Enter Pale Death (17 page)

“Embarrassing, though! What do you prescribe, Doctor?” Joe managed to say, beginning to win the struggle with his heaving stomach.

“Keep starching the old upper lip and stay away from dead rats, of course. Ready to come back inside? Your friend is anxious.”

Hunnyton was standing by with a glass of water when they rejoined him.

Adelaide exchanged a meaningful look with him and voiced the thoughts of both of them. “Just imagine, Superintendent—if it can do that to
him
—what must it have done for an animal with a hundred times the sensitivity?”

“Terrified the poor beast to death,” said Hunnyton. “I think we understand now after that little demonstration. Is the commissioner all right?” He peered at Joe with concern. “Looks a bit seedy to me … Now listen. There’s not many who know and I ought not to be speaking out, but … oh, well. We all accept that it’s fear and its response, flight, that dominate in a horse? Fear is what’s kept the species alive through the millions of years they’ve been on earth.” Joe and Adelaide nodded. “Man has always tried to influence and tame horses to fulfil his own requirements. He’s
worked out some subtle ways of doing that. There’s horse lure, like the curry spices, and then there’s horse bate. Nasty stuff that has the opposite effect. Smear a trace of it on the posts of a horse’s stall and it won’t pass between them even if it’s starving. Push a load of it on a bun close up to its nostrils and you’d send it out of its mind. Do that when you’re advancing on it in a narrow space, driving it backwards, blocking its escape route, and, mad with fear, it’s going to tear right through you. As its nature insists. It has no choice.”

“Bate, you say? What is ‘bate’? Superintendent, what exactly do you think was smeared on that piece of cake?” Adelaide asked. “What’s the commissioner just breathed into his lungs? I insist on hearing.”

“Decayed stoat liver, steeped until rancid in rabbit’s blood and cat’s urine, then dried out. Most likely,” he said with relish.

“You can’t get that off the shelf at Mr. Harrison’s,” Adelaide said. “And how on earth do you get a cat to pee in a pot?”

“Well, lacking a cooperative moggie, horse’s urine is more plentiful and does the job.”

“You’re having me on!”

“No indeed. Believe me—this is serious magic! Produced locally, I’d say, to an ages-old recipe by someone with the knowledge. The Horse Knowledge.”

“It sounds like hogwash to me,” Adelaide said crisply. “Well, no, that’s about the one ingredient that didn’t feature in your little confection. Why do people think they need to have recourse to magic potions? My father’s been handling horses all his working life without benefit of fenugreek and cumin. Rabbit’s blood and stoat’s liver have never featured in his
materia medica
.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Horses hate stoats, even the live ones,” Joe remarked. “The sight and smell of one on the road will send them into paroxysms of fear or fury—you must have noticed?”

“We certainly didn’t miss the paroxysms in the rose bed, I’ll
grant you that,” she said thoughtfully and summed up for herself: “So, Lavinia bought the lure from Mr. Harrison, helped herself to a bun from the tea table and gave it a very special frosting. It’s this she must have thought she was using when she went down to the stable to make her overtures to young Lucifer. But somewhere along the way—where? and when?—the sweet spiced cake was … exchanged?—for a piece that had been ‘bated’ with a substance obnoxious and threatening to the horse. Am I getting this right?”

Time for Hunnyton to show his cards, Joe decided. Professional etiquette told him he should wait until they were alone together before putting him to the question but a glance at the doctor’s face, good-humoured and quizzical, made this reticence seem unnecessary. “You’re getting it right,” he said. “But, Hunnyton, it’s time to come clean, I think. Son of a horseman of repute as you tell me you are, you must have acquired the knowledge of lures and bates—the ingredients must be as well known to you as the recipe for fruit scones. In Scotland this knowledge is passed down to a select few initiates, never more than one or two per district. The numbers of these have diminished drastically since the war and few remain on either side of the border. Now tell us, which local man would have had the skills to mark Lady Truelove’s card for her? Who would have the formulae for lures and bates off by heart?”

