by John Burke
Caspian tried to suppress a mounting antagonism. Simply by existing, the tetchy old woman was an eternal source of dissension within her family. Along with the antagonism went a mounting suspicion. He refused any longer to see her as the helpless, hard-done-by widow she tiresomely presented herself as being. But still he could not be sure how exactly he did see her.
Abruptly he said: ‘And the dog? Was that the vapours, too—its own foolishness—getting itself decapitated?’
Judith gasped. ‘No! You don’t mean Pippin?’
‘Alex,’ Bronwen begged. ‘SureIy you don’t have to—’
‘Somebody’—Caspian stared at Lady Brobury and saw that she had no intention of flinching—‘cut off Pippin’s head and stuck it on a post.’
Judith whimpered, gagged; Bronwen leaned closer and put a hand firmly on her arm.
‘How can you be so callous?’ said Lady Brobury. ‘Judith, my dear, this is all becoming so distasteful. I’m sure you would feel better in bed.’
Judith did in fact make a move to get up. Before she could heave her weight from the chair, however, there was the crash of the front door closing David marched in, driving Evan Morris before him as if the man had been one of his own hogs.
‘Margaret still resting?’
‘As we all should be. You certainly can’t disturb her at this time.’ Lady Brobury was, of a sudden, solicitous.
‘I heard you come up the stable-yard.’
Margaret stood in the doorway behind her brother. She had pulled a woollen dressing gown over her nightgown, and her hair was drawn back into a hastily woven bun.
‘You can’t show yourself like that,’ protested Lady Brobury. ‘It’s most unseemly. If there’s anything to discuss it can very well be settled without having to drag you from—’
‘I want it settled,’ said Margaret, ‘in my presence. Without delay.’ She advanced into the room and stopped by Evan Morris’s shoulder. He kept his head very still. She sniffed once, twice; and said with loathing: ‘It was you. I’ll swear it was you.’
‘Your ladyship, I don’t know what all this is about. I swear I don’t.’
‘Be quiet,’ snapped David. ‘You’ll speak when you’re spoken to. And now, let’s go over it from the beginning.’
His mother clapped a hand to her head. ‘It’s cruel. All this noise, this bullying. I don’t know how I’m expected to sleep tonight. My head.…’
‘It might be better if you did go to bed, mother. I’ll get Jenkins to see you to the lodge.’
‘I think it would be better if Lady Brobury stayed,’ said Caspian.
She bestowed an icy glare on him. ‘I have every intention of staying, Dr. Caspian, without needing to seek your permission.’
David took his sister’s elbow and led her to an armchair by the fire. She was beginning to tremble, and held out her hands to the warmth. David turned to Caspian, but still kept an eye on the sullen, hunched figure of the swineherd.
‘Now, Alex, will you be good enough to tell us what you found this morning?’
Stirred by renewed jealousy and the memory of Bronwen’s sensual dream torment, Caspian quelled his instinctive hostility. David’s decisiveness in tracking down Evan Morris and bringing him here so promptly deserved as brisk a response. Friendly and serious, Caspian said: ‘Ought we not to start at the beginning, with Margaret’s experiences?’
‘Of course. You’re quite right. Margaret—’
‘By whose authority,’ demanded Lady Brobury, ‘is Dr. Caspian imposing himself on this fruitless inquiry?’
‘Margaret,’ said David, ‘will you tell us what happened when you left here on Jenny yesterday morning?’
She clasped her hands together, slowly rubbing them. It was clear that she would not speak until she was sure her voice would be steady.
She began: ‘You all saw me go, so you know what time it was. I was riding Jenny, and the dog.…’ She faltered, then made herself continue. ‘Pippin followed me. I kept shouting at him to go home, and whisking my riding crop at him, but he just trotted along behind.’
‘Quite uncontrollable,’ murmured her mother. ‘Quite useless.’
