Rainbow's End by Martha Grimes Read Free Book Online

him. “Who?”
    â€œHelen Hawes. Of course, you don’t want to drag her in when you talk to Rush, or he’ll know I’m trying to get information.”
    â€œI’m not dragging her in, because I’m not talking to Rush.”
    Macalvie plowed on as if Jury hadn’t spoken. “The fact that Nell Hawes and your lady might both have died from the same cause. Probably you shouldn’t mention that.”
    â€œShe’s not my lady, she’s A Division’s lady.”
    â€œWould you mind filling me in on the details? All I know now is what I scraped together from newspapers and the Yard’s information office. She keeled over, sitting on a bench in the Pre-Raphaelite room of the Tate, landed on some citizen sitting beside her.”
    â€œThen you know it all.”
    Macalvie looked truly amazed. “How the hell could I know it all ? I wasn’t there, much less was I first on the scene.”
    It was Macalvie’s firm belief that if anyone got to a crime scene before he did, ninety percent of the usable evidence would blow off into the stratosphere. Jury smiled. “Okay, I’ll describe it all in relentless detail. Remember, though, I wasn’t first on the scene. The gallery was full of people.”
    â€œMeaning they tramped all over everything.” Macalvie looked disgusted and shoved another stick of gum in his mouth. Why was the world up and about when somebody got killed?
    â€œI was in the Tate’s shop, the gift shop, when the commotion started. When I asked the guard, he told me a woman had suddenly died. They called West End Central; I just happened to be there and got there first.”
    â€œStroke of luck.”
    â€œNot mine.”
    â€œA Division’s, I meant.”
    â€œGood Lord! Is that a compliment?” As Macalvie looked off noncommittally toward the tower ruins at the other end of the bailey, Jury went on. “The woman—Frances Hamilton was her name—who had been sitting on one of the benches in the Pre-Raphaelite collection suddenly fell to one side. The young lady beside her thought she was either being pushy or had fallen asleep, something like that—unfortunately, the girl was more interested in touching up her boyfriend than in the woman beside her. She wasn’t paying any attention to Frances Hamilton. Neither of them was until Mrs. Hamilton fell on her. No one saw anything out of the ordinary, from what I could see and hear. Remember, I wasn’t doing the questioning. Only the observing, after A Division and the ambulance got there. Coronary occlusion. Or a stroke.”
    â€œWhich?”
    Oh, hell, thought Jury. “The pathologist wasn’t one hundred percent sure which. But she was on nitroglycerin, that was clear.”
    Macalvie’s eyes burned into Jury’s. “Coronary occlusion, stroke. Vague, but they’re still two different things, Jury.”
    â€œNo kidding?”
    â€œGo on.”
    â€œWith what? That’s it.”
    â€œThat’s what you call ‘relentless detail’? What pictures?”
    Jury looked at him.
    â€œWhat painting or paintings was she looking at?”
    It had occurred to Jury, too, how much the painting she had been sitting in front of might have reminded her of her nephew. “ The Death of Chatterton. The Henry Wallis painting.”
    â€œGreat picture. But how do you know she was looking at it?”
    â€œI don’t. Do you think it’s important?”
    â€œJury, I don’t know what’s important. Nell Hawes dropped over dead in front of some embroidered cushions. That doesn’t mean looking at them killed her. And it doesn’t mean it didn’t , either.”
    â€œThe painting on one side was Holman Hunt. A man and his mistress at a piano. Sad . . . ” Jury shook himself free of this memory. “The other side, I don’t recall. Fanny Hamilton might not even have been paying