Help the Poor Struggler

by Martha Grimes

  Uncle Robert was looking at her with his head slightly cocked. And then came that bemused smile that bothered her. “If that’s so, she must take wonderful care of herself.”

  Jessie concentrated on dabbing tiny bits of plum preserve on her toast. “She does. Victoria has lots of those little pots of colors and jars of cream and stuff. Before she goes to bed she wears the cream and a hair net.”

  Instead of being put off by this odious picture, he was fascinated and completely forgot about his mail. “Well, she certainly has beautiful skin. It must all pay off.”

  “That’s from the mud.”

  “Mud?”

  “Sometimes ladies put it on their faces when they’re old to make their skin tight.” Here, Jess pressed her fingers to the sides of her own flawless face, pulling the skin back.

  Uncle Rob shook his head. “Poor Victoria. Paint, cream, mud.”

  Quickly, the Times came up in front of his face, but Jessie thought she might have seen just the beginning of a smile, snatched away.

  She studied the beads of jam on her toast and wondered if she should have left out the mud.

  • • •

  That evening of the fourteenth, Victoria Gray broke into Jess’s reflections on the weather, the fog, the condition of the roads. Night had descended on the moor like a black-gloved hand. But he hadn’t take a car — that was the trouble.

  “You’re being childish, Jess. Better you go to bed and stop all this morbid worrying.”

  “I am a child, aren’t I?” A fact she denied most of the time, using it only when it suited her. She watched Victoria collect the balled-up wrappers that the Dreadful Dru had aimed at Henry, now napping on a chair by the fire. He was always napping. She supposed she loved Henry, but he was getting boring.

  Victoria was going on about the Dreadful Dru: “ . . . glad to see that one leave. The only thing she’s good at is penmanship. Probably a forger in her youth.”

  None of them seemed to understand the monumental importance of what had happened. “Did you see him leave?”

  Victoria sighed. “No, for the tenth time. No. He obviously left early in the morning — he’s done it before — when we were all asleep. You know your uncle is impulsive.”

  But that didn’t explain the absence of a Valentine, the lack of a note.

  “Jessie, dear.” Victoria stood directly behind her now, doubling the reflection in the window. “Go to bed and stop worrying. Can’t you allow your uncle to forget just once —?”

  “No! Come on, Henry!” Jessie ordered the dog before she ran from the room. Henry, looking tired and sad, had to obey this injunction, as it was usually the only one he ever got from his mistress.

  • • •

  But she didn’t go to bed directly. First, she took down her yellow slicker from the peg beside the overall and jammed her arms in it before she opened the heavy door leading out to what used to be all horse-boxes.

  The stable now provided room for garaging nine cars. There were two horses boxed on the other side. Victoria loved to ride; Jessica hated it. She’d told her uncle there were so many ponies on the moor, just looking at a pony made her want to throw up. And she certainly wasn’t going to some stupid riding school, only to go round and round in a ring.

  • • •

  “I want a car,” she had said, as his collection grew.

  “A car? Jess, you’re seven years old.”

  She sighed. How many times had she heard that? “In a month I’ll be eight. I want a Mini Cooper. You know. The one Austin Rover made.” She was rather proud of having come upon this minuscule bit of information.

  “Police don’t look kindly on eight-year-olds driving.”

  • • •

  The Mini Cooper was there. Henry slogged behind her, stopping when she stopped. He yawned, unused to this nocturnal inspection of cars in the dark and the rain. Rain blew the hood of her slicker as Jessica walked round the old stables, beaming her torch on each one, touching the bonnet — almost patting the car, as if each were indeed a favorite horse.

  TWELVE

  JESSIE lay in bed in the pre-dawn hours, with Henry like a heavy duvet at her feet. She stared up at the tracery of light that the blowing branches etched on the ceiling. Then she turned on her side. Instead of counting sheep (which was horribly dull), she started counting off the rooms at Ashcroft. Her thoughts lingered on the long, dark hall beyond her bedroom door, and on Uncle Rob’s room, two doors down, full of leather and chairs and books and a high mahogany chest where he kept the pictures of her father and mother.

