by Tessa Arlen
Lady Montfort perked up. However upset she is, she doesn’t waste time moping about.
“I knew it, Jackson, I simply knew you would not be presenting this puzzling painting without a solution! Where is Mr. Stafford these days—somewhere useful?”
“Most useful, m’lady. He was drafted into the Graves Registration Commission and is presently stationed in Auchonvillers in northern France. The Auchonvillers commission keeps records of all casualties and deaths in northern France. It would be quite easy for Mr. Stafford to look up the identification information for Lieutenant Carmichael and find out if he is alive or dead, and perhaps he can find out if there is such a man as P. Hector, too.” It was a relief to see Lady Montfort’s tension lift. “Should I write to Mr. Stafford, m’lady?” She dropped her voice as they reached the bottom step of the marble staircase and her words echoed in the cavern of the hall.
“Yes please, Jackson, first post tomorrow. How long does it takes for a letter to get to France?”
“The postmaster general told the newspapers only the other day that the post office guarantees that all letters reach France in two days now, m’lady—it is important for our troops’ morale apparently. If Mr. Stafford can find the information we need quickly, perhaps we will hear in four or five days.”
Evidently this was not a welcome answer, as Lady Montfort’s chin came up and she frowned. “We don’t have the luxury of five days! We have the wretched War Office and Medical Board inspection in four, and we must get Sir Winchell cleared before he is tried for murder.”
“It would be so much better if the murderer turned out to be a civilian than one of our officers,” Mrs. Jackson heard herself say, and then, horrified at the audacity of the idea, she instantly wished she hadn’t said such a thing, for her ladyship turned to her, eyes wide with shock. There now, this is what happens when you take succor in the bottle, she thought. What can I be thinking?
“Perfectly brilliant of you, Jackson. If we have not solved our crime before then, we can just keep silent about Walter Howard as Sir Winchell’s alibi for his uninterrupted day of fishing until after the Medical Board have completed their inspection and gone away.”
And it was Mrs. Jackson’s turn to be shocked.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mrs. Jackson was up, washed, and dressed and by half past seven the next morning was reading through her letter to Ernie Stafford.
Well, I hope that will do, she thought, as she skimmed through her opening paragraphs. She seemed not to have the flair for written conversations and the confidences that some letter-readers enjoy and often require. What a dismal job he has been allotted in France. Burying the dead; burying Britain’s hope, as Ernie Stafford called it: young men barely out of boyhood and men with wives and children praying for them at home. He had told her that part of his job was finding the right sort of terrain to create new graveyards. He did his best to find land on the rise of a hill where the earth was dry and clean and the air sweet. She thought of all the beautiful gardens that her friend had created over the years, and how saddened he had been on the day Britain had declared war on Germany. She read again what she had written.
I am pleased to hear that they have moved your headquarters further back behind the lines. Your description of the countryside reminds me of the Yorkshire dales with its sheep pastures and gray stone villages.
I walked over to Iyntwood last week and received a very heartwarming welcome from Lord Haversham, who came home to recover from a broken arm.
And then she described as clearly and concisely as she could the events that had taken place at the hospital, playing down the murder because she did not want to alarm him.
It would be useful if you could help the hospital confirm the identity of two of our patients. We are sure Captain Bray is who he says he is, but it is Lieutenant Carmichael that we are puzzled about.
She copied down the identification number, name, and regiment, the Gloucestershires, for both Captain Bray and Lieutenant Carmichael from her patient ledger.
And if you could also look for a man with the last name of Hector, initial P or D, who might also have been in the same battalion of the Gloucestershires, it would be most useful. And need I say that speed is of the essence?
And then, because her letter should contain some personal details:
Did I say how much I am enjoying my new job? The treatment of our patients is most interesting and I am beginning to believe that perhaps this business of talking about the things that trouble and worry us, usually never mentioned so as to not burden family and friends, does seem to be helpful, if not taken too far.
