Malice in Miniature

by Jeanne M. Dams

  The constable on guard duty this time was older than the poor boy I had conned on Friday, and made of sterner stuff. I explained my errand plausibly, I thought, and gave him my most winning smile. He steadfastly ignored the small red felt roosters bobbing on top of my head and repeated, “I’m sorry, madam. I have orders to admit no one except members of the staff.”

  “I see.” Here was a brick wall; I would have to find a creative way around the problem. “Then perhaps I should call and ask Mrs. Cunningham to request my appointment as temporary staff. Thank you so much.”

  He looked at me suspiciously, but made no attempt to follow me to the parking lot which, fortunately, was around the corner, out of his sight.

  It was also close to Sir Mordred’s barn/workshop, and there was more than one way to skin a cat. I paused by my car and surveyed the area. No one was in sight; the atmosphere positively reeked of peace and harmony. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the rattly hum of a lawn tractor. Richard was apparently taking advantage of the fine weather for one last mowing before winter set in. That really left only Sir M. likely to be outside, unless some police expert happened to be combing the herb garden. Well, Sir M. I could cope with. The police—I’d cross that bridge if I came to it.

  There was a good, sturdy dead bolt on the barn door, so I was actually lucky that it was open and the lord of the manor was working inside. I’ve done a spot of breaking and entering now and again, in a good cause, but I’d never have been able to credit-card my way past that lock. Sir M. was fussing over some finicky job on the workbench when I came in, and jumped when I spoke his name.

  “My dear Mrs. Nesbitt, I—”

  “Martin. I kept my former name.”

  “Yes.” There was no mistaking the disapproval in the monosyllable. “If you had only told me who you were when we first met, I should never have allowed you to take tea in the kitchen, as I understand you and your distinguished husband did.”

  “I guess I’m still not used to my married state. And it was a very good tea, so don’t worry about it. You have a fine workshop here, Sir Mordred. I hope you don’t mind my stopping in, but you did offer to show it to me once.”

  “Ah—yes. Yes, of course I did. And, in any case, I owe you a debt of gratitude for looking after me the other day. I must apologize for my behavior, but when you pointed out that Mr. Thoreston must be at the root of all my troubles, the shock, on top of all the other shocks . . .” He wiped his forehead delicately with a silk handkerchief. “You are most welcome to look at my humble work, dear lady. What would you particularly like to see?”

  I didn’t have a clue, of course. I was there to see what I could see, talk to him, and draw whatever conclusions presented themselves. “Whatever you’d like to show me. I love to see how fine craftsmen do their work.”

  A little of the best butter never hurts, but as my eyes wandered I could see that I spoke nothing but the truth. The room was untidy, but only in the way that an artist’s milieu always is when work is being done. Tools that were not in use were clean and hanging neatly in their appointed places. The workbench, a fine smooth surface, had vises clamped to its edge, ranging in size from small to very small. There was a table saw, a drill press, a lathe, all somewhat smaller than the usual versions. Everything shone with care; some of the tools looked new. It was, in short, a fully equipped and very professional carpenter’s shop on a reduced scale, and the bits and pieces that I could see lying around in various states of completion were extremely impressive.

  Sir Mordred melted completely under my beams of appreciation. “Perhaps, then, you would like to see the steps in the manufacture of fine miniature furniture. As it happens, I have just begun a new Louis XIV desk . . .”

  He showed me the processes and explained them in exhaustive detail. As usual with Sir Mordred, I soon felt I was learning a great deal more than I wanted to know about the subject, but there is no stopping a true enthusiast once he gets started. “And what is this in the corner?” I asked finally. “It looks like a small kiln. Do you make your own pottery?”

  He smiled patronizingly. “I do, of course, but not in that kiln. That is for drying wood, when it is necessary to produce an aged effect in a short time. The pottery kiln is in the next room, where I store several kinds of clay, as well as the molds for various kinds of tableware, ceiling decorations, vases . . .”

