Her head bent to the kitten in her lap, its coat as shiny-black as her bobbed hair, she said, “Now, I suppose you’ll tell.”
“Tell? Not only do I not know what to tell, I do not know whom to tell it to. Consider yourself safe.”
There was a moment’s scrutiny — a penetrating appraisal of his face — from eyes of such a rich blue one was surprised to see tiny knives in there. Then she looked at the window and the panes growing smoky white and put the kitten from her lap. “Okay. Maxine’s probably not here yet, so let’s go.”
The carpet slippers slapped past him and as he hesitated, she motioned impatiently with a tilt of her head that he was to follow. He wondered if they were both to glide, arms outstretched, down the hall to their crypt.
“Where?”
“To the kitchen,” she whispered over her shoulder, putting a finger against her mouth.
The kitchen. Tea. He followed down the narrow back stair where he felt the rising damp almost like tendrils of fog.
“What are we doing here?” He looked to see if there was a kettle on the hob.
She was busy sticking her head in a large fridge — there were two of them in the pub’s kitchen, in addition to a large freezer and a huge butcher’s table in the center of the room. The floor was stone and icy-cold. Now she was dragging out milk and bits of cheese and things that she stacked along her arm. “It’s got to be fed. You can carry some of this.”
“I see. But why were you walking along with your arms out?” Melrose extended his own, in imitation. “Were you sleepwalking? Or, I mean, pretending to?”
“No. Here.” She handed him a knife and a small plate. “Cut up the cheese in little bits. Thank you.” This was added as an afterthought and without so much as tossing a sweet smile in his direction.
“You had your arms out —” Melrose was determined.
Crossly, she said, “We’ve got to be quick about this or Maxine or somebody’ll come in. Can’t you cut the cheese faster? You haven’t done it at all. I’m nearly finished with mine. Do you eat venison?” She was looking toward the big freezer. “I think it’s awful to kill deer and eat them. You must be the guest.” She did not stop for confirmation or even temper her speech long enough to be surprised that the Deer Leap’s single guest was down here doing scullery duty around seven A.M.
“For my labors, I would appreciate a cup of tea,” he said, cutting the cheese in bits.
“We don’t have time. Can’t you make those pieces littler?”
“We’re not feeding a mouse; it’s a cat,” he said.
“It’s only eight weeks old. I’ll get the milk and you run down to the playhouse and get the Kit-e-Kat.” Her head was buried in the fridge.
Run to the playhouse. That made as much sense as anything in this dawn patrol. “I do not feel like running to the playhouse —” How could such rich, almost navy blue eyes give him that look full of splintered glass? “Oh, for heaven’s sake. I shall do it only if you put the kettle on.” Must he wheedle this person? “And where is this ‘playhouse’?”
She looked as if she could have wiped the floor with him, but her slippers slapped on the stone as she got out the kettle. “Just down the walk behind those trees. And don’t dawdle, please.”
Dawdle? Outside in his dressing gown? “Just have the water boiling,” he commanded.
• • •
The playhouse was just that: a tiny place where he expected to find the seven dwarfs. As he turned the knob on the door he was thinking of Snow White. Hadn’t she had trouble with her bed, too?
It was dark and musty in the the little place, and his eye fell on the supply of Kit-e-Kat in the corner.
Unfortunately, it had to travel over the body of Sally MacBride on its way.
Melrose needed no warning about dawdling on his way back up the path. The sprite had probably tired of waiting — he had spent perhaps thirty seconds assuring himself the woman was, indeed, dead — and the kettle was whistling its long, screeching note.
He shoved it off the burner and went for the telephone.
Fifteen
There was so little room in the playhouse, they kept bumping into one another, or at least Wiggins and Pasco did. Jury managed to keep his own space clear. Pasco had called the Selby station. They would try to get hold of Farnsworth, the doctor they seldom needed to call in as a medical examiner. If not him, someone from the local hospital.
