Sighing, Bertie threw off the quilt and inspected the burned rashers. They would have to settle for toast. He apportioned out the rashers thrice weekly: two for him, one for Arnold. Bertie was very budget-minded.
“Anyway,” he said, pronging the bread with a toasting fork, “it’s what it sounded like to me. A bunch of holes in her, she must’ve looked like a sieve.” He held the toast over the fire and turned it carefully, then stuck it out for Arnold’s inspection. “Brown and crispy. I think we’ll have a boiled egg for tea.” He set a small pan of water over the fire, added two eggs from a bowl on the shelf, pronged another piece of bread with the toasting fork. “Toast fingers and eggs.” He hummed a little and thought. “I guess the holes was too big, though, and too far apart. . . . ” He turned the bread and hummed some more while it toasted to a golden brown. Then he took that piece from the fork and started to prong another. He stopped and looked at the fork itself. Prongs. “Whatever it was only made two holes, didn’t it Arnold?”
Arnold’s nose twitched. He was not interested in the toasting fork, he was interested in the toast and rashers.
Suddenly, Bertie’s eyes widened, and he whispered, “Arnold!”
Arnold, who had been scratching under his collar, tensed. Bertie’s tone suggested something worth attending to, as if a cat had sprung to the sill outside.
“Arnold! The swallowtail!”
9
Melrose Plant and Sir Titus Crael were in the Bracewood Room that evening, having drinks. Julian was nowhere to be seen, out for a walk, perhaps, and Melrose was just as glad of it. He was, almost, beginning to feel sorry for him. Julian’s responses since the morning had been especially lethargic; he seemed merely waiting for his life to wind up. But the sympathy did not change Melrose’s mind. He still thought him guilty. Who had the better motive? Julian would never have let her get away with it. Perhaps what Gemma Temple had had in mind was a spot of blackmail: I’ll go away if you give me such-and-such.
He was called back from these reflections by the voice of Colonel Crael, saying “I’m sorry, my boy, you’ve walked into all of this trouble.”
Melrose went a little red. He was thinking of what hand he had had in “all this trouble.” “It’s I who should apologize, Sir Titus, for bothering you with my presence in the middle of it. I was planning on leaving today.” That was a lie.
The Colonel made clucking sounds, waving the words away like smoke. “Not at all. Indeed, I’m awfully glad you’re here. What’s wrong with Julian, do you know? I can’t believe he’s in shock because of poor Olive. He never liked her much; well, she wasn’t really a likable person . . . but I’m speaking ill of the dead.” He took a drink of whisky and wiped his face all over with a huge handkerchief, like a farmer in the middle of a hot field. “God, I don’t know. It’s too much.”
“It is indeed.”
“Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”
“When will you have your next hunt?”
“I don’t know we will have another this season after what’s happened.”
“But there’s lots of good hunting weather left. You can hunt here much longer than in Northants, can’t you?”
“Oh, yes. Into April much of the time.” He reached over and shook the red coat, which he had hung across a chair and turned to the fire.
Melrose wondered why he didn’t have the servants perform this homely task of drying out the damp cloth. Maybe it was a small ritual the Colonel enjoyed doing himself.
Sir Titus said something about a small hole in the worn sleeve. He clucked sympathetically as if the coat would understand. “The old red rag. I’ll have to send it along to the tailor in Jermyn Street. I’ll have to make do with the swallowtail for a while. Though the Master doesn’t ordinarily wear one. Oh, well, no sense standing on ceremony these days. Do you read Jorrocks?” he asked Melrose, who shook his head, his mind not on hunting but on the torn body of Olive Manning.
Quoted the Colonel: “ ‘I knows no more melancholic ceremony than takin’ the string out of one’s ‘at and foldin’ hup the old red rag at the end of the season — a rag unlike all other rags, the dearer and more hinterestin’ the older and more worthless it becomes.’ ”
“ ‘Swallowtail?’ ” said Melrose suddenly, looking at the Colonel.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You said ‘swallowtail.’ ”
“Why, yes, the coat I use when —”
But the Colonel broke off because Melrose Plant had shot out of his chair, spilling his drink, and then nearly run from the room.
