Vigorously, she nodded. “That’s just what I said.”
She’d said nothing of the kind.
“And Barney missing.” Now she slumped back, tearful.
“We’ll find him.” And then, hemming in that smile, quite deliberately, Plant knew, Jury said to him, “But really you should have got more of the facts before you called . . . .”
Polly’s smile at Jury was dazzling.
Melrose shut his eyes. Why didn’t they just stuff him and mount him like a deer?
Eight
Paul Fleming’s surgery was a half-mile outside Ashdown Dean, along the road which Carrie had just run, the cat sliding back and forth like a boulder in the cardboard box.
• • •
She watched Dr. Fleming, who was, unfortunately for him (Carrie thought), the village “catch.” He took the cat out of the box. Wrestled it out, rather. The cat in the red bandanna wasn’t looking with any more kindness on this second helpful member of the crew than he had on her. As the veterinarian more or less tossed and held it on the examining table, she wondered if animals, like humans, remembered their torturers and could go after them later, for she surely would like to set this cat on the trail of Batty and Billy Crowley.
Paul Fleming was sniffing the air. “Where’d you find this one? Smells like it’s been dumped in a petrol pump.”
Carrie scratched at her elbows. She never believed in giving out any more information than absolutely necessary. Constable Pasco would be bad enough, and she intended to get to him before the Crowley boys’ aunt did; that way she might get off with the usual lecture, instead of jail.
“It has been. Someone put petrol on it. I got off what I could but I didn’t know —” She shrugged.
She held the cat steady while he got soap and water. “How long’s it been? I mean since you found it?”
“Fifteen minutes maybe. Just soap?” She nodded toward the pan of water.
“Castile. Beef fat. The petrol defats the skin. You wrapped the sweaters round him?”
Holding the cat still, she merely nodded.
Fleming looked from cat to Carrie. “To keep him from licking at the petrol? That was smart. Apparently, it didn’t get any in its system; I’d hardly call this cat lethargic.” The cat took a swipe at the towel. “Hold on, you big thug. Two sweaters. You must’ve been cold.” He glanced up at her.
No reply.
“Where’d you find him?”
“On the heath.”
“Well, what the hell was he doing running round out there?”
“I don’t know, do I?”
Her refusal to give out the details had nothing to do with wanting to protect the Crowley boys. She wished they’d burn in hell. In petrol, in hell. Carrie simply didn’t believe in telling any more than she had to. Not even to Dr. Fleming, whom she supposed she could stand being around for ten minutes at a time, which was saying a lot for someone who walked on two feet. But she didn’t approve of his work at the Rumford Lab. She never lost a chance to remind him of that.
“Off work, today, are you?”
He looked at her. “You don’t call this ‘work’?”
Carrie looked at him. “I mean from the lab.”
Fleming looked as if he was just barely controlling himself. “Let’s not have another go at that, if you don’t mind.”
“The RCVS doesn’t seem to be doing much to improve things.” She rolled her eyes ceilingward to avoid looking into his. “I mean, they change the language around and so forth. ‘Termination condition.’ That’s pretty good. Why don’t you say what you mean?”
Paul Fleming glared at her. “Listen, if there wasn’t any animal experimentation, what about this cat here? That ever occur to you?”
She looked at the big tom. “I guess it’s a point.”
“Thanks!”
“Kill fifty cats to save one.” Slowly she nodded. “It’s a point.”
“You do not know what you’re talking about! God! Why aren’t you up there with the rest of the demonstrators, torching away?”
“It’s against my principles.”
He looked at her and shook his head.
Carrie knew it upset him, just having her walk in. Too bad. He was pretty nice. And Gillian Kendall was probably in love with him.
Poor Gillian. Carrie watched him as he worked and had to admit he was handsome, also good with animals, also unmarried. He’d be better off to stay that way, and so would Gillian. Carrie was a reader, and was constantly amazed at how few books could get by without the Big Love Scene. These scenes neither embarrassed nor repulsed her; she merely found herself grandiosely indifferent to the intermingling of lips and bodies. It was their unlucky lot to be caught up in a fate worse than death.
