The Deer Leap (7 page)

The Baroness might be a little nutty, at that. That was fine with Carrie, because all of the sane people she'd known hadn't been God's gift.

Getting down from her tree perch, she picked up the box, and once again looked up at the hazy sunlight, the sky like pearl.
Was it a pleasant Day to die
—
And did the Sunshine face His way?

She squeezed her eyes shut. In a hasty moment, she had even had to name herself and had no idea why she came up with Carrie Fleet.

S
ebastian Grimsdale stood at the window of Gun Lodge, his hands clasped, or, rather, wrenching themselves behind his back, watching her come around the stables. This morning when he had awoken at six, all had been covered with hoarfrost, dew frozen on each dying blade of grass, and he had known a moment of rare exhilaration. Hunting was the only thing that brought that on. Certainly the girl coming across the court didn't. Nor did that Proud woman. No, Prad. Something like that. And here came the Fleet girl carting the damned cat. Police, mind you! Had they nothing better to do with their time than go about the countryside looking for cats?

“I assumed Barney could stay in my room
—” the Prad woman had had nerve enough to say.

Well, he'd scotched
that
plan mighty quick. Told her she'd have to leave the cat in the car, and when she'd turned to find lodgings elsewhere — nearly flung down the pen, rude woman — he'd taken thought about the eight pounds and told her the veterinarian could board the cat. The woman had seemed easy enough to subdue.

A cough behind him turned Mr. Grimsdale from the window to confront two of his guests. Archway, or something like. And his bleached-blond-haired wife who looked enough of a floozy to be in some West End musical. There she was now, dabbing lip-rouge on. Wondered how the husband, who had a face like a biscuit and wore rimless glasses, ever wound up with
her.

He dragged his eyes away from her frontage, which was ample, and said, “Yes, Mr. Archway? What is it?”

“Archer. We were just wanting to pay our bill.”

They were supposed to have stayed another night. Wasn't it awful enough that lean circumstances had forced him to turn Gun Lodge into a guesthouse (he refused to refer to it as a B&B) without those guests breaking their promises. “It was my understanding you were to stay two nights.
Two.
” The indictment made the husband redden, but the woman snapped shut her compact and said in her dreadful East End accent, “That room's as cold as a virgin's —”

Fortunately for her, the husband silenced her. An elbow in the side. Well, if they insisted on being difficult. . . “Checking-out time is at noon. It is now one o'clock.” A long case clock in the entryway bonged the fatal hour.

And as if in tune with the sounds of doom, the giant iron knocker was raised and lowered once with a deadly crash. That Fleet girl. No respect for anything. “I am sure that you would not wish to pay for a night's lodging without the privilege of using it. No one has complained about the heat before,” (actually, quite a few complaints along those lines had reached his ear) and here he sighed wearily — “however, I shall see Midge puts an extra heater in your room. Now, if you will excuse me.”

 • • • 

Carrie Fleet stood on the wide doorstep and looked without expression into the eyes, hard as knuckles, of Sebastian Grimsdale. “I've come with the lady's cat.”

There was a movement from within the box.

Grimsdale looked at both of them with the same disdain. “Just leave it.”

“Here on the doorstep?”

“I
will see she gets it.”

Carrie, who seldom registered emotion, allowed herself the luxury of hating Sebastian Grimsdale, not only because she found him personally hateful, but doubly so because of his being Master of Foxhounds and taking the greatest pleasure in hunting anything (within the law) on the wing or on four feet — pheasant, rabbit, deer, grouse. Indeed, the only time she ever noticed him smiling was when he was tramping along with a gun in his hands.

“No,” said Carrie.

“No? No what?”

“
I'll
see she gets it.” Her tone was merely determined, but the major would take it as rank insolence. His face turned beet red. “Can't I come in and wait? I'll sit in the kitchen.” If he let her in at all, she knew that's where she'd have to sit, anyway.

He glared at her, nodded curtly, and told her to go round back and Cook would let her in.

The delivery boy's entrance was okay with Carrie. She took the cat around to the back of the house, a big ramshackle brick place with a stone wall encircling it like an iron band.

 • • • 

When Polly Praed and Melrose Plant walked into the big kitchen of Gun Lodge, Carrie Fleet was drinking tea from a mug and Barney, out of his box, was dozing peacefully by the hearth. The cook, Mrs. Linley, had paid no more attention to the rules smartly laid down by Sebastian Grimsdale than did anyone else in Ashdown Dean: the greengrocer, the butcher, the librarian.

Polly rushed to the hearth and gathered up the intractable Barney, who seemed to prefer to sleep rather than be found. Barney had never been putty in Polly's hands. It was a bit embarrassing the way he squirmed to get back down to the tattered little rug on which he'd been toasting himself at Carrie's feet.

Polly momentarily put him down and said to Carrie, “Wherever did you find him?”

“On the heath.” She shrugged. “It's near where I live. I guess he got out of your car and just wandered around.”

“How can I thank you —?” Polly, with the aid of Melrose's handkerchief, wiped her eyes and blew her nose, which then looked frostbitten. She scrabbled about in her handbag, drew out her purse, and held out some folded notes.

Carrie frowned slightly. “I don't take rewards for stuff like that. It's against my principles.” She put down her mug and got up.

Melrose Plant had been about to take out his wallet when she said that. The frown disappeared like a shadow's sudden passing and her face took on a lunar quality, something rather above it all, the expression calm as a nun's, though he felt there was something very unnunlike in its placidity. He had to admit here was someone under thirty who held a certain interest for him. He looked at his wallet, and turned back to see her pale blue eyes look quickly away from him. “That's certainly very kind of you.”

