The Stabbing in the Stables

by Simon Brett

  Now Hilary looked confused. “He garbled on about something. He said it involved Immy, but I didn’t take it seriously. I thought he was just trying to exonerate himself. The only information I retained was that Alec’s bloodstained Barbour was hidden in the hayloft at the Dalrymples’ stables.”

  “And suddenly you saw the perfect way to get revenge on him for all the real and imagined slights he had inflicted on you during your marriage.”

  “You make it sound so calculating.”

  “I think,” said Jude, “it was pretty calculating.”

  “I genuinely believed that Alec was the murderer!”

  But Hilary Potton’s bluster was not convincing. She couldn’t meet the three implacable pair of eyes that were fixed on her, least of all Imogen’s.

  “For heaven’s sake, I’m not the villain of the piece.” She pointed at her daughter. “There’s the villain of the piece.”

  But neither Carole nor Jude thought that was completely true.

  41

  THE HOPE HAD fluttered briefly in Jude’s mind that they might be able to do nothing, that the police need never know the details of Imogen Potton’s crime, but Carole soon put her right about that. Apart from the moral issue—her Home Office training had ensured that Carole had a great respect for the processes of British justice—there were practical considerations. Alec Potton was still in custody. The only thing that would make him—albeit unwillingly—retract his confession was the knowledge that his daughter’s guilt for the crime had been unarguably proved.

  But Carole was optimistic about the outcome for Imogen. The processes of British justice did not exclude compassion, and there where many extenuating circumstances connected with the girls’ offence, particularly once the details of Nicky Dalrymple’s crimes had been established. Imogen Potton’s motive had been the protection of a beloved pony from appalling molestation. That the man she had stabbed was not the perpetrator of those crimes was simply an issue of mistaken identity. These facts, taken in consideration with the girl’s age and the pressure of her parents’ divorce, made Carole pretty certain that she would escape a custodial sentence, but be given a few years of judicial monitoring.

  So in fact it proved. By the age of eighteen, Imogen Potton no longer had even to see her probation officer, and was happily enrolled at Brinsbury Agricultural College in a course in horse management.

  But that lay a long way ahead.

  While the case of Walter Fleet’s murder was satisfactorily resolved, the case against Nicky Dalrymple sadly never came to court. His money enabled him to buy lawyers whose infinite expertise in the law’s delays put off any charges until he persuaded his bank to find him a permanent—and very highly paid—job in Hong Kong. He could never return to his native land, but at least he escaped the ignominy of having his name and reputation dragged through the courts and tabloids.

  In the circumstances, however, he could not make any objections to his wife’s demand for a divorce. From the moment she knew she would never have to see Nicky again, Sonia Dalrymple opened up like a Japanese flower in water, and the granting of the divorce crowned her feeling of emancipation.

  Her affair with Alec Potton continued for a while, but soon sputtered out. Even such a biddable and beautiful woman as Sonia Dalrymple could not completely fix his roving eye and, after the first couple of infidelities, she, with some relief, drew the plugs on the relationship.

  She kept in touch with Imogen, however, and, after Alice and Laura had shown absolutely no interest in Conker over their next holidays, transferred ownership to her. Imogen was ecstatic, and the exemplary care she demonstrated to Conker was one of the most valuable elements in her process of healing and growing up.

  And her feckless father, whom she saw intermittently, did at least pay the livery and fodder bills at Long Bamber Stables.

  Meanwhile, Conker got plenty of love and attention and riding—and carrots—which was all she had ever wanted from life.

  Chieftain, as Donal had predicted, recovered completely from his lameness and, no longer fearful of Nicky Dalrymple’s bullying, provided Sonia with many years of happy riding and companionship.

  After sticky teenage years with Alice and Laura, their mother was delighted when they both married early to rich young men, one emigrating to Florida and the other to South Africa. She kept in touch, paying dutiful visits to a spreading horde of grandchildren, who promised to grow up just as spoilt as their parents. So far as she knew, neither Alice nor Laura maintained any contact with their father.

  Then, in her early fifties, Sonia Dalrymple was destined, while walking the Inca Trail, to meet the love of her life, and live happily ever after.

  But that too lay a long way ahead.

  Men like Donal Geraghty don’t change, but, as the arthritis crippled him more and more, he did take up Jude’s offer of trying to ease his pain. Her ministrations helped, and, though he was never going to give up the Jameson’s completely, he did moderate his intake, at least to the point where he could remember getting into fights. And the fact that he could remember them meant he got into fewer of them. After some years, Ted Crisp grudgingly lifted the ban on him at the Crown and Anchor.