10
The gray brindled cat, face besotted with sleep, sat like a lump in the window of the gallery, apparently used by now to these interruptions of its naps, for it made no move, other than to turn itself in a sleepwalking way when Jury cupped his hands round his face and looked in. No one was about — business must be hell in winter. It was dark inside, but since the OPEN sign was stuck in the glass, Jury assumed Rees was there and opened the door. The bell tinkled and the cat stretched, made several circles, and returned to its original doughnut-rolled position.
Jury let out a hallo, anyone here? and soon a clattering of boots came from the back stair. Adrian appeared in his paint-blobbed apron. The black hair falling over his forehead seemed slightly matted as if he’d been working up a real sweat. He wiped it back with his arm, his hand still clutching a camel-hair brush.
“Ah, Inspector Jury. I rather thought you’d be coming round. Let’s go back to the kitchen, shall we?”
While Jury settled himself at a listing table crowded against the wall, the kitchen being hardly big enough to admit two upright bodies, Adrian shot open a window and pulled in a couple of bottles of cooling ale.
“None for me, thanks —”
Adrian returned one bottle to its dirty bit of snow. “I guess you’re here about Olive Manning. Inspector Harkins almost had me convinced I killed her.” Adrian flashed Jury a smile. “But not quite.”
“You were following the hunt this morning. Why? You hate hunting, I hear.”
“My, my, you do know my likes and dislikes. Where’d you hear it?”
“Little bird.”
Adrian uncapped his ale, sat down, and tilted chair and bottle simultaneously. He wiped his hand across his mouth and said, “It’s true. I think fox hunting is one of the stupidest sports there is. It’s a sham sport, actually.”
“Why did you go out this morning, then?”
“Because the Colonel wanted a picture. A large one, to put in the Long Gallery, of the Pitlochary Hunt. I was merely an observer.”
“Maud Brixenham says you were with her at Momsby Cross. She said you went off in the direction of Cold Asby.”
“So there’s your little bird. Maud is not terribly fond of me.”
“I wasn’t aware of it. She’s never said anything against you.”
Adrian clattered the chair down and snorted. “Oh, come on, Inspector. She’s too smart for that. Direct attack would not be Maud’s way.”
“What would she have against you?”
“I think she’s jealous of anyone who has a stake in the Colonel. He likes me; he actually admires me—” Adrian smiled, dipped his head, tapped ash from his cigar.
“I don’t see why that surprises you. You’re very good, at least from what I’ve seen. Were you anywhere near that wall?”
“I’m not really sure. I don’t know the moors all that well, not like those who follow hounds, certainly.”
Jury took out an ordnance map, spread it on the table, pointed to Momsby Cross. “You and Maud were here.” Jury ran his finger along the map. Dane Hole, Cold Asby, Momsby Cross. “The body was found here. That’d be about a quarter of a mile from Momsby Cross.”
Adrian picked up the map, squinted at the lines, dots, and shadings, and shook his head. “Maybe that tumuli there . . . I think I might have passed that. But that doesn’t seem to be specially near the wall.”
Jury folded the map, stuck it in
his back pocket. “And then you came back to the village?”
“Yes. First I heard of all this was when Inspector Harkins came knocking at my door several hours ago.”
“About this picture: if you dislike hunting so much, why would you take that commission?”
“Art and morality, is that the lecture? Inspector, I’d take any commission. No scruples. If Scotland Yard wanted to commission me to do Identikits, I’d do it, believe me. And speaking of that—” Adrian creaked his chair forward, jammed the cigar in his mouth and got up. “Come on up stairs.”
• • •
Adrian flung back the cover from the canvas in the corner of the room, the picture he had been working on. “Done from memory, of course, but true, I think, to detail. And mood, I hope. Like it?”
Jury was stunned. The figure seemed shrouded not so much by the black cape, as by night and fog. Thin tendrils of it wrapped about the woman. She was as stiffly posed as if she had sat for the portrait, and Jury imagined it was not precisely as she had appeared to Adrian on the night of the twelfth. The form was elongated, long-limbed, the neck and hands etiolated; the face, black-masked, and rather frightening. The left side glimmered ghostlike; the right side was black and almost disappeared into the dark background. The play between light and shadow was wonderful. Fog made a silver aureole round the street lamp. It was, in its way, as affecting as the portrait of Lady Margaret.
