Dead Man Riding

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to accompany me some of the way back,’ he said, very correct and formal.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He held out a yellow-gloved hand to help me as I put my foot on the step and swung into the seat beside him. We set off again at a trot, which in a two-wheeled vehicle on a rutted road doesn’t make for conversation and he didn’t try, just stared straight ahead. When we reached the point where the road turned off for Studholme Hall he brought the gig to a smart halt. This was where I should have thanked him and gone on my way. I was just nerving myself to say I wanted to talk to him when he got in first.

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to come and have tea with me?’ he said in that same weary voice that had sentenced the poachers. I stared. ‘Won’t you come into my parlour?’ said the spider to the fly.

  ‘Thank you. That’s very kind.’

  I smiled as well as I could manage and settled myself back in the seat. At a walk now, because the track was narrow, we turned right along the road then through the gateway and down the drive to his house. I noticed that the gates had been opened ready for him. There was more evidence of an efficiently run household when we turned into the stable yard and found a groom waiting to take the reins as soon as we came to a stop, touching his cap to the Major in a gesture like a salute. The groom was a strong-looking man, middle-aged with close-cropped hair, very much the ex-soldier. The Major and I walked round to the front of the house, our feet crunching on new yellow gravel.

  ‘Was your groom with you in the army?’ I asked.

  He jumped, as if his thoughts had been a long way away and I suppose my question was impertinent, but I’d decided you didn’t have to mind your manners too much in the spider’s parlour.

  ‘Oh yes. Sinclair’s been with us a long time.’

  No doubt he was strong, loyal, good with horses, used to taking orders and not asking questions. Useful, I thought, but didn’t say it. The housekeeper must have heard us coming as well because she opened the front door as soon as we set foot in the porch. She looked surprised to see me again so soon, but said nothing.

  ‘Tea in the front parlour please, Mrs Bell. I expect Miss Bray would like the chance to wash her hands.’

  Mrs Bell showed me up a wide dark wood staircase, with rainbow colours spilling over it from stained-glass panels in the window on the landing. New, strident stained glass. The bathroom was the size of most people’s sitting rooms, with mahogany fittings, modern plumbing and more stained glass in the window. I used the lavatory, washed my hands and smoothed down my hair with them (I’d lost my comb somewhere as usual) and inspected my sunburned nose in the mirror. Downstairs, the housekeeper was waiting to show me into the parlour.

  ‘Major Mawbray will be with you in a minute. Do you take milk?’

  She poured Earl Grey and left me to entertain myself with piles of sporting magazines or oil paintings of plain men with handsome horses. Neither appealed, so I wandered over to the grand piano. It was closed and looked as if nobody had opened it in a long time, with a fringed paisley shawl draped over it and family photographs in silver frames on top. There were several different portrait studies of the same person, a fair-haired woman with a soulful look, big dark eyes and a penchant for lacy shawls and collars. In one of the pictures a boy of about five years old was standing beside her in pale satin jacket and knickerbockers, glowering at the camera. He had his mother’s fair hair and dark eyes, but there was nothing soulful about him. Major Mawbray came in and saw me looking at the picture.

  ‘My wife Lilia. She died seven years ago.’

  ‘And that’s your son with her?’

  He gave a nod. He didn’t want to talk about him. He poured hot water into his teacup, took a small blue bottle out of his pocket, palmed a couple of pills and gulped them down.

  ‘So you’re a friend of Beston’s nephew?’

  ‘Yes. You probably saw us out riding on your land.’

