The Stabbing in the Stables

by Simon Brett

  “Donal, I wonder if I could talk to you…?”

  “You could talk to me. Whether I talk back or not is another matter.” The voice was Irish, but without the charm of leprechauns and Blarney stones.

  “Donal doesn’t talk for free,” said one of his companions.

  “Except to his mates in the police,” said another, prompting a round of discordant laughter.

  “So what’s the price of your talking?” asked Jude.

  Donal grinned, baring more of the bomb site in his mouth, but let one of the others answer her question. “Large Jameson’s will usually get him started.”

  Jude turned back to the counter. The barmaid, who like everyone else had been listening to the exchange, was already filling the glass. She rang up the price and took the proffered money. Clearly, speaking was something she avoided whenever possible.

  Facing the four men again, Jude could see Donal stretching out his hand for the drink, but she held on to it. “No, I want a quiet word. Come and sit with me at that table. It won’t take long.”

  This prompted rowdy suggestions from Donal’s mates, on the lines of “You’re on a promise there, you lucky sod” and “When did you last have an offer like that?” But Donal, lured by the drink, did get up out of his seat and limp gracelessly across to the table Jude had indicated.

  She raised her glass. “Cheers.”

  He said nothing till he had downed two-thirds of his Jameson’s in a single swallow. “So you want to know what the police asked me, do you?”

  “What makes you assume that?”

  “Recent experience. That’s the only reason anyone wants to talk to me. God, you know the only product made in this entire area is gossip. And I assume you’re just another local who’s got some crackpot theory as to who killed Walter Fleet?”

  He had come surprisingly near the truth, but Jude started off on another tack. “In fact, it was about your expertise with horses I wanted to talk to you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I do some healing myself…”

  He nodded, showing none of the derision those words sometimes prompted.

  “…and someone asked me to try my skills on a horse that’s lame. I’m afraid I haven’t been successful, but I was told by Lucinda Fleet at Long Bamber that you might have more luck.”

  “It wouldn’t be luck,” he said.

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Where is the horse? Whose is it?”

  “It’s at Long Bamber.”

  “Then I probably know it.”

  “Called Chieftain.”

  He smiled a crooked smile. “Oh yes. Mrs. Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth Dalrymple. I’ll bet I know why he’s lame.”

  “Well, I don’t. Sonia didn’t tell me.”

  “No, she wouldn’t.”

  “Then why do you think he is lame?”

  “I know. No reason why you should.”

  The way he said this was not exactly rude, but it left her in no doubt that she wasn’t about to find out more.

  “So would you have a look at him?”

  “The Dalrymples have got plenty of money,” Donal said. “That stable complex of theirs must have set them back a bob or two.”

  “Oh yes. I’m sure Sonia would pay for your services. She was going to pay me, but I couldn’t ask for anything unless I got a result.”

  “You’re stupid,” he said, without vindictiveness. “People should pay for the healing, not for the results.”

  Donal downed the remainder of his Jameson’s and grinned enigmatically. “I’m like a slot machine. When your money runs out, I stop working.”

  “You mean you’d like another of those?”

  “If you want me to talk more, yes.”

  Another silent transaction was conducted with the girl at the bar, and Jude placed the refilled glass back in front of her interviewee. “As your friend said, the police didn’t keep you topped up with Jameson’s when they asked you questions.”

  “No.”

  The monosyllable was spoken without intonation. Jude couldn’t tell whether he’d follow the change of conversation or clam up on her. But she tried her luck.

  “Presumably they didn’t have anything on you? They just questioned you because you were quite often round Long Bamber Stables?”

