Dead Man Riding (13 page)

‘I agree with you. The police answer to that is that Robin is particularly loyal to the Old Man because of his horses and would do anything he wanted.'

Nathan said, ‘There's quite a lot of land here, Alan. The paddocks, the wood and so on. You'd need an army to search it properly.'

‘Your point being?'

‘Well, if the police are right and the three of them did make away with the body, then it's probably still round here somewhere.'

Involuntarily our eyes went to the inside of the barn with its dark corners and piled-up hay.

‘It's all right,' Nathan said cheerfully. ‘It's not in here anyway. I've had a good look.' Our eyes came back to him. ‘Well, don't all stare at me like that. It stands to reason that if the man's dead there's a body somewhere, and if he's not there isn't. You don't have to be Aristotle to puzzle that out. If the main reason the police think it's murder is that they haven't got a body our best course is to find the body alive or dead, wouldn't you say?'

Meredith said gently, ‘Could you have missed a few logical steps there, Nathan?'

‘How would that help? He'd still have hidden him,' Alan said, recovering. ‘Anyway, hypothetically disposing of the body is only part of it. There's the Mawbray question. His father's chairman of the local magistrates and the police practically jump up and salute when the name's mentioned.'

Midge and I glanced at each other. We still hadn't told the others about our visit to the police court.

Kit asked, ‘So why is a magistrate's son out in the dark burning people's barns down?'

‘If he was,' Meredith said. ‘Remember we've only got the Old Man's word for that so far.'

Alan said, ‘But Inspector Armstrong didn't question he was there. He didn't really seem surprised. He wouldn't say much, but we did get the impression that the young Arthur Mawbray might have been a bit of a wild lad.'

‘Isn't arson and attacking old men a bit beyond the bounds of wildness?' Nathan said, still rasping away.

‘The police attitude seems to be that it was mostly high spirits that got out of hand and my uncle pretty well brought it on himself by being pro-Boer. He seems to have upset people round here more than you can imagine with that meeting.'

‘What I can't understand,' Kit said, ‘is all the uncertainty about what happened. Nobody seems to be disputing that a gang of people attacked this place, so even in the dark the others would have heard or seen something. Surely the police have witnesses to what really happened.'

‘Meredith asked them that,' Alan said, glancing at him.

‘Yes I did, and got nowhere, as I deserved. If reality depends on witnesses, then none of this is real. There are none. Or at least, none that the police have been able to question.'

‘They ran off,' Alan said. ‘After the shooting the whole gang of them ran off. I suppose they knew they'd be in trouble about burning the barn down. According to the inspector, the police have made inquiries about who was in the gang and got nowhere.'

‘In a country area where everybody knows everybody? I don't believe it,' Midge said.

I pointed out that country areas where everybody knew everybody were good at closing ranks against the police. It was a fair guess that every farmyard for miles around had a young man or lad working in it who'd been out that night.

‘Of course,' Alan said, ‘that's a bit of good luck for the Old Man in its way. If the police haven't got witnesses and haven't got a body, they'd have a job proving anything happened. But it can't go on like this. They can't just throw up their hands and say if there's no material proof, then it never happened.'

‘Logically speaking, they could,' Kit said.

‘Except you don't find the police playing logic games when it's the son of the chairman of magistrates missing believed dead. Anyway, there's another thing about the Mawbrays and the Old Man.'

‘Worse?'

‘Yes. There was a history of trouble between him and the Mawbray family practically from the time he got here two or three years ago. The Mawbray land's just over the hedge near that place in the river where we bathed. A stallion belonging to Major Mawbray got into my uncle's field and … um … paid his compliments to one of my uncle's mares.' Nathan made a strangled sound, trying not to laugh. ‘All right, I know it sounds very funny, but in my uncle's case that was quite enough to start a war with a neighbour over.'

I said nothing but knew he was right. I'd already seen the Old Man's reverence for his horses and his possessiveness in questions of sex.

‘So there was bad blood between them even before this latest business. In fact, the inspector seemed to think the Old Man might have organised that meeting as much as to annoy Major Mawbray as support the Boers. The Major used to be in the cavalry.'

There was silence for a long time. I wondered whether Alan intended to tell the others about the anonymous note on the wagonette. It seemed not. He'd been embarrassed enough talking about Dulcie Berryman's past even without that and thought he'd offended Imogen again. Imogen was looking at Alan but now he was staring at the ground, not her. How long before that bomb exploded?

