‘I don’t know a thing about horseflesh, myself, and my cousin is headstrong. I wanted to be sure of my ground before I wrote to warn her off the breed. So what can you tell me? Is it true that they’re dumb blonds?’
Annette had begun to look a bit distressed. ‘I wish I could tell you it isn’t so. I love the breed myself. Well, most say it’s not really a separate breed, just a colouring; almost any horse can have the colour pattern. The original ones, though, were from Spain, Queen Isabella’s favourite horses, and the best ones even today have that breeding. We’ve had some splendid palominos here over the years. But I won’t pretend that there’s never a problem. The trouble crops up with careless breeding. If horses are bred purely for looks, leaving out other considerations, eventually you get inbred animals that can barely find their way to the feed trough. It’s not fair to the horses, but some breeders are really unscrupulous. They don’t care if a horse can be trained; they’ll sell somebody a beautiful colt and then claim it’s the owner’s fault when the horse doesn’t prove satisfactory.’
‘Oh, dear! I guess I’ll have to tell Maisie to be really careful. I don’t suppose . . . are there any palominos in your stables now?’ I held my breath.
‘Not at the moment,’ she said, and I nearly gave the game away with a sigh of relief.
‘Oh, I was hoping you might give me some tips about what to tell my cousin to look for in a good specimen.’
‘Well, I could show you some pictures, but the important details are more in the horse’s behaviour than in looks. But I’ll tell you what you might do, if you want. There’s a lovely palomino living not far from here, a mare that’s beautiful and smart as can be. We didn’t sell her, but I wish we had. She’s a horse to be proud of. I know the owner would be happy to show her to you, let you put her through her paces.’
‘I don’t ride, but I’d love to look at the horse.’
‘Here. I’ll write down the owner’s name, and directions to the farm. And I think I have the phone number around here somewhere, if you’d want to call first.’
I glanced at Alan. Was it going to be this easy?
He smiled. ‘We’ve struck a bit of luck, it seems,’ he said, and if I knew what he meant and Annette didn’t, that didn’t matter.
She gave Alan a slip of paper with the information, and I managed to restrain myself and not look over his shoulder until we got back to the car. He handed me the paper, his face a perfect blank.
The owner’s name was Jo Carter.
TWENTY-SEVEN
‘But . . . but . . .’
‘You’re sounding like Paul’s motorbike,’ commented Alan unhelpfully.
‘It’s just that . . . our theory . . . her own horse?’
Watson, riding courteously in the back seat, whined a little. My tone of voice was upsetting him.
‘You’re jumping to conclusions, love.’
‘I am not! I’m not within sight or smell of any conclusion, much less jumping range. All my ideas have just been blown away.’
‘That’s what I mean. Jo Carter owns a palomino mare. You have leapt to the conclusion that it is the only palomino in Gloucestershire and therefore must have been the horse at the shed. If indeed there ever was a horse at the shed, and not just a bit of yellow sewing thread.’
‘Hah! That hair was from a horse. I’ll swear to it.’
‘“I don’t know a thing about horseflesh, myself,”’ he quoted. I swear, that man does know how to be maddening.
‘I do, however,’ I said through clenched teeth, ‘know the difference between hair and sewing thread. I have been sewing on buttons for well over sixty years, including, I would remind you, a good many of yours. I can’t swear that was horsehair. If you can find me, somewhere nearby, a woman, or indeed a man, with bleached blond hair down to the waist, I will concede your point.’
‘Why bleached?’ asked Alan with real interest.
‘You felt how coarse it was. The only time I’ve ever seen human hair like that, it had been so badly treated over the years that it was like straw. And of course the poor woman had split ends and couldn’t grow her hair longer than four or five inches before it broke off.’
‘I bow to your expert knowledge. And I’m sorry for teasing you. But—’
‘I know. You’re right. I did jump to at least one conclusion. But Alan, I don’t believe in coincidence. It really bothers me that Jo owns a palomino, and also stole one to ride away on.’
