The Deer Leap

by Martha Grimes

  His manner with men — certainly with Jury — was somewhat more brisk, somewhat less unctuous, somewhat less full of direct eye-contact. Jury didn’t put this down to his being a policeman. He bet that was Farnsworth’s general manner with men. All of his women patients were probably in love with him.

  “I merely meant that many patients do become obsessed with their illnesses and want to believe you’ve a particular interest in them.”

  Jury did not bother to point out that Una Quick’s story about the telephone calls was much too particular to be explained in that way. But he dropped the point for the moment.

  “Why is all of this so important, Superintendent? And why would Scotland Yard be interested? Do you question my diagnosis?”

  Farnsworth’s expression was like becalmed water, not a ripple crossed it. If he was at all worried about Jury’s visit, he was doing a superb job of hiding it.

  “It was a friend of mine who found her,” said Jury.

  “Ah. The lady at the call box.” He shook his head. “Devil of a thing to happen to a visitor.”

  Jury smiled. “I suppose it’d be a terrible thing to happen to a local, too. Were you surprised, Doctor? Cardiac arrest apparently from climbing up that hill?”

  Farnsworth continued to roll his cigar in his mouth as his glance strayed about the room, a room he obviously took some pride in. “Una could have gone at any time.”

  Although the doctor did not appear to resent Jury’s questions, still he was doing precious little by way of answering. Jury approached the central problem in another way. “Miss Quick must certainly have had a lot of faith in your patience, then, to call you every week like clockwork. And after office hours.”

  “It’s not much trouble answering a phone call, Superintendent,” said the doctor, expansively. “Wouldn’t you do the same in your line of work for someone who went in fear of her life?”

  “Yes. I might even insist the person call.”

  Farnsworth stopped rolling both the cigar and the chair. “I have a feeling you don’t believe me.”

  “Sorry. The only other person who’d know is dead.”

  The doctor frowned. “Good God, Mr. Jury. Why would I lie about something so innocent as having a patient telephone me?”

  Depends how innocent it is, mate, thought Jury. But all he said was, “It’s true that Una Quick would have more reason to embroider — self-aggrandizement, maybe. What sort of person was she?”

  Dr. Farnsworth shrugged and shoved the ashtray into line with his gold pen set. “Ran the sub-post-office stores, lived alone. No relatives except a cousin or two in Essex or Sussex. Perfectly ordinary old woman with an old woman’s complaints. No kind of person, especially.”

  It was that comment that rather encapsulated everything Jury disliked about Dr. Farnsworth.

  The same could not be said for Dr. Paul Fleming, the veterinarian, whom Jury called round to see next.

  His offices were Spartan and his patients on a lower social scale than Farnsworth’s. But at least their fur was their own.

  Paul Fleming was scraping a mass of tartar from the teeth of a large black tom while he talked to Jury. “I only knew Una, really, in relation to her dog. I guess that’s the way I know most of the villagers. Haven’t been here all that long. It was a terrible thing, that — I mean the dog. I guess you’ve heard about the poisonings.” Paul Fleming shook his head. The cat lay quiet, anesthetized and into another night as dark as the one he apparently had come out of. Fleming had found him, he said, on his doorstep, like a patient come to call.

  Jury started to take out a packet of cigarettes and remembered where he was and put them back.

  “Later,” said Dr. Fleming. “When I’m through with him we can have a smoke and a drink. I feel like I could drink the whole flaming bottle.” He lifted the cat from the porcelain table and put it in a cage. “Okay, mate, when you wake you’ll be able to eat again.”

  • • •

  Now they were sitting in Fleming’s small, crowded parlor — books stacked about, magazines on veterinary science. They were passing the bottle back and forth, topping up their glasses.

  “You work hard, Dr. Fleming.”

  “Paul. Yes. I’m also an administrator at the Rumford Laboratory about a mile outside of town.”

  “Animal experimentation, I think.”

  “I love the way you put it. Sound like a bloody member of the Animal Freedom Front. There’s research and research. A lot of people don’t understand that.”

