Free The Deer Leap by Martha Grimes Page A

leave Bingo behind?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIn case you’re interested.” Carrie stopped there, as if it were the end of a lengthy exegesis.
    The Baroness waited. Nothing further was forthcoming. “Well? Interested in what, my dear girl?”
    â€œWhy Bingo’s only got three legs. Wasn’t born that way.”
    â€œI had inferred as much. Hit by a car, or something?” She tapped ash out the window. Frankly, she wished the rest of him had gone the way of the fourth leg.
    They had spanned Waterloo Bridge, and she was thinking nostalgically of the old one, and poor Vivien Leigh standing in the fog. Or was it poor Robert Taylor? Both, probably . . . .
    They were in Southwark, now, on the other side of the Thames and headed for Waterloo Station.
    Carrie drew her companion’s attention to a skirmish outside a dilapidated building, where several boys were throwing stones at a couple of mongrel dogs that had been searching for their breakfast in an overturned dustbin. “I found Bingo in an alley, round back of the docks. One of his legs was practically chewed off. That’s the way it looked, anyway.”
    â€œHow revolting. Don’t bother with the details.”
    The details were forthcoming. “It wasn’t chewed. Somebody’d beat it with a spanner. Or something like.” Carrie’s face was turned around, watching, while the cab was stopped at a light.
    And then she looked at the Baroness. “I don’t suppose you want to go back?”
    â€œBack?”
    Carrie hitched her thumb over her shoulder. Her expression was as hard as the stone that hit the dog. “There.”
    â€œI most certainly do not .”
    The girl was rather alarming. But she said nothing else, just sat staring straight ahead. The Baroness took in her profile. It was, actually, quite good. Straight nose, high cheekbones. Magnificent pale blond hair. “Once we get you in some decent clothes,” she said, enjoying her morning cigarette and hoping the train had a real dining car, “and scrubbed up, you’ll be quite presentable.”
    â€œI’m not a potato,” said Carrie Fleet.
    The Baroness chose to ignore this. “You’re not going to get that animal in a first-class car, you know. He’ll have to go third.”
    Carrie Fleet was still looking back over her shoulder. Then she turned around. “You could just buy up all the seats in the car. Then there wouldn’t be no — any —” she’d squinted her eyes like a person with a stammer “— bother from people.”
    â€œGood God! You are the most stubborn person I know.”
    â€œSecond most,” said Carrie Fleet, with her butterfly smile.

Twelve
    T he whitewashed cottages of Ashdown Dean straggled off like roses on a trellis, up the hill-rise of the High Street and down the other side, with winding roads as narrow as stems branching off, one of which was Aunt Nancy’s Lane, where Una Quick had lately lived.
    The bizarre incident of the death in the call box explained, Ashdown was returning to its daily rounds, with Ida Dotrice filling in at the post-office stores. Thus Jury knew that Constable Pasco was merely indulging the superintendent’s whim. If he wanted to waste his time in the overcrowded cottage of an elderly woman, Pasco didn’t care.
    Pasco was leaning against the cluttered mantelpiece, chewing gum, as Jury stood with his hands in his pockets and looked around. “Certainly liked knickknacks, didn’t she?” Pasco apparently felt the answer to this quite obvious, given the bits of shells, little stuffed birds, blown-glass animals, Presents from Brighton, the Isle of Man, and Torquay, their greetings written in flaking gold script across shaving mugs, gilt-edged cups and saucers. The little parlor was stuffed with memorabilia. “No family?”
    â€œNone I ever heard of,” said Pasco, lazily chewing his