19
Melrose Plant was in bed, or rather on it, but not in the way Jury meant.
He was lying fully clothed, staring up at the elaborately painted ceiling of miniaturized scenes of gods and goddesses and cupids. He was smiling; he was thinking of Julian Craels’ rooms — three doors down from his own room.
Melrose had just taken the picture he was turning round in his hands from those very rooms. It made him, actually, quite happy.
First Melrose had made quite sure that Julian would be going for his morning walk by offering to accompany him. Julian had given him the same look he might have used had Melrose offered to share his bath water. Walking for an hour on the moors (as Julian said he intended to do) when one could be sitting by a warm fire drinking Cockburn’s Very Superior Port seemed to Melrose the act of a madman, but it would give him an opportunity to undertake his search.
They did not like one another, that was clear. Similarities of age, rank, wealth, position created no bond between them. And Melrose felt guilty: he had really wanted to get something from Julian — an impression, if nothing more — which would alleviate the Colonel’s anxiety. Deny it as he might, Melrose felt the elder Crael was very worried about the younger — alibi or no alibi.
Blood out of stones. That was about as far as he’d got with Julian Crael, though he could hardly blame the man, he supposed. Now, with Jury, it was more like St. Peter striking the rock: all he had to do was walk into Percy Blythe’s cottage and fountains of conversation had gushed forth.
Thus Melrose had decided that if he couldn’t get information one way, he’d try another, and so he had. Perhaps searching a gentleman’s rooms was not a gentlemanly act. But neither was murder.
• • •
He had gone to Julian’s rooms, not sure what sort of evidence he was looking for. Nor had he thought he’d be lucky enough to find it. But he had.
The house had been very quiet. The Colonel was out slopping around in the kennels in Pitlochary. Olive Manning was in Whitby, and the servants were doing nothing, as servants will.
So Melrose had the house virtually to himself. And he was wise enough to leave the door to Julian’s room wide open in the unlikely chance someone should walk by; that way it would not look as if he were snooping. He could just make up any old story about borrowing a book or some such rot. Julian had a marvelous library of old books on Yorkshire.
Melrose quietly searched everything — every drawer, every shelf, every closet. It hadn’t taken long, for the rooms were spartan, almost dreary with their moss-colored draperies and heavy Tudor furniture.
Melrose parted the draperies and looked out of the long windows which faced the sea to assure himself Crael hadn’t decided to make an early and sudden return. It was a morning of weak sunlight and not so much fog, so that he could see for a little distance along the cliff walk. No sign of Julian Crael.
There were two rooms, a bedroom and a small study or library. He began with the bedroom. On a chest of drawers were the usual gentleman’s accoutrements, including a Victorian fitted box, a dressing case holding silver-backed hairbrushes (which Melrose picked up and envied). There were keys, a bottle of lime water, a photograph of Lady Margaret. The drawers disclosed nothing of interest. In the closet hung few but very good, exquisitely tailored suits, a robe, a hacking jacket. He had seen Julian take one of the horses out once very early in the morning; yet he would not participate in the hunt itself.
Melrose returned to the library, where a handsome davenport sat in a recess in a wall of bookcases. He pulled out the writing-slope above, found nothing but writing accessories — no personal papers beyond a few bills from a tailor in London. Systematically, he went through each drawer and found precious little: stationery, pens, and in one drawer, some loose snapshots. These he examined. They were largely views of the manor house and the moors, taken, he thought, some time ago. He closed the drawers and began looking over the bookcases. They seemed in perfect order, nothing shelved behind them, no secret panels, hidden documents.
There was an arrangement of small, framed photographs along the shelves. They were snapshots, really, a dozen or more set up on two of the shelves. They had that sort of brown tint which bespeaks age. He recognized in several of them Julian in his younger days, recognized the elegant Lady Margaret (here on the arm of her husband), knew that the black-haired girl had to be Dillys March, since Melrose had seen the pictures the Colonel had brought out for the police.
