Dead Man Riding

by Gillian Linscott

  ‘Often enough to come up with a plan at any rate. Once he started thinking the child might not be his you had to do something quickly before he changed his will. Dulcie knew the Old Man was walking round outside most nights, guarding his horses…’

  ‘We never meant any harm to the horses!’

  ‘… so while she was keeping an eye on him it would be an easy enough matter for you to catch the horse and get his tack. It must have been you I heard down in the tack room. I think you waited with the horse just on the far side of the gate to your father’s land. He’d see the horse, come through to take it back, then you hit him on the head and tied him into the saddle. Whether he was already dead by then…’

  While I’d been talking, he was trying to stop me, inarticulate sounds at first then ‘no’ repeated louder and louder. Now his hand closed round my arm in a crushing grip and started pumping it up and down.

  ‘No, no, no. What are you talking about? You’re mad.’

  Dulcie called to him to stop, but he got his other hand on my shoulder and twisted me round so that he was shouting into my face.

  ‘You’re calling me a murderer? You’re saying I did that to him?’

  ‘Yes, and the police know it too.’

  Not true, but all I could think of to protect myself. As the shock of it hit him his grip went slack and I managed to pull away from him. I took a few steps back, expecting him to come at me again, but he suddenly sank down into a sitting position on the ground, head on his knees and arms clasped round them, rocking backwards and forwards, keening ‘no, no, no’. His collapse horrified me more than the attack. Surely this wasn’t the way murderers were supposed to behave.

  Dulcie moved first. She came forward and put both hands on his shoulders, staring at me over his bent head.

  ‘If the police think they know it, they’re wrong. He couldn’t have done it. He wasn’t here.’

  If she’d sounded angry it would have been less convincing. She just stated it as a fact, her fingers kneading the sides of his neck like a mother with a fretful child. Arthur stopped keening but his head stayed bent.

  ‘He’ll tell you himself in a while. You can’t expect him to be thinking straight after what you said to him.’

  After a few minutes he got himself clumsily upright but stayed in contact with her, arm against arm.

  ‘I didn’t even know it had happened until two days afterwards.’ He sounded sulky now rather than fearful. ‘I got back here and met Dulcie by the gate as usual and she told me.’

  ‘Where had you been?’

  ‘Out in the boat.’

  ‘What boat?’

  ‘The Eastern Light, fishing boat out of Maryport.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  He stared. ‘Fishing.’

  Dulcie explained, ‘It’s what he likes doing, only his father won’t let him.’

  ‘He wanted me to go into the army like he did. I wouldn’t have minded the fighting but then there was all the rest of it, shouting orders and standing in line and so on. I ran away once, only he brought me back. He said he’d disinherit me. Never mind the inheritance, I told him, just set me up with a nice little fishing boat and I won’t bother you again. That was fair enough, wasn’t it?’

  He looked at me as if the answer to that was as important as whether he’d killed a man or not. Now I’d got him, I felt a deep disappointment in him. The belief that young Mawbray was still alive had created a picture of him in my mind: ruthless, intelligent and sinister. One thing I could certainly rule out now was intelligence. Stupidity is one of the most difficult things for a clever person to act convincingly and every tone of his voice and movement of his body told me I was face to face with the real thing. But stupidity can be dangerous too.

  ‘So you needed money?’

  ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

  ‘Enough to kill for it?’

  ‘I expect a lot of people would if they thought they could get away with it. Only I didn’t. I’ve told you, I wasn’t here.’

  ‘Maryport isn’t far away.’

  He stared, ‘Do you know anything about tides?’

  ‘Only that they go in and out.’

  ‘You ever tried to row a boat in from a long way out at sea against the tide?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, take it from me it’s true what Dulcie told you. What day of the week did the Old Man die?’

  I told him it was the night of Thursday the twelfth. He wrinkled his broad forehead, working it out.

