Twelve Horses and the Hangman's Noose (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  “What did you say your stallion’s name was?”

  “Him? Iceland Blue. He’s a real beauty.”

  “I’d love to see him. Is he temperamental?”

  “Him? Gentle as a lamb. A child could lead him about. He’s pure-bred. That accounts for his gentlemanly manners.”

  “I’d love to see him,” Laura repeated warmly.

  Grinstead shook his head. His melancholy eyes met hers.

  “Not today, Mrs. Gavin. I haven’t got him here today. No. Over on the other side of the Forest is Iceland Blue. Yes. Doing his bit to continue the breed, Mrs. Gavin. Ah, a nice little nest-egg is that horse laying for me these days. Ah, well, now! A pity you’ve got to be disappointed, but there it is. The pigs ’ull have to do for today.”

  “Oh, well, some other time, perhaps,” said Laura, off-handedly. “What did you think when you heard about poor John Mapsted?”

  “I read a story once about poor John Straker, Mrs. Gavin.” His deceiving eyes met hers again.

  “Good heavens!” cried Laura, considerably startled by this reference. “John Mapsted would never have tried to lame Percheron!”

  “Can you be sure of that, Mrs. Gavin? Percheron was entered for the point-to-point and the fifty-pound prize, wasn’t he? Ah, and but for Ancreon, that’s owned, as you know, by a Lymington syndicate, Percheron, if he ran, would be bound to win.”

  “Percheron could beat Ancreon,” said Laura. “In fact, he did, last year, and that’s why John Mapsted bought him.”

  “True for you, Mrs. Gavin. Would it surprise you to know that John Mapsted had two hundred pounds on Ancreon to win the point-to-point?”

  “It certainly would! I don’t believe it! Why should he bet against his own horse? And, anyway, I don’t believe he could risk two hundred pounds. I don’t believe he’d got it.”

  “He was putting the money on a certainty, Mrs. Gavin, so long as Percheron was out of the race. You see, Mrs. Gavin, there’s one funny thing about Percheron. You can’t pull him. When he races he runs as he likes and you can’t hold him. He’s a mad horse. So, knowing he couldn’t pull him in the race, John Mapsted decided to hamstring him, see, Mrs. Gavin? And so came to his end, as you could not blame the horse, could you?”

  “Rot!” said Laura flatly. “And you shouldn’t malign the dead.”

  “Malign, Mrs. Gavin? Oh, no. It is what I should have done myself if Percheron had been my own.”

  “But,” objected Laura, abandoning ethics in favour of common sense, “why on earth shouldn’t Percheron win? If John had two hundred pounds to spare, why shouldn’t he have backed his own horse?”

  “Not enough profit, you see, Mrs. Gavin. Not a good price. No. Last year’s winner, and known to the whole Forest as being better than ever. Quoted at evens in our little country flutters, Mrs. Gavin. What’s the good of evens? No punter in his senses would look at evens when he could get a very nice seven to two on Ancreon. Don’t you see?”

  Laura rode back to the Stone House very slowly.

  “I still don’t believe it,” she said to Dame Beatrice at dinner.

  “Don’t believe what, my dear Laura?”

  Laura recounted her adventures.

  “What’s more,” she said firmly, “I don’t believe Grinsted had sent that stallion away. He’s got him hidden somewhere. That’s the horse that killed John Mapsted, if any horse killed him at all! Oh, and another thing! It was weird about Merial Trowse. She didn’t like me to mention murder, but bucked up at once when she thought I meant a horse, not a man. I’m going to find out more about that stallion. Apart from that, there are other fish to fry. What do you make of Grinsted’s suggestion that John nipped into Percheron’s stable that night to hamstring him?”

  “There is the question of which was lying, Mrs. Mapsted or Miss Gauberon, child.”

  “I know,” said Laura. “What’s the answer, do you suppose? In other words, where do we go from here?”

  “I think our best plan would be to open the Grammar School at Seahampton. I must rehearse my speech. It is difficult to know what will be acceptable upon these occasions. One’s funny stories are all too apt to sound either banal or slightly blue.”

  “Well, you said you’d got alternatives. Anyway, you can hardly say that you never got a prize at school, and that you don’t believe in education.”

