Dead Man Riding (20 page)

I felt like laughing. Back in Oxford, nobody had been clearer than Nathan about women's right to equality. Now there was trouble he'd reverted instantly to protective Victorian male.

‘I can't go,' I said. ‘I'll be needed for the inquest.'

That made matters worse. His face had been flushed anyway but now it turned as red as a peony.

‘It's all wrong. You shouldn't have to stand up there in public and be questioned in front of a jury. I'll tell the police that we're going away and that's that.'

‘Not on my behalf,' I said. It had struck me suddenly that Nathan was nervous of the police. Goodness knows why since his past – though not blameless by Oxford standards – was unlikely to have been criminal.

‘It's not a game any more, Nell. It was different while it was just this Mawbray business but now—'

‘It never was a game. That's why we can't walk away from it.'

He stared at me then at Midge, picked up the mattresses and marched away down the track.

‘Poor Nathan,' Midge said, sounding more sorry for him than he deserved. After all, she'd been more closely involved in it than he had.

‘Where's he taking those mattresses?'

‘Down to the house. The men have decided to move back into the parlour.'

‘To protect us?'

‘I suppose so.'

It was a defeat, we knew. The end of our airy college above the world in the old barn. The Old Man's death had dragged us back from theory into a very real world. Midge and I started walking after him back towards the house. We could see Dulcie down in the yard, scattering feed for the chickens. At least the police hadn't kept her long.

‘Going on just as normal,' Midge said.

‘Chickens still have to be fed after all.'

‘It was the same this morning. There we were, trying to get him off the horse, knowing he was dead, and she was behaving … oh, I don't know … behaving as if it were just any other problem that had to be solved, as if it were a basket of washing or something. Only … only there were tears just flooding down her face.'

‘I can't imagine her crying.'

‘I can't now, but I didn't imagine it. And yet she's not somebody you can talk to, is she?'

‘I wonder why not?'

But Midge was right. We weren't snobs – we were quite sure of that – but class came in to it. That and the fact that she was older and had a reputation. We approved very much of women exerting their freedom, it was just that we weren't used to them looking and sounding like Dulcie.

Midge said suddenly, ‘I've been thinking about that anonymous note. Do you think Alan showed it to Mr Beston?'

‘I shouldn't think so. He was too embarrassed.'

I thought of the grubby message: DID YOU ARSK DULSIE WHO HER BASTARD'S FATHER REALY IS. Hard to imagine Alan putting that in front of his uncle, even though it had been addressed to him.

‘But Mr Beston must have known there was gossip about her.'

‘I don't suppose that would have worried the Old Man.' (I was already slipping back into that way of thinking of him, rather than the funereal Mr Beston.) ‘He wasn't exactly a model of respectability himself.'

‘But if it wouldn't have worried him, why was somebody telling him to ask her?'

‘Because whoever it was didn't know him very well. He or she wanted to make trouble for Dulcie and was getting impatient because it hadn't happened. That note reads to me like one of a series. There was probably at least one earlier note telling him to ask her and whoever wrote it wants to know what happened.'

In the yard below Dulcie scattered the last of the feed, upended the bowl and went back inside with lazy, swaying steps. She never looked as if she was working hard, but somehow everything got done.

Midge said, ‘If there was a child, where is it now? She could have had it farmed out, I suppose.' Then, tentatively, a few steps further on, ‘You don't suppose … Robin?'

‘I was wondering that too. But would the ages fit? I'd guess he's seventeen or eighteen, maybe older. If she's in her thirties she could have had him when she was very young.'

‘But he's Irish and she's from round here.'

‘If she'd farmed him out to Ireland when he was a baby…'

‘And brought him back when she got the position with the Old Man?'

‘It's possible,' I said, ‘and you can imagine the Old Man being quite amused by the idea.'

*   *   *

When we got down to the house I propped the whip in the porch with an assortment of other whips and crops. The police had finished their questions and were drinking tea in the kitchen. We left them in possession, although they were a nuisance because the men were carrying their things down from the barn and had to pile them by the porch until they could get to the parlour.

The doctor had promised to send a covered cart up from town to collect the police and the Old Man's body but it was early evening by the time it came lumbering down the lane. We directed it through the arch into the stable yard and stood in a line watching as the two policemen took out a stretcher from the back and carried the Old Man's body from his tack room, still wrapped in the horse blanket. Robin was crying quite openly. With the suspicions about him and Dulcie in my mind I watched to see if she made any move to comfort him, but she was staring down at the flagstones, thinking her own thoughts. As the cart creaked away across the yard and through the arch I was surprised to find tears in my eyes. I wished I'd talked to the Old Man more when I had the chance – found out about seventy years or so of a life that sounded as if it had been bravely, if not wisely, lived. I knew that in spite of the differences in our views I'd already learned something from him and might have learned more, given time. There was silence after the noise of the wheels died away, then people started talking apologetically at first, then with more confidence, about the commonplace things of life going on. The parlour had to be reorganised and we'd all eat together in the kitchen, pooling our rations. I knew it was right and necessary but couldn't face it yet. Besides, there was something that had been worrying me since Midge talked about the bump on his head.

*   *   *

I walked out of the yard and down the lane to the mares' field on my own. My towel was still there on the gate, dried by a day in the heat. There was no mist by the river now, just long tree shadows from the sun slipping down in the west and a smell of hot earth and drying grass. It was the trees that interested me, willows and alders mostly. The willows were either leaning out over the water or pollarded with whippy little stems growing from upright trunks. The alders threw their branches out over the river with only scrubby twigs inland. Even if you'd ridden a horse at a canter straight along the bank, there were no overhanging branches to give you anything worse than a scratch. Next door though was another matter.