  ‘All right, that was the night before that we took the Eastern Light out on the night tide. We stayed out all night and came in with nets pretty full when the tide turned in the morning. Even if I’d taken the tender, I couldn’t have gone out in the boat and rowed myself back and got here before daylight, could I?’

  When he talked about boats there was a confidence and maturity in his voice that wasn’t there otherwise. Dulcie gave me one of her sweet smiles as if that cleared up everything.

  ‘If you really went out that night,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘You’re sure it was that night? It took you a while to remember.’

  ‘You don’t go by clocks and calendars if you work at sea. It’s tides and winds and when it gets light or dark, the things that matter.’

  ‘So you can’t be sure what night it was you went out?’

  He ran a hand through his hair and looked appealingly towards Dulcie, waiting for her to rescue him.

  ‘Mr Morrisey would know what night you were out,’ she said.

  He picked up the cue. ‘Mr Morrisey, of course he would. You ask Mr Morrisey. He’ll tell you.’

  ‘Who’s Mr Morrisey?’

  ‘My skipper. He owns the Eastern Light.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘You go down to Maryport and ask the first person you meet. Everybody knows Mr Morrisey.’

  A local character, I supposed, or as otherwise expressed, local rogue. Either Arthur had come equipped with an alibi or Dulcie was in the process of making one for him, as calmly and efficiently as she jointed rabbits for stewing.

  ‘I’ll speak to him, then.’

  ‘You do that, and when you have you go and tell the police what he told you.’

  He sounded confident now, almost happy. I wasn’t, because I had a problem. If they hadn’t already stewed up his alibi – and it was possible that they hadn’t – I needed to get to the obliging Mr Morrisey before they did. But Maryport was about fifteen miles away and it was already nearly dark. Even if I ran all the way down to the town and managed to catch a late train to the coast, assuming there was one, I wouldn’t get there before most people had gone to bed.

  ‘So that’s all right then,’ he said. The tone was dismissive, almost cocky.

  Short of making a citizen’s arrest on suspicion of murder, which wasn’t worth even considering, there was nothing I could do.

  ‘Goodnight,’ I said. And had to bite my tongue to stop myself adding something bitter and useless. The fact was that they’d won and though I’d never wanted to hang them I was furious for being so much at a loss. As I went back up the field I thought I heard Dulcie’s soft laugh from the darkness behind me, but it might have been one of the cows snuffling. I sat on a bench outside the house and about half an hour later she came back, walking heavily as if tired, and let herself in at the kitchen door. If she saw me there she gave no sign of it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I HEARD IMOGEN AND MIDGE TALKING SOFTLY to each Other as I went up the stairs to our loft but they said nothing when I came in. I expect they thought I’d been with Meredith. When I got up and dressed before it was light they probably thought that I was going to him again and in this case they’d have been right, only it wasn’t intentional. I’d planned to leave him a note. I’d scribbled it by the light of a candle stub downstairs in the tack room: Gone to Maryport. Back this evening. Will explain then. I folded it and wrote his name on the outside a
nd thought I’d fix it on a nail on the back of the porch door. I walked as softly as I could through the arch and into the yard, not wanting to wake anybody, but when I came to the porch there was somebody standing outside. Although he was no more than a shape in the half-light I knew instantly that it was Meredith. He was facing the east, where the curve of the hill was just becoming visible against a sky of the taut blue-black that comes just before dawn in summer. He heard my step and turned, cigarette butt glowing.

  ‘Nell.’ A statement not a question.

  ‘I was coming to leave a note for you.’

  ‘Are you going away?’

  ‘Only for the day. I’ve got to go to Maryport.’

  We were talking in whispers. He touched my hand and indicated that we should walk up the track. There was such pleasure in walking beside him before the rest of the world was awake that I wished I didn’t have urgent things to tell him.

  ‘Young Mawbray’s alive. I’ve talked to him.’

  I told him everything that had happened the night before, including my strong suspicion that Dulcie had suggested an alibi to him while we were talking.

