The Deer Leap (16 page)

“I can think of one or two. Donaldson, for instance. Only I thought those meetings were generally held at
his
place. And then there's our constable, isn't there? And, perhaps, even Paul Fleming. Too bad for Gillian Kendall.”

Jury's jaw tightened. Then he smiled. “Since you're not a gossip, Miss Crowley, perhaps you might know who is.”

“Well, I dislike speaking ill of the dead. But certainly Sally MacBride seemed cheek to jowl with Una Quick.”

“Ever heard of rumors of Miss Quick's tampering with people's post?”

“Well, Billy and Batty — Bertram —
did
mention —”

She quickly dropped the subject of Billy and Bertram and Jury just as quickly picked it up. “That incident with Miss Praed's cat —”

Her diversion was to say she had no idea who Miss Praed was. “The woman staying at Gun Lodge whose cat was taken from her car —”

Amanda interrupted. “You've been listening to Carrie Fleet, of course. She's hardly to be taken seriously.”

“According to her, your nephews were about to burn Miss Praed's cat.”

Amanda crushed her cigarette so forcefully it looked like a splayed bullet. “I'm suing that girl for slander.”

“You'd have to sue the Baroness. I don't think you'd win. Dr. Fleming saw the cat.”

“That
doesn't
prove my boys —”

Jury was losing patience. It was an effort not to show it. “Miss Crowley, I'm not here to press charges about the cat. I'm interested in the deaths of Una Quick and Sally MacBride. And the motive for their murders.”

She stared at him through the gloom of the little sitting room. “
Murder?
Their deaths were accidents.”

“I doubt that.”

“Dr. Farnsworth signed Una's death certificate.”

“She was phobic, really.”

Amanda shrugged. “I'd hardly call a bad heart that.”

“I would. If your behavior was so compulsive you had to call your doctor every Tuesday to report. That's pretty phobic.”

Again she shrugged. “I wouldn't know.”

Jury got up. “Don't you wonder about your own, Miss Crowley?”

Sharply, she looked up. “My what?”

“Phobia. Cats.” Jury smiled and said, “I should be careful, if I were you. Thanks for your time.”

She did not bother to rise as he opened the door. Her mouth was still open.

T
he Deer Leap was closed except to guests of the inn and police, though the sanguinity of John MacBride had been replaced, behind the bar, by the sanguinary looks of Maxine Torres.

When Jury asked her for a double whiskey, he almost expected her to say
I don't do windows.
And her sullen though sultry look at Wiggins, who asked for a hot buttered rum, would have been enough to make anyone less determined to stave off a bout of flu forget it.

Maxine was happy to forget it. “Kitchen's closed,” she said. “You want beer, gin, whiskey, okay. Sherry, okay. Nothing that means cooking.”

“Heating up a bit of water and butter hardly means cooking,” said Wiggins.

“Yeah? To me, you have to put it on a stove, it cooks.” Even under the heavy lids, the Gypsy eyes stared him down. Then she recited the litany of drinks she would fetch. This time she left out the sherry. She'd have to travel down the bar for that. The optics were directly behind her.

Wiggins gave in. “Brandy.”

“Brandy,” she repeated, ran a balloon glass under the optic, and plunked it on the bar. All in one motion. Should have been a flamenco dancer, thought Jury.

Wiggins was certain he was coming down with a disease unknown in the annals of medical science. On the way back from Fleming's laboratory, he'd sneezed his head off and asked Jury if there might have been something back there he was allergic to. Only cat or dog dander, Jury assured him, knowing Wiggins could even talk an allergy into something terminal.

He sat beside Jury now, as determined to believe he'd caught something as Maxine Torres was determined not to help him get rid of it. She sat at the other end of the bar, wetting a finger, slowly folding back the pages of a fashion magazine, her interview with Russell apparently not having dented her complacency, and the death of Sally MacBride having turned her attention to a new wardrobe.

The door opened and Polly Praed came in together with a gusting wind that made Wiggins shiver. Maxine looked up, sulking, and informed Polly that the Deer Leap was closed. Respect for the dead. Looking around at the three of them, she made it sound as if only Maxine had any.

“I'm meeting Lord Ardry,” said Polly. Jury heard Maxine mumble something, but having taken on the job of temporary publican, she was forced to serve her.

When Polly asked for a sherry, Maxine gave her a look that could stop a tinker's cart, and moved down the bar, Polly calling after her, “Tio Pepe.”

“No got,” she said, not about to search through the various bottles. She returned with the one nearest to hand, Bristol Milk.

“I don't
like
sweetish sherry.”

Maxine shrugged and didn't even look at her. “Don't drink it, then.”

“Isn't she a charmer?” said Jury.

Polly braved a look at him in the mirror, adjusting her big glasses. “Oh, hello.”

Jury shook his head. “Hello, Polly.” He asked Maxine for a pint of best bitter. Fortunately, the beer pull was directly in front of her.

“Hello, Sergeant Wiggins.” Her greeting was absolutely sunny. He returned it. “I'm meeting Lord Ardry,” she said to the mirror, then let her gaze wander all around the firelit room — at the horse brasses above the bar, at the painting above the fireplace — everywhere but directly at Jury.

“Polly, why don't you stop with that ‘Lord Ardry' stuff. You know he dropped the titles.” He watched her color and snap open her bag and rummage relentlessly through it, as if looking for proof of Plant's peerage. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, she said, “I can hardly call him Melrose, hardly knowing him as I do. Or don't.” She fumbled with her sherry glass.

“Good God. After all the time you spent with him in Littlebourne?”

She was silent.

“You
do
remember your own village, Poll? The murder, the letters —”

“Poll?
You make me sound like a parrot.”

