by Alan Hunter
‘That’s how my mind works,’ Gently shrugged.
‘Yeah, that’s how it works,’ Rising said. ‘And you’d better make it work some other way, sport, because there’s no percentage in that.’
‘The gossip isn’t true?’
‘What gossip?’ Rising snarled.
‘Gossip we’ve been hearing,’ Gently said smoothly.
‘There hasn’t been any gossip!’
Gently shook his head, stared mildly at Rising’s furious glare.
‘Look,’ Rising said, moving closer, ‘it’s a bloody try-on, and you know it. Charlie’s been pals with us for years and never a whisper about him and Jill. There wouldn’t be. She isn’t that sort of woman. She couldn’t do it and me not know. And if any creeping bastard had said so I’d have beat him into a pulp.’
‘The way we found Berney,’ Gently said.
Rising’s eyes thinned to points. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It won’t do, sport. You’re never going to hang that one on me. I was right here all day Tuesday.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘Can you disprove it?’ Rising sent a leer at Docking. ‘I say I was here, and I was here. Look, you can see what I was doing.’
He turned abruptly and marched across to a building which had probably been the old coach-house. Gently and Docking followed. Rising pushed open the door, stood aside to let them enter.
‘There. Run your eye over them.’
The interior had been converted into a workshop. Along one side ran a carpenter’s bench with racks of tools mounted behind it. A miniature circular saw stood under the window and a stack of new timber lay by the wall. In the centre of the floor stood four freshly painted jumps, with splashings of paint lying around them.
‘That’s what I was doing Tuesday – finishing off these new jumps. And Jill, she was out with the kids – and she didn’t take them to High Hale.’
‘You were here alone . . . ?’
‘When Jill wasn’t here. Our domestic only comes mornings.’
‘So she’s your alibi, you’re hers.’
‘Try to beat it,’ Rising said. ‘Try to beat it.’
Gently moved to one of the jumps and ran his fingers over the moistly silky fresh paint. ‘I may do just that,’ he said. ‘Who were the kids who went with your wife?’
‘You leave the kids out of it,’ Rising said. ‘I wouldn’t know who they were anyway.’
‘But your wife will know?’
‘And leave her out of it! I’m not having Jill upset with dirty scandal.’
A shadow fell in the doorway: they turned to look. The woman in riding drag was standing there.
‘And what scandal can that be?’ she asked coolly.
‘Jill!’ Rising said. ‘You get out of here.’
Jill Rising didn’t get out. She stood looking at the policemen with a determined expression on her handsome face. She was younger than her husband, perhaps in her mid-thirties, and she had firm brown eyes and dark hair worn short. Her figure was majestic. A voluptuous bust rounded out pushingly beneath the black jacket, and the fine spring of hip and calf were not concealed by her jodhpurs.
‘What scandal?’ she repeated. ‘I can’t think of any that would upset me.’
‘Jill,’ Rising said appealingly. ‘Just do what I say, Jill. I can handle what’s going on here.’
Jill Rising laughed. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘The tone of your voice didn’t sound reassuring. And if there’s scandal being talked which I shouldn’t hear, then of course it has to do with me and Charlie.’
‘Look, Jill, will you leave it?’ Rising implored.
‘Don’t be absurd, Jerry,’ Jill Rising said. ‘If these gentlemen have been listening to gossip, they’ll certainly want to ask me if there’s any truth in it.’
‘It’s filthy lies!’
‘Is it?’ she said.
‘Oh my God, you know it is.’
‘I know nothing of the sort,’ Jill Rising said. ‘Charlie made passes at me from the start.’
Rising pulled back from her. ‘That’s a lie!’
‘Oh, relax, Jerry,’ Jill Rising said. ‘Charlie couldn’t help it. He was made that way. With him it was like a nervous twitch.’
‘But you never told me,’ Rising snapped.
‘Because you’re too impetuous,’ Jill Rising said. ‘You’d have knocked him about, then there’d have been a lawsuit, and all about nothing except Charlie’s being Charlie. I didn’t mind. I rather liked it. I’d have felt hurt if he’d made me an exception.’
