The Deer Leap

by Martha Grimes

  Cyril, unlike his keeper, savior, or whatever one might call Racer’s secretary, seemed concerned only that cleanliness, not beauty would get him through those pearly gates. Fiona Clingmore was far more convinced that the art of nail-varnishing was the heavenly priority. More to the nails she was holding up for inspection than to Jury, she said, “He’s out.”

  Jury nodded toward the Racer’s door. “Obviously. The Met has been left in better paws than Racer’s. When’s he coming back?”

  That Racer came back at all was a mystery to the Metropolitan Police. At least twice a year there were rumors of the chief’s imminent departure, which never materialized. There were even worse rumors that he would be kicked upstairs to an assistant commissionership. Fortunately for the safety of Greater London, the kick never landed.

  “He’s at his club. Been gone since eleven, so I dunno.” Her eyes squinted. She inspected her index finger. A flaw. Carefully, she just touched the tiny brush to the nail. Satisfied, she recapped the bottle and waved her fingers in air to dry them. Now she could concentrate on smiling at Jury.

  “You wield a mean brush, Fiona. Matisse wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

  “Had your lunch?” It was a ritual question. Jury always had some excuse. Not that he didn’t like Fiona; indeed, she fascinated him in many ways. Right now she rested her elbows on the desk and let the fingers hang down, nails purplish-black like talons. Her lipstick was the same color, which rather washed out her already pale skin. The silvery strands in her blond hair she put down to frosting. Nails dry, she now stood up and took the opportunity to display a laddered stocking, which she turned and presented for Jury’s inspection. “And I just bought them.” Her half-turned, hand-on-hip position also showed the curve of the hip-hugging black skirt and the beruffled blouse, sheer black like the slightly laddered stocking. Just a tiny one at the ankle that she held up in case his eyes had gone bad in the last three days. Jury loved the way Fiona tried for the demimondaine and only ended up seeming old-fashioned. He could imagine her carefully washing out her undies at night, before rolling up her hair and creaming her face. Suddenly, he felt sad.

  He hadn’t time for lunch, he told her. She accepted this, as always, with grace.

  “He’s in a right temper,” she said, nodding her blond curls toward Racer’s office. “And seeing that cat there won’t help it along. Cyril!” There would be hell to pay if Racer found Cyril sitting in his own kingly perch. “He says he’s going to garrote him.”

  Cyril paid no attention to commands or to threats on whichever of his lives he was enjoying. Racer had nearly got him one day with a letter-opener.

  “Cyril knows what he’s doing. Did the Hampshire police call?”

  “Well, they didn’t complain. I listened on the extension. Of course, he’ll say they did.” Fiona ran a blank page in her typewriter and called for Cyril again, who just kept washing. She checked her tiny bejeweled watch. “Been down at that club two hours now —”

  The subject under discussion just that moment walked in, the tiny red lines on his face rather like the laddered stocking, red turning to blue nearer the nose. Jury guessed about three doubles. And brandy to follow. Savile Row-suited and boutonniered, Racer looked more as if he should have been in a window of Burberry’s than in a New Scotland Yard doorway.

  “It’s Superintendent Jury. Well. I haven’t interrupted your little Hampshire holiday, have I?”

  Fiona, her face expressionless, was banging her newly painted nails on the typewriter.

  “Got those letters done, Miss Clingmore?” he asked smoothly.

  “Nearly done,” said Fiona, equally smoothly. “Just the finishing touch here and there.”

  “Well get the here and there into my office quick, girl!” He snapped each syllable out as if he were shooting rubber bands. “Come on, Jury!”

  The cat Cyril had slipped like cream from the chair and now lay in wait in the corner under the desk.

  As soon as Racer planted his feet there, Cyril slid himself around the knife-pleated trousers, then whipped out and whizzed toward the door Jury had been careful to leave open a few inches.

  A few expletives and a paperweight followed Cyril on his way.

  “Miss Clingmore! Throw that beast out of the window!”

  The Cyril-ritual always ended on this note.