  ‘I don’t think he’s very clever but he can’t have missed what she meant. I’m sure he went straight down to Maryport last night and agreed the story with some crony of his. I was tempted to try to get there first, but he knows the country better so I’d have had no chance.’

  ‘I’m glad you had that amount of sense. If you think he’s a murderer, didn’t it occur to you that you were taking an unjustifiable risk seeing him at all?’

  ‘Not until he caught hold of me. Until then I’d just been excited about being able to prove I was right.’

  I’d been angry when Imogen accused me of playing detective to impress Meredith, but had to admit to myself that I enjoyed having him listen to me so intently.

  ‘Pointless if you’d managed to prove it by being murdered as well.’

  ‘Dulcie stopped him. It’s funny, I think I was relying on her to protect me.’

  ‘In spite of being a conspirator with him in killing the Old Man?’

  ‘More than a conspirator, I think she planned it. She’s a lot cleverer than he is. We’ve all been underrating her because she keeps quiet and does the cooking.’

  ‘So what’s your next step? That is if you intend to take me into your confidence this time.’

  ‘I’m going to walk to the station and take the first train down to Maryport. He said anybody there would know Mr Morrisey. I’d guess the man’s a notorious local smuggler or some such.’

  ‘If young Mawbray’s been down ahead of you and fixed up his alibi, what’s the point of talking to him?’

  ‘To get some impression of what the man’s like. Liars usually give something away, or embroider too much, don’t you think?’

  ‘Bad liars do. Though logically, I suppose, you could argue that there is no such thing as a bad liar because against his will a bad liar reveals the truth therefore is not lying at all. On the other hand, a good liar—’

  ‘Are you trying to distract me by any chance?’

  ‘A good liar makes us believe he is telling the truth. Therefore the only good liar is a man to whom we can never logically give the name of liar because once we arrive at the conclusion he is not telling the truth he becomes a bad liar…’

  ‘Goodbye. I’ll see you this evening probably.’

  ‘… and as we have agreed, a man who could be described as a bad liar is not, properly speaking, a liar at all. So … Where do you think you’re going?’

  I was walking away fast up the track. I called over my shoulder, ‘I told you, Maryport.’

  ‘Wait for me. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘But you think there’s no point in going.’

  ‘Just wait while I go back for my wallet. I’m not making that mistake again.’

  So I waited while he went back, impatient to be going but with a warm laughing feeling inside at having won. He came running up the track to join me and we walked fast down the lanes and roads to the town with the colour coming back into the sky and fields as we went, not talking much except for something he said that sounded like an apology.

  ‘I’m sorry, perhaps I was trying to stop you. I’ve been worrying more than you know, hoping that we could leave things as they were, I suppose.’

  ‘Only they weren’t, were they?’

  Which was hardly a logical contribution from me, but he didn’t pick me up on it. We arrived at the station with half an hour to wait for the first train. This early on a Sunday morning it was practically empty when it came. He asked if I minded being in the same compartment and volunteered not to smoke if it bothered me. Not at all, I said, amused at his formality. It was almost as if our time by the waterfall hadn’t existed, but the consciousness of it was there under everything we said or did. We had the compartment to ourselves and as we passed the coalmines at Aspatria, with the coast and Maryport not far away, we started talking about Mawbray again.

  ‘You were determined he should exist, weren’t you?’

  ‘Because he was the only possible explanation.’

  ‘Logically there are limitless explanations.’

  ‘I’m not talking logic, I’m talking facts. Once you accept that the Old Man was deliberately killed, and I’ve been sure of that almost from the start, there has to be a reason. Dulcie and Arthur Mawbray had a very good one.’

  ‘So how do you propose to set about breaking this alibi if we find the obliging Mr Morrisey?’

  ‘I’m not sure that we can – not to the satisfaction of the police or a lawyer at any rate. I just want to see and hear him and be quite certain in my own mind that he’s lying.’

  ‘But if your certainty isn’t the police or lawyers’ certainty, what’s the point?’

