‘Lloyd’s – look, do we have to talk about this now?’ Gideon protested, seeing Pippa beginning to look intensely uncomfortable.
‘What? Oh, I see.’ Belatedly, Giles caught on. ‘But we can’t just pretend it didn’t happen.’
Suddenly, Pippa pushed her chair back and stood up.
‘No. Don’t mind me,’ she said with brittle brightness and suspiciously sparkling eyes. ‘I’ve got things to do, anyway. It’ll be easier for you to rake it all over if I’m not here.’
She left the room without so much as looking at Gideon, brushing past Logan in the doorway with a muttered apology, and leaving behind an uncomfortable silence.
Life, it seemed, would take a little while to return to normal.
‘Should I go after her, do you think?’ Giles asked, doubtfully, and seemed relieved when the general consensus was that she probably needed a little space.
Logan had come to take his leave, but accepted, with no noticeable reluctance, an invitation to stay for tea and sandwiches.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked Gideon.
‘OK, all things considered.’
‘Sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but I was stuck at work,’ Logan explained, tucking into one of the wedge-shaped offerings. ‘Just before I came off shift we were called out to a post office raid, and then there was the report to write up. I can’t just down tools and leave if I’m in the middle of something. But then I thought we had an agreement that you wouldn’t do anything until you knew I was in place?’
‘Yeah, I know, but if I’d waited it would have all been for nothing, so I just took a chance. I guessed you’d get here as soon as you could. So where did you come in – as a matter of interest?’
‘Something about a dog and a dead bird, if I remember rightly. You know, it’s not always the best idea to antagonise someone you suspect of murder – especially when you’re on your own without back-up!’
‘No, I guess not, but you can’t deny I got results.’
‘You bloody nearly got yourself killed – that’s what you got!’ Logan said. ‘Again!’
‘He was brilliant!’ Tilly said, jumping to his defence. ‘We got here just after PC Logan did,’ she told Gideon. ‘So we listened in. It was pretty scary not being able to see what was happening, but we were only just down the drive . . .’
‘I wanted to be sure Lloyd-Ellis would incriminate himself,’ Logan put in. ‘I knew you’d blow your top if I breezed in before we had enough to nail him, and it didn’t sound as though there was any violent activity at that point. But when he offered you a sword, I decided the time had come to step in. Would’ve been easier if you hadn’t locked the door, though.’
‘I didn’t want him getting away,’ Gideon admitted sheepishly. ‘If I’d had any idea he would go so completely off the rails, I don’t think I’d have gone in, in the first place. But then I thought it was just going to be about Marcus and the diary, and it wasn’t until he all but admitted to killing Damien that I realised just how dangerous he really was.’
‘But I don’t understand. I thought the case against Adam Tetley was cut and dried,’ Tilly put in. ‘DI Rockley said you’d found the gun in a locker and Tetley had the key . . .’
‘Yeah, but Rockley was never completely happy about that,’ Logan said. ‘It was just too easy. Plus, Tetley was on nights and he said he slept most of the morning. Neighbours told us that his car was on the drive all day, and he was there when a man from the electricity company called just after noon to read the meter. He could have done it, but it would have been extremely tight. The facts didn’t quite fit.’
‘So how did he come to have the key?’ Hamish wanted to know.
Logan swallowed a mouthful of tea.
‘He told us it came in the post, in a plain brown envelope, addressed to him, and I guess he was probably telling the truth. I mean, what would you do if something like that turned up? Most people would do what he did – look at it, wonder where the hell it came from, and then put it on the window sill and forget all about it. It was a clever move on Lloyd-Ellis’ part. It seems he’s been pretty clever all along. We underestimated him. Not that he was ever really a suspect, because we didn’t have a motive and, in any case, he seemed to have a watertight alibi for the shooting. Mind you – if we’d known about the list of names from the start, it might have been a different matter.’ He slanted a look at Gideon under his brows. ‘Our friend here has something of a history of withholding information.’
‘I just wanted to find out whether it was actually relevant before dumping everyone in it,’ Gideon explained. ‘I thought Damien’s family had had enough to deal with. How was I to know I was lighting the blue touchpaper?’
The day of the Tarrant and Stour Team Chase dawned fine, clear and windy. In the absence of Lloyd, Tilly had offered to step into the breach, riding Comet.
Waiting at the start with Pippa, Tilly and Steve Pettet, the hunt dragsman, Gideon shivered with nervous anticipation and wondered, for the umpteenth time that morning, just what the hell he was doing there.
Blackbird sidled restlessly beneath him, ducking his head down and grinding his teeth. Gideon had visions of him exploding into a frenzy of bucking as soon as they got under way, and could only be glad that there would be nobody amongst the spectators who knew him. Giles had had business commitments – a new and satisfying concept for him. Even Eve had had to cry off, having promised to see her friend Trevor Erskine off in his yacht for a six-month painting odyssey to the Mediterranean.
‘Two minutes,’ the starter called, and Tilly gave Gideon a reassuring smile. They were all wearing matching purple rugby shirts with the team name, Stour Grapes, emblazoned across the shoulders. The name had been Giles’ idea.
Pippa was walking Skylark in circles next to Steve, who rode a lean grey horse with a casual ease that Gideon envied. The arrest of the Master of the Tarrant and Stour Hunt was, inevitably, the talk of the day, unfortunately for Pippa. Knowing of her relationship with Lloyd, a number of people had approached her, agog for news. Gideon was full of admiration for the way she had politely denied any knowledge of his misdemeanours and suggested they ask his wife.
