The Wild Boy and Queen Moon

by K. M. Peyton

  ‘Grandpa!’ Sandy could feel herself going scarlet. Leo had got the giggles.

  ‘What you laughing for, young lady?’ Grandpa demanded.

  ‘I’ve just thought of a joke.’

  ‘What’s your joke then?’

  ‘There were these pleasure boats on a lake, hired out by the hour, and the attendant shouted, “Your time’s up, number ninety-nine!” and the other attendant said, “We haven’t got a number ninety-nine,” so then the first attendant shouted, “Are you having trouble, number sixty-six?”’

  After Grandpa had worked it out he laughed so hard that he started his smoker’s cough and had to be taken out into the scullery to have his back thumped and his eyes wiped. The girls got on with the potatoes, behaving themselves, until Mrs Speerwell drew up outside in her Alfa-Romeo and Mary Fielding went to greet her.

  Mrs Speerwell looked about twenty-five. She was fabulously made up and dressed in a cream suede coat over a red cashmere dress, with many gold trinkets and rings. A strong smell of scent came in with her.

  ‘Tony, darling! Whatever have you been up to?’

  Sandy was pleased to see that darling Tony looked as sick as any lad whose mother was an embarrassment to him. He scowled furiously and stood up, swaying slightly, to fend her off.

  ‘So kind of you to take him in!’ Mrs Speerwell smiled. Her large blue eyes were darting about to take everything in. ‘I really never know what he gets up to these days.’

  ‘He came off his horse. I think perhaps a doctor should check him to be on the safe side. Concussion is a tricky thing.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I’ll give Dr Menzies a ring as soon as we get home. So kind of you! Come along, Tony darling! You can walk to the car, can you?’

  ‘Diddums,’ Leo whispered.

  Neither of them mentioned the horse, Sandy thought sadly, as they departed.

  Grandpa came in and said, ‘What’s the pong in here?’

  ‘Mrs Sneerwell,’ said Leo.

  ‘Cor. Like a funeral!’ Grandpa loved funerals. They gave him a superior feeling at outdoing all these young fallers-by-the-wayside. ‘What’s for dinner then?’

  Leo went home for her own lunch on her bicycle. Julia came with her and, after the hill flattened out, Leo let her get up behind for the ride into the village. There Leo went left and Julia right, and they parted.

  Julia, walking the half-mile to her house, hugged herself with sheer joy at the glory of her day. It had been the best Saturday morning she could ever remember. It felt like six days rolled into one, and yet was only half over. Later she would go down and do Faithful for the night. She might even offer to do King of the Fireworks, too.

  Leo let herself in her back door and found her mother cutting up nuts to put in the salad. Her house was cold and silent. Her father was out birdwatching.

  ‘Leonie, you must do something about your hair!’ her mother moaned gently, as was her habit. ‘You look – you look – oh dear! Dirty.’

  ‘I am. I’m covered in horse manure. Smell me. Yum.’

  Leo held her hands up close under her mother’s nose. Then she picked some nuts out of the salad and ate them and her mother gave another moan. I really hate it here, Leo thought.

  SANDY KNEW THERE was something wrong when they passed Gertie’s house on the way to school. She stopped and Ian said, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  It was raining, not hard but miserably, and the water ran gurgling down the ditch in front of Gertie’s house.

  ‘I’ll just give her a shout. Say hello.’

  ‘If she starts yakking we’ll miss the bus.’

  ‘You go on then.’

  Ian shrugged, scowled, and decided not to wait. Sandy cursed and went round the path to the back door. It was open. Sandy hesitated. Ian was right: the old girl had no idea about catching school buses and what it cost her, Sandy, to do this simple duty. ‘I am foul,’ Sandy thought, and went inside.

  ‘Gertie!’

  There was no answer.

  The cat hadn’t been fed and came running in after her, leaving wet paw marks over the already dirty kitchen lino. The house smelled of old woman. Sandy knew then that it was all wrong. She felt a cold hand claw at her stomach.

  ‘Gertie!’

