The Shadowy Horses

by Susanna Kearsley

  “Oh,” said my sister.

  “Honestly.”

  “I believe you,” she said.

  “Look, I probably ought to go, come to think of it. Keep the line clear, in case someone’s trying to ring.”

  “Right. Shall I keep this book, then? The one by Philip Quinnell?”

  “Please. I’d rather like to see it.”

  Something was nagging at me as I rang off—some minor point that I’d just heard, but couldn’t quite remember. Closing my eyes, I replayed the conversation, trying to recall what Alison had said…

  No, it was gone. Whatever it was, it was gone.

  I sighed again, with feeling. Charlie the cat showed me a weary eye as I gently lifted her for the umpteenth time. “Sorry, darling,” I apologized. “It’s time to move.”

  Peter’s sitting room was out, I thought, since Adrian was still asleep in there. But across the hall, the posh sitting room offered warmth and light and a glowing gas fire. I drew an armchair up to the hearth and stretched my legs out, coaxing the cat to settle down once more. With a less than trusting look at my face, Charlie lay down and fell instantly asleep, her small sharp claws hooked neatly through the fabric of my jeans.

  Time crawled.

  I leaned my head back, counting off the minutes on a great gilt clock with a soporific tick. Another half hour had passed before I saw the gleam of headlights curving up the drive, and heard a car door slam above the unrelenting wind. The front door opened and closed. Soft, measured footsteps crossed the entrance hall, paused in the doorway behind me.

  “My dear girl,” Peter Quinnell said, his low voice mingling faint surprise and weariness. “You ought to be in bed.”

  I twisted round in my chair, gently so as not to disturb the slumbering cat. “I couldn’t sleep.” He looked gray, I thought, and frightfully old, and I asked my next question with some hesitation. “How is she?”

  “Nancy? Resting comfortably, the doctors say, but doctors always say that, don’t they?” Rubbing the worry from his forehead with a tired hand, he crossed to the drinks cabinet. “Can I get you something? Brandy? It’s good medicine, for sleepless nights.”

  He poured one for himself as well, and lowered his long frame into the chair next to mine, staring at the hearth. “You’ve got the fire on,” he said, after a long moment.

  “Yes. I was cold.”

  “Were you? It’s the house, I expect. Old houses,” he informed me, “feel the cold more. Like old bodies.” He sat back, eyes half closed, and let the silence stretch until I killed it with a cough.

  “David found you all right, then, did he?”

  “What?” His eyes slid sideways, not really seeing me at first, and then he seemed to pull himself together. “Oh, yes. Yes, he did. He’s a great help, that lad. A good son. He’ll stay all night with her, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “It must have been a frightful scare for him.” I looked at his face and amended my statement. “For both of you.”

  “Yes, well, it’s not the first time.” Quinnell swirled his brandy, turning back to the fire. “This is her third attack, you know. She never did like listening to doctors. For years now they’ve been telling her she ought to be more careful, have some help around the house; but she’s a bloody-minded woman, Nancy Fortune. She still thinks she can do it all herself.” He smiled faintly, shook his head. “We used to call her Henny, in the old days, after the Little Red Hen in the fairy story. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ that’s what she’d say. And she’d do a damned fine job of it, too. Always mastered anything she put her mind to.”

  I heard the ring of pride in his voice, and glanced at him with interest. “It must have been a great loss, when she left you.”

  “A terrible loss,” he agreed. “Terrible. But of course, she had her reasons.”

  “David’s father.”

  “Yes.” He smiled again, a little sadly. “I’m afraid I was rather ungracious about the whole affair. I never quite forgave her for leaving, but in time I understood. Time,” he told me, “gives us all the gift of perspective.”

  Of course, I thought, he’d lost much more since then. His wife, presumably… she must be dead, since Peter never mentioned her. His son. He’d lost them both. How tragic.

  I tried to think of something suitable to say, but nothing came to mind.

  Behind us, in the hall, the floorboards creaked. My shoulders tensed in sudden, foolish fear, and then relaxed again when Adrian said sleepily: “Ah, here you are. I thought I heard voices.”

