Una had told Ida Dotrice that Dr. Farnsworth insisted she call him once a week — every Tuesday after office hours to report on her condition. How the latest medication was affecting her, or how the old ticker was doing, or whether she’d been going against his orders and drinking more than her limit of two cups of tea, and so forth.
But the storm Tuesday evening had brought down a telephone line and she hadn’t been able to ring up the doctor from her cottage. So she had stupidly taken the walk up that hilly High Street to the call box dutifully to report to the doctor.
The call had never gone through; Una had passed out in the kiosk and instead of slumping to the floor, as one might have suspected, she’d been supported by the telephone box itself. Must have thrown her arm across it — as police reconstructed the case — to keep from falling.
Dr. Farnsworth did not appreciate the irony of his patient’s death put down to a gradual but nonetheless steep climb to a call box to report on the state of her health.
It was morning and Barney was still missing.
Melrose Plant would be here at any moment. Now, of course, she was hideously embarrassed that she’d got him all the way down here to Hampshire under false pretenses. Perhaps she could suggest they take a nice drive through the New Forest or have lunch somewhere. Or something. Polly scrunched down in her chair in the dining room of Gun Lodge.
Why she felt perfectly comfortable talking to him — he who was, or had been, one of the Earls of Caverness, and Viscounts Somebody, and a baron, and who knew what else, and had given it all up. . . Polly knifed the table mat as if it were one of the defunct titles. Not that she gave a fig for a title. She simply disliked people acting in a way contrary to what she would have them doing in her books. Earls and dukes and marquesses were supposed to stay that way.
“Ma’am,” said a spindly girl who seemed as shy as Polly herself. The girl had waited at table last night, had brought her early tea this morning, and seemed to be the only employee in Gun Lodge. She deposited a bowl on the table.
“What’s that?” asked Polly, peering into the bowl.
“Porridge, ma’am,” said this pathetic breath of a girl, who then scurried away.
Polly had no appetite anyway. Not with Barney gone.
The girl was back. Go away, she thought with the embarrassment of one who doesn’t want to be caught crying. “A gentleman to see you, ma’am.”
She looked down, listened to the approaching footsteps, said a brief (and rather surly) Good morning to Melrose Plant’s Good morning, Polly, and without preamble, told him: “Coronary occlusion, that idiot doctor said. Well, maybe it was, but why was she in that call box anyway?”
Melrose Plant put his silver-knobbed stick on the table, sat down, and said, simply, “I don’t know. Why’re you crying?”
“I’m not,” said Polly, his obvious sympathy breaking a logjam of tears, which now flowed freely. “My cat’s missing.”
“Barney?”
That was the trouble with him. He even remembered the name of her cat. Not only that, but he seemed more interested in her cat than that she’d got him here on a wild-goose chase. She wiped her face with her napkin. Why he seemed actually to admire her was beyond her comprehension. She was off-hand, rude, demanding, and temperamental. “You’re a masochist,” she said, sniffling.
“Obviously,” said Melrose, looking at the bowl. “So must you be if you’re eating that.” He took a spoon and stuck it in the porridge. It stood there.
“Don’t touch it. You may never get back to Ardry End. I was met at the door by a gray-mustached, dreadful man who seemed to want a full accounting of my life before he’d rent me a room.”
“Why did you stay, then? There’s a perfectly good little pub with rooms a bit farther along.”
Polly looked up, enraged. “He told me there wasn’t any other place.”
Looking round at the prison-gray walls, the plastic place-mats, the porridge, Melrose said, “How else could he get custom? Never mind. You can have my room at the pub and I’ll stay here.”
“I can’t. See, Barney might come looking for me.”
Remembering Barney’s battle scars, more likely he was out looking for a leopard to fight.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find Barney.”
He was rewarded with a deep look from Polly’s violet eyes. That he had been dragged all the way from Northamptonshire to Hampshire was nothing in the light of eyes like amethysts. The rest of her was ordinary enough. But who would bother looking at the rest of her? Melrose had to look away. “I take it you are thanking me?”