  She would be dead in bed, Sandy thought. I can’t bear it! Perhaps she should go back for her mother. She was a baby. It was all in the imagination. And to think she had sometimes toyed with the idea of being a policewoman. At least if Gertie was dead, she would be newly dead, not three weeks old like some old women who died alone. They looked after her that well, at least. But Sandy felt sick, all the same.

  She went through the tiny living-room to the foot of the stairs and started up them her heart thumping. Her hands were clammy. Gertie slept in sometimes. She was imagining all this! No.

  ‘Gertie!’

  Gertie was in the bedroom, but not in bed. She lay just inside the door: her face was ghastly and there was blood everywhere.

  Sandy screamed. She felt her knees give way and she fell down on the floor in a sort of stupid kneeling position. She strove to recover herself, got up and ran. She pelted down the stairs and out of the kitchen door. The rain hit her in the face, smelling of the river and the reeds and the sea. It stopped her, like a reprimand. Grow up! A policewoman! Do your duty.

  She stood trembling, breathing heavily. In the mud of the garden path at her feet, something gleamed. She picked it up. It was an old red penknife which she recognized – Duncan’s, which he used for cutting the baler twine on the straw. She put it in her pocket. Duncan did it, she thought. Duncan wouldn’t.

  And then, because she had to, she went back. She climbed the stairs, breathing heavily like old Gertie herself, and forced herself to look at the old woman on the floor. She saw straightaway that she wasn’t dead. Her face was bluish, but a snoring breath was flaring her nostrils at regular intervals. The blood came from the side of her head, but her skull wasn’t bashed in or anything dreadful. There was a cut over her temple but the blood wasn’t flowing any more but sort of hanging in congealing lumps through her mangy hair. Ugh! Sandy felt her gorge rise. She burst into tears and ran downstairs and out into the rain. She ran down the hill so fast she almost fell, shouting, ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ like an infant child.

  Her father was coming up from the marsh meadows in the tractor, having taken feed down to the cattle. Sandy screamed at him.

  ‘It’s Gertie! Gertie’s had an accident!’

  ‘Get up here!’

  He opened the door. She scrambled in and he roared up the lane to the house.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s lying unconscious – her head’s all bleeding. Someone’s hit her!’

  ‘Hit her? More likely she just fell. Who’d hit her, for goodness sake?’

  Why did she think someone had hit Gertie? Because Duncan had been there. Duncan had hit her.

  ‘We’ll get the police. And the ambulance.’

  For a slow-moving man, Bill Fielding moved fast when motivated. He went indoors to the phone and Sandy followed him, shivering. Then her mother ran out and said, ‘Sandy, are you all right? Darling!’ She put her arms round her in a brief hug and gave her a sharp look.

  ‘I’ll have to go up there. But you stay here. Make yourself some strong sweet tea – you know, like the books say!’ and she was gone.

  Sandy went indoors and it was very quiet. She felt stone cold and went and wedged herself against the Aga. The breakfast things were still on the table. Ian would be mad at missing the excitement! Serve him right! She had been noble, her caring nature going to look, and she had saved Gertie’s life. Or might have. Her mother wouldn’t have gone up till lunchtime, by which time Gertie was bound to have died. How long had she been lying there? Since last night, or had it happened early in the morning? What a tough old bird!

  She dithered about for a bit, then cleared the breakfast things and put the kettle on. She was all shaky and her mind kept shoot
ing about. She couldn’t think straight about anything.

  Her mother came back in about an hour. She had a policeman with her.

  ‘He just wants to ask you a few questions, Sandy, about how you found her. The ambulance has taken her away and they think she’ll be all right.’

  The policeman was young and friendly. He sat at the table and Mary Fielding made more tea, and Sandy explained how she had gone in, just to say hello, and found Gertie in her bedroom.

  ‘You didn’t touch her at all? You didn’t move anything?’

  ‘No. I just screamed and ran.’

  ‘Was the back door open or shut? How did you get in?’

  ‘It was open. But she often leaves it open, even in the winter, for the cat. She gets up early. I wasn’t surprised it was open.’

  She remembered Duncan’s penknife lying on the path. She wouldn’t mention it.

  ‘Did someone do it? Or did she just fall?’ she asked.

  ‘We can’t tell. You didn’t notice anything different from usual? Do you usually call in?’