  He shuffled over to the drinks cabinet, smoothing back his rumpled hair. The gesture didn’t help. He looked like he’d been romping through the sheets with someone, barefoot and bare-chested, his shirt slung on loosely as an afterthought, his jeans unbuttoned.

  Quinnell arched an elegant eyebrow in my direction and I hastened to explain, not wanting him to get the wrong idea. “He stayed to keep me company, and fell asleep on the sofa.”

  Adrian grinned. “What she means to say,” he told Quinnell, “is that I’ve been behaving myself, in spite of appearances. But if you will insist on leaving me stranded…”

  The eyebrow lowered again. “Ah yes, your car. I do apologize, my boy. Couldn’t find the keys to the Range Rover, I’m afraid. Fabia puts them in the damnedest places. And when I went to look in the Rover itself, I found your car beside it, with the keys in the ignition, so…” He spread his hands and smiled an apology. “I wasn’t thinking very clearly, at the time.”

  Adrian sloshed a measure of gin into a glass, and shrugged magnanimously. “No harm done. Not to me, anyway. Poor Brian McMorran’s a bit shaken up, though. You nearly ran him over.”

  “Did I?” Quinnell frowned faintly, trying to remember. “I do seem to recall something leaping into the bushes… that was Brian? Did I do him any damage?”

  Adrian shook his head. “Just rattled him a little.”

  “Ah.” The charming voice sounded rather disappointed, to my ears. “Pour me another brandy, would you, there’s a good chap.” He passed his empty glass to Adrian, and turned to me expectantly. “And now, since I have you both here, perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me what all of you were up to tonight, out in the field.”

  Adrian turned.

  The black cat Murphy, drawn by our voices, materialized in the doorway. After a moment’s pause he came padding across the carpet and leaped lightly to the arm of Quinnell’s chair. Nothing else moved.

  My eyes met Adrian’s, uncertainly. He lounged back against the drinks cabinet, his expression deliberately blank. “I’m sorry?”

  “Come now,” said Quinnell, taking the brandy from Adrian’s outstretched hand. “I may be an old man, but I’m not a complete fool.” His eyes slid from one to the other of us, waiting. “Now, what did the Sentinel say?”

  Chapter 20

  “Ye’ve telt him.” Wally Tyler wasn’t asking a question. He slowly lit a cigarette and nodded like some ancient sage pronouncing judgment. “’Tis well ye did. It’ll take his mind off Nancy, some.”

  I took a seat beside him on the low stone wall that ran around the small neglected garden at the side of the house, and watched while he threw a stick for Kip.

  Already it was early afternoon, and the betraying shadow on the sundial at the center of the garden shamed me for sleeping away half the day. Not that I could have helped it. When sleep had finally found me in the hours after dawn, it had claimed me with a sure and final vengeance. But I was sorry to have missed what must have been a lovely morning.

  Without the wind, the sun would have felt exceedingly hot; even as it was, my plain outfit of jeans and T-shirt seemed too warm. Spring had nearly faded into summer. Come Saturday week, it would be June. Which left us three full months still, in the digging season. Time enough to prove our theory. Our theory… I smiled faintly, raising a ha
nd to rub my tired eyes. When I’d begun this, I had thought it Peter’s theory, and his alone.

  “Actually,” I confessed to Wally, “he wasn’t much surprised to learn what we’d been up to. He’d figured most of it out already, on his own.”

  “Aye.” Wally nodded. “Thought he might. I had a feeling, ye ken.”

  “God.” I sighed in mock exasperation. “Don’t tell me you’re psychic, as well.”

  The wizened features smoothed into a smile. “No, lass. There’s only Robbie has the sight, and he didna get it fae my side o’ the family.”

  Kip trotted back toward us, stick in mouth, and Wally patiently tossed it out again across the garden.

  Another voice intruded unexpectedly. “You’ll make the dog boak, if you keep that up.” A smooth voice, not unpleasant, but not the one I’d been hoping to hear. Brian McMorran’s hair shone silver in the sunlight as he sauntered over to join us.

  “Away wi’ ye,” said Wally, flatly. “And mind your language.”

