She shrugged. "Moor's as good a place as any. Better. No one about to see him do it."
Him? He had set down the half-dried skillet and was now half-drying the pot. "You think it was a man?"
With a slightly incredulous stare, she said, "Well, it warn't no woman to do a thing like that."
"You mean a woman wouldn't? But Mrs. Healey . . ." He tossed down the tea towel, ignoring the cutlery.
"Well, I didn't mean that." She shook her head. "Mrs. Healey doing that ..." She shook her head in wonder. "That was a surprise. I don't know her, mind you, not to talk to. She is a cool one. Though she did like Abby. Always bringing her things, she was."
Melrose came over to stand by the fireplace. "You say that
was surprising as if you weren't especially surprised by Miss Denholme's murder. And you said you didn't mean 'that'— that a woman mightn't have done it. What did you mean?"
Resolutely, Ruby clamped her lips like a penurious old lady snapping her purse shut.
He oughtn't to have been so direct. Now her eyes were beginning to close. "You know, it's rather odd Miss Denholme never married. She certainly was an attractive woman." Ruby's eyes opened, studying him carefully. "As a matter of fact"—he laughed artificially—"she had a bit of the, ah ... well, no speaking ill of the dead and that sort of thing." His smile glittered, he hoped, like his green eyes. They had at least been said to glitter by those who didn't compare them with scarab beetles.
"Meaning her ways with men?" Ruby's smile was thin and a little mean. "Well, there was plenty of them to dance attendance."
At last his efforts were paying off. "Around here?" He laughed again. "It's a bit of a wasteland for romance, isn't it?'
"I never said romance. I do the rooms, you know."
With that elliptical statement and a crimped, probably jealous little smile, she was off for her own lie-down.
Ruby Cuff had a prurient mind, thank God. Ann Denholme had not apparently drawn the line at her own guests.
And who else? Melrose was wondering now, as he looked fretfully out of the front room window and yet again checked his watch. Nearly nine o'clock and no Ellen. No Abby, either. He'd just been down to the barn three times after his talk with Ruby and no sign of her.
He settled down with a large brandy to think, trying to console himself with the notion that Abby was totally unpredictable and was out with Stranger digging out sheep, or something.
Except no more snow had fallen.
Indeed, it had been melting. But it must be sheep.
A blind cast.
Abby lowered her head on her folded arms and wished she'd paid more attention to Mr. Nelligan. A blind cast had to be the hardest thing to do and she didn't even know where Stranger was.
Tim nosed at her hair and whimpered. Abby raised her head and looked squarely into the eyes of this dog she'd always thought of as a lazy layabout, although she knew it was Ethel's fault. Ethel never tried to train him, no wonder. The only commands he'd ever heard he'd got came from Abby—
So it might be possible, even a blind cast. Right now, looking into Tim's sparkling eyes, she was willing enough to swallow all the tales of Babylon, Summertime, and impeccable breeding. Abby curled her fingers in Tim's coat and tried to bore, mentally, into his mind. Sheer concentration was the trick. She'd been at a lot of sheepdog trials and she'd seen what those dogs could do. She had seen the best of them head off a mob of sheep without getting a single command.
If Tim had all that royal blood in him, even if he hadn't been a working dog since Ethel got her little white uncal-lused hands on him, still, blood was blood and you didn't forget how to do what you'd been born to do. The Queen of England would never forget how to be a queen; it was like bicycle riding.
The night had grown colder, the moon surrounded by mist, the stone walls insurmountable. Her mouth was frozen more with fear than cold, her waterproof crusty with rime, her hair straggly-wet with mist.
But she was not going to be like Jane Eyre's friend Helen and go round and round in a ring in sopping rain and soppy obedience to her torturers, a saint among devils.
Stranger. Well, she was going to believe he was out there waiting for a signal. Way off, the sheep were dotted about the hillside. It was more difficult now, the moon having gone misty, to see them, how distant, how far-flung. Mr. Nelligan, despite his habits, never seemed to lose one and he had over a hundred and fifty. ... It seemed an impossible task; her heart hammered.
