MacBride only nodded.
Melrose put in: “There was a howler of a wind last night, too.”
Wiggins couldn’t have agreed more, but Russell was looking at Plant as if he couldn’t imagine this guest in the Deer Leap offering anything of substance. The testimony of someone who would wander out to a playhouse at seven in the morning to get catfood . . .
“Splintered wood,” said Russell, “long marks as if she’d tried to —” Again, some more humane instinct took over.
“Sorry, John,” said Pasco. Light filtering through the fussy chintz curtains scooped out hollows in MacBride’s cheeks. “Maybe you should lie down, John. We can talk to you later.”
“Where’s Neahle?” asked MacBride, looking a bit wildly around.
“Asleep,” said Wiggins, snapping shut his notebook.
Wiggins might have had more sense than all of them.
Sixteen
Jury wondered when the driveway would end and who had managed, in what couldn’t have been more than an eighth of a mile, to devise the tortured approach to “La Notre” that in its twists and turns must have been like a Disneyland adventure-game. He expected something to jump out at every turn.
And at that moment in his thoughts, he had to veer and brake, barely missing an old man on a bike careening around one of the curves and not seeming bothered at all about scrapes with death. Must belong to the place, must be used to it, thought Jury, starting up again.
• • •
The surprise-package at the end of his deadly drive through deep rainpools and littered branches was a huge house whose towers he had seen from the Ashdown Dean road not far below. It was architectural gimcrackery at its worst. Where the original house left off was clear. It had played its part innocently enough as an old manor house or a draughty vicarage. Its design was pleasant and traditional, mullioned panes set in slabs of gray stone, ivy-bound. But to this house had been added towers, oriel windows, and cathedral windows, these last with a topping of painted barge-boards, like icing on a cake, utterly out of keeping with anything else. English, Italian, medieval, ecclesiastical all jousted for first place.
• • •
To round it off, from what he could see when he got out of his Vauxhall, there must have been a large expanse of Italianate garden behind the house. Jury just glimpsed a statue, a pagodalike bridge, a Corinthian column in the far distance.
None of this marvel, which made him want to laugh despite the reason for his visit, had been seen to — neither house nor grounds — in what must have been years. The ivy crept, the stones crumbled, the branches fell. Round those mullioned panes were cracks that must have let all the weather in Ashdown Dean come to settle here at “La Notre.”
• • •
His card was taken on a plate of tarnished silver by a waiting maid in a cockeyed cap, hastily pinned on for the occasion.
While Jury waited for an audience with the Baroness, he looked around the commodious entryway. Here England, Greece, and Italy competed. Between beams of dark wood, Grecian-like columns held sculpted heads (that reminded him unpleasantly of those once stuck up on Traitors’ Gate). The ceiling moldings were graced with cupids and garlands. The floor was green marble, the wide staircase mahogany. “La Notre” made up in money for what it lacked in taste.
Jury was admitted to an enormous room to his right, out of keeping with the hall, all breezy and bright, a sort of solarium, with plants everywhere. On the walls left and right, two identical trompe l’oeil murals. They seemed to be a reflection not only of each other, but of the real scene between them — on either side of a marble fireplace, french doors led to separate stone paths that in turn led to the wide gardens beyond. Jury blinked. It was worse than seeing double.
“Fools you, doesn’t it?” said the woman on the green chaise of watered silk.
Her smile was as tricky as the mirror-image of the murals. Jury returned the smile. “You’re the Baroness Regina de la Notre?”
“No. I’m her double. Two of everything. Good idea?”
“Maybe. Only one of me, though.”
“Pity,” she said, looking him up and down. Then her eye drifted to the card she held. “A superintendent, no less.” Waving the hand that held the card, she invited him to sit.
Her dress was not his idea of eleven in the morning, magenta with a sprinkle of sequins, a violent shade that matched her lipstick and rouged cheeks. The bones were high and aristocratic.
From her velvet chaise (in keeping with herself, but not the plant-gorged room) she said, “A Scotland Yard superintendent. I’m impressed.”
