Deadfall

by Lyndon Stacey

  In search of Sylvester Tremayne, he let himself into the main part of the house on the first floor and made his way along the Long Gallery towards the wide central flight of stairs. From either side of the corridor, oil-painted images of previous Tremaynes looked down with varying degrees of hauteur from their gilded frames. A runner of hardwearing carpet protected the polished boards from the thousands of visiting feet, whilst stanchions bearing heavy ropes kept sticky fingers away from the priceless portraits.

  Linc gave a mock salute to one of these as he passed. St John, Third Viscount Tremayne, had been, according to tradition, the closest the family had had to a black sheep, frittering away much of its quite substantial wealth, killing a love rival in a duel, and finally meeting his own death racing his curricle from London to Brighton. He had died in the reign of George III, aged just twenty-nine, without producing an heir, and the title had passed to his younger brother, Sebastian.

  Now the same age as his ill-fated ancestor, it was said by many that Linc was extraordinarily like him to look at, a comparison which didn't displease him. St John was pictured here dressed in riding clothes and leaning against a stone balustrade, whilst in the background a groom hung on to a spirited grey stallion. In keeping with his rebellious reputation he wore his hair unpowdered and tied back with a black ribbon, and if not exactly handsome his features were at least regular and strong enough to be considered good-looking. On one hand he wore a beautifully chased gold ring with a sizeable emerald at its centre, and another gold ring adorned his left ear. What had always drawn Linc to the Third Viscount was the suggestion of a sardonic smile that curved his lips; he looked like a man who was nobody's fool but who found much amusement in life.

  At the far end of the gallery, near the top of the stairs, hung the portrait of the current Viscount, Linc's father. It had been painted thirty years ago, when Sylvester Tremayne was first married and in a break with tradition also portrayed his new wife, Marianne. The style was informal; the Viscount wearing his usual camel-coloured corduroys and tweed jacket, and Marianne seated by his side, dark-eyed and lovely, laughing up at him in amber cashmere and pearls. The artist had captured their mutual love and the portrait always inspired a tinge of sadness in Linc. Both his parents had effectively been lost to him on the day Marianne Tremayne had suffered her fatal fall.

  A quick search of the first floor proved fruitless and he eventually ran his father to ground downstairs in the library, one of the many rooms that were off limits to visitors.

  Aside from the desk, at which he was seated, several red leather-covered reading chairs stood about, each with its attendant table and lamp, and towering bookshelves exhibited row upon row of gold-embossed leather spines; volumes that Linc could not recall ever having seen anybody read. The library was, as always, poorly lit, heavy velvet curtains and north-facing windows combining to protect the treasures within.

  As Linc went in, his father's two wolfhounds, Saxon and Viking, got to their feet and padded across to see him, flattening their ears and wagging their long feathery tails with pleasure.

  Viscount Tremayne, on the other hand, greeted his son with an unencouraging grunt.

  'Thought you were off playing with your bloody horses today,' he remarked.

  'I am. I just thought I'd check everything was okay with you before I went,' Linc said evenly.

  'Well, you only just caught me. Sykes wants me to look at the roof of the summerhouse – something about loose ridge tiles, I gather – and I've got Bennett coming out about the forestry grant at half-past ten. Some of us have work to do, you know.'

  'I was up 'til almost eleven o'clock last night going over the farm accounts with Geoff,' Linc retorted, goaded in spite of himself.

  'Well, you wanted the job,' his father observed, looking over the rim of his spectacles. His hair and beard were grey, and seventeen years of grieving had left their mark, but at sixty-four he was still an imposing figure, and one who'd been known to reduce junior staff to mumbling confusion with just such a look.

  Linc was made of sterner stuff.

  'I did, and I do, but I'm entitled to some free time, and how I choose to spend it is my affair,' he replied. 'I'll be back in plenty of time for the sponsors' meeting tonight, don't worry.'

  The Viscount regarded Linc for a long thoughtful moment before returning his attention to the papers on his desk. 'Suit yourself,' he said. 'It's all the same to me. Just don't expect me to hold your job open for you if you end up in hospital with a broken neck! There'd be no shortage of takers. Reagan, for one, would jump at the chance.'

  'I'm sure he would, but you know as well as I do that he's not the right man for the job,' Linc pointed out. 'Sykes is worth ten of him.'

  'Sykes doesn't want the job, Reagan does. You put his nose severely out of joint turning up when you did.'

  'You had no intention of giving him the position,' Linc protested. Reagan was Farthingscourt's head forester, and a very able one at that, but there was something indefinable in his manner that meant that as far as the Viscount was concerned, he had risen as far as he was going to. 'Anyway, I don't intend ending up in hospital, if I can help it,' he added cheerfully.

