The Stabbing in the Stables

by Simon Brett

  Amongst the many medical complaints suffered by horses is infestation by botflies, a condition sometimes known as the “bots”—or even “botts.” A bot knife is used to scrape the eggs of the parasite out of a horse’s hair. In the illustration shown on the television, viewers saw a black-handled knife with a curved serrated end, which looked more suited for slicing grapefruit than committing murder.

  But clearly it was an object that could be found around any stable yard, which suggested to Carole and Jude that the stabbing of Walter Fleet was a spur-of-the-moment rather than a premeditated action. The unsuitability of the bot knife as a means of killing someone served only to support that theory.

  From Sonia Dalrymple Jude found out more about botflies and their treatment, data which she gleefully passed on to Carole. The adult botfly looks not unlike a bee, and favours laying its small yellowish eggs in the thick hair on a horse’s chest or behind its front legs. The presence of the eggs irritates the host, who tries to remove them by biting and licking the infested area, but these actions have the opposite effect of encouraging growth inside the eggs. They also give an opportunity for the tiny maggots to get transferred into the horse’s mouth and thence into its digestive tract. Here the maggots feed away, taking essential nutrients from the host and sometimes even creating a total blockage that can cause the animal to starve. When they are full grown, the maggots are excreted in the horse’s faeces, and in the comfort of the warm dung hatch out into adult botflies. And so the cycle continues.

  Carole found all this was rather more information than she required.

  But she was very keen on the idea of Jude staying in touch with Sonia Dalrymple. The owner of Chieftain was their one legitimate link to Long Bamber Stables and, on the assumption that the police didn’t instantly solve the case and make an arrest, she could be of great value to the two inquisitive women.

  The stables did constitute a rather unusual crime scene. In most cases, after a murder the police seal off the relevant area, move all the people out and strictly control who is allowed back in. Horses present a different problem. There is a limit to the time they can be kept locked up in their stalls, but nothing is likelier to destroy a crime scene than having a large number of horses trampling over it. As a result, the police had to work fast on their forensic investigations.

  Then, before the normal business of the stables could continue, owners were encouraged, if possible, to find alternative short-term accommodation for their horses. In Sonia Dalrymple’s case, this was not a problem. Her substantial home, Unwins, had its own stabling, which had accommodated Chieftain and the children’s pony Conker for some years. But the departure of Sonia’s twin daughters to boarding school and the increasing amount of travel undertaken by her and her husband Nicky had led to putting the horses into Long Bamber Stables. Returning them to their home stabling until the police investigations were complete was the obvious solution. And also meant that Jude’s visit of potential healing to Chieftain could be easily rescheduled.

  She fixed to go to the Dalrymples’ house at three-thirty on the Friday afternoon and that morning invited Carole to Woodside Cottage for a cup of coffee.

  “Can I give you a lift to Sonia’s?”

  “Bless you, but it’s no distance. I can walk. I need the exercise.”

  Carole’s tightening mouth showed her disappointment. She didn’t want to be excluded from any part of the potential investigation. Jude could feel her unease, and also sensed that there was something else troubling her neighbour. There was a secret Carole wanted to confide. Knowing better than to prompt, Jude waited for the revelation to be made naturally.

  “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “It concerns Walter Fleet’s murder.”

  “Mm?”

  “Well…”

  Jude looked evenly at her friend, a smile playing round the edges of her lips.

  “You know, after you’d found the body…”

  Jude nodded.

  “…you went off to the Fleets’ house…”

  Another nod.

  “…and I stayed by the body…”

  “Yes. Because, as you had pointed out to me, it would have been very irresponsible for either of us to do any investigation of the crime scene.”

  “Mm.” There was a long, awkward silence. “Well, I’m afraid I did.”

  “Did what?”

  “A little investigation of the crime scene.”

  “Oh, Carole, brilliant!”

  “I know I shouldn’t have done but—”

  “Never mind that. What did you find out? Did you go into the tack room or whatever it was?”