And as it would amuse him, she told him about his old friend Mr. Thrower and his triumph over Inspector Savor.
I think we were all hoping that the inspector would want to check up on Bill’s aggressive nature himself. But unfortunately he decided against such a course, which was a sore disappointment to Mr. Thrower. You know how he proud he is of Bill’s efficiency as a watchdog.
She signed her letter, folded the three sheets of closely written pages, and slid them into the green envelope, a signal to the censor that the letter was from an auxiliary hospital and not to a man in a fighting unit and need not be opened and read. Leaving her envelope in the hall postbag, she let herself out of the front door of Haversham Hall and walked in the direction of the kitchen gardens.
Mr. Thrower was planting winter-cabbage seed, and he lifted an arm in salute as he saw her, but he did not stop to come over. With her eyes down she walked along the grassy area under the walnut tree toward the half-open double gates that led out of the kitchen garden on its south side. The grass felt brittle and dry underfoot. There was no sign of footprints anywhere in the hard earth: not from a human shoe or boot, a bicycle’s wheels or the imprint of a horseshoe. On she went out through the open gate to the cart track that ran along the outer side of the kitchen-garden wall. The early morning sun struck hot on her forehead and she pulled down the brim of her hat to shade her eyes.
On the other side of the track was a tall hedge separating it from the wheat field. If the man on the horse had ridden up the track, he would have been completely concealed from the field—even from the vantage point of the Howards’ barn.
She followed the track along the wall of the kitchen garden until it dodged out from behind the hedge to become a public footpath. Here it linked up with all the footpaths and bridle trails in the area as they rambled and meandered across the county to connect hamlet, farmhouse, croft, and village to others and thence onward across the entire country, providing the ancient network of rights-of-way that the people of Britain had walked for centuries. Someone had told her that it was possible to walk the length and breadth of the country on its footpaths and bridle trails, as the law forbade any landowner, city council, or industrialist to either obstruct a right-of-way or deny access.
Talbot land stretched in each direction for mile after fertile mile, and its public footpaths were well maintained by the Land girls even in these days of war. Hedgerows were trim and ditches clear of weeds. She glanced at her watch, turned left, and with her eyes on the tracks’ hard and rutted surface she set a brisk pace in the direction of Crow’s Wood.
Tall wheat, yet to be harvested, stretched away from her in a long sweep burnished to a rich, deep gold. The sky, a blue of such exquisite clarity that it was impossible to mimic its likeness in fabric or paint, provided a perfect backdrop to the rounded expanse of swaying gold. She stopped, lifting her hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and looked around her, partly to assess the distance, up on its rise, of Holly Farm and its barn standing in a ruffle of dark green woodland, and also to enjoy the simple delight of the pastoral beauty of England. The bent ears of wheat, heavy with grain, rippled and surged like the waves on an inland sea as a breeze blew up the valley. She might walk off the path and stand almost chest deep in the crop it was so tall. She stretched out an arm and palm-down brushed the edge of the field’s tawny back, but she didn’t slo
w her pace. The cart track in front of her widened and continued across the bottom end of Iyntwood’s empty horse pasture to the Home Farm and was intercepted by a footpath that curved south to skirt the deeply shadowed fringe of Crow’s Wood. A wooden fingerpost informed her MARKET WINGLEY 22 MI.
She stopped briefly in the shade of oak trees. The surface of the path was rich with damp leaf mold, the grass on either side a lush, soft green. Her eyes searched the ground as she walked slowly forward. There! She stopped and crouched down. Pressed deep into the soft earth was the great round print of the only Shire horse in the area.
Dolly’s iron shoes were heavy: the six square-headed nails that secured shoe to foot were set three each side of the deep V of the frog of her hoof, clearly visible in the print. The mare was a strong-boned and stalwart creature standing almost eighteen hands at her withers. If she had cantered along this path on the edge of the woodland her stride would easily measure thirteen or fourteen feet depending on her speed. Eyes down, Mrs. Jackson walked forward.