  “Oh, they had more reasons than that.” His eyes twinkled teasingly and he was silent, as if not going to give any more. Then he relented. “They had the reason that I’ve a record for petty crime, a bit of thieving and that stuff. They had the reason that I drink, that I sometimes get violent in my cups. Then the reason that I’m Irish and…what? A vagrant? A diddycoy? A tinker? They had the reason that I don’t live in a nice neat little house like everyone else in this lovely part of England…” The words were heavy with irony. “Oh yes. So far as the police were concerned, I was the perfect Identikit murderer. They were really gutted when they couldn’t pin it on me. So they had to let me go at the end. They’d got nothing on me. Nothing that would stand up in court. And, more to the point, their time was up.” He pointed to his empty glass. “As is yours.”

  “But another refill will keep you talking?”

  “For a very short time. I’m afraid a law of diminishing returns operates here, you see. I tend to drink faster as I go along.”

  Another wordless transaction at the bar, and Jude was back at the table. Donal at least kept his side of the bargain and picked up the conversation exactly where he had left it. “I think most of the detectives who questioned me have still got me down as the killer. But they don’t have a shred of evidence.”

  “So you think they’re still keeping an eye on you?”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me at all.” He looked out through the clouded pub windows. “Probably an unmarked car out there, waiting to pick up my trail when I get out of here.” He took a lengthy sip of the Jameson’s. “Which won’t be for a long while yet.” He let out a cracked laugh. “Yes, if I go down to Long Bamber to have a look at Chieftain, the police’ll see that as further proof that I’m the villain.”

  “How do you work that out?”

  “Have you not heard the great cliché: ‘The perpetrator always revisits the scene of the crime’?”

  “Ah. Right. Does that mean you’re not going to go there?”

  “No, of course it doesn’t.” He chuckled. “It’ll give me great pleasure to lead the police on a wild goose chase.”

  “So you will try and heal Chieftain?”

  “I’ll be down at Long Bamber tomorrow morning,” he said, suddenly efficient. “Round eleven.” He drained his drink. “And that’s me switched off again. Now I will return to my mates, to be perverse and argumentative, and talk a load of bollocks, and lead the conversation down a lot of whimsical cul-de-sacs, and then lose my temper and start threatening people.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, he winked—that is what is expected of a stage Irishman.”

  She scribbled down her name and mobile number on a scrap of paper and gave it to him.

  This prompted more ribaldry from George Tufton’s stable lads, whose table Donal rejoined, stepping immediately back into his expected role.

  16

  JUDE RANG SONIA Dalrymple’s number, but only got the answering machine. So she put in a call to Long Bamber Stables to check with Lucinda Fleet that it would be all right for Donal to work on Chieftain the following morning.

  “Yes, that’s fine. I’d been expecting him to turn up sometime soon. I’ll hide the petty cash.”

  “I have actually just met Donal.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “He lives up to his image, doesn’t he?”

  “A point of honour with him, I’ve always thought.”

  “But as a healer…?”

  “Oh, he’s good. Whatever power it is that’s needed, Donal’s got it. I always recommend him to all my owners.”

  “Yes. Something’s just struck me, Lucinda…”

  “Oh? W
hat’s that?”

  “If you recommend him to all your owners, then presumably you also recommended him to Sonia?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet, when Chieftain got lame and the vet couldn’t do anything about it, she turned to me rather than to Donal.”

  If a shrug could be audible, than that’s what Jude heard down the phone line. “So? It’s a free country. If she doesn’t want to take my suggestion, then that’s up to her.”

  Again Jude was aware of the frostiness between the two women, the feeling she had got when she’d first heard Lucinda mention Sonia Dalrymple’s name. “Yes…Incidentally, Donal said something about Chieftain.”

  “Mm?”

  “He said he could guess how the horse got lame.”

  “Did he?”

  “Do you know what he meant by that?”

  “No.” But something in Lucinda’s voice betrayed her. She did know exactly what Donal had meant. But there was no way she was going to tell Jude.

  “By the way, do you know whether Sonia has ever met Donal?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but I’d have thought she must have done at some point. They both keep coming down to the stables, they probably have seen each other.”

  “But you don’t know whether they’ve ever had any disagreement about anything?”