  “True. I did get prizes at school, including one for deportment,” said Dame Beatrice with a triumphant leer. “I feel that you cannot match that.”

  “I got a prize in my kindergarten for cheerfulness,” said Laura proudly. “It has stood me in good stead all my life. If you notice, I am cheerful. I feel I owe it as a duty, since I accepted the prize.”

  “And what was the prize, child?”

  “A cruet set. A bit of a blow to one who had designs upon an infant’s tricycle. But that’s Fate. And Fate, as the Master of English prose has indicated, is apt to lie in wait with a wet sandbag. Mind you, one becomes accustomed to these things. That’s philosophy, that is.”

  “You fill me with awe,” said Dame Beatrice. “Well, while I rehearse, which I propose to do aloud, you will be left to your own devices. Why not take the rest of the day and go to London? You may have the car.”

  “Nope,” said Laura very decidedly. “If you really don’t want me to do anything here, I’ll go over and pump Cissie Gauberon, and bounce it out of her that she was telling lies at the inquest. And now, I wonder what’s for lunch?”

  Lunch over, a replete and casually-costumed Laura—she was wearing slacks and a reefer jacket—strolled over to the Elkstonehunt riding stables. She found that, by the time she got there, the horses were being fed. It was then a quarter-past three.

  “A bit early, isn’t it?” she said to Jenkinson whom she found at Barb’s loose-box.

  “Not for some of ’em, Mrs. Gavin,” the groom replied. “Horses varies, and, anyway, we got the colonel and his grandchildren coming over at just after four, rot the lot of ’em!”

  He was obviously drunk, Laura noticed.

  “What’s that you’re giving Barb?” she asked.

  “Her tea, ma’am,” said Jenkinson insolently. Then, meeting Laura’s hostile eye, he added, “Her’s getting two pounds of oats, one of bran, and half a pound of chopped ’ay, which is economic, which we ’as to be ’ere, otherwise she’d pick out the good grass and leave the bad.”

  “Good old Barb,” said Laura. “I say, Jenkinson, why do you feel so sure that Percheron killed Mr. Mapsted? It doesn’t make sense, you know.”

  The old man looked at her malevolently, and hiccupped.

  “It makes sense to me,” he said. “If you knowed that horse as well as I know him, Mrs. Gavin, you wouldn’t ask a question like to that.”

  Laura shrugged her shoulders.

  “As you say,” she remarked off-handedly. “Where’s Miss Gauberon?”

  “Having a look at Viatka.”

  “Oh, yes. How’s the kick?”

  “Getting on, Mrs. Gavin. Funny about that kick.”

  “Yes, apparently. What’s your theory?”

  “Mrs. Cofts.”

  “You think, then, that the mare did over-reach?”

  “Not Viatka, no. That there kick,” said Jenkinson, pausing to belch, “come of Mrs. Cofts’s a-lending that there mare to somebody she didn’t have ought to. That’s my ideer, Mrs. Gavin, for what it’s worth.”

  As Laura had not the slightest idea of how much it was worth, she gave a casual wave of the hand and walked off to the loose-box occupied by the unfortunate Viatka.

  Cissie Gauberon was feeding the mare by giving her the chopped hay in handfuls.

  “Hullo,” said Laura casually. “How is she?”

  “She’s all right. She misses John,” Miss Gauberon replied. “She can’t make it out at all that he doesn’t come. I’ve explained that he’s gone to heaven,” she added with some inconsequence, “but she doesn’t really think so.”

  “Why did you tell those lies at the i
nquest?” demanded Laura. Cissie Gauberon studied her with Gallic amusement. Laura, the Scot, interpreted the attitude correctly. “I see,” she said. “So you’re determined that the police are to make a do of it? You think they’ll find your evidence pretty fishy?”

  “I hope so,” Cissie responded. “They ought to, oughtn’t they? Don’t you agree?”

  “Well, I do,” said Laura. “The queer thing is that at the time I thought you were telling the truth and that old Mrs. M. was lying.”

  Cissie gave Viatka a good handful of oats.

  “She enjoys being spoilt,” she said. “No, I can’t tell you at the moment which was which. Trouble is, I’d love to keep out of it all, but I don’t see how I can. I know Percheron. He didn’t trample anybody. And I know another thing or two, but I can’t let on, not even to you, although I know you’re all right.”

