Malice in Miniature (19 page)

“All right, then. You saw someone you thought was Meg. That much is clear. You also thought she had a good motive to murder both the Lathrops, and you had no intention of giving her away. Meanwhile,
she
's been scared to death
you
had something to do with the whole mess. Now that you've had the sheer good luck, both of you, to clear yourselves of Claude's murder, maybe we can make some sense out of what you saw, Richard. You're going to have to tell the police the whole story, of course, but I hope you'll tell me first. As a rehearsal. Or, darn it all, because I'm dying to know!”

Richard's face, like Meg's, was transformed when he smiled. For the first time, I could see the attraction.

“Very well, Mrs. Martin. I'm sorry I was so uncooperative. You've been doing your best to help us, I can see that now.”

“Don't worry about it, and call me Dorothy. But please tell me. I'm dying by inches.”

“Why don't we sit down?” suggested Meg. “And would anybody like some tea?”

“Look,” I said desperately, “I'll treat you both to lunch in a few minutes, and we can have all the tea, or any other beverage, that anyone wants. But can we settle this business first?”

Richard and Meg sat on the couch. If they had been ten years younger they would have held hands. At almost thirty, English reserve had set in, and they were careful not to touch. It didn't matter; the sparks between them flared as brightly as if they'd been intertwined.

Richard cleared his throat. “First of all, I need to apologize to Meg for being an ass. I ought to have known she could never be mixed up in something like murder. But I wasn't thinking very clearly.

“I was up early that morning, as usual. In summer, of course, I'm at work soon after dawn, and it takes me a while, in the autumn, to slow down from the summer rhythm. I've always liked being awake in the early morning, anyway. There's a stillness, with only animals abroad . . . it's peaceful, refreshing.”

Meg did touch his hand then, gently. He said nothing, didn't even look at her, but he gripped her fingers.

“It was a little before six. I was making tea and planning out my day. That's why I was looking out of the window. It was bright as day, or nearly, with a full moon and no clouds. I was looking at the terrace garden and hoping the earth would be warm enough to dig, because the bulbs needed to be separated and new ones planted.

“When I first saw the movement, I didn't pay particular attention. It was just in the corner of my field of vision, and if I thought anything at all I suppose I thought it was a dog, or a fox. You know how tricky moonlight can be.”

I nodded. Exactly my own thoughts, if more prosaically expressed.

“But I kept looking out the window, not really noticing much. I was thinking about my work. And then I saw it, unmistakably.”

“Saw
what?
” said Meg and I in unison.

“A woman. On a bicycle.”

“Where?” I said.

“She was going along the main road, just where the drive comes out. It was pretty early for any traffic on that road, but I wouldn't have thought anything about it, particularly, except that she was wobbling a good deal. It didn't look as though she was used to a bike. And then she stopped and got off and walked the bike, as if she was going to turn up the drive. I watched closely, then, to see if she did, because she had no business there. I'm not hired as a watchman or guard, you understand, but I try to keep an eye on things. I couldn't see anything, though; the shadows were too long in the drive. I kept watching, but I didn't see her go on past on the road, either. And just then the kettle came to the boil and started screaming, so I made my tea, and when I looked again, there was nothing to see.”

“How did you know it was a woman?”

“She was wearing a skirt. And a scarf. And—oh, it was everything about her. The awkward way she handled the bike, the way she walked.”

“You could see all that from here?”

“Look for yourself. The kitchen window.”

I looked. The kitchen window was larger than those in the rest of the cottage. I thought Richard had probably enlarged it to take advantage of the view. Brocklesby Hall, sitting in a little valley, was spread out in all its gaudy grandeur for Richard to see while he ate his breakfast. Even on a gray, cloudy day the window commanded miles of countryside. I could easily believe that on a moonlit night he could pick out details on the road by the entrance to the drive.

I came back and sat opposite the two of them. They hadn't moved closer, they weren't touching anymore, but the electricity between them was palpable. I wasn't needed, and they certainly didn't want to share lunch with me. I doubted they would remember to eat at all. It was time I was out of there.