I said, ‘Not everybody in the town's against the Old Man, and Arthur Mawbray's run away from home once already.'

Heads jerked up all round us. I told them about the conversation I had had with the woman in the dairy. Meredith was looking at me particularly intently, but I couldn't tell if he approved or not.

‘I don't think that proves anything,' Kit said. ‘The fact that he ran away years ago – assuming it is a fact and not just gossip – doesn't prove he's done it again.'

‘I'm not saying it proves anything in itself, but it is some weight on the other side of the scale. Young Mawbray does something he knows is wrong, he gets on badly with his father in any case so he decides to disappear for a while. Isn't that as tenable as the theory that he's dead?' The bad news from the police station had made me realise how much I wanted the Old Man not to be guilty but I could see I wasn't convincing them. I threw another little weight on to the scale. ‘Mrs Berryman agrees with me at any rate. You heard what she said on our first night here about the Old Man having some queer notions.'

Imogen said, ‘I'm not sure Mrs Berryman would be a very good witness for anything.'

That annoyed me. Imogen didn't know about the anonymous note, but the malice and grubbiness of it had put me on Dulcie's side. ‘Why not? Because there's gossip about her? I dare say there's been gossip about many a housekeeper, particularly if she looked like Mrs Berryman.'

Alan blushed deep red. Frank talking on matters of sex was something we all believed in theoretically, but we hadn't had much opportunity to practise it yet.

‘The police seemed to think it's relevant,' he said.

‘Why? It sounds as if they've been gossiping like a lot of old market women. What has Dulcie Berryman's last position got to do with whether she helped the Old Man hide a body?'

‘It's a matter of who she worked for.'

‘Who?' Then, as soon as I'd thrown the question at Alan, the answer dawned on me. ‘Not…?'

‘Yes.'

Kit said, ‘Since the rest of us don't go in for mind-reading, would you mind telling us?'

Alan looked towards Meredith for help and got an almost imperceptible nod. Even so he said it reluctantly. ‘Until about a year ago, Mrs Berryman worked for Major Mawbray.'

Silence, broken suddenly by a great bark of laughter from Nathan. ‘The Trojan war all over again.' He went on laughing, while we stared at him. ‘Come on, you classicists. Major Mawbray as whatsisname – Menelaus – and Mrs Berryman as the lovely Helen who gets stolen away. Do you suppose the Old Man carried her off across his saddle bow?'

I couldn't help laughing and Midge laughed too, but Alan was furious.

‘I'm glad you find it so funny. He's my relative, remember, and for all we know the police could be up here arresting him tomorrow. I suppose you'll make a joke of that as well.' He got up and stalked off out of the barn. Imogen put out a hand to stop him but he didn't see and her hand fell back down.

I mouthed at Meredith, ‘Have you told him?' and got a shake of the head.

‘You'd better go to him,' I told Imogen. She gave me a wild and wide-eyed look then stood up and went after him. Midge meanwhile was trying to reassure a shocked and penitent Nathan.

*   *   *

I think we were all shaken, as much by this first quarrel in our little republic as by any news about the Old Man. Through the hot afternoon we went our various ways, collecting things to eat and drink from our new supply of stores as we wanted them. Meredith stayed in the shade of the barn to work on his book. Kit disappeared for a walk on his own. He seemed preoccupied, probably because his friend was in trouble and he could do nothing to help. Nathan tried to make practical amends by promising chairs for everybody and persuaded Midge to go into the woods with him to look for more materials. As the two of them scrambled through the fence that separated wood from field, Nathan looked back at me with a worried expression.

‘What happens if we find him, Nell? Do we leave him or don't we?' For once he wasn't joking.

‘You're expecting to find Arthur Mawbray's body?'

‘Not expecting exactly, but you have to admit if you were trying to get rid of something it would be better in a wood than a field. You could put dead leaves and branches over the place where you'd buried it and—'

Midge said, ‘Come on and stop being morbid,' and practically dragged him through the fence. At least that meant I didn't have to try and answer his question.

*   *   *

I decided a walk might clear my mind so went down the field and crossed the lane into the paddock where Sid was grazing. I said a few friendly words to him in passing, then contoured round the side of the wood to the open hillside. Up there it was rough pasture, with sheep newly sheared and looking as leggy as goats wandering in and out of clumps of bracken and gorse. You could see the whole of the Old Man's land from there, identifiable by the new post-and-rail fences round his paddocks, and beyond it to the railway shining in the sun and the little town. Westwards towards Aspatria a cluster of chimneys and winding gear marked the collieries, then a strip of green along the coast and the sea. Nearer at hand to the left, in another clump of woodland, the red roof and chimney-pots of a large house were just visible: Major Mawbray's house possibly, and if so more hostile territory.