Jury reached out to pick it up — the canvas was not very large — and said, “May I?”
“Of course.”
He took it over to the lamp and studied it again. “It’s remarkable. Only, I wish you’d finished it before. Did you show it to Harkins?”
Adrian was rooting through a jar of brushes; he threw them down and turned. “Good God! Philistines! All you can think of is murder.”
“It does rather occupy my time, yes. Is this the Angel steps in the background?” Adrian nodded, wiping off the brushes. “It’s a hell of a lot better than an Identikit, if this is really what you saw.”
“I’m an artist, remember. Observation is my business.”
The bell tinkled downstairs. Adrian looked at the floor, surprised. “Surely it can’t be a customer. I’ve forgotten what they look like. It can’t be you, you’re here. Someone must have got lost in the fog.”
“Why don’t you go and see?”
Adrian took a swipe at straightening his hair and went downstairs.
All Jury heard from below were muted voices; he was still absorbed in the picture. He frowned.
Something was wrong. An image, obscure, opaque, floated in his mind. A face in a wave, a reflection in a pool. His mind jumped back to watching himself in front of the mirror in the Old Fox Deceiv’d. . . .
“Mr. Jury!” yelled Adrian up the stairs. “Come on down; you’ve a visitor.”
Carefully he replaced the canvas on the easel, the image lost to him again. But something was still wrong.
• • •
Of all the people he hadn’t expected to see it was Percy Blythe: much sweatered, heavy-coated, bundled nearly to his nose in scarves. He was wadding his knitted cap in his hands and darting quicksilver glances at the paintings on the walls.
“Hello, Percy. You wanted me?”
“Ah do.” A darkling look fluttered toward Adrian Rees. “Alone.”
Adrian excused himself with elaborate politeness, and once his footsteps had receded and Percy Blythe had made sure he was out of earshot, he said, “It’s Bertie. The bairn’s been in me heeam, thievin’.”
“Bertie? Oh, surely not —”
“Seen ’im wit me own eyes.” He pointed to his eyes, to make sure Jury knew he had two. “Coomin’ up Dagger Alley, ah was ’n ah seen ’im ’n Arnold, coomin’ outa me heeam. Ah hung back i’ t’shadows.”
“But weren’t they just visiting, Percy? They go in when you’re —” Seeing him shake his head, Jury stopped.
“Not t’goin’ in ah mind, but t’ coomin’ out. An’, oh, so sly they was, slippin’ along like two eels —”
(The thought of Arnold as an eel nearly made Jury laugh aloud.)
“— wit t’murder weapon.”
“What?”
“T’murder weapon, lad. Wot ’er was done killed wit. Ah cudda tol’ ye wot killed ’er soon as ah knowed ’twas puncture wounds.”
11
Bertie did not like coming this way even in full daylight, certainly not at night.
He held the swallowtail prong-down and stepped carefully. He didn’t want it putting his eye out in case he stumbled, which was a likelihood in the sea-roke and on this boggy ground. Roots of trees which he could not see well in the moving mist lay across his path like the feet of prehistoric monsters. A couple of times he nearly fell.
He was making his way to that part of the cliff between Old House and the seawall where there was a place (according to Percy Blythe) where you could send anything over and it wouldn’t be seen again. That’s where he intended to throw the swallowtail. Of course, he knew Percy hadn’t had anything to do with the murder. But that wasn’t to say the police wouldn’t think so if they found this thing in his cottage. Someone must have walked in and taken it and then put it back.
Bertie knew he might be destroying evidence; he had seen enough American telly to know that. It had kept him for hours sitting over a cup of tea at his kitchen table, head in hands, debating. He had even forgot Arnold’s Weetabix. Finally, he had managed to rationalize it. There was no proof the murder had been done with the swallowtail. There were lots of things with prongs like that. The toasting fork, for instance. Lots of things.
