Simon Brett - The Stabbing in the Stables

“He’ll be all right now.”

“You mean he’s cured?”

“I mean he’s ready now for nature to cure him. It’ll take a couple of weeks. The muscle was torn. But it’s on the mend now.” He reached up to take hold of Chieftain’s head collar and lead him back to his stable. As he did so, Lucinda emerged from the tack room. “Got him sorted, have you, Donal?”

“Yes. Can’t be ridden for a couple of weeks, then he should be fine…until his owner does the same thing again.”

Lucinda looked rueful.

“Aren’t you going to say anything to Mr. High-and-mighty Dalrymple then?” asked Donal.

“I can’t risk them taking the horses away. I need the money.”

Just what she’d said about Victor and Yolanta Brewis. Her financial situation must be pretty serious for someone as devoted to horses as Lucinda to risk their being hurt by bullying owners. Jude wondered whether money pressures at Long Bamber Stables had anything to do with Walter Fleet’s death.

Donal didn’t seem surprised by her reaction, and led Chieftain on into his stable. Conker, still tethered in the yard, whinnied, perhaps feeling it was about time he too was reinstalled. But the sound of broom on cement flooring indicated that Imogen hadn’t finished mucking out.

Donal locked the bottom half of the door with practised ease, though he moved stiffly, his body still adjusting from the bent pose he had held so long. Lucinda stood waiting when he turned back from the stable. “What?” he asked.

“I just wondered-I suppose as the widow of the victim I have a right to wonder-whether the police gave you any indication of what they thought might have happened to Walter.”

Ah, thought Jude, so Lucinda and Donal hadn’t had an earlier conversation about the murder.

He grinned, without much humour. “While they were questioning me, they gave the pretty firm impression they thought I’d topped him. Perhaps they still do. But they hadn’t got a shred of evidence, so they had to let me go.”

“Didn’t you have an alibi for the time of the murder?” Jude’s words were out before she realised how unnaturally nosey they sounded.

Donal smiled, as if realising she’d jumped the gun. “Whether I had an alibi or not, I didn’t mention it to the police. I wasn’t going to make their work too easy. I knew they couldn’t pin anything on me, so I let them sweat.”

“I thought the police were meant to make their suspects sweat,” said Lucinda, “not the other way round.”

“That is indeed the traditional way they like to do things. But it’s not the first time I’ve been questioned by the bastards-though probably the first time I’ve been questioned about something I didn’t do. You get to know the form after a while. So I wasn’t going to let them have an easy ride.”

“But they didn’t give any indication of where their investigations were taking them?”

“No. Their investigations were taking them as far as me, and that was it. Whether they’re now making some other poor sod’s life a misery, I don’t know.”

“There’s been nothing on the news about anyone else being questioned,” said Jude.

“Oh. And do you not have a personal hotline to the police to find out how their investigations are proceeding?”

He was sending her up. She grinned ruefully. “Sadly, no. I wish I had.”

“You’re lying. I’ll swear the police spend all their time coming round to consult you, like you were some kind of New Age Miss Marple.” But whatever game Donal was playing with Jude, he suddenly got bored with it, and turned back to Lucinda. “Afraid I can’t tell you anything about who else the police are talking to. You see, the police, having grabbed the obvious Paddy with form who’s known to hang around stables and got nowhere with him, probably don’t have the imagination to find another suspect.”

“And what about you, Donal? Do you have your own theory about who killed my husband?”

The blue eyes, embedded in their folds of wrinkles, twinkled sardonically. “I could ask you the same question, Lucinda. Do you have your own theory on the subject?”

She shrugged. “I really can’t come up with much beyond the random intruder. A person or persons unknown. Walter wasn’t a particularly popular man, he was irritating, but surely not enough for anyone to have killed him.”

“Well, there’s no way it was suicide, so somebody did.”

“Yes.”

He let out a dry laugh. “But if you really want my opinion, for what it’s worth-and the opinion of a drunken Irishman, in the opinion of many people, isn’t worth very much-I’d say it was definitely a woman who killed Walter.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The nature of the attack. Men lose their tempers and lash out, but they don’t go on doing it. They stop after a while. Once they know the blows have hit home. Also a man would never have used a bot knife for the attack.”

“It was the only weapon available.”

“A man still wouldn’t have used it. Whoever attacked Walter was hysterical-and I don’t need to tell you that means we’re talking about a woman-from hystera, the Greek word for womb.”

Again Donal was letting his facade slip to reveal his true intelligence and education. As if aware of the lapse, he felt the need to follow it with something crass. “And only a bloody woman would be as incompetent as to kill anyone that way.”

Lucinda Fleet’s lips thinned. “Well, thank you, Donal, for your most helpful assessment. I don’t know why I bothered asking.”

“Because you’re like every one else round here-a nosey cow.”

“Look, if you’re going to insult me, I can-”

She was interrupted by the flustered arrival of Alec Potton. He came rushing through the gates of the yard, what remained of his hair sticking out at odd angles. He was once again wearing his corduroy suit, which seemed baggier than ever, and no topcoat.

“Good morning, Lucinda. And hello.” He knew he’d met Jude, but he couldn’t place exactly where or how. And he was too rushed to work it out. “Is Immy here?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

The girl came out of Conker’s stable and stood leaning on a broom. There was an expression almost of insolence on her face, challenging her adoring father to be angry with her.

“I had a call from the school. They wanted to know where you are.”

“I’m here. As you see.”

“Immy, you can’t bunk off lessons like that.”

“Why not?” She jutted her lower lip and her right hip in the perfect posture of adolescent rebellion. “They never teach us anything.”

“That’s not the point. You’re breaking the school rules. You’re breaking the law, come to that.”

“Am I?”

Alec Potton wasn’t sure enough of his legal ground to answer that. “Never mind. Come on, you must come straight back to school with me. And you’d better think of something pretty good to tell your headmistress.”

“Why?”

“Because I say so, Imogen!”

This sudden outburst was the anger of a weak man, but it was so little expected by his daughter that she immediately burst into tears. Her mouth fell open, revealing the full ugliness of the braces on her teeth. Totally disarmed, and unable to maintain his pose of fury, her father moved instinctively forward and put his arms round the girl’s shoulders.

“Come on, Immy, let’s pick up something to eat on the way back to school.” And, with an embarrassed wave of good bye to the two women, he led his daughter away from the stables.

Jude moved to the gate and saw that, as arranged earlier in the morning and punctual to the minute, Carole’s Renault had arrived in the car park. “Donal,” she said, “can I buy you a drink by way of thank you?”