Mary Mary (Matthew Hope) Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE MATTHEW HOPE SERIES

  “A master. He is a superior stylist, a spinner of artfully designed and sometimes macabre plots.” —Newsweek

  “He is, by far, the best at what he does. Case closed.” —People

  “McBain has a great approach, great attitude, terrific style, strong plots, excellent dialogue, sense of place, and sense of reality.” —Elmore Leonard

  “It’s hard to think of anyone better at what he does. In fact, it’s impossible.” —Robert B. Parker

  “The Matthew Hope novels do for the world of Florida sleaze what the 87th Precinct books do for big-city vice. The reader is hooked and given not a moment’s letup.” —New York Times Book Review

  Jack & The Beanstalk

  “A cracking good read...a solid, suspenseful, swiftly-paced story.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  The House That Jack Built

  “Deft plotting, crisp dialogue, and intriguing characters rack up solid entertainment.” —San Diego Union

  “When McBain sets his tale to wagging, he commands close attention.” —Los Angeles Times

  Three Blind Mice

  “Matthew Hope, the suave Florida lawyer, is back in the latest of McBain’s series of cynically titled nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale themed novels....McBain is an undisputed master of the genre – slick, wry, and satisfying.” —Booklist

  There Was a Little Girl

  “McBain does it again! A brilliant piece of writing...and you won’t put it down.” —Larry King, USA Today

  Cinderella

  “The first page of a McBain novel is like the first potato chip: It whets the appetite for more.” —Newsday

  Snow White & Rose Red

  “Guaranteed to raise the hackles you didn’t know you had.” —Kansas City Star

  ALSO BY ED McBAIN...

  THE 87TH PRECINCT NOVELS

  Cop Hater (1956), The Mugger (1956), The Pusher (1956), The Con Man (1957), Killer’s Choice (1957), Killer’s Payoff (1958), Lady Killer (1958), Killer’s Wedge (1959), ‘Til Death (1959), King’s Ransom (1959), Give the Boys a Great Big Hand (1960), The Heckler (1960), See Them Die (1960), Lady, Lady, I Did It (1961), The Empty Hours (1962), Like Love (1962), Ten Plus One (1963), Ax (1964), He Who Hesitates (1964), Doll (1965), Eighty Million Eyes (1966), Fuzz (1968), Shotgun (1969), Jigsaw (1970), Hail, Hail the Gang’s All Here! (1971), Sadie When She Died (1972), Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man (1972), Hail to the Chief (1973), Bread (1974), Blood Relatives (1975), So Long As You Both Shall Live (1976), Long Time No See (1977), Calypso (1979), Ghosts (1980), Heat (1981), Ice (1983), Lightning (1984), Eight Black Horses (1985), Poison (1987), Tricks (1987), Lullaby (1989), Vespers (1990), Widows (1991), Kiss (1992), Mischief (1993), And All Through the House (1994), Romance (1995), Nocturne (1997), The Big Bad City (1999), The Last Dance (2000), Money, Money, Money (2001), Fat Ollie’s Book (2002), The Frumious Bandersnatch (2004), Hark! (2004), Fiddlers (2005)

  THE MATTHEW HOPE NOVELS

  Goldilocks (1977), Rumpelstiltskin (1981), Beauty and the Beast (1982), Jack and the Beanstalk (1984), Snow White and Rose Red (1985), Cinderella (1986), Puss in Boots (1987), The House That Jack Built (1988), Three Blind Mice (1990), Mary, Mary (1992), There Was a Little Girl (1994), Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear (1996), The Last Best Hope (1998)

  OTHER NOVELS

  The April Robin Murders (with Craig Rice) (1958), The Sentries (1965), Where There’s Smoke (1975), Doors (1975), Guns (1976), Another Part of the City (1986), Downtown (1991), Driving Lessons (2000), Learning to Kill (2005), Transgressions (2005)

  AND BY EVAN HUNTER...

  The Evil Sleep! (1952), Don’t Crowd Me (1953), The Blackboard Jungle (1954), Second Ending (1956), Strangers When We Meet (1958), A Matter of Conviction (1959), Mothers and Daughters (1961), Buddwing (1964), The Paper Dragon (1966), A Horse’s Head (1967), Last Summer (1968), Sons (1969), Nobody Knew They Were There (1971), Every Little Crook and Nanny (1972), Come Winter (1973), Streets of Gold (1974), The Chisholms: A Novel of the Journey West (1976), Walk Proud (1979), Love, Dad (1981), Far from the Sea (1983), Lizzie (1984), Criminal Conversation (1994), Privileged Conversation (1996), Candyland (2001)

  PLAYS

  The Easter Man (1964), The Conjuror (1969)

  SCREENPLAYS

  Strangers When We Meet (1960), The Birds (1963), Fuzz (1972), Walk Proud (1979)

  TELEPLAYS

  The Chisholms (1979), The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1980), Dream West (1986)

  CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  Find the Feathered Serpent (1952), The Remarkable Harry (1959), The Wonderful Button (1961), Me and Mr. Stenner (1976)