  “Why should they have?”

  “Only because Sonia didn’t consult Donal about Chieftain.”

  There was a level of exasperation in the sigh that came from the other end of the phone. “Jude, I’ve no idea. And I’ve got to give a riding lesson in five minutes, so if you don’t mind—”

  “Sorry, sorry. You haven’t heard from Sonia recently, have you?”

  “She rang this morning. Said she wouldn’t be able to come and sort out Chieftain for a couple of days.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s gone to a health farm. Yeomansdyke. Do you know it?”

  “Yeomansdyke as in the hotel?”

  “Yes. Down towards Yapton.”

  “I know it. In fact, someone gave me a free day voucher there as a Christmas present.”

  “Then you’ve got some wealthy friends.”

  “Oh, it never occurred to me that the place was that expensive.”

  “Well, it is. Membership’s about as much as I make in a good year here at the stables.”

  “Not that that’d be a problem for Sonia.”

  “Of course not. She often goes to Yeomansdyke to recuperate after Nicky’s been home.”

  “Lucinda, what on earth do you mean by—”

  “Must go. My lesson’s arrived.”

  Which was very frustrating and left Jude with more than one unanswered question.

  “Hello, Mother, it’s Stephen.”

  He sounded more formal than ever. Round the time of the wedding, he had quite often relaxed into calling her “Mum.” Such intimacy now seemed to have vanished like it had never existed.

  “Oh, how nice to hear from you. How is everything?”

  “Total chaos at work. Just don’t seem to have a moment.”

  “But it always seems to be like that, doing…what you do…” Whatever that might be. Carole reckoned she was destined never to understand her son’s work.

  “Well, let me tell you. Now is absolutely worse than ever.”

  “At least they pay you well.” Why Carole had said it, she didn’t know. The words sounded crass, not at all what she had intended. She had an unfortunate knack of saying the wrong thing.

  “I bloody earn it,” said Stephen, justifiably piqued. “Anyway,” he went on brusquely, “you rang. Was there something you wanted?”

  This put her on the spot. She had rung because she was anxious about the state of her son’s marriage, but it was not in her nature to raise the subject directly. She knew there were women who could boldly ask, “What’s going on with you and Gaby?” but she also knew that she wasn’t one of them. “Erm…” She hesitated, sounding, to her distaste, just like David. “It’s just, I spoke to Gaby last week…”

  “Yes, she said you’d rung.”

  “…and I just wondered whether…erm…”

  “What?” he asked shortly, sounding as grumpy with her as he had in his early teens.

  “She sounded a bit down to me. I just really wondered whether she was all right…?”

  “She’s fine,” he said in the same tone of voice.

  “Oh, good. Because she’s normally such a lively person, I was a bit worried to hear her so—”

  “We’re both fine, thank you, Mother. As you know, we both have very stressful jobs and—”

  “Yes. Gaby was off work when I spoke to her. Is she better now?”

  “There was nothing wrong with her. She just needed a break.”

  “I thought she sounded—”

  “There is nothing wrong with either of us, Mother…except that we don’t get enough relaxed time together.”

  “Well, if you need anything that I—”

  “We don’t need anything—except for a bit of space. Our relationship is fine, and it’s our business, and the last thing we need is other people poking their noses into it.”

  And he rang off. Carole felt as though she had received a physical slap in the face. To her surprise, she felt tears prickling at her eyes—and it was a very long time since that had happened. By sheer willpower, she stemmed them. But she didn’t feel good.

  And, in spite of Stephen’s assurances, her worries about the state of his marriage multiplied.

  She felt in need of comfort, of moral support. But there was no one in at Woodside Cottage.