That it took one hell of a lot to impress the Baroness was quite clear from her tone.
She seemed as much a part of her surroundings as had the tricky driveway, the crumbling walls, the deceptive vista of the trompe l’oeil murals. Her smile was slightly unpleasant, not the result of ill will, but of dull teeth. Too many cigarettes, and, he supposed, catching a whiff as he had shaken her hand, too much gin. As she looked at the wall behind him, she said, “The Baron — my late husband — was fond of that particular school of French painting.”
And, thought Jury, the Italians, the British, the Greeks. . .
She leaned forward, offered him a cigarette from a pedestrian crumpled pack rather than the gold box. “It’s Una Quick you’ve come about, I expect. Wasn’t that heart of hers at all, was it? Murdered, wasn’t she? Not surprising, is it? It’s her Nosy Parker business with the post, isn’t it. . . ?”
Jury cut into the barrage of questions. “Why do you think Una Quick was murdered?”
“Because you’re here, obviously.”
Again, Jury smiled. It was a smile unmarred by tobacco stains, cynicism, deviousness, or anything else that might make a witness or a suspect throw up a guard. It had the opposite effect: they let down the guard. “I came here because of a friend.”
Regina de la Notre stopped being arch. She merely looked at him and said, “Perhaps, but I’m not the friend, so you’re poking about for other reasons. Una Quick was a simpering little mouse of a woman who ran the post-office stores and had a right rave-up with other people’s post —”
“You’re suggesting she read the villagers’ post?”
“No, I’m assuring you she did.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I posted a letter to myself from London that I got someone else to write — as I’m quite sure Una knew my hand — and turned the second page upside down. When she read it, she quite naturally had to turn it and forgot to turn it back. Or, even if some part of her little sewer of a mind took note, it discarded the notion that such a small thing might be important.”
“That’s very interesting. A different impression of Miss Quick than I’d got so far.”
“Only because most of the people in Ashdown are idiots. Tea?”
She raised a silver pot, which had to be cold by now. Jury refused and she reached behind the chaise. “Gin?”
“Sounds better than tea.” He smiled.
“I thought you’d think so.” She poured some into a teacup. “Always knew that business about policemen not drinking on duty was bunk. How the hell would you get through a day of your line of work without it? Here.”
Jury took the cup of gin from the beringed hand. He was rather surprised. Though he wasn’t going to drink a cup of gin, at least it had been offered with something like sympathy, something he doubted she plied to excess. The Baroness continued with her fund of information as she stuffed a cigarette into a long holder. Also sequined. “And now there’s the MacBride woman.”
The sip of gin Jury had taken burned his throat. “And just how did you know that? Her body was discovered only a couple of hours ago.”
She raised her gin and eyebrows at the same time. “God. In a couple of hours the Ashdown Dean scandal could travel to Liverpool and back. My hometown. You probably noticed I am not French.” Two possible murders did not seem of much more account than her Liverpudlian background
. “Carrie Fleet told me.”
“Carrie Fleet?”
“My charge. More or less. Neahle Meara came running up the drive an hour ago. She tells Carrie everything. Though I doubt she understands most of what she tells. I’m still debating whether MacBride was sleeping with our constable or that oily head keeper, Donaldson. Or both.” She raised the pint of gin in invitation.
Jury shook his head. “Why don’t you tell me what you know, then?”
Having poured herself another tot, she screwed the cap back on the bottle, and looked up at the ceiling through tendrils of smoke. “I’ll try and condense it. Otherwise, you’ll be stopping here all day. I told you about Una and the post. And that MacBride piece of fluff. If someone killed her, I’m quite sure it wasn’t John. That, I believe, was true love, worse luck for him. I myself made a marriage of true love. No man since Reginald — the Baron — has interested me. Had you come along twenty years ago, things might have been different. Loaded with charm, aren’t you?”
Jury smiled. “I only just got here.”
“How tiresome.” She sighed. “Charm, like a falling star, can be seen in a flash.”
