by Jo Bannister
“You think she threw an Army blanket over the wire?” He had every right to sound doubtful.
“Colonel Fane got his rank from somewhere.”
Harry’s left eyebrow climbed. “You want me to march down there and ask Colonel Fane if he was involved with your dad in an Army-blanket black market?”
“On the other hand, it could be the stuff they line stable rugs with.”
Chapter Seven
So we walked down through the fields to Standings to ask the Colonel if his daughter had a jute rug lined with grey blanket.
It was a difficult interview. I wondered if it would be easier without me there, just man to man, but decided the only one it would be easier for was me and so stayed.
Nor was it made less difficult by the fact that when he saw us coming across the lawn behind his home, the Colonel thought we had come over to congratulate him on his daughter’s performance at the event.
He was in the sitting-room at the back of the house and saw us through the high casements, with their long, white glazing bars like impossibly slim fingers pointing out the finer details of the architecture. If he thought there was anything strange about rather distant neighbours approaching his house via a wood, three fields, and his back lawn, nothing in his greeting indicated as much. He raised a hand and waved us up, and met us at the conservatory door.
“Walked over from Foxford? Great heavens, that must be a couple of miles. Come in, sit down, take some refreshment. What will you have? I can recommend Mrs. Handcock’s lemonade if it’s a little warm for sherry.”
We accepted the lemonade. It was cool and sharp, opaque with the fragments of flesh and rind spiralling in it like sea-gulls riding a thermal. The Colonel sat down with us on the cast-iron chairs in the conservatory, his long, scrubbed, perfectly shaved cheeks pink with pleasure.
“That was a splendid idea of yours, going up to Bramham yesterday. Did you see anything of Sally’s ride?” We nodded. “Excellent! How was she going?”
Harry said, “Like a bat out of hell.” I noticed how low his voice was. I don’t think the Colonel did.
“Splendid. Of course, they put up the fastest time of the day, even with the run-out. Without that they’d have been the combination to beat. After less than three weeks together again it was a damn good showing.” He chuckled then, his sharp blue eyes twinkling. “Forgive me. I’m not only a proud father in this; I’m a proud breeder. It doubles the likelihood of becoming a bore on the subject.”
Harry said, “How long is it since you sold David the horse?”
The Colonel looked at him a little oddly but answered amiably enough. “It must be nearly four years now. We had him till he was five. Sally broke him, of course, so it was easier for her to get on terms with him again than for somebody starting afresh. At least, that’s what we hope the selectors will think.”
“You must wish now that you’d kept him.”
The sharp gaze wasn’t softening at all. Colonel Fane knew that, however politely, however tactfully, he was being questioned. He was helping police with their enquiries. The flush of pleasure died from his cheeks. But he answered Harry’s questions adequately and accurately, partly because he saw no reason not to, partly because he respected the tradition of law even when its practice was personally inconvenient, but mostly I think because our visit had made him our host and he accepted that certain obligations came with that. One was that he shouldn’t tell us to go boil our heads. He might have thought it; he might even have conveyed something of the thought in the precise angle of an eyebrow, the exact note of a word; but we’d have to be a lot more personal and offensive yet before he’d tell us to mind our own damn business.
I sighed inwardly. Where we were going was about as personal and offensive as you could get, but by the time we got there the Colonel would have no illusions left about our respective roles. However testy the host became, the guests wouldn’t leave in a huff until the purpose of the visit had been achieved.
“You can’t keep them all,” he said. “Besides which, as a breeder, your aim is to put horses where they will do the best they’re capable of. You’re judged on the competition results of your progeny. That horse has gone further with David Aston than he would have done if he’d stayed with us.”
“Does Sally share your view?”
The eyes were like steel-blue needles now, the voice honed to a perfect silky edge. “I would have thought my daughter’s views would be something you would discuss with her.”
“I’m sorry, Colonel. I’d like to have your opinion.” Harry’s voice was quiet, firm, both respectful and sympathetic. I knew he was a cleverer man than most people realised, and a kinder one. I tended to lose track of his enormous professionalism. Even through the strain of the situation I got a little lift from being reminded.
Colonel Fane regarded him levelly, containing his anger but not so completely that we were unaware of it. “Very well. Yes, I imagine”—the word was selected, not arbitrary—”that she has mixed feelings on the subject. She’s proud of the horse and fond of David, but if we could turn the clock back, I imagine she’d choose to keep the animal. Even so, she might not have succeeded with him. With some horses, and Gilgamesh is that sort, there’s only one possible combination for success. At the time, we thought his temperament would always be too much of an albatross round the neck of his talent. She was getting better results with Pasha, so when I got David’s offer for the bay, I took it. Sally was sorry to see him go, but the economics of the business depend on selling horses, and you don’t get far only selling the bad ones. And then—” He stopped.
“And then?” prompted Harry.
The Colonel’s quiet anger was growing to real resentment, but still he answered. “This was nearly four years ago—before David was married, before his father died. David and Sally knocked around together a lot when they were teenagers. They shared the same interests, went the same places. There weren’t many other youngsters living on The Brink at that time—I’m not sure there were any—so naturally they enjoyed each other’s company. I used to think David spent more time here than he did at home, but Reggie Aston assured me he was always tripping over the pair of them at Foxford.
