by Simon Brett
“And would the price be charged in Jameson’s?”
He chuckled. “No, I think for information of this kind I’d be looking for payment of a more foldable nature.”
“Ah. Well, I don’t believe in paying money for information.”
“And why would you want the information, anyway? From what I’ve seen of you, you’re not one of the bitchy Fedborough gossips. Why do you care what’s going on inside a couple’s marriage?”
“I don’t care at all.” She had to say it, though of course she was anxious to know everything she could about anyone involved with Long Bamber Stables. “But do you think there are people who’d pay for the information you have?”
“I don’t see why not. There are things I’ve seen which people might want to keep quiet…things they might not want an irresponsible drunken Paddy to spill out…in his cups.”
As when he’d referred to himself the previous day as a “stage Irishman,” there was a knowingness about Donal’s words. He was aware of the image that was expected of him, and was quite prepared to live up to it. But again Jude got the feeling that he was a lot more intelligent than he allowed himself to appear.
“So who would you hope to get the money from?”
He grinned, still playing with her. “If it’s something discreditable about a marriage, I’d have thought the people most likely to pay for it being hushed up would be the people involved.”
“Yes, and in this case they could certainly afford it.”
“My thinking exactly, Jude.” A complacent smile cracked his wizened face, and he looked back down at Chieftain’s leg. While they had been talking, he had kept his hands circling the invisible wrapping around the knee. Now he pointed his hands, swollen knuckles tight against each other, at the joint, and slowly, as if directing a hose, moved them up to the horse’s shoulder. After a few moments of intense concentration, he took his hands away, and straightened up, wincing from the stiffness in his back.
“He’ll be all right now.”
“You mean he’s cured?”
“I mean he’s ready now for nature to cure him. It’ll take a couple of weeks. The muscle was torn. But it’s on the mend now.” He reached up to take hold of Chieftain’s head collar and lead him back to his stable. As he did so, Lucinda emerged from the tack room. “Got him sorted, have you, Donal?”
“Yes. Can’t be ridden for a couple of weeks, then he should be fine…until his owner does the same thing again.”
Lucinda looked rueful.
“Aren’t you going to say anything to Mr. High-and-mighty Dalrymple then?” asked Donal.
“I can’t risk them taking the horses away. I need the money.”
Just what she’d said about Victor and Yolanta Brewis. Her financial situation must be pretty serious for someone as devoted to horses as Lucinda to risk their being hurt by bullying owners. Jude wondered whether money pressures at Long Bamber Stables had anything to do with Walter Fleet’s death.
Donal didn’t seem surprised by her reaction, and led Chieftain on into his stable. Conker, still tethered in the yard, whinnied, perhaps feeling it was about time he too was reinstalled. But the sound of broom on cement flooring indicated that Imogen hadn’t finished mucking out.
Donal locked the bottom half of the door with practised ease, though he moved stiffly, his body still adjusting from the bent pose he had held so long. Lucinda stood waiting when he turned back from the stable. “What?” he asked.
“I just wondered—I suppose as the widow of the victim I have a right to wonder—whether the police gave you any indication of what they thought might have happened to Walter.”
Ah, thought Jude, so Lucinda and Donal hadn’t had an earlier conversation about the murder.
He grinned, without much humour. “While they were questioning me, they gave the pretty firm impression they thought I’d topped him. Perhaps they still do. But they hadn’t got a shred of evidence, so they had to let me go.”
“Didn’t you have an alibi for the time of the murder?” Jude’s words were out before she realised how unnaturally nosey they sounded.
Donal smiled, as if realising she’d jumped the gun. “Whether I had an alibi or not, I didn’t mention it to the police. I wasn’t going to make their work too easy. I knew they couldn’t pin anything on me, so I let them sweat.”
“I thought the police were meant to make their suspects sweat,” said Lucinda, “not the other way round.”