Margaret had set a steady pace which would get her to Lenhale in time for any mid-morning train there might be. If she found when she arrived that there was time to spare, she was quite prepared to order an early lunch at the inn, after stabling Jenny. It was a mild, pleasant morning, and she enjoyed the ride. Years before she had come along this route more than once with her father. There were few striking landmarks, but she tried to pick out plantations which had been young when she was young, and to guess in advance what side path or firebreak lay beyond the next gentle rise, around that next clump of oaks.
The noises of the woodland were so different from the Malayan forests through which she had travelled sometimes with her husband. A few evoked moments of her childhood; others had been forgotten, or were new to her. Breeze and birdsong, rustling of leaves and the thud of Jenny’s hoofs, all fitted into a pattern.
But then there was a snuffling and whistling which at first she could not identify. It came from the fringes of the wood on her right just as the avenue along which she rode was beginning to narrow.
‘Swine rooting for acorns?’ suggested Caspian quietly.
Evan Morris shook his head resentfully.
Lady Brobury said: ‘Don’t put words into the girl’s mouth.’
‘I didn’t know what it was,’ said Margaret, ‘but it seemed to follow me, crashing along just inside the wood, keeping pace with the horse.’ She stared into the leaping flames.
She had ridden a few hundred yards further when the noise began to worry Pippin. Instead of bounding along behind, pausing for an occasional sniff in the bracken and a game with some fallen twig, he came closer to Jenny’s hoofs, whining, looking up as if for protection. Then he began to growl and make little sorties towards the edge of the wood, but without actually plunging in between the trees.
All at once the noises ceased. There was a strange lull. Margaret urged the mare onward, eager to reach the top of the slope and go over the ridge above Lenhale. But the dog did not follow. It stopped, pointed, and then suddenly with a violent barking launched itself into the darkness.
Then it screamed. The horse reared. Pippín streaked out of the trees again, almost under Jenny’s forelegs. She whinnied, shied away, and stumbled. Margaret felt herself sliding sideways. She tried to hold on, but Jenny was down and she went down with her. Rolling clear, she was aware of Pippin madly circling them both and dashing back through the trees. Hysterical barking became a scream again. The mare answered, scrambling to her feet, shuddering, and galloping off along the ride. Margaret shouted. The mare went faster. The only response was one final, awful yelp from Pippin; then silence.
Silence save for a heavy crashing through the bushes, and a sudden snort of what might have been laughter or hatred. Before Margaret could get to her feet and look round, a hand was clamped over her mouth. A fist drove brutally into her back and began to force her off the path and in through the trees. She struggled, tried to kick back, but was driven onwards. Ahead was a clearing; and on the far side of the clearing was a hut. She hoped for a wild second, as her captor reached past her to drag the door open, that she could wriggle free and turn on him. But he clamped her even closer, thrusting his head against her neck, and once the door was half-open hurled her forward so that she smacked into the far wall. Robbed of breath, she collapsed on the stinking floor. Before she could get even to her knees, the door grated shut and the light was blocked out.
She shouted, but there was no answer. She went on shouting. And then, when she knew that no one would hear, she began pulling and kicking and clawing at the door.
‘And the man who threw you in,’ prompted Caspian when David, staring lividly at Evan Morris, seemed incapable of framing a question: ‘did you see his face?’
‘No.’
‘No way of identifying him?’
‘He stank
,’ said Margaret, ‘of pigs.’
‘Sheer imagination,’ said Lady Brobury. ‘Ideas they’ve put in your head. Obviously you fell foul of a poacher, who didn’t dare let you see his face and bundled you into the hut. There’s no more to it than that.’
Evan Morris turned ponderously towards her. An insolent grin creased the grime of his face and faded slowly, complacently.
David said: ‘And the poacher fastened the door so that she could die of starvation?’
‘He probably only wanted time to get away. He’d have guessed someone would come along and find her.’
‘Alex, you and Bronwen were the ones who did find Margaret. What made you turn back and look for her?’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Brobury thinly, ‘what did make you start prying, Dr. Caspian?’
‘I’ll not have it called prying.’ Margaret’s face flushed with more than the heat of the fire. ‘If they hadn’t come in search of me, I’d have been left for dead.’
‘Alex?’
