Simon Brett - The Stabbing in the Stables

The girl looked up towards the window, her eyes unfocused. “It was as if it had never happened. I’d wake up in the mornings often, thinking it hadn’t happened, thinking I’d dreamed it. Then I’d slowly remember, but it still didn’t feel real. When I heard that Donal had been taken in for questioning, I almost managed to convince myself that he had done it. I mean, I like Donal, but it seemed to make more sense that he had killed Mr. Fleet than that I had. Daft, I know, but that was how my mind was working.

“Then they let Donal free, and suddenly they were questioning Daddy, and I knew what was real and what wasn’t. And for a few days I just didn’t know what to do. And then all at once it became very clear to me. I wanted to confess-I wanted to say everything that I’ve just said to you-but Mummy wouldn’t let me.”

Hilary Potton looked defensively at the other two women. “I didn’t know, did I? I just thought she was being self-dramatising again.” Rich, coming from you, thought Carole. “I thought her idea of confessing was just to get her precious father off the hook.”

“And you didn’t want him to come off the hook, did you? Ever?”

“Shut up, Carole! Stop making me feel like I’ve done something wrong in all this!”

“I think you have done a few things wrong,” said Jude. “You’ve lied about your alibi…”

“That was only to protect Immy.”

“There’s something else, though, isn’t there?”

“What?”

“You told the police where to find the bloodstained clothes.”

Hilary Potton’s face took on an expression of injured innocence. “That was my duty as a citizen. Once Alec had told me they were there, I had to do it.”

“Did Alec tell you everything? That Imogen had killed Walter Fleet?”

Now Hilary looked confused. “He garbled on about something. He said it involved Immy, but I didn’t take it seriously. I thought he was just trying to exonerate himself. The only information I retained was that Alec’s bloodstained Barbour was hidden in the hayloft at the Dalrymples’ stables.”

“And suddenly you saw the perfect way to get revenge on him for all the real and imagined slights he had inflicted on you during your marriage.”

“You make it sound so calculating.”

“I think,” said Jude, “it was pretty calculating.”

“I genuinely believed that Alec was the murderer!”

But Hilary Potton’s bluster was not convincing. She couldn’t meet the three implacable pair of eyes that were fixed on her, least of all Imogen’s.

“For heaven’s sake, I’m not the villain of the piece.” She pointed at her daughter. “There’s the villain of the piece.”

But neither Carole nor Jude thought that was completely true.

The hope had fluttered briefly in Jude’s mind that they might be able to do nothing, that the police need never know the details of Imogen Potton’s crime, but Carole soon put her right about that. Apart from the moral issue-her Home Office training had ensured that Carole had a great respect for the processes of British justice-there were practical considerations. Alec Potton was still in custody. The only thing that would make him-albeit unwillingly-retract his confession was the knowledge that his daughter’s guilt for the crime had been unarguably proved.

But Carole was optimistic about the outcome for Imogen. The processes of British justice did not exclude compassion, and there where many extenuating circumstances connected with the girls’ offence, particularly once the details of Nicky Dalrymple’s crimes had been established. Imogen Potton’s motive had been the protection of a beloved pony from appalling molestation. That the man she had stabbed was not the perpetrator of those crimes was simply an issue of mistaken identity. These facts, taken in consideration with the girl’s age and the pressure of her parents’ divorce, made Carole pretty certain that she would escape a custodial sentence, but be given a few years of judicial monitoring.

So in fact it proved. By the age of eighteen, Imogen Potton no longer had even to see her probation officer, and was happily enrolled at Brinsbury Agricultural College in a course in horse management.

But that lay a long way ahead.

While the case of Walter Fleet’s murder was satisfactorily resolved, the case against Nicky Dalrymple sadly never came to court. His money enabled him to buy lawyers whose infinite expertise in the law’s delays put off any charges until he persuaded his bank to find him a permanent-and very highly paid-job in Hong Kong. He could never return to his native land, but at least he escaped the ignominy of having his name and reputation dragged through the courts and tabloids.

In the circumstances, however, he could not make any objections to his wife’s demand for a divorce. From the moment she knew she would never have to see Nicky again, Sonia Dalrymple opened up like a Japanese flower in water, and the granting of the divorce crowned her feeling of emancipation.

Her affair with Alec Potton continued for a while, but soon sputtered out. Even such a biddable and beautiful woman as Sonia Dalrymple could not completely fix his roving eye and, after the first couple of infidelities, she, with some relief, drew the plugs on the relationship.

She kept in touch with Imogen, however, and, after Alice and Laura had shown absolutely no interest in Conker over their next holidays, transferred ownership to her. Imogen was ecstatic, and the exemplary care she demonstrated to Conker was one of the most valuable elements in her process of healing and growing up.

And her feckless father, whom she saw intermittently, did at least pay the livery and fodder bills at Long Bamber Stables.

Meanwhile, Conker got plenty of love and attention and riding-and carrots-which was all she had ever wanted from life.

Chieftain, as Donal had predicted, recovered completely from his lameness and, no longer fearful of Nicky Dalrymple’s bullying, provided Sonia with many years of happy riding and companionship.

After sticky teenage years with Alice and Laura, their mother was delighted when they both married early to rich young men, one emigrating to Florida and the other to South Africa. She kept in touch, paying dutiful visits to a spreading horde of grandchildren, who promised to grow up just as spoilt as their parents. So far as she knew, neither Alice nor Laura maintained any contact with their father.

Then, in her early fifties, Sonia Dalrymple was destined, while walking the Inca Trail, to meet the love of her life, and live happily ever after.

But that too lay a long way ahead.

Men like Donal Geraghty don’t change, but, as the arthritis crippled him more and more, he did take up Jude’s offer of trying to ease his pain. Her ministrations helped, and, though he was never going to give up the Jameson’s completely, he did moderate his intake, at least to the point where he could remember getting into fights. And the fact that he could remember them meant he got into fewer of them. After some years, Ted Crisp grudgingly lifted the ban on him at the Crown and Anchor.

The traumas they had both experienced did not serve to bring Hilary Potton and her daughter closer together. They continued to share the house in Fethering, in a state of silence interrupted by rows, until Imogen started college. Then Hilary, with enough money saved from the divorce settlement and her share of the house sale-though sadly without the largesse of the tabloid newspapers-fulfilled her dream of upping sticks and moving alone to New Zealand, where it was to be hoped that no nice caring New Zealander was so unfortunate as to get caught in her tentacles.

But that lay in the future too.

Victor Brewis made one property speculation too many and lost all his money. The plugs were pulled on the renovations at Cordham Manor and it was put on the market, which at least saved the lovely old house from undergoing a total makeover by Yolanta.