There must have been a half-dozen of Dillys, more even, if he counted the ones in which she appeared with others. There was one of Dillys and Lady Margaret, taken when she was little more than a child — ten or eleven, perhaps, snapped in the garden. Another of her, Julian and a young man who must have been the brother, Rolfe. They were all up on horseback. Rolfe looked a man beside the other two, snapped at an awkward age. He was good-looking, but not a patch on Julian for sheer physical beauty, except for that golden hair, which was his mother’s. Then there were two of Dillys and Julian, taken a bit later, both posed like sticks on the steps of Old House. Three more were of Dillys alone. In one she was again on horseback. In the other two she was leaning against a rail fence, looking coy, her head tilted, her eyes looking up from the shadows of bangs and lashes. She might have been in her late teens there, wearing the same light silk frock she wore on the steps of the house.
All told, seven pictures of Dillys March. More of her than of anyone else, and yet Julian Crael professed not to like her at all.
Melrose did not know what, now, brought unbidden to his mind an old trick of his mother’s. When she had more photographs than frames, or when she had wanted to supplant an older, tireder picture with a fresher one, she had simply slipped out the cardboard backing, and put the new in front of the old. Starting with the photos of Dillys and Julian he pulled down the velvet backing and found nothing but the piece of cardboard. He repeated this process through four other pictures. On the fifth, the one of Dillys leaning against the fence, he found another snapshot; it was of Dillys in a park somewhere. Could it be Regent’s Park? Hyde Park?
But this girl was no longer a girl; she was a woman. Dillys March? or was it Gemma Temple? Melrose had not seen the pictures of Gemma Temple, but if the likeness were as great as he had heard . . .
In the sixth frame he found another picture behind the first. Here she stood in front of a building, leaning against an iron railing. The building was indistinguishable from hundreds of brick buildings on city streets. He would have liked to go through all the other pictures, but he was afraid Julian might be returning; Melrose had been in the study a good half-hour as it was.
He opened the desk drawer, the one in which he had found the loose snapshots, took two of them and slid them in behind the pictures of Dillys. It was taking a chance, of course, but if Julian merely checked the frames to make sure there were two pictures, he might not bother to take the back ones out to examine. It was worth it, certainly. Jury would have to see these pictures.
• • •
Back in his own room, lying on his bed, he knew he had found what he wanted. Whether the woman was Dillys March or Gemma Temple was to him at this moment almost irrelevant. Whoever she was, she shouldn’t be turning up in London. Or in a picture frame in Julian Crael’s rooms.
20
“Dillys March? ’Twas a long time ago ah knew her. What’s she got to do with it?”
Tom Evelyn, huntsman for the Pitlochary hounds, had been in the process of carrying what looked like buckets of porridge out to the kennels when Jury approached him. “Did you see this Gemma Temple when she was in Rackmoor?” Evelyn shook his head. “There was a very strong resemblance between Gemma Temple and Dillys March.”
His eyes widened and his eyes were very blue. He was nearly forty but he looked less than thirty. In another ten or fifteen years, Tom Evelyn would look much as he did now — straight, spare, dark, taller then he actually was because of the way he carried himself. And fifteen years before he ha
d probably still looked much the same man, one who would appeal to any woman who liked men, and perhaps to a few who didn’t.
“Yer not tellin’ me this murdered woman was Dillys March, now, are you?”
“No. But we would like to know about Dillys March from anyone who knew her.”
Evelyn rolled down his sleeves, slowly buttoned up a leather vest. “She was trouble, ah can tell you that, man.”
“For whom?”
“Just about any man she’d a mind for.”
“You?”
His blue eyes looked off into the distance, across the courtyard which surrounded the kennels. He was embarrassed, Jury thought, but showed it little. Jury wondered if the woodenness — the straight bearing, the carved features — came from his dealing with animals more than people. And undoubtedly liking them more than people, too. A slight flush had tinged his permanently sunburned face. “She would ha’ been if ah’d let her. Ah been huntsman for this pack over ten years. Before that, ah was whip. Ah wasn’t about to throw that away on the likes o’ her.”