  Carole nodded, her shame now giving way to excitement. “Yes. And I reckon it was a tack room. Full of bridles and halters and bits of leather and rope and what-have-you. But there was a second level too. Not quite a second floor, but one half of the space was boarded over, and there was a wooden ladder leading up to it.”

  “Did you go up the ladder, Carole?”

  This time the nod was defiantly proud. “There was a little lamp switched on. A sleeping bag, a few other oddments. It looked as though someone had been camping out up there.”

  “Any sign that whoever-it-was had been there recently?”

  “The sleeping bag was half unzipped and crumpled. Looked as if someone had just leapt out of it.”

  “I suppose you didn’t feel as to whether it was still warm?”

  “As a matter of fact I did, Jude. Hard to tell, though. The night was cold, any warmth would have dissipated pretty quickly.”

  “Hm…I wonder who’d been up there.”

  “Well, unlikely to have been Walter Fleet, given the fact that his house was right next door.”

  “Unless he was up there on guard.”

  “How do you mean, Jude?”

  “Well, going back to the Horse Ripper theory…”

  “Oh, I see what you mean. The Fleets were worried about someone breaking into the stables at night, so Walter would be up there, keeping watch for intruders?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “Yes. But it was a quarter past six in the evening when you found his body. He wouldn’t have been in his sleeping bag at that time of night.”

  “True. So the more likely scenario is that someone else was upstairs in the tack room…Walter surprised them…an argument and a fight ensued…and he got killed…by this…person…whoever it was.”

  “Mm.”

  “Hell having no information, isn’t it, Carole?”

  “Yes. If only we had one fact…like the time the murder took place.”

  “Well, I think it was only moments before I found the body.”

  “Why, because the blood was still flowing?”

  “I don’t think it was still flowing, but it certainly hadn’t started to congeal. And blood would dry pretty quickly when the weather’s as cold as that. Also, there had been a sudden commotion from the horses. Something had disturbed them only moments before I went into the stables. In fact, it was the noise that made me go into the stables. I thought Sonia must be inside.”

  “So maybe the murderer—”

  “And I’ve just remembered another thing.” Jude’s brown eyes focused intently as she tried to recapture the scene. “Just as I entered the stables, I heard a clattering, like a gate shutting. I think, if I’d gone in a few seconds earlier, I would actually have seen the murderer.”

  5

  WHEN JUDE HAD described Sonia Dalrymple as “quite well heeled,” she had been guilty of understatement. Her client was extremely well heeled. Unwins, where the Dalrymples lived, was what West Sussex estate agents would describe as “an equestrian estate,” off the Fedborough Road roughly a half mile nearer Fethering than Long Bamber Stables were. But Jude didn’t have to go on the main roads for her visit; “the pretty way,” along the tow path of the River Fether, would get her there in a brisk twenty minutes.

  Her refusal of Carole’
s offer of a lift had been only partly for health reasons. Jude’s deep understanding of the human body left her in no doubt as to the importance of exercise. She ate sensibly and walked whenever she had the opportunity. This regime didn’t seem to have any effect on her bulk, which had been quietly expanding since her early forties, but it made her feel good in herself.

  Apart from that, though, Jude didn’t really want Carole with her for this visit. Sonia Dalrymple, for all her confident exterior, was a highly sensitive, even shy woman. And, though Carole would probably have intended just to drop Jude at the gates, there was a danger she might expect to be asked to wait—or decide, out of her natural curiosity, that she wanted to wait. Carole’s presence on the premises would undoubtedly have put Sonia on her guard, and destroyed the confidential mood in which Jude hoped to find her.

  The February air was sharp on Jude’s cheeks. The tidal Fether, swollen by recent rains, churned in full spate, ominously close to the tow path. On Jude’s horizon the South Downs undulated away, green mounds giving way to ever mistier grey. A startled pheasant flew up from the grass by her side, creaking like an old football rattle. The landscape’s harsh beauty contributed to a sense within Jude of well-being—and also of excitement.