  As did the Jury-ritual end on one much the same, except that paperweights and letter-openers were not for him. No fate was mean enough for Jury. Being roasted on a turning spit would probably have been the chief’s choice, largely because he thought Jury, rather than Cyril, might be sitting in that leather chair one day.

  That Jury would rather sit on a curbstone in a blinding snowstorm did not occur to Racer. Naturally, anyone with Jury’s rank had to be after the chief’s job.

  “The Hampshire police are raising holy hell, Jury. Just how did you manage to slip this one over on me?” He did not stay for an answer, but turned on the mental tape that had detailed Jury’s egregious errors and derelictions of duty over the years.

  “They seem to welcome my presence, actually. Sir.”

  Racer always noticed the infinitesimal pause and glared at him. “You’re larking about in Hampshire investigating a couple of accidental deaths —”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? Even Wiggins can tell the difference between accident and murder. I think.”

  “I’d like twenty-four hours. That’s all. You can surely do without me for twenty-four hours.”

  That would put him in a bind, thought Jury. Racer had a way of reminding him the Met could do without Jury forever. Into the brief silence where Racer must have battled with this problem, Jury jumped. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor. After all, you have influence.” The flower girl on the steps of St. Paul’s couldn’t have plied her wares so well.

  “Certainly I do. Would I have got where I am — ?” Then seeing the weevil in the boll of his career, Racer rushed on. “What sort of favor?”

  “You lunch at the Regency rather often . . . ?” Rather seldom, Jury knew.

  But it worked enough to make the chief superintendent smile his thin-as-a-penny smile. He flicked his lapel, as if a crumb of some privileged repast and all its perks still clung to his garments. “When I’ve the time. Why?”

  “Know anyone named Lister?”

  To cover up his obvious lack of knowledge, Racer asked Jury what made him think this Lister would get into the Regency? “You know what sort of place it is. Not just money gets you in. Privilege, that’s the ticket. And as far as getting information out of the management goes, forget it. Manager’d be on the phone to the A.C. unless ten guests had just been knifed over their Rémy. Or Armagnac.”

  One thing Racer knew was brandy.

  One thing Jury didn’t know was the name of the manager. Which was what he wanted to know. Jury didn’t give sod-all about the manager’s calling the assistant commissioner. He just didn’t want him or her calling Lister. And given his plan, he certainly hoped it was a man. Too much tradition at the Regency, he was sure, for a woman in that job. “One of the best in London, he is,” said Jury, hoping Racer would rise to the bait.

  He did. “You mean Dupres?”

  “Umm.”

  “Just how do you know Dupres? Been nosing about?”

  No. You just told me. “Heard his name somewhere.”

  “Georges doesn’t deal with People.”

  Thanks for the first name, thought Jury.

  “There’s an assistant for that.”

  “I should imagine. Now, about that twenty-four hours —”

  Racer waved his hand. “Hampshire can have you. I’ve got work to do.”

  Jury left. As he walked out, the cat Cyril slipped in, gliding noiselessly and almost invisibly across the copper carpet.

  His first stop was at a costumier’s off St. Martin’s Lane used by theater people and the rich who wanted to do Marie Antoinettes and harlequins at drunken fancy-dress parties.

&nbs
p; “ ’Ello, luv,” fluted a voice.

  Jury turned to see a youngish woman with fire-brigade curls eyeing him, the eyes outlined in black. She looked as if she was just making up for that party herself. There was a velvet coral band round her neck tricked out with a cameo, and between that and her waist, not much of anything. Slash-and-dash must be the fashion this year, he thought.

  “I wanted to hire a costume.”

  She looked him up and down. “Come to the right place, you did. What sort?”

  “Actually, just a few pieces of women’s clothing —”

  Her smile altered.

  “Not that kind, dear. No whips and chains, either.”

  She giggled. “It’d be hard to believe anyone looks like you—”

  Jury broke up that encomium, but still smiled. “I’m stupid when it comes to fashion. Do you have anything that you’d say would look particularly French?”

  “Inside or out, ducks?” Her tongue, coral like the band, ran round her lips.