  But she couldn’t think of that room and sleep. Her mind traveled on to Dreadful Dru’s — the room on the other side of hers. Dru was living the life of Laura Ashley (which didn’t fit her a bit) — tiny flowers on wallpaper, tiny sprigs on curtains that made Jessie think of thorn-thickets. Whenever she went into the Dreadful Dru’s room, she felt trapped by stinging nettles. Next to Dru was Victoria Gray, whose room matched her perfectly. It was rather mysterious, with its silky velvet drapes that lay in heavy folds upon the floor.

  None of this was helping her sleep. She counted the rooms in the servants’ wing where Mr. and Mrs. Mulchop and Billy had their rooms. The other six rooms in that wing were empty.

  Like a potential buyer viewing a property, her mind was led down the dark hall outside her room and down the sweeping Adam staircase to what was now a well of darkness: the big entry room that on sunny days was bright, its floor of Spanish tiles, its circular table in the center pungent with the smells of roses or jasmine.

  She opened her eyes and saw that the black panes had lightened to purple. The casement windows rattled in rain. Jessie turned on her other side and took her mind through the tiled hall, into the morning room where, at the dreary age of twenty or so, she would most likely have to talk to people like the local vicar or Major Smythe. . . .

  • • •

  “I don’t want to grow up,” she had told Uncle Robert a year ago. “To get old like sixteen and have to go to some boring boarding school like All Hallows.”

  It was a misty September morning. They had taken the Zimmer and a basket of lunch to Haytor.

  Jess had held her breath, waiting for him to say something like But you must grow up, or You’ll love school. Only, he couldn’t say that, could he? Not after his own awful schooldays.

  What he did say was, “I don’t see why you have to do anything before you feel like it.”

  She looked up at the sky that had changed from a sluggish gray to clear pearl. “But I have to.”

  “Go away? When you’re ready. Otherwise, it just makes misery.”

  Now she felt adult and indignant at his lack of knowledge of the Real World. “Don’t you know people are always having to do things they don’t like to? Lucy Manners — she had to go to All Hallows whether she liked it or not.”

  “She’s got spots, hasn’t she?”

  Jessica was trying to be serious. “What’s that got to do with it?”

  Uncle Rob was lying on the rock, an arm thrown over his face. “Don’t they all have spots, the boarding school ones? Either spots or teeth that stick out? I don’t think you should go because you’re much too pretty. I’d hate to see you with spots and stuck-out teeth.”

  And she began to think of school in more kindly terms. “Lucy Manners would have spots anywhere,” she said reasonably.

  II

  Jessie lay on her back and watched the shadows of the branches comb the ceiling in the gathering light. She was still debating what to do. She got out of bed.

  Although Henry had no desire to rout himself from the foot of the warm bed and follow, follow he did. Come on, Henry, were the three worst words in the language.

  • • •

  She could not reach the telephone in the kitchen because it was high up on the wall. Jess pulled over the cricket stool that Mulchop liked to sit on and smell the soup cooking.

  The operator took forever to answer. Jess hung up twice, each time being c
areful to dial 100. Finally, she got one of them, frosty, far-off in her wired-up ice castle. Jess cleared her throat. “My name’s Jessica Ashcroft and I live at Ashcroft. That’s fifteen miles outside Exeter. My uncle’s missing. I want the police.”

  The operator talked to her in that sort of slow, loud way that people used with deaf people and dumb children. When Jessie explained that her uncle had been missing five days, the operator asked her why she thought he was “missing.”

  “Because he isn’t here!” Jessie hung up. It was hopeless. How could she ever make the operator understand that he’d never go anywhere without leaving a note — and, especially, a Valentine. Today — well, just yesterday, was St. Valentine’s Day. Uncle Rob always remembered every holiday. And how could she make the operator understand about the cars? Jessie leaned against the black telephone and came close to crying. She gulped to stop the tears. Henry shook himself out of his lethargy and pawed at her leg and whined in sympathy. But his eyes closed like shutters and he dozed off again.

  While she was sitting on the cricket stool, an image came back to Jessie. It was the Dreadful Dru on the couch, stuffing herself with chocs and trying to read the paper.

  Jessie took down the receiver and dialed Emergency — 999. A crisp, no-nonsense voice asked her what she wanted. Ambulance? Hospital? Police?