  Laura accepted this compliment unemotionally.

  “So I get no farther,” she said. “What would your reaction be if I told you that one of those brats from the Hall put me wise?”

  “Which one?” asked Cissie warily.

  “So you do know?” said Laura.

  “Know what?”

  “That somebody paid a clandestine sort of visit to John, and that the two of them had a row.”

  Cissie shrugged.

  “I didn’t know at the time, but I found out afterwards,” she said.

  “Same source of information as mine?”

  “Yes, I expect so. Ursula.”

  “Any idea at all who the other man could have been?”

  “Yes, but it’s nobody you know.”

  At this moment a diversion was caused by the arrival of Colonel May, accompanied by the children. Miss Temme was not with the party but it had an addition in the person of Mrs. Cofts, the vicar’s wife, who had come to see Viatka and to express her condolences to the mare and her apologies (for the third time) to Miss Gauberon.

  The vicar’s wife had money and depended upon a mouse-like but efficient sister-in-law who had been given a home at the Vicarage and who had undertaken those tiresome and often futile duties in and about the parish which fall ordinarily to the lot of the incumbent’s spouse. Poor Miss Elizabeth Cofts did the district visiting, ran the Mothers’ Wednesday Afternoons, including a terrifying outing to Seahampton by coach each year, and gave a truly frightful Christmas party to which the mothers brought their children and at which there was always bitter feeling about whose Christmas cake was to achieve the place of honour in the centre of the centre table. Miss Cofts also kept the parish accounts (since a one-time churchwarden had once been found to fiddle them to his own advantage), visited the village school once a term, admonished the intemperate old and the ill-behaved young of the parish, helped the choirmaster to discipline the choirboys, took nourishing broth to the sick, patched up quarrels between neighbours, organised the annual Church Bazaar, typed her brother’s sermons, saw that the lawns were trimmed and the marquee ordered for the annual Vicarage garden-party, and pressed unwilling helpers into service at the Sunday School treat.

  Mrs. Cofts, who had married the vicar on the distinct understanding that she proposed to wash her hands of all these matters, treated her with ironic courtesy and gave her a comfortable home, excellent meals, and a generous quarterly allowance. Miss Elizabeth Cofts resented the irony, appreciated the luxury, and, in any case, doted on her brother to such an extent that even if she had been banished to an attic and fed on the kitchen scraps she would still have been eager and anxious to live in his house and to serve him with all her strength. This, in spite of her mouse-like appearance, was considerable.

  Mrs. Cofts and Laura were acquaintances.

  “Hullo,” said the latter, who was a firm believer in taking the bull by the horns. “Come to see Viatka?”

  “Why, yes,” the incumbent’s wife agreed. “Can’t think how she came to be kicked. I suddenly noticed she was limping when I brought her back.”

  “It’s these amateur bunglers,” said Laura. Mrs. Cofts cocked an eyebrow.

  “Amateurs, Mrs. Gavin?”

  “Don’t tell me your kindness of heart didn’t lead you astray! Who, exactly, rode Viatka home the last time you had her out?”

  “I did, of course. Why should you suppose somebody else did? I should consider it highly immoral to lend to another person a horse I had hired.” Mrs. Cofts looked displeased. Laura waved a shapely palm.

  “Come back all I said,” she observed cordially. Mrs. Cofts turned away to go to Viatka’s loose-box and the thin-faced Ursula took her place at Laura’s side.

  “I say,” she observed in a conspiratorial tone, “did lying old Cofts-Wofts tell you she rode Viatka home the last time she had her out?”

  “You mind your manners,” said Laura, who had been trained as a school-marm. “It’s no business of yours what Mrs. Cofts said to me.”

  “I could tell you a thing or two more, you know, if you wouldn’t be so stuffy,” said the horrible child. “Mr. Cofts may be ever so holy, but cook says he wouldn’t be her cup of tea.”

  “Go and wash that chocolate off your face,” retorted Laura. “You look more than usually repulsive, you loathsome little gargoyle.”

  “Oh, you are funny!” said Ursula, with as much affection as was in her to bestow. “I do like the things you say. Don’t you want to know who lamed Viatka? I know you do, so I shan’t tell you, see?”

