The Deer Leap

by Martha Grimes

  If Melrose thought he’d got a long lecture from Grimsdale, it was nothing to what he was getting from Carrie Fleet. Silent on other matters, she was extremely voluble on the subject of animals. It ended, the list of deer-hunting atrocities, with the story of a buck that had fallen under a van and got pulled out by its antlers and its throat slashed in full view of the villagers.

  “And he bags foxes,” she went on, staring straight ahead.

  He was taken with her magnificent profile. Who had been this girl’s forebears?

  “. . . see the one there?”

  Melrose shook his head to clear it.

  “I’m sorry. The what?”

  “Fox. He keeps it in a kennel. He’ll let it go and set hounds on it. That’s what he does, and it’s against the rules. I’ve read the rules.”

  Melrose could believe she’d written them.

  “What he does is, if a fox goes to ground and he can’t get a badger or terrier to get it out, he does it with tools and has a bag. That’s how he got the one he has now.” Carrie looked at Melrose, her pale blue eyes like glistening ice. “When a fox goes to ground and finds a rabbit hole or something, that’s supposed to be sanctuary.” Suddenly, she got up. “I’ve got to look for Bingo.”

  “Carrie, just a second. Pasco will be round, of course. You’ll be asked to press charges.” She seemed not to comprehend. “You know. Against Grimsdale.”

  “Why? Because he almost shot me?” She shrugged, still scanning the horizon. “He’d have missed, anyway.”

  Not at that range. “Are you saying you’re not going to? It was assault with a deadly weapon.”

  “Someone killed his dogs. I guess I’d get pretty upset too.”

  Melrose couldn’t believe it. “But you loathe the man!”

  Her face was again without expression. “He’s not warrantable. He’s trash.” She started to walk off and turned again. “When Mr. Jury comes back . . .”

  The sentence hovered there, unfinished.

  Jury was, at that moment, sitting in his flat, smoking, turning over pages of reports he had accumulated from various branches of New Scotland Yard. They told him next to nothing. Brindle had been nicked once for extortion that hardly seemed worth the trouble. Probably he had tried it on several times, maybe got away with it, maybe not. It seemed to be the way he spent his leisure time when he wasn’t watching the telly and drinking.

  As for the Lister family, nil. What the old man had told him was confirmed by the odd newspaper report — about the Listers, not about Carrie Fleet. Or Carolyn, assuming they were one and the same. They had to be — there wasn’t a break in the chain of events that had led up to that accidental meeting with Regina —

  Jury shook another cigarette out of the packet that lay on the arm of the chair. A family far flung, the Listers. Son, daughter, a couple of cousins. And a sister. He had mentioned a sister near his own age.

  The match burnt Jury’s finger as he thought about Gigi Scroop from Liverpool. He took Brindle’s letter out again. “. . . well, Floss and me thought, having the care of her all them —” And the them crossed out, these printed in above it. Extortionists have to be careful of their grammar; Jury couldn’t help but smiling over this. “— years, that this ought to call for just a bit more, don’t you think, Baroness?” Probably the title had been suggested by Flossie. Add a touch of class, even though she’d already forgotten what the class was.

  Jury dropped the letter atop the other papers and frowned. If Una Quick had taken the picture, she might have had blackmail in mind. But how could she put this particular two and two together? “Amy Lister” would have, in Una’s mind, no association with Carrie Fleet.

  But in somebody else’s mind?

  Someone in Ashdown Dean was smart enough to put Carrie Fleet into that picture and see there was money in it —

  He was shaken from this brown study by a knock at the door.

  Carole-anne stood there, dressed again as only Carole-anne could, meaning she looked undressed. Skintight leathers she was wearing today and a parrot green T-shirt. And behind her, clutching her black handbag to her black bosom, Mrs. Wasserman, all smiles.

  Carole-anne draped herself in Jury’s doorway, all smiles herself. “Took your gear back, Super. I mean, can you see me in sable?” From her ears dripped long, bluish-green bits of glass, like tears. “Mrs W. and me” — she nodded at Mrs. W., behind her — “we’re going down the pub. Come on, then.”

  Jury stared, blinked, stared like a man who’d just had the bandages taken from his eyes. “Mrs. Wasserman?”