Just by being there we'd taken on the Old Man's battle whether we liked it or not, in local eyes at least. The trouble was, we hadn't quite. When I looked down at Studholme Hall I saw the Old Man walking slowly across the stable yard and Robin leading Bobbin down the track. The thin line of smoke coming up from one of the chimneys meant that Dulcie had the fire going for her oven, even on this hot day. Rabbit stew for them again? They were going about their normal lives apart from us. We were polite and even friendly when we saw each other, and yet we'd just been discussing whether somewhere under all this green of pasture and woodland they might have buried a man's body. And we still hadn't decided what to do about it.

After a while I turned away from the house and walked straight uphill, criss-crossing from one sheep track to another. A little breeze came off the sea and as I got higher first the hills around Skiddaw Forest came into view, then Skiddaw itself. That made me feel better, not because I'd forgotten the problems back at Studholme Hall but at least it reminded me I could walk away from them if I wanted. I was crazily tempted to do just that, even though I had no pack or money with me. As it was I stayed up there longer than I should have and by the time I turned downhill the light had taken on the golden glow of late evening, with the sun on its way down to the sea. Walking fast, I was back within sight of the house while there was still some light left, probably nine o'clock or so. I followed the wood round the top of Sid's pasture and saw the horse standing there under an oak tree. When I heard a voice I thought for a mad moment that Sid himself was speaking. It was a kind of low crooning, the sound a pigeon makes on a roof on a sunny morning. I caught a word, ‘acushla' and realised it was a man talking to the horse in a soft southern Ireland accent. The horse saw me before the man did. He'd been totally relaxed listening to the crooning, but suddenly his neck came up and his nostrils flared, ‘Hrrrh?'

‘Who's there? Who is it.'

The voice was still soft, but alarmed. Robin had an arm over Sid's neck, lifted high in the air now with the horse's sudden movement. His eyes looked very bright in the half-light under the trees.

‘Just one of the visitors,' I said. Who had he expected? ‘Nell. I'm sorry if I scared him.'

He looked at me for so long I wondered if he talked only to horses. Then, ‘It's a grand evening for walking.'

‘Yes.'

‘I come up here sometimes for a bit of crack with him.'

The horse had relaxed again now we were talking. Robin slid his arm along the shining neck and down the shoulder. The horse turned his head towards him, blowing a long breath through his nostrils. Robin replied with a similar gentle breath and Sid rubbed his muzzle up and down his arm, giving little playful pushes.

‘Thinks I'm another horse, so he does.'

He was perfectly friendly and seemed more relaxed out here than in the farm kitchen. I apologised again for disturbing them, said goodnight and went on my way, leaving man and horse breathing at each other under the trees.

*   *   *

From the lane, I heard louder voices up by our barn and smelled woodsmoke. All of a sudden I was hungry and thirsty, longing for a mug of tea or even a bottle of ale, bother whether it was ladylike. I wondered if Alan was back from his own walk and if Imogen had made her simple, honourable statement yet. Within a few seconds of opening the gate into our hayfield, I had my answer. They were walking slowly along by the hedge at the bottom of the field, about as far as they could get from the fire and the voices, side by side and hands not quite touching. They had their backs to me but everything about them from the matching curves of their necks and shoulders to the swing of her skirt and their feet sauntering on the close-cropped grass said that yes, the words had been said. They must have heard the latch of the gate click because they turned. Imogen called out, ‘Hello Nell,' probably thinking that she sounded normal, but so bubblingly happy that she might as well have let rip with war-whoop at convention and caution and anything in the world that argued against being where she was and what she was doing. He said, ‘Good evening, Nell. Everything all right?' There was a laugh in it – not a bad-natured one but as if he couldn't take the presence of anybody else in the world except the two of them entirely seriously. I said good evening back, raised my hand to them and turned away quickly up the field, so that they wouldn't think I was coming to interrupt. The air seemed crammed with the scent of honeysuckle. The moon was rising over the field, bronze-coloured and three-quarters full. It was one of those crazily beautiful evenings when anything seemed possible, like taking off from the field and flying. As it was, I joined the other four by the fire outside the barn and was informed by Midge that they'd kept me some scramlette.