The Stabbing in the Stables

by Simon Brett

  “Hello, I’m Jude.” She could see the panic as Sonia searched for an alternative explanation for her arrival.

  “Nicky Dalrymple.” His handshake was predictably firm and strong.

  “I just popped by to talk to Sonia about a charity event I’m setting up, but I can easily call another time.” Jude had never had a problem with lying when the necessity arose.

  “Nonsense. Come on in. We were just having some tea. Be easy enough to find another cup, won’t it, Sonia?”

  “Yes, of course, Nicky.”

  While she scuttled off to the kitchen, he led Jude into the sitting room. She had not been in this part of the house on her previous visit, but again the image was straight from the pages of an interior design magazine. The furthest wall was all glass, with a vista to a terrace, the garden—remarkably neat and sculpted for February—the paddocks, and then up towards the comforting contours of the South Downs.

  Nicky Dalrymple gestured Jude towards one of the plethora of sofas.

  “I gather from Sonia that you’re just back from Frankfurt.”

  “Yes. A meeting didn’t last as long as it was scheduled, thank God, so I was able to get an earlier flight. Always love getting back here, but…I’m afraid what I do is very time hungry.”

  “I can imagine. Banking, isn’t it?”

  “In the broadest sense, yes.”

  “Well, that’s a subject about which I cannot claim to know anything—and please don’t feel that you need to explain it to me.”

  That prompted another of his perfect smiles. “Very well, I won’t. And what do you do…Jude—was that right?”

  “Yes.” Having been tipped off about Nicky Dalrymple’s views on complementary medicine, she contented herself with, “Oh, I’m retired.”

  Fortunately he didn’t have the opportunity to follow this up with questions about her past career, because Sonia came in at that moment with the required cup and saucer.

  Jude commented on the beauty of the view, and some conversation ensued about the advantages of living in the Fethering area. Nicky asserted that, as soon as he got home, he felt he was shedding an accumulation of stress, like a snake discarding an old skin.

  Though getting home may have had that effect on him, Jude didn’t get the impression it worked the same magic for Sonia. In the presence of her husband she seemed positively on edge, trying to anticipate his reaction to anything that was said, desperate perhaps to please. Jude received a new insight into the condition of Sonia’s marriage, and perhaps a clue to the reason why she had sought help in alternative therapy.

  “I gather from Sonia that all Fethering is talking about the murder up at Long Bamber Stables.”

  “Yes. Didn’t you know Walter Fleet?”

  “No. Sonia does all the horsey stuff. I’m afraid I don’t have time. When we bought Chieftain I had this idea of riding him out with the hunt, but…God, life takes over, doesn’t it?” There was no doubt that Nicky Dalrymple knew how to ride. He carried an air of omnicompetence, a man who’d played all the right sports at all the right schools, and probably been captain of most of them. “Anyway, now the government’s banning hunting, that all becomes a bit academic. Perhaps we should think about getting rid of Chieftain…”

  “Oh, we can’t do that,” said Sonia, shocked.

  “I didn’t say we would, darling. I said we’d have to think about it.” But when he did think about it, if he decided that the horse should go, Jude knew no amount of argument would change his mind.

  “Maybe the girls’ pony’s becoming surplus to requirements too.” Nicky continued. “What’s he called?”

  “She. She’s called Conker,” Sonia replied, with a weary intonation that suggested her husband made a point of not remembering the name. “And we couldn’t possibly get rid of her. Alice and Laura would kill us.”

  “Who knows? A bit of time at boarding school’s going to change their priorities. Entirely possible that they’ll come back for the Easter holidays without a thought of horses in their heads. They’ll probably have moved on to boy bands, or possibly”—he shuddered—“even real boys.”

  “They don’t meet any real boys at that school.”

  “Don’t you believe it. If they’re anything like I was at boarding school, they’ll somehow manage to arrange encounters with the opposite sex.” He laughed a man-of-the-world laugh.

  “Well,” said Sonia firmly, “we’ll wait until we find out the girls’ views about Conker before we even think of getting rid of her.”