‘You’re still upset and not thinking clearly. If Jo owns a palomino, and she sees two horses, or more, in a field, which one is she apt to choose to ride? Which one will more readily come to her?’
‘Oh. The one she’s familiar with, I suppose. Do various kinds of horses have various personality traits, like dogs?’
‘My dear, I know almost as little about it as you do, but it would make sense, wouldn’t it?’
‘I guess. Oh, Alan, I thought we were so close, and now it’s all to do over again.’
‘Not quite. We have Jo’s address, and directions to her farm. We didn’t know before where she lived.’
‘The police do, though.’
‘Doubtless. But we’d more or less agreed that the police need some help. So what’s to prevent our going out to have a look? Your famous intuition might find meaning in something the police have overlooked.’
‘Surely someone’s on duty at the place. Will they let us in?’
Alan just looked at me and grinned. I admit, I do tend to keep forgetting how important he is.
I had no idea what we might learn at Jo Carter’s farm. Something more about her, perhaps, but I wasn’t sure information about her was relevant at this point. If she had gone somewhere voluntarily, yes. Knowledge of her habits and preferences might lead to an understanding of where she might go. But she had been taken away forcibly.
‘It is extremely frustrating,’ I said to Alan, ‘to know, almost to a certainty, who kidnapped Jo, and yet know nothing about him, not even his name.’
‘Mmm,’ said Alan, concentrating on the winding Cotswold roads.
I shut up, knowing he hates to be distracted while driving, but a few minutes later when the road ahead was ironed out and became straight and level for a few hundred yards, he said, ‘Yes, I agree. It is frustrating. But we know one important thing about this man. Ben is a sociopath. That means he follows a certain pattern of behaviour and is, in his own twisted, evil way, as predictable a criminal as any out there. We know his essential credo: all his misfortunes, all his plans that have miscarried, are someone else’s fault. We know he has a driving, an insatiable need to get what he wants, as strong as the craving of an addict for the drug. His drugs are power and control. We know he has no conscience, but can be extremely clever and convincing to get his way. We know enough about him to recognize him, when we find him.’
‘When we find him,’ I echoed.
We were silent the rest of the way to Jo’s farm.
The farm looked very much like Jo. I got the notion that I would have known it was hers without being told. It was a foolish idea, of course, but the whole place did seem to suit her personality perfectly.
It was small, compact, and very tidy. It wasn’t a farm at all in the strict sense, I suppose. No crops were apparent and there was no barn, only small outbuildings and an immaculate two-stall stable. A well-kept rail fence enclosed a paddock, and a good-sized pasture behind the house was thickly green with sweet grass.
The house itself, like the other buildings, was built of the golden Cotswold stone and roofed in slate. It was a cottage, really, and the front garden was a cottage garden, glowing with flowers in that profusion envied by gardeners the world over. In back a kitchen garden sported neat rows of vegetables and herbs, and fruit trees trained against the walls.
There was no sign of a golden palomino. There was, however, a neat black car parked in the drive, and as we drove up a trim young woman got out of the car. She was in uniform.
‘May I help you?’ Her att
itude was pleasant, but with an unmistakable air of authority.
‘My name is Alan Nesbitt.’ He pulled out his identification. ‘Retired, as you see, and with no official status whatever, but your chief has asked me to look around a bit and see if I can help. I doubt it very much. He’s a most capable man, and I know he has a fine staff. But I wondered if my wife and I could just take a look at the house?’
The constable hesitated for a moment, and I could almost see the wheels turning. Technically, Alan was simply a member of the public, and unwelcome. But the constable had heard of him, of course, and had, I was sure, been told that he was to be granted every courtesy.
She smiled and handed his identification back. ‘Of course, sir. You’ll be careful to touch as little as possible?’
Alan nodded gravely, and the constable’s fair face was flooded with colour. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she muttered. ‘Of course you know . . .’
We followed her into the house. She might be embarrassed, but she wasn’t going to allow anyone, even a retired chief constable, to roam the house unsupervised.
