told him about our house.” Her voice was strained. “Later, when I thought about it, I wondered if he was the man I'd seen earlier, when I went to the Pavilion. When I came out and started walking across Castle Square, I saw him standing down at the end of the walk. It was unnerving; he seemed to be watching me. As if he was following me.”

“What'd your sister say when you told her?”

“But I didn't, you see. Dolly left the house early in the afternoon to go to Pia Negra's. She's a fortune-teller, a clairvoyant with a place in the Lanes. I know she came back because she changed coats — she left the fur and took the rain slicker. But I haven't seen her.”

“You say she went to this fortune-teller. Exactly where in the Lanes?”

“Black Horse Lane.”

Macalvie wrote it down. “Okay, where else could she have gone? Favorite pub? Shop? Restaurant?”

Kate shook her head.

“You better think it up, Miss Sandys. Your sister's out there with a killer.”

She flinched as if he'd slapped her. “I'm trying to think.” She rolled the gold necklace between the palms of her hands. “I thought it was a man, that she was having trouble over a man.”

“She is. Big trouble.”

H
E
watched her as she stood in the weak arc of light coming from the entryway to the Old Penny Palace. She was standing there, pulling the collar of the bright, white slicker round her throat, considering. Her face was pale, filtered through the drizzling rain that had started a few minutes ago. Perhaps she was looking for shelter. She went in.

Except for the pub farther down, everything else was shut up tightly along this causeway of amusement arcades underneath the arches of the King's Road, between the two piers. There was no one about. From the direction of the West Pier came the barking of a dog, excited perhaps because of its proximity to the water. But he saw no one, nothing. The only illumination came from the sodium lamps above, along the King's Road; that, and the sickly yellow light shining out from the Penny Palace.

Except for her, the museum looked empty. Someone must have been spiffing it up, for there was a bucket of marine blue paint on the counter with a brush across its top. The owner or whoever was doing the painting was gone, perhaps gone
along to the pub under the arches for a drink. There was no one but the two of them, nothing but the wooden figure called the Laughing Sailor inside his wood-and-glass cage, there beside the entrance to greet the customers if they had a penny to make him laugh.

•  •  •

When she had left the house on Madeira Drive, he'd followed, as he'd followed her twice before. Those times, though, it had been daylight, and she'd led him in the other direction, away from the seawall toward the center of the town and the brick-paved alleys of the Lanes, a maze of narrow streets like a spiderweb.

It had been difficult watching the house; there were no newsagents, no shops or restaurants he might have gone into, as there'd been in Exeter. So he had watched from several different vantage points from King's Road and the seawall, leaning against a railing, pretending to read a newspaper or to look out over the sea. And the surveillance — at which he felt he was no good at all — had to be interrupted by going off for a meal, or to the toilet, then coming back, then going off again.

He had considered going up to the house when the other one had gone out. The sister. They looked enough alike to be sisters. Older, a little taller, but without that strangely compelling presence that made the younger one so popular. How odd that he should recognize a television personality; that news broadcast with its trendy little weather report was the only thing he watched. Otherwise, he would never have found her. And whether it was her face or whether that white slicker she always wore, he didn't know. As he followed her, he watched men turn as they passed her, turn and stare.

He moved closer. There was a counter for making change, dispensing the big pennies that were necessary to work the machines. He watched her moving about through the thicket
of machines, stopping to look at the crane in its fancy glass enclosure. She must have had some of the pennies with her from an earlier visit or perhaps she'd nicked a few from the counter, for she reached in her pocket and in a moment he saw the crane move. After a moment she moved away, circled some more of the machines, sometimes cupping her hands around her face and peering through glass. Against the far wall was a player piano; she studied it for a moment, slugged a coin into it, and soon the tinny, broken sounds of music filled the night.

He stepped back into the shadows of the awning of the place next door that housed video games and a coffee bar when he saw someone coming along the Parade, hurrying now. Probably the owner or whoever had left the machines untended. He could hear voices, brief laughter. It would be difficult to be angry with her; she was too pretty. And probably whoever was in there was bored, maybe lonely.

He listened to the rattling, broken-sounding notes from the piano, remembered the words: “. . .
trade it for a basket of sunshine and flowers.”