  Jury wasn’t sure he did himself.

  Fleming went on. “I suppose people think they can save themselves. From cancer. From thalidomide. After all, what’s the life of a baby compared with a dozen cats?”

  Jury smiled. “Several hundred, more likely.”

  Fleming just looked at him.

  Jury changed the subject. “There was Una’s dog, and, I understand, a cat and the bicycle-shop owner’s dog. How do you explain it?”

  “Accidents, that’s all. The Potter sisters are known to be a bit ‘peculiar,’ to say the least. Their cat died from a dose of aspirin.”

  “Aspirin?”

  Fleming nodded. “I’d given them some pills for the cat’s allergy. Flat, white. They were screaming at one another that the other one — Sissy is half-blind — gave the cat the wrong pills.” He shrugged. “It would take more than one, though.” Fleming looked doubtful. “So someone had to make the mistake several times.”

  “Let’s suppose none of these deaths were accidents.”

  “Hard to suppose. But I guess I’d probably bet on those Crowley kids — though that’d be going a bit far even for them. And they’d have to gain access to the food.” He shrugged. “They said the cat got fed on the back porch. Someone could have got at it, I suppose. Some animal-hater. Grimsdale, maybe.”

  “The one who owns Gun Lodge?”

  Fleming nodded. “M.F.H. Real snob, worse because he hasn’t got the cash to keep the place going without turning it into a B-and-B. He nearly went bonkers when he found old Saul Brown’s dog turning up the rosebushes. Actually got out his gun.” Paul Fleming leaned his head back against the worn leather and considered. “There really aren’t that many possibles. Amanda Crowley — Billy and Batty’s aunt — maybe. Loves horses but that’s all. And she’s phobic when it comes to cats. But that would be a point in her favor, wouldn’t it? She’d be terrified to get near one. Must play bloody hell with her in Ashdown. There’re so many of them. I remember Regina — the Baroness —” He turned to Jury. “Have you met her?”

  Jury shook his head. “Haven’t had much of a chance to meet anyone yet.”

  Paul Fleming laughed. “You’re in for a treat if it’s your plan to go about questioning people. Anyway, the Baroness de la Notre, as she calls herself, unaware of Amanda’s phobia, had a couple of cats wandering about during one of her salons. Amanda started screeching and fell into Grimsdale’s arms. Maybe it was just an act, at that. But how anyone could be attracted to him is beyond me.” Fleming stopped in the act of refilling their glasses. “Of course, the same could be said of her.

  “So if you haven’t met Regina, you haven’t met Carrie Fleet?”

  “Haven’t had the pleasure, no.”

  Paul Fleming burst out laughing.

  Fourteen

  Neahle Meara had pulled the covers up over her face, body stiff and straight, pretending to be Dracula. It was difficult with the kitten rising and falling with every breath. It would be nice to be able to sink long fangs into Sally MacBride’s neck. It was dark. Dawn was just breaking outside the dormer window nearly strangled in creepers, but no light filtered through the covers over Neahle. It was also cold. Sally made Neahle wonder if death really might come in bat-form and pick you up with its talons (Sally’s were long and lacquered) and take you off.

  But it would have to drop you in a wooden box. That’s the way her father had been buried. She lay there and tried to think how it felt — but he couldn’t have felt, coul
d he? Being dead? It was four years ago, but she remembered the wake and the sitting up and the singing and drinking and found it very strange they were having a party when her da was dead. It’s not a party, Neahle, her gran had explained, it’s but the way we see your dear father is taken into Heaven. Her mother had died giving birth to her. Her da she had loved because he was always in such a good humor and telling her how pretty she was, how her eyes reminded him of the lakes of Killarney.

  It was supposed to be such good luck for her to have this English uncle with his pub in Hampshire who was so happy to take her in. For he could offer her so much more. And get her out of Belfast. Neahle remembered Belfast vaguely as a place full of bright shops on the one hand, and broken glass and boarded-up houses on the other.