Caspian positioned himself by the end of the mantelpiece. He looked down on their faces in the flickering light: all upturned save for the swineherd’s. Morris stood back from the group with his head averted, apparently studying a far corner of the carpet.
Caspian described his arrival with Bronwen at Lenhale and the casual enquiry at the ostlery, which ceased to be casual. He glossed over the true nature of their unease: in such company it was simpler and safer to talk of sudden impulses than of psychic powers slowly reawakening. ‘We felt there was something wrong,’ he hurried on. ‘It…well, let’s just say it gave us the fidgets. We hired two horses and rode part of the way back.’
‘But how did you know where I would be?’ Margaret was looking curiously up at him.
‘How did you?’ Her mother intervened again. ‘If there’s anyone who arouses my suspicion, it’s you, Dr. Caspian. How could you have known about the hut, and about Margaret being in it?’
They would not understand and must not be allowed to understand. ‘We didn’t know,’ said Caspian with a barely perceptible hesitation. ‘We spent some time moving about before we heard her.’
‘Heard her?’
‘Yes,’ said Caspian firmly: ‘heard her.’
Margaret was shaking her head uncertainly. Before she could raise troublesome doubts, Caspian took over the inquisition without David realizing that the initiative had passed from his hands.
‘You claim,’ he said over the heads of the others to the swineherd, ‘that you found Jenny, the mare, wandering near Lenhale village.’
‘That I did.’
‘Why didn’t you bring her back here where she belonged?’
‘Not much of a hand with horses, I’m not. And that Jenny’s always been a bit on the skittish side. I’d be afear’d to go far with that ’un. Only Sir Mortimer rightly knew how to handle ’un.’ Morris managed to make it a sly reproach, aimed at the back of Margaret’s head. ‘Safest thing was to get her to Harwood the ostler, and leave her there to be picked up.’
‘Why didn’t you report the fact to Sir David here, or to Lady Brobury?’
‘Didn’t have no cause to come right back over the estate, not right away. As soon as I was here I’d ha’ done it—first thing tomorrow, most likely.’
‘Or never?’
‘You got no cause to say things like that to me, mister.’
‘If nobody was aware that Mrs. Henderson had not even reached Lenhale on Jenny—’
‘I didn’t know nothing about Mrs. Henderson. Didn’t know what that horse was doing there, and never had no call to ask. Did what I thought best, that was all.’
‘That hut in the woods is yours?’
‘There’s a couple I use, yes, when the weather turns nasty. Not much call to be there this time o’ year.’
‘So that once Mrs. Henderson had been shut in there, and nobody knew that she had failed to reach Lenhale and caught the Hereford train, she could have remained there for…how long?’ Caspian’s gaze swung to his right so that Lady Brobury lay in the path of his challenge. ‘How long would it have been before anyone commented on Mrs. Henderson’s disappearance? You here at Ladygrove would have thought she must be busy in Hereford. Her housekeeper there would have assumed her to be still at Ladygrove. How long before people got round to comparing notes: four days, five days—a week? And why’—he spun back towards Morris—‘was she imprisoned in the first place?’
‘No use asking me…sir.’
Silently Bronwen said: Because Margaret must not be allowed to reach Hereford.
‘Because,’ said Lady Brobury, ‘that dog flushed out a poacher. Is it not perfectly plain? The dog got the man’s scent and went wild, the fellow killed it, and then pushed Margaret out of the way before she could see his face. That’s why.’
In shaky unison Bronwen and Caspian shared it: Because Judith must not be allowed to leave Ladygrove, must not be taken away by Margaret, that’s why.
Caspian was horrified by the strain of keeping in tune with Bronwen. That corrosive jealousy had done incalculable damage to their loving, unquestioning complicity.
‘Where were you’—he forced himself to concentrate on the swineherd—‘at the time Mrs. Henderson was riding from here to Lenhale?’
‘How’d I be knowing what time that’d be?’
‘Let’s say between a quarter past eight and nine o’clock yesterday morning.’
