He seemed embarrassed. “Oh, heavens, my dear child —”
There was a look that the Baroness rather liked on the face of the dear child. It reminded her of the flower girl being taught to speak properly.
“You were only gone for just over an hour.” She handed him the lead to his whippet. The dog seemed nervous and baffled; its sleep had been disturbed and, worse, it was to go back to the same old routine, the same old people, to be hauled about like a dog. It gave its temporary keeper a beseeching look. The girl returned the look, but let it go, like the realist she was.
The Bedlington was clearly ready to take the other dog’s place in the sun.
Regina’s tobacco-brown eyes followed the couple and the dog. “Part of the setup?”
Carrie Fleet flicked her a smile like someone tossing pennies. “If I may say so, madam —”
“You may not. Very well. Here’s Tabitha, and you needn’t wince. It’s as good a name as any.”
Tabitha lay down at Carrie’s feet and the Baroness started down the steps. Then she turned, curious. “What were you going to say, anyway?”
“You don’t seem to trust people much.”
“Aren’t you clever. I don’t.”
“Neither do I,” said Carrie Fleet in a tone like dry ice.
There was forged between them an immediate bond. Mutual curiosity and reciprocal distrust.
She was the first interesting thing that had happened to the Baroness since the Baron had died.
Eleven
The negotiation for the life of Carrie Fleet was carried out in a run-down street near the East India Docks, but not in that dockside area lately running toward chic, where warehouses and crumbling waterfront properties were being bought up by the sorts of people who usually lived in mews in Kensington or Chelsea and realized that proximity to Harrods no longer did much for status. Decorators were followed by artists, actors, and retired brigadiers.
Although the general ambience of the Crutchley Street house had a certain warehouse flavor — orange crates doing service as tables — the Brindles, Joe and Flossie, weren’t fortunate enough to have one of those properties the moneyed were looking for. It was one of several on this mean little street, where doorjambs and window moldings had been tarted up by Pakistanis and Indians with more of a flair for color — especially marine blues and rusty reds — than had the Brindles. They had decided to let well enough alone, a decision which extended both to their property and themselves.
The Baroness was sitting on an orange crate covered with an India-patterned spread and drinking tea the color of coffee from a permanently stained mug.
The cab at the door, from which the Baroness and Carrie had exited, had been regarded through the windows by several pairs of eyes. Probably, the last cab at the door in this street had been a hansom.
“Now, then,” said Joe Brindle, the vest undulating over his loosened belt, “you’re sayin’ you was thinkin’ a findin’ a bit a work for our Carrie here?” He gave Carrie a friendly smack across the buttocks that made the Baroness, well traveled and used to the various breeding practices of many countries, somewhat uncomfortable.
Flossie, drinking a bottle of Bass, one thin leg tucked under her other on the sprung couch, said (for the dozenth time) “Well, I never.” She kept curling and recurling a ringlet around her index finger. “Whatever’d you want t’do that for?”
The question that the Baroness had wanted to ask ever since she’d put her silver-buckled shoe out of the cab was: Whatever had they been thinking of when they took the girl in in the first place? Mercy and succor did not seem to be the Brindles’ strong points. Sex and avarice would have beat them out by several lengths.
Then there were the others — children, dogs, cats — the last two categories fallen apparently into the hands of Carrie, and the Baroness hoped they knew how lucky they were. The dog Bingo, a rat terrier missing half a leg, had yipped and yapped and got up in a strange dance on its good legs like a circus animal the minute Carrie came into the house. It was the sort of animal that made the Baroness shudder — but then she had no interest in animals, anyway. Even the Bedlington did not belong to her, but to a friend in Eaton Place. She had thought it rather chic. The other dogs and cats could have been regulars or casuals; it was hard to say. A couple of them were growling over a dirty bone. That got them a boot in the side from Brindle. A one-eared cat got the same when it wound too close to his whiskey glass.
There was a young girl dozing under a pile of old blankets on another sofa, its springs coming through as on the one on which Flossie Brindle sat, a matched set. The girl was perhaps three or four years older than Carrie and hadn’t moved at all except to wave a buzzing fly away and wipe her nose.
