The Deer Leap (12 page)

Although Pasco's
about as well as anyone else, I guess
was casual enough, Jury noticed the flush spreading upward from his open collar. “I don't know why she'd be down here.”

 • • • 

After the Selby police pathologist had examined the body and it had been zipped up in a rubber sheet, he put the cause of death down to heart failure.

“Like Una Quick.”

“Brought on by fright, from the looks of it,” said the pathologist. “If she was, as you say, a claustrophobic.”

Detective Inspector Russell, from the Selby C.I.D., shook his head. “I'll be damned.” He looked at Jury unhappily, whether from having Scotland Yard here or from a second death in this tiny village, Jury couldn't say. “What the hell was the woman doing down here?”

“We don't know. Any objections to my being here? It was a friend of mine who discovered Una Quick's body.”

Inspector Russell didn't seem to mind; indeed, he looked relieved. If Scotland Yard wanted Selby-Ashdown corpses, they could have them. “I'll check it with the Chief Constable. That door —” Again he shook his head. “Knob just came off?”

“Maybe.”

Russell took out his handkerchief and tried to twist the stem. It was old and rusted and wouldn't give. “She couldn't get it back on.” The iron fitting inside the porcelain was broken, making it impossible to fit the knob to the stem. It was a very old doorknob.

“Let's go talk to MacBride. Does he know?”

“I took the liberty,” said Melrose, “of informing him there'd been an accident. In a word, yes. He knows.”

“Would you mind if my sergeant went along?” asked Jury, who was looking around the tiny house, his gaze finally fixed on the chair and the lamp. “And Mr. Plant?”

“Your sergeant, yes. And Pasco.” He squinted at Melrose Plant. “But I don't see why —”

“He found the body,” said Jury.

“Okay. What about you?” A mild suggestion that Scotland Yard was leaving the dog's work to the Hampshire constabulary.

“I'd like to talk to the girl — what's her name?” he asked Pasco.

“Neahle Meara.”

“Ask her to come down here.” At Plant's look, Jury said, “No, I won't show her the inside of the door. I want to talk to her, away from the others.”

Then Jury added, “And tell her to bring her kitten and a can opener.” He grinned.

She stood framed in the doorway, clutching a gray cloth coat around her and holding what looked like a schoolbag.

Jury was surprised by her black hair and deep blue eyes, now smudged underneath and looking scared. He hadn't seen her in the Deer Leap; although he knew she wasn't the daughter, he'd expected someone with MacBride's washed-out coloring. This little girl was definitely not washed out; she was beautiful.

“Hullo, Neahle,” he said. “Is the kitten in the book bag?”

Wordlessly, she nodded and chewed her lip. Then she stepped over the sill and said, with as much defiance as she could muster, “You can't take him away. He didn't do anything.”

“Good God, whatever made you think I'd want to do that? I just thought maybe you'd like to give him his breakfast.”

“Lunch. He had some cheese for breakfast, and milk.”

“Lunch, then.” Jury smiled. They might have been here for no other reason than to confirm the kitten's eating habits. It poked its black head out of the bag and blinked.

Neahle pulled it all the way out and set in on the floor, but made no move toward the catfood. “I heard about Sally — Aunt Sally.”

That she didn't want to call her “aunt” was clear. And that she wasn't sorry the MacBride woman was dead was equally clear.

That, unfortunately, meant guilt could fall on her perhaps suddenly like a brick, hard and fast.

She was sitting in a troll-sized chair, picking at the flaking blue paint, “It's too bad.” She did not look at Jury because she couldn't work up the appropriate tears, he bet.

“Yes. I thought you could help.”

She looked up, then, interested. “I've got the can opener.” She said it as if the Kit-e-Kat might be by way of helping.

“Toss it here.” She did. Jury pulled a can from the bag and opened it. Then he put it down for the kitten, who obviously had had its fill of cheese.

“Why do you carry — what's its name?”

“Sam.”

Jury nodded toward the book bag. “That's got holes in it for air.”

“I know. That's to smuggle it in and out of the house. Sally”— and she inclined her head again —“wouldn't let me have pets. Said they just dirtied the place up.”

It sounded consistent with the little he'd seen of Mrs. MacBride. “That was smart of you.”

“Oh,
I
didn't think it up. It was Carrie. She's my best friend. She found the kitten in the woods and fixed the bag. It was yesterday.”

It was almost as if the fact of the kitten, Sam, had brought about this tragedy. Now she was groping in the bag and brought out an apple. “Would you like this for your lunch?”

“Thank you,” said Jury gravely, as she handed it over. It was the first bribe he'd ever taken. “I don't know Carrie. I've only heard her name. Is she a school chum, then?”

Neahle laughed and put her hand over her mouth, which she smoothed out as if she were smoothing out her coat. Laughter in the house of death was hardly right. “No. Carrie doesn't go to school. The Baroness's secretary teaches her, or something. She's lots older than me. Fifteen. I don't know why she likes me.”

Best friends, like kittens and aunts, could disappear easily in this world, her worried look said.

“I can't imagine why she wouldn't. Age doesn't make any difference.”

“How old are you, then?”

“Quite old,” said Jury solemnly. Thinking of Fiona Clingmore, he smiled and added, “I'll never see forty again.”

Her eyes widened. “You don't look
nearly
that old.”

“Thank you. Listen, Neahle. You know your aunt — Mrs. MacBride — was found in here.”