His tone was not merely contemptuous; it was venomous. Evelyn was not the sort of man to show his feelings; if Dillys March could arouse them in such a way after fifteen years, she must have been trouble indeed. The man had a great deal of pride which Jury tried to tread by carefully. “You might have wanted to leave her alone but did she leave you alone?”
Evelyn hunkered down, stirred the porridge, thick enough to stand a spoon in. From the kennels fifty feet off hounds were setting up a terrible racket for their food. “She got me sacked, she did. For a while.”
“What happened?”
“Once, only the once ah was stupid. Young, see. Well, Dillys comes up to the kennels —ah was second whip then. She was with the Colonel. She stayed after he left, and . . . ” He shrugged, letting Jury fill in that part of the story. “She wanted to keep it up, but ah was scared. My God, the Colonel’s ward! But she was nothin’, nothin’ like them. Ah don’t care where she come from and ah don’t care where she’s gone to. Dillys March was trash.”
“Where do you think she went? And didn’t you think it very strange, her leaving that way?”
“Ah don’t get paid, man, to think about things like that.”
“What about Olive Manning’s son, Leo? There was something going on there, I hear.”
Evelyn’s laugh was sharp, like a signal to hounds. “Of course. Any man, like ah said. Olive Manning could have killed her—” Evelyn threw Jury a swift glance. “You know what ah mean. It broke Olive’s heart when Leo was sent to hospital.”
“You don’t really believe, though, that the girl could turn an otherwise sane man into a psychotic?”
Evelyn didn’t answer. He reached down to pick up the buckets of white, glutinous stuff.
“I think it odd that she’d overlook the one right under her nose, the one who would surely be, from her point of view, the best catch.”
“Ah don’t understand. Rolfe Crael was interested in women, not little girls.” Evelyn smiled and the smile was surprisingly warm. “But Ah’m sure she tried.”
“I didn’t mean Rolfe. I meant Julian.”
“What makes you think she wasn’t after him, too?”
“Nothing, really, except he certainly had a strong aversion to her.”
Again, that sharp laugh. “That’s daft. Julian was crazy about her. Anyone could see that.”
21
There was the barest whisper of a knock on Melrose’s door. He stuffed the photos under his pillow and said, “Come in.”
Wood presented his mummified self and said, “Begging your pardon, sir. But there’s a call for you. And Colonel Crael would like a word with you, sir, when you come down. He’s in the Red Run Room. His snug, sir.”
Melrose took note of the flicker of disapproval on Wood’s face: a gentleman napping fully clothed at midday on the counterpane, and with his shoes on? His own butler, Ruthven, would have hidden that look. He thanked Wood as he swung his legs from the bed. “Have you a magnifying glass about somewhere, Wood? I need to do some close work.”
“Colonel Crael often uses one for his butterfly collection. I’ll find it for you.”
“I’ll be right down. And could you scare me up some tea and toast? Is it Inspector Jury calling, by any chance?”
“No, sir. Inspector Jury wanted me to tell you he’s gone to London. It’s Lady Ardry ringing up.”
Oh, God! thought Melrose. And Jury gone to London. What was he to do with these pictures? “Sergeant Wiggins, did he go with Inspector Jury?”
“I can’t say really. They left the house together, though. I’ll just have Cook do your tea, sir.” Before Wood made his straight-backed exit, he added reflectively. “Very busy man, Inspector Jury.”
• • •
Agatha sounded, to his dismay, as if she were in the next room.
Which was where she said she would be within twenty-four hours. Dear Teddy had been invited, also, by Sir Titus. They would both motor along.
She had invited herself, of course. Melrose knew he could neither reason with her, insult her, nor threaten her. She was impervious to all treatment of that sort. He could, of course, bludgeon her to death, only she was in York and he was here. All he could do, then, was trick her.
“How very pleasant,” he said to her, his eyes screwed shut in pain. “Only, just listen, Agatha. If you could simply stay there for another couple of days, I’ll be driving through.” He lowered his voice. “There’s something very important Jury wants you to do in York; he especially asked for your help.” Jury would kill him.