Then she heard—this time a little closer—the sort of rock-chinking noise someone might make scaling a wall. She turned slowly in her hideout and raised her eyes to see, over the shooting butt, a black mass slowly rising above the dry-stone.
Abby dropped her eyes, turned back to stare at Tim, the energy that had stoked her rage now massed like a fiery ball into sheer concentration. She would move Tim out to the right where he'd have at least the protection of a white backdrop, what was left of the bank of snow against the long hedgerow.
Very slowly and softly she said to Tim, "Away to me."
Tim jerked up, turned, and streaked toward the snowy rise where he turned right again and ran like a white projectile to the far moorland.
Abby huddled down. She didn't think the Gun would waste a cartridge (and also give away his or her own position) by shooting at a fleeing dog.
Thus the crack of the rifle shot totally disoriented her for a second; her mind whirled with the explosion of it; a terrifying noise that could have blown up every living thing on the moor, could have blown up the moors themselves. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Yet one part of her mind was still and told her to take advantage of the second's aftermath of that shot. With her eyes still shut, she stuck her fingers in the corners of her mouth and whistled. It was so piercing that she knew it would carry as far as the rim of the hill, way off.
Then it was quiet. Abby opened her eyes to see that Tim was still streaking toward the far fields.
The Gun had missed.
The Gun was a fool and Abby, in her excitement, was almost getting up to shout it out, to tell whoever it was: You missed, you missed, screw you, you bloody, stupid sleazeball. Sleazeball was one of Ellen's best words.
Everything was quiet now.
Tim was alive; she was alive; the moors remained.
Melrose moved the Braine woman's lap desk, still with cards outspread, and slouched down in the deep armchair that she had staked out as her territory.
He had the Tarot and Malcolm's portable stereo for company. The Magician stared up at him; the stereo squawked lightly and indecipherably with one of Malcolm's oo-ah-oh-oh-oh teeny-bopping tunes. He reached over and pushed the stop/eject button and looked over the several tapes to see who this brain-curdling group was. BROS. The picture in the empty plastic box showed four very young men who looked like they'd just graduated from the Beavers. He found the Lou Reed tape and slotted that in, turned up the volume, and leaned back to think.
Caroline says— while biting her lip
Melrose had to admit to a fascination with Caroline's chronicle, with her drugged-out, crazy, wasted life. All of the songs were about Caroline, he was certain, though her name came up in only two. Caroline and her lover or husband and their marriage made in hell.
it's so cold in A-las-ka it's so cold in A-las-ka
Endless snowy wastes. Melrose got up and went to the window again and saw the moon cast an ambient light across the misty courtyard. Where could the girl be but on the moors? Suddenly, he thought of Mr. Nelligan and relief flooded him for a few moments. Abby was probably sitting in Mr. Nelligan's van warming herself with a cup of cocoa at the very moment Caroline was being beaten.
But he didn't really believe it and walked morosely back to the armchair. Absently, he rolled the brandy around the balloon glass and thought about Ann Denholme. Ann Denholme sitting on his bed. Ruby's comments. The persistent beat of the most depressing of the songs
they're taking her children away
because
they said she was not a good mother
A relentless dirge of guitar chords. It mimicked the repetitive, meaningless sexual encounters of Caroline—army officers, incest, she drew the line at nothing. He half-smiled thinking of Major George Poges. But even given Ruby's hints of Ann Denholme's promiscuity, Melrose couldn't imagine her trying it out on Poges.
miserable rotten slut couldn't turn anyone away
Up again, he paced round the room. He stopped, went out into the hall, looked at the boots lined up there, and noticed the Princess's ermine-lined ones were missing. Perhaps she'd decided to dine with Poges after all.
What was a woman like that, with her printed velvets and figured satins, her Worths and Lady Duff Gordons . . . what was she doing here?
He returned to the front room and the fireplace and leaned his head down on his folded arms. Police. Should he call them. About what? No one else was in the slightest way concerned that Abby hadn't eaten her tea. He sighed and paced.