Jury smiled again and shook his head. “You're not nearly so talkative.”

It was at this moment that Melrose came down the stairs. He had been looking glum but brightened when he saw Polly.

“Hullo, Polly. Ready for dinner?”

Maxine looked up in alarm.

“Oh,
don't
worry. I wouldn't ask you to boil water.”

“I just did,” said Wiggins.

“Liberty Hall, back there, isn't it?” Plant was surveying the decor in the recommended restaurant in Selby. The town
was charming, the restaurant, or
taverna,
was not — at least in the judgment of Melrose.

“You're always complaining,” said Polly equably as she drank her wine.

“I? I beg your pardon. Seldom do I complain. I simply do not care for defrosted
spanakopita.
And this retsina tastes like fish oil” — he made a face as he took another sip — “and I believe all of the waiters and Mama Taverna are really the rest of the Torres family. They're Greek Gypsies.” Melrose poked at a stuffed grape leaf. “This reminds me of that horror movie about the body-snatchers —”

“Cut it out,” said Jury. “You're putting me right off my meal.”

“Sorry. Didn't mean to be rude. I just want to go back to England.”

“
I
have to get back to London. Although Racer probably doesn't even know I'm gone yet.” He looked at Polly. “I'd pretty much guessed Una Quick wouldn't have made that trek up the hill unless it was damned important —”

Polly looked crestfallen.

“— But the umbrella; that I missed completely.”

Polly's violet eyes glimmered. “You can't be expected to notice
everything,
I expect. I write mysteries; I've trained myself to notice things.”

“Scotland Yard, of course, hasn't,” said Plant, holding up a hand to signal a black-eyed waiter, who was irritated at having his rattling conversation with the other three broken by the customers.

Polly ignored him, chewing a bit of crusty bread. “She'd come out before the storm.” Polly frowned.

Jury waited for her to go from A to B. But she only shrugged.

“It wasn't the storm that pulled down the telephone wire,” said Plant. “Which means, then, someone tampered with it—”

“
You're
so clever,” said Polly, irritably. “That's just what I was going to say.”

“Good. Then you would also have deduced that someone knew Una Quick would have to make a telephone call and wanted to force her to walk up that hill.”

“That's certainly a chancy way of trying to kill someone,” said Polly.

“Like the dog.”

“What?” Polly looked suspiciously at the plate of hummus.

“The dog,” Plant repeated, asking for the wine list. The retsina had been Polly's idea.

“Don't you agree?” asked Plant, over Polly's head.

“What's this stuff? It looks like something I feed Barney.”

“Cats and dogs,” said Jury. “The death of that terrier, given the terrible state of Miss Quick's heart,
could
have brought on an attack that would kill her. But it didn't. Next thing, force the old woman right after the poor funeral to huff up the hill to the phone box.”

“Still chancy. Polly, will you stop coveting my shish kebab? Eat your catfood.”

“Not if there was someone on the other end of the line,” said Jury.

Polly reached over quickly and forked a succulent piece of lamb from Melrose's plate, saying, “You mean Una Quick
was
making a call?”

“I'd say she'd been told to call someone at exactly such-and-such time.”

“Farnsworth,” said Plant. “Everyone in town knew that she called him on Tuesday evenings.”

“But that doesn't mean she was calling Farnsworth.”

Polly, having helped herself to half of Melrose's plate, stopped chewing and sat back. “What you're saying is that it wasn't a soothing statement about her heart that did it.”

Jury nodded. “More likely something quite venomous. Deadly. A threat, perhaps.”

“ ‘I was the one who killed your dog and the same thing is going to happen to you, Una,' ” said Plant. “That ought to do it.”

“I'd say so. It might have done the job even over her own telephone. But forcing her to physical exertion beforehand would make the result pretty much a dead cert, wouldn't you say?”

Polly, having pretty much polished off Melrose's dinner, was sitting back, wearing her glasses again, staring up at the ceiling. “What an absolutely marvelous way to kill somebody —”

“Really,” said Melrose, studying the wine list. “A bottle of blood, Polly, perhaps? Couldn't taste worse than the fish oil.”

“No, I mean it —”

“I know you mean it. Here's your moussaka. I'll just have some —”

She slapped his hand away from her plate. Melrose ordered a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and the waiter, who in truth might have been Maxine's relation, looked at him as if he were crazy. “We got the retsina, house wine, the . . .” He named two or three others.

“Then why is the Châteauneuf-du-Pape on the wine list?”

“Who knows? Have the house wine.” He moved off.

Polly continued. “It
is
ingenious. The murderer disguises his or her voice, doesn't get near the victim. So even if it
doesn't
work, the worst that can happen is that Una says she was threatened. And the storm becomes simply a lucky accident for the murderer. Makes it look as if
that's
what knocked out Una's telephone wires, when they'd already been cut.”

“Sally MacBride?” asked Polly, well into her moussaka.

“I believe I'll have some shish kebab,” said Melrose.

She stared at him. “You just did.”

“It would be very much the same thing,” said Jury, as
Plant signaled the waiter, disengaging him once more from the interminable conversation going on at the rear of the Taverna. “Probably a number of people knew about that phobia, her fear of the underground, her sleeping with a light on and the door open —”

The waiter had ambled over, yawned, and stared at Plant. “Another shish kebab, if you please.”

“You just had some,” said the waiter, glaring.

“That's what I told him,” said Polly, eyes now on the list of sweets.

“I know I just had some,” said Melrose. “Instead of your skewer—” He reached around and picked up his silver-knobbed stick, clicked a button, and the ebony stick disengaged immediately. “Use mine.”