  Interesting, Jude thought, how much stronger Sonia’s defence had been when her daughters’ concerns were at risk rather than her own. Chieftain was her horse, but she’d let him go if Nicky insisted. There was no way, though, that she’d let the twins be steamrollered. Jude was also getting the impression that Alice and Laura had inherited their father’s strong will, in fact that they were quite possibly right little madams. Sonia’s role in the family was that of making concessions to everyone.

  Jude was also interested to note that Nicky Dalrymple was behaving as if the conversation was a kind of performance, including her in their domestic life. His ordered family circumstances were almost being paraded in front of her.

  “Anyway, about this murder,” he said. “I gather from Sonia that the police have arrested someone?”

  “Technically only taken someone in for questioning,” said Jude. “Some kind of itinerant horse expert called Donal.”

  Nicky raised his eyebrows in the direction of his wife. “You didn’t tell me you knew the suspect’s name, darling.”

  “I didn’t know it.”

  Jude suspected that Sonia was lying.

  “He’s not that Donal who came round once to look at the girls’ pony…erm…?”

  “Conker.”

  “Yes. Was it him?”

  “I don’t know.” Sonia was flustered, and she looked to Jude for help. “Do you know anything more about this Donal?”

  “Just that he knows about horses. He’s helped out Lucinda Fleet from time to time up at Long Bamber Stables. Bit of a reputation for being light-fingered…and for starting fights when he’s in his cups.”

  “Got to be the same fellow.” Nicky Dalrymple grimaced with distaste. “Scruffy little Herbert, whose Irish charm I have to say didn’t go far with me.”

  “But he did cure Conker of that coughing.”

  “How do you know the pony wouldn’t have got better on its own?”

  “Well, I can’t prove that, Nicky, but—”

  “I think that Donal was full of blarney and Jameson’s. I told him so at the time. Just a bloody snake-oil salesman, getting money out of gullible housewives for his so-called healing. Do you believe in all that mumbo jumbo, Jude?”

  She could feel focussed pleading from Sonia’s eyes, and replied sedately, “One does hear remarkable instances of alternative therapies working.”

  “Huh. Mind you, there’s usually another explanation for whatever’s happened. A lot of injuries and illnesses just clear up under their own steam.”

  Nicky Dalrymple was clearly not used to being contradicted. In other circumstances Jude would have happily introduced him to the concept, but for his wife’s sake she knew this wasn’t the moment. “Well, thank you so much for the tea. I’d really better be off.”

  “But you haven’t talked about your charity thing to Sonia yet.”

  For a moment Jude was thrown, having forgotten the lie she had told. Then hastily she said, “We can do that another time.”

  “No, tell me what the charity is. We always try to do our bit, don’t we, Sonia? We’re personally major contributors to the I.L.P.H.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.”

  Sonia supplied the information. “I.L.P.H.” stood for “The International League for the Protection of Horses.”

  “So what is the charity you’re working for?” Nicky Dalrymple insisted.

  “Erm…well…It’s the N.S.P.C.C.” The only one she could thi
nk of on the spur of the moment. But a perfectly admirable charity. And it did help humans rather than animals, which Jude—unlike most residents of West Sussex—always thought was the greater priority.

  “Let me give you a contribution then.” And Nicky Dalrymple’s cheque book was out of the pocket of his jacket. “Now who should I make it payable to?”

  Jude looked across at Sonia, who made an imperceptible shrug. If Jude’s lie was going to bring benefit to some suffering children, then what harm was done? It wasn’t as if Nicky couldn’t afford it.

  “Just to the N.S.P.C.C. then, please.”

  Nicky filled in the cheque, pulled it out of the book and handed it across with a flourish. “But don’t you want to talk about the details of the event…because I’ve got some papers I should be going through, so if you want to be on your own…?”

  “No, really. I’d better be on my way.” Jude had an instinct that, even if he were not in the same room, her husband’s presence in the house might inhibit Sonia from saying what she really wanted to.