“That is indeed the traditional way they like to do things. But it’s not the first time I’ve been questioned by the bastards—though probably the first time I’ve been questioned about something I didn’t do. You get to know the form after a while. So I wasn’t going to let them have an easy ride.”
“But they didn’t give any indication of where their investigations were taking them?”
“No. Their investigations were taking them as far as me, and that was it. Whether they’re now making some other poor sod’s life a misery, I don’t know.”
“There’s been nothing on the news about anyone else being questioned,” said Jude.
“Oh. And do you not have a personal hotline to the police to find out how their investigations are proceeding?”
He was sending her up. She grinned ruefully. “Sadly, no. I wish I had.”
“You’re lying. I’ll swear the police spend all their time coming round to consult you, like you were some kind of New Age Miss Marple.” But whatever game Donal was playing with Jude, he suddenly got bored with it, and turned back to Lucinda. “Afraid I can’t tell you anything about who else the police are talking to. You see, the police, having grabbed the obvious Paddy with form who’s known to hang around stables and got nowhere with him, probably don’t have the imagination to find another suspect.”
“And what about you, Donal? Do you have your own theory about who killed my husband?”
The blue eyes, embedded in their folds of wrinkles, twinkled sardonically. “I could ask you the same question, Lucinda. Do you have your own theory on the subject?”
She shrugged. “I really can’t come up with much beyond the random intruder. A person or persons unknown. Walter wasn’t a particularly popular man, he was irritating, but surely not enough for anyone to have killed him.”
“Well, there’s no way it was suicide, so somebody did.”
“Yes.”
He let out a dry laugh. “But if you really want my opinion, for what it’s worth—and the opinion of a drunken Irishman, in the opinion of many people, isn’t worth very much—I’d say it was definitely a woman who killed Walter.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The nature of the attack. Men lose their tempers and lash out, but they don’t go on doing it. They stop after a while. Once they know the blows have hit home. Also a man would never have used a bot knife for the attack.”
“It was the only weapon available.”
“A man still wouldn’t have used it. Whoever attacked Walter was hysterical—and I don’t need to tell you that means we’re talking about a woman—from hystera, the Greek word for womb.”
Again Donal was letting his façade slip to reveal his true intelligence and education. As if aware of the lapse, he felt the need to follow it with something crass. “And only a bloody woman would be as incompetent as to kill anyone that way.”
Lucinda Fleet’s lips thinned. “Well, thank you, Donal, for your most helpful assessment. I don’t know why I bothered asking.”
“Because you’re like every one else round here—a nosey cow.”
“Look, if you’re going to insult me, I can—”
She was interrupted by the flustered arrival of Alec Potton. He came rushing through the gates of the yard, what remained of his hair sticking out at odd angles. He was once again wearing his corduroy suit, which seemed baggier than ever, and no topcoat.
“Good morning, Lucinda. And hello.” He knew he’d met Jude, but he couldn’t place exactly where or how. And he was too r
ushed to work it out. “Is Immy here?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
The girl came out of Conker’s stable and stood leaning on a broom. There was an expression almost of insolence on her face, challenging her adoring father to be angry with her.
“I had a call from the school. They wanted to know where you are.”
“I’m here. As you see.”
“Immy, you can’t bunk off lessons like that.”
“Why not?” She jutted her lower lip and her right hip in the perfect posture of adolescent rebellion. “They never teach us anything.”
“That’s not the point. You’re breaking the school rules. You’re breaking the law, come to that.”
“Am I?”
Alec Potton wasn’t sure enough of his legal ground to answer that. “Never mind. Come on, you must come straight back to school with me. And you’d better think of something pretty good to tell your headmistress.”
“Why?”
“Because I say so, Imogen!”
This sudden outburst was the anger of a weak man, but it was so little expected by his daughter that she immediately burst into tears. Her mouth fell open, revealing the full ugliness of the braces on her teeth. Totally disarmed, and unable to maintain his pose of fury, her father moved instinctively forward and put his arms round the girl’s shoulders.
