Malice in Miniature (17 page)

Richard was lying about what he had seen in those crucial minutes before Mrs. Lathrop had drunk poisoned tea. I had asked Jane if he could really have seen anything, and she had assured me that his cottage, on a little rise, actually looked down on the Brocklesby estate. In November, with most of the leaves off the trees, his view would have been clear. It was, of course, dark out, early of a November morning. But Wednesday, I recalled, had been a particularly lovely, clear day. If there had been a full moon that night . . . I shoved Emmy away, got up, and consulted the almanac. Thursday, November 11: Full moon, rising 2:30
A.M.

And Thursday—the sky hadn't begun to fill with clouds until the afternoon. I remembered that because they had matched my gloomy, confused state of mind so well.

So Richard could have seen anyone who had been abroad, on lawful or other occasions, in those dead hours before dawn, before Mrs. Lathrop brewed herself a dose of destruction. But had he, in fact, seen anything at all? Or had he left his cottage, dressed in dark clothes, perhaps, to slip more easily through the shadows of that bright moonlit night? Moon shadow is deceptive. Odd, humpy, terrifying shapes may be nothing more than knobby old trees, their patterns moving as if alive on the cold, silvery ground, while the forms that glide smoothly across the grass are shadows neither of clouds nor of trees, but of hunters: foxes, wolves—or men.

I shivered, picked up Emmy again, and turned off the music.
Symphonie fantastique
was not the sort of background my thoughts required. But if Berlioz's macabre strains had contributed an extra shudder or two, the deductions, shorn of their nightmarish trimmings, were sound enough. Richard could have seen anything, or nothing.

And I couldn't imagine how I was going to get him to tell me which it was.

T
HEY SAY ONE'S
subconscious sometimes works miracles. Go to bed with a problem, the theory goes, and your mind will work it out for you as you sleep. My mind must have been installed with some of the instructions missing, for in the morning it was functioning no more creatively than it had the night before. Even after more coffee than I usually allow myself, no sparkling insights swam to the surface, no lightbulbs went off.

My intuition hadn't deserted me, however. When the phone rang, I knew who it would be.

“Good morning, Alan. I sure am glad to hear from you!”

“One moment, please, Mrs. Martin.” There was almost a giggle in the softly accented African voice, but she transferred the call before I could say anything.

“Dorothy, my dear.”

“I swear, next time I'm going to wait until I hear your voice. I came
that
close to telling Betty Atieno I loved her.”

Alan chuckled. “You do rush headlong, don't you? One of the reasons I love you, actually. But this is serious, my love. You've heard?”

“About Claude? Yes, it was on the news last night. I didn't see it, but Jane told me. I don't know the details.”

“What you'd expect. Claude and his bike were in the lake. Not together, however. And it's pretty apparent he didn't drown; there's a dirty great wound in the back of his head.”

I must have made some sort of squeamish sound, because Alan stopped abruptly. Annoyed with myself, I kept my voice very level as I asked, “What about time of death? Any guesses?”

“You know how medical examiners are. Or perhaps you don't, but they never want to commit themselves. However, we can time it fairly well by other factors. It rained there last Friday, Derek Morrison tells me.”

“Let's see, Friday. Yes, I went to Matins and then out for coffee with Margaret, and it was foggy and drizzly, then and for most of day. Not hard rain, but steady.”

“Yes. So the tire tracks and footprints by the lake had to have been made after that. We know they were, in fact, because our people inspected the area on Saturday and found nothing. Now. Saturday was quite warm and dry—you weren't there, but it was, according to Derek—much the same sort of weather that we had at Bramshill. And Sunday was dry as well, until about nine-thirty in the evening, when there was a bit of rain for about an hour. Not much, just enough to soften the ground. Then the temperature dipped sharply, and there was frost before midnight. The prints are good, clear ones, apparently made in damp ground, so they must have got there after the rain stopped on Sunday night, and before the frost set in. I might add, incidentally, that there are one or two blurred prints of a smallish foot in a woman's shoe, made at some time when the ground was much drier.”

