"Only in the Foreign Legion. What the devil was that all about?"
Holding the book firmly under her arm, she went about retrieving her pitchfork. "He's horrid." She then dragged pitchfork and book into the stable where stood a magnificent golden horse, apparently being made ready for the carriage rides.
Melrose sat down on a convenient bale of hay and lit up a small cigar. "Is he always like that?" He wondered what the book was and why she seemed intent on keeping it so near her person.
"Yes." Now she was stamping out of the stable block over to the bins of feed. Half of her disappeared into one of them, and the remainder of her speech about Derek's horridness was lost in the echoing bin. As she got out the bucket of feed and once more entered the stable, she said, "All boys are horrid."
"Oh, I don't know. They can be rather fun. After all, they grow up to be people like me."
Her eyes appeared over the stable door to regard him with distaste.
"Did Katie O'Brien have a particular boyfriend?"
"I don't see why we have to talk about boys. It's stupid." She tramped out of the stable and back to the barrels. The one she was drooping over now was so large that she had to drape herself over its rim to reach what was left of the oats at the bottom.
"Look here, do you want some help?"
"No." Her legs dangled down, toes missing the ground.
"Derek Bodenheim acts very strange for a young man of twenty-odd." Back with another bucket, she went into Shandy's stall, making a retching noise in her throat at the mention of Derek. "Do you think he's quite right in the head?"
"No. He was horrid to Katie, too. She hated him."
"Did he tease her, too?" Melrose's interest quickened.
"You know. Sneaking up on her and grabbing her and trying to kiss her." Small shudder as she raised a forkful of hay to Shandy's hayrack. "She said he had a wet mouth. . . . I'd rather not talk about it."
There was a lengthy silence, broken only by the scrape of the pitchfork. But Melrose sensed she was interested, although she didn't want to admit it. He knew she was hiding something that had to do with that book. "Let's pretend something."
No answer came from the occupants of the stable except for the sound of the pony chewing.
"Let's pretend we live in a magnificent country-a kingdom, say. Full of green fields and amethyst skies." That made him uncomfortable; how had amethyst got into it? "And you are a beautiful princess." He noticed the sound of the scraping pitchfork had stopped. "And I-" Oh, heavens, what should he be? Why hadn't he thought this through? Something unattractive, he knew, to make the story more acceptable to her. "I am a stupid, ugly, nasty gnome."
A velvet cap and eyes appeared over the stable door. Behind her, her pony chewed its fodder, unmindful of princesses and gnomes.
"Indeed, I'm a perfectly horrid dwarf who's always going about the kingdom doing mischief. I pinch cakes and tarts and muffins straight out from under the nose of Cook. I am so small-and ugly, of course-they hardly know I'm around." He paused to reflect and to relight his cigar. "Now, you are the gorgeous princess of this kingdom of, ah, Nonesuch." Warming to his tale, Melrose started pacing the small enclosure. "Your gowns are magnificent. One of them is a violet color, studded all over with amethysts." Melrose flicked her a glance to see if she was attending closely to this baroque and colorful tale. She was. "The dwarf-that's me-is very conceited. I have a brother who is even a worse gnome than I-" Did that sudden snort come from Emily Louise or the pony? "He is even more conceited; he thinks, despite his silly behavior and evil, horrid ways, he is a handsome gnome. Even though he's no higher than a table leg and his head is flat and his cheeks stick out-"
"Maybe he's got mumps."
Melrose stopped pacing, annoyed. "Gnomes don't fall prey to human diseases. They've got their own. He's-"
"Like what?"
"Never mind. He's not sick; he's just-horrid." Now she'd made him lose the thread. He was working Derek in. Ah, yes, vanity. "So because he was so vain and because his mum and dad would let him do anything . . . did I mention his family? His family-mum, dad, and sister-all perfectly awful. They treated the other villagers-subjects, I mean-as if they didn't amount to a hill of beans. So one day this horrid gnome went straightaway to the palace stables where the princess was walking to and fro in her jewel-studded gown and reading a book." He looked at her. She stared back. "And he sneaked up behind the princess and grabbed her and tried to kiss her." She obviously didn't like that part of gnome behavior. Her expression was fierce. Melrose rushed on. "He was trying to find out what was in the book, the stupid, clumsy lout. But it was a royal secret, and the princess didn't want him to know. He was a spy, she decided. So you know what she did?"
