The Case Has Altered (18 page)

Reminiscence was probably something Peter Emery seldom had an audience for. So Melrose was quiet and let him talk. “My daddy went through more'n one flood. I can remember one, I was maybe five or six, fen bank over on Bungy Fen broke. No matter how hard they worked to keep the dike from crumbling, it did, and pretty soon the whole of the land was a dozen feet under water. Far as the eye could see there was water, a vast sea of it. Our crop, my daddy's barley crop, went a' floating off and took the old scarecrow with it. The scarecrow from out the field, swimming right along—oh, there was a sight! We had the punt, except it got caught up too, so my daddy, he put us into a big tin washtub and I thought that was grand. Punt finally went aground, so we got it back; that's it”—he inclined his head—“out there. I kept it all these years. I'll tell you this—” He sat forward and said with a near-ferocious intensity, “You can't let the elements stop you. Nature can be tough, so you've got to be tougher.”

Melrose was intrigued by all of this. He was fascinated by this intrepid man, still young and active, who could refer to his blindness as an “annoyance.” There was a subtle sense of hubris about Emery, a suggestion of challenging God and nature. Melrose could picture, in his mind's eye, Emery storming blindly across the heath in a scene out of Shakespearean tragedy.

He was called back from this theatrical fantasy by Zel, who came in to serve the coffee. It was indeed excellent, and the accompanying shortbread,
melting now in his mouth, turned him from Shakespeare to Proust. “Delicious!” Melrose exclaimed. “Best I've ever eaten.” This was the truth. Zel said he couldn't have the recipe, for it was a secret.

Having made a good impression with coffee and shortbread, she apparently set out to make a better one—the quartermaster who ran this outfit—by getting out a broom and rag and starting to dust the bookcases.

Peter went on, talking about his father's farm and how he had never liked farming much, but he had liked the shooting. Melrose didn't share in his affection for frosty dawns and sitting pheasant, and lord knows not for lying on his stomach for hours in the old punt waiting for tough-fleshed birds to whisk out of water and fly upward against the sky.

Melrose hesitated to bring up the murders while the little girl Zel was within earshot, so he asked her if he might not have another piece of shortbread. She left to get it.

“If you know the Owens—”

“I do, of course,” said Peter. “Grand people.”

Melrose asked, “Then did you know the—did you know this Dunn woman?”

“Indeed, I did,” he said roughly as he got up to mess with the fire, which was already drawing so well the flames stood up like spikes. With perfect assurance, his arm reached out for the poker, his hand found it and raised a log that then crumbled and spat. Peter replaced the poker, returned to his chair, and said nothing further.

It was difficult to build on nothing, that is, if you weren't a policeman, but Melrose tried. With an artificial laugh, he said, “Sounds like you didn't care for her very much.”

“Aye. You're right there.”

“But you weren't the only one.”

“Oh, of that I'm certain. A lot of trouble that woman—”

They both stopped talking when Zel came in with the shortbread.

“If the Queen's biscuit cook gets wind of this shortbread, you'll have to give up the secret.”

Zel took the compliment with a blush and then set about her business. Or businesses, if one were to believe her round of activities was the usual round. It was as if she wanted it marked that her days were not spent in idle chatter before the fire. Melrose could scarcely keep up with her: Zel dusting, Zel sweeping invisible debris out the cottage door—the stuff Melrose was supposed to know he'd dragged in on his person—Zel adjusting things on shelves, Zel telling the dog Bob she'd get his dinner in a moment (and instructing him as to proper nourishment).

It was exhausting in a wonderful sort of way. Her various duties performed, Zel planted herself between their two chairs and leaned heavily on the arm of Melrose's. She was ready for relaxation, which meant, for her, tearing up bits of the local newspaper. These she rolled into tiny balls and tucked them into her jumper pocket. This activity went on for another ten minutes while Melrose and Peter talked about hunting and shooting and old-fashioned punting. Fifteen minutes had certainly exhausted Melrose's knowledge of the subjects.

