The Stabbing in the Stables

by Simon Brett

  “Mm.” Jude’s brow wrinkled as she tried to get her thoughts in order. “Donal accepted the offer of a lift to Fethering because he said it ‘just the place that I need to settle back into,’ which might suggest he’s got a bolt-hole down here.”

  “Could be,” Ted agreed. “There are enough people with stables in the area.”

  “Yes, but he also implied that he knew something about Sonia and Nicky Dalrymple’s marriage, which he might have overheard if he was dossing down at their stables.”

  “I think that’s rather a big leap of the imagination,” said Carole in her prim wet-blanket mode.

  “Possibly not.” Jude’s brown eyes sparkled as the logic came together. “And now I come to think of it, Sonia did say something about not wanting Donal around her stables again, which implies that he had been there. And the Dalrymples travel so much that the stables are empty and unused a lot of the time. Yes, they’d be the perfect bolt-hole for him.”

  Jude’s enthusiasm was infectious and, though she tried to resist it, Carole found her spoilsport pose weakening. “So what are you suggesting—that we go and see Sonia Dalrymple and ask whether she has an unwelcome guest in her stables?”

  “Something along those lines, yes. Except Sonia’s not there at the moment. She’s taking a few days’ break at Yeomansdyke.”

  “Oh.” And Carole could not completely disguise her disappointment as she said, “Well, we’ll have to wait till she comes back.”

  Jude nodded, then turned to Ted. “You’re sure you’re going to be all right?”

  “Yes. Just have a kip upstairs; that’ll sort me out.”

  “Sure?” asked Carole anxiously.

  “You betcha.” He grinned with manufactured bravado, and lapsed into the manner of the stand-up comedian he had once been. “Take more than a little prick to put Ted Crisp out of commission—particularly when that little prick’s only Donal Geraghty!”

  “All right, but, as we’ve seen, he can be dangerous,” said Jude. “You look after yourself.”

  “Right you are, nurse. I’ll do as I’m told.”

  “Well then, we’ll say good-bye.” And she rose to her feet.

  Carole looked up in puzzlement. “Why, where are we going?”

  “To the Dalrymples’ house.”

  “But you’ve said they’re not there.”

  “No.”

  Carole’s eyes widened in fascinated horror. “Are you suggesting that we trespass—or even ‘break and enter’?”

  “That’s right,” said Jude.

  21

  SOME OF THE Dalrymples’ fleet of cars may have been on the premises, but they were invisible behind closed garage doors. Jude persuaded a very uncertain Carole during their walk along the tow path that their best means of approach was through the front gate. She was known to Sonia and, if seen entering, felt confident she could invent some reason for doing so. Carole wasn’t so sure, but she did have to concede that “trespass” was a lesser offence than “breaking and entering”—though she was afraid they might have to move up the scale of criminality when they reached the stables.

  Carole was also paranoid about the presence of burglar alarms and CCTV cameras, but as they walked across the gravel to the house, there was no sign of either. Nor, so far as they could tell, had there been any witnesses to their arrival.

  When they reached the frontage, Carole’s twitchiness increased. Walking up to the front door and ringing the bell was a legitimate act. Jude could easily have been mistaken about how long Sonia Dalrymple was staying at Yeomansdyke. But the minute they started going round the side of the house, the two women had stepped over the barrier into wrongdoing.

  Jude, unaffected by any such scruples and knowing the route, marched boldly ahead. Her companion, with scuttling gait and many furtive glances behind, gave a totally convincing impersonation of an intruder.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” she kept saying. “It’s illegal.”

  “Not only illegal, but dangerous.”

  “What do you mean, Jude?”

  “If Donal is in the stables…”

  She didn’t need to finish the sentence. After the recent confrontation in the Crown and Anchor neither of them needed reminding they were dealing with a violent man.

  “Maybe we should go back.”

  “Do you really want to?”

  There was a moment while Carole weighed up the demands of fear and curiosity. Then, firmly, she shook her head.