  “It’s more fun you need to have, Superintendent. We were just saying that maybe we could get you out.”

  Carole-anne smiled her syrupy little smile and winked slowly. “Don’t be such an old stick, Super. Down the Angel for an hour and you’ll look near human.”

  “Down the Angel for an hour and you’ll have to carry me back. I’ve got to —”

  Carole-anne rolled her heavenly eyes toward heaven. “Oh, God. You’ve always got to.” She was pulling on his sleeve. “We need an escort, right, Mrs. W.?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Jury. You would not want unattended women going to the pub.” She slid a glance toward Carole-anne and winked at Jury.

  “See. Outvoted.” Carole-anne lounged and chewed her gum.

  Jury laughed. “Half an hour.”

  “Oh, hell, how wonderful. Vous serez toujours dans mon souvenir.”

  Mrs. Wasserman was clicking the clasp on her purse open and shut, nervously. “This one, she has an ear, a real ear for languages. I tell her if she studied, the Common Market would hire her as a translator.”

  Carole-anne plucked at her teardrop earrings. “Just what I always wanted.”

  Twenty-eight

  The note was delivered on the silver salver, along with the rest of the post.

  Carrie, sitting at the luncheon table, had been staring blindly at her salad, thinking about Bingo. She hadn’t seen him since last night, when she’d been out unstopping earths.

  “He’ll turn up, Carrie,” said Gillian, but without much conviction in her tone.

  “Like the others?” Her face, her tone were void of expression.

  Gillian handed the Baroness the post, and said, “Animals do wander off, Carrie —”

  “How would you know?” There was no inflection, no bitterness in the tone; it seemed only a mild question.

  It was true; neither Gillian nor Regina had shown interest in the sanctuary: the infrequent visits they made to it were born of curiosity, nothing more.

  The Baroness, at least, had the sense not to offer cheap comfort. Or perhaps she was simply more interested in her letters. As she smoked and drank her coffee, Gillian read two of them to Regina. Then she frowned and handed Carrie a small envelope. “It’s for you.”

  Carrie, who never got any letters, was as surprised as were Gillian and Regina. It had been posted in Selby. Carrie wondered who in Selby would be writing to her — Neahle, perhaps? Maxine might have broken down and taken her on market day. The scrawl was childish, large loops of letters. But why would Neahle —?

  “Aren’t you going to open it, for heaven’s sake? It might be some news.”

  Regina sounded really concerned.

  • • •

  Bingo. It was not a word; it was a small picture of a bingo board. The entire note consisted of pictures. Cut from a book or magazine, more likely a child’s playbook, was one of those maze-puzzles. Then — and here Carrie’s iron control nearly broke — a snapshot of the Rumford Laboratory. Taken at night. Floodlit on that empty field, it looked all the more like a prison.

  That was all. Carrie stared past Gillian, who looked at her anxiously, as Regina asked, “Well, what is it?”

  Carrie was about to say something and then stopped. For she knew, she knew with the swiftness of Limerick taking to the air, and with the surety of a lock clicking closed on a cage, that whatever this was, it wasn’t some silly game Neahle was playing. That whoever
had done it, with the exception of the address, was being incredibly careful not to give away the sender’s identity. It was a warning. Or a direction . . . ?

  Regina had just jogged her arm impatiently. “Carrie?”

  Carrie shrugged and said calmly, “Oh, it’s just some silly pictures Neahle sent me.”

  “Neahle? Good grief, I didn’t even know she could write.”

  Carrie had pocketed the envelope and paper. “Maybe she got Maxine to do it. Maybe just to cheer me up. May I be excused?”

  “I don’t know why you bother to ask. I’d have to chain you to a chair to keep you from doing what you want to.”

  “I guess,” said Carrie, pushing back her chair.

  • • •

  Not until she was out in the sanctuary did she take the paper out again. Almost absently, she fed the animals — misfeeding the Labrador, who let out a whine. No wonder, she thought. She’d given him chickenfeed. Keep your head, she told herself. Keep your head or Bingo’s going to die. She let Blackstone out and gave him his food and the mouse. Her jobs done, she sat down to study the threat.