Well for heaven’s sake! Mrs. Jackson’s exclamation was triumphant. Here are Dolly’s hoofprints going both ways: two here and a third one there going north, nearly obliterating a fourth southbound print. She hurried forward, eyes down. Now that is very interesting, she thought, there is no sign of any other type of tracks. No wheel prints from the tire of a bicycle, or cart, and the path is certainly not wide enough for a motorcar at this point.
She was clear of the protection of the wood and now the wheat field stretched out on either side of her and the full force of the sun fell on the path as it ran ahead, hard-packed and as straight as a die right down the middle of the field. Not a hoofprint to be seen anywhere. She was halfway across the field now and on her right, to the west, she saw the rise on which Holly Farm house sat with its tall barn. She could easily make out the open gable door on the second story where Walter had whiled away his lonely days, a fugitive from the war. He was not there today. He is probably just finishing his breakfast with his family, poor lad, she thought as she remembered that this morning Walter would go down to Market Wingley with his father and Lord Montfort to turn himself in. She resumed her brisk walk across the field.
Ten minutes later she could see the hedge at the field’s edge, another ten and she came up to the big five-bar gate. She leaned against its top rail to catch her breath and gazed out onto Brook End Lane and checked the time. It had taken her almost an hour to walk from the kitchen garden to this gate and she breathlessly realized that she had been going at quite a clip. That’s a distance of at least three miles, maybe even a little more, she thought as she opened the gate to the meadow where Dolly had been let loose to enjoy a break in her workday.
Poor Dolly, she thought, instead of an hour or two of cropping meadow grass and staring contemplatively into the brook that flows into the river at its border, she was made to gallop across country. She walked down to the little stream and checked along its edge, and under the shade of a willow tree in the soft mud she found what she was looking for: the large, almost circular prints of Dolly’s hooves.
Lieutenant Carmichael had certainly brought Dolly down to the pasture, but instead of letting her loose, had he jumped up on her back and ridden her as fast as she could go across the wheat fields and up to the kitchen garden? She imagined him sliding off the blown horse at the south gate of the kitchen garden and loosely tying her halter to it. “Hullo there, Evelyn, digging potatoes again?” he might have called out as he sauntered across the lawn under the walnut tree, mopping his brow from his gallop. She saw Captain Bray start to straighten his back, head turned toward Carmichael, and in one swift bound the lieutenant sprang forward and, lifting his right arm, hit the captain a stunning blow on the top of his head. He brought a murder weapon with him, she thought as in her imagination the captain fell like a stone facedown in the earth of the last potato row.
If it was Lieutenant Carmichael who had ridden Dolly, he would have known where to find the solitary captain; he would have carefully set up his alibi and arranged transportation. He had galloped with one hand on the halter because in his other he was holding his weapon. She felt most uneasy as she stood on the edge of the pasture, her head bent deep in thought.
It all fits together quite well, but did Lieutenant Carmichael have enough time to accomplish all this in twenty minutes? She had walked as fast she could for the most part, slowing down only slightly as she checked the path at the edge of Crow’s Wood. How long would it take to gallop three miles? Dolly’s stride was long, but, as her ladyship had pointed out, she was a heavy animal built for hauling, not racing.
Mrs. Jackson had not worked for the Talbot family for as long as she had without picking up some information about horses. Thoroughbreds on the racetrack were capable of the highest speed, and Bruno, Lord Montfort’s stallion, a tall strongly built hunter bred not just for speed but for the endurance of the chase, would probably be able to run three miles quite easily and in a matter of minutes. But Dolly was not built for the raking speed of a Thoroughbred or the pace and endurance of a hunter. Would she even be able to sustain a full-out gallop for three miles? Lady Althea had said that Lieutenant Carmichael had taken twenty minutes to turn Dolly out in the pasture and then join her for a picnic; could he possibly have climbed on Dolly’s back, galloped to the kitchen garden, killed Captain Bray, and then galloped back?