Alan stood in the minute entryway and looked around. The house appeared to be in perfect order. ‘This is not being treated as a crime scene,’ he said, with a slight lift to his voice. It wasn’t quite a question. The answer was obvious. No fingerprint powder anywhere, no crime scene tape, no sign of police presence.
The constable flushed again. ‘Well, sir, we don’t actually know that a crime has been committed. That is, we have no evidence, other than the phone call and the disturbance at the shed. We did take a quick look here, of course, but we’re pretty sure she wasn’t abducted from here.’
‘Yes, far more likely from her abandoned car, I agree. All the same, I’d like to see over the house, if you will.’
‘You sound as though you’re planning to buy it,’ I whispered as the constable led the way upstairs.
‘Too austere for my taste,’ he whispered back.
I agreed with that assessment. After that riotous garden, the house was an almost shocking contrast. It was so painfully neat and clean, I thought Mrs Bryant would have felt right at home. The walls were painted a pale grey, and I saw no pictures hanging on them. The stair treads were unadorned oak, and when we reached the top landing, the wide oak boards were bare.
There were two bedrooms upstairs, along with a tiny bathroom, almost certainly a late addition to the house, which I guessed was of eighteenth-century vintage. Both bedrooms might almost have served as monks’ cells, save for the width of the beds. Each was a double, covered with a plain white coverlet. It was obvious from the flat, smooth look of the beds that there were no duvets under the coverlets, though the house was chilly even on this late spring day. No rugs lay on the floors; no curtains hung at the windows. There was a large mirrored wardrobe in each room, two uncushioned Windsor chairs, and a washbasin, another obvious twentieth-century innovation. In the front bedroom, a bedside table held a small lamp and two paperback books, the only sign of habitation.
I shivered, not entirely from the cold.
Wordlessly we went back down the stairs.
Downstairs the house was the same. Clean and tidy to a fault, but everything hard-edged. The ‘lounge’ belied its name, with only two chairs, one of them wooden. The other, the only chair in the place that appeared to be at all comfortable, was covered in brown leather and looked more as if it belonged in a man’s den. The kitchen was modestly equipped – the kitchen of someone who cooks but doesn’t make a religion of food. Table and countertops were bare.
‘May I?’ Alan asked the constable, gesturing at the refrigerator.
She moved forward and opened it for him, using a tissue and touching only the very edge of the handle.
Inside were an opened carton of milk that even I could tell, from where I stood, was sour. Some cheese looked fairly fresh, and there was most of a loaf of wholemeal bread and an unopened jar of Branston pickle. The bottom shelf held a lettuce that had seen better days and a couple of apples.
We dutifully visited the tiny room at the back, which Jo apparently used as an office. There was no room for a real desk, but the bookshelf had a pull-down panel that revealed a few pigeonholes with bills (unpaid in one stack, paid in another), stamps, envelopes. There was no computer in evidence, no printer or other appurtenances. Those must be at her professional office. The two-drawer file cabinet was as exquisitely neat as we had begun to expect, and held no surprises.
We had been in the house less than half an hour when Alan thanked the constable. ‘There’s just one more thing,’ he said. ‘The stables look well maintained, but I don’t see any horses. Can you tell me anything about that?’
‘Oh, yes. There were two horses in the pasture when we arrived, beautiful animals, a golden palomino and a bay, both mares. They seemed to be in excellent condition, but when Ms Carter didn’t return after another few days, and we had all that rain, a neighbour asked if he couldn’t take them in and look after them.’
‘That was kind of him,’ said Alan. ‘I’m fond of horses myself. Might I have his name?’
Again her thin, fair skin betrayed her. ‘Um . . . I’m afraid I don’t know his name. My DI took that information, and I wasn’t there. But he lives on the next farm.’ She pointed over the hills. ‘You can just see the horses in his pasture.’
Well, maybe her young eyes could. All I could see was a blur of movement that might equally have been dogs, cats, goats, or motorcycles. But I nodded amiably.