‘But . . . holy Josephine!’ Rising said.
‘Isn’t that what the policemen want to know?’
‘You can bet it is!’
‘So,’ Jill Rising said. ‘Now they know it – for what it’s worth.’
She turned calmly to Gently. Gently cleared his throat. ‘And . . . this . . . had been going on for some time?’
‘Ever since Charlie began coming here,’ Jill Rising said. ‘Even before we’d been introduced.’
‘The slimy Casanova!’ Rising burst out.
‘Did he make a pass at you on Sunday?’
Jill Rising shook her head. ‘Not since he married Marie. Charlie had reformed. He really loved her, you know.’
‘He made no approach to you?’
‘Not of that kind. I rode part of the way to the beach with him. He seemed a bit absent-minded, not quite his old self. I thought perhaps he’d had a tiff with Marie.’
Gently nodded. ‘Did you speak to her?’
‘Yes. We all met up on the beach.’
‘Was she her old self?’
‘Oh yes, Marie. It takes a good deal to throw her.’
‘But I’d have thrown him,’ Rising growled in his throat. ‘Hell, when I think about that party . . .’
‘He means parading me there,’ Jill Rising said quickly. ‘In a plunge-neck dress, for Charlie to ogle. But really, it wasn’t a very bright party. Charlie was dull as an old bear. If you think he had a woman on his mind you could be right, but it wasn’t anybody at the party.’
Gently hesitated. ‘Is that what you thought?’
Jill Rising smiled brightly. ‘It crossed my mind. It couldn’t have been money, because Charlie was rolling, and with Charlie there was practically only one other thing.’
‘And you had a guess,’ Gently said. ‘Knowing Berney so well?’
‘Perhaps,’ Jill Rising said. ‘But I’d nothing to go on. As I told you, Charlie’d reformed after he married Marie. He’d broken off with all his old playmates.’ She looked at Gently squarely, her brown eyes forceful. ‘I’m your best bet,’ she said, ‘only it wasn’t me. Charlie knew he had nothing coming from me. Over the years, the message had got through.’
Gently paused, still holding her eyes. ‘But he’d tried,’ he said, ‘over the years?’
‘I’ve admitted that. He made passes.’
‘Including writing you poems . . . like this?’
He pulled out the poem and shoved it at Jill Rising. She flushed suddenly and put her hand out with reluctance. Gerald Rising stepped closer to her. His mouth was pressed tight. Jill Rising fumbled with the sheet, got it open, began reading. Then she laughed a little breathlessly.
‘Charlie never wrote this!’
‘Here, let me look,’ Gerald Rising said. He took hold of the sheet, his eyes puckering, and read the poem right through.
‘You agree?’ Gently said.
Rising nodded. ‘We’ve only got one poet round here, sport.’
‘It’s one of Lachlan’s,’ Jill Rising laughed. ‘And it wasn’t written to me, I assure you.’
‘You’ve never seen it before?’
‘I . . . never!’
‘For example, on Monday.’
She shook her head, her face hot.
‘You?’ Gently said to Rising.
‘Me neither,’ Rising said. ‘If you want to know about this you’d better ask Marie’s brother.’
Gently took the poem and st
owed it away again. The two Risings stood silent, their eyes turned from him. Jill Rising’s starch had gone out of her. Gerald Rising’s thumbs had crept back into his pockets.
‘That leaves me with one question,’ Gently said. ‘I’d like the names of the children who accompanied Mrs Rising on Tuesday.’
‘I can give them to you,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But it may not help much. I picked them up after school.’
‘After school,’ Gently said. ‘When was that?’
‘It was quarter to four,’ Jill Rising said.
‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘Still, I’ll have the names.’
Gerald Rising’s thumbs hooked tighter.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE LOTUS WAS hot. Gently switched on the fan as they turned out of the stable yard. From Rising’s drive one could see the sea, but there was little breeze coming from that direction. A black thunder-fly was trapped behind the windscreen and Docking squashed it with a well-aimed prod. They tinkered through the gates into the narrow road and coasted down to the silent village.
‘Amusing people,’ Gently said.
