Читать книгу Last Ditch - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 9
Оглавление‘As far as I can see,’ Alleyn said, ‘he’s landing us with a sort of monster.’
‘He thinks it might amuse us to meet him after all we’ve heard.’
‘It had better,’ Alleyn said mildly.
‘It’s only for a minute or two.’
‘When do you expect him?’
‘Some time in the morning, I imagine.’
‘What’s the betting he stays for luncheon?’
Troy stood before her husband in the attitude that he particularly enjoyed, with her back straight, her hands in the pockets of her painting smock and her chin down rather like a chidden little boy.
‘And what’s the betting,’ he went on, ‘my own true love, that before you can say Flake White, he’s showing you a little something he’s done himself.’
‘That,’ said Troy grandly, ‘would be altogether another pair of boots and I should know how to deal with them. And anyway he told Rick he thinks I’ve painted myself out.’
‘He grows more attractive every second.’
‘It was funny about the way he behaved when Rick trod on his vermilion.’
Alleyn didn’t answer at once. ‘It was, rather,’ he said at last. ‘Considering he gets the stuff free.’
‘Trembling with rage, Rick said, and his beard twitching.’
‘Delicious.’
‘Oh well,’ said Troy, suddenly brisk. ‘We can but see.’
‘That’s the stuff. I must be off.’ He kissed her. ‘Don’t let this Jones fellow make a nuisance of himself,’ he said. ‘As usual, my patient Penny-lope, there’s no telling when I’ll be home. Perhaps for lunch or perhaps I’ll be in Paris. It’s that narcotics case. I’ll get them to telephone. Bless you.’
‘And you,’ said Troy cheerfully.
She was painting a tree in their garden from within the studio. At the heart of her picture was an exquisite little silver birch just starting to burgeon and treated with delicate and detailed realism. But this tree was at the core of its own diffusion a larger and much more stylized version of itself and that, in turn, melted into an abstract of the two trees it enclosed. Alleyn said it was like the unwinding of a difficult case with the abstractions on the outside and the implacable ‘thing itself’ at the hard centre. He had begged her to stop before she went too far.
She hadn’t gone any distance at all when Mr Sydney Jones presented himself.
There was nothing very remarkable, Troy thought, about his appearance. He had a beard, close-cropped, revealing a full, vaguely sensual but indeterminate mouth. His hair was of a medium length and looked clean. He wore a sweater over jeans. Indeed, all that remained of the Syd Jones Ricky had described was his huge silly-sinister pair of black spectacles. He carried a suitcase and a newspaper parcel.
‘Hullo,’ Troy said, offering her hand. ‘You’re Sydney Jones, aren’t you? Ricky rang up and told us you were coming. Do sit down, won’t you?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he mumbled, and sniffed loudly. He was sweating.
Troy sat on the arm of a chair. ‘Do you smoke?’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t got any cigarettes but do if you’d like to.’
He put his suitcase and the newspaper parcel down and lit a cigarette. He then picked up his parcel.
‘I gather it’s about Jerome et Cie’s paints, isn’t it?’ Troy suggested. ‘I’d better say that I wouldn’t want to change to them and I can’t honestly give you a blurb. Anyway I don’t do that sort of thing. Sorry.’ She waited for a response but he said nothing. ‘Rick tells us,’ she said, ‘that you paint.’
With a gesture so abrupt that it made her jump, he thrust his parcel at her. The newspaper fell away and three canvases tied together with string were exposed.
‘Is that,’ Troy said, ‘some of your work?’
He nodded.
‘Do you want me to look at it?’
He muttered.
Made cross by having been startled, Troy said: ‘My dear boy, do for pity’s sake speak out. You make me feel as if I were giving an imitation of a woman talking to herself. Stick them up there where I can see them.’
With unsteady hands he put them up, one by one, changing them when she nodded. The first was the large painting Ricky had decided was an abstraction of Leda and the Swan. The second was a kaleidoscopic arrangement of shapes in hot browns and raucous blues. The third was a landscape, more nearly representational than the others. Rows of perceptible houses with black, staring windows stood above dark water. There was some suggestion of tactile awareness but no real respect, Troy thought, for the medium.
She said: ‘I think I know where we are with this one. Is it St Pierre-des-Roches on the coast of Normandy?’
‘Yar,’ he said.
‘It’s the nearest French port to your island, isn’t it? Do you often go across?’
