The Old Fox Deceived

by Martha Grimes

  “No,” was all he said.

  6

  “Crime passionel?” said Melrose Plant, his eyebrows uplifted like wings, his whole bright face so surprised it might have taken off into the somber sky. “Julian Crael?”

  “Not quite the cold fish we’d imagined, is he?”

  They had their backs to the seawall as they stood on the promenade looking down at the Old Fox Deceiv’d. Jury saw a window open and sweatered arms—Kitty’s, probably — tossing out water from a pail. Life goes on, thought Jury. “You never did like him much, did you?”

  “I guess not. What happens to him now?”

  “I’m saying nothing about it just yet. I want to get this other business sorted out first. A fifteen-year-old crime of passion . . . ” Jury shrugged.

  “It must be awful to be so besotted with a woman you lose all sense of — perspective.”

  Jury smiled at Plant’s way of putting it. “He’s capable of violence, yes. But not necessarily premeditated violence.”

  “You certainly do defend him. Then who is it who’s stepping over bodies on his or her way to the Crael fortune?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Jury watched a cormorant searching out its breakfast. “Tell me, Mr. Plant. What do you think of Lily Siddons?”

  “Lily Siddons? I don’t know. Haven’t had much to do with her. Seen her only a few times. I must admit, she’s rather fascinating. Chameleonlike. You see her in the café with some scarf about her head pummeling bread dough and think nothing much. But when I saw her today, I must say . . . ” Melrose pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “She rather looked, up on that horse . . . ” He seemed to be searching for the proper words.

  “To the manor born?”

  “Now you mention it — yes.”

  “I think she was.” Melrose stared at him. “Remember the other son, Rolfe? Suddenly spirited away by Lady Margaret. Rolfe, I think, was her father. I daresay Lady Margaret would have gone to some pains to keep that knowledge from her husband. Imagine how he’d feel about his own granddaughter — ‘Cook’s girl’ or not. So the mother took him off to Italy.”

  “My god. But, Lily— she doesn’t know?” said Melrose.

  “Apparently not. It certainly provides a motive for someone to kill her.”

  “Such as Julian Crael.”

  “Or Maud Brixenham or Adrian Rees. With that painter’s eye of his, I’d be surprised if he hadn’t put it together long ago.”

  “But how stupid. Why not kiss her instead of kill her? Marry her and make off with the swag that way?”

  “Lily would have to agree to that. And she seems oddly — cool towards men.”

  “But why kill Olive Manning? Or did she know that Lily is a Crael?”

  “My guess is she did. Olive was Lady Margaret’s confidante. And I think she was very happy to keep the secret forever.”

  Plant shook his head. “It doesn’t add up.”

  “No. But it will. After Julian ditched Gemma Temple, she had a double reason for the imposture: money and spite. It must have seemed almost fun to her. She needed more information and someone inside the house to keep bolstering the Colonel’s belief in her if he wavered. It was clever of Olive to deny, at first, the woman was Dillys. And then after she was killed, well, pretty obviously, she had to keep denying it.”

  “Surely you agree that all of this gives Julian Crael more of a motive than he had before.”

  “He’s also got an alibi. Believe me, Harkins checked it out.”

  “No, he doesn’t.” Melrose tossed it off as carelessly as if he were throwing crumbs to the gulls. “I’ve been chatting to the servants. Don’t you remember all the extra help the Colonel hired?”

  “Please don’t tell me that Julian Crael was running about in a waiter’s uniform, incognito—”

  Plant shook his head impatiently. “Outside of his room, up there on the landing was a section of the hall that looked, if you remember, kind of like a minstrel’s gallery. The musicians were up there. In costume.” Melrose smiled. “And they strolled about. Now, if Julian donned something, a cloak, anything to cover that hair of his, and mask and carried, oh, a dulcimer? Good Lord, I wouldn’t even recognize my aunt if she were carrying a dulcimer. He didn’t need to play the damned thing. All he needed was to get down those stairs. Or up them. What’s one more musician in a funny costume. Why are you shaking your head?”