  There was no point in beating about the bush. I knew he hadn’t invited me there for the pleasure of my conversation. In fact, it was hard to imagine him finding pleasure in anything. He was looking at me as he’d looked at the poachers in the dock and there was a tension about him, as if he didn’t know what to do with me now he’d got me there. It would have been convenient to think it came from guilt, but I guessed there was another reason. Major Mawbray, protected first by military tradition then the life of a country squire, wouldn’t have had any personal contact with what newspapers and magazines called The New Woman. He’d have read about her though and would know her habits, like appearing in public unchaperoned, wearing bloomers and having unconventional relationships with men. In his limited knowledge of me, I fitted the bill all too well. That question about being a friend of Beston’s nephew possibly implied that I was Alan’s lover but I could hardly say, ‘No, that’s my best friend’. I contemplated taking one of his cigars from the humidor on the table and sitting down to smoke it legs crossed, just to complete the picture for him, but I’d tried a cigar once and it had made me cough. Instead I settled demurely on an uncomfortable chair with a shiny and overstuffed seat. None of the parlour furniture seemed built for relaxing. He stayed on his feet.

  ‘Old Beston never had any respect for anybody’s property.’

  Did that include Dulcie? I almost asked him. At least he wasn’t pretending to be polite. It made things easier.

  ‘Do you think Mr Beston killed your son?’

  He looked at me steadily with eyes like wet pebbles. ‘He admitted firing in the dark at where Arthur was. What am I expected to think?’

  ‘But the police have never found your son’s body.’

  He shook his head and turned away to pour more hot water. While he was pouring he said almost casually, ‘I’ve just got back from the inquest.’

  That surprised me. I knew magistrates had no obligation to attend inquests.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They took evidence of identity and the doctor’s evidence then adjourned until this time next week, pending further inquiries. The coroner released the body for burial.’

  ‘Much as we expected,’ I said.

  ‘I gather you discovered his body, Miss Bray.’

  ‘Did that come out at the inquest?’

  ‘No.’

  So the police had been talking. A magistrate would naturally hear the gossip. At least I knew now why he’d brought me there, so his next question didn’t come as a surprise.

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘On his horse, the stallion.’

  ‘A fall?’

  ‘No, but it looks as if the horse might have rolled on him and there was a bump on his head as if he’d hit it hard on something.’

  He nodded. I suppose some of that might have come out in the doctor’s evidence.

  ‘I heard something about him having tied himself on.’

  Significant. It meant that either the police had no suspicion that anybody else was involved, or Major Mawbray was pretending they hadn’t. It was an uneasy game I was playing, telling him just enough to see how he reacted without giving too much away.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think he killed himself – remorse for what he did to Arthur?’

  I turned the question back on him. ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘I don’t think he was capable of it.’

  ‘Remorse or killing himself?’

  He didn’t answer, apart from inviting me to help myself to more tea. I was thirsty so I did, taking a look round while I drank. The parlour obviously doubled as a library with serveral shelves of books that didn’t look as if they’d been read for years, if ever, mostly campaign histories and manuals of estate management. But there was one section of poetry books, conventional enough in range – Keats, Tennyson, Browning, and Byron of course. The books were in a shelf by the window so I had to screw my eyes up against the sun, trying to see if the Byron might be ou
t of alignment with the rest, as if somebody had been reading it recently. As far as I could see it wasn’t. He saw where I was looking.

  ‘Sun bothering you?’ He made a move to pull the blind down.

  ‘Are you fond of poetry?’

  He blinked at this sudden dip into drawing-room conversation. ‘Not much time for it. My wife liked it though.’

  ‘Byron?’

  ‘Mostly Browning, as far as I remember.’

  That was as close as I wanted to get to Mazeppa. After the literary diversion there was more silence and I was on the point of saying I must be going when he spoke again.

  ‘I suppose the nephew’s the heir, takes on the horses and the lease and so on?’

  From the hard edge to his voice and the way he’d turned away from me again this was an important question to him. It was certainly beyond the bounds of polite curiosity and I might have told him it was none of his business, except I’d got precious little for my trouble so far and was seized with an urge to experiment.

  ‘His great nephew Alan gets the horses and quite a lot of money. The rest of his estate goes to Dulcie Berryman in trust for her child by him.’

  ‘What?’ An undisciplined yelp from a thoroughly disciplined man. ‘What did you say?’

