Comeback (19 page)

Carey shook his head.

“I locked it,” Yvonne said. “I locked it as usual after the clinic.”

The policeman glanced at the legs and suffered a spasm of regret, then pulled himself together, sighed and rubbed his fingers down his nose.

“And who locked the laboratory?”

“Probably I did,” Jay Jardine said. “I had some tests in there that I didn’t want to be disturbed.” He laughed without mirth. “I suppose there’s nothing left of those, either?”

“Very unlikely, sir.” The policeman cleared his throat. “At what time were you last on the premises?”

Jay Jardine stared and took offense. “Are you suggesting that
I
set fire to the place?”

“I’m trying to establish a pattern, sir.”

“Oh.” Jardine still looked annoyed. “I locked up when I left at about four. I was called out to a sick cow. Anything else?”

“I’d like to make a list of where you all were during the evening.” The policeman turned to a fresh page in his spiral-bound notebook. “Starting with Mr. Hewett, please sir.”

“I told you, I left after eight and went home.”

“How far away is home, sir?”

“Are all these questions necessary?” Carey protested. “You surely can’t think one of
us
started the fire?”

“We can’t tell who started it, sir, but we’d like to eliminate as many people as possible.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I live five minutes away.”

“By car?”

“Of course by car.”

“And you spent the evening with your wife?”

The policeman, not insensitive, observed the mental wince of everyone there and was ready for Carey’s reply.

“My wife’s dead.”

“Very sorry, sir. You were alone, then, sir?”

“I suppose so. I got some supper, played some music, read the newspaper. I don’t think of it as being alone, but if you mean was anyone else there, no, they weren’t.”

The policeman nodded, made a note and continued to the next name on his list.

“Mrs. Amhurst?”

“Miss,” Lucy said.

The policeman gave her a slow reconnoitering look as if establishing a base against which to test her answers. A good detective, I thought, and very experienced.

“Thursday evening, madam?” he asked economically.

She answered straightforwardly, without Jardine’s umbrage. “I left here soon after lunch as I had about four calls to make in the afternoon. The last was to some sheep up on a hill above Birdlip. I suppose I left there at dusk, say before seven, and then called on a basset hound I’d had in surgery in the morning. He was all right. I had a drink with the owners and went home. Didn’t look at the time.”

“Do you live alone, madam?”

“My sister lives with me, but she’s away on a cruise.”

“So that evening ... ?”

“Same as Carey. I suppose, though, in my case instead of music I watched some television.” She forestalled his next question humorously. “Don’t ask me what program I watched, I’ve no idea. I’m afraid I’ve a habit of falling asleep in my chair after a long day.”

“How far away from here do you live, madam?”

“A mile and a quarter. In Riddlescombe.”

I looked at her with interest. Riddlescombe was the village where I’d lived with my mother, where the Eaglewoods still held sway. I hadn’t realized it was quite so near to the outskirts of Cheltenham. Distances seemed greater, I supposed, to children.

The policeman consulted his list.

“Mrs. Floyd?”

“Yes,” Yvonne said, uncrossing the spectacular legs and crossing them the other way. “Like I told you, I went home at seven.”

“And home is?”

“Painswick Road. About a couple of miles from here. My husband was away on business but the kids were in.”

“Er ... how old are your children?”

“They’re not mine. They’re my husband’s. Fifteen and sixteen. Boys. They listen to pop music and chew gum, hey man.” Her impersonation in the last few words brought the first cracking smiles of the morning.

“And could they vouch for you, madam?”

“Vouch
for me?” She gave him a comical grin. “They were doing their homework. How anyone can do homework with a million decibels battering their eardrums beats me, but they get fidgety in silence. They have a room each. Just as well. I always go up and tell them when I get in. They give me a wave. We get on pretty well.”

“So you went downstairs, madam, I’m guessing, and cooked some food and spent the evening more or less alone?”

“I suppose so. Read the day’s letters and a magazine. Watched the news. Then Oliver phoned and said this place was on fire, so I hopped upstairs and told the boys why I’d be going out. They’d got their videos going by then but of course they wanted to come too but I wouldn’t let them, it was already late and they had tests the next day. I told them to go to sleep. My name was shit.”

