Have His Carcase (30 page)

shoe was a fairly common accident with this particular gee. Stil, we needn’t

blame him or her too much. With al these stones about, a slight trip or knock

might easily wrench a shoe away.’

‘Him or her. Can’t you go on and tel the sex and colour while you’re about

it?’

‘I am afraid even I have my limitations, my dear Watson.’

‘Do you think the shoe was lying where it fel? Or would the sea have moved

it much? I found it just here, close by the water’s edge, buried deep in sand.’

‘Wel, it wouldn’t float, but the tide might drag it a bit one way or the other,

and each successive tide would tend to bury it farther. It’s very lucky you found

it at al. But we can’t tel exactly at what point the horse passed along, if you

mean that. The shoe wouldn’t just drop off. It would be thrown and would spin

away on one side or other, according to the speed and direction and al that

sort of thing.’

‘So it would. Wel, that’s quite a pretty little piece of deduction. . . .
Peter!

Were you looking for a horse-shoe?’

‘No; I was expecting the horse, but the shoe is a piece of pure, gorgeous

luck.’

‘And observation. I found it.’

‘You did. And I could kiss you for it. You need not shrink and tremble. I am

not going to do it. When I kiss you, it wil be an important event – one of those

things which stand out among their surroundings like the first time you tasted li-

chee. It wil not be an unimportant side-show attached to a detective

investigation.’

‘I think you are a little intoxicated by the excitement of the discovery,’ said

Harriet, coldly. ‘You say you came here looking for a horse?’

‘Naturaly. Didn’t you?’

‘No – I never thought about it.’

‘You miserable little cockney – no! You never thought of a horse except as

something that holds up the traffic. Your knowledge of horses is comprised in

the rhyme which says, “I know two things about the horse and one of them is

rather coarse”. Didn’t it ever occur to you that a horse is made to R,U,N,
run
,

and cover a given distance in a given time. Did you never even have a bob on

the Derby? Wretched girl – wait til we are married. You shal fal off a horse

every day til you learn to sit on it.’

Harriet was silent. She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him

to be inteligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, wel-read, amusing and enamoured,

but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of utter inferiority

which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realised that there

was, after al, something godlike about him. He could control a horse. She had

a fleeting vision of him, very sleek, very smart, in a top-hat and pink coat and

gleaming white breeches, loftily perched on an immense and fiery animal which

pranced and jiggled about without even disturbing the lofty nonchalance of his

demeanour. Her imagination, making a terrific effort, promptly clothed her in a

riding-habit of perfect cut, placed her on an animal stil larger and fierier and set

her at his side, amid the respectful admiration of the assembled nobility and

gentry. Then she laughed at this snobbish picture.

‘I could do the faling-off part al right. Hadn’t we better be getting on?’

‘H’m. Yes. I think we’l do the rest by horse-power. I can’t see the coast-

road from here, but we shal probably find the faithful Bunter in attendance not

very far off. We can’t hope to find anything more along here. Two horse-shoes

would be a work of supererogation.’

Harriet heartily welcomed this decision.

‘We needn’t crawl up the cliff,’ Wimsey went on. ‘We’l turn up and get to

the road by the lane. We’l chuck the Bible and the boot – I don’t think they’l

get us anywhere.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To Darley, to find the horse. I fancy we shal find that he belongs to Mr

Newcombe, who had occasion to complain of gaps in his hedges. We shal

see.’

The two or three miles to Darley were quickly covered, with only the

necessary pause while the gates were opened at the Halt. At the top of Hinks’s

Lane they got out and walked down to the camping-place.

‘I would draw your attention,’ said Wimsey, ‘to the three grains of oats

found at this spot, and also to the two inches of burnt rope found in the ashes.

Bunter, have you brought those things?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Bunter rummaged in the bowels of the car and brought out a smal paper bag

and a halter. These he handed over to Wimsey, who immediately undid the bag

and from it poured a couple of handfuls of oats into his hat.

‘Wel,’ he said, ‘we’ve got the halter – now we’ve only got to find a horse to

put in it. Let’s go round by the shore to look for the stream our friend Mr

Goodrich spoke of.’

The stream was soon found – a smal trickle of fresh water emerging through

a bank beneath a hedge, some fifty yards from the encampment and wandering

away across the sand towards the sea.

‘No good looking for marks this side of the hedge – I fancy the tide comes

pretty wel up to the foot of the grass. Wait a minute, though. Here we are! Yes

– on the very edge of the stream, right up against the hedge – a beauty, with

nailmarks al complete. Lucky last night’s rain didn’t wash it out, but the grass

overhangs it a bit. But there’s no gap in the hedge here. He must – oh, of

course, he would. Yes. Now, if we’re right, this won’t correspond to the shoe

we’ve found – it’l be the other foot. Yes; this is the left fore. Our horse stood

here to drink, which means that he (or she) was running loose around here

about the ebb of the tide, horses not liking their water salt. The left fore was

there – the right should be about here – it
is
here! Look! the print of the naked

hoof, without shoe and rather light in the ground – lame, of course, after coming

shoeless for nearly three miles over a stony beach. But where is the gap? Let us

walk on, my dear Watson. Here, if I mistake not, is the place. Two new stakes

driven in and a bunch of dead thorn shoved in and secured with wire. I agree

that Mr Newcombe is not a good hand at mending hedges. Stil, he has taken

some precautions, so we wil hope that our horse is stil in the field. We

scramble up the bank – we look over the hedge – one, two, three horses, by

jove!’

Wimsey let his eye rove meditatively over the large field. At its far side was a

thickish clump of spinney, from which the little stream emerged, meandering

quietly through the coarse grass.