  Sonia Dalrymple’s husband Nicky worked for an international bank. His actual role there was never defined; all Fethering gossip knew was that, whatever he did, he was paid an enormous amount of money for doing it. Unwins, the house that Jude approached, was one of the family’s three residences; there was also a mansion flat overlooking the Thames in London, and a villa in Barbados.

  Their Fethering place had been built in the early nineteenth century as a farmhouse. Over the years, as with so many farms in the area, the land had been sold off for development, but some ten acres, now converted to gardens and paddocks, had been retained. The Dalrymples had renovated and designer-decorated the house so completely as to erase any vestiges of its humble agricultural origins. The same transformation had been wrought on the outbuildings. A barn had been converted into luxury guest flats, and the old cowshed into a state-of-the-art stable yard.

  Sonia’s Range Rover was parked on the gravel outside the front door. Open garages revealed a couple of random Mercedes. And Sonia herself, as ever, maintained the image of casual wealth. Above tight black trousers and black buckled shoes, she wore an off-white Aran sweater, which on her contrived to look like a designer garment.

  She offered the option of coffee before they went to see Chieftain, and Jude accepted. The more opportunity they had to talk, the better.

  “How’re you feeling?” asked Jude, when she was settled at the breakfast bar of a kitchen that looked as if it had stepped straight out of a lifestyle magazine. The question was posed casually, but both women understood its importance.

  Sonia Dalrymple, however, was not about to go into “client” mode. Jude was there to see to the horse, not to her own troubles. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Is Nicky around at the moment?”

  “He’s in Frankfurt on business. Left early this morning.”

  “And the girls are well? Presumably they’ve heard about what happened at the stables?”

  “Yes, I rang the school that night. Rather they heard it from me than on the television news.”

  Jude looked around the kitchen. There was evidence of the twins everywhere: childish drawings of horses laminated and preserved from their first school days, photographs of them in riding hats, cartoon character fridge magnets, proud clusters of fading rosettes. Maybe all that was wrong with Sonia Dalrymple was empty-nest syndrome. Since their birth, she’d devoted all her time and attention to the girls’ needs. Suddenly they were away at boarding school and her role had been taken away from her. Add to that a frequently absent husband and the awareness the forties bring of beauty’s finite nature, and it was no wonder that, in spite of all her material comforts, Sonia should feel out of sorts. But Jude suspected there might be some other, more deep-rooted explanation.

  This, however, was not the time for psychological probing. Keep the conversation light. “You must be relieved to have got your horses out of Long Bamber.”

  “Yes. They’re both much more relaxed now they’re here. Horses are very sensitive, you know. They could tell there was something wrong, and they didn’t like the police clumping round the place.”

  “Any idea how long it’s going to be closed?”

  “I asked Lucinda. The sooner they reopen the better, so far as she’s concerned.”

  “But presumably she needs some time to adjust to her husband’s death.”

  “I think getting back to work is going to be her best therapy. She’s losing money, apart from anything else. She can’t charge owners if their horses aren’t there. And then she can’t do any riding lessons or anything like that.”

  “No. When you talked about Lucinda earlier…”

  “Hm?”

  “You know, before Walter’s death, you implied that theirs wasn’t the happiest of marriages.”

  Sonia looked flustered and busied herself with the coffee machine. “Oh, did I? I can’t remember.”

  “I remember. You did.”

  “Well, it doesn’t do to speak ill of the dead.”

  “No, but everyone’s going to. I’m afraid, when a murder happens, the people involved become public property.”

  “I agree. But that’s not something I would wish to encourage.” Sonia sounded almost prissily righteous. Jude wondered whether such righteousness was a convenient excuse to keep away from the subject. When they’d last spoken about the Fleets, Sonia had shown no such inhibition. “I think,” she continued piously, “that gossiping about her and Walter can only make Lucinda’s situation worse.”