  “Julian didn’t once throw that alibi in my face when I was talking with him. He almost seemed to accept his guilt as a fait accompli. Or at least that “I’d believe him guilty. And anyway, Julian’s not —”

  “If you say ‘not the type to do murder,’ Harkins will have to arrest me for assaulting a policeman.”

  “Harkins would stand you drinks.” Jury was thoughtful. “I’ll have to admit, what you say is a possibility — though, I think, a slim one.”

  “Well, I’m tired of Julian’s ‘perfect alibi.’ Why is it so hard for you to believe that he’s the guilty one?”

  Jury looked down the steps. Sergeant Wiggins was approaching at a fast pace, taking them two at a time. “It’s hard for me to think any of them did it, to tell the truth. Here comes Wiggins.”

  Sergeant Wiggins was out of breath. “Inspector, it’s . . . Les Aird . . . Mrs. Brixenham . . . says he was . . . out on Howl Moor this morning . . . wants you to . . . come along and talk to him.” Wiggins had to lean against the seawall following this exertion.

  “You mean he saw something, Wiggins?”

  Wiggins nodded, mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, put a pill under his tongue.

  “Well, let’s go along then to her cottage.”

  “Might I come, too, Inspector? I know it’s police business, but . . . ”

  “After all your work, Mr. Plant, I don’t see why not. And I’m sure you’ll be a help talking to Les. After all, you’re good at the Romance languages.”

  7

  “He’s really quite upset about this,” yelled Maud Brixenham over the din of the rock music. The three of them stood like trees shaken by thunder while ashtrays danced on the tables. Maud stove the ceiling with the broom handle. The uproar diminished to a kind of subroar, as if the train you thought was going to run you down veered off onto another track suddenly.

  Melrose Plant, seeming quite at home, sat down and drew out his gold cigarette case offered it round. Looking ceiling-ward as he tapped a cigarette on the case, he said. “Your nephew has quite conservative tastes, doesn’t he? That’s the Rolling Stones, I believe?”

  Jury and Maud Brixenham stared at him as he lit his cigarette and then smiled at them.

  “What happened this morning, Mrs. Brixenham?”

  “I’ve never known Les to take any interest in the hunt. I was simply astounded when he said he’d been out there and seen — or thought he’d seen — those two people by the wall where she . . . Olive . . . was . . . ” She fiddled with a button which was dangling by a thread. It came off in her hand.

  “You follow the hunt on foot?”

  “Yes. I don’t ride. I hate hunting.”

  “I’d like to talk to Les. May we go upstairs?” She nodded. “Perhaps you could give Sergeant Wiggins some information as to your own movements.”

  Unhappily, she nodded again.

  • • •

  “Hullo, Les,’ said Jury, when the door opened and Les Aird looked through a narrow crack with misgiving. “This is Mr. Plant. May we come in?”

  Once they were in the room, Les went to the stereo, turned it down a decibel or two, and flung himself back on the bed. What bed could be seen from the wads of dirty clothes mounded here and there like tumuli. The faded, flower-sprigged wallpaper was scarcely visible beneath its lathering of posters: they were groups — rock groups, Jury assumed — but were they different groups? Or was it just one with continuous costume changes? The same ratio of clean-shaven to hairy faces, of blacks to whites, of floppy hats to Afros stared out from them.

  At first, Jury thought the record
was stuck; then he realized it was merely that the vocalists were hammering out the same phrase over and over again. His expression must have betrayed him, for Les said, in slightly vinegarish tones, “Guess you can’t relate to these jams, right?”

  Before Jury could answer, Melrose Plant said, “On the contrary, they’ve improved immensely ever since they got Ron Wood. May we sit down?”

  Les Aird stared at Melrose, mouth open. Then he smiled broadly and said, “Yeah man. Mellow out.” He swept a stew of unsavory socks from a chair. “You a cop?” He looked ready to discount whatever points Melrose had just got.

  “I? Heavens no, would I lower myself?”

  Les smiled again. “I didn’t think you looked like one.”

  “I should hope not.” Melrose took the easy chair; Jury had to fetch his own wooden one. Les lay on the bed, his small muscled arms walling in his chest, nearly obscuring the half-moon of curved letters spelling out The Grateful Dead.

  “Cigarette?” Melrose extended his gold case.