Charles Citrine. Charles Citrine was a regular visitor to Weavers Hall. ... It was ridiculous to jump to such a conclusion. He knew the man only through that brief meeting. Still.
Ann Denholme had got a phone call; she'd left and been walking in the direction of that house. When he'd stopped by on his way from Harrogate, had he seen that cloaked figure against the sky taking the same route?
But if Charles Citrine had rung up, if he were the one waiting on the moor, why? Or one of the others in that household—Nell Healey or her aunt. Had Charles Citrine thought to marry Ann Denholme? Inheritance couldn't be a motive. Had the sister, Rena, hope of her brother's money? According to Jury they didn't get on. And Nell Healey was far richer than her father. If not money, what?
Knowledge? Blackmail?
since she lost her daughter it's her eyes that fill with water
That scrap of conversation during breakfast. How Ann Denholme had gone to tend her ill and pregnant sister because the doctor feared another miscarriage.
The Princess had said Ann Denholme hadn't been here when she'd made her first visit to Weavers Hall. That had been eleven years ago. Doesn't come on as the motherly type, not to me, George Poges had added. Why'd she take over the child? Doesn't seem to care much about her. . . .
because of the things that she did in the streets and
He heard the piercing sound from down there where she was. She hadn't come with the sound. He knew what it meant but he was used to seeing her, her being there behind the sound, aiming the crook or making the clicking and snapping noises or, sometimes, only her eyes telling him what to do. Or trying to. She wasn't that good, but she was small, too, like most of the sounds she made. She couldn't know everything.
What he did know was danger and that there was too much of it in that cracking noise, the air splitting above his head. He could sniff it like blood. Blood everywhere on the snow.
He had not run away. He had run farther, higher, to watch and wait.
He looked sharp to one side then to the other, his nose for the heady smell of the Smokes. They were standing or moving silently down on the moor and round the banky hillside. More were on the other side and he'd have to get behind them and—
He froze. An onrush of white over there was making for the Smokes and running faster than he believed it ever could. It was the Deadheel, the one that never moved from the mat in front of the fire.
That one could run?
The Deadheel could move that fast? But if she'd sent it on a long outrun, she wanted him to work with it.
His brief howl was not pain, not Hello. It was Oh no, oh no, oh no and he pulled it back into his throat.
Oh, no.
In a straight line from his point to its point, he looked at the Starer and panted from the long outrun toward the Clouds. He'd watched the Starer sometimes freeze a cloud with his starey eyes and go right on until he'd frozen himself, as if he was staring at his own eyes.
It wasn't the best way to get the Clouds to obey. You had to get your teeth into them.
But they would have to do this together. Oh, no.
He started climbing the hill and so did the Deadheel. A stumbling hill of banks where the Smokes ranged wide, a hill of broken shards that made walking hard, and running awful. As he ran, some of the Smokes turned and watched.
They knew; they always knew.
Wide apart from the Starer, he'd reached the other side at the same time. He looked over at the Starer through the Clouds and caught a signal. They dashed in opposite ways.
He would have to rough them; it was better to hurl himself against several than to hang on to just one.
In widening arcs they ran until he and the Starer were behind the Clouds.
Carefully, Abby dragged at the bright yellow waterproof; it was blue on the inside, darker.
In the middle of getting out of one sleeve as she watched the moor and the hillside, she saw them.
A line of sheep straight across the edge of the bluff, like a platoon. Like that Zulu movie with the native tribe suddenly appearing. Her mouth had dropped open then. She was breathless, now.
She forgot everything—the cold, the danger—for she had never seen such a sight in her life.
The veiled moon rode above a tall black pillar of pine and looked like the streetlamp in the Empire of Light.
Ellen swung off the BMW, grabbed up the white containers from a basket she'd attached to it, and held them aloft. "You like Chinese? Sweet-and-sour pork? Lo Mein noodles—?"
"No. Abby's missing."
Ellen dropped her arms. "Missing? What d'ya mean missing?" Her voice was ferocious. Panther-black, she approached him.