If Adelaide Hartest hadn’t been present, turning her bright, concerned face on the superintendent, Joe would have added: “Starting with your own name …”

Hunnyton replied at once. “Well, you can scratch my name from any list you’re drawing up. My pa was one of the Horsemen, no doubt about that, but they were so darned secretive no one but the members knew who they were, not even their families. Once a month on a Saturday, he’d put on his best suit with waistcoat and watch-chain. My mother would brush his hat and polish his
boots and off he’d go to Bury. Sometimes Ipswich. Dad’s night out at the Whistling Ploughboy or the Great White Mare. I was a grown lad going about a grown lad’s business in Bury one Saturday when I came across him with his mates. Not a drinking outing—though much ale was drunk. I asked about, listened at locked doors and discovered the meetings were the monthly gatherings of the Horse Society. As hush-hush as any Masonic do. More so.

“At home he kept his horse remedies, pills and potions in a locked cupboard in his shed. Those were the days when vet’s fees were high,” he said with an apologetic grin to Adelaide. “He’d dispense them to anyone needing them, but there were one or two items in there he kept for his use only. We kids never knew what the mixtures were. He had a clever way of keeping his secrets. Every now and again when supplies were running low, he give us three boys a scrap of paper. A shopping list. Never on the same day and never together. He’d send us off to local chemists. Different chemists in different towns. When he’d gathered in all the ingredients, he’d mix them up in his shed. To this day I’m not sure I could reconstitute any of his recipes.”

“But someone in the village knows, evidently,” said Adelaide. “The knowledge was passed to—sold to—Lady Truelove, with awful consequences. Lure swapped for bate? Now that’s malice aforethought.”

“I’d call it murder, Doctor,” Hunnyton said.

“But murder that’s almost impossible to prove,” Joe warned. “I hardly like to think why we’re even bothering to attempt an enquiry.”

He was shot down by two focussed glares. Uncomfortably, he tried to justify his pessimism. “No evidence … time delay … lack of witnesses … laughed out of court …” He heard himself bumbling.

“All true, alas,” Hunnyton chimed in in reluctant support.
“Give us some fingerprinting, footprinting, blood-typing and scene-of-crime forensic stuff to do and we’re your men.” He shook his head and glowered. “But this death by horse at arm’s length, weeks after the event … I dunno!” He sighed.

Adelaide nodded in agreement. “You know, if this were a medical problem, I’d say Lavinia’s death was not a solution but a symptom. A symptom of a great malaise in the family. All is not well up at the Hall, that much is clear.” She got to her feet and looked at her watch. Consultation at an end. “Time you gents went off to hear what Gracie Aldred has to say for herself, I think. I say—do you mind if I tell this to my father? The curry spices and stoat’s entrails? Professionally, he’ll be very intrigued. Might even put some on his shopping list.”

“Yes, Doctor, of course. Something may occur to him. He may, in spite of annoying Suffolky reticence,” Hunnyton gave her a cheeky grin, “be handed a confidence or two—something someone would rather not divulge to a policeman.” He rose to his feet. “Sadly, not everyone finds us congenial company.”

She went to stand in front of him, eye to eye.

Ouch! Not a good move, Doctor, Joe thought, knowing what he did of Hunnyton’s gentling powers.

“Look, Mr. Policeman, reticence is all very well in its place, which would be somewhere in about the middle of last century. You may call me ‘Doctor’ when I’m attending to your ingrowing toenail. ‘Miss Hartest’ when you see me in church. When you’re teasing me in my parlour, you must call me ‘Adelaide.’ And your name is?”

“It’s Adam. Adam Hunnybun,” he said without thinking.

Her face lit up with delight as she repeated the name to herself and, for an awful moment, Joe thought she might take him for the teddy bear he much resembled and give him a hug.

“And my name’s Joe,” Joe said, adding a silent, “As if anyone cared.”

CHAPTER 11

As they climbed back into the car Hunnyton grumbled, “How the blazes did she know I have an ingrowing toenail?”

“It’s the way you walk,” Joe said kindly. “You favour your left foot. Not a particularly adventurous guess—most coppers have them.” He found he was reluctant to leave go of the image of the young woman they’d just encountered. “That’s a wonderful girl! I wasn’t happy to hear her call herself an ‘old maid.’ ”

“Nor was I. She’s wrong on the first half anyway. Not what you’d really call old. She was twenty-seven last week.”

“Now how would you know that?”

“While you were being attended to in the rose garden I peeked inside the birthday cards lined up on the mantelpiece.”

“So—hardly old then.”

“No. And she was misleading us on the second half too, unless I mistake.”

“Now how would you know that?” Joe said again but his voice now conveyed a chilly rebuke rather than a question. A woman’s honour would always be defended by Joe whatever the circumstances. Whoever the woman.