“Not a mark, except for the hands.” Jury got up. “Leave it until the M.E. gets here.” He shook his head, looking around the single, square room. Perhaps twelve by twelve, he figured. Tiny. The few scraps of furniture — rocking chair, small bed, lamp, table — were clearly leavings from the dustbin men or unwanted sticks from the pub.
“MacBride’s little girl’s place?” He saw a sack of catfood in the corner.
“Niece,” said Pasco, still looking wonderingly at Melrose Plant, now wearing a Chesterfield coat over his dressing gown.
Plant was getting damned irritated. “Constable Pasco. I wish you’d stop looking at me that way.”
“I just can’t figure out what you were doing down here — getting a can of Kit-e-Kat, you said?” Pasco gave him a flinty smile.
“Hell,” said Melrose.
“Stop it, both of you.” Jury was not happy.
Neither was Plant. “Look, what I really wanted was tea. So I followed the ghostly child to the kitchen —”
“Neahle,” said Pasco.
“What? What sort of name is that?”
Pasco, used to sleeping in until nine, yanked from bed before eight and with another death on his hands, was not happy either. “Neahle Meara. Irish.”
“Nail? What an awful name for one so young.”
“Spelled N-e-a-h-l-e.”
“Oh. Rather pretty.”
Jury had picked up an enamel doorknob, handkerchief wrapped around it. “Bag this, Wiggins.”
Sergeant Wiggins had been standing hunched in the doorway. There wasn’t room for a fourth. He took a plastic bag from a supply he carried about like cough drops. “Shouldn’t we wait for the Selby —”
“Probably, but I’m afraid of too many more feet mucking up this place. We’ve probably done enough damage as it is.”
Plant said, “Look, I didn’t touch anything.”
Jury smiled up at him from his examination of the metal stem from which the knob had come off. “I know that.” He got up. His head nearly brushed the ceiling. “You only came for the Kit-e-Kat.”
Pasco smiled. Melrose smiled back.
Pasco was kneeling where Jury had kneeled, looking at the inside of the wooden door. “Terrible. It looks like she was trying to claw her way out.”
“Claustrophobic,” said Plant, frowning. “You remember how she was talking about cracking their bedroom door at night.” Plant bent to look at the marks. Splintered wood and blood.
Jury could tell from the state of the fingers where the streaks of dried blood on the door had come from. “Absolute panic.” He frowned and turned to Pasco. “Why would she be down here, anyway, Pasco? How well did you know her?”
Although Pasco’s about as well as anyone else, I guess was casual enough, Jury noticed the flush spreading upward from his open collar. “I don’t know why she’d be down here.”
• • •
After the Selby police pathologist had examined the body and it had been zipped up in a rubber sheet, he put the cause of death down to heart failure.
“Like Una Quick.”
“Brought on by fright, from the looks of it,” said the pathologist. “If she was, as you say, a claustrophobic.”
Detective Inspector Russell, from the Selby C.I.D., shook his head. “I’ll be damned.” He looked at Jury unhappily, whether from having Scotland Yard here or from a second death in this tiny village, Jury couldn’t say. “What the hell was the woman doing down here?”
“We don’t know. Any objections to my being here? It was a friend of mine who discovered Una Quick’s body.�
��
Inspector Russell didn’t seem to mind; indeed, he looked relieved. If Scotland Yard wanted Selby-Ashdown corpses, they could have them. “I’ll check it with the Chief Constable. That door —” Again he shook his head. “Knob just came off?”
“Maybe.”
Russell took out his handkerchief and tried to twist the stem. It was old and rusted and wouldn’t give. “She couldn’t get it back on.” The iron fitting inside the porcelain was broken, making it impossible to fit the knob to the stem. It was a very old doorknob.
“Let’s go talk to MacBride. Does he know?”
“I took the liberty,” said Melrose, “of informing him there’d been an accident. In a word, yes. He knows.”
“Would you mind if my sergeant went along?” asked Jury, who was looking around the tiny house, his gaze finally fixed on the chair and the lamp. “And Mr. Plant?”
“Your sergeant, yes. And Pasco.” He squinted at Melrose Plant. “But I don’t see why —”
“He found the body,” said Jury.
