by M C Beaton
Beyond the arch was flat open parkland. Unlike the approach to Barfield House, there was no avenue of trees leading up to a grand residence. Instead, a few specimen trees were dotted here and there, with more dense woodland lying beyond the acres of open grass. The road swept into the far distance, where an intriguing Palladian mansion stood proudly on a low rise. The house was framed by the woodland behind it. Above, the wide expanse of blue sky, scrubbed by occasional slow-moving clouds, appeared infinitely vast.
The areas of interest for Agatha, Toni and Roy, however, were the oceans of lawn either side of the road. Tents, pavilions and market stalls were scattered around fenced-off areas where showground arenas had been created. The one to the left was flat and empty apart from a female rider sitting tall in the saddle trotting across it on a glossy chestnut pony. The arena to the right was laid out with a series of colourful gates and jumps. Agatha consulted an event map that Toni had printed out from the Manor Park website.
“That’s obviously the show-jumping arena,” she said, pointing to the right, “and on the other side is the dressage enclosure. We should be able to park farther up on the left.”
The car park was busy, with very few spaces left, and Agatha was impressed at how well attended the charity event was, given that it was midweek. She scanned the crowds of people milling around the various stalls selling snacks, souvenirs and all manner of equestrian equipment and ephemera. Toni and Roy stood either side of her, studying the map. Roy was wearing brown brogues, corduroy trousers, a checked tweed jacket, contrasting checked shirt and a flat cap—every town-dweller’s idea of how a gentleman dressed in the countryside. Toni was in a waxed jacket, jeans and boots. Unlike Roy, she would blend into the crowd and go almost unnoticed. Agatha had chosen a sober grey trouser suit and black shoes with wedge heels, having long ago discovered that any high heels other than wedges spiked themselves into soft ground with a wanton, ankle-twisting disregard for a girl’s dignity.
“We need to split up,” she said. “Concentrate on those areas where the horse boxes are. Ask around for the people on our party guest list and try to engage any of the competitors in conversation. We need to find out as much as we can about what Mary got up to at these events and who might have a grudge against her. We need a list of her enemies.”
Roy set off eagerly to play detective. Toni sniffed the air, winced and coughed. The heady scent of horse was everywhere.
“Does that smell remind you of anything?” she asked Agatha.
“If you mean burying myself in a pile of straw and donkey shit not too long ago to hide from a maniac who was trying to put a bullet in my head,” said Agatha, “not at all. The thought never entered my mind.”
Toni laughed. “I’m glad you can see the funny side of it now.”
“Ruined one of my favourite outfits,” Agatha smiled. “All right, I’m going this way—you try over there.”
Agatha approached a group of half a dozen young women standing chatting by a cluster of horse boxes. Their ages seemed to range from mid twenties to mid thirties. They were all of similar build—slim and athletic—with their hair tied back in ponytails. All wore white jodhpurs and black boots. Their jackets, she decided, were the only things that stopped them from looking like identical clones. Unlike Mary and Mrs. Chadwick, they were not all dressed in black jackets. Some wore royal blue, one a luxurious dark green and another deep purple. A couple of them were smoking cigarettes.
“Excuse me,” said Agatha. “Can you help me? I’m looking for—”
“And you are?” said one of the smokers, turning and blowing a grey cloud at her. That, Agatha knew, was designed to tell someone they weren’t welcome, to make them feel they were regarded as inferior and generally to piss them off. She knew because she’d done it herself more times than she could remember. She refused to be intimidated.
“I know who she is,” said another of the women. “She’s that detective—Sally Sultana or something.”
“Agatha Raisin,” said Agatha, forcing a polite smile. “I’d like to talk to you about—”
“Well we don’t want to talk to you,” said the smoker, turning her back.
“I quite understand,” Agatha said, as the women resumed their conversation. “Sorry to have bothered you.” Then she tapped the smoker lightly on the shoulder and whispered in her ear, “There’s a really horrible muddy mark on the back of your trousers. Makes it look like you’ve … you know … had a bit of an accident.”