"Missing! Disappeared! Gone."
She stopped then and looked totally confused.
"I called Superintendent Jury—"
"You expected him to find Abby in London? You think she walked to London?"
"Shut up. I rang up the Keighley police."
"Police. Wonderful. It takes them an hour just to get their bikes going." Enraged, she flung out her arm.
"This isn't New York," he yelled as the white cardboard box sailed away, noodles cascading, falling and lying in slimy drips on the stones. She took furious aim and the pork followed, this container landing inside the mesh wire of the hen yard. He heard rustles, squawks and in a moment saw flapping wings. He turned and walked toward his Bentley, cold as hoarfrost except for the anger. Let her have her tantrum, dammit.
"Where're you going?" she yelled at his back.
As he slid onto the seat, he yelled back: "To look for her, of course." He slammed the door.
She'd followed him, standing now hands on hips gazing from boot to wing of the Bentley, shaking her head. "Terrific."
"Go eat Chinese with the chickens." Melrose turned the key. The engine quietly turned over and clicked into a purr.
"Beautiful. Brilliant. Across the moors in a Bentley!" El-len stretched out her arms and flung the words into the night, "It's so you!"
"Go away." He was backing out slowly and taking her with him because she'd clamped her hands on the window-sill. "Away, away! You're an encumbrance!" But he jammed down on the brake.
"Listen, Wonderearl," she said, her voice dangerously low, "you will get about forty feet in this slab. And if the police ever do get here, who's to welcome them while you're crashing around in your Batman car?"
"Malcolm. Get your hands off." Melrose tried to push them. They were steel clamps. He nodded up toward the dully lit window. Malcolm waved furiously.
She squinched her eyes nearly shut, looking up. "You've got to be kidding!"
"And you." Since she'd released her grip, he backed up, spitting gravel.
Ellen hurled herself at the car and he hit the brake again. She yanked the door open, grabbed his arm, and jostled Melrose away from the wheel.
"Get your damned hands q^ me!"
She didn't.
He tripped on a stone, nearly went down, thinking if he'd fallen she'd simply have grabbed his collar and dragged hi
m. Now she was shoving him onto the long, leather seat of the BMW. As she hopped on in front, he was pushed onto the metal fender. The noise of the bike's engine was shattering. As the bike shot away from the Hall, Melrose had to grab for her waist. He glanced back and saw Malcolm waving some idiot flag and could have sworn the chickens had rushed up in a long line and were beating their wings in applause.
The bike had slogged and sloshed down a green lane, come out on the Oakworth Road, then found an opening in a rotten wooden fence and they were now bucking along across the frozen field.
Melrose raised his voice, which was carried away by the wind anyway, and asked, "Do you know where you're going?"
"No." The word wailed in the onrushing wind.
"Keighley Moor." He took one arm from her waist and pointed west: "That way."
Ellen bumped across a stream and whipped the bike toward the west.
The bitter wind whipped his jacket back and he knew he would be in hospital straightaway. Still, he had to admit the race through the cold moist air, his arms hugging Ellen's waist, was exhilarating.
At least until he saw the low stone wall rushing toward them.
He saw the stone wall, knew the Smokes wouldn't want to move when they got there, knew he could fly over it, but they could only go through the rubble. The leader would try to hold and then to bolt.
A rush of Smokes just in front was already dithering and moving off to the left. He circled out to the left, corkscrewing to confuse them, and he got them back on course. Smokes could run. And Smokes were smart.
Something told him he shouldn't be tasting this thick salty stuff but if the Cloud wouldn't move, the others near would stop, too. Charge the whole lot. Waste of time. He rounded on the big, stubborn one, caught its heel, clamped down. The Cloud made its dumb angry noise, but it moved back toward the mob and the others followed. He made a quick zigzag line in front of his part of the mob, showing them Teeth. Teeth, Teeth, Teeth, Teeth. Then back to his position, running slightly behind them. He looked over at the Starer dashing toward a Cloud way on the other side. The Starer only had Eyes. Eyes.
Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent Page 31