  ‘They don’t come into it at all. Once I know for certain, we can put the whole thing to rest.’

  He frowned. I’d surprised him, perhaps even shocked him.

  ‘By not telling anybody?’

  ‘Probably not. What do you think?’

  But he just went on looking at me in that disconcerting way. I found myself tripping over my words, trying to convince him.

  ‘There’s the inquest next week. I’ll probably be lying to it – not in words but by implication – nudging it towards a suicide verdict. That’s the case, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s your decision.’

  ‘But I know it’s the decision everybody else wants me to make. It might even be the right one. Please don’t ask me what I mean by right in this context, because I don’t know myself. But I can’t imagine giving evidence that would help them hang Dulcie.’

  ‘Even though you think she planned it?’

  ‘She must have known his heart was weak, living so close to him. Perhaps she guessed he wanted to die. And she had the baby to think of.’

  ‘So that makes it all right?’

  ‘No, of course it doesn’t. But she’s not … well, not somebody with a strong moral sense. It would be like … like a fox say, not so much wanting to kill the goose as having to eat.’

  ‘In that case, you’d pardon most of the murderers who ever existed or will exist.’

  ‘No. Anyway, it’s not all murderers I’m talking about. It’s Dulcie.’

  ‘And young Mawbray?’

  ‘He’s like a spoilt child. I don’t think he understands even now what he’s done.’

  ‘Not responsible for his actions?’

  ‘Not quite. But not … not living up to them, or perhaps I mean down to them. The dreadful thing about murder is it’s an extraordinary crime done by ordinary people. The world’s made all wrong. It shouldn’t be so easy to take somebody’s life.’

  He took his cigarette case out of his pocket and a cigarette out of the case, still keeping his eyes on me.

  ‘So you’re saying you want to find out for certain then forgive them?’

  ‘Not forgive, no. Just find out and decide to leave it there.’

&nb
sp; He lit his cigarette, drew on it and blew out a cloud of smoke, wafting it away from me.

  ‘And you’ll find out from Mr Morrisey?’

  ‘Yes. I’m expecting him to be a bad liar who, by your definition, isn’t a liar at all.’

  ‘So in spite of himself, your slippery Mr Morrisey tells us the truth – that young Mawbray cobbled together his alibi last night?’

  ‘I think so. If he does, I’ll let it drop. I’ll say as little as I can at the inquest and get away from here as soon as it’s over.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Greece perhaps.’

  He raised his eyebrows and wafted another smoke cloud. The train started slowing down for Maryport.

  * * *

  Still early on a Sunday morning, the town was more than half asleep as we crossed the bridge over the River Allen on our way from the station. It was a bigger town than I’d expected, with warehouses and factories off to the left, but the narrow streets of terraced houses were quiet. Only an occasional cat loped across the pavement and an old man shuffled bent-backed down a side street with a newpaper-wrapped parcel under his arm. We followed the smell of fish up Senhouse Street and found ourselves looking down on the harbour. It looked as sleepy as the rest of the town with fishing boats tied up and nets piled on the decks, no putting to sea on a Sunday. We went on down to the quay, passing at least four public houses on the way. Their doors were closed and barred but the smell of stale beer crept out, mingling with the fishy odour.

  ‘We might as well have a look at the Eastern Light,’ I said.

  I expected it to be some rickety old tub, on the grounds that anything connected with Arthur Mawbray’s alibi wasn’t likely to be watertight, and was surprised when Meredith called, ‘Here it is.’ He was standing by a boat that stood out from the rest because it was so trim and bright, newly painted in dark blue and white, deck scrubbed and ropes coiled with naval exactness. No sign of life apart from a herring gull screaming at us from the bows. There was a line of fishermen’s huts at the seaward end of the harbour wall. We walked along them hoping to find somebody to ask where to find the Eastern Light’s skipper, but the doors were shut and padlocked. I suggested we should go back towards the town but Meredith stopped and sniffed the air.