  I suppose it was interesting in its way, but it was also useless. I was trying to invent an excuse to make my escape when Richard Adam walked in the door, in the middle of a lecture on the various glaze effects produced by various techniques. “Salt-glazing, of course, is a very old—yes, Adam, what is it?”

  “I’ve finished with the lawns, as you wished. Was there anything else? I should get to digging the bulbs while there’s still some daylight.”

  His tone was almost rude, and little Sir M. looked distinctly annoyed. I seized the opportunity.

  “I’ve kept you far too long, Sir Mordred. You obviously have responsibilities to tend to. Thank you so much for showing me what you do; I must be going.”

  I shot out into the daylight. The long shadows of evening were beginning to stretch out against the lawn, and birds were circling the small lake that dominated the back garden. One bird, coming in for a landing, took my breath away. From where I stood, about fifty yards away, it looked like an airplane, with a wingspan of at least six feet. I moved slowly across the grass, trying to be perfectly quiet, and I was nearly at the edge of the water when the great blue heron saw me, rose magnificently, and flew away. I followed it with my eyes, tilting my neck back and nearly losing my balance on the muddy shore of the lake.

  As I looked down for surer footing, I saw it. I moved back then, slowly and carefully, like a cat backing up, until I stood safely on the grass where I could leave no more footprints, and studied what I had seen.

  Something had been dragged across that little patch of mud at the edge of the lake, something heavy. The shoes that had slipped had been deep in the mud. And faintly, close to one of the footprints, was the slight but unmistakable print of a tire. Not a car tire, narrower.

  A motorcycle tire?

  11

  If Inspector Morrison had been in sight I would have gone straight to him, but he wasn’t. I didn’t even know if he was here, or back at the police station, or out working on some other case, and I would be stopped if I tried to wander around the Hall looking for him. So I climbed in my car, drove home in reckless haste, and put in an urgent call to Alan.

  He returned the call promptly.

  “Alan, I’ve been out to the Hall, and there’s something the police need to look into right away.”

  I detailed the marks I had seen at the edge of the lake. “If Claude is still missing . . .”

  I didn’t have to spell it out for him, of course. “I’ll get on to Morrison myself, and then ring you back.”

  To my relief, he said nothing to curtail my activities. But why did he need to call me back? I’d told him everything I knew. Had he had second thoughts, or third or fourth? Would he call me off?

  I sat by the phone with mounting apprehension and impatience, and snatched it up on the first ring.

  “The tracks are new,” Alan said without preamble. “Morrison said they checked the lake carefully on Saturday, on the principle of being thorough. It’s a convenient place to get rid of anything one doesn’t want found. There were no signs then of anyone having been near it. He’s sending men out to the Hall immediately.”

  He cleared his throat. “You’ve been very helpful, love. It was clever of you to notice those tracks, and I’m glad you reported back immediately. There are—a few things Morrison told me that you might want to know.”

  I drew in a long breath. “Yes?”

  “I’m meant to be in a meeting at the moment, so this will have to be quick. Three things: First, Thoreston was arrested yesterday in York, and has been brought back to Sherebury for questioning. Second, one of the gardens at the Hall does, in f
act, have a fine stand of monkshood, and some of it appears to have been recently cut. Third, the head gardener is not being particularly cooperative. Morrison is sure he’s lying about something, but can’t tell what.”

  I didn’t like Alan’s last piece of news, and I was very, very glad he couldn’t see my face. “Well, that’s all very interesting,” I said cautiously. “By the way, what exactly did Thoreston do to cook the books? I’m not an expert on embezzlement.”

  He chuckled. “That’s comforting to know. I shall rest easier, knowing my retirement account is safe. He did it the easiest way, ghost payroll. Brocklesby made it simple for him, not knowing the names of the casual employees.”

  “Just as I thought! Penny-ante, and not very imaginative. I cannot see him as a murderer. No autopsy results yet, I suppose?”

  “No, but Morrison has asked them to check specifically for aconite.”

  “And I take it Claude is still missing?”

  “It looks,” said Alan a trifle grimly, “as though you may have found him.”