“Yes, well, I slipped. I wasn't looking where I was going; I was watching a great blue heron. I think it was a heron. Anyway, I didn't mess up anything, did I?”

“Not seriously. They'll have to come and take casts of your shoes for comparison, of course.”

“They can take the shoes if they want them. I haven't cleaned them; they'd still have some of the relevant mud on them. So apparently Claude went into the water soon after that hour of rain on Sunday night. Who was at the Hall then?”

“No one, apparently. Sunday is the cook's day off; she says she spent it as usual with her married sister in Sherebury. The whole family went to the cinema in the evening and didn't get home until after ten, and Mrs. Hawes— that's the cook—stayed to help put the children to bed and have a nightcap, so she didn't get back to the Hall until nearly midnight. She says it was dark and apparently deserted when she got in, and she went straight to bed. She assumed Sir Mordred had gone up to London as he often does of a Sunday.”

“And had he?”

“Not according to him. He says he pottered about in his workshop all afternoon and then went out to dinner. He had intended to go to the Old Bakehouse, in Maidstone—”

“Oh, I know that place! The Andersons took me there once. It has the most marvelous food!”

“Yes, well, it is also closed on Sundays, a fact Sir Mordred had apparently forgotten. So he says he had to drive about looking for a place to eat, and ended up at a pub, the Pig and Whistle just outside Hawkhurst.”

“Somehow I can't imagine Sir Mordred in a pub. He's so prim.”

“He didn't enjoy it much, or so he told Derek. ‘Chi-chi decor and food from the deep freeze' was the report. But he was late getting there to begin with and very late leaving. It's a popular place on a Sunday night, even if our little man doesn't think much of the food, so it was some time before he was served. And then he got lost on the way home. Derek said he was rather cagey about that. Probably had one or two over the limit and wouldn't, of course, admit it to the police. At any rate, he didn't get home until well after two in the morning.”

“And in a terrible temper, I imagine, driving all over the countryside to end up with mediocre food, especially when he had his mouth set for Old Bakehouse fare. So. With the Hall and the estate deserted, anyone could have brought Claude to the lake and dumped him in. Alan, I've been finding out a thing or two.”

I told him about Richard. “Are Jane and I jumping to conclusions?”

He laughed at that. “My dear, you and Jane are both Olympic-class contenders for the gold medal in the conclusion jump. It is a tribute to your powers of insight into the human mind that you are so often right.”

“I hope I'm not right this time, though. I don't actually know Richard Adam, and he doesn't seem to like me, but Meg needs him. But really, the two of them are the only suspects left, aren't they? With Thoreston out of the way— I presume he
is
out of the way?”

“Oh, yes, easily. He was arrested early Sunday afternoon in York, and his address since then has been one or another county jail. No, he's out of it, for Claude's murder, at any rate. And naturally Derek is having the cook's story checked, and Sir Mordred's, but short of homicidal mania there seems to be no reason why either of them should go around wiping out the Lathrop family.”

“And that leaves Richard. And/or Meg.” I thought I'd kept my voice neutral, but I couldn't fool Alan.

“You can't take it personally, you know, my dear. I've often had to put handcuffs on villains for whom I had a good deal of sympathy. If you're to keep poking about in criminal affairs, you're going to have to develop a certain detachment. Are you still there? Dorothy?”

I swallowed. “Yes, I'm still here. I just—you—when are you going to be home, Alan?”

I could actually hear him smile. “On Saturday, I think, as scheduled. And you're not to make any plans. You and I have a good deal to talk about.”

For several minutes after I hung up the phone, I sat there, hearing his voice. “If you're going to keep poking about . . . a good deal to talk about . . . develop a certain detachment . . .” And he hadn't told me to be careful. For once, he hadn't warned me off.

Well. Well! If he was shifting around to my way of thinking, I was going to have to be very professional about this. Clearly I needed to find out more about Richard Adam, and the way to do that was to talk—very carefully—to Meg Cunningham.

This time I wasn't going to take any chances about getting into the Hall. I looked up the number and picked up the phone.

The voice that answered was female and dithery, one of the volunteers, I assumed. “Brocklesby Hall Museum of Miniatures. I'm sorry, the Museum is closed today because of an emergency.”