‘Aw – yar,’ he said, fidgeting. ‘It turns me on. Or did. I’ve worked that vein out, as a matter of fact.’
‘Really,’ said Troy. There was a longish pause. ‘Do you mind putting up the first one again. The Leda.’
He did so. Another silence. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘do you want me to say what I think? Or not?’
‘I don’t mind,’ he mumbled, and yawned extensively.
‘Here goes, then. I find it impossible to say whether I think you’ll develop into a good painter or not. These three things are all derivative. That doesn’t matter while you’re young: if you’ve got something of your own, with great pain and infinite determination you will finally prove it. I don’t think you’ve done that so far. I do get something from the Leda thing – a suggestion that you’ve got a strong sense of rhythm, but it is no more than a suggestion. I don’t think you’re very self-critical.’ She looked hard at him. ‘You don’t fool about with drugs, do you?’ asked Troy.
There was a very long pause before he answered quite loudly, ‘No.’
‘Good. I only asked because your hands are unsteady and your behaviour erratic, and –’ She broke off. ‘Look here,’ she said, ‘you’re not well, are you? Sit down. No, don’t be silly, sit down.’
He did sit down. He was shaking, sweat had started out under the line of his hair and he was the colour of a peeled banana. He gaped and ran a dreadful tongue round his mouth. She fetched him a glass of water. The dark glasses were askew. He put up his trembling hand to them and they fell off, disclosing a pair of pale ineffectual eyes. Gone was the mysterious Mr Jones.
‘I’m all right,’ he said.
‘I don’t think you are.’
‘Party. Last night.’
‘What sort of party?’
‘Aw. A fun thing.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ll be OK.’
Troy made some black coffee and left him to drink it while she returned to her work. The spirit trees began to enclose their absolute inner tree more firmly.
When, at a quarter past one, Alleyn walked into the studio, it was to find his wife at work and an enfeebled young man avidly watching her from an armchair.
‘Oh,’ said Troy, grandly waving her brush and staring fixedly at Alleyn. ‘Hullo, darling. Syd, this is my husband. This is Rick’s friend, Syd Jones, Rory. He’s shown me some of his work and he’s going to stay for luncheon.’
‘Well!’ Alleyn said, shaking hands. ‘This is an unexpected pleasure. How are you?’
II
Three days after Ricky’s jaunt to Montjoy Julia Pharamond rang him up at lunch-time. He had some difficulty in pulling himself together and attending to what she said.
‘You do ride, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘Not at all well.’
‘At least you don’t fall off?’
‘Not very often.’
‘There you are, then. Super. All settled.’
‘What,’ he asked, ‘is settled?’
‘My plan for tomorrow. We get some Harkness hacks and ride to Bon Accord.’
‘I haven’t any riding things.’
‘No problem. Jasper will lend you any amount. I’m ringing you up while he’s out because he’d say I was seducing you away from your book. But I’m not, am I?’
‘Yes,’ said Ricky, ‘you are, and it’s lovely,’ and heard her splutter.
‘Well, anyway,’ she said, ‘it’s all settled. You must leap on your bicyclette and pedal up to L’Esperance for breakfast and then we’ll all sweep up to the stables. Such fun.’
‘Is Miss Harkness coming?’
‘No. How can you ask! Before we knew where we were she’d miscarry.’
‘If horse-exercise was going to make her do that it would have done so already, I fancy,’ said Ricky, and told her about the mishap on the road to Montjoy. Julia was full of exclamations and excitement. ‘How,’ she said, ‘you dared not to ring up and tell us immediately!’
‘I thought you’d said she was beginning to be a bore.’
‘She’s suddenly got interesting again. So she’s back at Leathers and reconciled to Mr Harkness?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘But couldn’t you tell? Couldn’t you sense it?’
‘How?’
‘Well, from her conversation.’
‘It consisted exclusively of oaths.’
‘I can’t wait to survey the scene at Leathers. Will Mr Jones be there mucking-out?’
‘He was in London quite recently.’
‘In London! Doing what?’
‘Lunching with my parents, among other things.’
‘You really are too provoking. I can see that all sorts of curious things are happening and you’re being furtive and sly about them.’
‘I promise to disclose all. I’m not even fully persuaded, by the way, that she and Syd Jones are lovers.’
‘I shall be the judge of that. Here comes Jasper and I’ll have to tell him I’ve seduced you. Goodbye.’
