The Deer Leap (23 page)

Wiggins made a note of that and said, with a frown, “That would mean that
whoever
went into that kennel would have been torn apart.”

“Yes,” said Fleming.

“But there were only two people who did,” said Melrose. “And Mr. Grimsdale, here, wouldn't have gone into the kennel for any particular reason, not until tomorrow.”

Polly Praed, sitting in the trophy room in her old brown wrapper, chewed at her lip. “And that's the third one. The murderer could have been anywhere when it happened. What a bloody awful way to kill a man.”

Melrose's thoughts were on Polly Praed's head on his shoulder when she added, turning those amethyst eyes on Wiggins. “But aren't you going to get Superintendent Jury back here at the double?”

“A
nd where do you think
you're
going?” asked Polly Praed the next morning. She had just walked into the Lodge's breakfast room to see Melrose finishing a sumptuous — by Gun Lodge standards — breakfast. The piece of toast she plucked from the toast rack was actually warm. So was the piece of bacon she plucked from his plate. “It's only just gone nine.”

Then, apparently having lost interest in Melrose's designs, she looked around the room. “I should have thought he'd be here by now.”

He
meaning Jury. Melrose sighed. “According to Wiggins, the superintendent had rather a full schedule yesterday. But he might come walking in at any minute, so I suggest you get dressed. Not that the robe is unbecoming; I'm sure Sherlock Holmes would have loved it. Sorry I ate my breakfast,” he added, seeing her staring at his plate. “But I imagine the Grimsdale cook, unobstructed by Grimsdale, will provide you with one.”

“Where is the awful man?”

“In the trophy room, last I saw. With Pasco and Detective
Inspector Russell. Grimsdale does not look at all well.”

“He shouldn't. He should look like death. He was going to
kill
that child. If it hadn't been for Sergeant Wiggins. . . Where
are
you going?”

“To ‘La Notre.' ”

“At this hour? Don't baronesses and so forth sleep until noon?”

“I have no idea. But she might rise to see the Earl of Caverness.”

“Impostor,” said Polly, chewing the last piece of toast.

To see her, however, one ran the gamut.

Melrose's Silver Ghost probably hastened the running of it, he guessed. A little maid in a cockeyed cap stared at it and then at him and the card he handed her, uncertain as to which of the three was the most impressive.

“I don't mean to bother the Baroness Regina at this rather ungodly hour —” Melrose smiled. “I thought perhaps I could see —”

“Oh, I'm sure it's no bother, Your Grace —”

He laughed. “I haven't reached those heady heights. Only an earl.”

“Hullo,” said a voice from the shadows of the foyer. “Gillian Kendall.” Gillian put out her hand. “Regina's secretary.”

“Miss Kendall.” She had been sorting the post on a silver plate, rather tarnished. “Sorry to be dropping by so early.” If nearly ten could be so considered.

She replaced the post and said, “That business last night at the Lodge. That was absolutely dreadful . . . .”

“Carrie told you?”

Gillian Kendall looked puzzled. “Carrie? No. What did she have to do with it?” Then she smiled. “Though she does have a way of turning up when there's an animal crisis.”

It was Melrose who was puzzled now. “I'd call it more of a Carrie crisis. She didn't tell you —?”

Before he could finish the statement, a vision, if not precisely of loveliness, but a vision nonetheless, came sweeping down the staircase. “How very kind of you to call, Lord Ardry. Coffee in the salon, Gillian?”

“Yes, of course. But what about Carrie?”

“Carrie? Carrie?” said the Baroness, attempting to upsweep her hair and hold it with the hairpins in her mouth. The mouth had been rather quickly painted; lipstick bleeding into the tiny pursed lines around it. Regina de la Notre apparently had no compunction about completing her toilette in public. “Carrie is always in trouble.” She sighed and stopped with her hair-pinning.
“Now
what's she done? And to a peer of the realm, dear God.”

“It's more what's been done to Carrie.”

“Well, dear God! Why are we all standing here?” She said it as if chairs should materialize out of the very air, and looked sharply at Gillian, as if her magic act were rotten.

Gillian opened the doors into the salon and Regina swept in. Her dressing gown was definitely the sweeping sort, blue brocade and ivory insets and a long train.

Having arranged herself on a chaise longue and accepted a light for her cigarette, she was ready for the day's disasters. Gillian still stood. “Now, what is all this?”

“Grimsdale nearly killed her last night. If it hadn't been for Sergeant Wiggins, I doubt she'd be alive — I can't imagine her not telling you.”

Both of them looked horrified, Regina enough that she seemed pulled from her chaise by invisible wires. She started pacing. “Blast and damn that man.” She whirled with quite an exquisite movement of pulling the train of brocade with her hand. “I trust the police have got him.”

“Questioned him, yes. Got him —?” Melrose shrugged.

“Assault with a deadly weapon — Gillian, will you please not stand there like a stick, dammit. Coffee!”

“Don't you think Carrie takes precedence over coffee?” Gillian said, icily.

Fortunately the little maid was back, given instructions, and Gillian went out through the french doors. Despite the greater concerns of the morning, Melrose could not help but be fascinated by the
trompe l'oeil
murals.