“Okay. What about you?” A mild suggestion that Scotland Yard was leaving the dog’s work to the Hampshire constabulary.
“I’d like to talk to the girl — what’s her name?” he asked Pasco.
“Neahle Meara.”
“Ask her to come down here.” At Plant’s look, Jury said, “No, I won’t show her the inside of the door. I want to talk to her, away from the others.”
Then Jury added, “And tell her to bring her kitten and a can opener.” He grinned.
She stood framed in the doorway, clutching a gray cloth coat around her and holding what looked like a schoolbag.
Jury was surprised by her black hair and deep blue eyes, now smudged underneath and looking scared. He hadn’t seen her in the Deer Leap; although he knew she wasn’t the daughter, he’d expected someone with MacBride’s washed-out coloring. This little girl was definitely not washed out; she was beautiful.
“Hullo, Neahle,” he said. “Is the kitten in the book bag?”
Wordlessly, she nodded and chewed her lip. Then she stepped over the sill and said, with as much defiance as she could muster, “You can’t take him away. He didn’t do anything.”
“Good God, whatever made you think I’d want to do that? I just thought maybe you’d like to give him his breakfast.”
“Lunch. He had some cheese for breakfast, and milk.”
“Lunch, then.” Jury smiled. They might have been here for no other reason than to confirm the kitten’s eating habits. It poked its black head out of the bag and blinked.
Neahle pulled it all the way out and set in on the floor, but made no move toward the catfood. “I heard about Sally — Aunt Sally.”
That she didn’t want to call her “aunt” was clear. And that she wasn’t sorry the MacBride woman was dead was equally clear.
That, unfortunately, meant guilt could fall on her perhaps suddenly like a brick, hard and fast.
She was sitting in a troll-sized chair, picking at the flaking blue paint, “It’s too bad.” She did not look at Jury because she couldn’t work up the appropriate tears, he bet.
“Yes. I thought you could help.”
She looked up, then, interested. “I’ve got the can opener.” She said it as if the Kit-e-Kat might be by way of helping.
“Toss it here.” She did. Jury pulled a can from the bag and opened it. Then he put it down for the kitten, who obviously had had its fill of cheese.
“Why do you carry — what’s its name?”
“Sam.”
Jury nodded toward the book bag. “That’s got holes in it for air.”
“I know. That’s to smuggle it in and out of the house. Sally”— and she inclined her head again —“wouldn’t let me have pets. Said they just dirtied the place up.”
It sounded consistent with the little he’d seen of Mrs. MacBride. “That was smart of you.”
“Oh, I didn’t think it up. It was Carrie. She’s my best friend. She found the kitten in the woods and fixed the bag. It was yesterday.”
It was almost as if the fact of the kitten, Sam, had brought about this tragedy. Now she was groping in the bag and brought out an apple. “Would you like this for your lunch?”
“Thank you,” said Jury gravely, as she handed it over. It was the first bribe he’d ever taken. “I don’t know Carrie. I’ve only heard her name. Is she a school chum, then?”
Neahle laughed and put her hand over her mouth, which she smoothed out as if she were smoothing out her coat. Laughter in the house of death was hardly right. “No. Carrie doesn’t go to school. The Baroness’s secretary teaches her, or something. She’s lots older than me. Fifteen. I don’t know why she likes me.”
Best friends, like kittens and aunts, could disappear easily in this world, her worried look said.
“I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t. Age doesn’t make any difference.”
“How old are you, then?”
“Quite old,” said Jury solemnly. Thinking of Fiona Clingmore, he smiled and added, “I’ll never see forty again.”
Her eyes widened. “You don’t look nearly that old.”
“Thank you. Listen, Neahle. You know your aunt — Mrs. MacBride — was found in here.”
Solemnly, she nodded, watching Sam now batting a tiny ball of wool she’d tied to the lamp cord for him.
“Did you ever know her to come down here before?”
“No. No one comes here but me, and sometimes Carrie.”
“Okay. When was the last time you were here?”
“Two days ago.”
“Did you keep the door closed?”
She looked puzzled.