“Both of us rather assumed that when they were old enough, they’d—well, do something about it. But time went on and nothing much happened. They remained friends, but as they got about more, they saw less of one another. Then David met Ellen at a shooting party and three months later they were married.”
Harry said slowly, “So when you sold him the horse, you were thinking of David as almost part of the family.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“And aware in your own mind of the possibility that he might actually be part of your family at some point in the future?”
“As I said,” the Colonel said stiffly, “both David’s father and I half-expected and were perfectly happy with the idea of them marrying.”
“Was Sally half-expecting it too?”
At that the Colonel’s head came up like that of a rearing horse, and his cold eyes flashed a warning. “That really is something you’ll have to take up with my daughter!”
“Fair enough,” Harry said reasonably. “OK, three more questions. You said Ellen Aston can shoot. Can Sally?”
“Of course. I taught her myself. She’s very good.”
“Have you ever known anyone—particularly David or Sally when they were kids—ride across Foxford Wood, between your fields and that big field of David’s?”
Fane’s eyes widened, but he thought about it and then he remembered. “Yes, David did it once. On a good hunting pony he had. The wood wasn’t just as overgrown then; Reggie took timber out regularly for firewood and for sale. David would have been about thirteen. He piled branches up against the wire on both sides and timed himself between his house and ours. If I think for a minute I’ll even remember how long it took him.”
“Think for a minute,” said Harry.
“Five minutes an
d forty-two seconds,” said the Colonel. “Sally wanted to try it too, but I wouldn’t let her. She hadn’t David’s pony, she hadn’t David’s skill, and even in those days she had more guts than was good for her.”
So it was possible. Not only that, it had been done before. I breathed softly, letting it sink in.
Harry moved on briskly. “Finally, what colour is the wool lining your stable rugs?”
The utter absurdity of the question took some of the tension out of the air. Fane barked a sudden laugh, and if it was inappropriate, it was at least something of a relief. “What kind of a damn fool question is that? What colour is the gear-stick in your car? What colour are the linings of your pockets? Why would anyone even notice the colour of the inside of a jute rug?”
So, of course, we had to go and look.
With most of Colonel Fane’s stock now out on the spring grazing, the rugs were piled in a neat stack in a corner of the tack-room. We carefully rifled through them, lifting successive corners. They weren’t all lined with blanketing: some of the nylon ones had a fleecy lining. But there were several jute rugs and a couple of green tarpaulin jobs which were lined with thick, slightly felted wool indistinguishable from the Army blanket I slept under as a child.
Except that they weren’t grey. They were fawn. They were brown. One was a tartan in near fluorescent blues and greens clearly designed for the Queen’s Very Own Highlanders. None of them was lined in grey, or a grey mixture, or a mixture with just a bit of grey in it.
“Damn,” said Harry.
The Colonel viewed him with entirely natural satisfaction. “Found what you’re looking for?”
Harry managed an amiable smile and shook his head. “No.”
Perhaps disarmed by such frankness, Fane softened his guard a little. “For heaven’s sake, Marsh, tell me what you’re looking for and then I can help you find it.”
Harry sighed. “I’m still doing what I’ve been doing for the last three weeks, Colonel: looking for some explanation of what happened to David Aston. And I still haven’t found it.”
“You seriously think Sally could have had something to do with it?” His tone was incredulous. Almost he thought it was too silly to worry about.
“What I think doesn’t matter,” said Harry. “It’s what I can prove that counts, and to date I have no proof against anyone.”
“And in the search for proof,” asked the Colonel, sharp eyes shrewd, “have you visited anyone else’s tack-room?” Harry didn’t answer, which I suppose was answer enough. “I don’t understand you, man. You know she was here the night David was shot. Even if my testimony is suspect, you have four unbiased witnesses to confirm it. How could she have been at Foxford shooting David, even if she’d wanted to?”
I could see Harry debating with himself whether he should say any more. Whether it would do more harm or good depended more on the character of the Colonel than the nature of the information.
He decided. “For about ten minutes either side of the shooting Sally was not with you or within sight or earshot of you. It makes it feasible, just.”
Whatever Sally Fane had or had not done, her father was neither party to it nor aware of it. He still didn’t look shocked, or horrified, or grief-stricken or guilty. He looked amazed. “She was upstairs changing her dress! She spilt coffee on it.”
“Whose idea was the dinner party?”
“I don’t know. We’d both of us talked about having some friends round.”
“Who talked about it first?”
Fane shook his head. “I really don’t remember.”
“All right. Were any of your staff still on the yard by ten o’clock?”
“I don’t think so. We didn’t have a foaling that night. I can’t swear to it, but I’d expect the last of them to be away home about eight. That would be the normal thing.”
“Do either you or Sally have, or have access to, a .240 deer rifle?”
“Not now. At least, we don’t have one and I don’t have access to one. You’d better ask Sally if she can borrow one.” His moustache bristled as his lip curled. “I wouldn’t necessarily know, and I’d hate to mislead you.”
“Good enough. If she had the use of such a gun, would she be reasonably accurate with it?”