“Come on, Immy, let’s pick up something to eat on the way back to school.” And, with an embarrassed wave of good bye to the two women, he led his daughter away from the stables.
Jude moved to the gate and saw that, as arranged earlier in the morning and punctual to the minute, Carole’s Renault had arrived in the car park. “Donal,” she said, “can I buy you a drink by way of thank you?”
“What are you thanking me for? Chieftain’s not your horse.”
“No. But I tried to heal him, and failed. So I owe you a thank-you for getting it right.”
He nodded. “That’s fair enough. There’s no pub very close to here, though.”
“No. My friend over there will drive us.”
“Ah. Where to?”
“Just down the road to Fethering.”
“All right.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “Yes, I haven’t been to Fethering for a while now. And it could be just the place that I need to settle back into.”
With which enigmatic comment, he started towards the Renault. Jude looked forward with some glee to the incongruous introduction to Carole that lay ahead.
She said good-bye to Lucinda, who was standing on exactly the spot in the stable yard where her husband had died. For the first time in their acquaintance, the sole owner of Long Bamber Stables looked slightly vulnerable, as if the enormity of what had happened had finally sunk in.
19
“MY FRIEND CAROLE. And Carole, this is Donal.”
Jude would treasure for always the expression on her friend’s face, seen through the open passenger door, as Carole grimaced a smile and said, “Very nice to see you, Donal.”
He didn’t think this greeting worthy of more acknowledgment than a curt nod. Donal had changed now he was parted from Chieftain; he was jumpier, on edge. The element of danger that Jude had noticed in the Cheshire Cheese had returned.
“You sit in the front,” she said, only for the mischievous pleasure of seeing Carole’s reaction. The thought of Donal’s filthy clothes touching the Renault’s pristine upholstery would be bad enough, but to have this creature in such immediate proximity to her, well, it would take Carole a long time to get over that.
Suppressing a grin, Jude got into the back of the car and said they were going to take Donal to Fethering.
“Erm…,” said Carole, for all the world like her ex-husband, “are you going to put on your seat belt?”
“No,” said Donal.
Unwilling to take issue with him, she started the engine, and drove out of the Long Bamber Stables car park. They drove along the Fethering Road in silence for a while.
“So tell me, Donal,” said Carole eventually, “where do you live?”
“Nowhere.”
“Ah.”
“According to the police, I am ‘of no fixed abode.’”
“Ah. Ah.” Carole was rather thrown for a genteel Fethering response to that. “It must be nice not to have the responsibility of a house.”
Donal didn’t think this worthy of comment. He was growing even more fidgety. From her seat in the back, Jude could see the tensing of his neck muscles and a slight gleam of sweat on his temple. She diagnosed that he was suffering from a hangover. He’d held himself together for healing the horse; now he was in desperate need of a drink.
“So,” Carole went on, still battling to maintain polite middle-class conversation, “are you Irish, Donal?”
“No, I’m bloody Serbo-Croat! What do you think?”
Though clearly offended, Carole didn’t rise to the rudeness. “And I’m sorry, Donal, I didn’t get your second name…?”
“No, you didn’t, because nobody’s bloody mentioned it.” But, after that put-down, to Jude’s surprise, he volunteered the name. “Geraghty. Donal Geraghty. Is that enough of the central-casting Irishman for you?”
Belatedly, Carole decided she had expended sufficient conversational effort on him. After a silence, Jude said, “Donal cured Sonia Dalrymple’s horse, where I failed. I’m going to buy him a drink to say thank-you. You will join us, won’t you?”
Carole was torn. The potential of actually getting some useful information about the case had to be weighed against the shame of being seen around Fethering in the company of this uncouth ragamuffin. Her detective instinct triumphed. “Yes, that’d be very nice, thank you. I’d love to join you for a drink.”