‘Look how nicely those trees screen it from the road and the vilage. A

pleasant, private spot for horse-stealing. How tiresome of Mr Newcombe to

have filed this gap. Aha! What is this, Watson?’

‘I’l buy it.’

‘There is another gap a few yards down, which has been filed in a more

workmanlike manner with posts and a rail. Nothing could be better. We

approach it – we climb the rail, and we are in the field. Permit me – oh! you are

over. Good! Now, which animal wil you put your money on?’

‘Not the black. He looks too big and heavy.’

‘No, not the black, certainly. The chestnut might do, as regards size, but he

has seen his best days and has hardly got class enough for our work. The joly

little bay cob rather takes my fancy. Coo-op, pretty,’ said Wimsey, advancing

delicately across the field, shaking the oats in the hat. ‘Coo-op, coo-op.’

Harriet had often wondered how people ever managed to catch horses in

large fields. It seemed so sily of the creatures to alow themselves to be taken –

and indeed, she remembered distinctly having once stayed in a country rectory

where it always took at least an hour for ‘the boy’ to catch the pony, with the

result that the pony-trap frequently failed to catch the train. Possibly ‘the boy’

had not gone the right way about it, for, as by the miracle by which the needle

turns to the pole, al three horses came loloping steadily across the field to

poke soft noses into the hatful of oats. Wimsey stroked the chestnut, patted the

black, weeded out the bay from between them and stood for a little talking to it

and running a hand gently over its neck and shoulders. Then he stooped,

passing his palm down the off-fore leg. The hoof came obediently up into his

hand, while the muzzle went round and gently nibbled his ear.

‘Hi, you!’ said Wimsey, ‘that’s mine. Look here, Harriet.’

Harriet edged round to his side and stared at the hoof.

‘New shoe.’ He put the foot down and reached in turn for the other legs.

‘Better make sure they haven’t made an al-round job of it. No; old shoes on

three feet and new shoe on off-fore, corresponding exactly to the specimen

picked up on the beach. You notice the special arrangement of the nails. The

bay mare brings home the bacon al right. Wait a bit, my girl, we’l try your

paces.’

He slipped the halter neatly over the bay mare’s head and swung himself up.

‘Come for a ride? Your toe on my foot, and up she comes! Shal we ride

away into the sunset and never come back?’

‘Better get on with it. Suppose the farmer comes.’

‘How right you are!’ He gave the halter a shake and cantered off. Harriet

mechanicaly picked up his hat and stood squeezing the crown absently in and

out, with her eyes on the flying figure.

‘Alow me, miss.’

Bunter held out his hand for the hat; she relinquished it with a little start.

Bunter shook out the remaining oats, dusted the hat with care inside and out

and restored it to its proper shape.

‘Handy to ride or drive,’ said Wimsey, coming back and slipping down from

his mount. ‘Might do nine miles an hour on the road – on the shore, through

shalow water, say eight. I’d like – my God! how I’d like – to take her along to

the Flat-Iron. Better not. We’re trespassing.’

He puled the halter off and sent the mare off with a clap on the shoulder.

‘It al looks so good,’ he mourned, ‘but it won’t work. It simply won’t work.

You see the idea. Here’s Martin. He comes and camps here; evidently he

knows al about this place beforehand, and knows that horses are kept out in

this field in summer. He arranges for Alexis to be at the Flat-Iron at two

o’clock – I don’t know how, but he works it somehow. At 1.30 he leaves the

Feathers, comes down here, gets the mare and rides off along the shore. We

see where he spilt the oats with which he got her to come to him and we see the

gap he made getting her through the hedge. He rides along through the edge of

the water, so as to leave no marks. He tethers the mare to the ring that he has

driven into the rock; he kils Alexis and rides back in a deuce of a hurry. In

crossing the rough pebbles below Polock’s cottage, the mare casts a shoe.

That doesn’t worry him, except that it lames the nag a bit and delays him. When

he gets back, he doesn’t return the mare to the field, but lets her run. Like that,

it wil look as though she broke out of the field on her own, and wil easily

explain the gap, the lameness, and the shoe, if anybody finds it. Also, if the

horse should be found stil blown and sweaty, it wil appear perfectly natural.

He is back at three o’clock, in time to go round to the garage about his car, and

at some subsequent period he burns the halter. It’s so convincing, so neat, and

it’s al wrong.’

‘Why?’

‘The time’s too tight, for one thing. He left the inn at 1.30. After that, he had

to come down here, catch the mare and ride four and a half miles. We can’t

very wel alow him to do more than eight miles an hour under the conditions of

the problem, yet at two o’clock you heard the scream. Are you sure your

watch was right?’

‘Positive. I compared it with the hotel clock when I got to Wilvercombe; it

was dead right, and the hotel clock –’

‘Is set by wireless time, naturaly. Everything always is.’

‘Worse than that; al the hotel clocks are controled by a master-clock which

is controled directly from Greenwich. That was one of the first things I asked

about.’

‘Competent woman.’

‘Suppose he had had the horse al ready before he went to the Feathers –

tied up to the fence, or something?’

‘Yes; but if these Darley people are right, he didn’t go from here to the

Feathers; he came by car from the Wilvercombe side. And even if we alow

that, he’s stil got to make rather over nine miles an hour to get to the Flat-Iron

by two o’clock. I doubt if he could do it – though, of course, he
might
, if he

leathered the poor beast like fury. That’s why I said I’d like to do the ride.’

‘And the scream I heard may not have been
the
scream. I thought it was a

gul, you know – and perhaps it was. I took about five minutes to gather my

stuff together and come out into view of the Flat-Iron. You might put the death

at 2.5, I think, if you felt you had to.’

‘Al right. But that stil leaves it al quite impossible. You see,
you
were there