  Through the opening of the old folly she looked at the maze. Why? Why would someone want her to go into the maze? She knew every inch of it. Carrie looked back at the picture. What she thought had been meant as the “La Notre” maze was not that — this one was square, the sort of thing scientists run rats and mice through with some kind of reward at the end.

  So it was merely another pointer to the lab. And when she had been there those weeks ago, the demonstrators, several of them, had been taking pictures by torchlight.

  All right. Carrie sat on her stool, perfectly still. Someone either had or was going to take Bingo to the lab.

  The only person she knew of who had access to it was Paul Fleming. She frowned. She didn’t like him much, really, because of his work, but what on earth would he want with Bingo? Why would anyone want to hurt Bingo?

  Sebastian Grimsdale. For revenge, maybe. But would he have poisoned the Potter sisters’ cat and killed the two dogs? Carrie frowned. Una Quick had died and Sally MacBride. But nothing had happened to the Potters or Gerald Jenks. She saw no connection.

  It didn’t make sense. She had the funny feeling that what she held in her hands now was all she was going to get. This person wasn’t going to chance another note, and was depending on her to be smart enough to figure out what she had right there.

  What she was supposed to do was go to the Rumford Lab, at night. No way to tell which night. So she’d have to go every night until she knew what was going on.

  Sebastian Grimsdale, although still showing the effects of the previous night, was coming round to his old self. His chief concern appeared to be that what had happened had resulted in there being no meet.

  Jury had got back to Ashdown Dean to find Wiggins dredging up totally unnecessary apologies for not having got hold of him sooner. Plant had credited Wiggins with saving Carrie Fleet’s life. Hardly a need for apologies, Jury assured him.

  “If anyone’s to blame, I am. That you couldn’t reach me. Where’s Grimsdale?” he’d asked as the three of them had stood in the large foyer of Gun Lodge, overseen by several racks of antlers.

  Between Grimsdale and Amanda Crowley, it might have been a wake. Amanda was dressed in her usual breeches, stock perfectly done up. Her tweed jacket was slung over the arm of the chair. Grimsdale had had plenty of brandy and was in the act of telling her to stay to dinner when Jury and the others walked in.

  “I don’t think Mrs. Crowley will have time for that,” said Jury.

  As they stared at this bizarre infringement upon their freedom, Jury looked at Amanda Crowley. In that gear, eyes the color of dry sherry. Lips, although touched up, equally dry. “Sergeant Wiggins would like a word with her.”

  Since Wiggins wasn’t sure what word he’d like, Jury tore a page from his notebook and handed it to the sergeant.

  Grimsdale sputtered. Jury overrode whatever objection he was going to make. “And I’d like to hear your story, Mr. Grimsdale.”

  Amanda remained seated. “I’ve no idea what this means.”

  “You will,” said Jury in a voice that lifted her from her chair. Then, escorted by Sergeant Wiggins, who, ever the gentleman, offered her a throat lozenge, she marched from the room.

  “I’m sick of being dogged by police.” He reddened at his own pun.

  “That’s too bad. I’d like to hear your story,” Jury repeated, sitting and helping himself to the cigarette box on the table.

  “I’ve told it often enough —”

  “I’d like to hear it, Mr. Grimsdale.”

  Grimsdale reluctantly told him what had happened the night before, piecemeal. Of course he hadn’t aimed the rifle at the child. Although he was quite sure she had something to do with it —

  “Carrie Fleet? Probably the only person who wouldn’t.”

  “She despises me, despises hunting — the whole lot.”

  “Please be logical. It’s just for that reason she wouldn’t have harmed those staghounds. But it is very likely you would have harmed her.”

  Trying to drag a red herring across the path, Grimsdale said, “And it’s illegal, Superintendent, to go about unstopping earths!”

  He took a pull at his brandy.

  “What was Mrs. Crowley’s relationship with your keeper? Donaldson?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Impatiently, Jury shook his head. “You know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean, and I resent it.”

  “Unfortunately, resentment means sod-all to me.” He smiled.

  “There was no . . . relationship. Good lord, man, everyone knew Donaldson and —” He stopped.

  “ ‘And.’ Go on.” Jury smiled inwardly. Plant had used the same trick.

  Jury merely wanted to confirm the rumor.

  “It would be ungentlemanly of me.”