‘Which is no more than God’s truth,’ Ricky shouted fervently. He heard her laugh and hang up the receiver.
The next morning dawned brilliantly, and at half past nine Ricky, dressed in Jasper’s spare jodhpurs and boots and his own Ferrant sweater, proposed to take a photograph of the Pharamonds, including the two little girls produced for the purpose. They assembled in a group on the patio. The Pharamonds evidently adored being photographed, especially Louis, who looked almost embarrassingly smooth in breeches, boots, sharp hacking jacket and gloves.
‘Louis, darling,’ Julia said, surveying him, ‘très snob presque cad! You lack only the polo stick!’
‘I don’t understand how it is,’ Carlotta said, ‘but nothing Louis wears ever looks even a day old.’
Ricky thought that this assessment didn’t work if applied to Louis’s face. His very slight tan looked almost as if it had been laid on, imposing a spurious air of health over a rather dissipated foundation.
‘I bought this lot in Acapulco eight years ago,’ said Louis.
‘I remember. From a dethroned Prince who’d lost his all at the green baize tables,’ said Julia.
‘My recollection,’ Carlotta said, ‘is of a déclassé gangster but I may be wrong.’
Selina, who had been going through a short repertoire of exhibitionist antics, ignored by her seniors, suddenly flung herself at Louis and hung from his wrist, doubling up her legs and shrieking affectedly.
‘You little monster,’ he said, ‘you’ve nearly torn off a button,’ and examined his sleeve.
Selina walked away with a blank face.
Bruno said, ‘Do let’s get posed-up for Ricky and then take off for the stables.’
‘Let’s be ultra-mondains,’ Julia decided. She sank into a swinging chaise-longue, dangled an elegantly breeched leg and raised a drooping hand above her head.
Jasper raised it to his lips. ‘Madame is enchanting – nay, irresistible – ce matin,’ he said.
Selina stuck out her tongue.
Bruno, looking impatient, merely stood.
‘Thank you,’ said Ricky.
They piled into Louis’s car and drove to Leathers.
The avenue, a longish one, led to an ugly Victorian house, and continued round the back into the stable yard, and beyond this to a barn at some distance from the other buildings.
‘Hush!’ Julia said dramatically. ‘Listen! Louis, stop.’
‘Why?’ asked Louis, but stopped nevertheless.
Somewhere round the corner of the house a man was shouting.
‘My dears!’ said Julia. ‘Mr Harkness in a rage again. How too awkward.’
‘What should we do about it?’ Carlotta asked. ‘Slink away or what?’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ Jasper said. ‘He may be ticking off a horse or even Mr Jones for all we know.’
‘Ricky says Mr Jones is in London.’
‘Was,’ Ricky amended.
‘Anyway, I refuse to be done out of our riding treat,’ said Bruno. ‘Press on, Louis.’
‘Be quiet, Bruno. Listen.’
Louis wound down the window. A female voice could be clearly heard.
‘And if I want to bloody jump the bloody hedge, by God I’ll bloody jump it, I’ll jump it on Mungo, by God.’
‘Anathema! Blasphemy!’
‘Don’t you lay a hand on me: I’m pregnant,’ bellowed Miss Harkness.
‘Harlot!’
‘Shut up.’
‘Strumpet!’
‘Stuff it.’
‘Oh, do drive on, Louis,’ said Carlotta crossly. ‘They’ll stop when they see us. It’s so boring, all this.’
Louis said, ‘It would be nice if people made up their minds.’
‘We have. Press on.’
He drove into the stable yard.
The picture that presented itself was of a row of six loose-boxes, each with a horse’s bridled head looking out of the upper half, flanked at one end by a tack-room and at the other by an open coach-house containing a small car, coils of old wire discarded gear, tools, and empty sacks: all forming a background for a large red man with profuse whiskers towering over Miss Harkness, who faced him with a scowl of defiance.
‘Lay a hand on me and I’ll call the police,’ she threatened.
Mr Harkness, for undoubtedly it was he, had his back to the car. Arrested, no doubt, by a sudden glaze that overspread his niece’s face, he turned and was transfixed.
His recovery was almost instantaneous. He strode towards them, all smiles.
‘Morning, morning. All ready for you. Six of the best,’ shouted Mr Harkness. He opened car doors, offered a large freckled hand with ginger bristles, helped out the ladies and, laughing merrily, piloted them across the yard.
