The Deer Leap (19 page)

His first stop was at a costumier's off St. Martin's Lane used by theater people and the rich who wanted to do Marie Antoinettes and harlequins at drunken fancy-dress parties.

“ '
Ello,
luv,” fluted a voice.

Jury turned to see a youngish woman with fire-brigade curls eyeing him, the eyes outlined in black. She looked as if she was just making up for that party herself. There was a velvet coral band round her neck tricked out with a cameo, and between that and her waist, not much of anything. Slash-and-dash must be the fashion this year, he thought.

“I wanted to hire a costume.”

She looked him up and down. “Come to the right place, you did. What sort?”

“Actually, just a few pieces of women's clothing —”

Her smile altered.

“Not that kind, dear. No whips and chains, either.”

She giggled. “It'd be hard to believe anyone looks like you—”

Jury broke up that encomium, but still smiled. “I'm stupid when it comes to fashion. Do you have anything that you'd say would look particularly French?”

“Inside or out, ducks?” Her tongue, coral like the band, ran round her lips.

“That's cute. I'm talking about a dress. Dignified but sexy —”

By now she was leaning on the counter, fingers intertwined, chin resting in them. The case housed some spangled masks and Jury wondered if it wasn't rather cold on her breasts, since nothing much supported them except the glass top. She looked at him as if this were absolutely the most fascinating request she'd ever got. “That's a tough one, luv.”

He was getting impatient. Running the gamut of female enterprise could be tiring sometimes. But he only smiled
more disarmingly. “Not for you, I bet. Say a size —” He gave her the once-over, just to please her. “No, a little bigger.”

She leaned farther. “Where?”

“More or less where you're leaning, love.”

Again, she giggled. “Ain't you a caution?”

Jury didn't think so and wanted to get on with it. The only problem was the dress and hat. He'd already eyed a short sable cape he wanted. Probably cost him a month's salary to get it for a day.

He followed her through hangered garments and he had to say she knew her business. She judged the size as a ten. “Bust okay?” She held it against her own.

“It certainly is.”

Tiny white teeth glimmered at him through coral lips. The dress was a draped crepe de chine, silky green, low-cut waist . . . well, it was hard to find the waist. “Perfect.”

He'd decided against a hat; why cover up the hair? “There's a sable cape, short, back there. How much?”

“How long?”

“Half a day, maybe.”

She was bagging the dress, wrapped in tissue paper. “We can only rent for a whole day. For you, hundred quid.”

“Good lord.” He took out his checkbook.

“Oh, you get some of it back. Deposit, see. We wouldn't want just anyone walking off with
that
little number.”

He took the parcel and asked her her name.

“Doreen,” she said, hopefully.

“You're good at your job, love.” Jury took out his warrant card. “So'm I. You don't have to worry about the sable.”

She stared. “Crikey!”

J
ury's foot had barely scraped the stone step of the Islington house when the window flew up above him on the second floor, and a bolt was thrown back in the basement flat.

“Super!”
shouted down Carole-anne Palutski. He looked up.

“Pssst! Mr. Jury,”
whispered Mrs. Wasserman. He looked down.

Carole-anne was not on the telephone, so he'd called Mrs. Wasserman — for whom the telephone was a lifeline, little as she went out — to make sure Carole-anne was there. Jury had already been ninety-percent sure. Daylight began at noon for Carole-anne.

They both had been eagerly waiting his return. He shouted up to Carole-anne, dressed, or undressed, in her flimsy nightie, to pull herself back in; he'd be up in a minute. Then, carrying his parcel and some flowers, he went down the several steps to Mrs. Wasserman's apartment.

Or fastness, he should say. The bolts thrown, the chain un-latched,
all she needed was to lower the drawbridge, metaphorically speaking, to let him in.
To be on the safe side
had little meaning for Mrs. Wasserman, for whom safety was a passing condition, something that quickly faded when she got used to the installation of Jury's last lock or window-guard. Always, she could find another possible means of entrance for the intruder who never came (and, Jury knew, never would). But the Feet followed her, she was sure, when she went out, and had done ever since the Big War.