‘That’s hard to say, now. I don’t keep much track of time. But let me see…part of the morning I know I was on…ah, yes, now. Yes, I’m thinking so.’
Morris stared at Lady Brobury.
She said: ‘Morris was here with me at that time.’
‘With you?’ David voiced the disbelief Caspian was already feeling.
‘Gracious, how silly.’ Lady Brobury wagged her head contemptuously. ‘I wasn’t connecting the two things. Of course, that settles the whole ridiculous business. Morris was with me from half-past eight at the latest, no question of that. We were discussing winter feed and pannage and what we might hope for in next year’s litters. No question about it.’
‘He was with you,’ said David, ‘and didn’t mention the horse he had delivered to the Lenhale ostlery?’
‘That was afore I went back over Lenhale way,’ said Morris in malevolent triumph. ‘Earlier in the morning, that’d be.’
‘Half-past eight and quite some while afterwards,’ said Lady Brobury. ‘So that settles it.’
Caspian cursed to himself. One lame question, one error by David, had steered the whole inquisition down the wrong trail. The defence was so glib; and so false. But who could contest the alibi provided by Lady Brobury? Who would dare, without also daring to accuse her to her face of complicity in the whole perverse affair?
He watched the flicker of firelight on bewildered faces. A coal fell, broke, and flared up, and he saw Margaret turn away, incapable of grappling with what had happened to her; David at a loss; Judith dejected and withdrawn into tired remoteness; and Bronwen as angry and frustrated as himself, smelling wickedness as he smelt it and not knowing how to pursue it to its lair. It was escaping them, mocking them. Biding its time.
And Evan Morris, the swineherd: what hold did he have on Lady Brobury, that he should be able to twist what words and excuses he needed from her so readily?
‘If there’s nothing else then, Sir David.’ Morris was standing with shoulders squared, sneeringly sure of himself.
David’s arms flagged his despair. ‘Very well. But we’ll talk again tomorrow. You haven’t heard the last of this.’ It was an empty threat. But as Morris slouched towards the door and paused only to exchange a last glance with Lady Brobury, David asked wildly into nowhere: ‘Where exactly did all this take place—where did you come off the mare, Margaret?’
Margaret and Caspian, both seeing the spot so clearly again, started to speak at once: saw at once the junction of main avenue and side track, the rail barring half the ride, the bare patch of badly rutted earth.
&nb
sp; It was Margaret who finished the sentence.
‘You see!’ Lady Brobury sat back. ‘Jenny put her foot in a rabbit-hole.’
‘But that’s the very place where father met his accident!’ cried David. ‘And the horse shied and went down…again?’
Morris and Lady Brobury were still looking at each other. In the second before their glances snapped away, Bronwen and Caspian shared a topsy-turvy, fragmented vision of what the swineherd and his patroness had shared. If only they had been more closely linked, if only they had been singleminded and less wary of each other, still they might have seen it whole and clear. But there, splintered yet briefly identifiable, it was.
Sir Mortimer was galloping up that same ride. The same rail was there, the same patch of denuded earth. And there was something dashing at his horse’s forelegs: Jenny’s legs and stumbling hoofs, but not Pippin beneath them. It could have been a tiny, terrified pig. Or a vicious one.
He was down. There was pain in his right shoulder, and his right leg had twisted under him. As he struggled to shift into a more tolerable position, the horse reared up beside him and was off in a wild flight; and there were fat shapes close to the ground, busy bustling shapes leaping greedily out of the woodland shadows. They came tearing at him with snouts ready to nuzzle him down, tusks to slash and rend.
Then they were gone. Avenue and woods were gone, the room was restored. Firelight spurted and subsided.
The door closed behind Evan Morris.
But the past had not been closed off swiftly enough. Through the distorted vision of Lady Brobury and her swineherd, Caspian| and Bronwen had witnessed the death of Sir Mortimer Brobury. And they knew, sharing the foresight and hindsight of those other two, that it had been no accident.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Judith said: ‘But I don’t want to leave. It was silly of me to make such a fuss about it. This is my home, and it’ll be the baby’s home.’