“I mean, was the knob missing from the inside of the door? Fallen off its iron stem?”
She frowned. “I suppose so. I didn’t much notice.” Neahle scratched her ear. “It was dark.”
If there’d been wind, it could easily have banged the door shut. “Would you have been scared if you’d got locked up in here?”
She seemed surprised. “Me? No. I like to come here and read and sometimes I go to sleep on the bed there.” She was watching Sam the kitten, now clutching the wool and swinging like a metronome from the lamp cord. “You could scream if you got locked up in here, but it’s so far from the house —” She stopped watching the kitten and put her head in her hands.
“There was a wind last night, too. Neahle, you can’t love everyone you think you should. When they won’t let you have pets, and have you do the cooking. Why should you?”
She looked up at him. Then down. “You didn’t eat your apple.”
“Did you ever know Sally to come here?”
Neahle shook her head. “Why would she? She didn’t even want me to.”
“Maybe she would to, say, meet a friend.”
“Like men?” Neahle was trying to look worldly-wise.
Jury smiled. “Like men.”
Neahle scratched her ear. “Well, there’s that Mr. Donaldson. He’s creepy. Carrie says so. He works at Gun Lodge.”
“Anyone else?”
She chewed her lip and shook her head.
Wouldn’t have mentioned Pasco, even if she’d known. Jury picked up her apple and rubbed it on his raincoat. Her look seemed to ask, Are you going to do something magical?
He crunched the apple, leaned back in the chair, and watched Sam swinging. Sam dropped from his perch and came over to sit and stare up at the new person.
Neahle started to cry.
“Not to worry, Neahle.” Jury picked up Sam and put him in Neahle’s lap, where its shiny black fur was wetted with her tears. Then he sat back and simply waited until the worst of it was over.
The end of the cord from which Sam had been swinging led up to a socket and a blue-shaded lamp. “You came down here a couple of days ago, you said. Did you come down at night?”
Neahle chewed her lip.
“I won’t tell.” He nodded at the books. “Did you read, then?”
“Of cour
se.” She nodded to a little stack of books. “Sam Pig, that’s my favorite. I named Sam after him. I suppose you can name a kitten after a pig.” She seemed doubtful. “Anyway, I sneaked out of bed.”
Jury turned his head on the back of the rocker. “What happened to the light bulb, then, do you think?”
None of them, particularly John MacBride, had been sitting very comfortably in the bar during the questioning of the husband.
Wiggins pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “Going up to London, was she? For how long, Mr. MacBride?”
“Few days. To visit a cousin.”
Wiggins wrote down the name of a Mary Leavy who lived, said MacBride vaguely, “Somewhere in Earl’s Court.”
Melrose could have constructed any number of scenarios, taken from all of those mysteries he’d suffered through for the sake of Polly Praed. It was such a cliché. Wife going off to London, then mysteriously “disappearing.” Fun for Crippen and Cream. But not, it would seem for MacBride, who seemed to be crumbling like the huge log sparking and splitting in the fireplace.
Detective Inspector Russell’s smile was tiny. Melrose could almost read his mind. It’s always the family. Dead wife, find the husband.
“And how was she to get there?” asked Pasco.
“How?” MacBride’s eyes were glazed when he pulled his head from his hands.
“Yes. You said she was going to London, John.”
“Oh. Train from Selby this morning.”
Pasco prodded him gently. “But to Selby?”
MacBride wiped his hands over his thin hair. “Someone at the Lodge going to drive her. Donaldson, I think.”
How nice, thought Melrose.
“Mrs. MacBride suffered from claustrophobia, I believe,” said Russell.
MacBride nodded. A shadow like a raven’s wing passed over his face as if the thought of Sally’s being trapped in that house were too much for him.
“I’d have thought,” said Russell, “when that door closed and she couldn’t — well, let’s leave it for the moment.” He must have seen the look on MacBride’s face, too.
Pasco put it in a more roundabout fashion. “You can’t see the playhouse from the pub, not with that screen of trees. And I expect you can’t hear — it’s a bit far, there by the river.”
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