“Thanks. Continue.”
“Well. Amanda Crowley is hot on the trail of Sebastian Grimsdale, though I imagine he’d rather sleep with a horse. I hope you do not think our Constable Pasco is stupid or lazy. That’s all an act. Farnsworth, on the other hand, is both, which is not to say he’s not capable of murdering the entire village. Paul Fleming, our veterinarian, is exceedingly clever, handsome, unmarried, and my secretary appears to be in love with him. Her name is Gillian Kendall. I expect you’ve heard the names of these people if you haven’t already met them. As for myself, I prefer to keep behind the battlements here, in regal splendor, and let the others make asses of themselves. Occasionally, I invite some of the asses here. To what I call a salon. I don’t really know what that means, but Grimsdale and la Crowley appear to think I am loaded —” quick smile “—I mean with money. And that allows me a certain ascendancy when they come to complain about Carrie. The local RSPCA. She turned the Baron’s arbor into a sort of animal refuge. I am not fond of animals. That’s where I found her. Outside the Silver Vaults —”
This enigmatic statement was cut short by Jury’s looking up, suddenly, to see a girl and a woman appearing like dream figures at each of the french doors. Again, he thought he was seeing double: they might have been figures in the mural, each of them coming to a dead stop with her foot just over the sill when she saw Jury.
Regina turned her head and looked from one to the other as if they were party-crashers. “Oh, it’s you. Gillian Kendall, Superintendent Jury.”
The woman came in, holding out her hand. The other arm held some Michaelmas daisies. “How do you do?”
“Original as always, Gillian.”
Gillian Kendall gave her employer a tiny smile. Used to her put-downs, probably. Jury couldn’t help staring at her, though she was not a beauty. Except for the Grecian nose, her features were unexceptionable — mouth too wide, eyes narrow. But her hair and eyes were a lustrous brown — hair more of an auburn — and the very plainness of the prim gray dress with its high neck and long sleeves drew attention to the body underneath it. He wondered if she knew this. He watched her arranging the flowers, brown-tipped from frost, in a vase. No beauty, but the most sensual woman Jury had seen in a long time.
He turned to see the girl staring at him. But she hadn’t moved from the frame of the french door at whose sill she stood, dead still.
“Oh, don’t be such a stick, Carrie.” Regina waved her impatiently into the room. “Carrie Fleet, Superintendent.” She turned to Carrie Fleet. “Superintendent Jury is with Scotland Yard.”
That announcement brought to Carrie’s face no hint of surprise, pleasure, bewilderment. But she did come in. Not, Jury thought, because of the command; she might have come or gone as she chose. She did not offer her hand. Jury felt the air stir when she walked in, felt a subtle change in the atmosphere — a pause. Gillian had stopped in her act of arranging the poor bouquet; Regina drew her lap rug a bit more closely. And all the time she had kept pale blue eyes on Jury.
“Well, good lord, girl, at least say hello.”
“Hello.” That she said no more was not a deliberate slight. Perhaps this was the way she marshaled her forces, moving carefully from trench to trench, gaining a bit of ground here, another inch there. Jury wondered only what the battle was. She made the single movement of brushing her long hair back across a shoulder. It was platinum, the sort of blond hair that made one think it could turn, overnight, to pure silver. She was a marvel of self-control. Indeed, for those few moments she had controlled the room. Involuntarily, Jury looked at the clock to see if it had stopped.
After telling the Baroness she needed money for more chicken feed, she turned and left through the french door.
Regina topped up her gin-laced tea and said, “What a trial.”
Gillian Kendall smiled slightly at the vase. “She’s the only one you like, and you know it.” Then she excused herself and left through the door to the foyer.
“God,” said Regina, screwing a cigarette into her holder, “you can imagine how sprightly the conversation is round the dinner table.”
“They both did seem rather shy.” That was certainly not the word for Carrie Fleet.
Nor did Regina think so. “The girl has been called in to our local police station over half-a-dozen times.”
“Why?”