“Instead of standing there mooning, help me,” he said, handing her a towel.
“I never moon.” She wiped the cat.
“Bring in a jaguar next time, will you?”
Carrie liked the way the cat’s pupils spurted in the light like red-hot coals, probably a reflection up from his red bandanna.
“God, is that a smile I see?” he asked, wiping the cat’s fur down.
Quickly, she erased whatever giveaway look had been there. She hadn’t known he’d been watching her.
“Gone,” he said, sighing heavily. “Well. I guess you’ll live, tiger.”
That the cat would not only live but probably outlive them both was clear. It wrestled with Fleming as if they were both on the mat and then flung itself on the floor.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Carrie, picking him up and plunking him back in the box. “You got one of those cardboard cat-carriers?”
He sighed. “You’re already into me for three of those. One pound apiece.”
From her pinafore she pulled some pound notes and slapped three on the table.
Paul Fleming reddened. “Look, it’s okay —”
“I robbed Nat West.”
“All right, all right, don’t give me that stormy look.” From a low shelf he pulled out the cat-carrier and unfolded it, handles upright. He smiled again. “Ten pounds is the usual fee. But for you —”
“That all you think about? Money? You know I’ll pay you.” Again, he smiled. “Just a penny. For your thoughts. What do you think about, Carrie?”
She picked up the carrier, just as much of a boulder, but quieter. “Fates worse than death. Thank you.” She walked out.
Too late.
Police Constable Pasco slammed down the telephone and glared at her, so she knew Amanda Crowley had already rung up. Probably the reason it took Amanda so long was because she knew Billy and Batty were guilty. “I’m reporting a crime,” Carrie said.
“That so?” Pasco folded his arms across his chest and plunked his feet up on his desk.
“Batty and Billy Crowley got hold of a cat and were going to burn it.” She put the cat carrier on the ledge between his desk and the tiny entryway. “Here he is.”
Pasco pointed to the telephone. “That was Amanda Crowley on the phone just now. She said you aimed a gun at those kids.”
“What was I supposed to do? Let them burn up the cat?”
“This is the eighth time —” He looked up at a huge calendar with pictures of grazing sheep on it. Carrie wondered why he’d want to look at sheep or cows or anything else on four feet. He didn’t care about animals. “No, tenth — tenth time — you listening?”
“Yes.” She lowered her eyes as though in sorrow and shame but actually to look at the copy of a manual put out by the RSPCA on his desk. The constable must have been doing his homework. He kept count on the calendar of how many times she’d been in here on some complaint from a villager.
“Well, you better, Carrie. Just because you got the protection of the Baroness —”
That, thought Carrie, was a giggle.
“— doesn’t mean you can go round untying dogs, stealing cats—”
“If you mean Mr. Geeson’s beagle, he kept it on a chain morning and night a
nd that’s against the law.” She held up the blue manual, slapped it back down.
His blue eyes narrowed. “It’s against the law to threaten people’s lives! This is the last time —”
“You want the fumes of roast cat ponging through the village?”
He closed his eyes, pained. “Don’t think I’m not on to you. Don’t think I don’t know who unstopped earths during cubbing season. If I get one more complaint from Grimsdale —”
She tuned him out. Sebastian Grimsdale was Master of Foxhounds and Harriers, one of the shining stars in the Ashdown Dean social heavens.
Disgust stamped on his face, Pasco drew a pad toward him. “What’s its name?”
Carrie frowned. “The cat’s? Batty didn’t introduce us —”
“Smart.” He pointed the pen like an arrow at her. “Fifteen and so damned starchy you probably sleep standing up. What’s it look like, then?”
“See for yourself. He has a red bandanna round his neck. He doesn’t live in Ashdown Dean —”
He told her to keep the thing inside the box. Then he swiveled in his chair and picked up the phone. As he dialed he said, “Know every cat and dog and pig and fox in town — Hello?” He asked for someone named Prad, it sounded like. He left a message they’d found her cat.