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  The Jungle Kids (1956), The Last Spin & Other Stories (1960), Happy New Year, Herbie (1963), The Easter Man (a Play) and Six Stories (1972), The McBain Brief (1982), McBain’s Ladies: The Women Of The 87th (1988), McBain’s Ladies, Too (1989), The Best American Mystery Stories (2000), Running from Legs (2000), Barking at Butterflies (2000)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright ©1976, 1977 HUI Corporation

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  eISBN: 9781612189840

  CONTENTS

  * * *

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1

  * * *

  SHE WAS in her late fifties, I guessed, a tall slender woman with gray hair and eyes the color of cobalt, wearing a pale-blue smock stenciled above the breast pocket with the words CALUSA COUNTY JAIL. They had told me she wasn’t quite all there, a sometimes foulmouthed woman of eccentric habits and unpredictable ways, but she seemed very much with it on this sultry September afternoon at the beginning of autumn.

  It was, in fact, difficult to imagine her in the role the local children had assigned, the “Mary, Mary, quite contrary” of the nursery rhyme, a bit of chanted doggerel that had become all too prophetic after the grisly discoveries three weeks ago. Sitting erect and attentive on the edge of her narrow cot, there was still a hint of rare beauty in Mary Barton’s pale and faded face. There was, too, a persistent sense of elegance, strengthened by the lingering British accent in her voice.

  The call from Melissa Lowndes had come at nine yesterday morning.

  “I recognize the name, of course,” Mary told me now. “But she was a child when last I saw her, and I can’t understand her coming to my assistance so many years later.”

  “You knew her in London?”

  The call had come from London.

  “No, no,” Mary said. “Well, not far from London, actually. I was teaching at a girls’ public school in...it’s the opposite in England, you know. Public is private. That is to say, a public school is a private school.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “In any event, the school was in Lockbourne, St. Edward’s Academy, a very fine girls’ school. Melissa was one of my students. A delightful girl.”

  I
was here because Melissa Lowndes had read about the murders in an international edition of one of the newsweeklies and had learned that her former teacher was to be represented by a public defender. She’d made some inquiries of friends in Palm Beach...

  Actually, she’d said enquiries.

  ...and had learned that the two best criminal lawyers in southwest Florida were Benny Weiss and me. She’d called Benny first...

  Everyone does.

  ...had discovered his plate was full at the moment...

  It always is.

  ...and was calling me next to ask if I would agree to represent Mary Barton because she was certain the woman couldn’t possibly be guilty of the heinous crimes attributed to her. Mary Barton had been charged with killing three young girls.

  I told Miss Lowndes that I hoped Miss Barton was indeed innocent because it was my policy never to defend anyone I thought was guilty. She said she considered this rather odd since surely there was room in our criminal justice system for lawyers who defended people who merely appeared guilty—

  “Yes,” I said, “but I’m not one of them.”

  We’d never met in person, and had been talking on the phone for not quite three minutes, and we were already arguing. But by the end of the conversation, I agreed to visit Mary Barton in jail and to telephone Miss Lowndes with my decision.

  I was here now.

  And I asked the question I always ask in one form or another.

  “Did you kill those girls?”

  “No, I did not,” she said.

  “Do you have any idea how those corpses turned up in your garden?”

  “No, I do not,” she said.

  “Three bodies buried in your backyard?” I said. “And you don’t know how they got there?”

  “And don’t give a fuck,” she said in her polite British voice.

  Enter Mary, Mary, quite contrary.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Because I really don’t give a fuck,” she said, in case I’d missed the point the first time around. “If someone planted those corpses in among my petunias, and if a telephone repairman dug up the yard and found those corpses, that has nothing to do with me. I had nothing to do with putting them there. And I don’t give a flying fuck either way.”

  “Do you always use such language?” I asked her.

  “Only when I’m irritated. This entire matter is irritating to me. I had nothing to do with killing those little girls. And I find positively disgusting the very idea of being incarcerated in a place where the toilet bowl doesn’t even have a seat on it! If you plan to represent me, the first thing you should do is get me out of here.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible,” I said.

  “Then go away,” she said.

  “The judge has denied bail—”

  “The hell with him,” Mary said.

  “Her,” I said. “And besides, I haven’t yet decided whether I want to represent you.”

  “Then don’t waste my time, young man.”

  She was flattering me. I’m thirty-eight years old, which on my block is middle-aged; if you double thirty-eight, you get seventy-six.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  “When?”

  “On the day they discovered the bodies.”

  “It wasn’t they, it was he. Have you noticed that in our mad rush to construct a language that will accommodate ridiculous feminist demands, we’ve taken to using ungrammatical constructions? ‘Everyone has their own favorite symphony,’ a radio announcer will say. In an attempt to avoid the correct ‘Everyone has his own favorite symphony,’ which God forfend might be considered sexist. I used to teach English,” she explained.

  “I see,” I said.

  But she still hadn’t explained the bodies in her backyard.

  “A telephone repairman made the discovery, is that right?” I said.