There was one more thing I had to clear up first, though.

“Why were you so sure it was Meg?”

“I wasn't! It never occurred to me that it was anyone I knew, at the time. A woman, and not young, was the only impression I got. It was only afterward, when I knew about Mrs. Lathrop, that I began to think it was odd, someone being near the house just about the time when the tea could have been poisoned, and to wonder who the woman could have been. And then I could only think of Meg, and I thought I must have been mistaken about the woman's age, with the moonlight and all, and—well, I was an ass, as I said.”

“Fear can obscure anyone's mental processes. Yes, you were stupid, but we all are, now and then.”

“But, Mrs. Martin—Dorothy. I'm still wondering. It wasn't Meg. It wasn't Mrs. Hawes; she was in the house already. And there's no other woman with a key to get into the Hall.

“So—who was it?”

T
hat was the question of the day, and, in fact, of the next several days. Inspector Morrison, when I walked back to the Hall to report, was, of course, furious with Richard.

“Five days later, he tells us! Five days!” He clenched his jaw. “Do you realize how much harder it is going to be to trace an unknown female after five days? It is entirely possible that Mr. Richard Adam may be charged with obstruction of justice, and I, for one, would be delighted to see him convicted!”

That was just temper, of course. The inspector had no time to waste on such side issues, much as he might have liked to. He set in motion the whole vast machinery of “routine,” instituting a far-flung network of inquiries, organizing his small, always too small complement of men and women to do what had to be done. Nobody had much hope, after all this time, that anyone would remember a woman, not young, not a very good cyclist. But it all had to be tried, the questions had to be asked, however useless they might prove to be.

I had to look for a lift into town, since Meg had forgotten I existed. Not that I could blame her. She and Richard could both work at the Hall now and live in Richard's idyllic cottage, happily ever after, presumably. On a practical level, I thought he'd be good with Jemima, and that, after all, was one of the really important things.

Inspector Morrison had also forgotten about me, in the flurry of issuing orders, so I wandered out to the parking lot to see if any of the police were bound for town. On the way I ran into Sir Mordred, coming out of the workshop. He looked awful. His face was white, his hands were shaking, his breathing was labored.

“Sir Mordred, are you all right? You don't look a bit well. Is there anything I can do for you?”

He looked at me without recognition for a moment, and then ran a handkerchief across his face.

“Mrs. Martin. Thank you, no. I shall be quite all right. These past few days have been frightful, and I'm a bit tired, that's all.”

“I'm sure you should have a doctor. Is there someone I could call?”

“No! I don't believe in doctors. I shall be quite all right. Please don't bother!”

He tottered off to the house, leaving me shaking my head in the parking lot.

Eventually, one of the policemen took me back to Meg's house, where I picked up my car, went home, and put in a call to Alan. I was bursting with conversation.

It was one of those days when he was heavily burdened with meetings, so it wasn't till after dinner that he was able to call me back. By that time he had heard the latest developments from Morrison, which relegated most of what I had to say to the category of old news.

“I hear you've been making my DCI's job harder for him,” was his greeting.

“Thanks a lot! I saved him hours of chasing up blind alleys, is what I did!”

Alan gave the comfortable chuckle I so love. “You did, indeed. So I informed him. He said he'll remember to thank you later.”

“Smart aleck. At least I got Richard to talk, and that puts the poor inspector one or two steps off square one.”

“Only one or two, I'm afraid. Until we trace the mysterious lady, Derek's absolutely in the dark. And, of course, tracing her is going to be much harder than it would have been several days ago.”

“Yes. Still, it shouldn't be impossible. Farmers would have been awake at that hour, and an old lady abroad on a bicycle before 6
A.M.
would stick in the mind, wouldn't you think?”

“Perhaps. It would be useful if we had any idea at all of whom we were looking for.”

“Another illusion shattered! I thought you went at these things like scientists, trying to gather facts, not prove a theory.”

He heaved an exaggerated sigh.

