Aaron Elkins: Murder In The Queen's armes

"It’s a good one," Gideon said. Nate might be a poor dumb bastard, but at least he wasn’t a dishonest, fraudulent dumb bastard, and that ought to count for something.

"No," Julie called from the bathroom, "I never heard you knocking. I was washing my hair." She came out, with a towel wrapped turban-style around her head, her pretty face freshly scrubbed. She was one of those people who look clean when they’re dirty, and when she was newly washed she positively glowed. "What are you looking for?"

Gideon was on his knees and elbows, poking about under the bed. "My tennis shoes," he said. He got up, went to the bureau in the corner, and looked through the drawers for a second time. "I thought I’d wearthem on ourwalk tonight in case it’s still muddy; they’ll be easy to wash." He stood looking around the room, hands on his hips. "Now where the heck are they? Or did I bring them with me at all?"

Standing before the mirror, Julie tucked her blouse neatly into her gray slacks. "Yes, Gideon," she said patiently, "you were wearing them this morning. When you couldn’t find your slippers."

"Well, I found my slippers. They were under the bed. But my tennis shoes are gone. Don’t bother looking in the closet," he said as she went to it, "I’ve already looked in there."

"But you don’t always see things when you look."

"I’m telling you they’re not there," Gideon grumbled. "I may be a little absentminded when I’m thinking about something important, but-"

With her head still in the closet, Julie stuck out an arm and waggled a large, white, blue-trimmed tennis shoe.

"Sonofagun, that wasn’t there two minutes ago," Gideon said.

Julie laughed. "All I can see is this one. We’ll find the other one after dinner. You know, you’re sure lucky you have me to take care of you. What did you do before you found me?"

He came up behind her and wrapped her in his arms. "God only knows," he said.

Since Abe was ministering to Nate and Arbuckle was having dinner in a Lyme Regis restaurant, they had the cozy dining room to themselves. Gideon was able to put Stonebarrow Fell out of his mind, and they enjoyed a relaxed, dreamy meal.

Then, after another unsuccessful search for the missing sneaker, they walked out to Dyne Meadow. At the end of Barr’s Lane, they turned off the flashlight that Hinshore had lent them, and tried to edge gingerly past Bowser’s pen, but of course the thing came bounding out, throwing himself hysterically against the chain-link fence.

Once past the formidable hindrance, however, they walked to the meadow and found the big log they had sat on before, damp now in the evening dew. All that was left of the day was a thin, ruddy streak in the west, against which a rolling shoulder of hillside and the ravage silhouette of an ancient stone barn stood out as crisply as an artificial horizon in a planetarium. The rest of the sky was black and as yet moonless, with only a few dim stars, so that they could see little of the meadow around them. A knee-high fog hung over the ground, wispy and vaporous, like mist onstage in a play. The only sounds were the thin plashing of an unseen stream and the soughing of breeze-stirred branches.

In a few minutes the northern sky grew lighter, and then the top of a stupendous orange moon rose behind distant trees and swam up with marvelous speed. At the first sight of it, Julie gasped and reached for Gideon’s hand. He put his other arm around her and pulled her closer, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. He could smell the clean fragrance of her hair and, more faintly, that sweet, damp, grassy bouquet of rural England. How adolescent this was, he thought, and how heart-wrenching perfect. He sat as still as he could, wanting nothing to change, and watched the moon, as three-dimensional as an enormous golf ball, float upward, paling to a cool alabaster and shrinking as it rose.

When he first heard the sound, he hardly noticed it-a distant, deep tolling like the pealing of a great, faraway bell. And then, when it finally did register, it was not in the neatly organized, orderly convolutions of the cortex, but somewhere deep in the dark and brutish brain stem that he perceived it. Before he even knew what it was he heard, the skin on the back of his neck raised itself, in obedience to primeval laws, and sent a long shiver crawling down his spine. He leaped to his feet, turning in the direction of the sound.

Julie jumped up too. "What is it?" she said, her voice hollow. "Oh, my God-the dog? "

For it was unquestionably the dog, and he was unquestionably loose and closing on them, his frenzied baying nearer now. Speechless, they stared toward the tortured, echoing howl. The moon was behind them, throwing some light; they could see before them about a hundred feet of misty meadow, and beyond that the edge of a beech spinney through which the path from Barr’s Lane came.

Paralyzed, his blood like cold sludge in his veins, Gideon stood stupefied, mindlessly waiting. Now, in addition to the wild, swelling howl, there was a rapid, rustling patter, and with the new sound Gideon suddenly found he could move again. He bent, looking desperately for anything that would serve as a weapon, and picked up the weathered stub of a thick branch, as big around as a loaf of bread. Gripping the damp, heavy wood, he turned toward the awful sounds and moved in front of Julie, who stood as if petrified.

Remembering that he still held the flashlight in his other hand, he flicked it on, aiming at the gap in the trees. In the foreground the low-lying mist hung like a bed of cotton candy and reflected back the light. In the gap itself, nothing showed but blackness. The baying had stopped, but the pattering was much louder, and now a ragged panting could be heard. Gideon fought down the trembling of his hand and held the flashlight steady on the opening through which the thing must emerge.

"Here it comes," he said, through a painfully tight throat, meaning it as a comfort to her, a sign that he was alert and in command of himself. Actually, he was far from it; he was as teeth-chatteringly scared as he’d ever been, and impotently raging as well-there was no way to get Julie to safety; no tree to lift her into, no place for her to run…

The monstrous animal shot out of the foliage, brilliant in the hard glare of the flashlight, and bounded toward them with loping, dreamlike strides that tore the fog into whirling tatters and ate up the ground. The panting was horrible, and Gideon imagined he could already feel its hot breath. It really is like the Hound of the Baskervilles, he thought. All it needs is a glowing coat of phosphorus on its muzzle…

He kept the beam on the charging animal and got a firmer grip on the branch. It seemed to him that his muscles responded with the gluey inertia of nightmare, and that the dog would have him in shreds before he could mobilize himself. Still, he crouched and lifted his arms, dumbly ready to take the animal’s leap.

Julie suddenly came to life and showed more presence of mind. Bending quickly, she picked up a stone and hurled it. Astonishingly, it hit home. Gideon saw it leap into the light beam, thwack against the massive skull, and bounce off into darkness. The dog shrieked with pain and stopped abruptly, fifteen feet from them, growling deep within its chest. There was a smear of blood, black in the flashlight beam, on its forehead where the stone had struck. It seemed to know it was Julie who had thrown it, for its eyes, milkily luminous, were focused behind Gideon, on her. With a quick, smooth movement it tensed itself to spring. In the harsh glare, its muscles cut shadowed furrows in the loose, tawny pelt and slid over each other like plates of oiled steel.

Whatever sort of semi-trance Gideon had been in, it finally ended. As the dog launched itself at Julie, he threw himself at it, thrusting the branch before him like an epee. It caught the huge animal full in the chest, but it was Gideon who was knocked backward, his entire frame shuddering with the impact. The dog screamed and twisted in the air, and landed tumbling on its side, but was up the moment it hit the ground. And now it knew Gideon for its enemy. Snarling, with black lips pulled back along its teeth, it spun to face him. He flung the flashlight at it, catching it a glancing blow on the shoulder. The animal howled and came for him again, harder to see now in the moonlight.