Dead Man Riding

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘He?’

  ‘It was definitely a man Kit chased. A man with fair hair. Major Mawbray’s son has fair hair. There was a photograph of him on the piano.’

  I’d forgotten that I hadn’t told him about taking tea with the Major so I had to explain. The path had curved round, bringing the waterfall in sight. He listened, still frowning.

  ‘So what’s your theory?’

  ‘It’s nothing as clear as a theory, but you know I’ve thought all along that young Mawbray might not be dead. Then there was the way the Major reacted when I told him about the will and Dulcie and the Old Man’s baby. And the other anonymous note on the wagonette.’

  ‘Different paper and handwriting.’

  ‘Completely, and quite probably a different person. But there’s surely something there. If we could get a sample of young Mawbray’s handwriting—’

  His hand touched my wrist again, warningly this time. ‘Nell, this is a tall tower of perhapses on a very shaky foundation. Are you even sure our burglar last night was fair-haired? It was dark, remember.’

  ‘I had a good view of him from above. You can make out a white shirt in the dark, so why not fair hair?’

  ‘Especially if fair hair is what you want to see.’

  ‘So you’re accusing me of making it up?’

  ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. But even a good mind can play odd tricks.’

  ‘Meaning my mind is playing odd tricks?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s trying very hard to put a fence round certain areas and not look over it. You said we’re all coming apart. What did you mean by that?’

  ‘That we’ve started quarrelling, people going off on their own, hiding things from each other. I’ve been doing it as much as anyone and I hate it. We started this holiday talking about truth and justice and now I’m honestly not sure what we mean by either.’

  ‘You might say that’s progress.’

  ‘Except we both know that it isn’t. What it’s doing to us isn’t progress at all.’

  We walked on in silence for a while. The figures of the hiking party ahead of us appeared in silhouette then vanished over the brow of the hill. Long shadows were stretching out from the rocks over the heather and bilberry beside the track. Meredith broke the silence.

  ‘Did you come out looking for Nathan?’

  ‘No. But it was hard not to think about him. After all, he was always the one you could rely on to be cheerful whatever was happening, but he’s been so quiet and odd since the Old Man died. He was totally loyal to his friends, but he’s walked out on Alan when he’s in trouble. Nathan’s one of the kindest men I’ve ever met, but he’s hurt Midge badly. Then there was something else.’

  He gave me a questioning look.

  ‘Then I found a place where somebody had made a fire. I’ve no proof of it but it was the way Nathan made fires. I think he’s out here somewhere in the hills.’

  ‘Do you remember, Nell, what I told you when all this started? You can’t start a logical course of thought then stop because you don’t like where it’s taking you.’

  ‘Why not? I might have been wrong about how the Old Man’s hands and feet were tied. Midge might have been wrong too. We were hardly in a calm frame of mind. The coroner’s jury would understand that, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘I’m sure they would. A country coroner and a jury of respectable middle-aged tradesmen faced with a good-looking and well-brought-up young woman who’s been subjected to a terrible experience. They’re certainly not going to be hard on you.’

  ‘So all I’d have to do would be fluttery and womanly and confused?’

  ‘You’ll probably be genuinely nervous in any case. Not many women like standing up and speaking in public.’

  I could have got angry and pointed out that I’d lisped my first political speech (consisting of ‘Vote for Papa’) from a soapbox at the age of six. But I was too sad and this was too serious. Besides, he wasn’t trying to be annoying. There was too much sympathy in his voice for that.

  ‘Or on the other hand, you can go on thinking and asking questions and let the chips fall where they will.’

  ‘That would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I can’t help you on that. I wish I could.’

  His hand touched mine again. We were at the foot of the waterfall now and the noise of it almost drowned out our voices. Somehow that made it easier to tell him what had been on my mind since I’d noticed the cut turves, as if the water would wash it away.

