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

by Gladys Mitchell

  “Not much company tonight,” she remarked to the landlord.

  “Oh, they come in later, round about half-past eight,” he answered easily. “We’re generally pretty quiet about this time. There’s more in the public, but there’s only a couple of chaps playing dominoes in the private, and old Mrs. Clapham sitting over a pint of stout, as usual. No, we’re never busy at this time of night.”

  Laura finished her beer and lit a cigarette, but it was soon evident that the four men were not going on with their conversation while she was there. She ordered another beer but there was nothing to be heard except the slapping down of the cards, the grunts as a game came to an end, and a muttered totting-up of the score.

  She left the bar as soon as she could, strode away so that the sound of her footfalls were audible, and then sneaked back to listen at the window. She heard the gipsy say:

  “Yes, she was here earlier today. Is she all right?”

  “No, she isn’t,” came in the surly tones of Grinsted. “She’s a blasted policeman’s—! You didn’t let her see the horses, did you?”

  “No, no,” replied the gipsy soothingly.

  “Oh!” thought Laura. “Didn’t you?”

  “Because,” said Grinsted, “she’d be able to recognise them, and that wouldn’t do. Sure she didn’t see them?”

  “Of course. Now, listen—”

  His voice became so low that, strain her ears as she would, Laura could not catch his next remarks. Suddenly there came a shout from Turnbull.

  “No, no! I’m damned if I do! I’m not going in any deeper! I’m getting out!”

  There was the sound of chairs being overturned. Laura moved away from the window just as Turnbull appeared in the lighted doorway and tore off into the darkness. Voices were again raised from inside the inn. Laura heard, before she ran after Turnbull, who was obviously terrified:

  “He’ll blow the gaff, boys! We’ll have to take his number. I told you he was a bastard!” This was said by Jed Nottingham. She did not catch Grinsted’s reply.

  It was easy enough to follow Turnbull, for his shoes rang out on the metalled road like iron. There was frost in the air. Laura snuffed up the night scents as she ran. One of them, at least, was unmistakable. Horses had passed that way, and very recently. She saw, in time, by the light of one of the infrequent lamps which showed the way to the harbour, a heap of fresh droppings, and leapt over it. In front of her Turnbull slackened. There was the sound of voices in front—a party on their way to the pub. Laura ran lightly on and caught him up.

  “I’ve got a pillion seat on my bike,” she said. “Back at the church. Come on.” She took him by the sleeve, but Turnbull shook her off and suddenly darted down a side-path into the darkness. There were people everywhere now, for Old Seahampton possessed the Yachtsmen’s Club and a seaman’s hostel, in addition to the Blue Finn.

  “Might as well be Brighton front on an August Saturday, if only they’d light it better,” thought Laura in disgust. “I can’t shout after the idiot with all these people about. He seems scared to death. I wonder whether it’s Grinsted he’s afraid of? Nasty customer, certainly.”

  She turned aside to follow Turnbull and heard the sound of a small lasher before she had gone a hundred yards. She remembered that the path led over a plank bridge and up to a small private house.

  “Mr. Turnbull!” she called at last. “Mr. Turnbull, are you there?”

  She received no answer. She waited and listened, but there was nothing to be heard except the sound of the lasher as it carried the brook to the sea.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE MUSIC GOES ROUND AND ROUND

  Who hunts doth oft in danger ride;

  Who hawks, lures oft both far and wide.

  WILLIAM BASSE

  There was nothing more that Laura could do about Turnbull. She could scarcely gate-crash a private house in search of him. He must have found refuge with friends. Looking at the luminous dial of her watch, she decided that it was time to get back to the Stone House, where her employer, although not, thank goodness, thought Laura, the worrying sort, by this hour (far past dinner) might be wondering what had happened to keep so keen and interested an appetite from the table.

  She went back to the churchyard wall, retrieved her motor-scooter, and started it up. As she approached the Blue Finn again by a bumpy path across the churchyard green which led down to the sea-wall and round to the jetty, she observed the headlights of what appeared to be a large van. Laura rode towards the jetty, parked the motor-scooter near it, and went back on foot to investigate. The van was a horse-box. What was more, it had an occupant—only one, Laura thought. There was a whicker and the sound of a hoof pawing the stout wooden floor. The van had no driver, and the door of the stable yard was shut.