  Uncle John had the Deer Leap, and things had been all right for a couple of years until he had gone up to London and come back with a new wife who did not like Neahle Meara at all. Neahle was there before Sally, sitting at John MacBride’s hearth. How did Sally MacBride know that she hadn’t also been first in his heart?

  Neahle sighed. Uncle John had changed a lot since Sally had come on the scene. And under the covers when Neahle sighed, the kitten rose and fell. The kitten was very small and probably not interested in what coffins were like and slept on, darkened over by covers though it was. Carrie had found it just yesterday and said she’d keep it part of the time with the other animals. Meanwhile, she’d fixed up an old book bag with air-holes at the bottom so that Neahle could smuggle it into the Deer Leap and up to her room. Carrie had even brought over a supply of Kit-e-Kat that she’d put in the playhouse. No one ever went down there except Neahle, and you couldn’t see it from the house. It was a perfect place to play with the kitten.

  Neahle was not permitted to have pets. Only the chickens and hens in the henhouse.

  “How can you call chickens pets?” Neahle argued. “You can’t take them to bed with you or play with them or anything.”

  It was Sally who had laid down that law. It was always that’ll be enough of that, miss. And turning to John MacBride, Such sauce.

  “Maybe I could have a fish, or something.”

  “Well, now, love,” said Uncle John. “I don’t see anything wrong with that, do you, love?”

  This love directed at one of the most unlovable things Neahle could imagine.

  They had been sitting round the dinner table, a dinner that Neahle herself had cooked, wearing an apron that hung nearly to the floor. Even at nine she could cook rings around Sally MacBride (née Britt) because her gran had started teaching her when she was five. They were having fish, which was what made Neahle think of it.

  Sally, who had large horselike teeth, was picking at them in a most unladylike way. “A fish is it? One of those goldfish in a bowl to stink up the place. No, thank you, miss.”

  Neahle went round the table collecting the plates. Washing-up was also her job. “I was thinking more of a shark,” she said, and ran from the room, jangling the cutlery on the plates just to make Sally MacBride turn sharply in her chair and yell “Brat.”

  • • •

  Now this morning there was the problem of feeding the kitten, so she must rise from her coffin and dare the daylight before Sally the Bat came round to whoosh at her door and tell her to get up and fix the breakfast.

  Then Sally would go back to bed, leaving Neahle to make the porridge and eggs. And there was Maxine Torres, a sullen Gypsy-like maid, who came in around eight, and would tell the world if she caught Neahle. She worked for the Baroness, too, sometimes, but Neahle liked the Baroness because she was kind of crazy and let Carrie do all the things that Sally MacBride would never let Neahle do. Most places Neahle was not supposed to go, but that made no difference to her, since if she only went where she was supposed to, she’d have to sit in a chair or stand at the stove all the time. But Neahle’s visits to “La Notre” were different, for Sally believed in currying favor with those who might be useful or who lent to Ashdown what she called “tone.”

  • • •

  Neahle left the kitten under covers scooped up for air and slipped her feet into her felt slippers. Light streaked the small windowpanes and cast its skeleton-finger across the dark floor. On the wardrobe door was a mirror in which Neahle could see herself in her white nightgown and, squinting her eyes, could imagine herself sliding ghostlike down the hall, quiet as the grave.

  Melrose Plant awoke in the chilly dawn light and pulled the duvet up to his chin. It was too short and left his feet uncovered, and the room was both cold and stark, but his brief encounter with the proprietor of Gun Lodge was enough to convince him that taking rooms anywhere else would be preferable to the steely gaze of Grimsdale over his morning gruel.

  Porridge and toast as cold and hard as shingles was Sebastian Grimsdale’s interpretation of Full English Breakfast.

  Melrose wondered if he would fare better at the Deer Leap and lay looking at his feet, deciding he didn’t like them, and contemplating rashers of bacon and fresh eggs and fried bread. The dinner last night had been quite presentable. Good English fare. When he told the MacBrides to offer his compliments to the cook, the wife had found this worth giggling over. But, then, she found a great deal to giggle about, whishing her brandy glass.