  “That’s cute. I’m talking about a dress. Dignified but sexy —”

  By now she was leaning on the counter, fingers intertwined, chin resting in them. The case housed some spangled masks and Jury wondered if it wasn’t rather cold on her breasts, since nothing much supported them except the glass top. She looked at him as if this were absolutely the most fascinating request she’d ever got. “That’s a tough one, luv.”

  He was getting impatient. Running the gamut of female enterprise could be tiring sometimes. But he only smiled more disarmingly. “Not for you, I bet. Say a size —” He gave her the once-over, just to please her. “No, a little bigger.”

  She leaned farther. “Where?”

  “More or less where you’re leaning, love.”

  Again, she giggled. “Ain’t you a caution?”

  Jury didn’t think so and wanted to get on with it. The only problem was the dress and hat. He’d already eyed a short sable cape he wanted. Probably cost him a month’s salary to get it for a day.

  He followed her through hangered garments and he had to say she knew her business. She judged the size as a ten. “Bust okay?” She held it against her own.

  “It certainly is.”

  Tiny white teeth glimmered at him through coral lips. The dress was a draped crepe de chine, silky green, low-cut waist . . . well, it was hard to find the waist. “Perfect.”

  He’d decided against a hat; why cover up the hair? “There’s a sable cape, short, back there. How much?”

  “How long?”

  “Half a day, maybe.”

  She was bagging the dress, wrapped in tissue paper. “We can only rent for a whole day. For you, hundred quid.”

  “Good lord.” He took out his checkbook.

  “Oh, you get some of it back. Deposit, see. We wouldn’t want just anyone walking off with that little number.”

  He took the parcel and asked her her name.

  “Doreen,” she said, hopefully.

  “You’re good at your job, love.” Jury took out his warrant card. “So’m I. You don’t have to worry about the sable.”

  She stared. “Crikey!”

  Twenty-three

  Jury’s foot had barely scraped the stone step of the Islington house when the window flew up above him on the second floor, and a bolt was thrown back in the basement flat.

  “Super!” shouted down Carole-anne Palutski. He looked up.

  “Pssst! Mr. Jury,” whispered Mrs. Wasserman. He looked down.

  Carole-anne was not on the telephone, so he’d called Mrs. Wasserman — for whom the telephone was a lifeline, little as she went out — to make sure Carole-anne was there. Jury had already been ninety-percent sure. Daylight began at noon for Carole-anne.

  They both had been eagerly waiting his return. He shouted up to Carole-anne, dressed, or undressed, in her flimsy nightie, to pull herself back in; he’d be up in a minute. Then, carrying his parcel and some flowers, he went down the several steps to Mrs. Wasserman’s apartment.

  Or fastness, he should say. The bolts thrown, the chain un-latched, all she needed was to lower the drawbridge, metaphorically speaking, to let him in. To be on the safe side had little meaning for Mrs. Wasserman, for whom safety was a passing condition, something that quickly faded when she got used to the installation of Jury’s last lock or window-guard. Always, she could find another possible means of entrance for the intruder who never came (and, Jury knew, never would). But the Feet followed her, she was sure, when she went out, and had done ever since the Big War.

  From her stout, neat frame, today clad in navy blue lawn, came her breathless account of the past few days. Her plump hand pressed to her heaving bosom, she might indeed have been running down long streets, fleeing her shadowy pursuer. Patiently, Jury waited, leaning against the wall, nodding, nodding.

  “. . . right to keep an eye on that one. Such a child she is, innocent, you know what I mean, out at all hours, and, of course, you know I don’t go out at night — I apologize, I cannot follow to see she gets into no trouble . . . .”

  “I hardly expected you to do that, Mrs. Wasserman,” he said to her outspread arms, her look of mournful apology, the failed policewoman who could not keep an eye on her quarry. “I really don’t think Carole-anne is getting up to anything.”

  “Ah!” Mrs. Wasserman closed her eyes in pain. “Would I suggest that?”

  No, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. He hid a smile.

  “And her men-friends — she says they are cousins. But such a large family? Twenty-four she says she is —”

  Carole-anne had aged two years in three days. My.