  “Well, I’ll say good-bye then. Pleasure to meet you, Jude. Jude…what? I don’t know your surname.”

  “Everyone just calls me Jude.”

  Nicky stayed in the sitting room, and Sonia closed the door against the potential draught as she led the way to the front door.

  “What did you want to see me about?” Jude whispered.

  “I just wondered if you’d heard anything from the police…you know, about what evidence they have against Donal?”

  “No more than anyone else has. What I’ve heard on the news bulletins.”

  Sonia looked disappointed, but not surprised at being disappointed. “You haven’t any idea what he’s said to them…?”

  “How could I? I’m afraid it’s only in crime fiction that the police share all the latest developments on a case with nosey local spinsters.”

  She’d said it as a joke, but Sonia didn’t smile. Instead, she whispered, “But if you do hear anything about what Donal’s said, you will let me know, won’t you, Jude?”

  Odd. Two women, thought Jude as she walked along the towpath towards Fethering, both deeply concerned about a vagrant Irishman. For the same reason? Or for different reasons? More important, for what reason?

  The weather had suddenly turned very cold. After a few mild days that had held the promise of spring, winter had reasserted its icy grip. The waters of the Fether, rushing fast past the towpath, looked icily uninviting, and the leaden sea beyond held no element of welcome. Jude’s hand, nestling for warmth into the pocket of her fleece, encountered something unexpected, and closed around Nicky Dalrymple’s cheque. She looked at it. A hundred pounds for the N.S.P.C.C. Oh well, it’s an ill wind. Who was it who had ever said that lying was a bad thing?

  11

  THE SEAVIEW CAFÉ on Fethering Beach was, surprisingly, open all the year round. In the summer, the tall windows at the front were concertina-ed back and the concrete floor was so covered with sand that it seemed like a continuation of the beach. The café was open from eight in the morning till eight at night. Then the space was loud with the shrieks of children, and the blue-overalled women behind the counter were kept busy all day supplying pots of tea, fizzy drinks, hamburgers, chips, crisps and ice creams.

  In the winter everything was different. All the windows were shut, and the place steamed up like a huge terrarium. Wind wheezed through ventilation grills and the odd cracked pane. Opening hours were eleven to five, and the average age of the winter population trebled that of the summer. The occasional child whose route from school passed the beach might drop in for a Coke and a bag of crisps, but generally speaking, the customers were well past seventy, and usually sitting on their own. The women behind the counter had plenty of time to peruse their Suns and Daily Mails, and amongst the clientele pots of tea were made to last a very long time.

  Carole Seddon usually avoided the place. In the summer it was too noisy, in the winter too dispiriting. But that Wednesday afternoon she’d had no choice. She’d got delayed shopping and, as a result, started late for Gulliver’s afternoon walk. Because of her rush, she had omitted to have a pee when she got back to High Tor, and on the beach, feeling the sudden drop in the temperature, she found herself desperate for a restroom. The toilets on the front were locked against vandals throughout the winter, so the Seaview Café was her only option. Also, dogs were allowed in there.

  Carole was by nature a law-abiding soul, and she could no more have gone into the café to use its facilities without making a purchase than she could have dismembered someone with a chainsaw. So, with mounting discomfort, she ordered a pot of tea at the counter and waited while it was prepared. She then took the tray with obsessive concentration across to a table and tied Gulliver’s lead to a convenient radiator pipe, before rushing off to the ladies’.

  When Carole returned, considerably relieved, she noticed a woman she vaguely recognised, zipped up into an anorak and sitting at an adjacent table. Whether she had been there earlier, Carole couldn’t say—taking in the other customers had not been her primary priority—but the laying out of her tea things and the half-eaten doughnut suggested she had.

  “Looked like you were in rather a hurry. It’s the cold weather.”

  The woman’s smile identified her to Carole, and allayed any resentment she might have felt about public discussion of her bladder. It was Hilary Potton, who clearly didn’t think Carole remembered their previous encounter. “We talked in Allinstore. I was on the till.”

  “I recognised you.”

