The Old Fox Deceived Read online

  Harkins crouched down again. “The face . . . Shine that torch over here, will you?” he called to one of the men combing over the steps. There were three or four torches in use, up and down the steps like giant fireflies. One swiveled over to shine on the woman’s face. “Under the blood it looks like makeup, greasepaint of some sort. Black one side, white the other. Weird.” Harkins rose, dusted his trousers by slapping his gloves against them. “Time?” he snapped.

  Elaborately, the doctor took out his turnip watch and said, “Precisely one fifty-nine.”

  Harkins threw down his cigar, ground it under his heel. “You know goddamned well what I mean.”

  The doctor clicked his bag shut. “I don’t work for you, remember. I’d say she’d been at least two hours gone, maybe three. I’m just a country doctor; you called me. So be civil.”

  As if civility were a term only in the lexicon of country doctors, Harkins turned to Constable Smithies: “I want blocks put up at both ends of these steps with notices to keep clear. And get those people out of here.” Down on Grape Lane, ghostly faces were still appearing and disappearing as they had done ever since Harkins and then the other police cars had showed up. More and more villagers were tumbling out of bed to see what all the ruckus was. Harkins managed to ask the next simple question in the most withering of tones: “Her name was Temple, you said?”

  Smithies tried to make himself small, difficult for such a big man. “Yes, sir. They tell me she was staying at the Fox Deceiv’d, the pub down by the seawall.”

  “Stranger to town?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You suppose so. Well, what’s a stranger doing in that weird get-up? Does Rackmoor often get such visitors?” Smithies might have been personally responsible for the turning up of the woman in black and white.

  “It’s a costume, sir . . . ”

  “You don’t say so.” Harkins lit another cigar.

  “ . . . because of Twelfth Night. There was a costume party up at Old House. She must have been going to it. Or coming back.”

  “Where the hell’s Old House?”

  Smithies pointed up the Angel steps, jabbing his finger as if to make it pass the church. “If you’re from these parts, you must know it, sir. That’s the Old Fox Deceiv’d Manor House.”

  “I thought you just said that was the name of the pub.”

  “It is, sir. Only the pub half belongs to the Colonel, and he named it after the house. So we just call one Old House and the other the Fox to keep them straight. Kitty’s place used to be the Cod and Lobster, see. But the Colonel, Colonel Crael, he’s that crazy over fox hunting—”

  “I don’t care if it used to be called my Aunt Fanny, what’s — wait a minute. Are you talking about Sir Titus Crael? That Colonel Crael?”

  “That’s him, sir.”

  “You mean she” — he pointed to the place where the body was in the process of being carried down the steps in a rubber sheet — “she was a guest of his?”

  “I guess so, sir.”

  Under his breath, Harkins muttered something, looking down at the chalked-off place as if he wished he could get her back here again.

  Inspector Harkins had little respect for his superiors, whether in Pitlochary, Leeds, or London. He certainly had no respect for his inferiors, assuming they were down there because that’s where they deserved to be.

  But one thing he did respect: privilege. The Craels had as much as anyone in Yorkshire.

  And now he was at war with himself: on the one hand he’d simply like to dump the body back where he’d found it and give London the headache.

  But on the other, he was Ian Harkins.

  · II ·

  Morning in York

  MELROSE Plant rested his paper on his knee and turned over the hourglass.

  “Where’d you get that contraption?” Lady Agatha Ardry was separated from her nephew by a splotch of Axminster carpet and a tiered cake-plate. She had been sitting for the last hour like a baby whale on the Queen Anne couch, shoving in fairy cakes and brandy snaps and calling it her “elevenses.”

  Fairy cakes at eleven in the morning? Melrose shuddered, but answered her question. “In an antique shop near the Shambles.” He pushed his gold-rimmed glasses back on his elegant nose and returned to his newspaper.

  “Well?” She held her teacup with little finger extended. It was, he noted, somewhere around her third or fourth cup.

  “Well, what?” He turned the page, looking for a crossword puzzle to break the tedium.

  “Why have you been sitting there turning it over every minute?”

  Melrose Plant looked at her over the rims of his spectacles. “It’s an hourglass, dear Agatha. Were I to turn it over every minute it would defeat its purpose.”