  Les looked tempted, but then shook his head firmly. “I don’t smoke. Too young.”

  Jury noticed Les looking sidewise at him, clearly suspicious he might be reported on by Scotland Yard. Considering the reek of smoke in the room, Jury had a hard time keeping a straight face at Les’s disclaimer.

  “Well, so am I old chap, but I do it anyway.” Melrose still held out the case and Les snatched one up as if suddenly overcome by reefer madness.

  “Thanks, man.” The music thumped on.

  “Mind turning that down just a bit?” Jury asked.

  Les looked at Jury as if that’s what he might have expected from him and then grudgingly rose from the bed and padded over, stocking-footed, to the stereo.

  Melrose Plant said, “You wouldn’t happen to have ‘The Wall’ would you? Pink Floyd’s not one of my favorites, but it’s more music to be questioned by, perhaps.”

  “It’s cool, man.” Les hunkered down over his box of albums, fingering through them. “I thought I had that, but I don’t. I got ‘Atom Heart Mother,’ though.”

  “It’ll do,” said Melrose. Jury stared at him. It was as if he’d come along for the concert.

  “That other guy,” said Les, changing discs, “he didn’t look like a cop, either. Great threads.”

  “Inspector Harkins.”

  “Yeah. He acted really radical. You’d a thought I’d done it. I mean, I couldn’t tell where his head was at.”

  “What happened this morning, Les?” Jury asked.

  “Say what?”

  Les had turned his face to Melrose, expression innocent.

  “Inspector Jury wants to know about your walk on Howl Moor.”

  “Oh, that.” Les blew a smoke ring and poked his cigarette through it, saying, “This is one strange place. Somebody’s always getting blown away.”

  “Regular Dodge City,” said Jury.

  “Say what?”

  Jury sighed. Les was obviously going to keep giving him those uncomprehending looks. Or perhaps Dodge City was before his time. Jury looked at Melrose Plant.

  “You went up to Howl Moor, and then what happened?” asked Plant.

  “Yeah. I went out around six-thirty, seven. Aunt Maud, she’d been after me to get out and see the hunt. Some fun, standing around freezing your balls off on the moors in the dark. Or near dark. Well, I got bored waiting around for the redcoats, so I just started walking around. I wound up by that wall, you know, the one where she was found. It was only half-light and I couldn’t see for nothing in the fog but I could hear — not voices, exactly. More like whispers.”

  “What direction did you come from? How did you get to that part of the moor?”

  “By way of the High. On the other side of the parking lot there’s a path that goes across the main road, finally. Lots of people take it, Aunt Maud told me lots of the foot-followers took it. They all seem to know where the hunt’s going by. Me, I could care less. But I guessed one morning of it wouldn’t kill me.”

  “Why didn’t you wait and go with your aunt?”

  “Say what?” Les rounded his eyes at Jury.

  “Why,” asked Plant, “did you go by yourself?”

  Casually, Les brushed a bit of ash from his cigarette. “Oh, I dunno.” Nervously, he looked from the one to the other. “Okay, okay! See, I thought my girl was going to meet me there — she lives in Strawberry Flats, you know — those counsel houses off the Pitlochary Road. She never showed.”

  “Go on. You heard voices. Men’s? Women’s?”

  “Dunno. They were too far away.”

  “It could have been others on foot, couldn’t it?” suggested Jury. “Waiting for the hunt?”

  Les swung his legs off the bed and hunched forward, warming to his subject, but also getting himself closer to Plant’s cigarettes. “I hear this sound, see. It’s like some thing between a shout and a moan. Scared shit outta me. I looked all around, but like I said, you couldn’t of seen an elephant beside you in that fog.” He accepted another of Melrose’s cigarettes, and when it was lit, puffed mightily as if trying to make up for all the ones he’d missed. “Listen, I booked, man. Christ, what a weird place. You feel a hand on your shoulder, you wonder if it’s hooked to a body. Spook City. What the shit’s goin’ down, man? And that ain’t enough, that other cop comes nosing around here early this morning after they found her and asks me a bunch of questions, and you know what he says? ‘You might have been the last person to see Olive Manning alive.’ Oh, boy, that’s nice to hear. I’m out there on that shitass moor with a murderer?”