  “Aw, she doesn’t know what boak means, do you?” Brian looked to me for confirmation. “See? Of course she doesn’t know. She wants to come out on the Fleetwing with me and the lads, when the sea’s a bloody roller coaster, then she’d know what boaking is.”

  “That’s enough.” Wally’s eyebrows lowered, and Brian grinned, exposing a line of wolfish teeth.

  “All right, all right. Sorry if I’ve shocked you.” But he didn’t look the least bit sorry as he settled himself on the garden wall beside me. “I am,” he confessed, “a rotten bastard, as Wally will no doubt have warned you. Cigarette?” He drew a battered packet from his rolled-up shirtsleeve, and I shook my head.

  “No thanks. I don’t smoke.”

  “Bloody filthy things,” said Wally. Since he himself was smoking, I deduced that he was talking, not of cigarettes in general, but of Brian’s in particular. They were a foreign brand—I didn’t recognize the writing on the packet—and the smoke stank to sweet heaven as it drifted past my face.

  Tucking the cigarettes back in his sleeve, Brian folded his tattooed arms across his chest and tipped back his head to look at the glorious sky.

  “Grand weather,” he remarked. “I’m surprised you’re not out digging in the fields, the lot of you, especially after that little panto you staged last night.”

  “No work today,” said Wally shortly. “Peter needs his sleep.”

  “Up all night with Granny Nan, was he?”

  “Most of it.”

  “Silly old sod.” Brian shook his head. “It’d take more than a heart attack to level that woman. She’s a tough old bird.”

  I had no doubt that Wally privately agreed with Brian’s opinion, but of course he would never have admitted as much, and so he said nothing; he simply went on tossing out the stick for Kip and smoking, and it was left to me to pick up the dropped stitch of conversation.

  “How’s Robbie?” I asked Brian, then saw from his expression that I’d picked a touchy subject.

  “I reckon there’s no damage done, no thanks to all of you.” Balancing the cigarette between his lips, he squinted through the haze of smoke. “He was rabbiting on to Jeannie just now, when I left them. Wanting to go into Berwick to visit Granny Nan in hospital, though I don’t imagine she’ll be having any visitors today.”

  I murmured something vague, thinking back. “Was it her heart attack he saw, last night?” I asked. “Was that what made him faint?”

  Brian nodded. “He didn’t get it when it happened, on account of he was already tuned in to your Roman ghost, but once the ghost was gone I guess the signal came in loud and clear. Bit too much for the lad, having all that happen in the one night. His mind’s like a fuse box, see. You overload the circuits and the lights go out.”

  It was, I thought, an apt analogy.

  “Anyhow,” said Brian, “it won’t be happening again. I’ve told Jeannie.” His face relaxed a little. “She’s having a soft time of it today as well, with all of you having a late lie. No breakfast to make, and she can’t even hoover the sitting room till Sutton-Clarke shifts himself. Still sleeping, is he?”

  “Adrian? Yes, I think so.” Kip nudged my leg and I took the damply chewed stick from him absently, tossing it out again toward the sundial. “At least, I’ve not seen any movement from the house.”

  “Fabia must be up, though. The Range Rover’s gone.”

  “What? Oh, no,” I corrected him, turning, “David’s got it.”

  “Still?” He raised his eyebrows in surprise, and I found myself wondering whether Brian McMorran had a mother. Poor woman, I thought to myself. Her son would never sit up all night at her bedside, that much was obvious. “Bloody inconvenient, that,” he commented. “I hope he brings it back by teatime.”

  “Why?” Wally speared his son-in-law with a narrowed glance. “What d’ye want with the Range Rover?”

  “Got some boxes to unload, off the boat. Our car’s too small,” he explained. “I told Jeannie we shouldn’t buy an import—not enough room in the trunk, I said, but she thought it’d save us a few pounds in petrol.”

  I rose to Jeannie’s defense. “And did it?”

  “Oh, aye.” He smiled a boyish smile that made me understand in part why Jeannie found him attractive. “But I’d rather have a Rover, wouldn’t you?”

  Wally calmly pointed out we couldn’t all have Fabia’s money.

  Brian laughed. “Speak for yourself, old man. I’ve not given up trying.”