When the Baroness had stopped her pacing, and restored herself to the chaise and another cigarette, Melrose told her what had happened.

“
Donaldson?
Killed by those beasts of Grimsdale's?” She shuddered. Then she turned to Melrose. “I've been visited by a Scotland Yard superintendent. What on earth is your particular interest in all of this?” She plucked up his card from the table beside the chaise. “Earl of Caverness.”

Melrose smiled. “More or less.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My name is really Melrose Plant.”

“Mine's Gigi Scroop. From Liverpool. I am actually a
real
baroness, not that it gets me much but lording it over the village. Why do you pass yourself off as an earl, then?”

“It's not quite that. I simply gave up my titles.”

A well-plucked eyebrow shot up. “I'll be damned.
Gave
them up? Well, to each his own tastes. Now, Grimsdale is done for, I hope. That should get him five to ten, wouldn't you say?”

“Possibly —”

Gillian was back. “She's with her menagerie. Not talking. It doesn't surprise me. Bingo — that's her dog — is missing.”

“Then I can imagine she'd be worried.”

He stood up. “Mind if I have a word with her?”

“Of course you may,” Regina swept her arm toward the french door. “It's her sanctuary. Displaced-animal thing. I
don't mind, if that's what keeps her happy. I only wish she'd get rid of the damned rooster. I'm not Judas.”

“No coffee, Mr. Plant?” asked Gillian.

“Later, thank you.”

As he started for the door, she said. “You're a friend of the superintendent?”

Melrose turned. “Yes.”

She colored slightly. “You wouldn't know when —”

“He's coming back?” He smiled wearily. “Sometime today.” Certainly, she was a good-looking woman.

Not that that would get
him
anywhere.

She was taking a black cat out of a makeshift cage when he stood at the door to the little house. Or “Sanctuary,” he supposed, looking up at the rough-cut sign above the door.

Given the cat, an elderly Labrador, two badgers, a rooster, and what he could have sworn was a pony that had peered at him out of the trees, Melrose had to admit that Carrie Fleet didn't play favorites. It didn't even have to walk on all fours, apparently, given the rooster clawing at the dirt floor with its bandaged leg.

None of the animals seemed in terribly good repair — the Labrador looked as if it had been hit by a lorry. It lay quietly in a wooden box with slats, eyes blinking, breathing slowly.

“Oh. Hullo,” said Carrie, in the act of putting a much-abused stuffed mouse at the other end of the room. Hut would have been an apter description than “Sanctuary.”

“Hello, there.” He waited, with a warm smile, supposing her own greeting, not awfully friendly, but certainly not cold, to be the forerunner to a lengthy conversation about animal welfare.

It wasn't. She had squatted down to give the cat a small push, apparently trying to work up interest in the mouse.
There was something wrong with one of its hind legs, and it seemed resistant. “Go on, then,” said Carrie, giving it another little push.

“Well. I suppose it needs a bit of exercise, that it?”

She nodded.

It was as if the events of last night hadn't happened. She just crouched there, running her long silvery hair behind her ear, watching the cat. Eventually, it got interested and made its clever play for the mouse.

She got up then, looking relieved.

“You have a way with animals, certainly . . . .” And then he felt an absolute fool as she looked at him with those milky-blue eyes almost devoid of expression.

“If you call not hitting them with cars and sticks.”

Almost a whole sentence. He wondered what it would take to get a smile out of her.

“Generally, of course, I don't bother about the drover and his sheep. Just plow the car right through them.” Melrose's own smile was brilliant.

It went unanswered.

He coughed. “Look, couldn't I talk with you for a minute?”

“You are.” She opened the cage where the dog lay, ran her hand down its back, not so much petting it, but more in the manner of a doctor whose fingers can feel what the eye can't see nor the ear hear.

Damn.
Melrose would have hated to report to Jury he couldn't get the girl to talk. “I'm a friend of the superintendent—”

That
should get a reaction. And the usual question.

“Is he coming back?” There was a hesitancy, though, as if asking it gave something away.

“Of course. Today, I'm sure.”

“Then maybe he can find Bingo.”

“Bingo — oh. Your dog. I'm dreadfully sorry he's missing.”

She came to the door of the dark little hut, blinking in the morning light. “At least you didn't say, ‘He'll turn up.' ”

Had Melrose's long-standing habit of refusing cheap condolences actually done him some good? “Don't you think he will?”

Carrie squinted off toward the horizon and was silent, as if her eye scanned the hill for some sign of Bingo. She was perfectly still, fingering a narrow gold chain around her neck.

There was a bench there and Melrose sat down. “Would you mind sitting?”

She shrugged. Standing, sitting — little difference.

“Sebastian Grimsdale's in a good deal of trouble about last night. I can't imagine a man being so obsessed —” There had been very few times in his life when Melrose blushed. This was one.

But all he caught was a flicker of a smile. “He's awful. With him, it's either a huntable buck or trash.” She leaned over, her elbows resting on her knees.

“I had rather a long lecture on the intricacies of stag-hunting.”

“ ‘Nasty beasts,' he calls them. Probably didn't say anything about what deer do to escape. Like jump over cliffs. Try to swim out to sea —”

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.