Simon Brett - The Stabbing in the Stables

“Just that he knows about horses. He’s helped out Lucinda Fleet from time to time up at Long Bamber Stables. Bit of a reputation for being light-fingered…and for starting fights when he’s in his cups.”

“Got to be the same fellow.” Nicky Dalrymple grimaced with distaste. “Scruffy little Herbert, whose Irish charm I have to say didn’t go far with me.”

“But he did cure Conker of that coughing.”

“How do you know the pony wouldn’t have got better on its own?”

“Well, I can’t prove that, Nicky, but-”

“I think that Donal was full of blarney and Jameson’s. I told him so at the time. Just a bloody snake-oil salesman, getting money out of gullible housewives for his so-called healing. Do you believe in all that mumbo jumbo, Jude?”

She could feel focussed pleading from Sonia’s eyes, and replied sedately, “One does hear remarkable instances of alternative therapies working.”

“Huh. Mind you, there’s usually another explanation for whatever’s happened. A lot of injuries and illnesses just clear up under their own steam.”

Nicky Dalrymple was clearly not used to being contradicted. In other circumstances Jude would have happily introduced him to the concept, but for his wife’s sake she knew this wasn’t the moment. “Well, thank you so much for the tea. I’d really better be off.”

“But you haven’t talked about your charity thing to Sonia yet.”

For a moment Jude was thrown, having forgotten the lie she had told. Then hastily she said, “We can do that another time.”

“No, tell me what the charity is. We always try to do our bit, don’t we, Sonia? We’re personally major contributors to the I.L.P.H.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

Sonia supplied the information. “I.L.P.H.” stood for “The International League for the Protection of Horses.”

“So what is the charity you’re working for?” Nicky Dalrymple insisted.

“Erm…well…It’s the N.S.P.C.C.” The only one she could think of on the spur of the moment. But a perfectly admirable charity. And it did help humans rather than animals, which Jude-unlike most residents of West Sussex-always thought was the greater priority.

“Let me give you a contribution then.” And Nicky Dalrymple’s cheque book was out of the pocket of his jacket. “Now who should I make it payable to?”

Jude looked across at Sonia, who made an imperceptible shrug. If Jude’s lie was going to bring benefit to some suffering children, then what harm was done? It wasn’t as if Nicky couldn’t afford it.

“Just to the N.S.P.C.C. then, please.”

Nicky filled in the cheque, pulled it out of the book and handed it across with a flourish. “But don’t you want to talk about the details of the event…because I’ve got some papers I should be going through, so if you want to be on your own…?”

“No, really. I’d better be on my way.” Jude had an instinct that, even if he were not in the same room, her husband’s presence in the house might inhibit Sonia from saying what she really wanted to.

“Well, I’ll say good-bye then. Pleasure to meet you, Jude. Jude…what? I don’t know your surname.”

“Everyone just calls me Jude.”

Nicky stayed in the sitting room, and Sonia closed the door against the potential draught as she led the way to the front door.

“What did you want to see me about?” Jude whispered.

“I just wondered if you’d heard anything from the police…you know, about what evidence they have against Donal?”

“No more than anyone else has. What I’ve heard on the news bulletins.”

Sonia looked disappointed, but not surprised at being disappointed. “You haven’t any idea what he’s said to them…?”

“How could I? I’m afraid it’s only in crime fiction that the police share all the latest developments on a case with nosey local spinsters.”

She’d said it as a joke, but Sonia didn’t smile. Instead, she whispered, “But if you do hear anything about what Donal’s said, you will let me know, won’t you, Jude?”

Odd. Two women, thought Jude as she walked along the towpath towards Fethering, both deeply concerned about a vagrant Irishman. For the same reason? Or for different reasons? More important, for what reason?

The weather had suddenly turned very cold. After a few mild days that had held the promise of spring, winter had reasserted its icy grip. The waters of the Fether, rushing fast past the towpath, looked icily uninviting, and the leaden sea beyond held no element of welcome. Jude’s hand, nestling for warmth into the pocket of her fleece, encountered something unexpected, and closed around Nicky Dalrymple’s cheque. She looked at it. A hundred pounds for the N.S.P.C.C. Oh well, it’s an ill wind. Who was it who had ever said that lying was a bad thing?

The Seaview Cafe on Fethering Beach was, surprisingly, open all the year round. In the summer, the tall windows at the front were concertina-ed back and the concrete floor was so covered with sand that it seemed like a continuation of the beach. The cafe was open from eight in the morning till eight at night. Then the space was loud with the shrieks of children, and the blue-overalled women behind the counter were kept busy all day supplying pots of tea, fizzy drinks, hamburgers, chips, crisps and ice creams.

In the winter everything was different. All the windows were shut, and the place steamed up like a huge terrarium. Wind wheezed through ventilation grills and the odd cracked pane. Opening hours were eleven to five, and the average age of the winter population trebled that of the summer. The occasional child whose route from school passed the beach might drop in for a Coke and a bag of crisps, but generally speaking, the customers were well past seventy, and usually sitting on their own. The women behind the counter had plenty of time to peruse their Sun s and Daily Mail s, and amongst the clientele pots of tea were made to last a very long time.

Carole Seddon usually avoided the place. In the summer it was too noisy, in the winter too dispiriting. But that Wednesday afternoon she’d had no choice. She’d got delayed shopping and, as a result, started late for Gulliver’s afternoon walk. Because of her rush, she had omitted to have a pee when she got back to High Tor, and on the beach, feeling the sudden drop in the temperature, she found herself desperate for a restroom. The toilets on the front were locked against vandals throughout the winter, so the Seaview Cafe was her only option. Also, dogs were allowed in there.

Carole was by nature a law-abiding soul, and she could no more have gone into the cafe to use its facilities without making a purchase than she could have dismembered someone with a chainsaw. So, with mounting discomfort, she ordered a pot of tea at the counter and waited while it was prepared. She then took the tray with obsessive concentration across to a table and tied Gulliver’s lead to a convenient radiator pipe, before rushing off to the ladies’.

When Carole returned, considerably relieved, she noticed a woman she vaguely recognised, zipped up into an anorak and sitting at an adjacent table. Whether she had been there earlier, Carole couldn’t say-taking in the other customers had not been her primary priority-but the laying out of her tea things and the half-eaten doughnut suggested she had.

“Looked like you were in rather a hurry. It’s the cold weather.”

The woman’s smile identified her to Carole, and allayed any resentment she might have felt about public discussion of her bladder. It was Hilary Potton, who clearly didn’t think Carole remembered their previous encounter. “We talked in Allinstore. I was on the till.”

“I recognised you.”