The Deer Leap

by Martha Grimes

  “A bad year?”

  There was a pause as she picked at the hedge. “A very bad year.”

  Jury didn’t think she was talking about wine.

  Gillian looked along the curving path they had taken, one they could have continued along, or taken another to their right. “We’ve got three options,” said Gillian. “Go on, go back, or go right. I leave it to you. Which way?”

  There was an arched opening in the hedge. Through that he could see several others, like a series of archways down a long hall. It was much like the mural. “Well, that vista is a trick, I’d say. It appears so obviously an escape that it probably leads straight back to the center of the maze. So I’ll take the fourth option.”

  “There are only three. Back, forward, out.”

  “There’s also down.” Jury enjoyed the feel of her arm as he pulled her to one of the benches they’d passed. “Strategically placed. Let’s sit.”

  Shaking her head, she sat down. “Not fair.”

  “I disagree. Perhaps we can talk our way out. Or I can. After all, you know the way, and you’ve been leading.”

  The eyes she turned on him were cool. “You think I’ve deliberately led you into a trap?”

  Jury smiled. “Sure.”

  “I don’t understand. What have I said?”

  “It’s what you haven’t. You’ve been having a hell of a good time walking round here, telling me about the Baron and his little practical jokes. But I would think that, knowing I’m from Scotland Yard, you’d wonder why I’m here.”

  “Why are you, then?”

  “You must have known Una Quick.”

  She frowned. “Everyone did. But you’re not here on her account —”

  Jury interrupted. “A few days ago her dog was poisoned.”

  “That’s right.” She shivered and pulled her cardigan closer. “It was awful for Una. She was a sick woman, anyway. Paul — Dr. Fleming — he’s the local vet. . .”

  “I’ve met him. What about him?” Given the way she hesitated over the name, Jury wondered if the handsome Dr. Fleming was the reason for another bad year.

  “Only that he said Una claimed the door to the potting shed was locked.”

  “Do you put that down to Miss Quick’s forgetfulness? Or a local animal-hater?”

  “That’s hard to believe. But if I had to, I suppose I’d say it was the Crowley boys. They’re awful. One truly is retarded, and the other acts as if he were. I can’t think why Amanda doesn’t put Bert — they call him ‘Batty’ — in an institution, instead of that ‘special school’ she sent him back to.”

  Looking through the corridor of openings, Jury said, “Institutions can be pretty grim places.” He remembered his own years in the orphanage the social services had put him in after his mother had been killed in the last bombing of London. He had been six, but he would still, in his mind, walk the cold corridors, sit on the brown-blanketed bed, taste the watery potatoes. “Maybe she loves the boy too much.”

  “Amanda loves Amanda.” Her profile, above the collar pulled up around her chin, was like the sculpted profile of one of the statues. “It allows her to play the martyr. It also allows her to play with several thousands of pounds a year. Twenty, Regina says. Amanda’s the executor of the will. The father knew the youngest — that’s Batty — might be put in some sort of institution right after he died. So the bequests, he made were contingent on that.” Gillian turned to Jury, her smile sardonic. “I imagine most people could put up with a few pranks for twenty thousand a year, don’t you?”

  Gillian Kendall did not seem especially cynical. Her face had a wasted look right now, the expression of one who’s gone down for the count once too often.

  Jury changed the subject. “Who collects the post?”

  She looked puzzled. “Well, it depends. I do, Mrs. Lambeth does sometimes; she’s our cook. Randolph, who’s supposed to be gardener. Carrie Fleet. Whoever happens to be near the post office.”

  “Did the Baroness Regina ever mention her suspicion that Una Quick was reading people’s letters?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m quite sure she’s right, too. I sent Paul — Dr. Fleming — a note that he was positive had been opened. He laughed about it.”

  Her face burned. She hadn’t laughed about it.

  Jury asked her point-blank. “What’s your relationship with Dr. Fleming, then?”

  Another pause. “Nothing.” She looked at him squarely. “I’m not sure there ever was.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  She looked away.

  “The Baroness says you’ve been here for about six months. Are you really her secretary or just good company?”