  “Maybe. Though I wonder how bad her situation actually is.”

  “Jude, what on earth do you mean? Her husband’s just been murdered. Isn’t that enough to make any wife feel pretty desolated?”

  “She just didn’t seem to feel desolated when she first heard the news. Almost relieved, I thought.”

  “She was in shock. She didn’t know what she was saying.”

  “She seemed much more worried about the idea of one of the horses having been injured.”

  “Well, that is horrible. There have been some very nasty incidents recently. This ghastly Horse Ripper. The thought of someone doing that to Chieftain or Conker…” Sonia Dalrymple’s slender frame shuddered. “It just doesn’t bear thinking of.”

  “Why do people attack horses?” asked Jude gently. The question had been exercising her mind recently, and she had been doing some research into the matter.

  “God knows. They must be sick. And, actually thinking about it, Chieftain would probably not be in any danger. But Conker…”

  “Sorry? What do you mean?”

  “Conker’s a mare. These people, they always seems to go for mares. Particularly pregnant mares. They slash them round”—she blenched—“round the genital area. It’s so cruel. A horse’d never hurt anyone—well, only in exceptional circumstances.” Another shudder. “No, it’s horrible.”

  Sonia handed across a cup of coffee with a finality that suggested the cue for a change of subject. But Jude was not to be so easily deflected. “So Lucinda and Walter weren’t love’s young dream, were they?”

  “I’m not saying that. Obviously there were tensions. There are tensions in every marriage…” The wistfulness with which this was said might have led to some revelation about the Dalrymples’ own marriage, but Sonia visibly restrained herself. Maybe giving away the Fleets’ secrets was preferable to giving away their own.

  “Look, Jude, Lucinda reckoned life had dealt her a pretty rotten hand, and in many ways you could see her point. Just before they got married, she and Walter were the golden couple. They were both eventers. He was reckoned to be a shoo-in for the British team at the next Olympics, and she wasn’t far behind his standard. They were both very good-looking and became media darlings, photographs in the ta
bloids, the lot. Walter was set fair to clean up—sponsorship, media appearances, the after-dinner circuit. It all looked very promising.

  “And then, just before they were due to have this big society wedding, he had this really bad fall at Burghley. It was the worst kind—his horse reared and fell on him. Fractured ribs, pelvis, both legs, God knows what else. He was lucky to survive. Took more than a year for the surgeons to put him back together. At the time there was quite a lot of publicity. Lots of cameras at their wedding when it did finally happen. Oh, and a charity fund was set up for him, whip-rounds in equestrian circles. He even appeared in a wheelchair on the BBC’s Sports Review of the Year, saying what a good recovery he was making and how positive he felt about the future, but…people forget. The money raised didn’t last for long. His earning potential was massively diminished…

  “Anyway, rumour had it that Lucinda didn’t take well to this change in their circumstances. You can’t blame her. It would take a very exceptional woman to handle that situation without complaint and…”

  Sonia paused, wondering whether she had gone too far, so Jude tentatively prompted, “And Lucinda Fleet isn’t a very exceptional woman?”

  “She…well, I don’t think the role of carer came naturally to her. She’s quite selfish and certainly used to be very ambitious. Walter’s long hospitalisation put a damper on her own eventing career, and by the time he was fit again, they couldn’t afford to continue. All the money they’d got they put into buying Long Bamber Stables. From being a jet-set golden couple, they ended up mucking out, dealing with stroppy owners and giving their spoilt little brats riding lessons. I got the impression Lucinda blamed Walter for that.”

  “How did you get that impression?”

  “Not very difficult. She kept blaming him in public. Not just for that, but for everything else, as far as I can tell. I don’t really know why I felt coy about telling you all this. You’d hear it from anyone else who had met them. The Fleets are one of those couples who are constantly sniping at each other, very publicly failing to get on. Being with them socially was like sitting next to someone with an open wound.”