The Stabbing in the Stables

by Simon Brett

  Nicky Dalrymple slowly brought the knife to touch Jude’s cheek, running it along the smooth skin, almost like a lover’s caress.

  Then he raised it to stab, his eyes narrowing to focus on the top of her cleavage.

  Jude felt calm, satisfied with the life that she had had, and closed her eyes to await the blow.

  Then she was aware of a sudden movement from below, and just managed to see Donal’s hand dart upwards, as he plunged a Stanley knife into Nicky Dalrymple’s stomach.

  The banker looked down in horror, to see the blood spreading over his perfectly laundered Turnbull & Asser shirt. Off guard, he hardly resisted when Donal Geraghty snatched the kitchen knife from his hand.

  Nicky Dalrymple was in shock. He gave a bewildered look at what had been his two prospective victims, then turned and staggered back towards the road, whimpering like a child.

  38

  JUDE CALLED THE Fethering taxi firm she always used, and they said “because it was her”, they’d have someone there in twenty minutes. She asked for the car to come to the entrance to the old farm, where Nicky Dalrymple must have parked his BMW. No need to involve Yolanta Brewis in further questions and explanations.

  She also insisted that Donal should come with her, and he was too exhausted by his recent exertions to put up much of an argument. “But no hospitals,” he said.

  “No hospitals. I’ll put you to bed in my house.”

  “When did I last have an offer like that?” he asked with a weary wink.

  Of course, what she was doing meant that Jude was not fulfilling her promise to Imogen, that she would stay with Conker until Sonia arrived. But, as with charities, when it came to the crunch, Jude always put human beings above animals.

  She checked that the pony was happy—which she was, extremely. And Conker was even happier when the buckets of carrots and pony nuts were moved to within her range. Jude left her chomping merrily.

  Under other circumstances, she would have stayed to run a bath for Donal and see him settled into bed at Woodside Cottage, but she was in a rush, so she just showed him where everything was. The cab was still waiting outside, ready to move onto her next destination.

  “Right,” she said as she was about to leave. “Have you got everything you want?”

  Donal grimaced ruefully. “Well, now, you wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of Jameson’s in the house, would you?”

  Jude apologised that she hadn’t got any Jameson’s, only Famous Grouse. Donal agreed that he’d make an exception.

  “Can I get you a glass?”

  “No, the bottle’ll do just fine.”

  She ran upstairs to fetch a notebook from a bedside drawer, said good-bye to an already-imbibing Donal and left.

  Before getting back into the cab, Jude knocked on the door of High Tor. She would have liked to have Carole with her for the next encounter. But there was no reply.

  She told the driver where she wanted to go.

  On the short drive to Unwins, Jude tried to separate out the conflicting strands of information that she had received in the last dramatic hour.

  Of Nicky Dalrymple’s violence—whose existence she had never much doubted—she now had firsthand experience.

  Another nugget of information rose to the surface of her confusion. Donal had actually given more details of how he was blackmailing the Dalrymples. He had talked about something he’d seen from the hayloft. Jude would have pursued the hint at the time, but that was just when Nicky had arrived with the knife, and in the ensuing drama it had been forgotten.

  Damn. She should have asked Donal before leaving him at Woodside Cottage, but the idea had gone completely out of her mind.

  There was something else, though, some scrap of information, some oddity, something that didn’t quite strike the right chord.

  Something to do with Nicky Dalrymple. Painful though it was to remember, Jude tried to reconstruct everything that had happened, everything that had been said during their recent confrontation at Cordham Manor stables.

  The most striking detail was Nicky’s response when she had first mentioned Donal’s name. He had seemed surprised. His reaction had certainly not been that of a vengeful man whose quarry has just been named.

  In other words, contrary to Jude’s assumption, Nicky Dalrymple had not arrived at the Cordham Manor stables in search of Donal Geraghty.

  He had come for another reason.

  She shuddered as she took in the implications of this.

  “Why don’t you stay for lunch?”

  “Oh no, really. I’d better be getting back to High Tor. There’s rather an aggrieved dog there who hasn’t been out since about half past five this morning.”

  “Having waited this long, another hour’s not going to kill him. Beside, if you started at that time, you must be starving by now. Did you have any breakfast?”

  Carole admitted that she hadn’t had any.

  “Then, no question, you must stay. My little thank-you to you for bringing Immy safely home.”

  The invitation was an appealing one. Carole certainly felt extremely hungry.

  And, even though Alec Potton’s confession seemed to have sewn up the case, she would still get the chance to ask more questions about the murder of Walter Fleet.

  Besides, Hilary Potton had led her through to the kitchen, and was already opening a bottle of white wine.

  Jude asked the driver to stop on the road outside Unwins. She didn’t want the noise of tyres on the gravel to alert the residents to her arrival. If the front door was locked, she would have to ring the bell for admission in the traditional way. But if it wasn’t…

  The door was locked, and when Sonia Dalrymple opened it, Jude felt embarrassed about the dramatic scenarios she had been spinning in her mind. Everything at the house seemed so ordinary, so peaceful. Sonia looked once again beautiful and soigné, the dark cloud of Nicky’s presence once again removed from her horizon.

