The Deer Leap

by Martha Grimes

  “No lecture. Does he know?”

  “Maybe. But he can’t go into my sanctuary. It’d be like trying to drag some thief or someone out of a church.”

  “If Grimsdale doesn’t try, I’d put it down more to fear of broken kneecaps than God.”

  Her smile was small and faded quickly. He had never seen such a determined chin, such an adamantine gaze. Again, she was fingering the gold chain, its links so tiny they were gossamer. Jury wouldn’t have thought Carrie to be much concerned with finery. Part of the necklace was under the jumper, and she drew it out. There was a small ring attached, an amethyst. It was too small to fit her fingers.

  “That’s very pretty.”

  She nodded. “I wish I had eyes that color.”

  Jury looked away, smiling. Obviously, she’d seen Polly Praed. “Is it a special ring?”

  Carrie held it toward him. “Can you read what’s inside? The writing’s so small I can hardly make it out. I think my mother gave it to me.”

  Jury squinted at the initial C and the tiny words from Mother. He knew she only wanted confirmation, or to share some knowledge that he doubted she herself had. “That’s what it says, all right. Do you remember her?”

  She shook her head, put the ring back under the jumper.

  End of subject.

  They sat there for a minute, and Jury said, “It would be helpful to know who’s going round killing off the animal population.”

  “And the people,” she said calmly. “Una Quick and Mrs. MacBride. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more.” Her face turned once again to the sky, as if it were her main concern. “Frost.”

  Nineteen

  Amanda Crowley was wearing whipcord trousers and a tweed jacket. Jury wondered if she was always scenting, like Sebastian Grimsdale and hounds, for the cold and the frost that foretold the hunt. The Crowley cottage reminded him a little of a rather fancy tack room. It smelled of polish and horses.

  It was the first thing she mentioned after the most abrupt of social interchanges. “Hunt starts soon, too bad the boys aren’t here.” Then she looked about her, as if mildly surprised by their absence.

  “Too bad, yes. They’ve gone back to school, I understand.”

  “Just two days ago. They’d been on a brief holiday . . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Been sent down, you mean, thought Jury.

  “I really haven’t much time, Superintendent. I’m expected at Gun Lodge in a few minutes. Can’t imagine why you’re here, anyway.”

  Again, he smiled, betraying in Amanda a response she no doubt resented. She fell for it. She pulled down the jumper beneath the jacket and ran her hand, like a comb, over her smoothed-back hair. The body was thin and the hair silvery; still, she would have been attractive except for the creases about the mouth that suggested a crotchety temperament.

  “I was wondering how well you knew Sally MacBride.” Jury held out his packet of cigarettes.

  She took one and rolled it between her fingers for a few seconds, then accepted his match. There was another brief silence. “Scarcely at all. It’s a dreadful thing to happen. Poor John.”

  Amanda crossed her legs. From thigh to ankle, in the tight trousers, it was clear they were well-shaped but taut, like the rest of her. She reminded Jury a little of the riding crop she had absently plucked from the table and was running up and down her leg.

  Nicely Freudian, he thought. He wondered how she got on with Grimsdale. “What’s ‘scarcely at all’ mean, Mrs. Crowley? That you spoke to her only to say ‘hello,’ or ‘nice morning’?”

  “Well, of course, I chatted with her. I often go to the Deer Leap. Don’t we all?”

  Jury shrugged, rested his chin on his hand, and said, “I don’t know, do I?” The tone was mild. No belligerence, except for what she might infer.

  “I don’t understand all of this. Why are you asking about Sally?”

  “What about Una Quick? Now, you did know her rather well?”

  The little lines around her mouth seemed etched in acid. “Everyone knew Una Quick. And I still am asking you what’s this all about?” She flicked her wrist, looking at the watch with its sensible leather strap, as if she’d give him another one-half minute.

  “Gossip,” said Jury.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I am not a gossip, Superintendent. I’ve better things to do.”