  'Your mother didn't intend ending up in a coffin!'

  Linc knew the futility of further discussion.

  'I'll see you later, then. Oh, and by the way, I met a friend of yours last night.' He gave his father a brief account of the raid on the Vicarage and the ensuing investigation.

  'I'm sorry to hear about the Hathaway girl,' his father said. 'Rockley's a good man. If there's anything to find, he'll find it. Is the girl going to be all right?'

  'Her father rang from the hospital this morning but there's no real news. She's still unconscious and they're going to do a brain scan. Apparently they think she may have been struck from behind and then hit her head again when she fell.'

  'Bloody thugs!' the Viscount growled.

  'Yeah. I just wish I'd got there ten minutes earlier . . .' Linc walked over to the door. 'Well, I'd better get going before the stampede starts.'

  The 'stampede' was the family name for the hordes of visitors who tramped round Farthingscourt on Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays. In reality it started with little more than a trickle at Easter, but in the high season numbers stepped up considerably, to the point where a limit had to be set to safeguard the antiquities they came to see, and even the very fabric of the building itself.

  His father raised a hand but not his eyes, and with a sigh, Linc let himself out.

  He left the damaged Morgan in the open-fronted barn that did duty as a garage, heading for Andover in the Land-Rover Discovery instead. His competition start-time was half-past ten and although Nina and her groom would already be there with Hobo, and could warm him up, Linc wanted to leave himself a little time in hand to renew his brief acquaintance with the horse before competing.

  Once clear of the back roads and doing a steady sixty-five in light traffic, he tried to concentrate on mentally rehearsing his impending dressage. Dressage is basically the horse's version of a dog's obedience test: a succession of linked moves combining changes of pace and direction which is marked on precision and style. But whereas a ring steward calls the instructions to the dog handler, the dressage rider must memorise his test in advance. With around half a dozen different novice tests and a similar number of intermediate ones, concentration was vital.

  Today's test was one Linc had ridden on Noddy only a few weeks ago and knew fairly well. Before long he found thoughts of Abby and his own troubled relationship with his father increasingly intruding.

  Guilt about his own, unwitting contribution to Abby's plight had passed, and what he felt now, aside from anxiety, was chiefly anger. In the short time he'd known them the Hathaways had become very dear to him, in a way representing the kind of ideal family life he'd missed out on. In attacking Abby the thieves had dealt a devastating blow to the whole unit.

  Linc remembered the stricken look in her father's eyes last nig
ht. Given time, the Reverend David Hathaway, currently a university lecturer in theology, would no doubt find comfort in his faith but that first outburst of fear and anger had been the instinctive reaction of any distressed parent.

  Linc wondered if his own father would have coped better with his wife's death if he had had such a strong faith to fall back on. While Marianne had been alive the local vicar had held a service every Sunday in Farthingscourt's private chapel for the benefit of the Tremayne family and their estate workers. These days the vicar visited just once a month, and the family usually only attended in force at the traditional times of the year, and then more through duty than conviction. Indeed the Viscount had been heard to say that in his opinion the Sunday regulars were merely hedging their bets.

  Notwithstanding this, the chapel services were well supported by members of the Farthingscourt staff, among them Viscount Tremayne's secretary and PA, Mary Poe, who was at present on holiday.

  Mary was probably, Linc thought, both the most valued and undervalued worker on the estate. She had taken up her position at around the same time as Marianne had come to Farthingscourt as a young bride, and, although she was a few years younger than the Viscountess, they had soon become great friends.

  After Marianne's death, Mary was the one who had stepped in to look after Linc and his younger brother Crispin, while their father shut himself away with his grief. Without her, the family would quite possibly have fallen apart.

  Aside from the loss of his mother, Linc's childhood had been a fairly happy one, but looking back, he recognised that running through it there had always been a thread of conflict between his inherited passion for horses and his desire to live up to his father's expectations.

  It wasn't something that had left him emotionally scarred for life. After all, a sizeable portion of his teenage years had been spent away at school, and there it had been fairly easy to arrange to ride in his spare time. But his relationship with his father had never been all that Linc would have wished.

  It had not been solely in an attempt to please him that Linc had studied business management, marketing and commerce at university. He had known from an early age that Farthingscourt would one day be his and had always embraced the prospect with enthusiasm. He loved the house and land, and wanted to be involved in the running of them, so it seemed as though fate was taking a hand when the estate manager gave in his notice a month before Linc was due to graduate. As soon as he'd completed his course he hurried home to plead his case.

  Lord Tremayne ignored his pleas and gave the job to an outsider.

  Twenty-two years old, his newly gained qualifications spurned, as he saw it, Linc packed his bags and left.