“Well, Joe, I’ll be a monkey’s.” And she took another swig of Bass Ale and rewound the curl. “I knew we done the right thing when we found her.”
Carrie might have been an investment in stocks.
“So where’d you say you lived, then?”
“Hampshire,” said the Baroness crisply, only wanting to pay them off and be gone.
He scratched a closely shaven head, tugged at his ear. “Hampshire. Near that place — what’s it called, Floss? Stonehenge, that’s it.”
“Stonehenge is in Wiltshire. The Salisbury Plain. I live in a village near the New Forest.”
“New Forest. That’s where you live?”
“Not in it, no. I would find that rather discommodious. The New Forest is more room than I need.” She sipped the strange fluid and over the rim of the mug saw Carrie’s mouth flutter in a tiny smile that quickly died. It made the Baroness think of a butterfly with broken wings.
Brindle blinked and then laughed. “Hear that, Floss?” he boomed, as if Floss were stone deaf. “More room — that’s a good one. Okay. So you want Carrie here to come work for you. That it in a nutshell?”
“In a nutshell, Mr. Brindle.”
“Well, I’ll be a monkey’s,” said Flossie. “Imagine. Us findin’ her wanderin’ in the woods round Hampstead Heath, and here was you lookin’ for her all this time.”
It was the story the Baroness had given out, that Carrie was her younger sister’s third cousin. “It’s a small world,” said the Baroness, taking out her silver cigarette case (which she watched them appreciate) while Carrie stood there, saying nothing, contradicting nothing.
Watching, thought Regina de la Notre, the world go by. Regina could have told the Brindles that Carrie was sister to Prince Rudolf of Ruritania and Floss would still simply have been a monkey’s.
Of course, the richer the bird, the harder the fall when the Brindles brought it down with buckshot.
“That makes us some kind of relations-in-law.” Joe winked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He slid down in his chair, squinted up at the ceiling as if the price of one Carrie Fleet were printed in its spidery cracks, and said, “A course, Carrie puts bread on the table. Good girl, is Carrie. What’d you make today, luv?”
“Six pound. Pounds,” she corrected herself. The Baroness Regina had noticed that Carrie Fleet’s accent bore no resemblance to either of the Brindles’, one East End, the other vaguely Northern.
“Jesus, you do better than them down t’the Sailor’s Mate,” said Flossie, swigging her ale.
The Baroness did not stroll her imagination down to the Sailor’s Mate, where she imagined Flossie strolled often enough.
“It will also be one less loaf,” she reminded Joe and Flossie.
He looked puzzled. “What’s’t?”
“Mouth to feed, Mr. Brindle.”
Flossie stopped curling her hennaed locks and looked a bit sharper at the Baroness. “You don’t mean you’d just take the girl away without no renumeration.” She leaned forward. “Listen, we been seein’ to Carrie here for five year, five.”
The United Kingdom had been seeing to Carrie Fleet. It was obvious they were all on the dole. The giant color television and video machine would have
attested to that. Extra money for the poor little orphaned girl.
“Remuneration, of course. I shouldn’t think of taking away your chief means of livelihood.”
Brindle had his eye so hard on his mark that he didn’t even get the insult. “How much were you thinkin’, then? Not, a course, we’d want to lose Carrie. Means a lot to us, Carrie does.”
“A thousand pounds perhaps?”
He pretended to think it over. Looked at Flossie, whose finger was frozen in midcurl. Slapped the arm of his horsehair chair and said “Done!” Then quickly added, unspilt tears choking him, “Meanin’ if it’s okay with you, Carrie. She could give you lots more than we ever could.”
Carrie looked around at all of them and when she spoke, her breath might have frosted the April air. “Maybe.”
The Baroness was ambivalent in her feelings toward that reply.
The Brindles wasted no time the next morning in handing over Carrie Fleet. Flossie’s hand was busy with a wadded hanky at her eyes, but since that took only the one hand, she had one left over for her can of Bass Ale.
Joleen, the girl who had been snoring on the couch the day before, appeared either sad or simply cross to see Carrie leaving. The other children — stairsteps of two, three, and four — did not appear to comprehend the solemnity of the affair and were chalking graffiti on the sidewalk.