“Pennies from Heaven,” it was called. Where had the sunshine gone, and the flowers? He looked up at the night sky, black as lacquer, studded with stars, and thought how much it was like that other night long ago. Darkness, stars, music  . . .

He heard her say good-bye. On the way out she — or perhaps the painter — must have dropped a coin into the wooden sailor. There was a short, guttural, donkeylike laugh that stopped suddenly when the music stopped.

And in a few moments, she came out. Stood, looking up at the black sky, as if calculating how long it would be before the rain got heavy, turned up the collar of her white raincoat, and walked on into the darkness toward the steps that led up to the King's Road.

He passed the Laughing Sailor, its wooden jaw locked, mouth hinged in a permanent grin.

•  •  •

Kate Sandys was weeping; Jury knew she couldn't help it, that she was frantic with trying to think of the first place Dolly might have gone to. Macalvie had convinced her that there might not be time to find a second.

She dried her eyes and looked down at the small photo of David Marr. It was a horror; she had actually been going to let him a room.

•  •  •

“It'll be all right, Kate.” He leaned toward her, took her hand. “Try to relax.”

“I've always been — envious of her, always said she was spoiled. I don't know now. I know I should have taken her more seriously.”

“Great,” said Macalvie, who was still standing. “That's great but it's not finding her.” He snapped shut the photograph album he'd been looking at. “The Brighton police will have gone to everyplace you've mentioned by now — but that doesn't mean she'll be at one of them.” He held up the album, frowning. “You leave this here?”

Kate wiped her eyes and looked up. “No. Dolly must've.”

“She was going through her childhood pictures, mostly of the pier and the sweet stands and stuff along the oceanfront. Does she go in for it still?”

“The King's Road Arches arcade. Dolly loved the arcade more than anyplace.”

“Let's go, Jury.” Macalvie started for the door.

Jury put the album in Kate Sandys's lap, wondering why he thought that would be any comfort. Yet, she wrapped her fingers round it as if the memories were real, staring straight ahead.

Then he picked up and pocketed the picture of David Marr. He shook his head. David hadn't been there, he hadn't seen it. And he thought Plant was right about their all having run together, in the mind of the murderer, as the faithless Porphyria. He looked again at the photo he'd been holding of David Marr. But it wasn't the first time, he supposed, he'd been wrong. And God knows, it wouldn't be the last.

•  •  •

She didn't walk up the steps to the King's Road after all; instead, she left the paved walk for the shingle beach. She stopped for a moment to look out to sea, shading her face with her hand, as if it were broad daylight and one could actually see out there, as if she were looking for the bright, bobbing head of a bather. She picked a pebble from the shingle and threw it and continued down the strand, the white raincoat dazzling in the night, a long, yellow scarf fluttering behind her.

•  •  •

He had carried a gun before and he carried it now. At this time of year, though, a woman could be depended on to wear a scarf, and she wore hers as the others had done, ends dangling down the back.

She was walking slowly enough that his catching her up might seem natural to her. Apparently it did, for when he spoke, she merely turned and looked at him, brushing back her hair with her hand.

He told her he was sorry if he seemed to be following her, that she looked so much like someone he used to know.

And did he look familiar to her? he wondered. He could not believe that his face was not engraved on her mind, etched on her eyes the way the victim is said to carry the image of the murderer.

Yet she looked at him almost sightlessly and for some moments.
There was a strange expression in her blue eyes, a look of acceptance — he might even have said of complicity. The scarf was unwound, removed. It too was white, and it trailed from her coat pocket. It wasn't a yellow scarf fluttering behind her, but her hair. How could he have mistaken one for the other?

She said that a lot of people took her for someone else; she said she looked like the woman on the telly who did the weather report.

There was nothing in her manner to suggest she recognized him; her voice was flat, expressionless.

Did she live in Brighton? Did she like it?

All of her life, she said; lately she'd been living in London, but she thought she would move back. Then she looked out to sea, said she remembered it the way it was when she was young.

When she was young. Of course, she must have meant when she was a child, but it was still an odd thing to say, as if youth were lost to her, had receded like the wrinkled waves drawing back from the shore.

Looking up at him, she said,
Dolly Sands.
That's who she reminded people of.