  I repeated it. He looked at me for what seemed like minutes then sat down heavily on a couch.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ I was alarmed at what I’d done. He’d looked ill before, but now he seemed to be struggling to sit upright. Luckily there was a knock on the door and the housekeeper looked in, probably to see if we needed more tea.

  ‘Are you feeling bad, sir? Would you like me to fetch you your other medicine?’

  He nodded, tight lipped. She was back soon with a spoon and medicine bottle on a tray. It gave him a chance to recover and me the excuse to go. I thanked him for the tea and the lift.

  ‘Sinclair will drive you back if you like.’

  But I preferred to walk, back up the drive to the crossroads, turn right for Studholme Hall. Why had the news about Dulcie done that to him? Simple jealousy? Men could be appallingly jealous in sexual matters. Midge, Imogen and I had discussed it sometimes in a mostly literary way, Othello and so on, and now we had the more immediate example of Kit, but I hadn’t expected such an attack of it in the Major’s case. Odd, too, how some women seemed to have a kind of gift for causing it. It was a relief to be out of the parlour and back in the sun. I strode along wondering what I’d got for my efforts and decided it didn’t amount to much. I knew that the Major had a strong and efficient groom, but I could have guessed that. I knew the Major didn’t writhe with guilt at the mention of poetry by Byron, but might have expected that too.

  * * *

  When I came to the gateway to Studholme Hall there was a vehicle ahead of me. It wasn’t one I recognised – a rustic wagon with a black waterproof covering, drawn by a raw-boned dapple grey. It went very slowly, even allowing for the ruts in the track. It wasn’t until I followed it down to the yard that I realised it had been bringing the Old Man’s body home.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THE MEN MUST HAVE DECIDED ALREADY TO KEEP the women out of what followed. I suppose the Old Man would have approved of that, although I didn’t. When I followed the cart into the yard I found all of them except Robin standing there. Alan said to me, ‘Imogen and Midge are up in your room. They’ll tell you what’s happening.’ His voice and face were so strained that I accepted he wanted me out of the way and didn’t argue for once. I found them both sitting on their mattresses, making no pretence of reading or anything else. As soon as my head came up over the stairs from the tack room Imogen burst out, ‘They’re not really going to do it, are they Nell?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Burn him.’

  It was the problem of the codicil. They told me what I knew already – that the inquest had been adjourned and the body released to Alan as closest relative. He and Meredith had arrived home about an hour before, knowing that the body was following, and immediately gone into a conclave with the others in the parlour. Imogen was furious, not at being kept out of things but with the Old Man for imposing yet another burden on Alan.

  ‘It’s barbaric. I don’t see how they can ever consider it.’

  ‘If it’s what he wanted, after all—’ Midge started, but Imogen cut across her.

  ‘What does it matter what he wanted? He was quite insane, the will shows it.’

  In the silence that followed we heard wheels grinding away out of the yard, presumably the funeral cart starting its journey back to town. I wondered where the men had put the Old Man’s body. Not in the tack room this time or we’d have heard. Although I didn’t like to mention it to the other two, there must have been some urgency to the men’s discussion. He’d been dead for four days and it had been unusually hot. As we waited the shadows stretched out over the room and we heard buckets clanking as Robin kept to his evening routine. Then there were quick footsteps and Meredith’s voice asking Robin where they kept spades and shovels. Imogen drew a deep breath.

  ‘At least it sounds as if its burying, not burning.’

  Some time after that Alan called us from the stable yard and we went down to see what they’d decided.

  ‘We’re digging a grave for him up at the top of the field near the woods. We’re going to bury him at sunset.’

  The Old Man had got half of what he wanted. There would be no funeral pyre but he would lie in the topmost field of his land and be buried without religious ceremony. Alan went back up to help with the grave digging.

  ‘At least they haven’t forbidden us to be there,’ I said.