  He was getting hungrier every moment and wished they did early teas. He had generously offered to give up his room to Jury, but Jury had had no qualms about dealing with Mr. Grimsdale’s porridge — to the speechless delight of Polly Praed. Anyway, Jury and Wiggins needed two rooms, and Melrose very much doubted Sergeant Wiggins would live out the visit.

  Melrose frowned and pulled the duvet down over his feet, having considered them long enough to know he didn’t like them; no more did he like the proximity of Polly Praed to Superintendent Jury. The violet eyes that regarded Melrose as a fly on the wall were simply dazzling turned upon Jury. Jury, fortunately, was not bedazzled by Polly. He found her seeming inability to knit words into sentences whenever she was in his presence puzzling. Melrose had always wondered at Jury’s lack of awareness at the effect he had on the female sex. He only wished it would rub off on him. Plant closed his eyes and pondered. Certainly, he was rich enough, probably intelligent enough, even good-looking enough. Had he not thrown the Earl of Caverness and Viscount Ardry out the back door of Ardry End, he would even be titled, and more than enough. He tried to punch the pillows up, but they were too thin. It had annoyed Polly Praed no end that he had given up his titles, because she hated the titled family in her village of Littlebourne and would have loved to refer to my friend, the Earl of Caverness. Again he pulled the covers up to his chin. Perhaps it was his feet. He sighed and yearned for tea.

  The welcome he had received at the Deer Leap was considerably warmer than the one at Gun Lodge, since there hadn’t really been one. Though Grimsdale would have loved to rent the room, he somehow made it clear he’d rather not have anyone actually in it.

  Here, however, the proprietors were all warm welcome, especially Mrs. MacBride, to whom he might have been a sailor returned from the sea. Looking at her, and getting her London bearings (Earl’s Court out of East End, perhaps), Melrose imagined she might have had some experience in welcoming returning sailors. Sally MacBride, though not ravishing, appeared willing to be ravished. Though a bit overblown, she was still a looker, if you liked the type. She offered Melrose and Jury double brandies, a tight skirt that looked welded above her knees, and the story of her life. Or at least up until the early twenties, when her husband, John, a mild-mannered publican, twenty years older than his new wife, must have decided that Mr. Plant was not Boswell and stopped her. But heartily laughing at her escapades and peccadilloes all the while.

  What miscrossed stars had brought the two together Melrose could only imagine: Sally was getting a bit long in the tooth and John MacBride had a nice, cozy business — the only pub in a pleasant village. But he did not appear to be a man of great sexual appetite. The wife, with all that flaxen, waxen-sprayed hair and pout
y red mouth, was certainly one a lot of men wouldn’t have minded having a bite of.

  • • •

  As his mind turned to Una Quick’s death, Melrose was aware of something moving along the corridor. He decided to investigate and rose and tied his dressing gown. Anything would be better than lying in an old brass bed six inches too short for him.

  Nothing, he thought, would take the chill out of the air, until he saw through the crack in the door a small, white figure, arms outstretched, coming down the hall. Apparently, It had heard his door open, for It stopped dead. The arms dropped as the little girl turned and fled with a look of horror back down the hall. Melrose saw a coal-black kitten getting shoved inside the room to the right of his.

  The girl in the white gown disappeared, too.

  He stood in the doorway to his own room and thought about this little scenario. The world of childhood was a world he felt best left to children; generally speaking, he did not engage in conversation, unless forced to do so, with anyone under twenty, and certainly had never himself initiated a meeting with an eight- or nine-year-old (for at such did he put her age). But in this case, curiosity overcame tradition.

  He passed the MacBrides’ room, where the door was slightly ajar and a night-light burning. Sally had had terrors of closed places ever since being locked in a closet, and her husband had leaned over to Melrose and whispered, Claustrophobia, I call it. Melrose heard the snores of John MacBride. The next room was the one into which the child had disappeared. He tapped on it; the door was open a crack, as if she had expected him, with his hood and sickle, to come calling. Given the look on her face.