She churned the spoon in the awful gruel and more or less shrugged, dropping her glasses back in place. They often rode on her head. “Thanks.”
“Ah, the bliss! The everlasting gratitude! The hundred-mile drive —!”
“Do stop being dramatic. You know you’ve nothing much to do.”
“How gracious. Except find your cat.” She deserved to be humbled a bit. “Well, not to worry. I called Superintendent Jury. He should be showing up in —” Melrose paused for a bit of drama with his gold watch “— in an hour or two.”
Medusa couldn’t have done a better job of turning someone to stone than did the eyes of Polly Praed, now a stormy purple, staring into the green ones of Melrose Plant. “What?”
“Why are you looking at me as if I’d just marshaled the Coldstream Guards? You were the one who hung up because you were so blasted angry I wouldn’t call him. So, I called him.” Melrose poured himself a cup of lukewarm tea and asked if she minded if he smoked. From her look, he could have gone up in flames, and no one the sorrier. “Look, I did what you wanted.”
“Well, this is just wonderful. The poor woman keeled over from a coronary. But she didn’t keel, that was the trouble. There I was, thinking it was a live person making a call —”
“Not an unreasonable assumption. But you mean this is why I’m here?” He could see that her mind was somewhere on the A204 tracking Jury’s car. Melrose might have been dragged from his own deathbed — that wouldn’t worry her.
“How am I going to explain to Superintendent Jury that I’m not up on a murder charge — ?”
“The way you’re pointing that knife, you soon might be.” He moved the blade away. “I don’t know,” he said, smiling wonderfully. “Poor Jury. Dragged all the way from London on a missing cat case —”
Polly Praed slapped her napkin on the table and slid down in her seat, still staring at or through him.
Then she said, to his surprise, “Why didn’t she have an umbrella?”
PART 3
Children — swindled for the first
All Swindlers — be — infer —
Six
She wore a washed-out blue denim pinafore over a white jumper, sneakers faded like the denim, and no socks. Her hair was nearly platinum in the slant of sun breaking through the drizzling rain and the trees that surrounded Ashdown Heath. The shine of her hair made up for the lack of light in her face, a pale oval, glazed with rain. Her eyes were the same wash blue, faded like the rest of her. She looked like any other ordinary fifteen-year-old, except for the .412 shotgun butted against her shoulder, as she squinted along the barrel at the two boys thirty feet away.
“Put the cat down,” she said.
Billy and Batty Crowley had been stopped in the act of pouring the can of petrol on the ginger cat. It had a red bandanna round its neck and looked almost like a cartoon cat — eyes white and huge with terror, fur sticking out like pine needles. Batty Crowley was just about to strike a kitchen match.
She had walked softly up behind them, a quarter of the way across the heath, and they’d been so absorbed in their game they hadn’t heard her until she’d said it: “Put the cat down.”
They turned and stared at her, their own eyes frozen over now like the cat’s. When they didn’t react as fast as she liked, she cocked the gun and snicked the safety.
Then she said: “Take your shirts and sweaters off.”
“Take your shirts and sweaters off. Now! Wipe that petrol off with the shirts.”
Both of them, each holding a leg of the squirming animal, bellowed with laughter —
Until she fired. She fired into the dirt of the cleared-off place where they were going to barbecue the cat. They ripped off shirts and sweaters and started wiping the cat down. They were sweating, half naked in the cold of the October morning.
“You’re—” screamed Billy Crowley. He must have thought better of telling her what she was when he saw the shotgun come up slowly, aimed somewhere in the area of his forehead.
“You got the petrol off?”
They nodded, squatting down and wiping for all they were worth. The cat screeched and clawed Billy.
“Wrap those sweaters round the cat so it can’t lick itself and put it in that box you brought it in.” When she motioned with the shotgun, they cringed. “Bring the box here.”