  “That’s a shame. Be ungentlemanly. Your keeper and Sally MacBride were having an affair, that it?”

  “That was the rumor. I pay no attention to rumors.”

  Jury bet. “Whose time do you want to waste, Mr. Grimsdale? Mine or the Hampshire C.I.D.’s?”

  Grimsdale waved him back into his chair. “Oh, all right, all right. He had his separate digs in the stable house. That’s where they met.”

  “Cozy. Anywhere else?”

  “How should I know? Listen, you’ve no right to browbeat —”

  “I’m not. But I could. You tried to kill a fifteen-year-old girl.”

  Grimsdale shot up. “And were you there, Superintendent?”

  “No. With three witnesses, I hardly needed to be, did I? Now, tell me if you’re familiar with the name Lister.”

  In the act of lighting a cigarette, Jury nearly dropped the match when Grimsdale said, “Of course.”

  “What?”

  Moving impatiently in his chair, Grimsdale said, “Can’t imagine why you’d be interested. You know the way we name hounds. Use one letter a lot of the time. Lister’s one of them. Then there’s Laura, Lawrence, Luster —”

  “I see. I was thinking of a person. A Lord Lister.”

  “Person? Oh. No, I never heard the name.”

  “Tell me about Amanda Crowley, then.”

  “What about her?” His tone was convincingly indifferent. “Been living in Ashdown ten, maybe a dozen years. I don’t keep count.”

  Jury watched his eye travel from stag’s head to buck’s to birds under glass. He certainly did, of some things. “She has money of her own?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She doesn’t seem to do any work, Mr. Grimsdale. One would assume she has money of her own. An allowance? A trust fund? Something like that?”

  Grimsdale leaned forward, brandy glass clutched between his hands. “Are you suggesting I’m a fortune-hunter?”

  Jury smiled. “Why not? You hunt everything else.”

  • • •

  “Nothing, sir.” Wiggins flipped through h
is notes. “She was here this morning because the hunt didn’t meet at the Deer Leap, and she rode over to find out what was happening. Been here ever since.”

  “How convivial. Breakfast, lunch, and a supper we interrupted.”

  “Yes, sir. But given the food in this place. . .” Wiggins shuddered. “Never had such stiffish oatmeal, sir, and then —”

  “Too bad, Wiggins. The name Lister—?”

  The sergeant shook his head. “Claimed it meant nothing to her. Never heard it before.” Wiggins folded the bit of paper and slid a lozenge into his mouth. “Believe me, I watched her responses sharp as a cat.”

  “Unfortunately, people can be sharp as cats too. But not to worry. I didn’t expect much.” He paused. “In my next report, you can bet what you did last night will be detailed.”

  Seldom did Sergeant Wiggins laugh aloud. Now he did. “ ‘Next report,’ sir? Do you ever make them?”

  “Intermittently. Where’re Polly and Plant?”

  “At the Deer Leap, for some food. I expect even Maxine could put something together better than what you get here. As long as she doesn’t have to cook it,” he added glumly, and then sighed. “Poor Miss Praed.” Seeing Jury putting on his coat, Wiggins pulled his scarf about his neck.

  “Why ‘poor’?”

  “Got all scratched up. Trying to get that hulk she calls a cat from running up the Lodge’s draperies.”

  “Hope he did a good job. On the draperies, not on Polly. She should take a lesson from Carrie Fleet.”

  As they let themselves out into the cold dusk, Wiggins said, “That reminds me. Mr. Plant wanted me to tell you. The girl Carrie’s dog. It’s missing.”

  “Bingo?”

  “Yes, sir. She wanted, Mr. Plant thought, to see you. Though she didn’t say it directly.”

  “She wouldn’t.”

  Twenty-nine

  “Damn the man! Revenge! You can bet on it!” Regina de la Notre had dropped her languid air and paced about the salon trailing behind her a vermilion coat of Chinese silk and in one hand a bottle of gin, which she used to top up her glass. She had been pacing now for a good ten minutes — back and forth, back and forth, mural to mural — and Jury wondered whether her turns at each wall and the passing of herself in front of the huge mirror might not have been done as much for effect as angry tirade. The bottle of gin didn’t quite fit that image.