‘Dulcie’s got ’em lined up,’ he said.
Julia beamed upon Mr Harkness and, to his obvious bewilderment, gaily chided Miss Harkness for deserting them. He shouted: ‘Jones!’
Syd Jones slid out of the tack-room door, and with a sidelong scowl at Ricky, approached the loose-boxes.
Julia advanced upon him with extended hand. She explained to Mr Harkness that she and Syd were old friends. It would be difficult to say which of the two men was the more embarrassed.
Syd led out the first horse, a sixteen-hand bay, and Mr Harkness said he would give Jasper a handsome ride. Jasper mounted, collecting the bay and walking it round the yard. The others followed, Julia on a nice-looking grey mare. It was clear to Ricky that the Pharamonds were accomplished horse people. He himself was given an aged chestnut gelding who, Mr Harkness said, still had plenty of go in him if handled sympathetically. Ricky walked and then jogged him round the yard in what he trusted was a sympathetic manner.
Bruno was mounted on a lively, fidgeting sorrel mare and was told she would carry twelve stone very prettily over the sticks. ‘You asked for a lively ride,’ Mr Harkness said to Bruno, ‘and you’ll get it. Think you’ll be up to her?’
Bruno said with dignity that he did think so. Clearly not averse to showing-off a little, he rode out into the horse-paddock where three hurdles had been set up. He put the sorrel at them and flew over very elegantly. Ricky, with misgivings, felt his mount tittuping under him. ‘You shut up,’ he muttered to it. Julia, who had come alongside, leant towards him, her face alive with entertainment.
‘Ricky!’ she said. ‘Are you feeling precarious?’
‘Precarious!’ he shouted. ‘I’m terror-stricken. And now you’re going to laugh at me,’ he added, hearing the preliminary splutter.
‘If you fall off, I’ll try not to. But you’re sitting him like a rock.’
‘Not true, alas.’
‘Nearly true. Good God! He’s at it again!’
Mr Harkness had broken out into the familiar roar but this time his target was Bruno. The horse-paddock sloped down-hill towards a field from which it was separated by a dense and pretty high blackthorn hedge. Bruno had turned the sorrel to face a gap in the hedge and the creature, Ricky saw, was going through the mettlesome antics that manifest an equine desire to jump over something.
‘No, stop! You can’t! Here! Come back!’ Mr Harkness roared. And to Jasper: ‘Call that kid back. He’ll break his neck. He’ll ruin the mare. Stop him!’
The Pharamonds shouted but Bruno dug in his heels and put the sorrel at the gap. It rose, its quarters flashed up, it was gone and there was no time, or a lifetime, before they heard an earthy thump and a diminishing thud of hooves.
Mr Harkness was running down the horse-paddock. Jasper had ridden past him when, on the slope beyond the hedge, Bruno appeared, checking his dancing mount. Farther away, on the hillside, a solitary horse reared, plunged and galloped idiotically up and down a distant hedge. Ricky thought he recognized the wall-eyed Mungo.
Bruno waved vaingloriously.
Julia had ridden alongside Ricky. ‘Horrid, showing-off little brute,’ said Julia. ‘Wait till I get at him.’ And she began shakily to laugh.
Mr Harkness bawled infuriated directions to Bruno about how to rejoin them by way of gates and a lane. The Pharamonds collected round Julia and Ricky.
‘I am ashamed of Bruno,’ said Jasper.
‘What’s it like,’ Carlotta asked, ‘on the other side?’
‘A sheer drop to an extremely deep and impossibly wide ditch. The mare’s all Harkness said she was to clear it.’
‘Bruno’s good, though,’ said Julia.
‘He’s given you a fright and he’s shown like a mountebank.’
Julia said: ‘Never mind!’ and leant along her horse’s neck to touch her husband’s hand. Ricky suddenly felt quite desolate.
The Pharamonds waited ominously for the return of the errant Bruno while Mr Harkness enlarged upon the prowess of Sorrel Lass which was the stable name of the talented mare. He also issued a number of dark hints as to what steps he would have taken if she had broken a leg and had to be destroyed.
In the middle of all this and just as Bruno, smiling uneasily, rode his mount into the stable-yard, Miss Harkness, forgotten by all, burst into eloquence.