“What — ?”
The gun moved again; the question went unasked. It would certainly have gone unanswered.
Billy wrapped the sweaters around the cat and stuffed it — screeching and clawing — back into the box.
“Here.”
They did as commanded, setting the box about six feet from her. Rustlings and bumpings came from the box that looked as if it were moving by itself, a trick box.
“Now you just run like hell across the heath and I’ll just stand here till I can’t see you any longer.”
They didn’t look back.
She didn’t wait. She broke the gun, took out the other shell and dumped it with the box of them in her pocket. Then she picked up the cat, hid the gun in some bracken, and ran through the trees until she reached the road that led out of Ashdown Dean. Where she ran even faster.
Seven
Polly Praed was still staring malevolently at Melrose Plant three-quarters of an hour later when he had moved them from the dining room of Gun Lodge to the more pungent airs of the Deer Leap. Since Melrose had taken a room here, the publican, John MacBride, was only too happy to open the bar at ten.
“It’s a point, certainly. No one would have gone out in that storm without an umbrella.” He looked around at the chintz-covered cushions of the chairs and window seats, the windows once again lashed with rain; at the inglenook fireplace; the pewter and brass mugs hanging above the bar; the copy of Landseer’s painting of a stag hanging above the fireplace. “But I’m not sure what it means.”
Neither was Polly, so she switched the subject. “That Grimsdale person nearly shut the door in my face for even suggesting the Lodge wasn’t the Ritz.”
“Um. Well, don’t worry too much about your predicament. I expect the superintendent can clear you when he gets here.”
“That’s so funny I can hardly contain myself. I’d like another Guinness.” She shoved her half-pint toward him, former earl, present lackey.
Melrose pretended not to hear her and looked at his watch. “He should be here any time now.”
Forgetting her Guinness, Polly started collecting her umbrella. She was still wearing that yellow mac and hat. “Give him my regards.”
“If you think you’re leaving after all of the trouble you’ve caused, you’re quite wrong. Anyway, my dear Polly, it’s too late.”
Melrose watched her die a thousand deaths and knew exactly what was in her mind — she sat there in that ridiculous oversized hat and mac, gum boots to match, looking as if all she needed was a small boat and a large net and she might come back with a crocodile.
Actually, he rather enjoyed her dilemma, even if he couldn’t say he enjoyed the reason for it. Polly was absolutely gaga over Jury, but Melrose was intelligent enough to know that gagaism didn’t add up to love.
He leaned across the table and whispered, “Don’t you remember that love means never having to say you’re sorry?”
• • •
“Having some trouble, are you, Polly?” asked Jury, after he’d greeted Melrose Plant. He and Detective Sergeant Alfred Wiggins pulled out chairs and sat down. Wiggins smiled and blew his nose by way of hellos all round.
Melrose looked at the stag in the painting, both of them mere innocent bystanders.
Turning her glass round and round, she managed to get out a strangled “Yes.”
Melrose watched as she tried to outmaneuver conversational possibilities. To him, she had detailed the odyssey of her journey round the Kentish coast and up through Chawton like Ulysses. Now, of course, she was tongue-tied.
Jury waited. Nothing doing. Ectoplasm in a yellow slicker. He cued her: “You found this body in a public call box, or at least that’s all I could get out of Mr. Plant.”
Melrose sighed and looked up at the stag. The innocent always suffered. He turned to Wiggins. “How are you, Sergeant?”
Wiggins merely shook his head. “Caught a chill. It’s pneumonia weather. Runs hot and cold. And the rain doesn’t help.”
“Quite right,” said Melrose. “It’s hell.”
“Wet hell, sir.” Wiggins said he was going to the bar for a buttered rum. Would the superintendent care for anything?
“Pint of bitter, thanks. Miss Praed — Polly?” She might have been out like a light. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“What happened? Well — didn’t he tell you?”