The moustache stood to attention. “Of course. I’ll tell you something more. If she’d shot David Aston, with a deer rifle or an air pistol or a popgun, he’d be dead.”
We left then, by the main gate. As we walked up the drive, followed by an almost tangible aura of resentment, Harry said quietly, “By the same token, if she intended only to disable him, she was good enough to do it.”
But the interview wasn’t quite over after all. As we neared the high wrought-iron gates, framing another superb view of Warwick-shire in their open arch, Colonel Fane called after us, and we stopped and turned back.
He didn’t give us time to reach him. It wasn’t more conversation he wanted. He called testily to us, “Pasha’s rug, of course, is on Pasha’s back over at Foxford. I’ve no idea what colour it is inside, but I’d rather you look than think we have something to hide.”
After the morning’s exertions I couldn’t face the long walk back to Foxford. We borrowed a phone and Harry called his office, and a few minutes later the squad car which was still making occasional fly-bys picked us up in the lane and drove us round to Foxford.
Karen was putting Lucy away as we arrived. She looked round, but only with the same interest you show a dust-cart or the milk-man. She was getting very blasé about our strange activities.
But she managed a small double take—perhaps more a take and a half—when I asked her about the inside of Pasha’s rug. She didn’t ask why though; she just moved down to his box and threw up a corner of it.
It was grey. We were luckier than that. It was nearly new, quite unworn inside, but half-way along the back seam there was a tiny V-shaped tear in the wool lining. For all the world as if it had been snagged on barbed wire.
While Karen was finding something else for Pasha to wear so that forensics could investigate his nightie—as phlegmatic about this strange request as she had been about the previous ones—I asked her about the big chestnut on which so much of our theory depended. I needed to know if he could have done what the scenario required of him. Obviously he wasn’t Gilgamesh, or Sally would have had no interest in getting hold of David’s horse. But could he still jump big fences at speed—not only the wire fences, one with its temporary top rail and the other hung with six feet of jute rugging, but two big hedges and a hedge and ditch between the wood and Standings? Harry and I had clambered over and through them in ways that a horse could not have done. Pasha had to jump them for the thing to work.
And there was another problem lying in ambush, which we hadn’t yet begun to tackle. Where was Pasha all the time Sally was up at the house? Clearly she hadn’t ridden him into the yard and thrown him into a stable; equally, there was no question of a handy groom to hold his reins under the shelter of the high hedge. You might tether a donkey with the reasonable expectation that it would be there on your return, but what about an event horse? Could you teach them to stay, like a collie dog?
With the possible exception of riding horses, there was nothing in the world that Karen liked doing better than talking about them. I could hardly remember now the quiet thing in the background that she had seemed for the last twelve months. I think the reason we got on so well, the difference in our ages and experiences notwithstanding, was that I was a new audience for her fund of horse talk.
At my question, her face brightened and her voice warmed. “Pasha? He’s a real gentleman. I’d never had much to do with him until this week, but he really is a super horse. He’s the sort of horse you’d pick for yourself—well, I would. He mightn’t make winning times in big competitions now, but he’d never let you down either. Whatever he’s got, he gives you. You can’t not like a horse that genuine. There aren’t that many of them about.”
“How high wo
uld he be able to jump now?”
She shrugged. “It’s a bit hard to say. He’ll have jumped in competitions where the maximum height was three feet eleven; but to clear that much solid timber from sloping ground, say, or at an angle, he might have to jump five feet.”
I pictured it and whistled softly. Five feet was me standing in soft ground. It was the gate into the sand school. There was nothing that big between here and Standings.
It left only one problem. “You know how in cowboy films everyone hitches his horse to a rail in front of the saloon, and when they’ve finished throwing each other through the swinging doors the horses are still there? Can you actually do that?”
Karen looked round at me and grinned. “Course you can. If you’ve an infinite supply of bridle leather and don’t mind chasing your horse down the main street for half a mile before you can ride home.”
“Ah. They tend not to co-operate?”
“Well, I don’t think ours would. It’s just something you wouldn’t do. The first thing you learn in this job is that you never tie a horse up by its bridle. You can tie them by a headcollar as long as they’re somewhere confined—in a horsebox, say, or the stable—but you always use a quick-release knot and tie them to a loop of twine rather than a fixed ring. Because if they panic, they’ll pull back until something breaks, and if nothing else gives, a young horse’s neck can. Or the headcollar breaks, and you find yourself trying to catch an hysterical horse with nothing to grab but his mane. This is not a nice experience.”
I wasn’t having a bundle of fun myself. “So it would be pretty reckless to tie a horse to a tree and leave him there for ten minutes.”
“You’d have more luck house-training a goldfish.”
I was in deep trouble and clutching for straws. “No exceptions?”
She raised an eyebrow and slapped Pasha’s rump through his new rug. “There are no rules about horses that you can’t find an exception to. Maybe one: What goes up must come down—and even that doesn’t apply to a swollen knee.” She turned to face me, and once more I was struck by the maturity that hard work and responsibility had fostered in this young woman. “Clio, what’s all this about? Jumping wire, hitching rails—whatever are you trying to prove?”