  “— but truly she looks only eighteen or nineteen. And her clothes, Mr. Jury.” Sadly, Mrs. Wasserman shook her head. “What can you do with one who wears sweaters down to here and such tight pants. Like skin, they are.”

  You can do plenty, thought Jury. “That’s why I wanted you to, you know, give her a cuppa, chat her up a bit. . .” Jury shrugged.

  Mrs. Wasserman’s small black eyes grew hard. Even her tightly pulled-back hair had a determined look about it, as if she’d nearly pulled it out in thinking about Carole-anne Palutski. “I have had her in for tea or a coffee. And she has kindly returned the favor, though it is difficult for me to walk up three flights. I say nothing against the child; the soul of kindness. Just — what can I say? She says she goes to the films. Every night, Mr. Jury? There are not that many films in Islington. You do not think she takes the Underground into the West End. . . ?”

  It went on, interrupted only by Jury’s handing her the bunch of roses he had picked up outside the Angel tube station. “You’re doing a good job, Mrs. Wasserman.”

  She was overwhelmed. “For me? Roses.” She might never have seen one in her life. And she was spieling off her thanks in Czech or Lithuanian — Jury remembered she spoke four or five languages.

  French. Jury smiled. “Would you do me another favor?”

  “You ask me? After all that you have done for me. Name it,” she added, with a sort of special-agent crispness.

  “You speak French.”

  Her eyebrows slanted upward. Didn’t everybody?

  “Mine’s very rusty, what I ever knew.” He had his hand on the door. “Would you mind staying in for a half-hour, an hour? I’m bringing Carole-anne down.”

  He had asked her if she’d “mind” only to give her whatever spurious support there was in his thinking she was free as a bird, one who flew at will all over Islington, London, wherever.

  “Indeed I wouldn’t, Mr. Jury. But why this French?”

  “You’ll see.” He smiled. “Bet you don’t recognize her.”

  • • •

  Jury certainly did. It was mostly naked skin that had hung over the windowsill, and although it was now covered, it made no difference. The body would turn a suit of armor to a pane of glass. There was just no way of hiding Carole-anne.

  She threw herself at him as if he might be one of the many long-lost fathers, brothers, cous
ins that had accumulated on the stairway over the past weeks. “Super! How’s about a kiss, then?”

  “Sure,” said Jury, giving her one right on her soft lips. “Oh, cut it out, Carole-anne,” he said, dragging her up from the floor and out of a pretended swoon.

  “Nearly fainted at that one. Let’s have another go.” Before he could stop her, the arms were like steel bands around his neck, and she seemed to have maneuvered parts of herself into every crevice of his body.

  He pulled her arms away. “You kiss your dad like that?”

  Meltingly, she looked up at him. “Ain’t got one. Just you. Dad.” And she tried it again.

  He shoved her back. “Who’re all these men been trailing up and down the stairs like a school of sharks?”

  Carole-anne’s already pink cheeks turned crimson, as if she’d just dabbed on rouge. “You mean she told you?” She pointed toward the floor. “Well, bloody damn. I never —”

  “Mrs. Wasserman only told me you had a brother and a father. She thought that was very nice. Thought you were being taken care of.”

  The fire that flared, died. “Oh. Well, had to tell her something, didn’t I? So bleedin’ innocent she is. Nice old bag o’ bones, but she sticks to that flat like glue. I did what you said and got her up here for tea and biscuits.” Carole-anne’s mouth puckered. Tea was not her drink. “So she couldn’t come up here, so I go to her place. Tried to get her to come down the Angel pub with me, but you might as well try to get the street lamps to walk —”

  Jury burst out laughing. Mrs. Wasserman going down the pub.

  Carole-anne was miffed. All her good work should have rated more than a laugh. “You did a great job, love. She likes having you round. Puts some life into this old pile of bricks, she said.”

  “Oh. Well.” Carole-anne sat down beside him. “Lay on a cig, Super, okay? I’m out.”

  No matter what she said, it sounded like sex. He got out his pack of John Players, lit one for both of them, and said, “I’ve got a job for you, Carole-anne.”

  “How much do I have to take off? I stop at —”