She was ‘discovered’ leering over the lower half-door of an empty loose-box. With the riding crop, from which she appeared never to be parted, she beat on the half-door and screamed in triumph.
‘Yar! Yar! Yar!’ Miss Harkness screamed, ‘Old bloody Unk! She’s bloody done it, so sucks boo to rotten old you.’
Her uncle glared upon her but made no reply. Jasper, Carlotta and Louis were administering a severe if inaudible wigging to Bruno, who had unwillingly dismounted. Syd Jones had disappeared.
Julia said to Ricky: ‘We ought to bring Bruno and Dulcie together; they seem to have something in common, don’t you feel? What have you lot been saying to him?’ she asked her husband who had come across to her.
‘I’ve asked for another mount for him.’
‘Darling!’
‘He’s got to learn, sweetie. And in any case Harkness doesn’t like the idea of him riding her. After that performance.’
‘But he rode her beautifully, we must admit.’
‘He was told not to put her at the hedge.’
Syd Jones came out and led away the sorrel. Presently he re-appeared with something that looked like an elderly polo pony, upon which Bruno gazed with evident disgust.
The scene petered out. Miss Harkness emerged from the loose-box, strode past her uncle, shook hands violently with sulking Bruno and continued into the house, banging the door behind her.
Mr Harkness said: ‘Dulcie gets a bit excitable.’
Julia said: ‘She’s a high-spirited girl, isn’t she? Carlotta, darling, don’t you think we ought to hit the trail? Come along, boys. We’re off.’
There was, however, one more surprise to come. Mr Harkness approached Julia with a curious, almost a sheepish smile, and handed up an envelope.
‘Just a little thing of my own,’ he said. ‘See you this evening. Have a good day.’
When they reached the end of the drive Julia said, ‘What can it be?’
‘Not the bill,’ Carlotta said. ‘Not when he introduced it like that.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. The bill, after all, would be a little thing of his own.’
Julia had drawn what appeared to be a pamphlet from the envelope. She began to read. ‘Not true!’ she said, and looked up, wide-eyed, at her audience. ‘Not true,’ she repeated.
‘What isn’t?’ Carlotta asked crossly. ‘Don’t go on like that, Julia.’
Julia handed the pamphlet to Ricky. ‘You read it,’ she said. ‘Aloud.’
‘DO YOU KNOW,’ Ricky read, ‘that you are in danger of HELL-FIRE?’
‘DO YOU KNOW, that the DAY of JUDGEMENT is AT HAND?
‘WOE! WOE! WOE!!! cries the Prophet –’
‘Obviously,’ Julia interrupted, ‘Mr Harkness is the author.’
‘Why?’
‘Such very horsy language. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”’
‘He seems to run on in the same vein for a long time,’ Ricky said, turning the page. ‘It’s all about the last trump and one’s sins lying bitter in one’s belly. Wait a bit. Listen.’
‘What?’
‘Regular gatherings of the Inner Brethren at Leathers on Sunday evenings at seven-thirty to which you are Cordially Invited. Bro. Cuthbert (“Cuth”) Harkness will lead. Discourse and Discussion. Light Supper. Gents fifty p. Ladies a basket. All welcome.’
‘Well,’ said Jasper after a pause, ‘that explains everything. Or does it?’
‘I suppose it does,’ said Julia doubtfully. ‘Mr Harkness, whom we must learn to call Cuth, even if it sounds as if one had lost a tooth –’
‘How do you mean, Julia?’
‘Don’t interrupt. “Cuspid”,’ Julia said hurriedly. ‘Clearly, he’s a religious fanatic and that’s why he’s taken Miss Harkness’s pregnancy so hard.’
‘Of course. Evidently they’re extremely strict,’ Jasper agreed.
‘I wonder what they do at their parties. Would it be fun –’
‘No, Julia,’ said Louis, ‘it would not be fun; ladies a basket, or no.’
Carlotta said, ‘Do let’s go. We can discuss Mr Harkness later. There’s a perfect green lane round the corner.’
So all the Pharamonds and Ricky rode up the hill. They showed for some moments on the skyline, elegant against important clouds. Then the lane dipped into a valley and they followed it and disappeared.
III
They lunched at a little pub in Bon Accord on the extreme northern tip of the island. It was called the Fisherman’s Rest and was indeed full of guernseys, gumboots and the smell of fish. The landlord turned out to be a cousin of Bob Maistre at the Cod-and-Bottle.