I walked on downriver to the gate that led to Mawbray's land and looked over it, confirming what I remembered from our ride. A wooded spur came down to the river on the opposite bank, mixed wood with some big oak trees. The wood extended a little way on this side of the river, again with oak trees. We'd had to duck under the boughs as we rode past. I remembered bits of oak leaf in my mare's mane. The question was whether any of the overhanging branches was thick enough to give a man a bad blow on the head. I stood at the gate a long time, trying to make out the shapes of them through the leaves then pushed it open and walked through. Trespassing now, with no excuse. I looked up into the wood on the far bank, half expecting to see the tall man glaring down at me again, but there was nothing. The oak branches on my side of the river were low growing and quite thick enough to do serious damage. The blow had been on the back of the head. If he'd simply galloped into a bough, it would have been at the front. The most likely explanation was that the horse had been rearing up on its hind legs at the time. There were hoof-prints in bare patches of earth under the trees, but a whole pack of us had ridden that way and back in the last few days. There was no way of telling in dry weather if one set were more recent. Then it struck me that a horse rearing would have to take all its weight on its back legs. If I could find a place where there was a low branch and a pair of unusually deep hoof impressions underneath I'd be making progress.

The work absorbed me more than anything I'd done for a long time, so much that I almost forgot why I was doing it and the grief and confusion up at the house. It was a relief, after all the philosophical theorising, to have a practical puzzle that might even have an answer. Either something had happened or it hadn't. If it had happened, then happenings leave evidence. They wouldn't be happenings otherwise. And if there's evidence, it's simply a question of finding it or not finding it. Thinking that out as I looked at dusty hoofprints under those trees was the second thing that summer that had an influence on my life, far more than Plato or ancient Greek (which, by the by, I still haven't learned). The light was just right for the work, horizontal with the sun low, throwing every little detail in high relief. Twice I found pairs of prints deeply incised that might have been a horse rearing, but they were nowhere near the likely tree branches. One big branch at about the right height had a scuff mark on the earth under it that might possibly have been made if a horse had stood up on its hind legs then slipped, but it was near the gate with a lot of other tramplings round it, so inconclusive. Still, I liked that one best and went back to it, kneeling on the ground with my eyes only a few inches away from it. Suppose a horse, scared already, reared with a man tied to his back. Why at this place in particular, near the gate? If the gate had been closed, shutting off the horse from his home then somebody had opened it, the horse might have reared up the way they do sometimes before galloping off. I looked towards the gate, imagining a man there, opening it and might have screamed except shock punched all the air out of my lungs. There was a man there. From where I was crouching under the trees, looking up at him against the light, he was no more than a silhouette but he was watching me and I had the feeling that he had been watching for some time. I scrambled to my feet, catching my boot in my skirt hem and ripping it again, wondering which way to run. Then he spoke.

‘Have you found anything, Miss Bray?'

Meredith's voice, not mocking, just interested. My heart started up again, thumping with relief and a little embarrassment.

‘I'm not sure. Come and see what you think.'

Amazingly, my voice sounded almost normal. He came through the gate and stood a little way from me, sensibly so as not to scuff the marks. I told him what I was looking at and why so he came forward and crouched down. The light wasn't quite as good as it had been a few minutes before so my scuff mark didn't seem so convincing.

‘The earth's almost polished from the pressure,' I said. ‘There was a lot of weight on it for a while.'

He looked down at it for a long time, then up at the branch.

‘You know the doctor found a bump on the back of his head?' I said.

‘Yes. He thought the horse might have rolled on him.'

‘I can understand that would break ribs, but would it cause a bump on the back of the head?'

‘The ground's hard,' he said.

‘Oak branches are even harder.'

But the picture was too vivid in my mind as I said it and my rooting in the dust seemed suddenly disrespectful, in bad taste. Perhaps Meredith sensed that because he opened the gate for me to go back into the mares' field as if this were no more than an evening stroll.

‘We were worried because you were missing supper, so I said I'd come and find you.'

‘How did you know where to look?'

‘I didn't. I've been wandering all over the place.' We were back on our own side of the gate, walking along the river bank. ‘I brought you some ham,' he said, ‘in case you were hungry.'

The warm feeling that came over me was quite ridiculous, given the banality of the thing. I laughed, a release of tension probably, but it felt like a little gust of happiness. Here was a man I admired and wanted very much to think well of me doing something as simply kind as a friend or brother. I hoped the laugh hadn't hurt his feelings and perhaps it had because he added, ‘I put mustard on it, but perhaps you don't like mustard,' in an almost humble voice. I assured him that I loved mustard and I was very hungry. To my surprise I suddenly was. He produced a greasy brown paper bag from his pocket and handed it to me.

‘Rather crushed, I'm afraid. Do you want to sit down?'

We sat on the bank beside an alder with a clump of yellow irises at our feet and gnats whining up and down. The ham was sandwiched between two bits of bread, no way of eating it elegantly, and yet somehow I didn't feel self-conscious. He let me finish it before trying to talk, just sitting beside me and staring at the stream.

‘So you were looking for hoofprints on the other side of the gate. Did you think the horse might have jumped it?'

‘I'm sure not. It's a terrible take-off and Arabs aren't great jumpers. Anyway, there were other gates that had to be opened.'

‘Yes?'

‘Robin says the horse was in the top paddock as usual the night before. Somebody would have had to bring him down to this field, open and close the gate. The Old Man couldn't have done that himself if his hands were tied.'

‘So you're saying somebody must have helped him?'

‘I don't think help's what I mean.'

I wiped my buttery fingers on the grass. He had a way of looking at people that said ‘Go on.' I'd noticed it in our discussions. It was one of his skills to make you bring the half-formed theories out of your mind and give words to them.

‘We've all been assuming that the Old Man killed himself, probably with somebody's help.'