  Imogen wasn’t sure that she wanted to go, but Midge and I were determined to show that much respect for the Old Man at least, so she gave in. The clothes I had worn to visit Major Mawbray would have to serve as funeral wear as well, so I stayed as I was while the other two changed into the darkest things they had with them. We went downstairs, through the house yard and on to our familiar track to the top field. There was half an hour or so to sunset but we’d timed it right because the men were just ahead of us, silhouetted against the golden light, carrying the body on a makeshift bier, each to a corner. They’d put Kit on the right because of his injured left arm. We found out later that the bier was an old door. The shroud they’d wrapped the body in was a horse blanket – which seemed fair enough for the Centaur. There were two figures walking behind them, separate from each other, first Dulcie then Robin.

  We fell in with the procession and went in silence through the gateway, up the cropped field, where the grass was beginning to grow again, past our abandoned college barn. They’d chosen a good place for the grave, at the very top point of the field, shaded by trees at the edge of the wood. The sun was almost down now, just showing over a low cloudbank the colour of purple grapes on the horizon of an inky sea. In the paddock just below and to the right Sid suddenly threw up his head, whinnied and cantered from one side of the field to the other, silver mane flying. It was wrong, I knew, to be superstitious about animals – he was probably just restless because nobody had been up to talk to him that evening – but the whinnying sent a chill down my spine and I could tell the others felt the same. The four men put down the door and we stood round the open rectangle gouged out of the grass.

  Alan said, ‘Well?’ and looked at Meredith. Between them they gently lifted the blanket-wrapped figure and knelt to lower it, clumsily because the grave was deep. Although I wouldn’t have wanted a conventional burial for the Old Man, I found myself wishing for the expertise of professional undertakers. But it was done. They straightened up and, with Nathan’s help, started shovelling in the earth. Dulcie stood a little apart, face impassive. Robin had tears streaming down his cheeks and his lips were moving, probably in prayer whether the Old Man had wanted it or not. The first few dozen spadefuls were laid in carefully, as if the body in the blanket could feel hurt, but once it had disappeared from sight the earth rained in faster and by the
time the sun had set and the edges of the cloud mass had turned red-gold from the afterglow, the job was done.

  * * *

  Perhaps it was that glow on the edge of the clouds that gave Midge the idea – Midge of all people, the practical mathematical one.

  ‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t have a bonfire at least,’ she said.

  We all looked at her, surprised, but the suggestion chimed with the uneasiness I think we all felt. Death needs some ceremony after all and we knew we hadn’t given the Old Man his beacon to cheer his friends and enemies. Without any more discussion we agreed that there should indeed be a bonfire and scattered in all directions to find things to burn. We had no more than half an hour of daylight left and must have needed some relief from the tension by then, because it turned into a wild hunt. Some people went back to the house, others through the fence into the wood. Still in our good clothes, we dragged and carried dead branches, bits of broken chicken coop, barrel staves, the remains of an old wheelbarrow. Even Robin joined in with the rest, bringing up sackfuls of old straw too musty for horse bedding. By the time the light was going we’d built up a good pile on a reasonably flat piece of ground, far enough from the grave for respect, high enough for the flames to be seen a long way away.

  ‘Matches. Who’s got matches?’

  ‘Nathan’s always got matches. Where is he?’

  We shouted for Nathan, thinking he was still in the woods but his reply, breathless and fretful, came from lower down by the barn.

  ‘I’m coming. Don’t be impatient.’

  When he appeared he was dragging the armchair he’d made so carefully.

  Midge protested, ‘Not that. It’s nice.’

  ‘It’s meant to be a funeral pyre, isn’t it? Besides, we won’t be using it any more.’

  Alan and Meredith helped him wedge it into the bottom of the bonfire. Robin and I pulled straw out of the sacks and pushed armfuls of it wherever there were gaps. A little breeze was ruffling the leaves in the wood. Alan straightened up and took the matches from Nathan.