  After I’d hung up, I sat and chewed the inside of my lip for some time, thinking furiously. Samantha didn’t like it. She circled my feet with anxious little chirps and finally jumped into my lap and fixed her cross-eyed blue gaze on me.

  “It’s all right, Sam. I’m trying to decide what to do, that’s all. No, don’t lick my nose! Your tongue is rough and you have the most terrible tuna breath.”

  Satisfied that she had captured my attention, Sam settled herself into a purring mound, and I stroked her thick, silken fur and thought some more.

  If the tracks by the lake had been made sometime between Saturday and this afternoon, Monday, it was extremely unlikely that John Thoreston had anything to do with them. I got out a road atlas and made some mental calculations. York is a good long way from Sherebury, 250 miles or so, I discovered, with London in between. True, it was motorway most of the way, and when the traffic is reasonable, motorways are fast—much faster, usually, than their official speed limit of seventy. The British, on the whole, pay even less respect to speed laws than Americans do. Offsetting that, however, were two facts. The first was that getting out of Sherebury and onto the motorway involves a lot of narrow country roads, and the second was the fearsome traffic in and around London, which is guaranteed to produce delays. Not only that, but if I were John Thoreston, with cause to fear the police, I would take extreme care not to break any traffic laws.

  Suppose that Thoreston had been in Sherebury all the time, hiding out somewhere, and had, for some reason I didn’t bother to question just then, killed Claude and dumped him in the lake. Now. If he were driving, I’d give him at least six hours to get to York. I didn’t, of course, know that he had a car. If he’d had to rely on trains, with weekend schedules as unreliable as they are, it was anybody’s guess. I was once delayed for two hours on a fifty-mile run, the excuses ranging from “the late arrival of the driver” to “debris on the line.”

  All right. Assume that he owned a car, or had stolen one. He might just have been able to kill Claude Saturday night, dispose of the body, and, late at night when traffic was lighter, get to York in time to be arrested on Sunday. That was if he had headed straight for York, with no deviations.

  It was possible, but it seemed contrived, and wildly unlikely. Why on earth should he rush to York just in time to step into the arms of the police? It would have been more in character for him to wander, more or less aimlessly, after Mrs. Lathrop’s death, knowing that his peculations would inevitably be discovered and trying to avoid the consequences. He might have ended up in York because he had some connections there, or maybe it just seemed a likely place to hide—a big city far removed from the scene of the crime. It was even possible that he didn’t know about Mrs. Lathrop’s death, that he had decided to run because Sir Mordred seemed to be getting too interested in the books.

  It was all guesswork, of course, until I knew exactly when Morrison’s men had checked the lake on Saturday and found it innocent, and exactly when Thoreston had been arrested on Sunday, and whether he had a car. And those things, of course, were very well known to the police and therefore not matters about which I could profitably speculate.

  The police would also be making exhaustive inquiries into Claude’s movements. Where had be been since his mother’s death? What had brought him back to Brocklesby Hall? When would someone, Thoreston or anyone else, have had a chance to kill him?

  I tried to shift Sam; my right leg had gone to sleep. She growled in her sleep, gently dug her rear claws into my thigh, and stayed where she was.

  The police would be coping with all these matters, and I was theorizing ahead of my data, as Sherlock Holmes pedantically warned never to do, but I thought my conclusions were warranted. I believed Thoreston was out of the picture, and Claude, by reason of being dead, was, too. It was just conceivable, I supposed, that Claude could have pushed his motorbike into the lake and walked off into the blue, but I could think of no possible reason for him to do so. And assuming he was dead, and Thoreston was not responsible for his death, I either had to posit two murderers at Brocklesby Hall or look for another suspect.

  And who was there?

  I reached for the telephone pad and pencil and made a desk of Sam’s back. There weren’t so many people left, unless one included the entire staff of Brocklesby Hall and the Museum. Any of them could have stuck around after the house was locked up and poisoned Mrs. Lathrop’s tea, but why would they? I had no idea what might motivate the pleasant woman who ran the shop, or the women who volunteered in that lamentable tearoom, or the guides, or—no, it was hopeless.