“The cat belongs to a guest at the Lodge. One of these days, Carrie, big, big trouble —”
Again, she lowered her eyes. “Yes.” She picked up the carrier.
“Leave it here,” commanded Pasco.
“Finders, keepers,” she said, running out the door with the carrier before he could go for his gun.
As she walked past the blue sign with the white P that told all of Ashdown’s villagers where to find help, Carrie reflected that, taken all in all, her relationship with Constable Pasco wasn’t so bad. She’d certainly been in his company often enough to know.
Coming along the walk toward her was Donaldson, Sebastian Grimsdale’s head keeper. He was a Scot, supposed to be a brilliant stalker and harborer, and she loathed him. How he could have lowered himself to come here and help Grimsdale with his bagged and kenneled foxes, Carrie couldn’t imagine. And another supposedly good-looking one with his copper hair and square face. Carrie had heard he was having an affair with Sally MacBride, the publican’s wife of only a year.
“Ah, and if it isn’t wee Carrie.”
Wee Carrie, indeed. She could have slugged him.
He stood directly in her path and when she tried to get round him he did a sidestep first one way and then another. She refused to ask him to let her pass. Carrie simply stood her ground and stared straight through him. There were times when she honestly thought slime like Donaldson was not solid, that she could reach out and stick her hand right through him. If he was soulless, why wouldn’t he be bodyless?
His smile was one of the most unnatural, one of the most twisted she’d ever seen. He made a grab for the carrier, which she moved quickly out of reach, behind her.
Looking her up and down in what was supposed to pass for a lazy, sexy glance, he said, “Y’ should do yerself up proper, lass; y’d be a looker.”
Still she said nothing nor did she move.
“Got nowt to wear but that damned faded pinafore? It hides too much.” His own eyes stared at her breasts, or what he could see of them, their bloom deliberately obscured by the sweater and shapeless pinafore.
Of course, he was trying as hard as he could to unsettle her, to make her nervous, to make her strike back. She just stood and stared.
“Aye, and I can stand here all day if needs be.”
Carrie said nothing. He wouldn’t have the patience to stop here another minute, if she knew him.
She did. Now disdaining her, he said, “Think y’r really the princess, don’t ye? Just because you live with that old nut, the Baroness.” Then he shouldered Carrie out of the way as if the pavement weren’t big enough for the both of them.
As she kept on toward Gun Lodge, she thought of how different he was around Sebastian Grimsdale, M.F.H. Donaldson was like toffee. You could hardly get him off your fingers, he was so sticky-nice.
Sebastian Grimsdale was one of the Baroness’s favorite guests, not because she liked him; she liked his posturing. He was forever at her silly salons, the most prominent of her guests — at least, in his own eyes. In Carrie’s he didn’t even reflect.
• • •
She was walking along the riverside that skirted the village, and came to the old playhouse behind the Deer Leap. The pub was built of chequers of local stone and knapped flint and had been simply a pub, until John MacBride’s new wife decided to open up a room for paying guests and call it an inn. Sally MacBride was another one Carrie had no time for. She wouldn’t let her niece have any pets at all. Carrie had thought of a way around that.
They didn’t use the child’s playhouse much anymore. It was awfully small and had no windows, but it had been fun when Carrie was younger. There were gardens at the rear of the inn, even an herb garden with peppermint and pennyroyal. Lupines nearly as tall as Carrie herself, roses, daisies, and all the rest “clumped” (said the Baroness) “all together with no respect for design, pattern, nor grace of movement.”
Carrie could not quite understand why a garden was only good for the thought of oneself moving through it, but the Baroness probably imagined nothing else. In her own mind she would see herself by one of her reflecting pools; or walking with her parasol beneath an arbor of white roses; or reclining “gracefully” upon one of the many benches of white-painted iron. Carrie had once found her outstretched beside the privet hedge, drunk as three lords. It was nice to enjoy one’s surroundings, she supposed.