From her stout, neat frame, today clad in navy blue lawn, came her breathless account of the past few days. Her plump hand pressed to her heaving bosom, she might indeed have been running down long streets, fleeing her shadowy pursuer. Patiently, Jury waited, leaning against the wall, nodding, nodding.

“. . . right to keep an eye on
that
one. Such a child she is, innocent, you know what I mean, out at all hours, and, of course, you know I don't go out at night — I apologize, I cannot follow to see she gets into no trouble . . . .”

“I hardly expected you to do that, Mrs. Wasserman,” he said to her outspread arms, her look of mournful apology, the failed policewoman who could not keep an eye on her quarry. “I really don't think Carole-anne is getting up to anything.”

“Ah!” Mrs. Wasserman closed her eyes in pain. “Would I suggest
that?”

No, but it wouldn't be a bad idea. He hid a smile.

“And her men-friends — she says they are cousins. But such a large family? Twenty-four she says she is —”

Carole-anne had aged two years in three days. My.

“— but truly she looks only eighteen or nineteen. And her clothes, Mr. Jury.” Sadly, Mrs. Wasserman shook her head. “What can you do with one who wears sweaters down to here and
such
tight pants. Like skin, they are.”

You can do plenty, thought Jury. “That's why I wanted you to, you know, give her a cuppa, chat her up a bit. . .” Jury shrugged.

Mrs. Wasserman's small black eyes grew hard. Even her tightly pulled-back hair had a determined look about it, as if she'd nearly pulled it out in thinking about Carole-anne Palutski. “I have had her in for tea or a coffee. And she has kindly returned the favor, though it is difficult for me to walk up three flights. I say nothing against the child; the soul of kindness. Just — what can I say? She says she goes to the films. Every
night,
Mr. Jury? There are not that many films in Islington. You do not think she takes the Underground into the West End. . . ?”

It went on, interrupted only by Jury's handing her the bunch of roses he had picked up outside the Angel tube station. “You're doing a good job, Mrs. Wasserman.”

She was overwhelmed. “For
me?
Roses.” She might never have seen one in her life. And she was spieling off her thanks in Czech or Lithuanian — Jury remembered she spoke four or five languages.

French. Jury smiled. “Would you do me another favor?”

“You
ask
me?
After all that you have done for me. Name it,” she added, with a sort of special-agent crispness.

“You speak French.”

Her eyebrows slanted upward. Didn't everybody?

“Mine's very rusty, what I ever knew.” He had his hand on the door. “Would you mind staying in for a half-hour, an hour? I'm bringing Carole-anne down.”

He had asked her if she'd “mind” only to give her whatever spurious support there was in his thinking she was free as a bird, one who flew at will all over Islington, London, wherever.

“Indeed I wouldn't, Mr. Jury. But why this French?”

“You'll see.” He smiled. “Bet you don't recognize her.”

 • • • 

Jury certainly did. It was mostly naked skin that had hung over the windowsill, and although it was now covered, it made no difference. The body would turn a suit of armor to a pane of glass. There was just no way of hiding Carole-anne.

She threw herself at him as if he might be one of the many long-lost fathers, brothers, cousins that had accumulated on the stairway over the past weeks. “Super! How's about a kiss, then?”

“Sure,” said Jury, giving her one right on her soft lips. “Oh, cut it out, Carole-anne,” he said, dragging her up from the floor and out of a pretended swoon.

“Nearly fainted at that one. Let's have another go.” Before he could stop her, the arms were like steel bands around his neck, and she seemed to have maneuvered parts of herself into every crevice of his body.

He pulled her arms away. “You kiss your dad like that?”

Meltingly, she looked up at him. “Ain't got one. Just you. Dad.” And she tried it again.

He shoved her back. “Who're all these men been trailing up and down the stairs like a school of sharks?”

Carole-anne's already pink cheeks turned crimson, as if she'd just dabbed on rouge. “You mean
she
told you?” She pointed toward the floor. “Well, bloody damn. I never —”

“Mrs. Wasserman only told me you had a brother and a father. She thought that was very nice. Thought you were being taken care of.”