  Gillian laughed. “I’m really her secretary. She enjoys having me read her morning post to her. That way, she can hold on to both her cigarette and her coffee, spiked, as you saw, with a tot of gin. As for company, I doubt I’m much company for anyone.”

  “I’m not having a bad time.”

  It was the first genuine smile he’d seen from her. “And if you pull that cardigan tighter, I’ll be forced to take off my coat and put it around you. Did you see this letter?”

  She looked at the one Regina had handed over to him. “Those people. Yes, I saw it —” Gillian looked a bit startled. “They can’t actually do anything about Carrie, can they?”

  “No. Extortion isn’t held in much esteem by police. Didn’t you think it peculiar? Brindle’s saying ‘the enclosed’ ought to be good for another five hundred quid. What was ‘enclosed’?”

  Gillian frowned. “I don’t know. There was nothing.” She read the letter through. “I supposed he was talking about the rest of the letter. The trouble and worry — the poor girl’d been attacked, apparently. Doctor’s bills—” Gillian shrugged.

  “Brindle? From what I can see he’s a tuppenny-ha’penny crook. Probably on the dole. Social services would have seen to all that. Well, never mind.”

  But she looked as if she minded very much, and Jury asked her if she’d heard about Sally MacBride.

  With surprising bitterness, she said she hadn’t. Jury wondered how many men Mrs. MacBride had got on her list. Fleming, perhaps?

  Jury told her, and her look changed quickly.

  “God! How awful! I didn’t know her that well. I’ve been to the Deer Leap a few times, talked to her a bit, but that’s all.” She shaded her eyes with her hand, gazed up at the cold blue of the sky. “What’s going on in this village?”

  “Good question.” Jury got up. “I think I’ll have a word with Carrie Fleet.”

  She smiled. “A word is about what you’ll get.” And she rose from the bench, too.

  “You’ll lead me out of this maze, I hope.”

  She looked at him as if she wished she could.

  It had once been an arbor, now bricked in, ivy-bound, and moss-encrusted. The stone mason had done rather a sloppy job of it: there were cracks, some of them stuffed with rags against the weather. Though the weather today was fine, a throwback to spring.

  The building was long, and at first he saw not her but the wooden crates and metal cages. Some were empty, unused perhaps, or temporarily vacated by their tenants.

  Their keeper must certainly have been a virtuoso performer. Cats, dogs, a rooster scratching in the dust, and in the largest compartment — more of a horse box — was a donkey. And on his walk through the grounds he had been startled to see a pony that definitely bore the stamp of the New Forest. It chomped at grass in a patch of woodland behind a statue with a broken arm. It had looked at him for some few moments, apparently used to the occasional two-legged animal, and then returned to its grazing.

  • • •

  Jury’s appearance in the doorway caught her by surprise. She had been forklifting hay into the donkey’s stall. He tried to remember where he had seen such an expression before; it might have been struck from metal, and that was where he had seen it, on all of the coins bearing the profile of the Queen.

  A black and white terrie
r with a missing leg stayed close to her as she went about her work.

  “Now, what’s a New Forest pony doing roaming through the woods of ‘La Notre’?” Jury smiled.

  He was surprised to see her blush before she turned back to the donkey. “It got hit by a car. Tourist, probably,” she added without rancor.

  “But how did you get it here?”

  “Pickup truck.”

  He leaned against the doorway of the dark hutlike place and simply shook his head. If she shot, no reason to be surprised she drove.

  “Doesn’t the Forestry Commission take care of them anymore? Those ponies are protected.”

  “Nothing’s protected,” she said evenly. She stepped back and surveyed the donkey. “I got him from a tinker. I had to pay him twenty pounds. Him, his caravan, and everything in it wasn’t worth that. But I didn’t have a gun.”

  “You usually carry a gun?”

  “No. Mostly when I’m in the woods. Poachers, see.”

  “Most people don’t go along with the idea of somebody carrying a shotgun around, you know.”

  Carrie opened a cage door in which some mourning doves cooed, put in some feed, and turned to look at Jury. “Especially policemen.”

