The Deer Leap (11 page)

 • • • 

Neahle left the kitten under covers scooped up for air and slipped her feet into her felt slippers. Light streaked the small windowpanes and cast its skeleton-finger across the dark floor. On the wardrobe door was a mirror in which Neahle could see herself in her white nightgown and, squinting her eyes, could imagine herself sliding ghostlike down the hall, quiet as the grave.

Melrose Plant awoke in the chilly dawn light and pulled the duvet up to his chin. It was too short and left his feet uncovered, and the room was both cold and stark, but his brief encounter with the proprietor of Gun Lodge was enough to convince him that taking rooms anywhere else would be preferable to the steely gaze of Grimsdale over his morning gruel.

Porridge and toast as cold and hard as shingles was Sebastian Grimsdale's interpretation of Full English Breakfast.

Melrose wondered if he would fare better at the Deer Leap and lay looking at his feet, deciding he didn't like them, and contemplating rashers of bacon and fresh eggs and fried bread. The dinner last night had been quite presentable. Good English fare. When he told the MacBrides to offer his compliments to the cook, the wife had found this worth giggling over. But, then, she found a great deal to giggle about, whishing her brandy glass.

He was getting hungrier every moment and wished they did early teas. He had generously offered to give up his room to Jury, but Jury had had no qualms about dealing with Mr. Grimsdale's porridge — to the speechless delight of Polly
Praed. Anyway, Jury and Wiggins needed two rooms, and Melrose very much doubted Sergeant Wiggins would live out the visit.

Melrose frowned and pulled the duvet down over his feet, having considered them long enough to know he didn't like them; no more did he like the proximity of Polly Praed to Superintendent Jury. The violet eyes that regarded Melrose as a fly on the wall were simply dazzling turned upon Jury. Jury, fortunately, was not bedazzled by Polly. He found her seeming inability to knit words into sentences whenever she was in his presence puzzling. Melrose had always wondered at Jury's lack of awareness at the effect he had on the female sex. He only wished it would rub off on him. Plant closed his eyes and pondered. Certainly, he was rich enough, probably intelligent enough, even good-looking enough. Had he not thrown the Earl of Caverness and Viscount Ardry out the back door of Ardry End, he would even be titled, and
more
than enough. He tried to punch the pillows up, but they were too thin. It had annoyed Polly Praed no end that he had given up his titles, because she hated the titled family in her village of Littlebourne and would have loved to refer to
my friend, the Earl of Caverness.
Again he pulled the covers up to his chin. Perhaps it was his feet. He sighed and yearned for tea.

The welcome he had received at the Deer Leap was considerably warmer than the one at Gun Lodge, since there hadn't really been one. Though Grimsdale would have loved to rent the room, he somehow made it clear he'd rather not have anyone actually in it.

Here, however, the proprietors were all warm welcome, especially Mrs. MacBride, to whom he might have been a sailor returned from the sea. Looking at her, and getting her London bearings (Earl's Court out of East End, perhaps), Melrose imagined she might have had some experience in welcoming returning sailors. Sally MacBride, though not ravishing, appeared willing to
be
ravished. Though a bit overblown,
she was still a looker, if you liked the type. She offered Melrose and Jury double brandies, a tight skirt that looked welded above her knees, and the story of her life. Or at least up until the early twenties, when her husband, John, a mild-mannered publican, twenty years older than his new wife, must have decided that Mr. Plant was not Boswell and stopped her. But heartily laughing at her escapades and peccadilloes all the while.

What miscrossed stars had brought the two together Melrose could only imagine: Sally was getting a bit long in the tooth and John MacBride had a nice, cozy business — the only pub in a pleasant village. But he did not appear to be a man of great sexual appetite. The wife, with all that flaxen, waxen-sprayed hair and pouty red mouth, was certainly one a lot of men wouldn't have minded having a bite of.

 • • • 

As his mind turned to Una Quick's death, Melrose was aware of something moving along the corridor. He decided to investigate and rose and tied his dressing gown. Anything would be better than lying in an old brass bed six inches too short for him.

Nothing, he thought, would take the chill out of the air, until he saw through the crack in the door a small, white figure, arms outstretched, coming down the hall. Apparently, It had heard his door open, for It stopped dead. The arms dropped as the little girl turned and fled with a look of horror back down the hall. Melrose saw a coal-black kitten getting shoved inside the room to the right of his.

The girl in the white gown disappeared, too.

He stood in the doorway to his own room and thought about this little scenario. The world of childhood was a world he felt best left to children; generally speaking, he did not engage in conversation, unless forced to do so, with anyone under twenty, and certainly had never himself
initiated
a meeting with an eight- or nine-year-old (for at such did he
put her age). But in this case, curiosity overcame tradition.

He passed the MacBrides' room, where the door was slightly ajar and a night-light burning. Sally had had terrors of closed places ever since being locked in a closet, and her husband had leaned over to Melrose and whispered,
Claustrophobia, I call it.
Melrose heard the snores of John MacBride. The next room was the one into which the child had disappeared. He tapped on it; the door was open a crack, as if she had expected him, with his hood and sickle, to come calling. Given the look on her face.

Her head bent to the kitten in her lap, its coat as shiny-black as her bobbed hair, she said, “Now, I suppose you'll tell.”

“Tell? Not only do I not know
what
to tell, I do not know
whom
to tell it to. Consider yourself safe.”

There was a moment's scrutiny — a penetrating appraisal of his face — from eyes of such a rich blue one was surprised to see tiny knives in there. Then she looked at the window and the panes growing smoky white and put the kitten from her lap. “Okay. Maxine's probably not here yet, so let's go.”