Only the animals seemed upset. Carrie said good-bye to each one.
• • •
Breaking her vows of silence, Carrie remarked as they drove across Waterloo Bridge, “You could’ve got me for less.” There wasn’t a touch of pathos in her voice. Or humor, either. It was simply matter-of-fact.
The Baroness twirled a cigarette into a carved-ivory holder. “No doubt. A case of whiskey and several of Bass would probably have done it.” She glanced at the shiny, battered hatbox Carrie was holding on her lap. There were air-holes stuck in it. It seemed quiet enough. “A three-legged cur wasn’t part of the bargain, however.”
“You wouldn’t want me to leave Bingo behind?”
“Yes.”
“In case you’re interested.” Carrie stopped there, as if it were the end of a lengthy exegesis.
The Baroness waited. Nothing further was forthcoming. “Well? Interested in what, my dear girl?”
“Why Bingo’s only got three legs. Wasn’t born that way.”
“I had inferred as much. Hit by a car, or something?” She tapped ash out the window. Frankly, she wished the rest of him had gone the way of the fourth leg.
They had spanned Waterloo Bridge, and she was thinking nostalgically of the old one, and poor Vivien Leigh standing in the fog. Or was it poor Robert Taylor? Both, probably . . . .
They were in Southwark, now, on the other side of the Thames and headed for Waterloo Station.
Carrie drew her companion’s attention to a skirmish outside a dilapidated building, where several boys were throwing stones at a couple of mongrel dogs that had been searching for their breakfast in an overturned dustbin. “I found Bingo in an alley, round back of the docks. One of his legs was practically chewed off. That’s the way it looked, anyway.”
“How revolting. Don’t bother with the details.”
The details were forthcoming. “It wasn’t chewed. Somebody’d beat it with a spanner. Or something like.” Carrie’s face was turned around, watching, while the cab was stopped at a light.
And then she looked at the Baroness. “I don’t suppose you want to go back?”
“Back?”
Carrie hitched her thumb over her shoulder. Her expression was as hard as the stone that hit the dog. “There.”
“I most certainly do not.”
The girl was rather alarming. But she said nothing else, just sat staring straight ahead. The Baroness took in her profile. It was, actually, quite good. Straight nose, high cheekbones. Magnificent pale blond hair. “Once we get you in some decent clothes,” she said, enjoying her morning cigarette and hoping the train had a real dining car, “and scrubbed up, you’ll be quite presentable.”
“I’m not a potato,” said Carrie Fleet.
The Baroness chose to ignore this. “You’re not going to get that animal in a first-class car, you know. He’ll have to go third.”
Carrie Fleet was still looking back over her shoulder. Then she turned around. “You could just buy up all the seats in the car. Then there wouldn’t be no — any—” she’d squinted her eyes like a person with a stammer “— bother from people.”
“Good God! You are the most stubborn person I know.”
“Second most,” said Carrie Fleet, with her butterfly smile.
Twelve
The whitewashed cottages of Ashdown Dean straggled off like roses on a trellis, up the hill-rise of the High Street and down the other side, with winding roads as narrow as stems branching off, one of which was Aunt Nancy’s Lane, where Una Quick had lately lived.
The bizarre incident of the death in the call box explained, Ashdown was returning to its daily rounds, with Ida Dotrice filling in at the post-office stores. Thus Jury knew that Constable Pasco was merely indulging the superintendent’s whim. If he wanted to waste his time in the overcrowded cottage of an elderly woman, Pasco didn’t care.
Pasco was leaning against the cluttered mantelpiece, chewing gum, as Jury stood with his hands in his pockets and looked around. “Certainly liked knickknacks, didn’t she?” Pasco apparently felt the answer to this quite obvious, given the bits of shells, little stuffed birds, blown-glass animals, Presents from Brighton, the Isle of Man, and Torquay, their greetings written in flaking gold script across shaving mugs, gilt-edged cups and saucers. The little parlor was stuffed with memorabilia. “No family?”