  “Especially.”

  There was a long silence. She stood there in her blue dress with a sweater underneath, very straight, like a lightning rod. Jury thought that in that place she was quite firmly grounded. And the longer she looked at him, the deeper the blush. She turned the high color of her face away and took a cat out of its cage. It was a rather ugly black tom with one eye permanently closed.

  “Blackstone,” she said. Carrie put him down and hunkered down beside him. “Blackstone, come on.” There was a combination of command and kindness in her tone. He had heard that quality occasionally in good leaders. The cat didn’t move; he seemed afraid to move. She put something a little way away from him. A toy catnip mouse it could have been. It was dusky in the arbor, which had been wired with one bulb. The cat sprang. Carrie smiled.

  “I figured he’d have to do something. He was getting pretty bored.”

  Blackstone flicked the mouse with his paws all round the dirt floor of the arbor. The terrier watched and then joined in. It was a game.

  “Well?” asked Carrie. “I guess you came out here to ask me questions.”

  “If you don’t mind. We could go sit down somewhere.”

  “I have too much to do to sit.” Noisily, she rattled a cage door, trying to open it, disturbing a badger in its rest.

  Jury could feel again the turbulence in the air and wondered if it was his proximity that bothered her. He did not think she wanted, as in the case of the tinker, to go for her gun.

  “Okay. I don’t want to bother you if you’re busy. Maybe later.”

  He turned to go.

  “No!” One of the crates toppled and she quickly righted it. The gray fox inside ran round in circles. She smoothed her hands down her dress, brushed her hair over her shoulder, and locked her arms across her breasts. “I mean, go ahead and ask.”

  Jury smiled. Carrie looked away. “Thank you,” he said, with a bit of a try at formality, respecting the distance she put between them. But he was not sure how to go on with her. Not with that look of woe she tried to let pass for either indifference or patience with uncomprehending adults. “First thing, Carrie: you came on the Crowley boys with Miss Praed’s cat with a gun in your hands. You don’t deny that, do you?”

  Carrie hadn’t moved her eyes from his, and not a flicker of denial had crossed her face. She was fingering a very small gold chain around her throat.

  Jury felt stupid. It was as if he were back in detective training school trying to get a handle on the ways to question witnesses. All he could bring to mind was the stare. Stare the buggers down. They’ll come round.

  Carrie stared back.

  “You shot that gun at them.” Jury knew she’d shot it into the dirt. But she didn’t bother correcting him.

  And still, she’d talked to him about the animals. He’d been stupid, taken the wrong path. “Okay. No one ever poured petrol over me and started lighting matches.” Her look shifted like sand. “What’d you have done if they’d gone ahead, Carrie?”

  “Shot their kneecaps,” she said, reasonably.

  “Constable Pasco would have pulled you in pretty quick for that.”

  “I’m used to him.” In an old cage, a finch with a bandaged wing uttered its weak double note. It must have felt there was something worth singing about.

  “What’s the finch’s name?”

  “Limerick. Neahle was born there. Before they moved to Belfast.” She opened the cage. “You can come out.” But the bird still sat, swinging gently on its perch. She closed the cage. “It doesn’t like strangers. I guess you’re going to do something about the shotgun, aren’t you?”

  Jury smiled. “I suppose if the Baroness wants a game warden, she has a right to one. It’s not up to me anyway, is it?”

  To that she simply answered, “I can shoot a gun, too. The Baron liked to hunt and used to do target practice on the grounds. Probably shot off a couple of statues’ arms.” She put Blackstone back in his cage, along with the mouse.

  “Where did you learn to shoot?”

  “I taught myself. And the Baroness loves to go to Clint Eastwood films. I like the way he holds the gun with both hands.” She paused, considering, chewing at the corner of her mouth. “He’s handsome, Clint Eastwood.” She blushed and shrugged it off. “I mean if you like that type. The Baroness claims the Baron looked like him,” she said, hurrying along to cover up her compliment to anyone who might be a policeman. “But I’ve seen enough pictures of the Baron to know how true that is.”