  I had to concentrate on the people I knew.

  Which meant:

  Bob Finch

  Meg Cunningham

  Richard Adam

  I chewed on the pencil for a moment and looked at the pad uneasily. Three names. One a good friend, one beginning to be a friend. The third I didn’t care for much at all, but if he was the one, Meg would . . .

  Meg is the best suspect, you know, whispered that nasty inner voice that torments me from time to time. Meg is a mother tiger. She’d do anything to protect Jemima. The Lathrops were a threat to her. The Lathrops are both dead.

  I squirmed, mentally and physically, and Sam swore at me in feline Siamese and jumped down. She didn’t, unfortunately, distract me from the painful idea I’d managed to keep at bay until now. Meg could have killed Mrs. Lathrop, easily. Claude would have presented more of a challenge, but Richard—oh, Richard would have loved dealing with Claude once and for all . . .

  Horrified by the picture I had conjured up, I substituted one of Meg, weeping and miserable. Was that the face of a murderess? Or a conspirator?

  Or, the nasty voice suggested, a woman terrified for her lover?

  I wrenched my unruly thoughts back to the other name on my list Bob Finch.

  Supposing, just for the sake of the argument, that Bob had stolen some miniatures and Mrs. Lathrop had found out about it. Never mind how wildly unlikely the scenario was, but supposing. What would Bob have done then?

  If he’d been drunk at the time—I modified that thought to if he’d been exceedingly drunk—he might, I supposed, have picked up a handy flowerpot and thrown it at her, or conked her on the head with a spade, or something of the kind.

  Would he, by any stretch of the imagination, have bided his time, gone out to the garden, picked some monkshood, dried it and shredded it up and deposited it stealthily in Mrs. Lathrop’s caddy full of herbal tea, for her to drink later and die in agony?

  And would Mrs. Lathrop, meanwhile, have sat by, telling no one about Bob’s sins, patiently waiting to be murdered?

  I crossed Bob’s name off the list while knowing it probably remained on the police list. I’d deal with that later.

  That left Meg and Richard.

  Alone or together. And Richard was lying to the police. And Meg was acting very oddly.

  Where were Meg and Richard on the Wednesday night
before Mrs. Lathrop died?

  I knew as I wrote the question on the pad that it was pointless. The police had certainly already questioned both Meg and Richard about their movements, just as a matter of routine.

  No, there was no point in my going into that kind of thing. What I could do better than the police was find out about people, what worried them, what made them happy, what they were afraid of. I already knew quite a bit about Meg; it was time to find out about Richard.

  I headed across the backyard to Jane’s.

  I tapped on the kitchen door and walked in, to be met by savory smells, assorted bulldogs, and the sight of Jane seated at the table, knife and fork in her hands and a book open by her plate.

  “Oh, good grief, I’m sorry. I forgot it was supper time. I’ll come back.”

  Jane looked at me sharply and pulled out the chair next to her. “Casseroled chicken. There’s plenty; get yourself a plate.”

  I know Jane’s kitchen almost as well as my own. I found a plate and cutlery, helped myself to chicken and vegetables, and let Jane pour me a glass of white burgundy. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until I put the first forkful into my mouth, then I applied myself single-mindedly to the business of eating.

  “Apple tart?” she said after a while.

  I looked down at my empty plate. “Oh, Jane, I’m ashamed of myself! Eating you out of house and home, and without a word of thanks, even!”

  “Nary a word of any kind,” she said with raised eyebrows. “What’s wrong?”

  “What makes you think something’s wrong?” I asked defensively.

  “Forgot it was mealtime. So hungry you forgot to talk.” She was ticking items off on her fingertips. “Forgot to be polite—you, of all people. Something’s on your mind.”

  “You know me too well. I’d intended to be subtle about it. Yes, I’d love some apple tart, and some coffee if you’re having some, and some information.”