  Jessie lowered her voice a notch, rounded her vowels, and enunciated clearly, in just the way Mad Margaret had taught her. “I am Lady Jessica Allan-Ashcroft.” Dramatic pause. “I want Scotland Yard.” The telephone nearly slipped from her hand because her palm was so sweaty. Her heart pounded. “That ax-murderer that was released from Dartmoor prison has been to this house and he’s killed —” she looked down — “the Honorable Henry Allan-Ashcroft.”

  Nose on paws, Henry raised beleaguered eyes, unaware that his blood — according to Lady Jessica — was everywhere. Almost total dismemberment. Then he returned to his light doze, equally unaware that he had just been knighted.

  • • •

  All of the operator’s questions she had answered cooly, almost indignantly, as if surprised that Lady Jessica Allan-Ashcroft should be questioned by such a menial. Directions were given. Times were given. Names were given. And she hung up, after being told to stay calm.

  Calm? With blood running all over the kitchen floor? Was the woman mad?

  She had begun to believe in her own fantasy until she looked at Henry, lying healthily by the hearth, and wondered how she was going to explain to police how he was so unbloody. And unbowed.

  “Come on, Henry. We’ve got to think.”

  • • •

  Henry showed as little inclination for thinking as for following. In the pantry, Jessie found a can of Chum, struggled with the can opener, and put some in a bowl. This she placed on the pantry floor and had no trouble getting Henry in there for his unexpected tea at dawn. She shut the door.

  As she walked through the dining room into the drawing room, where morning light lay in splinters on oriental carpets and velvet couches, it occurred to Jessie that the Devonshire police didn’t know Henry. And Henry certainly wouldn’t talk.

  But she, Jessie, would have to. How would she explain the lack of blood? Blood was not easy to come by, and she had no intention of sacrificing any of hers. She sat on the same sofa as had the Dreadful Dru, trying to be calm, trying to think. Jessie looked out the window and saw the cold, scabrous dawn slither up the grass like a snake and considered tomato sauce.

  But where was the slaughtered body? Cold in only her nightdress, she still sat there, constructing and reconstructing her story. In the attic was a dressmaker’s dummy. If she put it in a dark corner of the kitchen and tossed the tomato sauce all over, she could say she saw it and just went crazy. . . .

  Yet, wouldn’t that open up more questions? Who had put the dummy there and spilt the sauce all round?

  At the same time she heard barking from the pantry, she heard the double-note of sirens coming up the gravel drive. The revolving lights, the noise, caused a lot of thumping from the rooms upstairs.

  Footsteps coming down the stairs, footsteps coming up the gravel. She felt sorry for Henry, shut up in the pantry, and sorrier for herself. She was going to have a lot to answer for.

  III

  The Dreadful Dru came in holding a candlestick, like a leftover from the Mad Margaret’s repertoire of characters. But the Dreadful Dru looked more like a blow-fly than she did Lady Macbeth, heavy with sleep in her black peignoir.

  Mrs. Mulchop was dressed in her mobcap and brown felt slippers. Victoria Gray in a velvet dressing gown.

  Police were everywhere, some in uniform and some in plain clothes; there were also men in white coats, and a doctor with his black bag.

  Jessica was surrounded.

  There was a torrent of questions and a few shocked answers from Mrs. Mulchop and Victoria Gray. No, they knew nothing. The questions were orchestrated by the insistent barking of Henry. Mrs. Mulchop went to the pantry to investigate.

  Jessica scratched at her ear and looked up through squinty eyes as if she couldn’t imagine what had brought all this crowd together. The salvo of questions seemed to confuse her awfully, and the man in charge — an Inspector Browne — waited while she gazed all over the ivory and damask splendor of the Ashcroft drawing room. Finally, she asked, “Where am I?”

  Drucilla Plunkett was wringing her hands as if to keep them away from Jessica’s throat. “Where are you? Whatever are you going on about, you silly thing?”

  Jessie rubbed her eyes and turned her troubled face to Inspector Browne. “I must’ve been walking in my sleep again.”

  Drucilla was yelling now: “You never walk in your sleep!”