  “Would you do me a favor and come sit down on that bench?” Jury nodded beyond the opening to the arbor.

  “When I’m finished,” she said crisply.

  Jury smiled inwardly. Might as well try to move a Stonehenge monolith as move her. As she went about her business of feeding her animals, he watched her in the filtered light that cast narrow bands of green across the arbor walls and across her face. Paraphrasing the poem, Jury thought: A green girl in a green shade. The poet might have been describing Carrie Fleet, much as she might have hated to be thought a pretty figure in an old romance.

  Eighteen

  When they were finally seated on the stone bench, with the dog Bingo lying underneath, Jury took out his cigarettes.

  “You going to smoke?”

  “Do you mind?”

  “It’s not my lungs.”

  There was a lengthy silence as Jury smoked and Carrie Fleet meditated. Finally, she said, “For a policeman, you don’t talk much.”

  “For a fifteen-year-old, neither do you.”

  She shrugged. “Talking’s just a nervous habit.”

  Jury smiled. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

  “No. I’m used to police.”

  “I understand you’ve had one or two talks with Constable Pasco.”

  She bent her head and counted on her fingers. “Eight. Though he makes it out to be more like a hundred and eight.”

  “That much trouble, is there?”

  Now she was gazing at the sky. It was an ice-blue, a frozen-over lake of sky, like her eyes. “Not for me.”

  “Just for Pasco.”

  Carrie didn’t, apparently, think a response necessary.

  “You knew Una Quick and her dog. And seem to know everyone else’s dogs and cats. What do you think’s been going on?”

  “Not accidents.”

  “Why not?”

  She was scuffing the toe of her sneaker in the dirt. “Two dogs and a cat. And two people. That’s an awful lot of accidents to happen in a week.”

  Of course, she would put the cat and dogs before the people. “Have you any ideas?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Mind telling me?”

  “Maybe.”

  Jury looked down at the stub of his cigarett
e, smiling. “I’d rather question the Queen.”

  Her blue eyes widened. “Have you, then? What’d she do?”

  “Nothing.” He laughed.

  Interest in Scotland Yard evaporating like the wispy smoke of his cigarette, she sighed and turned away. Jury glanced at her profile — quite perfect, but she didn’t know it. The child who’d emerged suddenly was hidden again.

  “Given the animals, I guess I imagined you’d have done a lot of thinking about it. Because you’d have cared more.”

  Still scuffing up dust, she looked away. “Maybe.”

  This time, the word caught in her throat, one syllable pulling the other along. She turned back. “It’s someone in the village.”

  In the act of grinding out his cigarette, Jury stopped, surprised. “Why do you think so?”

  “Because—” Her tone was loaded with disgust. “—I don’t think somebody would come up from London to poison the Potters’ cat or Una Quick’s dog. And if I find out who —” The tone was grim.

  “I suggest you tell the police.”

  She just looked at him. Hopeless.

  “Have you got a list of suspects, then?”

  “Haven’t you?”

  Jury took out his notebook. “Haven’t lived here as long as you. Only got into town yesterday afternoon. Would you mind telling me?”

  “Yes, I’d mind.” Shading her eyes with her hand, she looked up at the sky. “Probably going to have frost, and I guess that’ll please Mr. Grimsdale to death. He can hardly wait to get hounds out. Going to be a meet in a couple of days.” She sighed. “It’s so much work.”

  “What work?”

  Her blue eyes glazed his face. “Unstopping earths.”

  Jury smiled. “What do you do? Follow the earthstopper when he goes out?”

  “Don’t have to. I know where they are.” She nodded toward the arbor hut and rough-cut wooden sign nailed to it, on which was printed Sanctuary. “That’s his fox I’ve got in there. It’s a little sick. I’ll let it go in a couple of days.”

  “Good God.” Jury laughed. “Can’t imagine Grimsdale letting you play nurse.”

  “I stole it.” When Jury opened his mouth, she sighed. “Here it comes. Lecture. It was one of those foxes he bags. If you think it’s okay to bag foxes and keep them in a kennel, lecture away.”