  “Don’t be cryptic. Aren’t you having any of this lovely tea Teddy had done for us?”

  “Teddy will never notice I didn’t eat.” Teddy. Any woman who permitted herself to be called Teddy deserved Agatha for a fortnight’s visit. He wondered what the Teddy stood for: Theodore, from the look of her. She was a very large woman with red hair like a burning bush. This morning she was out doing the shops.

  “You still haven’t answered my question about the hourglass. Why did you turn it over? There’s a perfectly good clock on the mantel.” She squinted her eyes at it. “Wonder how much Teddy gave for it? Looks Italian.”

  She’d have the entire room appraised and priced inside of ten minutes, thought Melrose. “It used to be that pews had curtains, and parsons kept hourglasses on the pulpits. If there were to be further oratory from that quarter, the parson would turn over the hourglass. If one were bored by all of the sermonizing, one could draw the curtain. It is my understanding that Lord Byron, while visiting some friends in Yorkshire, attended church with them and immediately drew the curtain.”

  Agatha chewed this over, both literally and figuratively, while she ate a fairy cake with awful blue-y icing. After one of her infrequent silences, she said, “Melrose, do you remember that strange Uncle Davidson? The one on your dear mother’s side of the family? Lady Marjorie’s?”

  “I remember the name of my mother, certainly. As to this uncle, what of him?”

  “He was quite mad, everyone knew that. He talked very strangely, and I sometimes wonder . . . ” She was stripping another fairy cake of its little paper coverlet. “It’s just that you say and do the oddest things. Now here you are thinking of going off to some rubbishy little fishing village by the sea—”

  “Fishing villages generally are.” He remembered she had called it a “quaint little fishing village” before she discovered the invitation to visit did not include her.

  She shuddered. “The North Sea, and in dead winter! Now, if it were Scarborough in summer, wouldn’t that be jolly?”

  Decidedly unjolly, thought Melrose. Scarborough in summer would be boardwalks and bathers and Agatha sticking to him like a barnacle. Melrose yawned and turned another page of the York Mail. “Well, there it is, then.”

  “I still do not understand why you are even thinking of going.”

  “Because I have been invited, dear Aunt. Which is why one ordinarily goes places.” Of course, the arrow fell wide: Agatha had invited herself to Teddy’s when she found Melrose was motoring to Yorkshire. Well, he thought he could hardly refuse to take her as far as York; it was straight on his way. Nor did he truly mind the stopover, for York was a wonderful place. There was the Minster with its golden pulpitum; the crooked Shambles with its closely tilting shops and cottages. And he had even discovered a nice little tucked-away men’s club yesterday where he could relax in a cracked leather armchair until rigor mortis set in. This morning he had taken a walk part way round the walls. Beautiful old York—

  “ . . . only a baronet.”

  Melrose roused himself from his reflections on the walls and the gates of the city. “What?”

  “This Sir Titus Crael. He’s only a baronet. Whereas you —”

  “Whereas I am only
a commoner. There are lots of us. We are popping up all over Britain. I heard, though it might be mere rumor, we have London surrounded and have already captured the whole of Cornwall. Though we might give it back.” He snapped his newspaper.

  “Oh, do stop being silly, Melrose. You know exactly what I mean. No one will let you off with being just plain Melrose Plant. Instead of the Earl of Caverness, I mean. And twelfth Viscount Ardry, and grandson of—”

  She was gearing up like a monkey-grinder and would be cranking out the whole lot of titles, tunelessly, if he didn’t interrupt: “I am afraid they will have to let me off, since I have let myself off. Funny how the old world keeps turning without my title.”

  “I still don’t see why you pretended to give it up. You’re not political. Your father might have been, but you’re not. You’re not running for anything.”

  Only the door, thought Melrose. She would keep on about it, but he had no intention of telling her. He leaned back and stared at the ceiling, thinking of his father, whom he had very much loved and admired. Except for all of that hunting tomfoolery. It was the hunting, he supposed which had made him such a friend of Titus Crael, whom Melrose hadn’t seen in thirty years. His only memory of Sir Titus was of that day Melrose had gone cubbing, and of a tall, imposing figure standing next to him, the dead fox in his hands. They were going through that ghastly initiation, the ritual of blooding. Melrose found his ten-year-old face being wiped with the blood of the fox.