  “Didn’t say you were. But I’d imagine Una Quick was, especially running the post-office stores as she did.” Jury looked around the room. Wood-paneled, a couple of saddles — one on a mock-up of a tailor’s horse — riding crops, boots, even two brass ones guarding each side of the small fireplace. The glass out of which she’d been drinking was etched with stirrups. “In three days, two accidents. And that’s not even mentioning the dogs and the cat. Fatal. Doesn’t that make you wonder?”

  Her eyes, stone-gray and stone-hard, regarded him. “No, it doesn’t. Una had a bad heart; Sally had the misfortune to get trapped in that playhouse.” She had the grace to shiver, rubbing her arms up and down. “Probably the wind banged the door shut. Awful to be claustrophobic —”

  “You knew she was?”

  “Everyone knew she was. Was on a train that stalled in the tube and she fainted. Had to sleep with a light on, that sort of thing.”

  “Don’t you think it strange that Mrs. MacBride would be going out to Neahle’s playhouse at night?”

  Her smile was knowing. “An assignation, perhaps, Superintendent?”

  Not much sympathy was being wasted on the dead woman, certainly. “With whom?”

  “I can think of one or two. Donaldson, for instance. Only I thought those meetings were generally held at his place. And then there’s our constable, isn’t there? And, perhaps, even Paul Fleming. Too bad for Gillian Kendall.”

  Jury’s jaw tightened. Then he smiled. “Since you’re not a gossip, Miss Crowley, perhaps you might know who is.”

  “Well, I dislike speaking ill of the dead. But certainly Sally MacBride seemed cheek to jowl with Una Quick.”

  “Ever heard of rumors of Miss Quick’s tampering with people’s post?”

  “Well, Billy and Batty — Bertram — did mention —”

  She quickly dropped the subject of Billy and Bertram and Jury just as quickly picked it up. “That incident with Miss Praed’s cat —”

  Her diversion was to say she had no idea who Miss Praed was. “The woman staying at Gun Lodge whose cat was taken from her car —”

  Amanda interrupted. “You’ve been listening to Carrie Fleet, of course. She’s hardly to be taken seriously.”

  “According to her, your nephews were about to burn Miss Praed’s cat.”

  Amanda crushed her cigarette so forcefully it looked like a splayed bullet. “I’m suing that girl for slander.”

  “You’d have to sue the Baroness. I don’t think you’d win. Dr. Fleming saw the cat.”

  “That doesn’t prove my boys —”

  Jury was losing patience. It was an effort not to show it. “Miss Crowley, I’m not here to press charges about the cat. I’m interested in the deaths of Una Quick and Sally MacBride. And the motive for their murders.”

  She stared at him through the gloom of the little sitting room. “Murder? Their deaths were accidents.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Dr. Farnsworth signed Una’s death certificate.”

  “She was phobic, really.”

  Amanda shrugged. “I’d hardly call a bad heart that.”

  “I would. If your behavior was so compulsive you had to call your doctor every Tuesday to report. That’s pretty phobic.”

  Again she shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Jury got up. “Don’t you wonder about your own, Miss Crowley?”

  Sharply, she looked up. “My what?”

  “Phobia. Cats.” Jury smiled and said, “I should be careful, if I were you. Thanks for your time.”

  She did not bother to rise as he opened the door. Her mouth was still open.


  Twenty

  The Deer Leap was closed except to guests of the inn and police, though the sanguinity of John MacBride had been replaced, behind the bar, by the sanguinary looks of Maxine Torres.

  When Jury asked her for a double whiskey, he almost expected her to say I don’t do windows. And her sullen though sultry look at Wiggins, who asked for a hot buttered rum, would have been enough to make anyone less determined to stave off a bout of flu forget it.

  Maxine was happy to forget it. “Kitchen’s closed,” she said. “You want beer, gin, whiskey, okay. Sherry, okay. Nothing that means cooking.”

  “Heating up a bit of water and butter hardly means cooking,” said Wiggins.

  “Yeah? To me, you have to put it on a stove, it cooks.” Even under the heavy lids, the Gypsy eyes stared him down. Then she recited the litany of drinks she would fetch. This time she left out the sherry. She’d have to travel down the bar for that. The optics were directly behind her.

