Free The Deer Leap by Martha Grimes Page B

gum.
    Jury smiled. The constable’s duties in Ashdown Dean were probably limited to stopping motorists going over the thirty-mile limit and checking locks at night.
    â€œWhy am I mucking about here, you’re probably wondering.” Jury was looking at a silver-framed photograph. A group in bathing costume, arms round one another, laughing by the seaside.
    Pasco smiled sleepily. “True. But if you want to, I guess you have a reason.”
    Jury replaced the photo, sat down and lit a cigarette. He tossed the pack to Pasco, who took one and tossed it back. The constable, Jury thought, under that lethargic manner was nobody’s fool. Maybe lazy or simply bored, but when he wasn’t doing his sleepy act, you could see the blue eyes were very sharp.
    â€œDid you think there was anything strange about Una Quick’s death?”
    The eyes opened; Pasco paused in the act of bringing cigarette to mouth. “Strange how?”
    â€œThat storm last night. It took down a couple of power lines and apparently Miss Quick’s phone service with it. No one else on the phone nearby? Ida Dotrice?”
    Pasco shook his head. “Una couldn’t really afford one —”
    â€œWho can? Go on.”
    â€œâ€” but she was so nutty about her heart that she had one put in. In case something happened. And to call Farnsworth.”
    â€œYou said she reported to him religiously, as he told her to do, by calling his surgery every Tuesday. Dr. Farnsworth must be an extremely dedicated doctor, to do that.”
    Pasco smiled. “If Farnsworth is dedicated to his National Health list, I’m the Chief Constable.”
    â€œNo money in it.”
    â€œBut a lot in private patients. Still, according to Una, that’s what he told her to do.”
    â€œBut she did have a bad heart.”
    â€œDamned right. When her dog died . . . Pepper, its name was. Poisoned on some weed killer.” Pasco threw the butt of his cigarette into the cold grate. “It nearly killed her.”
    â€œWhere was it found?”
    Pasco nodded in the direction of the rear door. “Potting shed. Claimed it was locked, but Una was pretty absent-minded.”
    Jury thought for a moment. “Ashdown Dean goes uphill and the one call box is at the top. Not a very steep incline, maybe. But a woman with a heart condition whose pet had just died —? The storm and the hill. Would you’ve done it, Constable? It’s pretty ironic, isn’t it? The very effort of calling your doctor kills you. And there was that comment Miss Praed made about the umbrella. Why wasn’t one found in the call box?”
    â€œThat storm came up pretty suddenly. She must have left before.”
    â€œThen that’s even stranger.”
    Pasco frowned.
    â€œThat means, given the time of death as Dr. Farnsworth puts it, Una Quick was in that call box for at least a half an hour.”
    The constable looked around the cottage, still frowning. “The storm took out the service at the vicarage and the post office. They’re working now.” Pasco moved to the other side of the room and lifted Una Quick’s receiver.
    â€œBut hers isn’t,” said Jury.

Thirteen
    â€œI didn’t insist she should ring me, Superintendent,” said Dr. Farnsworth as they sat in his surgery in Selby. “It was, if anything, the other way around.” He rolled ash from a Cuban cigar that must have come from some secret stock; it hadn’t come from the local tobacconist. Indeed, the doctor’s surgery had not been decorated by the National Health. Not with a Matisse on the wall and a marble sculpture of a fish on a desk whose polished surface the fish could have swum across.
    â€œYou know,” continued Farnsworth, “the way many cardiac patients are. Obsessive about their hearts. Phobic. Which adds to the problem. She did ring me on Tuesdays, that’s true, but not at my insistence. And not last