Jasper stood drinks all round and Julia captivated the men by asking about the finer points of deep-sea fishing. From here she led the conversation to Mr Harkness, evoking a good deal of what Louis afterwards referred to as bucolic merriment.
‘Cuth Harkness,’ the landlord said, ‘was a sensible enough chap when he first came. A riding instructor or some such in the army, he were. Then he took queer with religion.’
‘He were all right till he got cranky-holy,’ someone said. ‘Druv himself silly brooding on hell-fire, I reckon.’
‘Is Miss Harkness a member of the group?’ Louis asked, and Ricky saw that mention of Miss Harkness evoked loose-mouthed grins and sidelong looks.
‘Dulce?’ somebody blurted out as if the name itself was explicit. ‘Her?’ and there was a general outbreak of smothered laughter.
‘Reckon her’s got better things to do,’ the landlord said. This evoked a further round of stifled merriment.
‘Quite a girl, our Dulcie, isn’t she?’ Louis said easily. He passed a white hand over the back of his patent-leather head. ‘Mind you,’ he added, ‘I wouldn’t know.’
Carlotta and Julia walked out into the fresh air where Ricky joined them.
‘I wish he wouldn’t,’ Carlotta said.
‘Louis?’ Julia asked.
‘Yes,’ said Carlotta. ‘That’s right. Louis. My husband, you know. Shouldn’t we be moving on?’ She smiled at Ricky. ‘But we’re an ever-so-jolly family, of course,’ she said. ‘Aren’t we, Julia?’
‘Come on,’ Julia said. ‘Let’s get the fiery steeds. Where’s Bruno?’
‘With them, I expect. Still a bit huffy.’
But Bruno left off being huffy when they all rode a fine race across a stretch of open turf. Ricky’s blood tingled in his ears and his bottom began to be sore.
When they had pulled up Louis gave a cry. He dismounted and hopped about on his elegant left foot.
‘Cramp?’ asked Jasper.
‘What do you suppose it is, love, hopscotch? Blast and hell, I’ll have to get this boot off,’ groaned Louis. ‘Here. Bruno!’
Bruno very efficiently pulled off the boot. Louis wrenched at his foot, hissing with pain. He stood up, stamped and limped.
‘It’s no good,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to go back.’
‘I’ll come with you, darling,’ his wife offered.
‘No, you won’t, damn it,’ he said. He mounted, holding the boot in his right hand. He flexed his right foot, keeping it out of the iron and checking his horse’s obvious desire to break away.
‘Will you be OK?’ asked Jasper.
‘I will if you’ll all be good enough to move off,’ he said. He turned his horse and began to walk it back along the turf.
‘Leave it,’ Carlotta said. ‘He’ll be cross if we don’t. He knows what he’s doing.’
In spite of a marked increase in his saddle-soreness, Ricky enjoyed the rest of the day’s outing. They took roundabout lanes back to the Cove and the sun was far in the west when, over a rise in the road, L’Esperance came unexpectedly into view, a romantic silhouette, distant and very lonely against a glowing sky.
‘Look at our lovely house!’ cried Julia. She began to sing a Spanish song and the other Pharamonds joined in. They sang, off and on, all the way to Leathers and up the drive.
‘Will Louis have taken the car or is he waiting for us?’ Bruno wondered.
‘It’d be a hell of a long wait,’ said Jasper.
‘I fancy he’ll be walking home,’ Carlotta said. ‘It’s good for his cramp to walk.’
As they turned the corner of the house into the stable yard, they saw the car where Louis had left it. It was unoccupied.
‘Yes, he’s walking,’ said Jasper. ‘We’ll catch up with him.’
There was nobody about in the yard. Everything seemed very quiet.
‘I’ll dig someone up,’ Jasper said. He turned his hack into a loose-box and walked off.
Bruno, who had recovered from the effects of his wigging and showed signs of wanting to brag about his exploit, said: ‘Julia, come down and look at my jump. Ricky, will you come? Carlotta, come and look. Come on.’
‘If we do, it doesn’t mean to say we approve,’ Julia said sternly. ‘Shall we?’ she asked Ricky and Carlotta. ‘I’d rather like to.’
They rode their bored horses into the paddock and down the hill. A long shadow from the blackthorn hedge reached towards them and the air struck cold as they entered it.
Ricky felt his horse’s barrel expand between his knees. It lifted its head, neighed and reared on its hind legs.