  “Oh, Jude, what on earth are you doing here? I was just about to ring Lucinda and sort out picking up Conker. I’m thinking it’s probably safer if she drives one of the horse boxes over, rather than riding Conker back on the roads.”

  “Yes.” She had been steeling herself for this confrontation, but now she was actually at Unwins, she was having difficulty working out the best approach. To say straight away that Sonia’s husband had just tried to stab her to death might be dramatic, but might not help her towards the information she needed. So she contented herself with asking a question that was already answered by Sonia’s demeanour and the absence of a large BMW in the drive. “Has Nicky gone?”

  “Yes, about an hour ago. He was driving straight up to Heathrow.”

  No, he wasn’t. He was making a detour via Cordham Manor.

  “Do come in, Jude. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  She would certainly like something. The woody carrot lay uneasily on her stomach. They went through to the kitchen, where Sonia made tea. When she offered a packet of shortbread biscuits, Jude fell on them.

  She still hadn’t quite worked out what she was going to say next. But, as she frequently did, she opted for a direct approach. “Sonia, I saw Donal again recently.”

  “Oh.” The very name was enough to set her clattering teacups.

  “And I know he’s blackmailing you over something he saw from the hayloft.”

  Sonia said nothing, but sank into a kitchen chair, as though all strength had been drained out of her. But, at the same time, she showed signs of relief. Maybe at last the cancer of the secret she had been holding inside for so long could be removed.

  “I knew it would have to come out eventually.” Her voice was weak, but calm. “Probably as well it’s come out now, when Nicky’s just gone away. Gives me a few days to prepare myself for his reaction.” Her face looked grim. “He’s not going to like it. This will be the row to end all rows.”

  “Literally? This might be the one that makes you leave him?”

  Sonia looked across at J
ude with yearning hopelessness in her eyes. “If only…”

  The phone on the table rang. “Probably Nicky, saying he’s safely at Heathrow and checking whether I packed something. He usually manages to find something I’ve forgotten, something that puts me in the wrong.” She reached for the phone.

  “If he asks whether you’ve seen me, say no,” Jude hissed.

  With a look of surprise, Sonia answered the call. As predicted, it was her husband. As predicted, he asked if she’d remembered to pack the charger for his shaver. When she said she hadn’t, a predictable earful ensued. Then, after a few more yes and no answers, the call ended.

  Sonia looked across the table in bewilderment. “He did ask if you were here.”

  “And you said no?”

  “Yes. Jude, what’s going on?”

  “It’s something rather nasty.”

  “About Nicky?” Sonia asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  “Yes, about Nicky. You said there are some nights he doesn’t stay at home?”

  “He spends most of his life travelling the globe.”

  “I know that. But you said sometimes he stays in a hotel round here.”

  “Oh yes. After we’ve had a particularly major row.”

  “Like you did last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you have those major rows, does he hit you?”

  Sonia gave her answer as if it was the first time she’d thought about the question. “No, he doesn’t. That’s odd, actually. He hits me over small things. The big rows, he…no, he just leaves me, goes out.”

  “But when he does that, he’s not in a calm state?”

  “Good God, no. He’s absolutely furious, red in the face, bottling everything up.”

  “And when you next see him, has he calmed down again?”

  “Yes. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I suppose he has. No,” she said thoughtfully, “I’m not afraid of Nicky when he comes back after one of those nights away.”

  “Hm.” Jude tapped her fingers lightly on the table as she considered how to phrase the next bit. “Sonia, would you be able to give me dates for the nights when Nicky stayed out, say, for the last six months?”

  “Well, yes, I could, actually.” She crossed to the kitchen units and opened the cutlery drawer. There was a purpose-built segmented tray inside. Sonia lifted this out to reveal a thin hard-backed manuscript book underneath.

  “My diary. He’d never look in there.”

  “Is it just for this year?”

  “No, it’s not marked up as a diary. I just go on until I run out of space and then start another one.”

  Sonia flicked through and found the relevant dates. Jude checked them against notes in the little book she had picked up at Woodside Cottage.

  One of the dates seemed particularly to trouble Sonia. “That was just after Christmas, I remember. The twins were still here, still on holiday.”

  “And you had a big row? Quite common in families at Christmas, I believe.”

  “Yes, but…” Sonia choked back a sob. “This one was worse. The reason we had the row was…worse.”

  Jude bided her time. She had an instinct that the revelation would not stop there.

  “The girls had gone to bed, and Nicky had gone up to say good night to them, and then I remembered some dirty clothes I had to pick up from Alice’s room and I…I found Nicky on Alice’s bed. He was…touching her.”

  “And that prompted the row?”

  “Huge row. Worst row ever. Nicky stormed out of the house.”

  “And came back the next morning calmed?”

  Sonia nodded tearfully. “That’s why I insisted the girls go to boarding school. At least during term time Nicky can’t…can’t get at them.”

  Jude took a folded newspaper cutting out of her notebook and spread it out on the table. “This was printed a couple of days later. The events it refer to happened the night Nicky stormed out of here.”