  The prompt.

  I waited.

  “Yes.”

  Briefly.

  Hands folded primly in her lap, like one of the schoolgirls she’d taught years ago. Like one of the schoolgirls buried in her garden.

  “Can you tell me the details?”

  She sighed forlornly, rolling her eyes heavenward. She’d obviously been asked this question a hundred times already and was weary of reciting the answer. Virtually by rote, in a singsong voice smacking of British country lanes and revealing nothing but total boredom, she said, “Ten-thirty or thereabouts on Tuesday morning, the first day of September—what’s today’s date? One loses track of time in here.”

  “The twenty-first.”

  “Almost three weeks ago, then. I arrive home to find a telephone repairman in my garden, tearing up Jack, digging through flower beds and shell arrangements, searching for the cause of interminable static on the line, reported by dutiful neighbors. He comes upon something that should not be growing there. The something is the head of a young girl, later identified as seven-year-old Jenny Lou Williams of Somerset, Florida. The head is attached to the rest of the unfortunate girl’s body. The telephone repairman comes screaming into the house asking if he can use the phone. Aren’t they supposed to have portable things clipped to their belts? The police arrived ten minutes later. Two hours after that, my entire garden has been dug up, and they’ve uncovered two more bodies, and I’m placed in custody and dragged to what is euphemistically called the Public Safety Building, which lofty title cannot disguise what is a basic cop shop. End of recitation, give the student a generous A-plus.”

  “You seem somewhat callous about these young girls.”

  “‘Bitter’ is the word you’re seeking.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. I don’t give a damn about them or the person who killed them. I’ve taken enough abuse since relocating in this Athens by the Sea...”

  Sarcastically hurling back into Calusa’s teeth its own promotional sobriquet.

  “...and I’m not overly thrilled by the ease with which the persecution of the innocent is now being extended. I did not kill those girls. You can take that or leave it, the choice is yours. You can also leave here if you don’t believe me.”

  “Who were the responding officers?” I asked.

  “Do you always avoid ultimatums?” Mary said.

  “I’m trying to get at the facts.”

  “I’m trying to decide whether to call for the guard.”

  “I’ll call him myself,” I said, and rose and moved toward the thick bars that separated the cell from the corridor outside.

  “Don’t be so impetuous,” she said. “Sit down.”

  Like the schoolmarm she once was.

  I did not sit. I leaned instead against the gray wall upon which were scribbled the names of countless previous prisoners, a record of incarceration that went back months before Mary Barton’s, and I looked her dead in those deep-blue eyes, and I said, “I’m trying to be your friend.”

  “I have no friends,” she said.

  “Wrong,” I said.

  She blinked.

  “Melissa Lowndes apparently feels otherwise.”

  “I hardly remember her.”

  “She remembers you.”

  “All the worse for her.”

  “Do you want to die?” I asked her. “The charges are three counts of first-degree murder. You’re looking at the electric chair.”

  “I don’t give a damn,” she said.

  “Did you use that kind of language when you were teaching school in England?”

  “That was twenty years ago.”

  “Did you talk that way then?”

  “I wasn’t the same person then.”

  “Who were you?”

  “I was Miss Barton.”

  “And who are you now?”

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” she said.

  “Tell me who responded. The names of the officers who responded.”

  “A fat fool in uniform was the first one, I don’t know his name. All excited, he, too, uses the stati
c-ridden telephone...”

  Switching to the present tense again.

  “...to call his superiors downtown, they always have to call downtown, have you noticed that, though in Calusa there is no precise downtown, there is merely north and south and in between. The suits arrive some fifteen minutes later, a detective named Morris Bloom—”

  “I know him.”

  “...and his partner, Cooper Rawles.”

  “I know him, too.”

  “So do I. Now.”

  “Did they question you?”

  “Yes. Aren’t they supposed to read me my rights?”

  “Not until you’re in custody. This was still a field investigation.”

  “Field is right.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Well, not quite a field, but certainly a garden. The focus of all that attention, you see. Arms and legs sprouting like new plants among the blue sage and powder puffs, the bird of paradise, and...have you seen my garden?”

  “No.”

  “A true wonder. The envy of townspeople for miles about.”

  I couldn’t tell whether she was being sarcastic again. I let it go.

  “What sort of questions did they ask?”

  “Well, they are quite naturally all amazed,” she said, shifting to the present tense again, and opening her arms and her eyes and her mouth wide to express wonder and awe; it suddenly occurred to me that she must have been a marvelous teacher. “And, quite naturally, they wish to know what I know about these moldering remains in my otherwise beautiful garden, a state of affairs for which I have no reasonable explanation. That’s when they told me I had the right to remain silent and to—”

  “Miranda,” I said.

  “Apparently,” she said drily. “And clapped me in handcuffs and carted me off to the famous downtown we see in all the movies and television shows.”

  “Did they question you further there?”

  “Only for an hour or so.”

  “Before formally charging you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just Bloom and Rawles?”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “The interrogation.”

  “Oh. No. They called in an assistant state attorney.”