The fire that flared, died. “Oh. Well, had to tell her
something,
didn't I? So bleedin' innocent she is. Nice old bag o' bones, but she sticks to that flat like glue. I did what you said and got her up here for tea and biscuits.” Carole-anne's mouth puckered. Tea was not her drink. “So she couldn't come up here, so I go to her place. Tried to get her to come down the Angel pub with me, but you might as well try to get the street lamps to walk —”

Jury burst out laughing. Mrs. Wasserman going down the pub.

Carole-anne was miffed. All her good work should have rated more than a laugh. “You did a great job, love. She likes having you round. Puts some life into this old pile of bricks, she said.”

“Oh. Well.” Carole-anne sat down beside him. “Lay on a cig, Super, okay? I'm out.”

No matter what she said, it sounded like sex. He got out his pack of John Players, lit one for both of them, and said, “I've got a job for you, Carole-anne.”

“How much do I have to take off? I stop at —”

“I don't want to know what you stop at. Actually, this involves putting
on
clothes.” He'd been unwrapping the parcels, and when she saw the sable she shot up from the sofa. “And there's some money in it for you, Carole-anne.”

With her eyes glued on that sable, she said, “There's some positions I don't do, and no ropes and tie-ups —”

“Shut up!” He knew she talked like that just to get a reaction. Carole-anne Palutski probably hadn't gotten many reactions that didn't have a tab on them. It came to him with a small shock, that thought. For a brief moment, his command had penetrated the Glo Dee Vine mask, and he saw what Mrs. Wasserman saw, however misled her vision of it. Carole-anne looked innocent.

He thought of Carrie Fleet and his blood ran cold.

“Work, love.”

 • • • 

A half-hour later he was tapping his coded knock on Mrs. Wasserman's door, and he had to admit, he didn't think he'd have recognized Carole-anne Palutski himself.

Of course, she looked gorgeous, as he'd known she would. Though the dress was draped, there was still that tiny strain across the bust, but the rest of it hung in such gentle undulations that the body underneath was plainly not advertising.
Jury thought of Gillian Kendall and tried to brush that thought away. But it was the paint job that was a marvel. Nothing flamboyant, she had gone at that makeup case with the eye of a surgeon. Outliner like a scalpel, lip-liner incised. Blusher like the real thing. Absolutely perfect. To top it, she looked ten years older than the ages she'd been doling out.

 • • • 

“French?” she squealed, on their way downstairs. “You crazy?” But her eyes and hands were all for that sable cape.

 • • • 

“Mr. Jury! What a surprise!”

It was. Mrs. Wasserman stared at Carole-anne with squinty eyes, eyes trying to adjust themselves to a totally different light. “How do you —?”

“Hey, babe,” said Carole-anne, chewing inexorably away at the gum Jury told her she'd have to park beneath a bench or behind her ear.

“Carole-
anne
?”

Carole-anne was pleased at the shock of recognition. “One and,” she said. “Come for the lesson. Only French I know is
bonjour.
”

Mrs. Wasserman smiled. “You pronounce it that way, dear, they will think you are Japanese.”

Carole-anne giggled. “You're a right caution sometimes.” Then, from her queenly height (fortunately, she'd had the right shoes) she deigned to look at Jury.
“He
thinks I can learn to talk like a frog in ten minutes.”

“Right now you talk like a frog, dear. But French, you do not sound.”

Carole-anne giggled again. They must have been getting on like a house on fire.

Mrs. Wasserman fluted,
“Bonjour, monsieur. II y a long-temps, Georges.”
Arms folded, she looked hard at Carole-anne. “Repeat, please.”

Carole-anne had parked the gum. She repeated.

“Again.”

Again.

“ ‘Il faut que je m'en aille.'
Repeat.”

Carole-anne did so.

“Again. Three times.”

Three times.

After a few more phrases and few more repeats, the lesson was over.

“Thanks, Mrs. W.,” called Carole-anne, as the bolt shot home behind them in the basement flat.

Jury had reckoned on an hour. A phrase here and there. It had taken only fifteen minutes.