  • • •

  Maud Brixenham was having a sip of her watery-looking sherry and giving clipped answers to Wiggins’s questions when Jury and Melrose Plant returned to the sitting room. “Poor boy,” she said. “Truly unnerved him.”

  The music, once again being played at full volume, did not attest to that fact, thought Jury. Neither did Les Aird himself. It wouldn’t be easy to unnerve Les.

  “Did you go up to the moors by yourself, Miss Brixenham?” asked Jury.

  “No. I walked up with the Steeds. Young couple on Scroop Street.”

  “Did you stay with them?”

  She sighed. “No. Wish to the devil I had. But I did see Adrian Rees a bit later. I was that surprised, because he thinks hunting’s quite dreadful. But there he was slogging along. Said he was after material for a painting, of all things. Why does he paint it if he hates it?” Maud shrugged her shoulders and sipped her sherry.

  “Where were you when you saw him?”

  “At Momsby Cross. Near Cold Asby. It’s boggy there. And there’s that beck that runs through, but it’s as good a place as any for a view.”

  “And where is that in relation to the wall?”

  Her face was as pale as her colorless sherry. “Momsby Cross is, oh, about a quarter mile from there. But I’m not sure. Ask Adrian. It was in that direction he went—” She clapped her hand to her mouth in what seemed to Jury a stagey gesture. “But I don’t mean he . . . well, he simply went off.”

  “And what time was this?”

  “About seven-thirty, I think. Quite early.”

  “How well did you know Olive Manning, Miss Brixenham?”

  She sighed. “Inspector Jury, I’ve just been through all of this with your sergeant and with the Yorkshire police. It was that Inspector Harkins again who came round.”

  “I realize that. But what with the raft of people they had to get through, questioning was necessarily cursory.”

  “Cursory? I certainly wouldn’t have said so. I think that man in charge goes home nights and sticks pins in dolls.”

  “Inspector Harkins is thorough, yes,” said Jury. She only looked at him. “It’s just that there are a few people who have some special connection with the case —”

  Maud sat up straight. “You mean by that, ‘chief suspects,’ don’t you?”

  “How well did you know Mrs. Manning?”

  “Not very. I tried to be friendly, but
found it rough going.”

  “You can’t think why someone might want her dead?”

  “Good God, no!”

  All of this time she had been looking not at Jury but at Plant or Wiggins, as if they were the ones asking the questions.

  “You said Adrian Rees was with you at Momsby Cross, and then went off. And this Mr. and Mrs. Steed. Where did they go?”

  “Said they thought they’d walk round to Dane Hole. That’s often where Tom Evelyn makes a draw. But I didn’t feel like it. It’s another half-mile to Dane Hole.”

  “Did you see Mr. Rees again, then, after he left you at Momsby Cross?”

  “No.”

  “When did you hear about Olive Manning’s death?”

  “When Mr. Harkins came round this morning.”

  Jury got up and Plant and Wiggins rose too. “Thank you very much, Miss Brixenham.”

  She followed them to the door, her neckerchief fluttering to the floor on the way.

  • • •

  “Pink Floyd?” said Jury, stopping Melrose on the walk outside the house. “Where did you ever meet up with Pink Floyd, for God’s sakes?”

  Out of his pocket, Melrose drew a folded up copy of New Musical Express and handed it to Jury. “Really, Inspector, you’ll never get anywhere in this game if all you read is Virgil.” He checked his thin, gold watch. “I see it’s past time for our tea. May I buy you gentlemen a Rackmoor Fog?”

  8

  “Vampire-bats!” Bertie yelled, swooping through the kitchen, an old quilt upraised above his head, his elbows beating in and out, stirring the traces of smoke from the rashers that had burned because Bertie was more interested in flying than cooking. He shrilled in a high, piercing treble a sound he thought a bat might make.

  Arnold stepped back a pace. If this was a new game, Arnold was not participating.

  Bertie started walking on tiptoe, fluttering the quilt. “They thuck blood, thath what they do, old Arnold.” His teeth were stuck out over his lower lip, making vampire-teeth. Bertie’s screeching laugh would have raised the hackles of any other dog. Arnold yawned.