  Laura returned to the jetty, confident that from there she would both see and hear if the van drove off. In it, she felt certain, there was one of the horses from the Elkstonehunt stables. Gone was all thought of returning immediately to the Stone House. Her business, as she saw it, was to find out where the van was going.

  She stood there for twenty minutes or so, and began to feel cold, but at the end of this time the van put on its headlights and drove off.

  “Attababy!” muttered Laura, and jerked the motor-scooter into action. The van lurched a little on the rough road, and to her astonishment, did not take the obvious way to New Seahampton but turned down a narrow, stony track on to the very road round the harbour which Laura had followed that same afternoon. She could not understand the manoeuvre. The tide, although by this time on the ebb, was still well over the path. True, this meant less than eight inches of water, but it seemed absurd to drive through this to reach Southampton road when it could be gained so much more easily by cutting through the well-lighted, well-made roads of New Seahampton. She concluded that the essential thing was not ease and security but secrecy. Her blood raced. She forgot how hungry and cold she was. She let the van turn the corner, then crunched her machine down after it.

  She dared not get up too close to the van; on the other hand, she dared not let it get too far away lest it should take some turning unfamiliar to her and she should lose sight of it altogether.

  Her one comfort was that, with the horse inside it, the van would be unlikely to travel so fast that she could not match its pace. Through mud and brackish sea-water it lurched and slithered, and Laura bucketed and skidded after it. By the time it turned off up the lane which the gipsy had taken, she was decidedly wet and chilled to the bone, but it did not occur to her to wonder whether the game was worth the candle.

  Once they had turned on to the main Southampton road, the situation improved. The van speeded up a little. There was a certain amount of traffic and Laura contrived to sandwich a small, troubled car of rare vintage between herself and her quarry. The van was going just fast enough to keep the ancient car from getting past it, and Laura, satisfied that the driving mirror of the van could no longer pick her out with any certainty, chugged contentedly in the rear.

  They entered Southampton by Belvedere Road, and at Rochester Street the vintage car turned off. Past the yacht-building station and Britannia Wharf went the van, down Marine Parade past the gasworks, past Phoenix Wharf, Gasworks Wharf, Burnley Wharf, and Victoria Wharf. After Union Wharf and American Wharf it slowed and then decided to take to Elm Street and Elm Road. After that it turned into a cul-de-sac and drew up.

  Laura was unprepared for the cul-de-sac. As she turned into it, the driver, Jed Nottingham, jumped down. In a second she had wrenched her little steed round and was back in Elm Road.

  “Well, they won’t go anywhere else tonight, I imagine,” she thought, as she pulled up to see whether Jed would follow. She waited a full five minutes, but nobody came by except a docks policeman, who sauntered up and inquired:

  “In trouble, Miss?”

  “No, thanks,” said Laura. “Just been trailing a horse-box.”

  The policeman looked at her gravely.

 
; “I should get on home if I were you, Miss. Pity to spoil a lovely evening.” He stared ruminatively at the motor-scooter. “You can’t come to much harm on that.”

  “I’m really not drunk!” said Laura. The policeman shook his head.

  “There’s no need for me and you to quarrel, Miss,” he said. “If I thought you were, I wouldn’t have any option. Now just you push off on the fairy-cycle and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll take care of the horse-box.”

  “Well, it’s just round the corner, in that cul-de-sac,” said Laura. “Horse-thieves, I think. Or aren’t you interested?”

  No longer certain of her locus standi as far as the law was concerned, she urged the motor-scooter into action. The last she saw of the policeman was his tall figure under an arc-lamp as he tramped stolidly onwards on his beat. She stopped at a public box and telephoned Dame Beatrice. This was the call that came through at ten o’clock. Having made it, she turned the motor-scooter round and returned to Elm Road, keeping a wary eye open for the policeman. There was no sign of him. A drunk went by, singing, but he was on the other side of the road. Laura parked her vehicle once more and tiptoed to the end of the cul-de-sac. The horse-box was still there, the back of it was open and so were the double doors which led into what appeared to be a warehouse.

