“Oh!” said Turnbull, deflated.
“Did you ever know a man named Mapsted?”
“Oh, the chap who was kicked on the head. I read about that in the local paper. I thought it was brought in as accidental death. Wasn’t it supposed to have been one of his own horses that did it?”
“We know better now. The police believe that Mapsted was not killed by a horse but by a heavy mallet from your own tool store.”
“What?” said Turnbull in a whisper. “But that was nothing to do with me!”
“So, you see,” went on Dame Beatrice in a chatty tone, “it might be well for you to think things over. The only fingerprints on the mallet are your own. We do not,” she hastened to add (for Turnbull looked as though he might faint), “pay undue attention to that fact, but it has its own importance.”
She rose to go, and as she opened the door—for Turnbull made no move—she came face to face with Mrs. Abu.
“Oh, you’re not going, Mrs. Turnbull!” exclaimed the hostess, as Dame Beatrice closed the door behind herself.
“I am going, because (I regret to have to confess) I am not Mrs. Turnbull.”
“Not? Oh, but she said she was coming. Can’t she manage it, then?”
“I really have no idea, and I do beg your pardon for intruding on you like this, and under false pretences at that.”
“Think nothing of it,” said the young woman. “I’m quite used to being bounced in on. You’re a friend of Nat’s, and that’s all that matters to me. You are a friend of Nat’s, I take it?”
“You are entitled to take it that I am. At the moment, and for, at any rate, the next few days, if not longer, I am probably the best friend he has in the world, and when I am gone I shall be infinitely obliged if you will tell him so. It may help to ease his mind.”
“Say, what has he been up to? He tells me he’s lost his job, but what’s behind it?”
“I wish I knew. I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Not a clue, and you can’t force people’s confidence, can you? All I know is that he came along here and said the headmaster had told him to take indefinite leave of absence and that he would probably get a letter from the Governors in due course. He translated this as being given the push, and that’s all I can tell you. He seems scared to show his nose outside the door. I can’t make him out.”
“I wonder whether you would mind telling me how long you have known him?”
“We’ve been friends for about a year now, through the yachting. He’s crewed for me once or twice, and I helped him a bit with his boat when he was building her. I got out the plans and specifications and things. My father was in the boat-building line, you see. I’m glad of a man’s company since Abu went back to Egypt, but there’s nothing between Nat and me. Once bitten, twice shy, that’s how I feel about that.”
“Do you know a man named Nottingham, Mrs. Abu?”
“A bit. Nasty bit of work, he always struck me as. He’s another member of the Yacht Club. That’s the extent of my acquaintance with him. Nat’s been meeting him a bit lately, I believe. I was with a party in the Blue Finn one evening, and the two of them were there with another man I’ve never seen before.”
“Only one other?”
“Yes, the three were together at the bar.”
“Can you describe the other man?”
“I guess not. He was just one of those types. Looked—not horsy, like Jed Nottingham, but somehow—well, you could tell he lived in the country.”
“Of medium height with a rather pale face for a countryman and remarkable, sad, dreamy, far-gazing, large eyes?”
“Do you know him?”
“He is a farmer who lives just outside the village of Wandles Parva. His name is Grinsted.”
“That’s right. Now I remember, Nat called him that. He said, ‘What about you, Grinsted? What’ll you have?’ Funny how things come back to you.”
“Yes. Thank you very much, Mrs. Abu. You don’t know, I suppose, exactly how long this association has been going on?”
“Only a matter of three or four months, that I actually know about. Nat dropped a packet over some steeplechase or other last autumn. I know he did because he tried to borrow from me, but I hadn’t got it. Later on, when I asked him, he said it was all right; Jed Nottingham had lent it to him.”
“Jed Nottingham had lent it to him…I see. Well, good-bye, Mrs. Abu. If you can get him to tell you anything more, it will be to his advantage if you will communicate with me, or with the chief constable of the county, or with the Seahampton police station. Here is my card. I will put the chief constable’s address on the back of it.”