She stared at him blankly.
"She went to the royal guard!" That was a clever way of bringing in the police, thought Melrose, pleased with himself.
"Is Jimmy Poole going to be in this story?"
"Jimmy Poole? Of course not. What the devil's he got to do with it?"
The small face disappeared from over the rim of the stall door and he heard the pitchfork again.
What was the matter with her? It was a whale of a good story. "You see, the gnome-"
"I don't wear dresses and I don't kiss gnomes."
"Well, I haven't got to the end. You'll love the end." What was the end?
"I don't want to hear it. It's a stupid story."
Oh, devil take her. He might just as well be direct. "What was that book Derek was trying to get away from you, and why'd he call it ‘dirty'?"
Brief silence. "Because it's about men and women."
"That takes care of ninety-nine percent of the world's literature. Anyway, why do you want to read it? Since you don't kiss gnomes."
"I'm not reading it. I'm giving it to that Scotland Yard person."
As if, he thought, the name Jury weren't engraved permanently on her heart.
"Superintendent Jury said he was going to Stonington. When you've finished with the horses, why don't we go along to the Blue Boy? With your book. I'm sure, though it's barely nine, there's always a lemon squash about." Two could play at this game, though he suddenly realized he was playing it wrong. He'd have to get the book before she held him up for drinks and crisps. "As a matter of fact, I think you ought to give it me now, and then we'll go along to the Blue Boy."
She was stroking the mane of the golden horse, stalling for time. There was an incongruous blue ribbon on its mane, which she undid and flung to the ground. "I'm not giving rides if it's got to wear that." She hazarded a glance at Melrose and, seeing him adamant, said, "Oh, all right!" She stomped over and dropped the book in his lap.
It was, he realized, a burden she was only too happy to palm off on someone else. "It's Katie's," she said.
"Katie O'Brien's book? What's all the secrecy about?"
"I don't know. She told me to get it out of her room in case anything happened."
"Was she expecting something to happen?"
Emily shrugged and looked over his shoulder at the book.
It was covered with a piece of white graph paper on which the word GEOMETRY had been printed, angling down the front. He removed the cover and saw it was a standard, neo-Gothic bosom-ripper, titled Love's Wanton Ways. "Was she hiding this from her mother?"
Obviously thinking Melrose quite dim, Emily said, "It's not the book, it's the cover." She took it from him, unfolded the homemade cover and held it up. "See. It's a kind of map."
It was a very strange sort of map, meticulously drawn in pencil and ink, bearing the legend THE FOREST OF HORNDEAN. Thick woodland surrounded a central picture consisting of small figures, a castle down in the right-hand corner, and numerous trails and roads. There were bear's tracks, a footpath, a grotto, a trail left by a giant snail. All of these were partially enclosed by a moat and a yellow brick road.
The Church of St. Pancras sat above a small bridge.
And running right through the center of everything was the River of Blood.
SIXTEEN
I
THE woman who ran out of the front door of Stonington just as Jury stopped his car in the circular drive was carrying something wrapped up in a blanket. As he crunched up the gravel toward her, she called to him, "Would you please go with me to the vet's? I can't drive and carry the cat, too."
Drooping out of one end of the blanket was a black, wedge-shaped face, a tiny ribbon of blood matting the fur between nose and mouth.
"Sure, only let's use my car. You hold the cat and I'll drive."
She was silent as he held the door for her. He backed up and started down the long gravel drive, passing a squat gatehouse on his right. When they got to the Horndean Road, he said, "Which way?"
"Left. Toward Horndean." She turned her head then to look out of her window, cutting off conversation. A square of paisley lawn tied at the base of her neck held back her oak-colored hair. He knew Lady Kennington had few servants-just a gardener and a cook. This was certainly neither, so it must be the lady herself. Jury was disoriented. He had got a picture firmly fixed in his mind of an imperious, elderly woman, perhaps thin and gray-haired, wearing a dress of lavender silk adorned by a cameo. The reality was substantially different.