Melrose did not feel he could justify lingering at the Emery cottage in his capacity of antiques expert before Peter Emery grew suspicious, so he thought he might as well leave the matter of Dorcas Reese for a later time. He said he must be off, that he had work to do at Fengate. “The Owens will be wondering where I've got to.”

Emery started to get up, but Zel shoved him down again, an action Melrose attributed to her wanting to be Melrose's escort, and not to any concern for her uncle's well-being. Zel ran toward the door with Bob at her heels. They both stood just outside of the path, Zel looking up. In the west the sky looked bruised.

“Rain,” said Zel. “You're going to get wet.” She rocked on her heels and held her hands behind her back, one hand gently slapping the palm of the other, an older person's posture for thinking weighty thoughts. “Where're you going?”

“No place in particular.” His destination was the dike in Wyndham Fen where Dorcas Reese's body had been found. “Want to come along?”

“No. I'm not walking on that footpath.” Resolutely, she folded her
arms over her chest and glared at him as if prepared for an argument. Still, she did not seem terribly eager to get rid of him. They were moving slowly along the cobbled path and from here one could see the wood, just the edge of it, that graced the Fengate property. “You can't tell what's out there.” She scratched at her elbows. Bob was staring up at Melrose as usual with that silent snarl on his face. “It runs all the way from before the Owens back there and across Windy Fen.” She paused and tried to sound indifferent. “That's where Dorcas got killed.”

“Did you know her?”

Zel reached into her pocket for one of the tiny balls, which she inspected as she shrugged the question away. “I used to see her. I wonder if you heard about Black Shuck. Did you?” She spit the newspaper ball at Bob, who yawned and shook his queer gray coat.

“Black Shuck? No, I can't say I've come across whatever that is.”

“Black Shuck's a ghost dog. He stalks people and kills them. Probably eats them too.” Another spitball in Bob's direction. Bob was off his haunches and giving Melrose his silent snarl as if he, Melrose, were the ghost dog.

He knew Zel was waiting for him to come up with something that would release her from the dread fantasy of Black Shuck. Like all adults (except, perhaps, Richard Jury), he came up empty-handed.

She said, “It's somebody walked on that path that did it.” Suddenly, the subject was changed. “Can you touch your toes?” She started going up-down, up-down.

“Of course I can.”

“But with your hands flat?” Down she went again, straight-armed, palms out, her long hair cascading over her head and fanning out. It looked less reddish-gold than hair on fire.

“Probably, but why would I want to? Now, listen—”

But she didn't. She was too intent on placing the flat of her hands against the ground. Never had Melrose seen such electric energy; she might just as well be plugged into a socket. Bob watched her, beating his tail on the stone walk like a baton keeping time with her movement. “Are you married?”

“No. I haven't had the good luck to be.”

“Are you going to get married?”

“Whenever you're ready.”

She stopped dead and made a face. “I'm not old enough. I'm going on ten. Uncle Peter almost was, but she fell in a river.”

Somehow, that way of reporting the tragedy made Melrose want to laugh. “That's terrible, awful.”

“She was really beautiful, too.” She bounced a spitball on her palm. “It was up in Scotland.”

“I'm sorry.” Melrose sighed. “This is jolly, but I must get on. It's going on two. Well, good-bye and it was lovely meeting you.” He said this to her downturned head. “I must be leaving now.”

Less than a dozen steps down the cobbled path, he heard her voice. “That Dorcas was always going over to Mr. Parker's. He lives away over there.”

That did interest him, as she knew it would. She had discovered a way to keep him stopping here indefinitely; she would let out just enough information to keep him hooked. He walked back the several paces. “Why would she do that? What for?”

Deaf and dumb, she set about doing waist-whittling exercises that Bob could not mimic, as he had no waist. Hands on hips, she twisted back and forth. Bob turned in circles.

Melrose supplied a possible answer to his question: “Perhaps she was working for him?” Though given her two jobs—at Fengate and the pub—it was hard to see how. “Cooking, possibly?”

Zel's fiery hair flew about her face as she turned quickly from one side to the other. Decisively, she said: “No. She. Wasn't.”