  Laura had never been afraid to take risks and her curiosity was a spur. She crept along the narrow road to the open doors and peered in. There was Jed with his back to her. He was at the far end of the warehouse and was filling a bucket from a tap in the wall. Between him and Laura stood the horse, tethered on a long rein to a staple fixed to a side wall. She imagined that he might be the strange-looking chestnut-headed horse from the inn, but this was no longer a blue roan with a chestnut-coloured head and neck. He was a blue roan all over. The gipsy had finished his job.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” thought Laura, beating a strategic retreat. This time she did make for home, told her tale, ate an enormous supper in front of the dining-room fire, and next morning went over to the Elkstonehunt stables to find Cissie dosing the pony Shan.

  “Oh, he’s getting on all right,” she said in response to Laura’s inquiry, “but I’m feeling pipped this morning. Jed Nottingham came over yesterday and told me he could sell some of my horses.”

  “Oh, I see. Then my message—”

  “Yes,” said Cissie off-handedly. “Jolly good of you to bother, but it was quite O.K. Anyway, he’s brought back two this morning, so I’m not feeling very cheerful.”

  “Which two?”

  “If it interests you, Criollo and Appaloosa. He’s got rid of Tennessee but even that’s only on spec.”

  Laura’s face cleared.

  “Oh!” she said, on a note of great satisfaction; and went home to report to Dame Beatrice. “Though I can’t quite see what the game is,” she concluded. “Anyway, I’ve had all my trouble for nothing. If Cissie let Jed Nottingham and the gipsy have those horses to sell, there’s nothing one can do about it. They’re her property. John Mapsted seems to have left the stables and all their contents to her.”

  “Don’t be discouraged,” said Dame Beatrice. “I am not certain that I would have been prepared to go bail for all your actions of last night, but there is one particularly important fact which you have stumbled on quite by accident.”

  “You mean about the real colour of Tennessee?”

  “There is another, and a more important, discovery.”

  “Yes? You mean finding that man Turnbull mixed up with that mob? And he must be well and truly mixed up with them, you know, otherwise Jed Nottingham wouldn’t have remarked, on his departure, ‘I told you he was a bastard,’ would he? Oh, yes. I say, it does begin to hang together, doesn’t it? There was the hay that was found among the wood-shavings. All the same, I can’t connect this Turnbull with any really dirty work. He isn’t the type.”

  “Then he may be in a position of some danger, as he himself probably realised when he fled from the Blue Finn. I shall go over to the school tomorrow afternoon and find out whether he reported for duty today. You left him, you say, to the best of your knowledge, in Old Seahampton?”

  “Yes. I’ll come with you and show you the little bridge over the lasher.”

  “I shall not need to know where it is. I shall not go there. Oh, and another thing. Are you afraid of Farmer Grinsted?”

  Laura looked at her questioningly.

  “I have reason to believe that his stallion will be at home tomorrow. Go over and have a look at it. He is not likely to think that you were eavesdropping at the Blue Finn.”

  “Will that really help?”

  “It will help materially. If the stallion is there, a theory of mine will be strengthened.”

  “All right, then. I’ll go. Does it help or hinder the theory if Grinsted isn’t there either?”

  Dame Beatrice gave her an approving and affectionate poke in the ribs.

  “I perceive that we share the theory, dear child,” she observed.

  “I jolly well perceive we don’t!” said Laura, removing herself out of range. “I haven’t a clue to what you’re talking about. Oh!”

  “Ah!”

  “Substitution!”

  “Exactly.”

  “But—I mean, it could only be small-time stuff. You couldn’t pull it off at Ascot or Goodwood.”

  “Probably not at Aintree, Epsom, or Hurst Park, either. But it has been known to occur at smaller meetings, to the great advantage of the persons concerned in the substitutions. When it comes to gambling, I suppose many a mickle makes a muckle.”