Hunnyton picked up the warning and, as Joe had come to expect, backed away. Advance, retreat, concede territory, disarm, advance again, eyes averted. Joe wondered if he’d recognise the
moment the superintendent was ready to throw the saddle over his back. “I wouldn’t know that,” the horseman said easily. “Evidence not so readily available. You might well have a better insight, city gent that you are. It just occurs to me that a woman of her quality, working at her trade, with her chances, well, it would be a bit of a surprise if … Just choosy, I expect. Hard to tell when she comes in from the garden looking like a rook-scarer that’s been pulled through a thorn hedge, but there’s something about her … She’s friendly and yet she has a sort of shield around her. Get close and you’d bounce off.”

“I noticed that, but she’s very unusual. I could swear I’ve seen her, or her like, somewhere before …”

“You have. You pass her every day on your way to work. On the Embankment. She’s standing with a dirty great spear in one hand, chariot reins in the other. She’s hurling abuse at the Roman army and she’s made of bronze,” Hunnyton said, chuckling. “Boadicea! Corst, blast! You wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of that one! Doctor Hartest is a corker but those pruning shears she keeps in her pocket are as much of a warning as the scythes on Boadicea’s chariot wheels. ‘Keep off! You could lose a limb.’ ”

This was a disappointing response. A crude cover to deflect the interest Joe was sure he’d noticed?

“You’re too severe,” he said easily. “I’ve remembered now where I’ve seen her before! She’s not the Queen of the Iceni, she’s a Botticelli goddess … Flora’s her name and she takes centre stage in the painting of
Primavera
.”

Hunnyton frowned, trying to recall it.

“You know the one—there’s the three Graces on the left, sketchily dressed in diaphanous dresses, dancing about in a bosky dell, cupids and cherubs shooting each other and just to the right of centre, the only one who’s looking at the camera, so to speak, the most amazing girl with honey-coloured hair, a deliciously wicked smile and slanting eyes. She’s offering you a choice bloom
from her pinny-ful of wildflowers. Or anything else you have in mind.” He sighed.

“I know it. A bit flowery-bowery for my taste. If lusting after painted ladies is all the go, I’ll admit to being more in tune with Peter Lely. All those Stuart beauties in slippery amber-gold boudoir gowns, pearl drops and just the odd rosebud carefully placed. There’s one of the Countess of Oxford … or is she the Countess of Halifax …?”

Joe knew when he was being sent up. “Ah, yes. Who needs ‘Tit-Bits’ when we have the ‘Tate’ for titillation? But—speaking of aristocratic ladies, I’d guess you are now taking me to the Hall to present me to the Dowager, Sir James’s widowed mother. Is that what you have in mind?”

Hunnyton nodded. “She’s on my list. I thought first we’d call in at my modest abode and spruce up a bit. You’re covered in ginger hairs of one sort or another.”

“Sounds like a good plan. Perhaps while we’re at the Hall I can ask to use the telephone. I didn’t think we could impose on Adelaide Hartest, though I assume the vet has one.”

Joe had unconsciously stumbled into an odd pocket of resentment, judging by the abrupt increase in speed and the exclamation that followed.

“You’ll need some change in your pocket. Bloody English aristocrats! They’ll freely lend you their second best castle for a month, their Rolls-Royce for a week, their mistress for a night but if you want to use their telephone for five minutes that’ll be sixpence please. Just leave it in the dish next to the telephone. Even if you’re reporting that the vicar’s fallen downstairs and broken his neck. If you want a stamp to post a letter it’ll cost you twopence—”

“It’s all right, Hunnyton. Calm down! I know the drill!” Joe understood the anxiety behind this huffing and puffing. “And I’m familiar with the quirks and customs of Society. I won’t let you
down. I shall tug my forelock and curtsey to her Dowagership and you won’t need to blush for my manners. I usually find the families are reasonably straightforward. It’s the butlers that terrify me.”

Hunnyton grinned and eased his pressure on the accelerator.

He stopped in front of a house rather larger than the run of cottages strung out along the road and Joe stepped out to admire. Unlike the other reed-thatched dwellings, this one had a steeply pitched roof with an undulating coverlet of plain tiles of all colours from a red so dark it was almost black, fading to buff and cream. Its long front was plastered and colour-washed in the Suffolk way in the brownish-pink of ox blood, dark under the eaves where protected from the rain, bleached to almost white at the level of the brick plinth which ran around the house.