She fished for a pencil, scribbled with it, and handed the card to the young woman. When she reached the end of the causeway she looked back. Mrs. Abu was still standing in the open doorway.
“He’ll have to talk,” said the superintendent over the telephone. “I’m going out there at once. Now that that mallet’s been found and tested, this business ought to be cleared up, and he’s got to help us, silly young fool!”
Dame Beatrice rang off. An hour later a call came through to the Stone House. Turnbull had fled from the house on the Point. He had gone out ostensibly to buy tobacco, but had not returned, and Mrs. Abu could tell the police nothing more.
“And I’m certain she’s telling the truth, madam,” concluded the superintendent. “I’ve dealt with too many witnesses not to be pretty certain when they’re lying. She doesn’t know where he is and he’s confided nothing to her. Now we shall have to set to work again to find him. One thing, he can’t have got far.”
CHAPTER 18
NO LIGHT ON A DARK HORSE
When the wind whistles cold on the moor of a night,
Tom Pearce’s old mare doth appear ghostly white.
SONG
Dame Beatrice did not share all the superintendent’s views. She did not think that Turnbull would have to talk. She did agree that he could not have gone far. She was terribly afraid that he was dead, and confided as much to Laura.
“Tell George to get out the car at once,” she said. “We had better contact Mrs. Abu and get her story at first hand.”
In Old Seahampton they parked the car by the churchyard wall and crossed the uneven stretch of grass to the house on the Point. Mrs. Abu could tell them no more than they knew already. What she added was mere speculation.
“I’d no idea he was going to leave,” she said. “I offered to get the cigarettes for him but he said he wanted a stroll. Of course, I did get the idea that he was very much put out by your coming to see him. He seemed all of a fidget when I went back into the house, and he blamed me rather for letting you in. Just as if I knew you weren’t his ma! After all, I’d been quite expecting her, and I’ve never met her, any more than I’d met you, and the age would be about right.”
“You flatter me,” said Dame Beatrice, with a leer.
“He said,” went on Mrs. Abu, “that if you could muscle your way in—his words, not mine—so could even more dangerous people.”
“Yes. Yes, I see.”
Laura had her own ideas about Turnbull.
“We’d better try the house by the lasher,” she said, “where I followed him before. That’s where he’s gone to ground, I’m certain.”
They re-crossed the green and came to the plank bridge. Once over this, they came in sight of a small bungalow. The garden was overgrown and needed weeding and the building had a boarded-up window and a general air of neglect. They went to the front door and Laura knocked. The door swung open, almost precipitating her into the hall. She recovered her balance and stepped back.
“Bit fishy, don’t you think?” she inquired. “I’ll bellow first, before we go in.”
“Very wise,” said Dame Beatrice. Laura lifted up her voice in a powerful and musical yodel on the word Turnbull. There was no response. She tried again, but the bungalow appeared to be empty.
“I don’t like it,” she said. “My flesh creeps. Let’s
go back and borrow one of George’s spanners. “‘By the pricking of my thumbs’ and so forth, you know.”
“If what I think is true, there’s no danger, child.” With this, Dame Beatrice walked into the tiny hall. Turnbull’s body was in the kitchen. The weapon, a heavy spanner, was lying beside it. Laura turned green.
“Get back to George and tell him to get the superintendent,” said Dame Beatrice briskly. “I’ll stay here until he comes.”
Laura went out to the car. George listened respectfully to her news, and then he said:
“If you’ve no objection, madam, I think it would be best if you would take the message and leave me to back up Dame Beatrice.”
“Oh, blow!” said Laura.
“It really would be the better plan, madam.” His respectful tones did not alter but there was a masculine determination in his eyes with which Laura, Amazon though she was, could not but sympathise. He picked a heavy spanner out of his toolkit. “This, madam, will be quite a good argument to convince a gent who decides to turn awkward. Murderers sometimes lurk about.”
“All right. Push along, then, George. I shouldn’t think he’d risk having a pop at us. He’ll give us time to clear off, or so he thinks. Anyway, you never know, so I shan’t start the car until you get to the bridge.”