The cat had been so quiet, she looked into the carrier to see if he was all right. He was peacefully dozing. Despite Dr. Fleming’s care, you never knew. Turn around and you might find something dead. Besides: she did not understand how a veterinarian, who was supposed to be in the business of taking care of animals and saving their lives, could have anything to do with the Rumford Laboratory.
The laboratory lay over a mile from Ashdown Dean, a long low gray fortress surrounded by a chain-link fence. Carrie saw it as a long scar on a blighted field.
There had been demonstrations; she had walked there to watch them. But she didn’t participate. The lab had been torched once by the Animal Freedom Front, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out their reasoning, since several rabbits had died from smoke inhalation. That aside, burning things down that you didn’t like was against her principles.
• • •
Walking on to Gun Lodge, she kicked up the fallen leaves, wishing she could make a great pile of them and dive straight in. Cover herself up and lie there hiding for a while. Her arm was wearying with the weight of the cat, and there was an old oak tree by the river, one that looked as if it had been lightning-struck. It hadn’t; there was a natural division that made a space just large enough to shove a small length of board into. She had found some wood to fit it and she liked to sit in the tree.
Although she knew she should get the cat back to the guest, she was awfully tired from the morning’s work. So she put the carrier on the ground and sat down, drawing her legs up with her sneakers against one part of the trunk and her back against the other. The sunlight that in September had filtered through the leaves had weakened to cast pale rivulets across her legs. And did the Sunshine face His way?
Carrie twisted her face and flattened it against the tree bark to keep from crying. Childhood amnesia. Her mother and father were probably dead, but she would never know.
That was a line of poetry from somewhere. Carrie had been to an East End school off and on, mostly off, and hated it. What she knew she’d taught herself. She did not go to school now. When social services came round to find out why, the Baroness had told them Gillian Kendall was her tutor (which she wasn’t — she was the secretary), and when threatened, the Baroness had counterthreatened with a verve and energy that could only come from the fourt
h drink of the afternoon. They always said they’d be back, but there were no return trips.
The Baroness might be a little nutty, at that. That was fine with Carrie, because all of the sane people she’d known hadn’t been God’s gift.
Getting down from her tree perch, she picked up the box, and once again looked up at the hazy sunlight, the sky like pearl. Was it a pleasant Day to die — And did the Sunshine face His way?
She squeezed her eyes shut. In a hasty moment, she had even had to name herself and had no idea why she came up with Carrie Fleet.
Nine
Sebastian Grimsdale stood at the window of Gun Lodge, his hands clasped, or, rather, wrenching themselves behind his back, watching her come around the stables. This morning when he had awoken at six, all had been covered with hoarfrost, dew frozen on each dying blade of grass, and he had known a moment of rare exhilaration. Hunting was the only thing that brought that on. Certainly the girl coming across the court didn’t. Nor did that Proud woman. No, Prad. Something like that. And here came the Fleet girl carting the damned cat. Police, mind you! Had they nothing better to do with their time than go about the countryside looking for cats?
“I assumed Barney could stay in my room—” the Prad woman had had nerve enough to say.
Well, he’d scotched that plan mighty quick. Told her she’d have to leave the cat in the car, and when she’d turned to find lodgings elsewhere — nearly flung down the pen, rude woman — he’d taken thought about the eight pounds and told her the veterinarian could board the cat. The woman had seemed easy enough to subdue.
A cough behind him turned Mr. Grimsdale from the window to confront two of his guests. Archway, or something like. And his bleached-blond-haired wife who looked enough of a floozy to be in some West End musical. There she was now, dabbing lip-rouge on. Wondered how the husband, who had a face like a biscuit and wore rimless glasses, ever wound up with her.
He dragged his eyes away from her frontage, which was ample, and said, “Yes, Mr. Archway? What is it?”
The Deer Leap Page 4