  “Thought not.”

  At least, when they got to the stables, no “breaking and entering” was required. The large outer gate of the block was not locked, nor had the padlocks been put through the rings of the individual stalls. Presumably, since, as Jude had witnessed, Sonia now kept all her tack inside the house, there was nothing worth stealing. The stables were at risk only from knife-wielding ex-jockeys who might chose to set up temporary homes there.

  The two women moved through into the small covered yard and looked around. Short of using one of the empty stalls, or bedding down on the neat stack of hay at the back of the central area, there was no suitable accommodation on the ground floor. But the rungs leading up the wall to the trapdoor in the wooden ceiling looked much more promising.

  “Donal!” Jude called out, her voice suddenly loud after the silence of their approach. “Donal, are you up there?”

  There was no answer. Jude and Carole looked at each other, the latter’s expression full of trepidation, as she whispered, “Suppose he’s just waiting up there, with his knife?”

  “I really don’t think he represents any danger to us.”

  “After what he did to Ted? Why not?”

  “Don’t know. Instinct.”

  Carole’s “Huh” fully expressed her views of the value of instinct in such circumstances.

  But her friend just shrugged and started up the ladder. After a moment’s hesitation, Carole followed suit. Through both of their minds went the same thought. Damn, we should have brought a torch.

  They needn’t have worried. As soon as she pushed up the trapdoor, Jude was aware of some light source above and, as she poked her head up through the aperture, she could see the Velux window set in the pitched roof. She pulled herself up into the loft space and looked around, waiting till Carole had joined her before saying anything.

  “Well, it looks like we were right.”

  The space was surprisingly tidy, and somehow gave the impression that it had never been used since the place was converted. The Dalrymples appeared never to have taken advantage of the space for storage.

  But someone had taken advantage of it as a bedroom. Long damp-speckled cushions from garden loungers had been laid down on the bare boards, and a grubby-looking sleeping bag had been placed on top. Beside the makeshift bed an old wine box stood, candles and matches on its surface, tins, boxes and unidentified garments shoved inside it.

  “I bet this is Donal’s little hideaway.” It was strange. In spite of her recent shout up the ladder, which would have alerted anyone who happened to be in the vicinity, up in the little loft Jude felt the need to whisper.

  “But there’s no sign of him, is there?”

  “No.” Jude knelt down and scrutinised the sleeping bag. “He hasn’t been here for a while either. There’s dust all over this.”

  “Oh well.” Carole, anxious to leave, edged back towards the ladder. “At least we know a place where he might come to.” All she wanted to do was to get back onto the road outside the Dalrymples’ house. They’d been very lucky so far, nobody had seen them. But they shouldn’t push their luck. Now it was time to go.

  “Just a minute,” said Jude, and she moved back towards the sloped window to get a better view of the bed. As she did so, she glanced down at the window sill. “Well, well, well.”

  “What is it?”

  Carefully in her gloved hands, Jude lifted up an object, covered in a thin layer of dust, not as much as on the sill where it lay. A Sabatier kitchen knife, discoloure
d with stains of rust or possibly blood. She ran the blade against the leather of her Florentine glove, leaving a distinct thin line. It was still sharp.

  “A murder weapon?” she suggested.

  “No,” said Carole with some exasperation. “You may have forgotten, but the police already have a murder weapon. The bot knife that was found at the scene of the crime.”

  “Oh yes. Yes, of course.” Jude returned the knife to its dusty haven, and redirected her attention to the makeshift bed on the floor. “It’s uneven.”

  “What?”

  “The bed. The foot end is higher than the pillow end.”

  “Well, why not? It’s not a proper bed, it’s just been assembled from bits and pieces. Probably those disgusting things it’s been put on are uneven.”

  Jude said nothing, but moved forward and knelt down near the far end of the cushions. She reached under them, felt around and then pulled out a bundle of something.