The policeman didn’t bother to smother his smile and made the briefest of notes.

“Oliver Quincy, large animals?” he asked next.

“That’s me,” Oliver said.

Oliver got the same contemplative inspection as Lucy.

“Sir, your evening?”

“Oh, well, I was bloody tired. We’d had that damned horse die and we’d had all sorts of postmortems, the real thing and endless checks of the equipment and we couldn’t come up with anything wrong. But I was knackered by the end, we all were. I was supposed to be going to the rugby club annual dinner but I couldn’t face the monkey suit and the speeches and the din, so I drove out to a pub and had a couple of pints and some bar food.”

“Did you pay with a credit card, sir?”

“No. Cash.”

“Are you married, sir?”

“My wife goes where she likes and so do I.”

There was something in his voice that belied the comfort-giving exterior, that belonged more to the ruthlessness with which he angled to supplant Carey.

“How did you hear the building was on fire, sir?”

“I phoned him,” Carey said. “He was a long time answering but he was the first I’d tried to reach. I think of Oliver as my second-in-command. It was natural to get to him first and ask him to phone everyone else.”

None of them met any eyes. A real case of et tu Brute in the making. Poor old Carey.

“The phone was ringing when I got home,” Oliver confirmed, still not looking at his Caesar. “I phoned Yvonne, Lucy and Jay and told them, but got no answer from the others.”

“I was in the pub,” Scott said.

The policeman nodded, looking at his list.

“Mr. McClure?” he asked.

“I took my fiancée, Belinda here, and her parents, out to dinner. Peter was with us too.”

The policeman again reviewed his list.

“Belinda Larch, qualified veterinary nurse? Peter Darwin, general assistant?”

We both silently nodded.

“And you three were together all evening, with Miss Larch’s parents? In a restaurant?”

“Right,” Ken said. “We were just about to leave when Lucy phoned me there.”

Lucy nodded. “When we all got here I realized Ken was missing. I remembered he was on call, so I phoned his portable phone from the hospital office. Does all this matter?”

“Some things matter, some don’t,” said our philosopher policeman. “We can’t tell yet.” He consulted the list. “Mr. Jay Jardine?”

Jay alone resented the questions. “I told you.”

“Yes, sir. Could you go on from after the sick cow?”

With unsuppressed irritation, in snapping tight-mouthed syllables, Jay said he’d gone home and had a row with his live-in girlfriend. She’d stormed out to cry on her best friend’s shoulder. So what?

So nothing, it seemed. His answer got written down without comment and it appeared the present session of questions had come to an end. The constable conveniently returned at that moment with Carey’s keys, speaking quietly into his senior officer’s ear so that probably only Carey himself, who was nearest, could overhear.

The senior policeman nodded, turned and handed the bunch to its owner. Then, glancing round our expectant faces, he said matter-of-factly that the pharmacy key did fit the lock in question. As no one had expected it wouldn’t, the news fell short of uproar. Carey, looking worried, said he thought he’d checked the door was locked, but he’d had so much else on his mind that now he couldn’t swear . . .

“But I
did
lock it,” Yvonne said. “I’m sure I did. I always do.”

“Don’t worry too much about it, madam. It’s quite easy to get duplicate keys cut and, frankly, between you, you already have so many keys in use here that I doubt if any would-be intruder would have much difficulty in borrowing and reproducing the whole bunch.”

Into a moderately stunned silence he poured a little professional advice. “If you’re thinking of rebuilding, sir, I would definitely consider electric locks. No one can pop into the nearest hardware shop to copy that sort of key.”

He had to leave with his constable and Carey stood and went with them, leaving a roomful of thoughtfulness behind.

“I did lock it,” Yvonne repeated doubtfully. “I always do.”

“Of course you did,” Oliver said. “It’s typical of Carey not to know whether he checked it or not. That’s just what I mean. He’s past it. The sooner we tell him, the better.” He stood up, stretching. “There’s no point in waiting about here. I’m off to play golf. Who’s on call?”

“Carey is,” Lucy told him, “and Ken.”