  Sonia Dalrymple can only have had time to read the headline HORSE RIPPER STRIKES AGAIN before she burst into uncontrollable tears.

  To Jude it all made sense now. What Sonia had said about her husband interfering with his daughter served only to confirm her thesis. The theory of a connection between horse molestation and paedophilia was gaining credibility in academic circles. And Jude had a feeling Sonia might have suspected what Nicky had been up to.

  “Is it a possibility you’d thought about before? Something you were afraid might be true?”

  The shattered woman managed to nod assent.

  “This morning,” said Jude grimly, “only about an hour ago, I saw your husband at the old stables at Cordham Manor. He had a knife with him.”

  “Oh, no,” Sonia moaned. “Conker.”

  “Yes, I think he was out to harm Conker.”

  It seemed impossible that Sonia’s crying could become more intense, but it did. Jude reached out and placed a hand on her arm. “Don’t worry. Conker’s all right. And, as you see, I’m all right. I have Donal to thank for that.”

  “Donal?” Sonia repeated in bewilderment.

  “Yes. He saved my life by stabbing Nicky.”

  “Stabbing?”

  “Only a flesh wound. I’m sure your husband has patched himself up at Heathrow, bought a new shirt and will be fine for his business meetings in Chicago.”

  “Yes.” There was a long silence. “Oh, Jude, what do we do?”

  “I think we have to tell the police.”

  She nodded in the face of the inevitable.

  “But will there be any evidence?”

  “Donal and I can testify to the attack he made on us this morning. With regard to the horses, well, the dates offer quite a strong pointer. I would imagine the police could get some DNA evidence—maybe from the kitchen knife that was found in the hayloft. I think there will probably be enough to convict him.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Sonia had stopped crying. She now seemed confused, as she tried to work out the ramifications of what she had just heard.

  But she didn’t seem surprised. The news that her husband was the Horse Ripper confirmed something that she had been thinking for a long time. And maybe, finally, it offered her a justification for leaving him.

  “A lot to take in, Jude,” she said slowly. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “Yes. And then, of course, there’s something else, isn’t there?”

  “Hm?”

  “What Donal saw from the hayloft…”

  “Ah. Ah, yes…”

  “…and was prepared to blackmail you about…”

  “Mm.”

  “Can you tell me about it? I know you couldn’t before, and from seeing what keeping the secret was doing to your body, I know how much it meant, but now…”

  “Now…it seems a lot less important. I was terrified how Nicky would react if Donal told him—that’s why I was prepared to pay Donal so much money.”

  “When did he first make his demands?”

  “I can’t remember. Month or so back maybe.”

  “Before Walter Fleet’s death?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “So you don’t know exactly when he saw you?”

  “No, and it was only later I worked out that the hayloft must have been his vantage point. Anyway, it all seems rather less significant now. I mean, given the new circumstances. I can’t see that Nicky and I are ever going to back into a normal married situation again.”

  “I’d doubt it.”

  “So the fact that I was having an affair with another man suddenly becomes infinitely less important.”

  “Donal saw you together? From the hayloft?”

  Sonia Dalrymple nodded, suddenly more confident. “Yes. Of course at the time I had no idea he was up there. I had no idea he was even using our stables as a temporary home until the police raided the place.”

  “But why were you and your lover out there?”

  “I don’t know. I was afraid in the house. This place is so domi
nated by Nicky’s presence, even when he’s not here. I suppose I was a bit worried about leaving evidence that Nicky might find, but it wasn’t really that. I just couldn’t relax in the house.”

  “Whereas in the stables…”

  “Yes. And there was something rather exciting about the whole set-up. Adolescent thrills, like having a snog in the cycle sheds.”

  Jude chuckled softly. “You don’t have to tell me who the man is…unless you want to.”

  “Oh, why not? You know everything else. Alec Potton.”

  “God.” That really did knock Jude sideways.

  But it also gave her another idea. “And when was the last time you and Alec were together in the stables?”

  Sonia Dalrymple dropped her head into her hands for a moment of complete silence before saying, “That’s what’s so dreadful. It was late afternoon on the day that Walter Fleet was murdered. That’s why I was late meeting you at Long Bamber Stables. I’d been with Alec for the last two hours. And then Nicky came home early from a business trip, and so nearly found Alec and me together, and I went into the house to see Nicky and Alec stayed hidden in the stables and it was so ghastly—”

  Jude let her get no further. Brown eyes sparkling, she exclaimed, “But, Sonia, if Alec Potton was with you for all that time, then there’s no way that he could have killed Walter Fleet.”

  “I know, I know.”

  And Jude finally understood the magnitude of the secret that had been torturing Sonia Dalrymple.

  39

  HILARY POTTON’S KITCHEN was surprisingly old-fashioned for someone whose husband worked in the fitted kitchens business. Maybe it was just another reflection of the state of their marriage, of Alec’s priorities lying increasingly outside the domestic nest. But Hilary put together an excellent lunch, pasta with tuna and broccoli in a creamy sauce. She had good domestic skills. Maybe they would be put to good use one day in another marriage. Because, from the way Hilary talked about the future, meeting a nice caring New Zealander was included in her plans.