  The traumas they had both experienced did not serve to bring Hilary Potton and her daughter closer together. They continued to share the house in Fethering, in a state of silence interrupted by rows, until Imogen started college. Then Hilary, with enough money saved from the divorce settlement and her share of the house sale—though sadly without the largesse of the tabloid newspapers—fulfilled her dream of upping sticks and moving alone to New Zealand, where it was to be hoped that no nice caring New Zealander was so unfortunate as to get caught in her tentacles.

  But that lay in the future too.

  Victor Brewis made one property speculation too many and lost all his money. The plugs were pulled on the renovations at Cordham Manor and it was put on the market, which at least saved the lovely old house from undergoing a total makeover by Yolanta.

  She, finding that all of her husband’s attractions went away when the money went away, divorced him and married an eighty-year-old shipping magnate, whose last years she determined to make happy—and few.

  Lucinda Fleet, meanwhile, continued to run Long Bamber Stables, single-handed. She never remarried or even had a boyfriend, finding, as had many people before her, that horses are much more rewarding companions than human beings.

  And the finances of the stables juddered from crisis to crisis until, eventually, Lucinda was forced to sell them.

  But that, as well, lay far in the future.

  What lay closer to the present was the ring on the bell of High Tor, just after Carole had returned from Imogen Potton’s dramatic revelations and released an extremely disgruntled Gulliver from the kitchen. She moved to the front door with some bewilderment. Jude had just been dropped at Woodside Cottage, so it couldn’t be her, and it wasn’t the general habit of Fethering residents to arrive unannounced.

  Carole was astonished and ashamed to open her door to Stephen and Gaby. In all the excitements of the morning, she had completely forgotten their arrangement. Oh God, this was to be the dreadful meeting, when they told her they were splitting up.

  Even worse, she remembered that she had promised to cook lunch for them. And she hadn’t done a thing. The joint and everything else were still in the fridge. If there was one thing Carole Seddon hated, it was inefficiency. Particularly when the inefficiency was her own.

  Full of embarrassed apology, she announced that they’d have to eat at the Crown and Anchor. Desperately hoping he wouldn’t be full, she rang Ted Crisp to ask him to hold a table for them. He immediately went into a worrying routine about everyone wanting to be squeezed in and how people were having to book weeks ahead because of the Crown and Anchor’s mounting gastronomic reputation. Then he relented, stopped fooling about and said it was fine.

  So it proved when they got there. Only three tables were occupied.

  Carol
e, insisting that this must be her treat, went to get the drinks. Both Stephen and Gaby ordered fizzy water, which was worrying and suggested that their mission was going to be an austere one. She ordered herself a large Chilean chardonnay; she felt she was going to need it.

  They sat down and raised their glasses in a wordless toast. Then Stephen said, with that heavy formality of which Carole hoped Gaby had cured him, “Mother, there’s something we have to tell you.”

  “Oh yes?” Her voice came out very small.

  “It is, not to put too fine a point on it, erm…erm…”

  Oh no, he was getting just like his father. And at that moment, Carole felt as alienated from Stephen as she was from David. Get on with it, she prayed, tell me the worst.

  “Well, the fact is, Mother…you’re going to become a grandmother.”

  This was so far from the news she had been expecting that at first Carole thought she must have misheard. But then, in the chaos of conversation that followed, details slowly emerged.

  Stephen and Gaby had wanted to start a family as soon as they were married, but for months nothing was happening and they were both getting very tense about it. The day Gaby had sounded so listless on the phone she had just found out she wasn’t pregnant—again.

  But then suddenly it had happened. She was only about eight weeks. It was really too early to tell anyone, but they so wanted her to know.

  “Does your father know yet?”

  “No, we wanted to tell you first.”

  Nothing Stephen could have said would have given Carole a deeper glow.

  “Current estimated arrival date is the twenty-eighth of October,” said Gaby excitedly.

  “Isn’t it wonderful news?” Stephen crowed.

  “Yes, wonderful.” Carole agreed.

  Her knee-jerk reaction was, Oh dear—another relationship to get wrong. She wouldn’t have been Carole Seddon if she hadn’t thought that. But the anxiety lasted only a second before it was overwhelmed by a warm flood of excitement. Now she really had got something to look forward to.