Jury smiled, and Plant thought he should have known better. The smile only made her shrink further into her slicker.
“Okay. I’ll tell you what I know and you supply the missing details —”
“Barney.” She looked down into her empty glass. “Is a missing detail.”
“Your cat.”
Quickly, obliquely, she ventured a glance from under her brim. “You remembered.”
“Your cat? Who’d forget him? I think I’d be afraid more for anyone who crosses his path. Go on.”
“No, you.”
Good heavens, thought Melrose, sighing hugely, they might have been playing Patience. That was certainly Jury’s game. Why didn’t he simply reach across the table and shake her till her teeth rattled — dragging him all the way from London. But no, he would never lay a hand on a woman; he would just sit there with that damned smile . . . no wonder they melted at his feet.
As now. “Okay. You opened the door of the call box and an elderly woman fell at your feet. That sum it up?”
She beamed. “Perfectly. But she didn’t have an umbrella.”
Jury looked puzzled. “That significant?”
Polly raised her eyes to heaven. “It was raining.”
“Good heavens, Polly,” said Melrose. “I wouldn’t take that tone with the superintendent, here.”
The eyes dropped as Wiggins returned with Jury’s drink and went back for his own, which he had to wait for, since he wanted it medicinally hot.
“That is odd. Good for you, Polly . . . .”
Jury’s voice purred on. He might have been petting that damned moth-eaten cat of hers. It really wasn’t fair, thought Melrose; he had gone to all of the trouble —
“Oh, sorry, sir,” said Sergeant Wiggins, breaking the spell of those violet eyes riveted on Jury’s gray ones.
“Hmm?”
“Your glass, Mr. Plant. Let me get you another.” His racking cough was somewhat more convincing than Polly’s little throat-clearings. But then Wiggins had had years of practice. He looked at Plant’s empty bottle of Old Peculier and shook his head, frowning slightly. “I’d suggest a nice hot buttered rum, sir. Never seen such weather. Ran straight into the eye of a storm coming here —”
He would turn it into a monsoon. “Just some more Old Peculier, thanks.”
As Wiggins slouched off (still in coat and muffler), Polly was becoming slightly more voluble, probably hypnotized by the gray eyes. Anyway, it was either talk or burn.
Plant just sat there turning his
small cigar round in his mouth. She hadn’t arrived at the doctor’s report yet. Thus far, the only criminal activity was the catnapped Barney.
Under other circumstances, Jury might have appreciated Polly’s epic, himself being a lover of Virgil, but even the superintendent’s patience had its limits. He was already into his second pint when he finally asked the Fatal Question: “How was she murdered, then?” When Polly simply studied her hands, Jury asked, “What did the medical examiner say?”
An indrawn breath. “Well, this woman wasn’t exactly murdered.”
Jury looked at her. Wiggins looked at her. Plant studied the picture. Neither the stag nor Polly had a chance.
It was Wiggins who finally said, “Not ‘exactly.’ Could you explain that, miss?”
Polly blew out her cheeks. “Yes. Well, it more or less looks like she died of some kind of heart-thing.”
Melrose offered helpfully: “There wasn’t a knife or a bullet in the heart, Superintendent. Not that sort of heart-thing.”
That got him a gum boot in his shin.
“Coronary?” asked Jury, his expression bland.
Polly nodded and nodded, bobbing her dark curls. She had, during her tiresome exposition, at least removed her ridiculous hat.
There was rather a lengthy silence as Polly slowly scraped at a dried bit of food on the tabletop.
Melrose, eyes narrowed, watched Jury watching Polly. There it was, that damned slow smile. Instead of beating her about the shoulders with a table leg as she deserved, she having hauled him — or, worse, gotten Melrose Plant to do her dirty work — all the way from New Scotland Yard where there would be hell to pay when he got back . . .
“Not to worry,” said Superintendent Jury. “You never know. It sounds pretty strange; police might be jumping to conclusions . . . .”
The Deer Leap Page 3