  ‘No, I didn’t notice anything. I quite often call in. Not always.’

  She wasn’t going to say about her gut feeling that something had been wrong. There was no way to describe that.

  ‘That’s all for now. I’ve no doubt the inspector will want to ask you some more questions later, Mrs Fielding. About who might have been in the vicinity last night, that sort of thing.’

  He drank his tea and departed.

  ‘Oh dear.’ Mary Fielding looked at Sandy sadly. ‘It’s a bad business. Her savings are all gone. You know she keeps an envelope full of ten-pound notes under her mattress? I told them, and they looked, and it’s not there.’

  ‘Everybody knows that. Everyone in the village,’ Sandy said. ‘She tells everyone it’s safer than in a bank. And who does he mean, everyone in the vicinity? All of us? Last night?’

  It was a Monday morning, a week after Sneerwell had fallen off King of the Fireworks.

  ‘Everyone was here last night. Sunday night,’ Sandy said. ‘Sneerwell, Leo, Julia, Polly, Henry, Stick and Ball – even Uncle Arthur came down last night.’

  ‘That boy on the grey went past in the dark, flat gallop as usual. Glynn came down with the new gate.’

  ‘Dad and Ian, you and me!’ And Duncan, Sandy thought. But didn’t say. ‘Grandpa!’

  ‘Grandpa was the last to see her. He called in at teatime. He’ll get a shock when he hears!’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s moving the electric fence in the top field.’

  ‘But anyone could have done it!’

  ‘Yes, of course. Anyone from the village. Or a stranger. The mattress isn’t a very original place to keep cash, after all.’ Mrs Fielding looked rather old suddenly, Sandy thought. ‘Poor Gertie – oh, poor Gertie! What a terrible thing to have happened to her! It can’t be anyone we know. They said she must have been lying there all night. Poor old soul!’

  ‘She might have fought back. She would, I think.’

  ‘She’s certainly a fearless woman. But this will do her so much harm, mentally. She won’t be able to live on her own after this.’

  ‘She’d never go in a home!’

  ‘No. Imagine! She’d drive them all mad. I don’t know what will happen.’ Mary Fielding slumped, in the old-looking way, and said nothing for a few moments, then she visibly pulled herself together and said briskly, ‘Well, I shall go along to the hospital and see how she’s doing, and I’ll take you to school on the way. It’s no good sitting here thinking about it. That’ll get us nowhere.’

  Sandy felt the day was half over, but she was as yet only half an hour late for school. Amazing. When she went in, in the middle of a lesson, and explained why she was late, she became the centre of attention all day and everyone wanted to hear the story of her going upstairs and finding the blood-covered old lady. She was almost a heroine, as if she had done something clever. She was ashamed of how she had reacted, but didn’t tell anyone that. Ian guessed. He said, nastily, ‘I bet you passed out, came to half an hour later and ran for Mummy.’

  ‘What would you have done, Bighead?’

  On the bus, going home, Leo said, ‘Are we all under suspicion then? We were all there last night.’

  ‘It was dark when I left,’ Julia said. ‘The light was on in her kitchen. She must have been OK then.’

  Julia was turning round from the seat in front. So far she had been quite bearable and Sandy and Leo had cautiously let her into their friendship – the part of it that was to do with the horses. She came down night and morning, devotedly, and helped around quite a lot. Sandy found her very useful and was impressed (without remarking on it) by her vast knowledge of The Horse, Its Ways and How to Look After It. Only Polly Marlin equalled her in this. She too had been there last night, late. Polly was famously, perennially, hard up, spending her every penny on her eventer, Charlie’s Flying. So was Sneerwell, apart from his fast car. Daddy Sneerwell kept him on a tight rein, so that he wouldn’t do anything silly. But if he got King of the Fireworks round a team-chase he was going to come into money. Stealing Gertie’s savings would be much quicker. And Duncan, Duncan of the Penknife, gave all his money to his grasping mother . . .

  Sandy’s mind flew round like a Catherine wheel, shooting sparks and getting nowhere. She was frightened by how suddenly a threat had come into their dozy domestic life.

  ‘It’s bound to be somebody we don’t know, a tramp or something. Anyone could come down the lane.’

  ‘Or up the river from a boat!’