  Wiggins gave in. “Brandy.”

  “Brandy,” she repeated, ran a balloon glass under the optic, and plunked it on the bar. All in one motion. Should have been a flamenco dancer, thought Jury.

  Wiggins was certain he was coming down with a disease unknown in the annals of medical science. On the way back from Fleming’s laboratory, he’d sneezed his head off and asked Jury if there might have been something back there he was allergic to. Only cat or dog dander, Jury assured him, knowing Wiggins could even talk an allergy into something terminal.

  He sat beside Jury now, as determined to believe he’d caught something as Maxine Torres was determined not to help him get rid of it. She sat at the other end of the bar, wetting a finger, slowly folding back the pages of a fashion magazine, her interview with Russell apparently not having dented her complacency, and the death of Sally MacBride having turned her attention to a new wardrobe.

  The door opened and Polly Praed came in together with a gusting wind that made Wiggins shiver. Maxine looked up, sulking, and informed Polly that the Deer Leap was closed. Respect for the dead. Looking around at the three of them, she made it sound as if only Maxine had any.

  “I’m meeting Lord Ardry,” said Polly. Jury heard Maxine mumble something, but having taken on the job of temporary publican, she was forced to serve her.

  When Polly asked for a sherry, Maxine gave her a look that could stop a tinker’s cart, and moved down the bar, Polly calling after her, “Tio Pepe.”

  “No got,” she said, not about to search through the various bottles. She returned with the one nearest to hand, Bristol Milk.

  “I don’t like sweetish sherry.”

  Maxine shrugged and didn’t even look at her. “Don’t drink it, then.”

  “Isn’t she a charmer?” said Jury.

  Polly braved a look at him in the mirror, adjusting her big glasses. “Oh, hello.”

  Jury shook his head. “Hello, Polly.” He asked Maxine for a pint of best bitter. Fortunately, the beer pull was directly in front of her.

  “Hello, Sergeant Wiggins.” Her greeting was absolutely sunny. He returned it. “I’m meeting Lord Ardry,” she said to the mirror, then let her gaze wander all around the firelit room — at the horse brasses above the bar, at the painting above the fireplace — everywhere but directly at Jury.

  “Polly, why don’t you stop with that ‘Lord Ardry’ stuff. You know he dropped the titles.” He watched her color and snap open her bag and rummage relentlessly through it, as if looking for proof of Plant’s peerage. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, she said, “I can hardly call him Melrose, hardly knowing him as I do. Or don’t.” She fumbled with her sherry glass.

  “Good God. After all the time you spent with him in Littlebourne?”

  She was silent.

  “You do remember your own village, Poll? The murder, the letters —”

  “Poll? You make me sound like a parrot.”

  Jury smiled again and shook his head. “You’re not nearly so talkative.”

  It was at this moment that Melrose came down the stairs. He had been looking glum but brightened when he saw Polly.

  “Hullo, Polly. Ready for dinner?”

  Maxine looked up in alarm.

  “Oh, don’t worry. I wouldn’t ask you to boil water.”

  “I just did,” said Wiggins.

  “Liberty Hall, back there, isn’t it?” Plant was surveying the decor in the recommended restaurant in Selby. The town was charming, the restaurant, or taverna, was not — at least in the judgment of Melrose.

  “You’re always complaining,” said Polly equably as she drank her wine.

  “I? I beg your pardon. Seldom do I complain. I simply do not care for defrosted spanakopita. And this retsina tastes like fish oil” — he made a face as he took another sip — “and I believe all of the waiters and Mama Taverna are really the rest of the Torres family. They’re Greek Gypsies.” Melrose poked at a stuffed grape leaf. “This reminds me of that horror movie about the body-snatchers —”

  “Cut it out,” said Jury. “You’re putting me right off my meal.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude. I just want to go back to England.”

  “I have to get back to London. Although Racer probably doesn’t even know I’m gone yet.” He looked at Polly. “I’d pretty much guessed Una Quick wouldn’t have made that trek up the hill unless it was damned important —”

  Polly looked crestfallen.

  “— But the umbrella; that I missed completely.”