  Yeomansdyke Hotel catered to the super rich, of whom there were a surprising lot in the West Sussex area. Other clients came from London, and quite a few from the States. It was not a country house hotel, like the Hopwicke, where Carole and Jude had once become involved in the mysterious death of a young solicitor. There the aim had been to reproduce the atmosphere of an Edwardian weekend party, whereas at Yeomansdyke the atmosphere aimed for was one of sheer luxury. It was not a place for people who needed to know how much anything cost.

  Yeomansdyke had been built by a Victorian entrepreneur who had made a killing in the lawn tennis boom of the late nineteenth century. Because of his sporting interests, he had designed the grounds to accommodate tennis courts, stables and an artificial lake for fishing and boating. The house itself was a huge structure in ornate red brick, whose spacious reception areas and plethora of guest bedrooms facilitated its conversion in the 1980s to a leisure complex for those who had cleaned up in the Thatcher financial bonanza.

  As health faddishness developed during the 1990s, the hotel’s small gym and pool area had been expanded into a large health spa, which offered every kind of traditional and alternative therapy. There the jaded wealthy could have their bodies balanced, their chakras realigned, their toes articulated, their force fields refocused, their skins scoured and scrubbed with a variety of unguents, their limbs wrapped in seaweed, their flesh exfoliated or their colons irrigated.

  Though Jude believed in the efficacy of many of these treatments, she was less than convinced by the way the health spa offered them, in a kind of pick ’n’ mix assortment for the idle rich. Her own approach to alternative medicine was very different from the Yeomansdyke way.

  But the fact remained that she did have a voucher for a free day at the place. It had been given her as a Christmas thank-you by a grateful client who, though Jude hadn’t thought about the fact before, was extremely well heeled and could afford such gestures.

  Jude got the silver envelope out of the drawer where she had shoved it carelessly on Christmas Day. “A full day’s treatment in the understated luxury of Yeomansdyke’s state-of-the-art health spa, with use of all the facilities. Just ring to book your day and one of our fitness professionals will advise you on the exciting range of health and beauty treatments available.”

  So Jude rang to book her day. Or, since it was by then early afternoon, her l
ess than half a day. But the fitness professional to whom she spoke said, yes, it would be fine for her to go straight there and wondered whether she would be requiring the services of a personal trainer to work out her gym routine. Jude, whose consistently good health derived from walking and yoga, declined the offer. She said she’d rather assess the therapies on offer when she got to Yeomansdyke, and the fitness professional was very happy with that. Without the words actually having been said, Jude got the distinct impression that business was pretty quiet that afternoon.

  Carole, she was sure, would have given her a lift to the hotel, but Jude didn’t want to impose. She ordered a cab and, aware of her neighbour’s sensibilities to the slightest of imagined slights, fixed to be picked up at the seafront end of the High Street.

  Close to, Yeomansdyke was even huger and more impressive than it had been in the brochure or glimpsed from the road. At the reception a smartly suited young man of exquisite manners and a vestigial Swiss accent directed her to the spa entrance, where a female receptionist of equally exquisite manners welcomed her and proffered a silver menu of available treatments. Avoiding the most exotic, Jude plumped for a full body massage. After that she planned to have a swim and then maybe make a further selection. The receptionist summoned a girl in clinical white, who—also exquisitely mannered—led Jude to the changing area, found her a locker and produced a swooningly soft bathing robe and pair of slippers. On hearing that her client had not brought a bathing costume, she offered a broad array from an adjacent cupboard. Jude, never one to be self-conscious about her substantial figure, chose a black two-piece, too substantial to come under the definition of “bikini.” But she didn’t put it on. Massage first.

  Then the girl in white led her through to an elegantly tiled treatment room, and left her alone. A minute later, her masseur appeared. Tall, thin and very dark, his name was Ahmet and he wore a white uniform. And he was good. Jude knew more than a little about various forms of massage, and the minute Ahmet started on her shoulders, she recognised she was under the hands of an expert. So she abandoned herself to the sensation. He said little, but—clearly it was part of the job description for anyone working at Yeomansdyke—he had exquisite manners.