  Laura gently corrected her accent, and after lunch on the following day they parted. Laura went to Cissie for a mount and rode over to Grinsted’s farm on Mustang, who seemed pleased to see her again, and as she rode, she turned over in her mind the last visit she had made to the disagreeable farmer. This time the introductory subject of conversation, she decided, might be the evening encounter at the Blue Finn, and from that she would lead on to the matter of Grinsted’s stallion.

  Grinsted was in the kitchen quarrelling with the woman who, for courtesy’s sake, was known to and by the village as Mrs. Grinsted. It was she who first perceived Laura.

  “Hold your noise, will you?” she said to her unshaven paramour. “Here’s company we have with us, then.”

  “Good morning, Mrs. Grinsted,” said Laura. “It was really your husband I came to see.”

  “Still after a look at Iceland Blue?” asked Grinsted, with a sour grin. “You’re welcome, Mrs. Gavin, I’m sure. Come with me. A pretty creature he is, and very well I’m doing with him. Very well indeed.”

  In spite of what Dame Beatrice had said, Laura had not expected such good fortune. She went across the yard with Grinsted, past his pig-sties and his covered well, past his blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes, through his open-ended cart-shed, and down a narrow path to the stable. The top half of the door was open. At the sound of voices the occupant of the stable came to the opening and put his head over. He cocked an inquiring eye at Laura and his ears twitched. Grinsted unfastened the lower part of the door. Laura’s heart thumped with excitement. The horse was a blue roan.

  “Come you out, then, my dear old man,” said Grinsted, “and show yourself to the lady.”

  The horse snorted and ambled forward. Laura stood still. He nuzzled her shoulder.

  “Hallo, Iceland Blue,” she said, putting out a hand to caress him. The creature blew gently into her hair.

  “Well,” said Grinsted, “and what do you think of him, Mrs. Gavin?”

  Laura was so puzzled and so excited that she almost failed to reply, but she realised in time that an answer was expected and that Grinsted was staring at her.

  “He’s a love!” she said.

  “There, now, didn’t I tell you?” demanded Grinsted, highly delighted. “Didn’t I tell you, Mrs. Gavin?” he patted the horse. “Much money have I made from him in my time. Of course, he’s going back a little now, as you can see, but a good old man h
e is, and a better young one he was, and always as you see him now, kind and gentle and like a lamb he is.”

  On their way back to the farmyard gate Laura said:

  “What was that red-haired young man doing in company with Jed Nottingham? He didn’t look like one of Jed’s friends.”

  “Ah, him,” said Grinsted, spitting into the middle of a rosebush. “Come to think of it, Mrs. Gavin, I can’t say I rightly remember. Jed didn’t bring him, so far as I know. I think he just joined us in a friendly way, as you or I might do were we on our own in a pub and encountered pleasant strangers.”

  “So, whatever kicked John Mapsted to death, it wasn’t Iceland Blue,” said Laura to Dame Beatrice, when they met. “How did you get on?”

  Dame Beatrice had visited the school and then had repaired to the Blue Finn at six for refreshment and conversation.

  “An interesting and informative man, the landlord there,” she observed. “We had a very pleasant chat.”

  “Did you talk about horses?”

  “No. We talked about the Budget, motor-car racing, equal pay for teachers of both sexes, his son in Australia, the purchasing power of the pound in 1929, and the rules of Canasta.”

  “Good heavens!”

  “Equal pay led us by obvious stages to the subject of mixed schools. From there we switched to grammar schools. Then we segregated the sexes and spoke of the Seahampton Grammar School for Boys.”

  “Aha! And so to friend Turnbull?”

  “And so, as you say, to friend Turnbull. I allowed the landlord to mention his name first by referring to the fact that no opprobrium now attaches to a schoolmaster who is seen to enter a public house. Most of the masters, I was then informed, frequent a modern hostelry in New Seahampton. Mr. Turnbull, however, is a keen yachtsman who has built his own boat—”

  “Woodwork and metalwork master,” interposed Laura.

  “Yes, and, like most of the yachting fraternity, when he wants a drink he usually goes to the Yacht Club for it. Lately, however, he has been seen at the Blue Finn in company with Grinsted and Mr. Nottingham.”