  He walked out with no clear idea of where he was going or what he was going to do. He wasn't ready to acknowledge the truth of his father's argument that he lacked the necessary practical experience for the top job; all he wanted was to put some distance between them and find a way of showing that he could get on, with or without his father's help. In defiant mood, his first spell of employment was in a top eventing yard where he quickly rose to the status of stable manager. The job gave him a chance to further his competition experience and it was during his second year there that he bought Noddy, the first horse he had ever owned.

  Linc was almost completely happy working with the eventers.

  Almost, but not quite. Farthingscourt was inextricably a part of his life and, no matter where he found himself, the urge to return was always tugging at his subconscious. However strong the pull, though, he was not about to go back, cap in hand; the Tremayne pride wouldn't allow that. He was prepared to admit that his father had been right, but not until he'd made up the deficit. With that in mind, Linc reluctantly left the stables and trawled a succession of large country estates for work.

  He finally found a position as an assistant estate manager and settled down to learn everything he possibly could about the job. Over the next four and a half years he returned home infrequently, saying little of what he'd been doing, and it wasn't until his younger brother Crispin wrote to tell him of the impending retirement of the Farthingscourt estate manager that he handed in his notice and returned to Dorset with Noddy still in tow.

  The fatted calf could rest easy.

  If Sylvester Tremayne was overjoyed to see his son and heir return, he hid it well. It took weeks of stubborn persistence by Linc to bring his father to the point of offering him a trial period as estate manager. Mary, desperate to see them settle their differences, added her subtle persuasion to the cause, and Linc even produced references for his father's perusal, with an ironic deference which almost provoked a total falling-out.

  So far, even the Viscount could find no fault with his work, though he fought every suggestion for change that his son made. One notable exception to this was Linc's plan to restore Farthingscourt Mill to working order. It was his aim to utilise the old building for its original purpose, that of milling grain from the estate's organic farms, and then to sell the resulting flour under their own label.

  He'd expected to have to fight for his idea but surprisingly his father had been quite prepared to listen; in fact, he'd yielded so swiftly that Linc suspected he was being given rope with which to hang himself. If he hadn't been completely confident in his research this prospect might have unnerved him but he'd been working on the idea for some time and was convinced of its viability. A grant had been secured and work was already under way.

  Management experience wasn't all Linc had brought back with him to Farthingscourt. On one of his fleeting trips home he had also brought his girlfriend of the time, Nikki, and when he finally succeeded in detaching himself from her overeager clutches two or three months later, she had returned of her own accord, unbeknownst to him, and struck up a relationship with Crispin. A year before Linc came back for good, he was best man at his little brother's wedding. To his relief, and in spite of his private misgivings, the union seemed to have been an unmitigated success.

  Traffic around Salisbury brought him back abruptly to the present and he looked at his watch. Forty minutes to go. With a wary eye open for lurking traffic police, he made a reassuring call to Nina Barclay on his mobile and, twenty minutes later, arrived at the venue in person.

  One-day events differ from their three-day cousins in more ways than the obvious; one of the main ones being that the crossd country phase often comes last, after the showjumping, instead of halfway through the competition, and another being that the horses are not asked to complete a steeplechase course or miles of roads and tracks before tackling the jumps across country. The aim of both competitions is to find the horse and rider combination which is truly versatile. A bit like a human decathlon event, contestants are tested on their suppleness, speed and endurance, obedience and accuracy. What is also tested, in consequence, is their temperament. A faint heart or lack of mental stamina will be laid bare as surely as any deficiency in the physical department.

  Hobo's Dream at home had not inspired Linc with any great excitement but he was clearly a horse who came alive on the big day. At eight years old he was just beginning his third year in horse trials and was on the brink of grading up to intermediate. When Nina Barclay's groom led the brown gelding across to meet him, Linc could see that he was fit and raring to go.

  'He's warmed up nicely. You just need to hop up and get the feel of him before we head for the arena.' Nina was walking beside Linc, dark-haired and fortyish with a lean angular figure that would probably stay the same into her seventies and beyond.

  'Yes, I'm sorry I'm so late. You must be cursing me!'

  Nina shook her head. 'Not at all, it's not your fault. I'm just glad you could still ride him. How is poor Abby?'

  Ruth had promised to update him as and when there was any news, so he had to assume she was still unconscious. He explained to Nina as he mounted Hobo and let the stirrups down to a comfortable length.

  'I can hardly believe it! Attacked in her own yard. You're not safe anywhere thes
e days, it seems, and they've lost all their tack, too.'

  'Yeah. I said I'd look up Sandy Wilkes and see if he'll bring some out to tide us over. Is he here today?'

  'Third stall up, second row. Right next to the Land-Rover stand,' Nina confirmed. 'I've been over there already for a new saddlecloth, mine was somewhat less than white.'