Help the Poor Struggler by Martha Grimes Read Free Book Online Page A

Yard.”
    â€œRichard Jury,” said Jury, embellishing upon Macalvie’s gracious introduction. He shook hands with Sam Waterhouse.
    â€œYou can’t be working our mutual friend Macalvie’s manor? It’s mined.”
    â€œJury’s working on the Dorchester case. It just happened to spill over into Devon.”
    â€œToo bad. But neither of them has sod-all to do with me.”
    â€œHas anyone accused you of anything?”
    â€œWhere would I get that idea? I walk into Freddie’s, and who do I find but you, lying in wait.” He leaned closer. “Macalvie, doesn’t it occur to you that I want to forget about Rose Mulvanney?”
    â€œIt had crossed my mind. That ‘other boyfriend’ she had —”
    â€œI don’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œShe never mentioned any names?”
    Sam Waterhouse closed his eyes in pain. “Don’t you think I’d have damned well said if I knew of anyone else? I looked at her diary; I went through her desk. All that got me was a shadowy snapshot of some man. I asked her who it was and she said her uncle.” Sam shrugged.
    â€œWell, we didn’t find anything like that. Uncle must have taken diary, photos, and papers.”
    Sam’s eyes glittered with anger. “Look, all of this has been said and said again.” His face took on the look of the chronic loser. “For God’s sakes, haven’t you had any murders in Devon in the last nineteen years so you want to hook these up with the Mulvanney case?” Macalvie shook his head. “Then why here and why now?”
    â€œRevenge, Sam. At least, that’s what the papers —”
    Sam Waterhouse shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got a psychopath on your hands —”
    â€œI don’t think so. At least not in the sense you mean — that there’s no connection between the kids’ murders.”
    Freddie stomped in with a steaming plate of mutton, boiled potatoes and vegetables. She plunked it down in front of Sam and gave Macalvie an evil look as if he’d been the prison cook. Sam went at the food with a vengeance.
    Macalvie went on: “You’ve been out walking the moor for four days? Why?”
    â€œBecause I’ve been in the nick for nineteen years and wanted to see a little open space. As soon I’m finished with this meal, you can slap the cuffs on me. I’ll go quietly, Commander.”
    â€œWell, arresting you’s not what I had in mind. You staying here?”
    â€œProbably. Freddie’s been like a mother to me.”
    Macalvie feigned surprise. “A mother? She’s not even female. What I was really waiting for was to talk to you. You could be helpful.”
    Waterhouse leaned back in his chair and laughed: it was a transforming laugh; Jury could see in his face the nineteen-year-old student of medicine. “Help the Devon-Cornwall constabulary? I think I’d go back to Princetown first.” That incandescent look of youth fell away like a falling star. “Even if I would ‘help,’ I couldn’t. I don’t know any more now than I did then. And I didn’t know anything then.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    Sam looked up from his plate. “Meaning what?”
    â€œYou might know something that you didn’t connect with Rose’s murder, or you might know something you don’t know —”
    â€œI had nineteen years to think it over. Case closed.”
    â€œLet’s say I just reopened it.”

III
The Marine Parade

SIX
    A NGELA Thorne had been told by her parents never to stay out after dark, never to miss her tea, never to walk along the Cobb, never to play along the shingle beach when the tide was coming in. Angela Thorne was presently engaged in doing them all, attended only by her dog, Mickey.
    Dark had come by five o’clock, and she was still out in it two