Solemnly, she nodded, watching Sam now batting a tiny ball of wool she'd tied to the lamp cord for him.

“Did you ever know her to come down here before?”

“No. No one comes here but me, and sometimes Carrie.”

“Okay. When was the last time you were here?”

“Two days ago.”

“Did you keep the door closed?”

She looked puzzled.

“I mean, was the knob missing from the inside of the door? Fallen off its iron stem?”

She frowned. “I suppose so. I didn't much notice.” Neahle scratched her ear. “It was dark.”

If there'd been wind, it could easily have banged the door
shut. “Would you have been scared if you'd got locked up in here?”

She seemed surprised. “Me? No. I like to come here and read and sometimes I go to sleep on the bed there.” She was watching Sam the kitten, now clutching the wool and swinging like a metronome from the lamp cord. “You could scream if you got locked up in here, but it's so far from the house —” She stopped watching the kitten and put her head in her hands.

“There was a wind last night, too. Neahle, you can't love everyone you think you should. When they won't let you have pets, and have you do the cooking. Why should you?”

She looked up at him. Then down. “You didn't eat your apple.”

“Did you ever know Sally to come here?”

Neahle shook her head. “Why would she? She didn't even want
me
to.”

“Maybe she would to, say, meet a friend.”

“Like men?” Neahle was trying to look worldly-wise.

Jury smiled. “Like men.”

Neahle scratched her ear. “Well, there's that Mr. Donaldson. He's creepy. Carrie says so. He works at Gun Lodge.”

“Anyone else?”

She chewed her lip and shook her head.

Wouldn't have mentioned Pasco, even if she'd known. Jury picked up her apple and rubbed it on his raincoat. Her look seemed to ask, Are you going to do something magical?

He crunched the apple, leaned back in the chair, and watched Sam swinging. Sam dropped from his perch and came over to sit and stare up at the new person.

Neahle started to cry.

“Not to worry, Neahle.” Jury picked up Sam and put him in Neahle's lap, where its shiny black fur was wetted with her tears. Then he sat back and simply waited until the worst of it was over.

The end of the cord from which Sam had been swinging led up to a socket and a blue-shaded lamp. “You came down here a couple of days ago, you said. Did you come down at night?”

Neahle chewed her lip.

“I won't tell.” He nodded at the books. “Did you read, then?”

“Of course.” She nodded to a little stack of books.
“Sam Pig,
that's my favorite. I named Sam after him. I suppose you can name a kitten after a pig.” She seemed doubtful. “Anyway, I sneaked out of bed.”

Jury turned his head on the back of the rocker. “What happened to the light bulb, then, do you think?”

None of them, particularly John MacBride, had been sitting very comfortably in the bar during the questioning of the husband.

Wiggins pinched the bridge of his nose and said, “Going up to London, was she? For how long, Mr. MacBride?”

“Few days. To visit a cousin.”

Wiggins wrote down the name of a Mary Leavy who lived, said MacBride vaguely, “Somewhere in Earl's Court.”

Melrose could have constructed any number of scenarios, taken from all of those mysteries he'd suffered through for the sake of Polly Praed. It was such a cliché. Wife going off to London, then mysteriously “disappearing.” Fun for Crippen and Cream. But not, it would seem for MacBride, who seemed to be crumbling like the huge log sparking and splitting in the fireplace.

Detective Inspector Russell's smile was tiny. Melrose could almost read his mind. It's always the family. Dead wife, find the husband.

“And how was she to get there?” asked Pasco.

“How?” MacBride's eyes were glazed when he pulled his head from his hands.

“Yes. You said she was going to London, John.”

“Oh. Train from Selby this morning.”

Pasco prodded him gently. “But to Selby?”

MacBride wiped his hands over his thin hair. “Someone at the Lodge going to drive her. Donaldson, I think.”

How nice,
thought Melrose.

“Mrs. MacBride suffered from claustrophobia, I believe,” said Russell.

MacBride nodded. A shadow like a raven's wing passed over his face as if the thought of Sally's being trapped in that house were too much for him.

“I'd have thought,” said Russell, “when that door closed and she couldn't — well, let's leave it for the moment.” He must have seen the look on MacBride's face, too.

Pasco put it in a more roundabout fashion. “You can't see the playhouse from the pub, not with that screen of trees. And I expect you can't hear — it's a bit far, there by the river.”

MacBride only nodded.

Melrose put in: “There was a howler of a wind last night, too.”

Wiggins couldn't have agreed more, but Russell was looking at Plant as if he couldn't imagine this guest in the Deer Leap offering anything of substance. The testimony of someone who would wander out to a playhouse at seven in the morning to get catfood . . .

“Splintered wood,” said Russell, “long marks as if she'd tried to —” Again, some more humane instinct took over.

“Sorry, John,” said Pasco. Light filtering through the fussy chintz curtains scooped out hollows in MacBride's cheeks. “Maybe you should lie down, John. We can talk to you later.”

“Where's Neahle?” asked MacBride, looking a bit wildly around.

“Asleep,” said Wiggins, snapping shut his notebook.

Wiggins might have had more sense than all of them.

J
ury wondered when the driveway would end and who had managed, in what couldn't have been more than an eighth of a mile, to devise the tortured approach to “La Notre” that in its twists and turns must have been like a Disneyland adventure-game. He expected something to jump out at every turn.