“Very good, Mrs. Gavin.” He strode away, a stocky, reliable figure, swinging the spanner as he went. Laura got into the car, and, as he disappeared, she started the engine.
Superintendent Humblederry was interested in the whereabouts of Turnbull, as he indicated when Laura arrived.
“Much obliged to you, madam,” he said. “I seem to have wasted a couple of officers down the Sound, but no matter. You say the body is definitely at this bungalow?”
“Well, it was when I left it about ten minutes ago.”
“Very good, madam. We’ll get down there right away.”
Laura waited for the police car to precede her, then, with a sigh of frustration, she let in her clutch and followed. She pulled up outside the church and lit a cigarette. She did not know how long it would be before Dame Beatrice and George were free to return home. After a minute or so she changed to the back seat of the car and read a book which George had left in the glove compartment. It turned out to be a book by Elizabeth David on Mediterranean food, and she was soon completely absorbed in it.
“Lady,” said a plaintive voice at the partly open window by the driver’s seat. “I’ve got a horse here. Will you help me to get him away?”
It was the gipsy. Laura, startled, looked up.
“Push off,” she said promptly. “The police are here.”
“Lady, I know. Won’t you help me with the horse?”
“No. Go away at once!”
She was not afraid of him, but the green in front of the church was quite deserted and the thought of the murdered man was not a pleasant one. It was still daylight. That was one good thing. But, while she was comforting herself with this thought, the gipsy put his hand over the top of the window and felt for the handle. He lowered the window and framed his head in the opening.
“You’ve got to help me, lady,” he said quietly.
“Hey!” said Laura. “Leave that handle alone and get away from here at once! I tell you there’s a police car in the offing. Don’t be a fool.”
The gipsy withdrew his head, wrenched open the door of the car, whipped into the driver’s seat, and, before Laura realised what his plan was, the car was in motion. It bumped off the rough grass by the churchyard wall and on to the little road which led past the stables at the back of the Blue Finn.
“And if you beat me over the head, lady, you will only pile us both up,” said the gipsy into the windscreen.
“What I shall do is to yell blue murder,” retorted Laura. The gipsy’s only reply to this was to accelerate and they bounced along the uneven and narrow lane, past the inn, and out on to the New Seahampton road. On this they went so fast that Laura realised that all the shouting in the world would not help her. Her only hope was that the car would be held up by a policeman. This, however, did not occur. They roared through New Seahampton past the grammar school, and on towards Southampton. But at crossroads, five miles out, the car swung away towards the Forest, and, from then on, it was clear to Laura that the gipsy intended to keep to unfrequented roads.
Neither he nor she exchanged a word for the next five or six miles. By this time they were crossing a stretch of open heath broken here and there by birch trees or oaks. Once they encountered a herd of ponies and in a glade there were two or three deer. It began to get dark. Laura cast about for a way to end the journey. It was becoming nightmarish. Once they passed a turning to Wandles Parva, and, after that every mile took her farther from home.
At last the gipsy spoke.
“Nearly there, lady.”
“And where is ‘there’ I wonder?” said Laura. He laughed softly and did not answer. The open heath ended and they were among trees. The gipsy had to put on the lights. The road narrowed. Dark giants of oak flung enormous shadows. Gleaming beech-trunks swung suddenly across the way. A thick copse of holly, black in the headlamps, swirled by.
But, at last, the drive was over. The car pulled up beside a group of pines. As it slowed to a halt, Laura acted. The edge of her strong right hand took the gipsy at the left side of the neck. It was a blow which her husband had taught her. She had put on her driving gloves, but, even so, she felt the shock right up her arm. The gipsy slumped. Laura wrenched open the door of the car, seized the man, and tried to pull him out. He was much heavier than she had supposed, and, apart from that, she got him wedged and could not move him. Every moment she expected his cronies to turn up, and, at last, panting, she gave up the struggle. Her aim now was to get away from him. At any moment (unless she had killed him) he might begin to come to. She immobilised the car by turning off the ignition and pocketing the key, and then decided to turn back and get on to the main road to Brockenhurst, the nearest place, if her calculations were correct, where she could get a train or hire a car. She leaned over the gipsy’s awkwardly-slumped body, picked up the electric torch which was always kept in the car, and had just begun to pick her way along the narrow forest road when she heard the whinny of a horse.