Docking trailed his fingers in the moving air. ‘One thing’s certain, sir,’ he said comfortably. ‘They don’t have an alibi worth a wet fag.’
Gently gave his slow nod. ‘What did you think of the lady?’
Docking watched the road for some moments before replying. ‘I think she was doing a nice job, sir,’ he said at last. ‘Until you gave her a jolt with that poem. Now I think she was just trying to beat us to the punch. I reckon Berney did more than make a pass at her. And I reckon Rising knew about it, too, for all the front he tried to put up.’
‘You think it blew up at the party?’
‘Maybe afterwards, sir. There was something happened about that poem. Perhaps Rising saw Berney slip it to her, and somehow she got it back to Berney.’
‘Then Mrs Berney took it from him.’
‘That’d be how it was, sir. And Mrs Berney isn’t going to let on because then she’d be giving herself a motive.’
Gently eased for the junction with the coast road. ‘There’s another angle to it,’ he said. ‘I’m not so sure that Rising’s reactions were faked – not about the poem, in any case.’
‘How do you mean, sir?’
Gently smoothed a gear-change. ‘Lachlan Stogumber was also at the party.’
Docking stared at the road. ‘You think he did write the poem?’
‘It’s what everyone’s telling us,’ Gently shrugged. He paused to let the Lotus skim up to sixty. ‘Let’s look at it that way a moment,’ he said. It’s Lachlan Stogumber who’s Mrs Rising’s lover, who tried to slip her the poem at the party. Mrs Rising doesn’t get it, or if she gets it she decides it’s too dangerous to hang on to. So she slips it to her friend Marie, who is careless enough to let Berney get hold of it.’
‘I’m still not with you, sir,’ Docking said.
Gently stroked the wheel. ‘What would Berney do? He’s always had a fancy for Mrs Rising, and now he’s in a position to use blackmail.’
Docking sat up straight. ‘By crikey, sir!’
‘But where does that get us?’ Gently said.
‘He’d send a message to her, sir – perhaps risk ringing her – and make her come out to meet him on the heath.’ Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘And when she got there?’
Docking’s eyes were large. ‘It didn’t need a man, sir. Just a rider on a horse with a big enough motive – and that’s what she was when she met Berney.’
Gently chuckled. ‘It still leaves some loose ends – like Berney’s odd behaviour on Tuesday.’
‘But it fits the rest, sir,’ Docking said eagerly. ‘Including the point you just made about Rising and the poem. Of course, he’d never seen the poem. She just glanced at it, but he read it. And the way she behaved, sir, I think he was catching on. If he didn’t know before, he knows now.’
‘There’s still Berney’s behaviour to explain.’
‘He could’ve been scared stiff of Rising, sir.’
‘And our rider on his dark horse.’
‘Perhaps that fellow doesn’t come into it.’
Gently laughed at Docking’s fervent expression. ‘There’s one more objection. Would Mrs Rising have done it?’
‘We can show opportunity, sir. And a pretty fat motive.’
‘But would she have done it?’
Docking was silent.
The Lotus slid docilely into High Hale, where the clock on the flint church tower was showing four thirty. Above the trees above the cottages the bland front of The Lodge displayed its slatted windows. Gently eased to walking-pace.
‘It’s an amusing theory,’ he said. ‘But just now we’ll keep it on the file. Meanwhile there’s that stallion Rising was good enough to mention – I think we should take a look at that.’
‘That’s at Home Farm,’ Docking said glumly. ‘It’s at the back of the heath, off the Low Hale road.’
‘And the Manor House,’ Gently said. ‘Where would that be?’
‘It’s in the same direction,’ Docking said. ‘Sir.’
They drove up past the heath again and as far as the grove of oaks. Here one of the narrow roads to which Gently was becoming accustomed bore away to the right. It skirted the heath on one hand and standing crops on the other, separated from them by low banks where grasses tangled with stubs of hawthorn. Then a plastered farmhouse appeared to the left, half-concealed by the lift of the fields. It had steep roofs of glazed blue pantiles and was hemmed by brick outbuildings and bushy elders.
‘Does Creke have any neighbours?’ Gently asked.