She walked off, looking back after a few paces to see the smoker, having discreetly separated from her friends, contorting herself by the wing mirror of a Range Rover trying to find a muddy mark that simply wasn’t there.
After several more fruitless attempts to talk to women who were either too uninterested or too busy to spare her even a few seconds, Agatha met up with Roy and Toni.
“I can’t believe this lot,” said Toni. “Nobody’s prepared to say a word about Mary.”
“They’re talking about her amongst themselves,” said Roy. “I’ve heard them giggling like schoolgirls when her name is mentioned, but they won’t speak to me.”
“I think they’ve been warned off,” said Agatha. “I feel the hand of Darell Brown-Field in this. Come on, let’s find somewhere we can sit down and have a drink.”
They made for a refreshment stand, in front of which a herd of plastic tables and chairs was corralled. A familiar voice rang out from behind the counter.
“Hello there, Mrs. Raisin! Fancy seeing you here!”
“Doris,” said Agatha, happy to encounter the friendly face of Doris Simpson, her faithful cleaning lady. “I didn’t expect to see you here either.”
“My cousin Rita’s girl Zoe asked me to help out,” said Doris, indicating a young woman wiping down the tables. “Well, it’s for charity, isn’t it? You enjoying an afternoon off?”
“Not really,” Agatha admitted. “We’re here on business. We had hoped to talk to some of the riders, but they’re not very communicative.”
“If you mean they’re a bunch of snooty cows, I completely agree,” said Doris. “Zoe—do you know anybody Mrs. Raisin could talk to about the horsey contest things? Folks here have been giving her the cold shoulder.”
“Not surprised about that,” Zoe said, wringing out her cloth. “Them that’s here today is the worst lot of snobs around. Ain’t seen none of the nice ones here. You should try talking to Tamara Montgomery, though. She’s the best. She runs the Montgomery Stables over by Blockley.”
“Would she have known Mary Brown-Field—the woman who was murdered?” asked Toni.
“Oh, she knew that one all right. Hated her, she did. I seen her in tears more than once after a run-in with Mary.”
“Really?” Agatha said. “Is Tamara here today?”
“Not today. She don’t compete no more. Still has her stables, though.”
“I think we need to talk to Tamara,” said Agatha, pushing a ten-pound note into the charity box on the counter. “Thank you for your help.”
“Not at all,” Doris smiled. “I’ll do you Monday as usual. Bye!”
* * *
“Finally,” said Toni, starting the car, “a lead to someone we can assume was one of Mary’s enemies.”
“I’d have thought the list of her enemies would have been as long as my arm,” said Roy.
“I bet it’s as long as both your arms, Roy,” Agatha agreed, “but somebody doesn’t want us meeting the people on that list.”
“Daddy Darell,” said Toni.
“Without a doubt,” Agatha nodded, “but he’s not keeping people quiet on his own. Somebody’s helping him out. Maybe we’ll find out more when we talk to Tamara Montgomery.”
“You want to go to Blockley now?” asked Toni.
“No, it’s getting late,” said Agatha, “and I’m famished. I think an early dinner is in order.”
“The Red Lion?” Roy suggested.
“Good idea,” Agatha grinned. “Red Lion tonight. Tamara t
omorrow!”
Chapter Five
The following morning, with Toni in the office catching up on some paperwork, Agatha and Roy set off to pay a visit to the Montgomery Stables. Roy had offered to drive, but Agatha found his sparkling gold Lexus a little ostentatious for her taste and far too conspicuous for a private detective, so they took her anonymous dark-grey saloon instead.
“You certainly brighten up the inside of this car,” she said, eyeing Roy’s burgundy chinos, yellow waistcoat and dusky pink shirt. Agatha loved colourful fashion, providing that colour was deployed with taste and elegance. For business, muted colours were often more appropriate. Her own light-grey skirt and jacket almost matched the car’s upholstery.