  ‘It’s Ian,’ Leo said mischievously. ‘That’s why he wouldn’t go in.’

  ‘Oh, great!’ said Ian. ‘I reckon it’s Dad. He’s going bankrupt fast.’

  ‘Shut up!’ snapped Sandy, because she knew it was true.

  Julia got off the bus. She always went home for her tea and came down later on her bike. It was too dark to ride after school now, and Faithful was turned out by day, as were most of the horses.

  ‘It’s her,’ Leo said. ‘She was telling me she had no idea how she was going to pay her livery soon as she’s nearly used up all her savings.’

  ‘It’s your dad,’ Ian said to her. ‘He’s a psychopath.’

  ‘He’s pretty weird,’ Leo agreed equably.

  ‘Mummy Marsden has said she’ll have Faithful home after all. She’s got over her paddy. But Julia doesn’t want to go.’ Sandy had heard this from Julia herself and nurtured the thought with some pride: that her stable could be more attractive to Julia than her own home. ‘She likes us.’

  ‘I always thought she was unbalanced,’ Ian said.

  ‘Why is he so horrible?’ Leo asked as Ian moved seats to talk to someone else.

  ‘Mum says it’s his age.’

  ‘It’s taking a long time, his age. I think it’s permanent,’ Leo said.

  ‘Some people are naturally horrid, I suppose.’ Sandy then mentioned what had been in her head for some time: ‘The wild boy came up the lane late last night. The police will have to know that. We might find out about him.’

  ‘What if he stole the money?’

  ‘Yes, I wondered. Oh, I hope not!’

  ‘When you think of it, there are dozens of possibilities! It’s like an Agatha Christie.’ As Sandy stood up to get off the bus, Leo added, ‘I’ll say it wasn’t you. I was with you all the time.’

  When Sandy and Ian walked home down their lane in the dusk, they found Gertie’s cottage surrounded by markers of red-and-white tape. Two police cars were parked outside and the lights were all on. They walked by. Sandy found herself feeling shaky again and a bit sick.

  ‘She might’ve died by now,’ Ian said.

  But when they got home their mother said Gertie was all right. Conscious. She wasn’t sure what had happened to her. She thought she had heard someone upstairs and remembered going up.

  ‘It were that slippery mat done for me.’

  ‘The police are coming down about six, when most
of the livery people will be here, to ask if anyone remembers seeing anything useful. And they want the name of the boy on the grey horse. You said you knew who he was, Ian. They want you to tell them.’

  Sandy put her hand in her pocket and her fingers closed round the red penknife. When they asked her if she had found anything, would she say?

  ‘You’d better get your tea early,’ their mother said.

  Sandy ate her tea and went out to the yard. Duncan was there, unloading straw from the tractor trailer. Sandy went over to help, out of habit, and found herself tongue-tied. She wanted to mention the penknife, but found the words wouldn’t come. She had always liked Duncan; he was more like a brother than Ian, and much nicer. He had worked on the farm ever since she could remember, coming down as a boy to help in his spare time before he had been employed. He loved the farm and the cattle and the work and would have given anything to be in Ian’s shoes, taking over from his father. Sandy was convinced Ian never would take over, he hated it so.

  ‘You will have it, you’re the only one,’ she had told Duncan.

  ‘But I can never own it! If it can’t be passed into the family, your father will sell it.’

  ‘He can pass it on to me. I wouldn’t mind being a farmer,’ Sandy said. After this conversation she realized the brilliant thing would be for her and Duncan to get married. This thought embarrassed her so much that she now found it difficult to talk to him easily. She wondered if the same thought had passed through his mind. If it had, he made no sign.

  He threw the bales down off the trailer and she stacked them until they got too high. Then he came to do it. He was enormously strong from so much outdoor work, but was gentle by nature, which made him a very good cowman. He was seventeen, like Ian, but very responsible. He had a quiet voice and manner, yet no-one took advantage of him; Bill Fielding never shouted at him, like he did at Ian.

  ‘It’s a bad do about Gertie,’ he said. ‘Must have given you a fright, finding her.’

  ‘Yes.’ She hoicked a bale towards him. ‘The police are coming down to ask questions.’