  Uncurled, it was revealed to be a frayed and battered Barbour, wrapped around a pair of gloves.

  Spattered all over both were the unmistakable rusty spots of dried blood.

  22

  “GOOD GOD,” SAID Carole. “So it was Donal, after all.”

  “We don’t know that. It could have been someone else.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Jude! This is pretty incontrovertible evidence. The bloodstained garments that were worn when he killed Walter Fleet are found here in Donal’s hideaway—what more do you want?” Carole was irritated to see her friend was grinning at her. “And what’s that expression meant to mean?”

  “Just that I thought you were meant to be the rational one, and what you just said did make quite a few major leaps of logic. For a start, we don’t know that these were the clothes worn by the murderer of Walter Fleet. And, on top of that, though there seems to be evidence that someone’s been squatting in this loft, we have no proof that that person is Donal Geraghty.”

  “Now you’re just being picky.”

  “Well, even if your theory’s true—say it is Donal who’s been camping in here, say these are the clothes worn by the murderer—what’re we going to do about it?”

  “Obviously, Jude, we take the evidence to the police…or no, we don’t touch it. We call the police here and we—”

  “Tell them that we just happened to be trespassing in the Dalrymples’ stables, and we just happened by chance to come upon these bloodstained garments?”

  “Ah. I see your point. No, what we do is, we get as far away from here as possible, and then we send the police an anonymous tip-off, recommending that they take a look in the Dalrymples’ stables.”

  “And how do we do that? Phone calls are traceable, so are text messages, faxes, e-mails…”

  “We find a way to do it.” Carole was getting exasperated by Jude’s uncharacteristic assumption of the wet-blanket role, and even more exasperated because she reckoned Jude was only doing it to tease her. “That’s not what’s important. What is important is that we get away from here as quickly as possible.”

  “Hm…Well, we’re not leaving till I’ve had a little look at what we’ve found.”

  “But you can’t…you mustn’t…” Carole’s Home Office training once more asserted itself. “If you touch anything, you’ll probably get arrested for the murder yourself. You can’t risk leaving any DNA.”

  “I think I’ll be all right,” said Jude, showing off her hands in the Florentine gloves. Carole watched, appalled, as her neighbour carefully inspected the bloodstained pair of gloves, almost turning them inside out to check for any marks of identification. But she was disappointed. Just cheap, ordinary woollen gloves that could be bought at any store or market in the country. And the one-size-fits-all expandable sort that gave no indication even of the wearer’s gender.

  “What about the jacket?” Jude picked up the Barbour and looked at it. Old, well worn, average size. She held it up to the window. In better light, even more dull blood spatters were visible on the old waxed fabric. If this was not the garment worn by Walter Fleet’s killer, then there had been another recent bloody murder in the Fethering area.

  Holding up the jacket by its collar, Jude checked the pockets. The inside ones yielded only a pencil stub and a crumpled tissue, the latter wonderfully revelatory to a police forensics team, but entirely useless to the unqualified amateur.

  Jude moved on to the outside pockets. Just a few bits of lint and shreds of paper. A wizened stump of carrot and a few fluffy Polo mints, presumably intended as treats for some lucky horse.

  Punctiliously, she returned each item to where she’d found it. Only the small upright slit pockets remained. Nothing in the left one. But in the right…her gloved hand closed round a scrap of slightly shiny paper.

  She pulled it out. A scrumpled cardholder’s copy of an American Express transaction. On which the name of the signatory could be clearly read.

  Alec Potton.

  Jude wrapped up the gloves in the bloody Barbour, trying to reproduce exactly the previous creases and to set the bundle in exactly the same place under the makeshift bed.

  Then, with Carole still looking like a finalist in the Miss Paranoia Competition, they went back down the ladder and left the Dalrymples’ stables.

  They were well away from the house and on the tow path back into Fethering when they heard the approaching sirens. But they were still close enough to see the pair of police cars hurtle up the road and turn into Nicky and Sonia Dalrymple’s drive.