“Because she will go wandering about the village seeing which cats and dogs are receiving what she considers adequate attention and which are in their death-throes. She did not care for the way Samuel Geeson kept his mongrel leashed in his backyard, and unleashed him and took him along to Paul Fleming and got him to call the RSPCA.” Regina rolled the ash from her cigarette. “I found her in London. She had been living with a couple named Brindle. The Brindles had in turn found her, wandering in a wooded area of Hampstead Heath. Amnesia, they said. The Brindles knew where the dole money was. One thousand pounds I paid them, and they’re putting the bite on me for more. Why on earth they think I’d be ripe for blackmail, I’ve no idea. Of course, I suppose they could claim I’d abducted her.” Regina arched an eyebrow. “I really think one abduction is quite enough for one child, don’t you?”
She reached round to a majolica jar and drew out a letter. “Here, have a look. Perhaps you can do something.”
The two pages — a bit grimy and just edging toward literacy — took first a whining and then a honeyed tone. Jury said, “You didn’t tell me she’d been given a bad blow to the head.”
“Dear Superintendent, I did not know. I believe they are playing it for tears. Presumably, that accounts for the amnesia.”
“It’s a rather odd letter.” Jury turned the pages over. Nothing on the back.
“I can assure you, the Brindles have their odd little ways.”
“. . . so we thought, taking enclosed into account, another five hundred might be worth your time. I remain, truly yours . . .” and a flourish of a signature. “What does he mean?”
Busy measuring out her gin, Regina just looked at Jury. “That he wants five hundred pounds, Superintendent. Even my spongy brain could ascertain that.”
“Mind if I keep this?”
She waved the letter away. “By all means. Poor Carrie. Her name isn’t even real. So there it is, she came to me with no documents at all.”
“You make her sound like a purebred dog with dubious credentials.”
She laughed. “Ah, Carrie would like nothing better than that comparison.”
Jury smiled. “What about Gillian Kendall?”
“She’s a Londoner and was having morning coffee in the local tea-palace when she overheard a conversation that I was looking for a secretary. I was beginning to bore myself, though that might be hard to believe, and when she came up the drive to offer her services six months ago I said yes on the spot. Couldn’t stand to advertise and hav
e half of Hampshire on the doorstep. But I’m not sure I care for her very much. I dislike people who walk on tiptoe and always seem to be carrying something in their hands — vases, decanters, flowers. Who knows but underneath there might not be a knife or a gun?”
Seventeen
Hard to believe that Gillian Kendall had a knife or a gun hidden under the cardigan she kept drawing more closely about her.
They were walking between the privet hedges that made up the maze, another of the Baron’s practical jokes, she told him. “It’s very carefully constructed,” said Gillian Kendall.
“Isn’t that the idea behind all mazes?” Jury thought Regina’s assessment of Gillian Kendall was off the mark. She did not walk on tiptoe, nor did she seem nervous. On the contrary, she struck Jury as composed. Composition. It was the right word, if one were an artist. An extra brushstroke here and there would have colored over the too-pale cheek, brought a spark to the eye that would have doubled its effect.
“It’s quite intricate,” she went on. “For one thing, it’s round. It can’t help but give the impression a person is going in circles.”
“Metaphorically speaking, a person usually is.”
She stopped and looked at him. For a moment he thought she might be going to say something less oblique. But what she said was, “I’ve got lost here several times. The Baron apparently wanted to make sure that once his wife got in here, she couldn’t get out. Oh, no malice. None. He liked games. This one I imagine would be sexual hanky-panky.” Gillian looked away. “Funny. She speaks of him with surprising devotion. I would have thought she’d only have done it for the money.”
“You don’t care for her very much, I take it.”
A gust of wind whipped her hair, even in this privet-sheltered place. Hiding the little row of buttons that marched up her prim dress by pulling the cardigan closer, she said, “I honestly don’t know. She’s like a wine that hasn’t aged well.” Gillian laughed. “A sixty-five Bordeaux, perhaps.”
The Deer Leap Page 9