We had, of course, left Watson in the car. Now we let him out for a brief comfort stop, and told the constable about looking for his owner. She admired him, but knew nothing about him. We both thanked her again and climbed into the car.
‘Alan!’ I said the moment we were away. ‘You don’t suppose . . .’
‘It is,’ said Alan sententiously, ‘unwise to calculate the quantity of juvenile poultry until the period of incubation has been completed.’
‘And where did you get that one?’ I asked after a period of stunned silence.
‘Our friend Ed Walinski, last November. He specialized in dreadful puns, but altered aphorisms also formed part of his repertoire. I rather liked that one.’
‘Yes. Well.’ I put my mind back in gear, and said, ‘Alan, tell me what you thought of that house.’
‘Schizophrenic. Warm, welcoming, beautiful outside, clinically cold inside. Of course we don’t really know Jo Carter, but I find it hard to imagine her living there.’
‘Would you like to know what I thought?’
Alan grinned. ‘I imagine you’re going to tell me.’
‘Allergies.’
Alan gave me one of his ‘Have you lost your mind?’ looks. ‘Allergies? Allergies? What do you mean?’
‘I knew someone once who had a house just like that. Lovely garden, sterile house. It wasn’t quite as bad as this one, because she had a lot of money and had bought beautiful bright paintings to liven things up. But there was nothing soft in her house, because although she could tolerate pollen and the like, she was deathly allergic to mould and dust mites. And I do mean deathly. An attack could close off her air supply and kill her.’
‘So you’re saying . . . what, exactly?’
‘I’m saying Jo Carter is allergic to dust and probably to mould spores, that’s all.’
‘And how is that going to help us find her?’
‘I have no idea, but I do know that it increases her degree of risk by a very high factor. I can’t imagine that any kidnapper would worry much about the cleanliness of his prison, let alone our sociopath Ben.’
Alan said nothing, but his hands tightened on the wheel, and he drove faster than the road would really allow.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The farmer next door wasn’t home, but his wife was. She was a cheerful soul, short and plump, shaped rather like the Mrs Noah dolls that used to inhabit Arks in English nurseries. She happily showed us both horses, grazing in the pasture with their own two. ‘And we’ll be missing Jo
’s when she comes home. They’re lovely mares, just lovely, both of them, though Jo’s always fancied the palomino. Beautiful, isn’t she?’
She was. And we were no closer to finding her owner than when we first started out.
We were on our way back to the holiday cottage, discouraged, when the same thought hit both of us.
‘Pharmacy!’ I said at the same moment Alan said ‘Chemist’s!’ He turned the car around at the first opportunity and headed for Broadway.
This time, fortunately, the inspector, one David Owen, was on duty and listened with attention to what Alan and I had to say. He sighed when he had heard it all. ‘It’s speculative, but of course you know that. And we’ve no better lead. You’ll understand I haven’t the resources to put someone in every pharmacy in the county, but I can telephone them all and ask that they call the police if anyone they don’t know comes in with a prescription for epinephrine. If you’re right, Ms Carter would surely have the prescription with her.’
‘My friend was never without it.’
‘You might go one step better,’ said Alan diffidently ‘if you don’t mind my making a suggestion. If anyone knows what doctor Ms Carter usually sees . . .’
‘Of course! That will pinpoint it, and save us a lot of useless telephone traffic. And we can call the doctor, as well, and verify your diagnosis, Mrs Martin.’
He remembered my name, and he was polite, and he apparently believed us. Three points in his favour, to offset the many points his sergeant had lost with his boorish behaviour.
‘You’ll let us know . . .’ I said as we left.
‘I will. You’ve both been of the greatest help, and we owe you that much.’
We were, all three of us, both tired and hungry. We stopped at a pub with a nice garden and ordered beer for two and bangers and mash for three. ‘Alan, I don’t think mashed potatoes are very good for dogs,’ I objected.
The Evil that Men Do Page 20