‘No, sir,’ Docking said. ‘Farmers don’t go in for them.’
‘How far is the Manor House from here?’
Docking considered. ‘I’d say another mile, sir.’
They reached a junction with a concrete track which led across the fields to the farmhouse. The junction was marked by an island of trees in which nestled a farm building and a pond scummed with weed. In the field opposite a big combine-harvester was puffing steadily through a stand of barley, while under the hedge lay four or five bicycles. A man lounged by them, smoking, watching.
‘Farmer Creke, sir.’
Gently parked the Lotus. Creke made no motion to come across. A lean, hard-framed man with greasy black hair, he leaned against a field-gate, his eyes inspecting them. He was around fifty, probably six foot, and his black hair extended to ghostly sideboards. He was smoking a small, sooty briar from which smoke rose in regular puffs.
Gently got out and walked over to him.
‘Mr Creke?’
Creke looked him over with quick grey eyes. He shifted his pipe to the side of his mouth. ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’
Gently introduced himself. Creke nodded. He nostrilled a couple of wisps of smoke.
‘So what’s on now?’ he said. ‘Your blokes were here Wednesday. I can’t tell you more now than I could then.’
‘Do you know Gerald Rising?’ Gently asked.
Creke took a few draws. ‘What about him?’
‘We’ve been talking to him.’ Gently said. ‘About your black stallion. About the way you can handle it when it’s out on service.’
Creke spat past his pipe. ‘He’s a big-mouth,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a word with him too when I see him.’
‘But he’s right about the horse?’
‘Right nothing,’ Creke said. ‘Prince is quiet as a baby if you don’t rattle him.’
‘But if you do . . . ?’
Creke eased himself off the gate. ‘Let me give you a tip,’ he said. ‘Rising’s an Aussie. He didn’t know the first blind thing about horses when he came up this way a few years back. His missus taught him all he knows and that’d go on a picture postcard. He doesn’t know a horse and he can’t ride one. What he says about them is squit.’
‘So,’ Gently said. ‘The stallion’s a quiet horse.’
‘He’s quiet as a dozen others I know.
’
‘You’d let your child ride him?’
Creke wagged his head. ‘He’s eighteen hands,’ he said. ‘He’s a bloody horse!’
As he spoke a deep clear neigh sounded from the building amongst the trees.
‘That’s him,’ Creke said. ‘He could hear my voice. If you want to see a horse, come and look at him.’
The building stood well back in the trees with the weed pond lying in front of it. Great, double doors were yawning open to reveal a shadowy, unlit interior. Creke marched them in. They were met by stable-smell and the sound of ponderously moving hooves. From a loosebox in the corner protruded the serpent-like head of a huge, jet-black horse.
‘Prince boy, Prince, Prince.’
Creke strutted up to the massive animal. At once it arched its glinting neck and began to fuss his face with its lips. It snorted and made low whinnying noises. Creke buzzed and patted and ruffled its forelock. Then he gave it a firm slap on the neck, when it snatched its head up with a chuckling neigh.
‘There,’ Creke said. ‘There. Would either of you gents like to shake hands with him?’
Gently shrugged and glanced at Docking, who shook his head very firmly.
‘Ah, you’re no horsemen,’ Creke said, grinning. ‘It’s a privilege to meet a horse like Prince. Look at his shine. Look at his eye. There isn’t a better sire in England.’
The horse chuckled again, its head held proudly, its smoky eyes staring down at them. Then it made a little dart in Gently’s direction, its lips curling from great yellow teeth.
‘Wheesh, Prince boy!’ Creke said, patting him.
‘Where does this horse come from?’ Gently asked.
‘He comes out of Leicestershire,’ Creke said. ‘My brother put me on to him. He farms out that way.’
‘A hunter, was he?’
‘That’s right. He used to hunt with the Quorndon.’
‘But they decided to sell him.’
Creke nodded.
Gently paused. ‘Why?’ he asked.
Creke leaned back against the rails of the loosebox, his hand toying with the great beast’s mouth.
‘I could tell you a lie,’ he said. ‘But I won’t. They had some trouble with him over there.’