‘Here!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s all this!’ It dropped back on its forefeet and danced. From far beyond the hedge, on the distant hillside, there came an answering scream.
Julia crammed her own now agitated mount up to the gap in the hedge where Bruno had jumped. Ricky watched her bring the horse round and heard it snort. It stood and trembled. Julia leant forward in the saddle and patted its neck. She looked over the gap and down. Ricky saw her gloved hand clench. For a moment she was perfectly still. Then she turned towards him and he thought he had never seen absolute pallor in a face until now.
Behind him Carlotta said: ‘What’s possessing the animals?’ and then: ‘Julia, what is it?’
‘Ricky,’ Julia said in somebody else’s voice, ‘let Bruno take your horse and come here. Bruno, take Carlotta and the horses back to the yard and stay there. Do what I tell you, Carlotta. Do it at once. And find Jasper. Send him down here.’
They did what she told them. Ricky walked down the slope to Julia, who dismounted.
‘You’d better look,’ she said. ‘Down there. Down.’
Ricky looked through the gap. Water glinted below in the shadows. Trampled mud stank and glistened. Deep scars and slides ploughed the bank. Everything was dead still down there. Particularly the interloper, who lay smashed and discarded, face upwards, in the puddled ditch, her limbs all higgledy-piggledy at impossible angles, her mouth awash with muddy water, and her foolish eyes wide open and staring at nothing at all. On the hillside the sorrel mare, saddled, bridled and dead lame, limped here and there, snatching inconsequently at the short grass. Sometimes she threw up her head and whinnied. She was answered from the hilltop by Mungo, the wall-eyed bay.
IV
‘I told her,’ Mr Harkness sobbed. ‘I told her over and over again not to. I reasoned with her. I even chastised her for her soul’s sake, but she would! She was consumed with pride and she would do it and the Lord has smitten her down in the midst of her sin.’ He knuckled his eyes like a child, gazed balefully about him and suddenly roared out: ‘Where’s Jones?’
‘Not here, it seems,’ Julia ventured.
‘I’ll have the hide off him. He’s responsible. He’s as good as murdered her.’
‘Jones!’ Carlotta exclaimed. ‘Murdered!’
‘Orders! He was ordered to take her to the smith. To be re-shod on the off-fore. If he’d done that she wouldn’t have been here. I ordered him on purpose to get her out of the way.’
Julia and Carlotta made helpless noises. Bruno kicked at a loose-box door. Ricky felt sick. Inside the house Jasper could be heard talking on the telephone.
‘What’s he doing?’ Mr Harkness demanded hopelessly. ‘Who’s he talking to? What’s he saying!’?
‘He’s getting a doctor,’ Julia said, ‘and an ambulance.’
‘And the vet?’ Mr Harkness demanded. ‘Is he getting the vet? Is he getting Bob Blacker, the vet? She may have broken her leg, you know. She may have to be destroyed. Have you thought of that? And there she lies looking so awful. Somebody ought to close the eyes. I can’t, but somebody ought to.’
Ricky, to his great horror, felt hysteria rise in his throat. Mr Harkness rambled on, his voice clotted with tears. It was almost impossible to determine when he spoke of his niece and when of his sorrel mare. ‘And what about the hacks?’ he asked. ‘They ought to be unsaddled and rubbed down and fed. She ought to be seeing to them. She sinned. She sinned in the sight of the Lord! It may have led to hell-fire. More than probable. What about the hacks?’
‘Bruno,’ Julia said. ‘Could you?’
Bruno, with evident relief, went into the nearest loose-box. Characteristic sounds – snorts, occasional stamping, the clump of a saddle dumped across the half-door and the bang of an iron against wood – lent an air of normality to the stable yard.
Mr Harkness dived into the next-door box so suddenly that he raised a clatter of hooves.
He could be heard soothing the grey hack: ‘Steady girl. Stand over,’ and interrupting himself with an occasional sob.
‘This is too awful,’ Julia breathed. ‘What can one do?’
Carlotta said: ‘Nothing.’
Ricky said: ‘Shall I see if I can get him a drink?’
‘Brandy? Or something?’
‘He may have given it up because of hell-fire,’ Julia suggested. ‘It might send him completely bonkers.’
‘I can but try.’
He went into the house by the back-door, and following the sound of Jasper’s voice, found him at the telephone in an office where Mr Harkness evidently did his bookkeeping.