“It’s called style, darling,” Roy smiled, waving a hand in a sweeping theatrical gesture. “Don’t even attempt to understand.”
Agatha sighed, shook her head and started the engine.
The stables were tucked away amid a patchwork of fields beyond Blockley on the road to Draycott. They approached the cluster of stable buildings along a track with a copse of oak trees to one side and a four-bar wooden fence to the other. The fence enclosed a flat area surfaced with what looked to Agatha like a mixture of ash and rags. From her research, she knew this was a special material spread on areas used for training horses. Beyond this enclosure was an old farmhouse and a structure that looked like a small barn. Another enclosure near the barn was laid out with show-jumping gates and walls. Three horses grazed in a paddock adjacent to the show-jumping area.
As they pulled up outside the farmhouse, they were greeted by a pleasant, rosy-cheeked woman in her late thirties wearing a heavy sweater, beige jodhpurs and muddy boots. A black Labrador dashed from her side and danced around Agatha and Roy, lashing their legs with his tail in a lavish welcome ritual.
“Piper, here!” called the woman and the dog slunk back to her side. “Sorry about that. He loves visitors. Can I help you?” she asked, wiping her hands on a towel.
“We’re looking for Tamara Montgomery,” said Agatha, frowning at Piper’s muddy paw mark on top of her sandal.
“You’ve found her.” Tamara smiled, and Agatha noted the lines that appeared at the sides of her mouth, as well as the crinkles at the corners of her eyes. This woman wore no make-up. “What can I do for you?”
Agatha introduced herself and Roy, explaining that they needed to talk to her about Mary Brown-Field. Tamara’s face fell.
“I can’t help you,” she said.
“We know that you and Mary had … issues,” said Agatha. “We’re trying to find out more about her. Her father has accused Sir Charles Fraith of murdering her. We need to make sure that he can’t railroad the murder investigation. Sir Charles didn’t do it. We have to make that clear or the Brown-Fields will crush him.”
“I don’t know…” Tamara said, shaking her head. Agatha had noticed her shoulders droop slightly when the Brown-Fields were mentioned, almost as if the mere thought of them had drained a little life from her. “You’d better come inside.”
She showed them into the main farmhouse building, pausing in the porch to remove her boots. Piper trotted ahead of her. A wide door with upper panels that were a delicate web of stained-glass flowers led into the hall. Piper nudged it open with his head. Tamara turned right to take them into the kitchen. Agatha glanced left, where there was a neat office with a desk, computer and filing cabinets. The kitchen was tidy and clean. Tamara offered them coffee and they sat at wooden chairs around a long table. Under the table, Agatha felt the soft, warm body of Piper as he draped himself across her feet. The silvery grey sandals she was wearing left most of her feet exposed. A heavy Labrador blanket might be nice on a cold winter morning, she thought, but it wouldn’t take long today for her feet to overheat. She gave the dog a nudge with her toes. He was way heavier than Boswell or Hodge and refused to budge.
“I’m sorry about what happened to Mary,” Tamara said.
“I would agree with you,” Agatha replied, “but then we’d both be lying wouldn’t we?”
Tamara stared at her, clearly taken aback; possibly, thought Agatha, even slightly appalled that she had been so forthright.
“Don’t look so shocked,” she said. “I wouldn’t have wished what happened to Mary on anyone, but I won’t pretend that I’m sad she’s gone. I had plenty of reasons to hate her, and I’ve heard that you did too.”
Tamara opened her mouth as if to respond, then burst into tears, burying her face in her hands. She pushed back her chair, the legs screeching as they scraped across the tiled kitchen floor, stood up to grab a handful of kitchen roll and blew her nose loudly. Piper scuttled out from beneath the table and made for the safety of his basket in the corner of the room. Agatha wiggled her toes to cool off her feet.
“It’s true,” Tamara gasped, wiping her eyes and sucking in great gulps of air. “I had … no … reason to like Mary or her family.”