“Wait! Don't hang up! I know the Museum is closed, but I'd like to speak to Mrs. Cunningham, please.”

“She isn't here. Nobody's here.”

Well, that wasn't quite accurate, was it? Plainly, the owner of the voice was there, and presumably there were police swarming all over the place. “This is Dorothy Martin. Who am I speaking to, please?”

“Clara Carter. I'm one of the maids, and they said to say nobody's here from the Museum and you should try next week.” She was losing patience.

“I see. May I speak to Richard Adam, please?”

“He can't come to the phone. The po—some people are talking to him.”

That was interesting. “Then perhaps you can give me Mrs. Cunningham's home telephone number.”

“I don't know if I'm supposed to—”

“At once, please, it's very important.” I had assumed my schoolteacher voice and manner, and the young woman capitulated and read me a number.

“Who did you say this was, again? They'll want to know, because I'm not supposed to—”

I hung up gently and waited a moment before I punched in the new number.

“Meg, this is Dorothy Martin. I'm sorry to bother you at home, but I tried to reach you at the Hall and they said no one from the Museum had come in today.”

“No, Sir Mordred told us to stay home. Oh, Dorothy, have you heard what's happened?”

“About Claude, yes. That's why I called, actually. I thought you might need someone to talk to.” I kept my fingers crossed. “Are you free for a while, either now or this afternoon? May I come to see you?”

“Oh, yes, do come. Come now! Do you know where I live?”

The instructions were simple enough even for me to follow. I pulled up in front of Meg's house ten minutes later.

The place, a duplex built of shiny, ugly red brick, was almost painfully neat. Her next-door neighbor's front path was littered with children's toys; the flower garden consisted of gravel and weeds. Meg's path was swept and pristine; her two roses had been cut back for the winter and the annuals pulled up; her curtains hung white and straight.

She opened the door before I could ring the bell. There was no sparkle in the blue eyes today. Her face was pale with anxiety; there were purple shadows under her eyes. Nothing could dull her hair, but it seemed to have lost its bounce.

She made an effort to smile. “Come in. I've just put the kettle on; would you like some tea?”

“I'd love some, thanks.”

She took my coat and hat, the latter a simple knitted affair (this was no time for frivolity), and established me in a front room as neat as the outside of the house. Here, though, there were touches of individuality. The furniture was cheap and ugly, the carpet—doubtless supplied with the house—was of a multicolored hideousness only English carpet makers seem able to produce. But a good painting hung on the wall, a couple of needlepoint cushions brightened the couch, and an inexpensive, plain blue rug covered a lot of the shrieking carpet. A pot of yellow chrysanthemums brightened the windowsill, between panels, not of the standard Nottingham lace, but of plain white cotton edged in blue-and-yellow braid.

“You've done a lot with this room, Meg,” I said as she came in and deposited a tea tray on the one table. “I like that painting.”

“Thanks. I wish I had more time to paint, but—”

“You don't mean it's your work!” I studied it more closely, with some awe. I can draw a cat that's almost recognizable, the two-circles-with-whiskers kind. Anyone who can render a flower bed full of daffodils and hyacinths that actually look like flowers fills me with admiration. But this painting went beyond mere skill. “I don't know a lot about art, Meg, but this seems like really fine work to me. It's well-balanced, the colors are clear and true, and I swear you can almost smell spring when you look at it.”

She smiled. For a moment she was transformed, and my heart twisted. “How kind of you to say so, Dorothy. That's the effect I was trying for, bringing spring into the room.”

“You're very talented. Even I can see that. But you said you don't paint much?”

“Not anymore.” The smile had left her face; I almost wondered if I had imagined it. “I'm quite busy, you know, and I've no space here for supplies. I do try to teach Jemima some of the rudiments of drawing; it's something she can do without worrying about verbal communication. She could be rather good someday, actually.”

She had already lost interest in the subject. Sitting, she poured tea into two cups, added milk and sugar, handed me one. Her own cup she left on the tea tray. “Dorothy,” she said, resting her chin on her hands and looking at me with great intensity, “please tell me what's happening to Richard!”