  23

  THIS WAS ANOTHER of those many occasions that brought home to Carole and Jude the frustrations of being amateur investigators. The police had arrived at the Dalrymples’ house only moments after they had made a discovery that could have enormous bearing on the search for Walter Fleet’s killer. But the two women had no means of knowing if that was why the police had turned up. And, if they had come in search of that evidence, who had tipped them off as to where they would find it?

  An even more troubling thought—particularly to Carole—was that someone had seen her and Jude “breaking and entering” and had tipped off the police. She lived in fear of a knock on the door of High Tor, leading to criminal charges.

  But, not for the first time, all Carole and Jude could do was to wait for public announcements on news bulletins, and keep their ears close to the groundswell of Fethering gossip.

  This last was certainly a flowing source, not to say a torrent. Something said in the Crown and Anchor would be quickly repeated (with embellishments) in Allinstore, whence it would pass and grow in size through the media of bakery, off licence and hairdresser. Within hours, everyone in the village seemed to know about the police going to the Dalrymples, and there were as many theories about their reasons for doing so as there were inhabitants to entertain them. The trouble was that none of these conjectures was based on any more information than Carole and Jude had, and a lot of them were frankly loony. When she first arrived in Fethering, Carole had quickly reached the conclusion that listening to village gossip was the way madness lay, and nothing that had happened since had done anything to change her opinion.

  So the two women spent a restless and unsatisfactory few days until, on the Monday’s World At One, it was announced that the police were questioning another man in connection with the death of Walter Fleet.

  The jungle drums of Fethering beat loud for the next hour, and, once the wilder rumours had been eliminated, there seemed to be a credible consensus that the man being questioned was Alec Potton.

  “Jude?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Sonia.”

  “Ah, hello.” Jude just stopped herself from asking about the discovery in the hayloft; of course she didn’t know about that. “Are you still at Yeomansdyke?”

  “No. I’m back home. I was summoned back here by the police.”

  “Oh, really?” Jude continued to feign ignorance.

  “They had a tip-off about something found in our stables. Something to do with Walter Fl
eet’s murder, apparently.”

  “Good heavens. Maybe that also has something to do with Alec Potton being taken in for questioning.”

  “Oh, is that what’s happened? I hadn’t heard.” Jude couldn’t be certain, but she got the impression that Sonia was lying. Either that, or she hadn’t spoken to a single person in Fethering over the whole weekend.

  “You told me you knew Alec Potton…I wondered—”

  “Well, I’ve met him. He’s picked up Imogen from here the odd time. I wouldn’t say I know him.” She seemed anxious to move on. “Anyway, as you can imagine, Jude, this has all been very stressful…”

  “I’m sure it has.”

  “…and I was wondering if I could book a session with you—you know, balancing? I mean, I’m sorry I had to cancel that one on Thursday.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m free tomorrow morning. Would that suit you?”

  “Oh, it’d be wonderful.”

  “Say…what? Ten? Eleven?”

  “Ten’d be good.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you then.”

  “Oh, and, Jude…”

  “Yes?”

  “You know how you got Donal to work on Chieftain?”

  “Mm.”

  “Do you know where I can find him? Donal. I need to talk to him.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. He seems to have gone to ground again.” No need to tell the reason why. Ted Crisp had been very insistent that the stabbing in the Crown and Anchor should be kept quiet.

  “Oh. Oh, that’s a pity.” But the way Sonia said the word, it sounded more like a tragedy.

  Jude gave assurances that she’d put Donal in touch if she met him again, and their phone call ended. Puzzling, why Sonia was so desperate to make contact with the ex-jockey. For the second time. Increasingly, from her client’s behaviour and from what Donal himself had said, Jude was becoming convinced that Sonia Dalrymple was the target for his blackmail demands. But of the dark secret he possessed, she had no idea. It might be related to what Jude now felt sure was Nicky Dalrymple’s violence against his wife, but she had a feeling there was more to it than that.