  ‘The trouble is, Nathan’s such a practical joker and the Old Man would try anything. Supposing they were practising some silliness – like Nathan’s knots that come apart when you pull them, only this time they didn’t. Nathan would have meant no harm, only once it had happened he’d be too scared to say anything. Then those things on the bonfire … Do you remember how Nathan made a point of putting that chair on it? It could have been to stop us seeing something else, like a conjuror making you look in the wrong place.’

  ‘All of us put things on that fire,’ he said. ‘It could have been anybody.’

  ‘I know that, but Nathan’s the one who went. And he went immediately after the bonfire.’

  ‘Even if you were right, he must know he can’t stay out on the hills all his life.’

  ‘Perhaps he just wanted to get away. Or maybe he’s just waiting until the inquest is over. Did you notice how nervous he was when the police were there?’

  ‘If you were right – and it’s just another hypothesis remember – wouldn’t the proper course be to find Nathan and persuade him to talk to the police? It would have been an accident after all.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, but…’

  He raised his eyebrows. I remembered that I’d confessed to him already that I’d deliberately destroyed evidence and here I was, hesitating over a legal and proper action. I was thinking that even though it would have been an accident, having to stand up at an inquest or even in court and admit to it would blight the whole of Nathan’s life.

  ‘Shall we walk on?’ I said.

  We went on up the path to the right of the waterfall. I’d seen much bigger waterfalls but the narrowness and whiteness of this one gave it an especially headlong quality, as if the water were risking injury to itself in its hurry to get off the crags and down to the flat fields. Seen from close to it wasn’t a completely vertical drop but three connected falls with little pools in between where the water swirled among grass and ferns before dashing on down again. At the middle pool, on the far side from us, a man was kneeling, bending down and cupping his hands to drink. At first I thought he must be one of the hiking party trailing behind the rest. The noise of the water would have prevented him from hearing our steps on the path opposite. He gulped, dipped his palms and gulped again, then looked up with water dripping from his beard – a bushy beard, ginger brown, worn with unfashionable sideburns that framed his face in a mass of hair. Plump round face and broad shoulders, glasses glittering as they caught the sun.

  I shouted, ‘Nathan.’

  Perhaps if I’d thought about it I shouldn’t have shouted. He saw us, started raising a hand in awkward greeting then thought better of it and hauled himself upright. He’d always reminded me of a big friendly bear but now he was an alarmed one. He turned away from the pool and started shambling across the rough grass. My only idea at first was to speak to him, see if he needed help, but the waterfall was between us and I’d have to cross the stream either above or below it. I decided on below and ran back down the path. At first I heard Meredith running behind me but when I got level with the bottom pool he wasn’t there. It didn’t worry me because my eyes were on Nathan on the hillside up above me, stumbling and making heavy going. Something fell out of his pocket. It caught the sun for a moment before rolling away down the hill and I realised it was a tin of tobacco. He must have felt it fall because he hesitated for a moment then blundered on. I was sure I could catch up with him once I was across the stream so I slid in and
waded across, boots slipping on stones, cold water up above my knees. I pulled myself out on the opposite bank and started uphill.

  ‘Nell, wait.’

  Meredith’s shout, not from close behind me as expected but at a lot higher up, just audible over the water. He was standing about forty feet above me, at one of the pinch points where the fall was at its most narrow between two large rocks, nearly on a level with Nathan but still on the wrong side. It struck me that he intended to jump across and I yelled to him not to, sure that the fall even at its narrowest point was too wide, the take off and landing too slippery. For a moment I thought he’d heard me and taken notice, then he was in the air, his foot touching down on the far side. There was a fraction of a second when it looked as if he’d managed it and he stood upright, then his foot slipped, his arms flailed in the air and quite suddenly he wasn’t there any more. I don’t know whether I screamed or not. I forgot about Nathan, who was still heading away and probably didn’t know what had happened, and started climbing up beside the stream, slipping on wet moss, clawing at grass and ferns, with some mad idea of grabbing out for Meredith as he came down. He came too fast. The white water suddenly turned black from his shape in it then he was past me and it was white again. I’m sure I screamed then. I let myself slide down the grass on my side to the pool at the bottom and there he was floating in it, boot wedged between two rocks, a trail of blood spiralling out from his head into the water, like the red twirl in a child’s glass marble. I went into the pool, waist deep, and hauled him upright. His eyes opened, looking hurt and puzzled as if somebody else had done this to him.