She thought at first that it might be a forest pony, but then she heard a soft thud as it pawed the ground, so she decided that it really was a horse, and was probably tethered. She turned the torch in the direction from which the sounds came. The horse whinnied again. Laura, certain in her own mind that it was the animal which the gipsy had mentioned before he kidnapped her, was conscious of a feeling of excitement. She groped her way through the trees and almost precipitated herself into a deep ditch.
“Good heavens! This must be Campbury Rings!” she thought. “They’ve hidden the horse among the earthworks!”
She descended the steep slope and, keeping the light of her torch shining on to the ground, she clicked her tongue and the horse answered with another whinny. She soon found him. He was saddled and bridled, ready for instant departure. She fumbled for, and found, the end of his tether and freed him. Then she led him along the bottom of the pre-historic ditch to where an upward-sloping ramp took them both on to the top of a low plateau which had formed the inner sanctuary of the Iron Age fort.
Here, for a moment, she stood. The horse, as docile as a spaniel, stood, too, blowing gently through his nostrils. Without the use of the torch Laura could see nothing. With it she was afraid of attracting the attention of the gipsy or his friends. The lesser of two evils seemed to be the latter, so, keeping the light shining downwards, as far as possible, she led the horse across the top of the fortified mound and, by great good luck, came immediately to a place where part of the earthworks had either crumbled or had been destroyed. On this side, too, she found herself clear of the trees. Still leading the horse, she walked on by the light of the torch, only hoping that the battery would last until she reached a road. Half the time she wondered whether she was dr
eaming.
They came out at last upon a road of sorts and followed it. Laura was getting tired, and had very little idea, by this time, of where she was. The late evening was chilly, she was desperately hungry, and she had begun to envisage herself wandering all night in the Forest. Suddenly, strongly brilliant headlights behind her cast enormous shadows of herself and the horse upon the road and over the heather. The horse began to dance. Laura tried to soothe him. The car sounded a respectful toot on the horn. The horse flung up his head and Laura had hard work to hold him. She got him to the side of the road, so that the car could go by, but, instead, it pulled up, and a voice with a transatlantic accent said:
“Say! What goes on?”
“Do pass me,” said Laura desperately. “I’ve left you room.”
“You seem kind of benighted,” said the voice. The headlights dimmed. There was the sound of a car door being slammed. Laura hung on grimly to the horse and faced him round towards the middle of the road. A young man appeared in the light of the headlamps, a silhouette. “Have you lost the rest of the hunting-party?” he inquired.
“No. I’m taking the horse back home. I say, though, I wish you’d tell me whereabouts I am. It got dark, and I want to get—well, Brockenhurst would do.”
“You’re way off your route, sister. Say, look. There’s quite a cute little roadhouse about two miles ahead. Maybe, if I went slowly, you could mount the mustang and follow me to it. There are stables there, like in most of the hotels around here. You could put the gee up for the night and ring your friends. I certainly do not appreciate the thought of leaving you here.”
“It’s very kind of you,” said Laura, “but I expect I’ll manage. About two miles, you say? Thanks very much. Good night.” She backed the horse farther into the heather. The young American said:
“Aw, now,” in a disappointed tone, and returned to his car. The door slammed, he let in the clutch, and drove slowly past her and the horse. Laura led the horse on to the road and resumed her lonely pilgrimage. Half a mile farther on she saw the tail-lamps of a car and realised that it must be the helpful American again. He flickered the lamps to let her know that he had seen the beam of her torch and then drove on again. At last, to Laura’s relief, the forest drive met a main road, and there, twinkling like a Christmas tree, were the lights of a big roadhouse. The horse she had been trading was Farmer Grinsted’s Iceland Blue.
Twelve Horses and the Hangman's Noose (Mrs. Bradley) Page 19