“It seems that they’re not easy people to like,” said Roy. “Believe me, Tamara, you are not alone.”
“You don’t understand,” said Tamara, calming herself and taking her seat again. “They made my life a living hell. They are utterly despicable,” she added, a note of anger in her voice, “and I hate the whole bloody lot of them!”
“Again,” said Agatha, “you’re not alone.”
“But I didn’t kill her,” Tamara said quickly. “I could never do anything like that.”
“Somebody killed her,” Agatha said. “The police even think that I may have had a hand in it. I didn’t, but there’s no doubt that I had a motive. What had Mary done to make you despise her? What might give you a motive?”
“I don’t think I can…”
“Have you already been interviewed by the police?” Roy asked.
“No, no, they haven’t…”
“They will,” said Agatha. “Eventually they will come to speak to you and you will have to tell them the truth. Whatever was between you and Mary will come out—unless I can find the murderer first and hand him, or her, to the police on a plate. Anything you can tell us might help with that.”
“It’s all to do with this place,” Tamara sighed. “The stables. My mother died two years ago and my father followed soon after. They left this house and the stables to me, along with a fair amount of cash. I was still competing then—I’ve been riding since before I could walk—but I never truly realised how much it all cost. My parents must have spent a fortune over the years to get me to the level I was at. With them gone, I had to cope on my own, and the business here began to suffer.”
“But everything around here looks in such good order,” said Roy. “Even outside is neat and clean. At a stables, I expected a lot more mud and … other stuff.”
“I work hard to keep everything shipshape,” said Tamara, “and I get a little help from a couple of local girls who do chores in return for riding lessons, and a friend who helps out from time to time. The real problem is that I have no clients.”
“What do you mean?” Agatha asked. “And what’s this got to do with the Brown-Fields?”
“When money started getting tight,” Tamara explained, “I suppose people must have realised that I was struggling. I had some small local sponsors, but it was never enough. Then I was approached at an event by a man who offered me a tempting amount of money to make sure that I didn’t win. He said it was a betting scam. I was desperate. I took the money.”
“Was this man Mary’s father?” Roy asked.
“No, no, he would never get involved in anything like that personally,” Tamara explained, “but it must have been someone who worked for them. So I threw the contest—like a boxer taking a dive in the fourth round. It was some time later that Mary came to me at another event and showed me photographs—photographs of me accepting a wad of cash from that man. She said she would expose me as a cheat unless I helped her to win and kept myself out of the running.”
“Blackmail!” said Roy. “She was a cunning little devil, wasn’
t she?”
“But you couldn’t actually guarantee her any wins could you?” Agatha reasoned. “There were lots of other talented riders competing. She couldn’t get to them all, so why risk blackmailing you?”
“Because she and her father had something else in mind,” said Tamara. “When I stopped winning, appeared to lose my form, my sponsors had to withdraw their funding. Then rumours started spreading that I was all at sea without my parents. People used to pay a lot for stabling here. But they love their horses—I completely understand that—and who would risk an animal they loved with a woman they had heard might be losing her marbles?
“One by one they drifted away, until now the only horses left here are my own. The Brown-Fields were behind those rumours, I’m sure of that. Mary offered to buy the business. She offered less than half what it’s worth. She was furious when I wouldn’t sell it to her, but I couldn’t just sell up and go—this is my home! She kept on at me, threatening, bullying, telling me and everyone else how useless I was and that the business was a mess. Now I suppose her father will start coming after me…”
“They had plans for their own equestrian centre,” said Agatha. “Maybe they saw you as competition and wanted you out of the way. That would be just like Mary.”
“And she may well get what she wants, even from beyond the grave,” Tamara admitted, shaking her head. “When you arrived I thought for a second that you might be new clients, but…”
“Buck up!” said Agatha cheerily, the germ of an idea forming in her head. “You need to find your old competitive spirit again, Tamara. You might be down now, but you’re not out. You’re still standing and you mustn’t give up. We never give up, do we, Roy?”