  Where had it been? He could not remember. Somewhere in the Shires? Rutland, maybe? Or even up here on the Yorkshire moors. He could only remember drops of blood on the snow. Hunting had never appealed to him after that. . . .

  “Quite a decent old house this,” said Agatha, interrupting his reverie once again. “Bring a lot on today’s market, I should think. That’s an Adam ceiling.”

  Melrose had been studying its delicate pastels and white moldings. “A copy.” Ceilings were his métier. He knew each ceiling in his own home, Ardry End, inch by inch. It came from staring up at them when his aunt was over to tea.

  “The plates are Crown Derby. And that table’s a very nice Sheraton,” said Agatha.

  Melrose watched her small eyes travel the length and breadth of the room, raking in Staffordshire figures, papiermâché, cameo glass — the cash-register of her mind adding it all up. In her previous incarnation she had probably been an auctioneer.

  “And did you see the size of that ring Teddy was wearing this morning? What sort of stone do you suppose it was?”

  Melrose turned back to the front page of his paper. “A gallstone.”

  “You really do hate it, don’t you, Melrose, when someone has more than you.” She looked at the cake-plate. “Let’s have that butler in; there aren’t any more brandy snaps.” She plucked at the bellpull. Then she settled back, fluffing up the cushions. “I’d no idea Teddy’d done so well by her marriage. I believe her things are quite as fine as the ones at Ardry End.”

  “You mean by the late Mr. Harries-Stubbs’s death.”

  “How cold-blooded of you, Melrose. But, then, I might expect you to take that line about marriage.”

  He refused to engage in any discussion of marriage. He was beginning to despair of ever finding that elusive She with whom to share himself and Ardry End. It was Ardry End, of course, that Agatha worried over. She liked to probe, was always dragging old names, old memories of women he had known like dead bodies across his path to see if she could trip him up, make him disclose some secret amour to which she was not privy and which might cut her out, as his only relative, of Ardry End — its real Adam ceilings, its early Georgian, its Meissen and Baccarat. What had ever given her the impression she had a right to this inheritance, Melrose couldn’t imagine. And, although she was over sixty and Melrose only forty-one, it did not seem to occur to her he’d outlast her. Wishful thinking, no doubt.

  “Is Vivian Rivington ever coming back from Italy, I wonder?”

  It was another of her sidesaddle questions.

  But Melrose did not answer because his eye was riveted on an item on the front page of the York Mail.

  There was murder in Rackmoor.

  According to the account, a body of a woman clad in some sort of mummer’s costume had been found sprawled in a backwater street. Yorkshire constabulary sure to make an arrest soon. (Meaning they had no idea what was going on.) Murdered woman supposedly a relative of Sir Titus Crael, M.P. and M.F.H. — one of Yorkshire’s wealthiest and most influential citizens.

  A relation of Sir Titus — now Melrose found himself in a real quandary. To be barging in at this bleak hour of the Craels’ lives, invited or not . . . perhaps he should just pack up and go back to Northants and send his apologies. . . . Northants, Agatha, and general malaise. There was no malaise in Rackmoor, he bet, at the moment.

  There was blood on the snow. . . .

  “What’s the matter with you, Melrose? You’re sitting there all white as death.”

  Fortunately, he was saved from comment by the entrance of Miles, the Harries-Stubbs butler, to whom Agatha said, “I’d like some more tea and one or two of those brandy snaps. But do ask Cook to see the cream’s fresher. Just tell her to whip up some more.”

  Miles looked at her out of bulletproof eyes. Agatha always managed to depopularize herself with servants very quickly.

  “Yes, madam,” was his stony answer. In warmer tones, he addressed Melrose: “And you, my lord. Is there anything you’d be requiring?”

  “The telephone,” said Melrose. “I mean — would you mind ringing up this number for me and seeing if this party is there?” He tore a leaf from his memorandum book and handed it to the butler.

  “Certainly, my lord.”

  “Who are you calling, Melrose?”

  “ ‘Spirits from the vasty deep,’ ” he said, trying to shove the newspaper down between the arm and cushion of the chair. If she knew a murder had been done in the very place to which he was going, she’d be right beside him, tramping along and stamping out whatever poor clues there were. Agatha fancied herself a mystery writer. She had never got over what she called “her solution” to those murders in their own village.