We’ll have to ask Lord Haversham, he’ll know. When he was fourteen, before he had discovered motorcars, the Talbots’ son had been given a very severe dressing-down by his father for joining in a steeplechase on one of his lordship’s hunters. The Talbot family revered their horses; there was never any question of their being whipped across country, taking all fences and hedges regardless of the dangers in a reckless steeplechase.
But if Lieutenant Carmichael murdered Captain Bray, then who shot the lieutenant? she wondered, before reminding herself not to go too fast and overwhelm her thinking.
She felt at this moment that the answer lay in the painting in the art room, depicting a likeness of Carmichael but with the name Hector painted in the lower right-hand corner. And with this thought in mind she set off as fast as she could in the direction of Iyntwood to find Lady Montfort and Lord Haversham.
* * *
“Ah yes, I see what you mean, Jackson, and your calculations are probably quite right so far as a Thoroughbred or a hunter is concerned. In the old days, before the war, a lot of farmers hunted on their plow horses, you know. They were such wonderfully steady beasts and quite talented jumpers. They did not have the speed of a horse bred for the track, or the hunt. I can’t imagine Dolly, even though she is a young horse, managing six miles in twenty minutes, she would have been exhausted at the end of it, blown and lathered.” She shook her head. “But as you say, we should ask Lord Haversham.”
* * *
“Harry,” Lady Montfort said when he had been sent for and had said good morning to her and Mrs. Jackson. “How long do you think it would take Dolly to go at her top speed from Brook End Lane along the footpath through the Holly Farm wheat field toward Crow’s Wood and then along the track to the south gate of the kitchen garden? We think that distance is about three miles.”
He laughed and said he thought Dolly would take the best part of a morning. “Would she be pulling a plow?”
His mother smiled. “She was probably being ridden, Harry, from the pasture by Brook End Lane. So, how long would it take her with a strong rider on her back to make the distance?”
“Are you serious, Mama? Ride Dolly, who is a particularly lazy horse by the way, three miles at her top speed?” And catching sight of his mother’s expression: “Ah, it’s a serious question then.”
She beamed at her son in reply. “Dolly is a willing plow horse, but I don’t suppose she has ever been under saddle.”
“The Brook End Farm children get on her back. I have seen all four sitting up there like birds on a branch.”
“And Dolly, what was she doing?”
>
She shrugged her shoulders. “She was cropping the grass, as placid as can be.”
“So Dolly, who as far as we know has never been under saddle, would be an unwilling partner in a ten-minute gallop across a wheat field.” He described the arc of her run with his splinted right arm across the room.
“But it was Dolly, wasn’t it, Jackson? First of all Walter saw her, and Mrs. Jackson has just walked that way and she saw Dolly’s hoofprints, didn’t you, Jackson?”
“Yes, m’lady, I believe it was Dolly. I compared the prints by the stream in the meadow with the ones by Crow’s Wood and they match. Big as soup plates they were and almost completely round.” Mrs. Jackson did not ride but she did know the difference between the prints of a plow horse and those of a hunter.
“Well, Harry, are you going to commit to how long it would take Dolly to gallop three miles?”
Her son gazed at the far wall in concentration, as if he was doing mental arithmetic. “If you could get her to canter it would be a miracle, and you would have to have spurs and a whip even for that.” He shook his head as he contemplated Dolly’s merits as a racehorse.
Her ladyship sighed. “Yes, I think he is right, Jackson. I would not envy anyone trying to get consistent speed out of her.”
Lord Haversham gave it some more thought. “Ten minutes one way if she was not tired, if it was not a hot day and she was willing, and even then only if you were a good rider with a strong leg.” He was curious now and taking their idea a little more seriously.
His mother said, “Walter saw a gray horse being galloped across the wheat field. It could only have been Dolly and she was galloping.”