Barney was again in a death struggle in Polly's arms, not impressed with the great reunion scenario. “He smells funny—well, soapy, or something.” Polly sniffed the cat's fur.

“That's the vet's soap. Dr. Fleming. You can pay him if you want.”

“A veterinarian? Was he hurt?” Polly started inspecting Barney, who let out an ungrateful growl and managed to struggle down to the hearthrug.

Carrie Fleet seemed to be considering. “No. But I didn't know whose cat it was; except for the bandanna, it could have been a stray. You don't have tags on him.”

There was a definite reproach in that word
tags.

“So I thought it'd be a good idea to take him to Dr. Fleming.”

The girl was chewing her lip, and her quicksilver glance from the one to the other of them suggested to Melrose that there might be more to her story than she was saying. But he let it pass.

“But — well, that was so
good
of you. What's your name, then?”

“Carrie Fleet.” She brushed the pale hair back across her shoulder and started for the door.

Polly Praed didn't know what to do about Carrie Fleet. “Where do you live? In Ashdown?”

Carrie Fleet turned. “Yes. With the Baroness.”

And with that as explanation, she walked out the door.

As Carrie walked back along Ashdown's High Street, she realized how stupid her story had been and that the lady would go to Dr. Fleming and find out about the petrol.

Maybe a stranger's going to Constable Pasco and complaining would finally convince him that Batty and Billy were holy terrors around anything that couldn't defend itself. Maybe Batty couldn't help it, being the way he was, but Billy ought to be in borstal.

A family of ducks rowed up to the edge of the pond, probably hoping for lunch, seeing her there. But she had no bread today. She turned out her pockets in mute explanation, but the ducks didn't take the hint, and bobbed there, shoving one another about, each wanting to be first.

“No crumbs,” said Carrie. “I can't
always
have crumbs, can I?”

She remembered Batty had been here one day, tossing in pieces of bread, and when the ducks came up close to the edge, he'd tried hitting at them with a stick until he saw Carrie and started backing off. She grabbed the stick and gave him a small whack across his bum, just the thing his aunt should have done. Even though she hadn't hit him hard, this assault had landed her yet once again in front of P.C. Pasco, being lectured to by Amanda Crowley.
“Poor Batty only trying to play with the ducks and you come along
—”

“Billy probably told him to do it,” was Carrie's answer.

That had not gone down well at all with the aunt, who had always considered herself a martyr first-class.

Carrie loathed this tall, slim, buckled-down woman. She always seemed to be wearing riding gear of some sort. Tight pants, tight boots, that day a jacket closed with metal clasps. She had a mouth like a clamp that barely opened when she spoke in angry little spasms. Her hair was metal-gray, but fashionably done, pulled back in a fancy chignon from a round face, slightly jaundiced from too much passing about of the hunt cup, probably. It reminded Carrie of a poached egg. Amanda Crowley considered herself very county, loved to hunt and shoot, and was rumored to have her eye on Sebastian Grimsdale.

A wonderful pair, Carrie had thought, listening to the spasmodic voice of Miss Crowley. The two of them might mistake the rustles they made in the woods and shoot each other.

“The Baroness will have to be told.”
The Baroness was often approached by certain of the villagers who did not appreciate Carrie Fleet's ministry. It was always with that
you must be told
excuse, though no one apparently ever thought Amanda Crowley “must be told” about her own two.

This going to the Baroness always made Carrie laugh inwardly. The Baroness sometimes would, and sometimes wouldn't, invite the complainants in. When she allowed
them an audience, it was in her withdrawing room, where she promptly withdrew her attention.

Thus while Amanda or Mr. Geeson or whoever happened to be that day's visitor was issuing an ultimatum, the mind of the Baroness was far away, strolling through an avenue of limes and plum trees, ripe fruit fallen underfoot, sunshade twirling slowly, milky hand lying on the arm of the Baron. That, or the faraway look had something to do with the gin in her teacup.

Carrie enjoyed imagining the Baroness's imaginings. Perhaps she embellished upon them in her own mind, she didn't know. But she had seen so many old photographs of what “La Notre” had once been — its summer house, its Grecian columns, its grounds and gardens completely out of place in Ashdown Dean.

There were times when Carrie's own arm replaced the Baron's as she accompanied the Baroness on her rambles through gardens long gone to seed or strangled with vines and grounds gone to moss and trees lichen-drowned. But the Baroness seemed to see in this adumbration of some garden Armageddon a mere need for the gardener to “see to” a few things. The cold stalks of dahlias she aimed her walking stick at and told Carrie to tell Randolph to see to them. Randolph was in his dotage and saw to nothing. Occasionally, Carrie had observed him leaning on a rake or a hoe and performing about as effectively as the crumbling statue at his back. Randolph also had a faraway look, but this was directed to the turf accountant's in the market-town of Selby. He would roll out his rickety bicycle and wobble off down the long drive, headed for Selby.

Given the Baroness's predilection to absent herself mentally from the felicity of the Crowleys of this world, it was left to Carrie herself to sit there and accept the hard coin of their complaints, like a parishioner passing the collection plate, as she literally passed the cake plate. And all the while
marveling that none of the Ashdown Dean crowd had twigged it: the Baroness Regina de la Notre was either in a waking dream or dead drunk.

Although, of course, when she held her salons, Regina came up for air out of the past to join the present.

 • • • 

These were Carrie's reflections as she looked blindly across the bright water at the Church of St. Mary's and All Saints. The ducks, everlastingly hopeful, had been joined by two swans. She had the money for the Baroness's gin in her shoe, and would buy a half-loaf and come back.

Carrie started toward the sub-post-office stores, her mind again on the lady and man at Gun Lodge.