  “If what you told was as truthful as the last of your yarns—” said Laura.

  “But, Laura, that was true! It was! It was! It was!”

  “All right, all right, all right. Who did lame Viatka, then?”

  “One of the owners of riding stables not so very far from here.”

  Laura regarded the child with deep distrust.

  “It was! It was!” screamed Ursula. “Cross my heart and may I die! It was one of the owners! So there!”

  Laura knew a good deal about the May children, and, although she knew her to be a prize liar on occasion, she felt that this time Ursula was speaking the truth. Whether this was so or not, it certainly seemed as though something out of keeping with a pastoral scene was, or had been, going on in the village, apart from the sudden death of John Mapsted.

  She brooded again on the evidence given at the inquest: upon the extraordinary case of Percheron who did nothing at the time of his master’s death, yet who created a disturbance some seven hours afterwards; upon the discrepancy between the evidence given by old Mrs. Mapsted and that of Cissie Gauberon; of the curious rider added to the jury’s verdict; on the point that nobody but Jenkinson had seen blood on the stable floor and on Percheron’s hoof, and, last but not least, on the extraordinary business of Mapsted’s having had neither lantern nor torch with him when he entered the loose-box.

  “It looks like murder,” was her conclusion, given to Dame Beatrice at dinner that evening, “but, if it is, Jenkinson is out of the picture. He’d given away the fact that he took down the lantern from its usual place, but he agreed that John Mapsted’s torch was still on the bedside table. He’s quite smart enough to have lied about that if he’d had any guilty knowledge of John’s death.”

  “Quite,” Dame Beatrice agreed. “I have re-cast my speech for the opening ceremony at the Seahampton Grammar School. It seems a pity, after the beautiful typing you did, and I apologise for wasting your time.”

  “Think nothing of that, but I hope you’re not proposing to jettison the bit from Kubla Khan. Your tongue-in-cheek quotations fill me with quiet joy.”

  CHAPTER 7

  SAY IT WITH FLOWERS

  …hoary-headed frosts

  Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,

  And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown

  An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

  Is, as in mockery, set.

  SHAKESPEARE

  On the morning of the great day Mr. Bond was at the school early. He was not a nervous or fidgety man, but he was particularly anxious that the Official Opening of
his school should be a success in the sense that the proceedings must suffer no hitch, let, or hindrance.

  His room had been unlocked at half-past eight by the chief caretaker and by twenty minutes to nine he was at his huge desk checking all the arrangements for the evening and racking his brains to find possible gaps and flaws. However, the programme he had outlined seemed foolproof. On such an occasion as this he could trust even the boys.

  At five minutes to nine—school Assembly was at a quarter-past—his head assistant came for instructions, dreading that last-minute change of plan which is the bug-bear of conscientious teachers and the perquisite and habit of their superiors.

  No plans were changed but there were plenty of instructions. As these had the force of Army orders the head assistant merely nodded gloomily and made notes in the small book which he kept for recording the headmaster’s more flighty and fantastic commandments.

  “Last-minute inspection of lavatories for inscriptions on the doors. Some of the Governors have a nose for that sort of thing. Prurience, of course,” said the headmaster. “Last word before they go home to the boys in the choir and have a look at the younger Small. He needed a hair-cut yesterday. See that Mr. Cooper has tidied out his stock-cupboard. He keeps it in a filthy state. Have a look at the gardening-shed. Phipps doesn’t always insist that the boys clean the tools before they are put away. Tell Collier to hide that broken balancing form. I’ll report it later, but I don’t want some poke-nose saying that we don’t take care of the apparatus in the gymnasium. The piano-tuner is coming at eleven and the plants at eleven-thirty, so we’d better see that the piano is moved well away from the front of the stage so that the parks people can produce their effect without being bothered with the instrument’s getting in their way.”

  “Redmond wants the piano just where it is now, sir, for tonight,” interposed Mr. Gadd.

  “Yes, all right. Chalk round it. Chalk round it before you move it, then label the space Piano. Oh, and that reminds me. You might let a couple of Sixth-Form boys search underneath the stage—you know how to take out that front piece in the centre, I suppose?—to see whether the workmen have left any wood-shavings or other inflammable matter there. They are abominably careless about such things and there is always the risk of fire.”