The carpet slippers slapped past him and as he hesitated, she motioned impatiently with a tilt of her head that he was to follow. He wondered if they were both to glide, arms outstretched, down the hall to their crypt.

“Where?”

“To the kitchen,” she whispered over her shoulder, putting a finger against her mouth.

The kitchen. Tea. He followed down the narrow back stair where he felt the rising damp almost like tendrils of fog.

“What are we doing here?” He looked to see if there was a kettle on the hob.

She was busy sticking her head in a large fridge — there were two of them in the pub's kitchen, in addition to a large freezer and a huge butcher's table in the center of the room.
The floor was stone and icy-cold. Now she was dragging out milk and bits of cheese and things that she stacked along her arm. “It's got to be fed. You can carry some of this.”

“I see. But why were you walking along with your arms out?” Melrose extended his own, in imitation. “Were you sleepwalking? Or, I mean, pretending to?”

“No. Here.” She handed him a knife and a small plate. “Cut up the cheese in little bits. Thank you.” This was added as an afterthought and without so much as tossing a sweet smile in his direction.

“You had your arms out —” Melrose was determined.

Crossly, she said, “We've got to be quick about this or Maxine or somebody'll come in. Can't you cut the cheese faster? You haven't done it at all. I'm nearly finished with mine. Do you eat venison?” She was looking toward the big freezer. “I think it's awful to kill deer and eat them. You must be the guest.” She did not stop for confirmation or even temper her speech long enough to be surprised that the Deer Leap's single guest was down here doing scullery duty around seven
A.M.

“For my labors, I would appreciate a cup of tea,” he said, cutting the cheese in bits.

“We don't have time. Can't you make those pieces littler?”

“We're not feeding a mouse; it's a cat,” he said.

“It's only eight weeks old. I'll get the milk and you run down to the playhouse and get the Kit-e-Kat.” Her head was buried in the fridge.

Run to the playhouse.
That made as much sense as anything in this dawn patrol. “I do not feel like running to the playhouse —” How could such rich, almost navy blue eyes give him that look full of splintered glass? “Oh, for heaven's sake. I shall do it only if you put the kettle on.” Must he wheedle this person? “And
where
is this ‘playhouse'?”

She looked as if she could have wiped the floor with him,
but her slippers slapped on the stone as she got out the kettle. “Just down the walk behind those trees. And don't dawdle, please.”

Dawdle? Outside in his dressing gown? “Just have the water boiling,” he commanded.

 • • • 

The playhouse was just that: a tiny place where he expected to find the seven dwarfs. As he turned the knob on the door he was thinking of Snow White. Hadn't she had trouble with her bed, too?

It was dark and musty in the the little place, and his eye fell on the supply of Kit-e-Kat in the corner.

Unfortunately, it had to travel over the body of Sally MacBride on its way.

Melrose needed no warning about dawdling on his way back up the path. The sprite had probably tired of waiting — he had spent perhaps thirty seconds assuring himself the woman was, indeed, dead — and the kettle was whistling its long, screeching note.

He shoved it off the burner and went for the telephone.

T
here was so little room in the playhouse, they kept bumping into one another, or at least Wiggins and Pasco did. Jury managed to keep his own space clear. Pasco had called the Selby station. They would try to get hold of Farnsworth, the doctor they seldom needed to call in as a medical examiner. If not him, someone from the local hospital.

“Not a mark, except for the hands.” Jury got up. “Leave it until the M.E. gets here.” He shook his head, looking around the single, square room. Perhaps twelve by twelve, he figured. Tiny. The few scraps of furniture — rocking chair, small bed, lamp, table — were clearly leavings from the dustbin men or unwanted sticks from the pub.

“MacBride's little girl's place?” He saw a sack of catfood in the corner.

“Niece,” said Pasco, still looking wonderingly at Melrose Plant, now wearing a Chesterfield coat over his dressing gown.

Plant was getting damned irritated. “Constable Pasco. I
wish
you'd stop looking at me that way.”

“I just can't figure out what
you
were doing down here — getting a can of Kit-e-Kat, you said?” Pasco gave him a flinty smile.

“Hell,” said Melrose.

“Stop it, both of you.” Jury was not happy.

Neither was Plant. “Look, what I really wanted was
tea.
So I followed the ghostly child to the kitchen —”

“Neahle,” said Pasco.

“What? What sort of name is that?”

Pasco, used to sleeping in until nine, yanked from bed before eight and with another death on his hands, was not happy either. “Neahle Meara. Irish.”

“Nail? What an awful name for one so young.”

“Spelled N-e-a-h-l-e.”

“Oh. Rather pretty.”

Jury had picked up an enamel doorknob, handkerchief wrapped around it. “Bag this, Wiggins.”

Sergeant Wiggins had been standing hunched in the doorway. There wasn't room for a fourth. He took a plastic bag from a supply he carried about like cough drops. “Shouldn't we wait for the Selby —”

“Probably, but I'm afraid of too many more feet mucking up this place. We've probably done enough damage as it is.”

Plant said, “Look, I didn't touch anything.”

Jury smiled up at him from his examination of the metal stem from which the knob had come off. “I know that.” He got up. His head nearly brushed the ceiling. “You only came for the Kit-e-Kat.”

Pasco smiled. Melrose smiled back.

Pasco was kneeling where Jury had kneeled, looking at the inside of the wooden door. “Terrible. It looks like she was trying to claw her way out.”

“Claustrophobic,” said Plant, frowning. “You remember how she was talking about cracking their bedroom door at
night.” Plant bent to look at the marks. Splintered wood and blood.

Jury could tell from the state of the fingers where the streaks of dried blood on the door had come from. “Absolute panic.” He frowned and turned to Pasco. “Why would she be down here, anyway, Pasco? How well did you know her?”