“Look here, you can't be so certain of this. How do you know that she didn't go there occasionally to cook a meal for him? She helped Mrs. Suggins, after all. And Major Parker lives alone; he'd probably be glad for the company.” Melrose thought suddenly of Ruthven and his wife, Martha, and tried to picture Ardry End without them. He couldn't.

“Well, maybe he'd want the company, but not the cooking.” Zel stilled herself long enough to add: “Dorcas wasn't a good cook. She was only vegetable cook, and she wasn't even good at that. She got things mushy.”
Zel made a face.
“I'm
a better cook than Dorcas ever was; Mr. Parker says so. He's the best cook around. He hardly ever goes out to meals because he doesn't like the way other people cook. Except for Mrs. Suggins.”

The dog Bob, who had been listening to them with a disturbing intensity, once again drew back his mouth, exposing his yellow teeth for Melrose's delight. “What does your dog think I am, a dentist? All the same”—Melrose went on, as Bob streaked off in pursuit of a hare—“you can't really know what she was doing at Major Parker's.”

“I know
that
, don't I? Mr. Parker wouldn't pay anybody to cook for him. The Owens, that's different. He thinks their cook's the best, next to him.”

Melrose was delighted to discover that Annie Suggins had been right about this facet of Parker's personality.

Zel went back to her exercises, saying, “I bet you can't cook, except eggs.”

“Of course I can cook. I was once
sous
-chef at Simpson's-in-the-Strand. Now, why—?”

“No, you weren't!” Her response rang in the frosty air. “
I'm
going to be a chef.”

“A chef! What a much more noble aspiration that is than teacher or doctor. I'll certainly come to your kitchen for dinner, then.”

“If you're invited. Mr. Parker makes plum ice cream.”

That would go a long way toward making Parker the most popular adult in Lincolnshire. “Well, I can make Christmas pudding. With silver charms in it.”

That stopped her turning. “You?”

Melrose proceeded to describe that morning's performance, only with him in the starring role instead of Annie Suggins.

Zel was impressed. But not for long. She started hopping. “Mr. Parker makes it, too. And plum ice cream.”

“You said that. So . . . you were spying on Dorcas.”

She stopped and looked at him.
Hopeless, hopeless.
“I wasn't
spying.
I was
seeing.”

“Ah! You were ‘seeing.' Then what happened?”

“Nothing. She could've come out and gone to the pub. That's where everybody goes that takes the footpath. It goes nearly to the back door of the pub.”

“Did you just see this once?”

“No. Lots of times.”

That could mean anywhere from two to two hundred.

“Mr. Parker's rich. You can do anything if you're rich.”

“No, you can't.” Melrose contradicted her.

“How do you know?”

“Because I'm rich.”

That stopped her. “Can you buy cars and hogs and houses if you want?”

“Yes. I'm not especially set on the hogs, although my groundskeeper might argue the point.”

She gasped.
“You
have a keeper? Like Uncle Peter?”

“No, nothing like your uncle, believe me. Mine just roams around and shoots things.”

“Is he a good shot?”

“No. And it's just as well.”

“Uncle Peter used to be the best shot around. He could shoot out a snake's eye.”

“An admirable accomplishment.” Melrose stopped to dislodge a pebble from his shoe sole.

Zel said, “Wyatt Earp could. Did you ever hear of him?”

“Off and on. It's a shame your uncle lost his sight. It's as bad as could happen to a man, I expect.”

He assumed her silence meant compliance with this judgment. No.

“Yes, there is. You could be captured and tortured until you talked.”

“Oh? Is this the fate you envision for yourself, then?”

“No-oh!”

There it was again, that drawn out
o
like a lasso round his neck. Melrose loved the way she could drag two syllables from a single one. But he thought the response too certain to pass for denial. “We should
be glad we don't have information someone else wants.” He glanced at her.

Her mouth was as set as concrete. “
I
don't know anything to be tortured about, but I don't know about
you.”

“You needn't sound hopeful.”

“What's the worst torture you can think of?”

Children were so bloodthirsty. “Having to watch Bob floss his teeth.” Melrose canvassed the surrounding landscape. “Where is he? I don't want him jumping into my path with his ivory grin.” Although it would be a hard landscape for Bob, or anyone, to hide in.