  “I do four to eight every weekday except Wednesday. This is my day off.”

  “Not a very nice one. Freezing out there, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly is. Handsome-looking dog. Labrador?”

  “Mm. Called Gulliver. Extremely good-natured, but not very bright.”

  “Oh, they’re good family dogs. We had one…in happier times.” Hilary sighed rather dramatically. She indicated the plastic seat opposite her. “If you’d like to join me…?”

  It went against Carole’s every instinct to start fraternising with people she didn’t know. But this was different. She had been trying to find out more about Hilary Potton, she had made the initial contact, and now she was being offered a second opportunity on a plate. “Well, if you don’t mind,” said Carole, moving her tray across to the other table.

  “I’m just here waiting for my daughter. She’s at the house with her father. Things are easier at the moment if we don’t meet.”

  “Yes, I gathered from what you said at Allinstore that all was not well.”

  Hilary Potton snorted at the inadequacy of this description. “All not well? What we’re actually talking about here is a state of total war. I’m afraid my husband and I just do not communicate. I’ve tried to build bridges, but he’s tried even harder to destroy them. Are you married?”

  “I’m not wearing a wedding ring.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything these days.”

  “All right. I’m not married. I’m divorced.” Carole still had difficulty in saying the words.

  “So will I be soon—thank God!”

  “Oh yes,” said Carole, casually probing, “you implied when we spoke in Allinstore that all wasn’t well with your marriage.”

  “You have a gift for understatement…I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

  They quickly established their identities and addresses. Carole was cautious not to reveal that she already knew Hilary’s details. She thought further prompting might be needed to get back to the subject of the Pottons’ failing marriage, but it proved unnecessary.

  “So was your story the same as mine? Husband couldn’t keep his hand out of other women’s knickers?”

  “No. No.” David may have had many shortcomings, but that wasn’t one of them.

  “Well, in my case, Alec—that’s my husband—so far as I can gather, he’d been at it with various women virtually from the moment we got married. And I, trusting littl
e domestic idiot that I was, never suspected a thing. He’s always travelled a lot—he’s a salesman, so I believed all his stories about having to work late, having to stay over for conferences…and all the time…” She seethed like a kettle boiling dry. “Let me tell you, it’s going to be along time before I ever trust a man again. I think most women would be a darned sight better off without a man in their life.”

  “I agree.” Carole nodded towards Gulliver, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “Dogs are much more reliable.”

  “What really humiliates me is the sense that everyone else probably knew about it. All the fine folks of Fethering sniggering at me behind their hands and saying, ‘Oh, Hilary’s such a meek little fool. She hasn’t a clue what’s going on.’”

  “They always say the wife’s the last one to know.”

  “That’s not much comfort!” This outburst prompted a ripple of geriatric interest in the Seaview Café. In a lower voice, Hilary Potton apologised. “Sorry. As you may have observed, it still rather gets to me.”

  The geriatrics returned to contemplating their cooling and dwindling cups of tea.

  “I’m not surprised, Hilary. If it’s any comfort—and I know ‘Time is a great healer’ is a peculiarly unhelpful comment—but things do get better eventually.”

  “Thanks for the ‘eventually’—that’s really cheered me up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, Carole. I do appreciate it. I’m sorry. At the moment I’m still just so…blindingly angry.”

  “Maybe part of that never does go away.” Carole thought of the way David’s voice, his constant “erms” could drive her into unreasoning fury.

  “It’s the selfishness of it that really gets to me. The money, apart from anything else. I mean, I’ve supported Alec all the way in his career. When I first knew him, he worked in a shop. Then I backed his decision to get a marketing training and become a salesman, which meant ‘good-bye, regular salary and hello, commission.’ And I’ve stood by him when times were hard, been prepared to tighten my belt a bit, put Imogen into the state system, dig into my own savings for her orthodontic work, forgo family holidays, that kind of thing. And now I discover that all the time Alec was spending our money—our money!—on squiring various tarts out for meals and booking them into hotels for sleazy sexual encounters. Ooh, it makes me so furious!”