Simon Brett - The Stabbing in the Stables

That was pretty unambiguous. The two neighbours exchanged a look. Carole reckoned they were both thinking exactly the same thing: that Lucinda Fleet was as tough as the old boots she was wearing. But that wasn’t what Jude was thinking.

“Do you think there’s something going on with her and Donal?”

“What-Lucinda?”

“Yes, obviously, Jude.”

“Why should there be?”

“Well, she made no secret of the fact that her marriage was unhappy, so maybe she sought…I don’t know what the word is…solace perhaps?”

“Sex.”

“All right…outside the marriage? Maybe that was a reason why she liked having Donal around so much, and why Walter loathed him?”

“I think you’ve been reading too much News of the World, Carole.”

“I have never read the News of the World.”

“I know you haven’t. Just a joke. But you do seem to be developing rather a prurient mind. Isn’t it possible that Lucinda just found Donal useful to help out with the horses-like she said?”

“Well, yes, it’s possible,” Carole conceded, “but there has been a murder here. High emotions are involved. If Donal was Lucinda’s lover, he might well have wanted Walter out of the way. And the police must have had some stronger reason to arrest him, you know, beyond the fact that he’s a vagrant who hangs round horses.”

“They haven’t arrested him. They’ve only taken him in for questioning.” Jude found it odd saying lines like that. Usually it was Carole, with her Home Office background, who was hot on details of police procedure.

But her friend was too excited to bother about such things. “I think it’s very likely that Donal did kill Walter Fleet.”

“Which Donal are we talking about here? The ex-jockey?”

They hadn’t heard the approach of Ted Crisp to their alcove, bearing the steak-and-Guinness pies they’d both ordered.

“Yes,” said Jude. “Why-do you know him?”

“Certainly.” Ted scratched his beard. “He holds something of a record here, actually.”

“What’s that?”

“He is the only person I have ever banned from the Crown and Anchor. There have been people who I’ve warned, but generally speaking, the natives of Fethering are a biddable, docile lot. Donal’s the only one who’s ever started a fight in here.”

“Who did he have a fight with? Was the other man one of your regulars?”

“The other man used to come in occasionally. Won’t be doing that so much now, though.”

“Oh?”

“Because he’s dead. He was that Walter Fleet-you know, the one who got stabbed up at Long Bamber.”

“And Donal picked a fight with him? In here?” asked Carole.

“That’s right. Six months ago, maybe a bit longer. Hot summer evening, I remember that.”

“Do you know what the fight was about?”

“Hard to tell. Donal was so drunk, he was hardly intelligible. And Walter wasn’t in a much better state either. They had this big slanging match, and then Donal went for Walter.”

“If they had a slanging match,” said Jude, “you must have heard something.”

“It was all pretty indistinct. But I do remember Donal shouting something like, ‘You’re not worthy of her! She’s beautiful and you don’t deserve her!’”

In spite of what Lucinda had said in his defence, Donal-who must also have a surname, though neither Carole nor Jude knew it-was looking the most likely candidate for the killer of Walter Fleet. And that impression was confirmed when Jude heard from Sonia Dalrymple that the horses were being allowed to return to Long Bamber Stables. That news definitely implied the police’s investigations were at an end. They had got their man.

Carole and Jude were disappointed by this conclusion, but they couldn’t really argue with it. Starved of information as they were, they knew that any alternative theories they produced about the crime would be nothing more than conjecture. They weren’t privy to the facts at any level, whereas the police seemed to have more than enough facts at their fingertips to secure a conviction.

So, without a murder mystery to worry away at, they would both have to return to their normal lives. For Jude that would not be too much hardship-back to the routine of Woodside Cottage, her clients, her occasional mysterious visits to London. (The mystery of these visits was really only in Carole’s mind. Jude had a wide circle of friends, many of whom her neighbour was destined never to meet. She also had lovers, though there were more of these in Carole’s imagination than in reality. Jude didn’t deliberately hide the details of her London relationships, but Carole was always too genteel to enquire directly about them. So the aura of mystery intensified-a situation that in fact suited Jude very well.)

For Carole, however, the return to normal life would not be so easy. The murder had offered a welcome distraction from thoughts of Stephen and Gaby’s marriage. Her son still hadn’t rung back. She couldn’t put off much longer making a phone call to David.

The evening after their meeting with Lucinda Fleet, she steeled herself to do the deed. Sunday, he was sure to be in. In his little flat in Swiss Cottage. The flat she had never seen and never intended to see. How did retired civil servants like David Seddon spend their time in little flats in Swiss Cottage? That was a question towards which she did not allow her mind to stray.

She had to look his number up. It was the only number she ever had to look up. Every other one she remembered. A psychologist would have had a field day with that.

“Hello.”

“David, it’s Carole.”

“Ah. Erm…hello.”

He didn’t sound either surprised to hear her, or particularly moved by the fact that she’d rung him. It was impossible for her to know what he was thinking-as indeed it had been right through their marriage.

“How are you?”

“Not so bad. You, Carole?”

“Mustn’t grumble.”

Neither of them contemplated volunteering more about their lives than this. In the run-up to Stephen and Gaby’s wedding, David had tried to make some kind of rapprochement towards his ex-wife. Now he seemed to have given up the unequal struggle. Carole preferred it that way.

“I was just wondering, David, whether you’d heard anything of Stephen and Gaby recently.”

“Erm…not very recently.” Apparently it was the first time he’d thought about them for a while. “No, I suppose I haven’t, not…erm…very recently.”

Carole had forgotten how much his little habit of hesitation grated on her. “So you haven’t seen them?”

“Not since…well, not since Christmas, now I come to think of it.”

How could he not have thought of it for so long? How did David actually spend his retirement? What thoughts did actually go through his head?

“No, I haven’t either. I spoke to Gaby a few days ago, but…I just wondered if you had any news of them.”

“No, I haven’t. But I’m…erm…sure they’ll be in touch…you know, when they’ve…erm…when they’ve got something to say.”

Yes. So that was it. As she put the phone down, Carole wished bitterly that she hadn’t made the call. Hearing David’s voice had only upset her more, and brought back to her mind Stephen’s inheritance of bad relationships.

“Jude, it’s Sonia.”

“Hello. Everything all right?”

“Well, yes.”

Tuesday had come round again. Walter Fleet had been dead for nearly a week. There had been no word of funeral plans, and there wouldn’t be any for a while. Police forensic investigations had not finished; they had yet to release the body.

“You sound a bit uptight, Sonia.”

“No, no, I’m fine.” But the tension in her voice contradicted her words. “I just, um…I just wondered whether you would come and have another look at Chieftain.”