  ‘Nell?’ Then, more clearly, pulling his thoughts together by what seemed like a physical effort. ‘I think my foot’s caught.’

  I was laughing from the sheer relief of finding him alive, but there was still a problem because I could only get his foot loose by letting the upper part of his body fall back in the water. I eased him down as gently as I could and dragged at the rocks. One of them was firmly set into the bank, but the other one moved an inch or two from my frantic pulling at it, just enough for his foot to come free. Somehow we got ourselves out on the bank, sodden and clinging together.

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ he kept saying. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

  I think we probably lay there for a long time in a shivering mass, hardly knowing where one body ended and the other started. After a while as the warmth of the sun got to us we sat up and looked at each other and I found that I was furious with him.

  ‘It was a totally insane thing to do.’

  ‘I nearly managed it.’ But he still sounded penitent.

  ‘That’s like nearly flying. Nearly’s nowhere.’

  ‘I thought we wanted to talk to him.’

  ‘Of course we did, but it wasn’t worth that. Anyway, I was catching up with him.’

  ‘I suppose he’s gone now.’

  ‘I’m sure he has. I don’t know what’s possessed him – or you come to that.’

  Then I felt sorry because he was shivering again. My clothes were wet but his were as soaked as it was possible to be, clinging to him. The gash above his right ear had stopped bleeding but the palms of his hands were raw and torn.

  ‘I tried to grab for things as I went down. Odd how your mind goes on working – as if it’s watching from somewhere quite calm, up above it all.’

  ‘Can you walk, do you think? You need to get warm.’

  He could, so we started walking down the path in the evening sun, trying to dry out and decide what to do next. We had no chance of getting home before dark even if we had been fit to walk that far. According to the map, the village of Bassenthwaite was three or four miles away down the path and I thought I remembered an inn there.

  ‘They’ll probably give us beds for the night, but there’s no way of letting the others know.’

  ‘They’ll think we’ve deserted them too.’ In spite of that he sounded more cheerful and was walking easily.

  ‘We’ll have to leave Nathan out here,’ I said. ‘We can’t do anything else.’

  ‘Suppose we stop thinking about him for a while. Do you happen to have any money with you?’

  ‘Not a sou. I didn’t think I’d need any.’

  ‘Nor have I, as it happens. I was so eager to catch up with you I didn’t bring my wallet and all my loose change seems to have gone as a tribute to the water gods.’

  ‘So even if there is an inn, we can’t afford it. We’re rogues and vagabonds.’

  For some reason this struck us as hilarious and we skipped along, laughing like children – reaction, I suppose. Then he stopped and looked at me, half seriously.

  ‘Are you glad I didn’t drown, Nell?’

  ‘I suppose I had the choice. I could have left you there after all.’

  He kissed me first this time, on the mouth, his tongue pushing in between my lips. When he put his arms round me the dampness of our clothes made it seem almost more intimate, like flesh to flesh. So it seemed a small step after all to lie down together on some soft grass behind a rock. He was tentative at first, tactful. I could have said no if I’d wanted to and when we got past the point of saying no I didn’t want to in any case. Afterwards we stayed clinging together for warmth, because the sun was right down by then.

  We were up and walking by first light, stiff and chilled, our clothes still damp and itchy with bits of grass and heather.

  ‘Still glad, Nell?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  * * *

  It was mid morning before we were looking down on the pastures and neat fences of Studholme Hall.

  He sighed, ‘I suppose we’re going to have to tell them.’ I looked at him.