“None I ever heard of,” said Pasco, lazily chewing his gum.
Jury smiled. The constable’s duties in Ashdown Dean were probably limited to stopping motorists going over the thirty-mile limit and checking locks at night.
“Why am I mucking about here, you’re probably wondering.” Jury was looking at a silver-framed photograph. A group in bathing costume, arms round one another, laughing by the seaside.
Pasco smiled sleepily. “True. But if you want to, I guess you have a reason.”
Jury replaced the photo, sat down and lit a cigarette. He tossed the pack to Pasco, who took one and tossed it back. The constable, Jury thought, under that lethargic manner was nobody’s fool. Maybe lazy or simply bored, but when he wasn’t doing his sleepy act, you could see the blue eyes were very sharp.
“Did you think there was anything strange about Una Quick’s death?”
The eyes opened; Pasco paused in the act of bringing cigarette to mouth. “Strange how?”
“That storm last night. It took down a couple of power lines and apparently Miss Quick’s phone service with it. No one else on the phone nearby? Ida Dotrice?”
Pasco shook his head. “Una couldn’t really afford one —”
“Who can? Go on.”
“— but she was so nutty about her heart that she had one put in. In case something happened. And to call Farnsworth.”
“You said she reported to him religiously, as he told her to do, by calling his surgery every Tuesday. Dr. Farnsworth must be an extremely dedicated doctor, to do that.”
Pasco smiled. “If Farnsworth is dedicated to his National Health list, I’m the Chief Constable.”
“No money in it.”
“But a lot in private patients. Still, according to Una, that’s what he told her to do.”
“But she did have a bad heart.”
“Damned right. When her dog died . . . Pepper, its name was. Poisoned on some weed killer.” Pasco threw the butt of his cigarette into the cold grate. “It nearly killed her.”
“Where was it found?”
Pasco nodded in the direction of the rear door. “Potting shed. Claimed it was locked, but Una was pretty absent-minded.”
Jury thought for a moment. “Ashdown Dean goes uphill and the one call box is at the top
. Not a very steep incline, maybe. But a woman with a heart condition whose pet had just died —? The storm and the hill. Would you’ve done it, Constable? It’s pretty ironic, isn’t it? The very effort of calling your doctor kills you. And there was that comment Miss Praed made about the umbrella. Why wasn’t one found in the call box?”
“That storm came up pretty suddenly. She must have left before.”
“Then that’s even stranger.”
Pasco frowned.
“That means, given the time of death as Dr. Farnsworth puts it, Una Quick was in that call box for at least a half an hour.”
The constable looked around the cottage, still frowning. “The storm took out the service at the vicarage and the post office. They’re working now.” Pasco moved to the other side of the room and lifted Una Quick’s receiver.
“But hers isn’t,” said Jury.
Thirteen
“I didn’t insist she should ring me, Superintendent,” said Dr. Farnsworth as they sat in his surgery in Selby. “It was, if anything, the other way around.” He rolled ash from a Cuban cigar that must have come from some secret stock; it hadn’t come from the local tobacconist. Indeed, the doctor’s surgery had not been decorated by the National Health. Not with a Matisse on the wall and a marble sculpture of a fish on a desk whose polished surface the fish could have swum across.
“You know,” continued Farnsworth, “the way many cardiac patients are. Obsessive about their hearts. Phobic. Which adds to the problem. She did ring me on Tuesdays, that’s true, but not at my insistence. And not last night.”
“Then Una Quick was lying?”
Dr. Farnsworth leaned back in his leather swivel chair, another gift from a private-patient list that Jury imagined was extensive. After showing his warrant card to the secretary, whose receding chin seemed to pull in even farther, turtle-wise, Jury had told her he’d be happy to wait until the two patients present had seen the doctor. The one who had just left had been wearing silver fox. The two remaining wore fashionable suits that hadn’t come off the rack. All three were women. And as Jury sat observing Dr. Farnsworth now, he guessed that most of his patients were women. Farnsworth was a trim sixty-plus who had had his arm around the shoulder of the middle-aged patient he had escorted to the door (no buzzers here, apparently), giving the shoulder a reassuring pat.
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