“You do read the wrong sort of books, my dear. I shall have to educate you properly. We try to be unprejudiced in our approach, of course, but we cannot gather all the facts in the world. Even scientists set limits to their experiments, so that it's clear what data they are trying to collect.

“Derek's people will be asking everyone they can find whether they saw anyone at all on that road, or any nearby road, at any time before dawn that morning. They'll check out bicycles in the neighborhood. They'll try to trace the woman's movements, where she came from, where she went after she left the Hall. If, indeed, she ever went to the Hall. It's the slimmest possible lead, but as it's the only one we have, we have to follow it up. But hunting an unknown is worse than the proverbial needle in the haystack. It would be extremely helpful to know we were looking for a bright blue knitting needle, size thirteen.”

“Well, then, I'll nose around and see if anyone has any ideas about stray knitting needles wandering in the vicinity of the Hall.”

“Do that. Who knows, it might just help. Now that you've managed to destroy Derek's case, it would be useful if you could build up another one.”

Well, a little sarcasm wouldn't hurt me. Once again he hadn't told me to go peddle my papers, and unless it was an accidental oversight, it was a very good sign.

Next morning, a cold, rainy morning, I poured a third cup of coffee, pulled out a small notebook and a pencil, and tried to think. The weather was not conducive to thought. The rain dripping steadily from the eaves had a soporific effect; so did the cats, sleeping heavily one on either side of me as I sat on the couch.

I shook myself awake and started to make random notes. The first was a list of all the older women I could think of who were in any way connected with the Hall.

It was a very short list:

Mrs. Hawes, the cook

What's-her-name, the new woman who dealt with school groups

Tearoom volunteers

Totally unproductive, I thought in disgust. The police would be checking out all those people. It was silly even to mention Mrs. Hawes; she was in the house that night, not wobbling around the countryside on a bicycle. I knew nothing about the tearoom volunteers except that they made terrible sandwiches and worse tea, and the police would be much more efficient than I at getting their names and verifying their whereabouts. And it would turn out that they had all been in their blameless beds on the night of November whatever-it-was, and their feathers would get ruffled at the very idea of being questioned, and some of them would quit in disgust, and where would Sir Mordred be then, poor thing?

I shook my head and uttered an exasperated noise. Samantha uncurled her lean, elegant body, opened one blue eye, stuck her front claws gently into my hip to reprimand me for disturbing a cat's rest, and went back to sleep, one paw over her eyes.

“Well, pardon me, Your Majesty!” Sam ignored me, having made her point Emmy chirped irritably and rolled into a ridiculous position on her back, all four paws in the air. I went back to my sorry list.

There was exactly one item that was worthy of a follow-up, and it wasn't even a name. I searched my memory of that day–surely it was more than a week ago!—when I had arrived at the Hall to find it swarming with schoolchildren. I could call up the woman's appearance: calm, authoritative, short graying hair, glasses, ordinary sort of figure clad in a brown tweed suit. For the life of me, though, I couldn't remember her name. Oh, to be thirty again, with a memory!

I sighed loudly and got up. At my age and weight that is not as simple as it sounds, especially from a squashy couch; both cats were seriously annoyed by the amount of shoving and grunting I had to do, and said so. I went to the phone.

“Brocklesby Hall Museum of Miniatures.”

The voice this time was crisp and professional.

“Yes, may I speak to Mrs. Cunningham, please?”

“I'll connect you.”

Meg's voice was bright and eager. “This is Mrs. Cunningham.”

“Hi, Meg, Dorothy Martin. I gather the Museum is open today.”

The voice changed only a little. She wasn't displeased to hear from me; I just wasn't the one she was hoping was calling. “Good morning, Dorothy. We're not actually open, not to the public. The police won't let us, yet. But the staff are all in and working like mad.”

“Well, I won't bother you. I'm sure you must be very busy. I just wondered if you and Richard would like to have that lunch we never got around to yesterday. He can't have an awful lot to do on a day like this, and surely you can leave your duties for a little while. I'd very much like to treat the two of you to a celebration.”