Something hard hit his foot — a root, he supposed— and he nearly fell again. “Come along, old Arnold,” he whispered, and wondered why he was whispering. There was no one to hear him. And he didn’t have to tell Arnold to come along since Arnold was glued to his side. It was more to hear the sound of his own voice than anything else. To make sure Arnold wouldn’t lag, he had a finger hooked in his collar. “Come along,” he said again. He heard the Whitby Bull; in this silence it sounded as if the horn were right by his ear. Perhaps he was getting nearer the sea.
So that he would have a free hand to search the fog before him, he put the swallowtail in the coat of his slicker. He should have worn his black coat; this old yellow slicker wasn’t nearly warm enough. And the torch he had was almost useless, its dim yellow glow more frightening than helpful, for it pointed up branches with skeletal arms, bushes like crouching beasts. He wished Percy Blythe hadn’t made those silly jokes about Arnold’s being a bargast. It wasn’t funny. He wished he hadn’t talked on about gabble ratchets, too. And the killing pits of the druids. It was all well and good to hear about that stuff between the safe walls of Percy Blythe’s cottage; but it didn’t go down a treat to think of it when you were out here, and maybe those other things were too. He should have gone by way of the seawall, but that might have meant meeting up with somebody on the High or in Grape Lane. He wished he could hear something except the sound of his own feet squelching over the boggy ground, or Arnold snuffling the wet undergrowth like a hound reeling in scent. Bertie yanked on his collar. Now he could hear the sucking sound of the waves and he walked on a bit faster, pulling at Arnold, who didn’t need to be pulled. When he could hear the waves’ collapse not far off, he was relieved; soon he would be rid —
Something moved.
Bertie swung round, beaming the torch full circle, shouting, “Who’s there?”
But amongst the wind-whipped branches and in the mist it was difficult to tell what was stationary, what was not. With his back to the sea, off to his left he could make out the lights of Rackmoor village, those on the far side of the cove. Arnold growled, low and soft, as if lit by Bertie’s own imagination, and then they turned and started again toward the cliff’s edge. It was all this pondering on gabble ratchets and bargasts —
Something was coming up behind him. There was no doubt this time that he heard steps, or something plowing thro
ugh the undergrowth. But since the trees themselves in the dark and fog took on almost human form, it was hard to tell if the something were human.
Arnold growled again, deep in his throat.
There was a rushing sound through the undergrowth, like wind sweeping down a corridor. Arnold was barking in earnest now and Bertie’s scalp prickled with fear the same as if he’d been trapped in a tube station tunnel and the train coming at him. A bright light suddenly shone in his face, its Cyclops-eye blinding him. Bertie flung up his arm, but not before a hand reached out and knocked off his glasses.
Arnold was barking furiously. Bertie could just barely make him out, rushing at the dark blur — at whoever it was who had dashed the glasses to the ground and grabbed at his slicker, pulling it off the shoulders. Someone was after the swallowtail, he was sure of it.
Bertie heard more rushing and scuffling and Arnold’s barking was near-hysterical and it was like two dogs going at each other’s throats. Except from the other dog there was no sound, no voice, only heavy breathing. He was afraid to move without his glasses. Without his glasses he couldn’t see anything clearly and he knew he was near the cliff’s edge, for he could hear the heavy crash of the waves beneath him.
He knew how near he was when hands shoved him over.
• • •
It was a thatching tool, Percy Blythe told Jury, once they were inside his cottage. He pointed to the wall where the other tools were hung and labeled. The swallowtail was missing. . .
“ ’E goes in me heeam t’ get nowt or summat. Ah niver mind. But what’d Bertie ’n Arnold want in theirsen fer?” He described it to Jury as about a foot and a half long, pronged, and the prongs sharp as you wanted to make them.
Jury asked him who knew about it, and he said everyone, yes, even the Craels. “They been ’ere. T’owd one come t’talk about stoppin’ h’earths or layin’ ’edges. T’youngun coom too, onct, twict.” No, he never locked his door, and Dark Street was empty this time of year. Anyone could have come along.
The Old Fox Deceived Page 25