  Kip, having carried the stick back to Wally, drew back a pace, panting, then suddenly brought his lovely head up and around to stare past our shoulders at the front door of the house. When he gave his now-familiar whine of recognition and the feathered tail began to wave, my heart lurched downwards to my stomach.

  But it wasn’t the Sentinel, this time.

  The figure coming around the house toward us, dressed in a loose shirt and trousers, blonde hair swinging wildly in the warm wind, was very definitely not a ghost.

  Fabia tossed us a surprisingly cheerful greeting and swung herself over the low garden wall, saving herself the bother of walking the few steps farther on to the gate. She looked disgustingly vibrant and full of life. The privilege of youth, I supposed. On top of which, she’d slept a good twelve hours against my six, and she hadn’t stayed up all night drinking brandy and discussing whether a child’s mumbled “nona” was enough to base an excavation on.

  “What have you done to Adrian?” she asked me, curious. “He’s dead to the world in there. Didn’t so much as bat an eyelash when the phone rang; I had to get up and answer it myself.”

  I moved to make room for her on the wall, between myself and Brian. “We were up rather late last night,” I explained, through a yawn. “Talking to your grandfather.”

  “Ah.” Swinging her legs, she met my eyes candidly. “Did you tell him, then? About our ghost?”

  “Sort of. He’s awfully pleased about it, really.”

  “Yes, I expect he would be.” Fabia’s satisfied eyes swept away from me and out across the wide green field that stretched beyond the garden wall to meet the rolling horizon. Returning her attention to the rest of us, she looked Brian up and down, assessingly. “You seem to have recovered from your hit-and-run.”

  “Oh, aye.” His golden earring caught the sunlight as he tossed his head back, grinning. “It’d take more than an old man in a sports car to finish me off.”

  Wally puffed a smoke ring skyward and observed, in a dry voice, that it might depend entirely on which old man was doing the driving.

  “Ha ha,” said Brian. “Anyhow, my darling, I promise I’ll not sue your grandad for damages, if you’ll just do me one small favor.”

  Fabia leaned forward expectantly. “Name it.”

  “Let me use the Range Rover.”

 
“Sure. When do you need it?”

  “Well, as soon as it comes back…”

  “It’s back,” Fabia interjected. Then, as we all turned to look toward the empty stretch of gravel where the vehicle should have been, she shook her head and set us straight. “No, not here, but Davy’s finished with it. That was him ringing a moment ago, to say that his mum was all right and he’s back at the Ship Hotel, and did I need the Range Rover before this evening? I told him no,” she confessed, to Brian, “because I didn’t know you needed it. But we could walk in now and get it, if you like.”

  “Walk, hell,” was Brian’s reply. “We’ll take my car. There’s two of us, two vehicles. We can each of us drive one back.” He chucked his spent cigarette into the tangle of weeds at his feet, and stood up away from the wall. “Anyone else want to help unload boxes?”

  I stood too, and stretched, brushing the dust from my jeans with an idle hand. “No, thanks. But I think I could do with a bit of a walk.”

  Wally angled his head to look up at me, and I caught the faintest glimmer of amusement in his crinkled gray eyes. He doused it soberly, and nodded. “Away ye go, then, lass. I’m fine the now.”

  The three of us left the garden together, which presented Kip with something of a dilemma. As much as the collie loved following me about, he wasn’t too keen on Brian, and even my mention of the word “walk” failed to ease the dog’s misgivings. As I went through the gate Kip stepped forward, hesitated, then turned again and, settling with a thump at Wally’s feet, began to gnaw at his stick with a disgruntled fervor.

  I rather missed him, on my walk.

  Because I didn’t want Wally, with his knowing eyes, to think that I was going where he thought I was going, I purposely struck out in the opposite direction, following the road down through the small ravine where the narrow river sang in the green coolness and the trees stretched out protective arms above the primroses and wilting daffodils; then on a half mile or so beside low walls and thorn hedge and the lush, verdant, nondescript growth of the verge. But having got safely out of sight of Rosehill, my purpose reasserted itself and I turned back, abandoning the road in favor of a narrow footpath that ran along the riverbank.