  Polly’s violet eyes glimmered. “You can’t be expected to notice everything, I expect. I write mysteries; I’ve trained myself to notice things.”

  “Scotland Yard, of course, hasn’t,” said Plant, holding up a hand to signal a black-eyed waiter, who was irritated at having his rattling conversation with the other three broken by the customers.

  Polly ignored him, chewing a bit of crusty bread. “She’d come out before the storm.” Polly frowned.

  Jury waited for her to go from A to B. But she only shrugged.

  “It wasn’t the storm that pulled down the telephone wire,” said Plant. “Which means, then, someone tampered with it—”

  “You’re so clever,” said Polly, irritably. “That’s just what I was going to say.”

  “Good. Then you would also have deduced that someone knew Una Quick would have to make a telephone call and wanted to force her to walk up that hill.”

  “That’s certainly a chancy way of trying to kill someone,” said Polly.

  “Like the dog.”

  “What?” Polly looked suspiciously at the plate of hummus.

  “The dog,” Plant repeated, asking for the wine list. The retsina had been Polly’s idea.

  “Don’t you agree?” asked Plant, over Polly’s head.

  “What’s this stuff? It looks like something I feed Barney.”

  “Cats and dogs,” said Jury. “The death of that terrier, given the terrible state of Miss Quick’s heart, could have brought on an attack that would kill her. But it didn’t. Next thing, force the old woman right after the poor funeral to huff up the hill to the phone box.”

  “Still chancy. Polly, will you stop coveting my shish kebab? Eat your catfood.”

  “Not if there was someone on the other end of the line,” said Jury.

  Polly reached over quickly and forked a succulent piece of lamb from Melrose’s plate, saying, “You mean Una Quick was making a call?”

  “I’d say she’d been told to call someone at exactly such-and-such time.”

  “Farnsworth,” said Plant. “Everyone in town knew that she called him on Tuesday evenings.”

  “But that doesn’t mean she was calling Farnsworth.”

  Polly, having helped herself to half of Melrose’s plate, stopped chewing and sat back. “What you’re saying is that it wasn’t a soothing statement about her heart that did it.”

  Jury nodded. “More likely something quite venomous. Deadly. A threat, perhaps.”

  “ ‘I was the
one who killed your dog and the same thing is going to happen to you, Una,’ ” said Plant. “That ought to do it.”

  “I’d say so. It might have done the job even over her own telephone. But forcing her to physical exertion beforehand would make the result pretty much a dead cert, wouldn’t you say?”

  Polly, having pretty much polished off Melrose’s dinner, was sitting back, wearing her glasses again, staring up at the ceiling. “What an absolutely marvelous way to kill somebody —”

  “Really,” said Melrose, studying the wine list. “A bottle of blood, Polly, perhaps? Couldn’t taste worse than the fish oil.”

  “No, I mean it —”

  “I know you mean it. Here’s your moussaka. I’ll just have some —”

  She slapped his hand away from her plate. Melrose ordered a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and the waiter, who in truth might have been Maxine’s relation, looked at him as if he were crazy. “We got the retsina, house wine, the . . .” He named two or three others.

  “Then why is the Châteauneuf-du-Pape on the wine list?”

  “Who knows? Have the house wine.” He moved off.

  Polly continued. “It is ingenious. The murderer disguises his or her voice, doesn’t get near the victim. So even if it doesn’t work, the worst that can happen is that Una says she was threatened. And the storm becomes simply a lucky accident for the murderer. Makes it look as if that’s what knocked out Una’s telephone wires, when they’d already been cut.”

  “Sally MacBride?” asked Polly, well into her moussaka.

  “I believe I’ll have some shish kebab,” said Melrose.

  She stared at him. “You just did.”

  “It would be very much the same thing,” said Jury, as Plant signaled the waiter, disengaging him once more from the interminable conversation going on at the rear of the Taverna. “Probably a number of people knew about that phobia, her fear of the underground, her sleeping with a light on and the door open —”

  The waiter had ambled over, yawned, and stared at Plant. “Another shish kebab, if you please.”