In the fortnight since the showdown at the Priory, Gideon’s working relationship with Pippa had gradually settled back into something approaching its former status. Away from the horses, however, she avoided him whenever she could, and seemed depressed and unhappy. They hadn’t talked about what had happened and Gideon decided that Eve had been wrong for once, and that Pippa had been more deeply attached to Lloyd than any of them had suspected. Whatever the case, the discovery of Lloyd’s duplicity seemed to have hit her hard, and, as the one who’d been instrumental in bringing it out into the open, Gideon was reluctant to offer his support for fear of being rebuffed.
For himself, his scars were healing, even the worst bruises not much more now than yellowing remnants, and the sword slash a thin red line. His hand was still tender, and strapped on this occasion, but it was fully functional, and his attempts to use it as an excuse for not riding in the team had received short shrift.
‘Thirty seconds,’ the starter called, and they began to manoeuvre the horses so that they were at least all facing the same way.
‘OK?’ Tilly asked brightly.
‘Sure.’ Gideon smiled. ‘But if I disappear into the wide blue yonder, just carry on without me! It’s only the first three riders that count.’
‘You’ll be all right!’
All four horses stood stock-still while the starter counted them down, then with a whoop from Steve they were away, Blackbird accelerating so swiftly that Gideon was almost thrown out the back door. Now that would have been really embarrassing, he thought, as they powered up a slight incline to the first of the twenty-two fences on the course; Pippa in the lead, side by side with Steve, Gideon third and Tilly bringing up the rear.
They flew the first hedge in that order, all the horses jumping high and wide, and swung left-handed across the next fi
eld towards a stile in the far corner.
So began the most exhilarating ride of Gideon’s career. Fences loomed, one after another, with bewildering rapidity: post and rails, hedges, walls, ditches and tree trunks. Low branches were dodged, muddy gateways floundered through and even a stream forded. Mud flew, coating all of them in turn as the running order changed and changed again; horses stumbled in the rough ground, slipped on the turns and occasionally bumped one another over the narrower fences, but somehow they all stayed on their feet and their riders remained, more or less, in control.
Blackbird was in his element and, as they approached the last two obstacles on the run in, speeding up all the time, his competitive spirit rose to the fore and he put on a spurt to take the lead. Gideon let him run, putting his trust in the horse’s sure-footedness, and Blackbird didn’t let him down. They crossed the finish line with all four horses more or less in line and pulled up laughing, swearing, mud-splattered and out of breath, to hear the loudspeaker announce that the Stour Grapes had, at the moment, gone into second place.
Moments later the four team members had dismounted and were exchanging hugs, kisses and slaps on the back, the horses trailing at the ends of their reins, flanks heaving and bodies wet with sweat.
Caught up on a high, Gideon and Pippa embraced and kissed.
‘You were brilliant!’ she cried, her eyes shining. ‘And wasn’t Blackbird wonderful?’
‘You weren’t so shabby yourself,’ Gideon told her, laughing, and suddenly it seemed the most natural thing in the world to take her in his arms and kiss her soundly.
Moments later, still standing close, they looked each other in the eye and Gideon bowed his head.
‘Oh Lord,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Are you?’
Gideon looked at her again.
‘No,’ he said, slowly. ‘No, I’m not. But we can’t, you know. Not just now.’
‘Eve?’
‘Yes; Eve. I won’t hurt her, you know.’
‘No, you mustn’t.’
Blackbird interrupted, rubbing his sweaty face on Gideon’s arm and shoving him violently sideways in the process so that contact with Pippa was broken.
‘We should see to these horses,’ she said, practicality surfacing once more. She turned towards the others, who were reliving the round, fence by fence.
Back at the lorry, with the horses washed down, rugged up and pulling at haynets, Gideon remembered his good-luck gift from Eve that morning. He climbed up into the cab and retrieved a boxed bottle of Moët et Chandon from behind the seats. Pippa dug out plastic mugs from the picnic hamper and set them out in a row on the step.
Opening the box, Gideon found a twist of pale gold paper attached to the neck of the bottle with a ribbon. Mystified, he removed it, passing the bottle to Steve to uncork.
It was a sheet of paper, such as might be torn from a writing pad, and the words on it were written in Eve’s stylish hand. Gideon read it, his heart beating suddenly faster.
Gideon, my love, I’m going with Trevor. I’m a free spirit who needs to stretch her wings again. I have loved you but I’m not leaving you, for you were never mine. Pippa needs you now, and she can give you what I cannot. I was right, you know – it was too perfect, but this way nothing will ever spoil it. Goodbye, my gentle giant!
Eve xx
He read it through again, struggling to take in the words.
Eve had gone.
Eve, tall and willowy, effortlessly elegant in shades of gold and bronze silk; she’d gone, leaving him free, and in that moment he probably loved her more than he ever had before.
‘What’s wrong?’
Pippa was beside him, holding out a green plastic mug, a smudge of drying mud on her nose.
Wordlessly he handed her the note and watched her read it, seeing her hands begin to shake. Finally she looked up at him, her hazel eyes glistening with tears.
‘She knew,’ she said. ‘How did she know? And what was it she couldn’t give you?’
Gideon remembered Eve’s reaction to the news of his sister’s pregnancy and hesitated, meeting Pippa’s gaze with his own.
One step at a time, perhaps.
‘I’ll tell you, one day,’ he said, and raised his plastic mug of champagne. ‘To Eve!’
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Copyright © Lyndon Stacey 2006
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First published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson in 2006 with the title Six to One Against
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