  Jessie considered for a moment. “Yes, I do. You just weren’t around.”

  The logic of this escaped Drucilla, who, having put down the candlestick, raised it now as if she meant to bring it down on her little charge’s head. Inspector Browne came between them. The house and grounds were swarming with police.

  Nothing, was the report passed back along the line of the inspector’s entourage. Nil. No body, no blood, no sign of forced entry or anything else. They all looked to Jessie.

  “It was a nightmare,” said Jessie. “I was having this awful dream about my Uncle Robert. He’s been missing —” (and here she looked out of the window to calculate another dawn into the whole of it) “— six days.”

  Once again Drucilla raised the candlestick. Victoria Gray turned away, looking pained. And the playlet was interrupted by the return of Mrs. Mulchop, marching in with Henry. “And why was Henry closed up in my pantry, I’d like to know, Miss?”

  One of Browne’s men flipped through a small notebook. “Report was that a Henry Ashcroft had been the victim. The Honorable Henry Allan-Ashcroft.”

  Before Dru or Victoria or Mrs. Mulchop could react fully to this announcement, Jessie had jumped up from the couch. “Henry! You’re all right!” She flung her arms about the massed wrinkles that were Henry.

  They all looked down in wonder. A child and her dog.

  THIRTEEN

  BRIAN Macalvie seemed at first to be merely irritated by the telephone’s ringing at four A.M. in the Lyme Regis station. He cradled the receiver like a bawling baby against his ear. Macalvie might, indeed, have been a new father, thought Jury; he didn’t seem to need sleep. They had been all day in Dorchester and Exeter.

  As he listened to the voice on the other end, Macalvie stopped sucking the Fisherman’s Friend. Wiggins had left the packet before going back to the White Lion for some sleep. In slow motion, Macalvie’s feet left the desk that had been supporting them; the chair creaked with his weight as he sat up. He nodded and said, “Yeah, I’ve got it.” He hung up.

  Then he put his head in his hands.

  “What the hell is it?” asked Jury, surprised by Macalvie’s look of remorse.

  “Dartmoor. Bloody Dartmoor. It sounds like it’s happening all over again.”

  II

 
“Dartmoor.” Wiggins said it with a shudder as they drove off the A 35 toward Ashburton.

  “You’ll love it, Wiggins,” said Macalvie, “it’s got a prison and ponies and it rains sideways.”

  • • •

  He was right about the rain. Wiggins was huddled down in his coat in the back seat. “You should slow down a bit, sir. This road’s posted as not being appropriate for caravans.”

  “So who’s driving a caravan?” said Macalvie, taking what looked like a single-lane road between hedges stout as stone walls at a good fifty miles per hour. God help them or anyone coming from the opposite direction.

  It was seven in the morning but it looked like dusk — the rain, the ground mist, the dark rock formations rising against the sky. When they got beyond the hedged-in road, Jury saw acres of heather the color of port, crippled trees, the occasional huddled house.

  Ashcroft was visible from a turning a half-mile away, standing on its hill, a large and perfectly proportioned house. As they turned into its long, sweeping gravel drive, Jury saw the grounds were partly formal — well-groomed hedges, flower beds — and partly wild, as if the gardener had dropped spade and hoe in the middle of the job.

  In front were two police cars.

  “Nice little place,” said Macalvie, braking hard enough to spit up gravel.

  • • •

  “What the hell do you mean, a ruse?”

  Detective Inspector Browne looked as if he’d like to be anywhere but where he was now. “Sorry, sir. The little girl, Jessica Ashcroft — or Lady Jessica, I should say, I expect —”

  “I don’t care what you call her, Browne. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  Eyes averted from Macalvie’s, Browne explained. “And by the time we found out, you’d already left Lyme Regis. . . .”

  • • •

  Jessica looked up at the three new ones. She was still in her nightdress, as were the other members of the household. She sat on the couch, ankles crossed, patiently waiting for whatever scolding the new ones had to dish out. There should be enough brains among all of them to find her uncle, she thought. She did not particularly like the look of the copper-haired one who stood with his hands in his trouser pockets and had eyes like torches. The other, taller one had gray eyes and looked, somehow, comfortable. . . .