Thrilled silence. It fairly trilled across the telephone wires. She reminded him that she was always willing to help the police. Had he forgotten how helpful she had been in Northants?
Melrose finally replaced the telephone receiver with no idea at all of what he was going to have her do in York. He would think of something.
But the phone at least gave him a small inspiration. As Wood whispered like a black swan across his line of vision, Melrose asked him if there were a London directory about. Wood said he would find one and bring it along with the magnifying glass.
• • •
“I’ve just had a very nice chat with your aunt,” said Sir Titus Crael, slapping shut his Whyte-Melville book. “And here’s your tea. Sleeping late, eh?”
With a smile pasted on his face, Melrose smoothly accepted the cup. “It was most awfully kind of you to invite her here, Colonel Crael. Really terribly decent.”
“I’m just sorry you didn’t mention she was so near, Melrose. She’s just in York. That’s only a few hours away.”
Don’t I know it? thought Melrose. He polished his gold-rimmed spectacles, stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket, and surveyed the ruins of Rackmoor. One simply didn’t have Agatha coming to a village so prized, so valuable it had had a preservation order slapped on it. It would be rather like planting a cow on the steps of Castle Howard. His eye traveled the room, as his mind slogged through years of Agatha and he wondered why she had to be his last remaining relative. “Do you think that this is the best time, though, Colonel, for a visit?”
Sir Titus seemed surprised. “But she said she was such a good friend of Inspector Jury. Said they’d actually worked together on a case in your own village in Northants. You didn’t mention that, Melrose.”
Melrose laughed weakly. “I felt you had enough on your platter with all of this business. . . . ” His voice trailed off as his eye flitted here and there, wanting inspiration. He could tell Colonel Crael she’d suddenly caught cold or died or something. Melrose’s eye fell on a series of hunting prints, mates, it appeared, of the ones in the Old Fox Deceiv’d.
“You did tell her about the hunt, Sir Titus?”
“Hmm? The hunt? Well, no, I didn’t. Why?”
Melrose clapped his hand to his forehead. “Oh, dear. Well, that is too bad. Agatha has a violent allergy to horses.”
Sir Titus looked at Melrose with hi
s mouth open. Melrose might as well have said his aunt had some social disease.
“Yes. If she so much as comes within breathing distance of horses, she has an attack.” He shrugged. “When I tell her there’s to be a hunt in three days’ time, I’m afraid she’ll change her mind. These allergies are tricky things.”
He had seen Agatha up on Bouncer once. Where Bouncer began and Agatha left off was impossible to tell from the rear. Bouncer had very soon rid himself of her.
As all the world should do. Melrose sighed and drank his sherry.
• • •
Back in his room Melrose ran the magnifying glass over the second picture, the one taken in front of the railing of a building.
At first he thought the whitish blob behind the woman was her own white dress reflected in the window. But the magnifying glass showed it up as a white-jacketed figure. A waiter, possibly. On the glass behind her, curving down below her right shoulder were the letters A C E. A word in itself — or part of a word? He ran the glass over the amorphous shapes suspended inside the window. Lanterns. Quite possibly those paper lanterns often serving as the tawdriest sort of decor in Oriental restaurants. That would explain the white jackets. The building, what he could see of it, had the warehouse look of such restaurants. A C E — it could be anything. Melrose grabbed up the London directory, turned to the restaurant listings in the Yellow Pages and was immediately discouraged. There must have been a hundred or more Chinese or otherwise Oriental restaurants. Then, running down the list, his eye fell upon one common denominator for some of them. The word Palace. He looked again at the picture. That could, possibly, account for the A C E.
He started in again on the list of restaurants, noting down every one which ended with the word Palace, beginning with China Palace. When he was finished, he’d accumulated nearly twenty of them, but that was better than a hundred, certainly.
Melrose slapped the directory shut and debated the problem. He supposed, since Jury and Wiggins weren’t here, he should hand the pictures over to Harkins. But Harkins, the last he had heard, was in Leeds with the Chief Constable.
The Old Fox Deceived Page 15