Oliver said without humor, “Then let’s hope it is a quiet Sunday.”

He walked purposefully out of the Portakabin, followed immediately by his chief admirer, Jay. Everyone else stood and in varying degrees of unsettlement moved in their wake. Scott, his internal dynamos whizzing again after the short inactivity, announced he was spending the day by the lake stripping down the engines of his speedboat in preparation for the waterskiing season, and marched briskly out of the rear of the car park. We heard the roar of his engine starting, and presently saw his strong figure riding a motorbike past the entrance.

“Does he always ride a bike?” I asked.

“He hasn’t a car,” Ken said.

Lucy said tolerantly, “He pumps iron, he’s got pectorals you’d hardly believe, he’s as physical as they come.”

“He’s a good nurse,” Ken said to me. “You saw him.”

I nodded.

“Loyal to Carey, too,” Lucy went on approvingly. “I couldn’t live the way he does, but he seems happy enough.”

“How does he live?” I prompted.

Yvonne answered, “In a caravan park. He says he hates permanence. He’s kind though. We took our boys to his lake one day last summer and he spent hours teaching them to ski.”

Lucy nodded. “Such a mixture.”

“Unmarried?” I asked.

“A chauvinist,” Belinda stated, and the other two women nodded.

“We may as well all go home,” Yvonne said. “Oliver was right, we can’t do any more here.”

“I suppose not,” Lucy agreed reluctantly. “It’s all dreadfully upsetting.”

The two women walked together to the gate. Belinda urged Ken to come with her to Thetford Cottage because her mother was a disastrous cook and she, Belinda, had said she would do the Sunday lunch for everyone.

“You go on, darling,” Ken said, “I just want to go over a few things with Peter.”

She went with bad grace, disliking it, delivering a parting shot about us not being late. Ken waved to her lovingly and walked purposefully ahead of me into the office.

“Right,” he said, settling into the chair behind the desk and stretching for a note pad to write on. “No secrets, no reservations, and don’t use what I tell you against me.”

“Not a chance.”

He must have heard more commitment in my voice than he expected, because he looked briefly puzzled and said, “You’ve known me less than three days.”

“Mm,” I agreed, and thought about his father and my mother, and the promises I’d made her.

 

 

 

 

C
hronologically,” Ken said, ”if we’re counting horses that’ve died when I wouldn’t expect them to, the first one was months ago, last year, September, maybe. Without my notes I can’t be certain.”

“What happened?” I said.

“I got called out to Eaglewood’s at six one morning. The head lad phoned me. Old man Eaglewood was away for the night and the head lad was in charge. Anyway, he said one of the horses was down and extremely ill, so I went over there and he was by no means exaggerating. It was a three-year-old colt that I’d been treating for a strained tendon, but otherwise he’d been perfectly healthy. But he was lying on his side in his box in a coma, with occasional tremors and twitches in his muscles, obviously dying. I asked the head lad how long he’d been like that but he didn’t know. He’d come in early to feed as usual, and found him in that state but with stronger spasms in the muscles.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he was too far gone to be helped. I just took some blood samples for analysis, and put him out of his misery.”

“And what was wrong with him?”

Ken shook his head. “Everything in his blood was just about within normal limits though the blood sugar was low, but . . .” He stopped.

“But what?”

“Well, there were other things. It had been a good colt before the tendon injury. A winner several times over. Even if the tendon had mended decently it would have been surprising if he’d been as good again. I asked the head lad if he’d been insured, because you can’t help wondering, but he didn’t know. I asked old man Eaglewood later, but he said it wasn’t my business. Then before he died, the colt’s heart rate was very high and there was swelling round his eyes.”

He paused. I said he would have to explain.

“He looked as if he’d been suffering for quite a while before I got there. I began to think about poisons, about what would cause spasms, high heart rate and coma. I thought a specialist lab’s blood analysis would tell us, but it cost a lot and showed nothing. But horses don’t die like that, I mean, not in the normal course of events. I talked it over with Carey several times and in the end he asked Eaglewood himself about the insurance, but it seemed the owner actually hadn’t insured the colt at all.”