Рита Браун - The Tell-Tale Horse

“Heard they had a good one today.”

“Who told you that?” A flicker of irritation crept into his voice, a rather nice baritone.

“Sam. Gray called him about one thing or another.”

“Oh.” He paused and looked over at his wife, now standing at the window, the sky darkening. “Bizarre about Lady Godiva.”

“Still don’t know a thing.”

“Even though she sets my teeth on edge, if anyone can handle that situation, it would be Sister.”

“Actually, honey, you could have handled it. I thought you and Sister got on quite well. She valued your every word when you sat on the board. She told everyone you brought a rigorous approach to projects, and your financial acuity was amazing.”

“Well….” His voice trailed off. “You know the legend of Lady Godiva.”

“It’s true. It’s not a legend. I looked it up.”

He smiled sheepishly. “I did too.”

“Funny, isn’t it, how the past keeps grabbing us around the ankles?”

“The past is prologue.” He was a keen student of history. “She was a Saxon lady married to Leofric, earl of Mercia. He taxed his people mercilessly and she pleaded for them for years. One day I guess he got tired of the nagging. He told her he’d lift the taxes if she’d ride through Coventry naked. That was about 1040, give or take a year. Anyway, she did it and he kept his word.”

“He must have loved her.”

“Perhaps. He certainly loved his reputation. How would it appear if he broke a vow after her sacrifice?”

“And that’s where we get Peeping Tom .” She laughed.

“Not much wick in his candle, stupid oaf.”

The townspeople, knowing full well how great an act this was for such a grand lady, withdrew, shutting all their windows. Tom, a tailor, drilled a hole in his shutter so he could see the beautiful woman, her body shielded only by her long hair. Some folks said back then he was struck blind. Others said that one of the two soldiers walking with the lady to guard her thrust his sword in the hole when he saw the white of Tom’s eye. However it happened, the name Peeping Tom has stuck in the English language to this day.

Godiva had a good heart, for she convinced her husband, a rich and powerful man, to found a monastery at Stow, Lincolnshire. In 1043 Leofric built and endowed a Benedictine monastery at Coventry, thanks to her urging. She became a benefactress of monasteries at Leominster, Chester, Wenlock, Worcester, and Evesham. Surely she possessed energy as well as beauty.

“Her brother, Thorold of Bucknall, was sheriff of Lincolnshire.” Crawford stood up, stretching. “Seems the family were all doers, for lack of a better word.” He walked up to her, standing next to her at the window. “When you hear of something like that murder at Horse Country, you can’t help running scenarios through your mind.”

“Such as?”

“Was this a sex killing?”

“Wouldn’t we know by now? I mean, that would show up during the autopsy. The papers said nothing about it.”

“You’re right.” He inhaled deeply. “Unless the police are withholding information. Sometimes they’ll hold something back to provoke the killer.” He paused. “I wonder if this has something to do with taxation?”

“Or some unjust practice. But Crawford, why make a beautiful innocent pay for it?”

“Maybe she wasn’t innocent.”

CHAPTER 5

The old apple orchard rested a quarter of a mile from the kennels located on Sister Jane’s Roughneck Farm. Many hunt clubs purchase land for a clubhouse and kennels, but in the early sixties Sister and her husband, Ray, joint masters of the Jefferson Hunt, thought to save money by refurbishing the old kennels first built in 1887 that were standing on the land.

The financial effort of JHC focused entirely on hunting, so land for a clubhouse was never purchased, although the club did own show grounds on land donated by the Bancrofts. Since other organizations would rent the attractive venue, it provided about seven thousand a year in income, a help to be sure. Occasionally, not having a clubhouse proved a burden, since any indoor activity needed a host willing to allow throngs, sometimes in muddy boots, to tramp through their house. Sister vowed to herself that the day would come when she would find or build a clubhouse. She began to hope this would happen before her century if God would grant her one hundred years.

In spring, when the gnarled apple trees blossomed, the fragrance wafted through the kennels and through Sister’s wonderful unpretentious house, centuries old and centuries loved. A clubhouse in the apple orchard would raise spirits, but somehow it seemed the wrong location for Sister’s secret dream.

This evening, the twilight shrouded in low clouds cast a gloom over the orchard. Georgia, a young gray fox, nearly black, lived there in a tidy den. The setting pleased her. Water was close by, thanks to the kennels and barns, if she wished to walk in that direction. If she headed east, a tiny stream crisscrossed the end of the orchard, as well as the farm road that divided the pastures on the eastern side. Broad Creek, a swift-running rock-strewn stream, lovely to behold in any season though occasionally difficult to cross, was on the far side of those pastures running into the Bancroft place, After All Farm.

Sleet rattled against the tree bark. Georgia, cozy in her den, some corncobs and treasures with her, lifted her head sharply as her mother, Inky, a jet-black fox, entered.

“Going to be a night of it.” Inky sat down on the sweet-smelling hay that Georgia changed often, being so close to the barn.

Inky’s den, farther down the farm road in a pasture north of the apple orchard, was in an old ruin under a powerful walnut tree. Fox families often stay close to one another, and Inky and Georgia were no exception. Many times a young female won’t breed in her first season but will help her parents. The boys usually move farther away from the home den, but foxes have a family feeling, one that most humans never seem to notice. Sister and Shaker were exceptions.

“I came in early.”

Inky pushed an orange golf ball toward her daughter. “You’re going to get as bad as Target.” She named a red fox who collected things, the shinier the better.

“Uncle Yancy is worse.” Georgia smiled, naming an old fox whose mate, Aunt Netty, nagged at him constantly. Uncle Yancy, fed up, would move out. She’d find him and move in, to the amusement of the others. He’d left Pattypan Forge on After All Farm just a few weeks ago to return to his old den half a mile west of Georgia’s den in the apple orchard. Aunt Netty declared she loved Pattypan Forge, built in 1792, so roomy now that she’d cleaned out Yancy’s mess. How long would that last before she bedeviled him again?

“Far as I know among our neighbors, only Charlene bred. It’s going to be a bad spring and summer. Funny, how the humans can’t tell. They keep on breeding regardless.”

“You know, Georgia, I often wonder if they used to know things as we know them and somehow, way back when they started living in cities, they began to lose the ability. Now it’s gone. I mean, they can hardly tell what the weather will be from one day to the next. On their own, I mean. It’s sad and dangerous.”

“Why is it dangerous?” Georgia asked.

“An animal that violates or forgets its own nature eventually dies, I think. Trouble is, they’ll take a lot of us down with them. Well, I won’t be solving that giant problem anytime soon.” Inky batted the orange golf ball back to Georgia. “At least Sister Jane is more like us. More animal.”