  ‘About Nathan, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we are.’

  We went on down.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO QUESTION OF SLIPPING back quietly, even if we’d planned to, because nearly everybody was around the house and stable yard. Imogen and Midge were scattering food for the chickens, Dulcie sitting on a bench in the shade watching them, Kit reading at the other end of the bench. Midge saw us first and in her surprise threw a handful of feed so wide that the chickens cackled their annoyance and went sprinting after it, scrawny legs scissoring.

  ‘Well, what have you two been doing?’

  Then she went red, realising that the question implied a lot more than she’d intended. Meredith said he’d fallen in a stream and I’d pulled him out. It was less than a complete answer but at least it broke the awkward silence.

  ‘Alan’s out looking for you,’ Imogen said, her voice carefully neutral. ‘He’s ridden the cob down to the town.’

  Meredith sat down on the bench between Dulcie and Kit and started unlacing his boots. He was obviously waiting for me to break the news.

  ‘We’ve seen Nathan,’ I said.

  ‘Where?’ The question came explosively from Midge. More chicken feed went scattering.

  ‘Up on the fells, on the way to Skiddaw.’

  ‘Why didn’t you bring him back with you? What did he say?’

  ‘He didn’t seem to want to talk to us,’ Meredith said. ‘In fact, he ran away.’

  They were all staring now, even Dulcie.

  ‘Are you sure it was Nathan?’ Kit asked.

  We both nodded. I felt desperately tired all of a sudden. The clothes I’d been wearing for twenty-four hours were itchy with sweat and bits of grass and heather. I told the others I was going to change and walked through the arch to the stable yard and upstairs to our loft. I wasn’t surprised to find Midge following me.

  ‘Nell, what really happened? He must have said something.’

  I took off my boots, peeled off the clinging wool stockings. My feet were pale and wrinkled from being damp so long.

  ‘No. He didn’t want to talk to us. Meredith nearly killed himself trying to catch up with him.’

  ‘But what’s he doing? How’s he living out there?’

  ‘I
think he’s been building himself fires and he must have taken some food with him, or maybe he’s been catching rabbits with snares. You know how practical Nathan is.’

  Blouse and knickers joined the stockings in a pile on the floorboards. They’d have to be washed under the pump later. I stood in petticoat and chemise, poured water from the ewer into the basin and started sponging myself.

  ‘So all the time we thought he’d gone off and left us, he was only a few miles away,’ Midge said.

  ‘Seven or eight miles perhaps. Not far, anyway.’

  ‘Far enough. So that he could get here quickly if he wanted to, but we wouldn’t know he was there. It all makes sense after all, doesn’t it Nell?’

  Midge’s mind moved fast, not just in mathematics, but this surprised me. So did her calmness, if she’d been thinking along the same lines as I had.

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘We were all surprised when he went off without saying a word to anybody. I admit it hurt me but he really had no choice. It meant if the police or somebody from the coroner came back to ask more questions, we could honestly say we didn’t know where he’d gone.’

  She sounded remarkably cheerful about it. Maybe we weren’t thinking along the same lines.

  ‘Why wouldn’t he want to answer questions?’

  ‘Surely you’ve worked it out, Nell. He was terribly nervous when the two policemen were here even though they didn’t ask him anything. You must have noticed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Nathan’s no good at lying, is he? Can’t act at all. So if they’d started asking him questions he’d have let out everything he knew and he simply couldn’t let that happen.’

  ‘Why not?’ I stood, sponge in hand, terrified of what she was going to say.

  ‘Please Nell, don’t start another ethical discussion.’

  ‘I wasn’t…’

  ‘That’s the whole point, you see. Nathan’s not a philosopher like the others. You said yourself, he’s practical. He looks at some situation, works out what the results will be in real life and if he doesn’t like the answer he does something about it. In this case, he doesn’t want to see somebody he knows hanged for murder.’