“Talking of drink,” said Donal edgily, “I’m dying for a drop. You wouldn’t happen to have some with you, would you?”
“Alcohol?”
“Yes.”
“Alcohol in my Renault?”
Jude was sorry she couldn’t at that moment see Carole’s face full on. But what she could glimpse in the driving mirror was satisfying enough. She swallowed down an incipient giggle.
It was rather terrifying to see how quickly the first large Jameson’s restored Donal Geraghty. One moment he was sweating, twitching and as jumpy as a kitten; a few sips later his body was still, and there was even a sardonic smile playing around the corners of his mouth, as he looked around the snug interior of the Crown and Anchor.
“Carole and I are going to have lunch here. Maybe you’d like to have something too?”
He laughed. “I don’t, as they say, ‘do lunch.’ I’m restricted to a liquid diet.”
“Is that on doctor’s orders?” asked Carole, misunderstanding.
“The only order the doctor’s ever given to me was to get the hell out of his surgery. His view was that he couldn’t help me, unless I was prepared to make certain changes in my lifestyle.”
“Which you weren’t,” said Jude.
“Take away the lifestyle, you take away the life. Take away the life, you take away the man.” He downed the remains of his glass, and looked at it rather wistfully.
Jude took the hint and went for a refill from the nose-pierced girl at the bar. Ted Crisp was either out in the kitchen or having a rare day off.
Left alone with Donal Geraghty, Carole’s upbringing forced her to forget the earlier snubs and continue to prosecute her conversational campaign. “I hope you don’t mind my mentioning your recent encounter with the police…”
“Why should that bother me?” asked Donal, mellowed by the first drink. “It’s no secret they grilled me. The entire country knows, and no doubt when some other crime occurs locally, the police’ll drag me in even quicker after this.”
“But you did know Walter Fleet, didn’t you?” Carole persisted.
“Oh yes, I knew him.”
“And, I believe, had a disagreement with him?”
“It wasn’t a disagreement—it was a fight I had with him.” He looked up to see Ju
de approaching with his refill, took it without a word and downed a long swallow. “And the fight happened in this very pub,” he added mischievously.
The two women exchanged horrified looks. Preoccupied by their opportunity to do a private grilling of the police’s first suspect, they had both forgotten about Ted Crisp having banned the man from the Crown and Anchor. Thank God the landlord didn’t appear to be about that day.
Donal Geraghty understood exactly what they were thinking. He had knowingly let them bring him into a pub where he was banned, and the fact that they had done so gave him great satisfaction. He giggled gleefully. “Smart ladies like you should be a bit more careful about the company you keep.”
Jude grinned and raised her glass of Chilean chardonnay to him. “I’ve known worse.” That won a chuckle, so she pursued her advantage. “Carole, Donal was telling me he thought the murderer of Walter Fleet was definitely a woman.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes,” Donal confirmed. “Using that knife—it’s a woman’s crime if ever I saw one.”
“So who would that make a suspect for the murder?” asked Carole.
He snickered. “Well, Lucinda and Walter’s wasn’t the epitome of an happy marriage.”
Again his choice of words betrayed a much better education than was promised by his exterior blarney.
“So you think she might have done away with him?”
“Usual rule of police investigation: if the victim has a live-in partner, haul them in for questioning—that is, of course, after they’ve hauled me in for questioning. But if they can’t pin it on me, then they go for the partner.”
Carole was thoughtful. “Lucinda certainly doesn’t seem to be making any pretence of being upset by having lost her husband.”
“Maybe she didn’t do it herself,” Jude speculated. “Paid someone else actually to do the deed, while she established an alibi for herself.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Donal in mock affront. “So that’d bring the accusation back to me, would it? ‘Donal Geraghty’s always helping Lucinda with odd jobs round the yard at Long Bamber. I’m sure he’d be only too glad to top the lady’s husband for her.’ Is that what you’re suggesting?”