Jasper said: ‘Yes. Thank you. As quick as you can, won’t you?’ and hung up the receiver. ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘How is he?’
‘As near as damn it off his head. But he’s doing stables at the moment. The girls thought, perhaps a drink.’
‘I doubt if we’ll find any.’
‘Should we look?’
‘I don’t know. Should we? Might it send him utterly cuckoo?’
‘That’s what we wondered,’ said Ricky.
Jasper looked round the room and spotted a little corner cupboard. After a moment’s hesitation he opened the door and was confronted with a skull-and-crossbones badly drawn in red ink and supported by a legend:
BEWARE!
This Way Lies Damnation!!!
The card on which this information was inscribed had been hung round the neck of a whisky bottle.
‘In the face of that,’ Ricky said, ‘what should we do?’
‘I’ve no idea. But I know what I’m going to do,’ said Jasper warmly. He unscrewed the cap and took a fairly generous pull at the bottle. ‘I needed that,’ he gasped and offered it to Ricky.
‘No, thanks,’ Ricky said. ‘I feel sick already.’
‘It takes all sorts,’ Jasper observed, wiping his mouth and returning the bottle to the cupboard. ‘The doctor’s coming,’ he said. ‘And so’s the vet.’ He indicated a list of numbers above the telephone. ‘And the ambulance.’
‘Good,’ said Ricky.
‘They all said: “Don’t move her.”’
‘Good.’
‘The vet meant the mare.’
‘Naturally.’
‘God,’ said Jasper. ‘This is awful.’
‘Yes. Awful.’
‘Shall we go out?’
‘Yes.’
They returned to the stable yard. Bruno and Mr Harkness were still in the loose-boxes. There was a sound of munching and an occasional snort.
Jasper put his arm round his wife. ‘OK?’ he asked.
‘Yes. You’ve been drinking.’
‘Do you want some?’
‘No.’
‘Where’s Bruno?’
Julia jerked her head at the loose-boxes. ‘Come over here,’ she said, and drew the two men towards the car. Carlotta was in the driver’s seat, smoking.
‘Listen,’ Julia said. ‘About Bruno. You know what he’s thinking, of course?’
‘What?’
‘He’s thinking it’s his fault. Because he jumped the gap first. So she thought she could.’
‘Not his fault if she did.’
‘That’s what I say,’ said Carlotta.
‘Try and persuade Bruno of it! He was told not to and now see what’s come of it. That’s the way he’s thinking.’
‘Silly little bastard,’ said his brother uneasily.
Ricky said: ‘She’d made up her mind to do it before we got here. She’d have done it if Bruno had never appeared on the scene.’
‘Yes, Ricky,’ Julia said eagerly. ‘That’s just it. That’s the line we must take with Bruno. Do say all that to him, won’t you? How right you are.’
‘There’ll be an inquest, of course, and it’ll come out,’ Jasper said. ‘Bruno’s bit’ll come out.’
‘Hell,’ said Carlotta.
A car appeared, rounded the corner of the house and pulled up. The driver, a man in a tweed suit carrying a professional bag, got out.
‘Dr Carey?’ Jasper asked.
‘Blacker’s the name. I’m the vet. Where’s Cuth? What’s up, anyway?’
‘I should explain,’ Jasper said, and was doing so when a second car arrived with a second man in a tweed suit carrying a professional bag. This was Dr Carey. Jasper began again. When he had finished Dr Carey said: ‘Where is she, then?’ and, being told, walked off down the horse-paddock. ‘When the ambulance comes –’ he threw over his shoulder – ‘will you show them where? I’ll see her uncle when I get back.’
‘I’d better talk to Cuth,’ said the vet. ‘This is a terrible thing. Where is he?’
As if in answer to a summons, Mr Harkness appeared, like a woebegone Mr Punch, over the half-door of a loose-box.
‘Bob,’ he said. ‘Bob, she’s dead lame. The sorrel mare, Bob. Bob, she’s dead lame and she’s killed Dulcie.’
And then the ambulance arrived.
Ricky stood in a corner of the yard feeling extraneous to the scenes that followed. He saw the vet move off and Mr Harkness, talking pretty wildly, make a distracted attempt to follow him and then stand wiping his mouth and looking from one to the other of the two retreating figures, each with its professional bag, rather like items in a surrealistic landscape.