  The butler swanned into the room. “I’ve got —” (quick look at Agatha) “— your party on the line.”

  “Thank you. I’ll just take it in the other room.” Butlers were amazing. Melrose thought of his own butler, Ruthven. They could read minds even where there were no minds to read. He looked at Agatha and left the room.

  • • •

  Yes, certainly, Sir Titus was still wanting Melrose to come, perhaps more now than ever. Police all over the house, all over Rackmoor. There was even talk about calling in Scotland Yard. Titus Crael laughed, but without much conviction. The way they were questioning Julian, you’d have thought he was, well, a suspect.

  “Look, dear boy,” said Titus Crael. “You might be some help, you know. I’m a bit worried.”

  “About what, Sir Titus?”

  “I don’t know, to tell the truth. It’s all very confusing. She was — well, we’ll talk when you get here.”

  Melrose tried to remember Julian Crael, but couldn’t. He didn’t think they had ever met, not even as children. But he agreed to come as planned and to be of what help he could.

  • • •

  “Who were you talking to?” asked Agatha when he returned.

  “Sir Titus Crael. Fixing up when I’d arrive. I make it about a two-hour trip.” When the butler reappeared to apportion out tea and confections and lethal looks for Agatha, Melrose said, “Would you toss my things into my bag, Miles? I’ll be leaving shortly.” Miles nodded and left.

  “Do you mean to say you’re leaving now?” The brandy snap was poised aloft, like a small plane. Melrose nodded. “All across the North York Moors in winter!”

  “That ‘bourn from whom no traveller returns.’ ” Not a bad idea, perhaps.

  She stared at him. “About your Uncle Davidson, now, I remember . . . ”r />
  Melrose Plant turned over the hourglass.

  · III ·

  Afternoon in Islington

  1

  DETECTIVE Chief Inspector Richard Jury was awakened from a dream of tiny men attempting to pin him to the ground, Gulliver-wise, by the rude ringing of his telephone. Sleepily, he tested his arms for ropes, and finding them disengaged, lifted the receiver.

  Oiled with sarcasm, the voice of Superintendent Racer slipped over the wire: “It’s gone one and you’re still getting your beauty sleep, Jury? The WPC’s will go wild. Have mercy, man.”

  Jury yawned. It was no use reminding his Chief Superintendent that Jury had had next to no sleep in the last forty-eight hours. And it didn’t need Freud to put a name to the Lilliputian men who had pinioned him in his dream, either. “You wanted something, sir?”

  “No, Jury, I didn’t really want anything,” said Racer with elaborate calm. “I called for a bit of a natter. Jury, you’re in the frame, damnit!”

  Jury knew that he was on call. But he was third down; there were at least two men ahead of him. He heaved himself up in his bed and rubbed his hair astringently, trying to wake up his scalp and hoping to get through to his brain in the process. “Wasn’t Roper ahead of me?”

  “He’s unavailable!” snapped Racer.

  That was impossible, thought Jury; Roper was on twelve-hour call, at least. Had Racer even tried to get ahold of him?

  “The Yorkshire police called in. They want someone up there. Pronto.”

  Jury’s heart sank. Yorkshire. “Are you sure — ?”

  “ . . . village called Rackmoor.” Jury heard papers rattling as Racer cut him off. “Fishing village on the North Sea.” Racer said this with evident delight.

  Jury shut his eyes. Last year at this time it had been Northamptonshire. That was wintry enough. He had nothing against Yorkshire in spring, Yorkshire in summer, Yorkshire in autumn. But not January. Was he to be driven farther and farther north by Racer, like a team of huskies? He looked out of his bedroom window and saw flakes of snow. Just a few, scattering like leftovers from another winter. Closing his eyes again, he saw the Yorkshire moors — the great, level, vast expanses covered with smooth crusts of snow. He saw (or rather, heard) himself walking— crunch, crunch, crunch — across the moors. And then he brought his mind’s eye back like a camera’s lens and saw himself dark and tiny in all that whiteness and tracks like birdprints. He smiled. Jury was obsessively fond of unbroken expanses of snow. He liked to muck it about.