Gilgamesh

by Jo Bannister

  “They?”

  “They, he—whoever. Is that why David was shot?”

  “It rather looks that way, doesn’t it?” I hadn’t been married to Harry Marsh for fifteen months without knowing when he was hedging. “It’s not the first burglary on The Brink this year. Standings was turned over back in January.”

  “I hope you don’t find it,” Ellen spat with sudden venom. “I hope we never see it again. The insurance will be more use to us, and I don’t think I could bear to see it hanging there again.”

  “The insurance,” said Harry, a thoughtful echo. “If it’s that valuable, were there any special conditions relating to it—alarms, sensors, that sort of thing?”

  “David could tell you for sure,” she said, and then stopped, wincing.

  “I know he will,” said Harry, that marvellously solid reassurance in his face and voice, “in just a day or two. But it would be helpful to have some idea now.”

  Ellen nodded and swallowed. “We had a security assessor here once. I don’t recall exactly what he said, but he was pretty well satisfied. Both house and stables are tied into the alarm system; with valuable horses, half of them other people’s, around the place we reckon to be careful. Foxford isn’t Fort Knox, but we always reckoned we had enough security to scare off the casual thief and make the professional look for something easier.”

  There had been nothing casual about the man who stole David Aston’s Herring. He had come prepared for any resistance he might meet, prepared, actually, to pre-empt any resistance. David had been shot in the back while seated at his desk, before he had the chance to turn and see the intruder. There was a cold-bloodedness about that which was neither casual nor professional.

  “But the alarm didn’t go off.”

  Ellen shook her head. Her expression was faintly apologetic. “The alarm wasn’t on. It was a warm evening; when I took David’s coffee in, he had the French windows open. It’s only a little room; it can get awfully stuffy.”

  The thief hadn’t even had to break in. All he had to do to gain access to the painting was disable the man working beneath it.

  Harry was nodding, as if that explained something which had bothered him. “I wondered why he’d come while it was still day-light. Burglars generally prefer the dark. He must have figured that on a warm evening there was a good chance of a door or window somewhere being left open and therefore the alarm not set.” He was thinking aloud. The Cotswold in his accent was always at its most pronounced when he was thinking aloud.

  Ellen was staring at him in fresh horror. “You mean it was someone who knows us—who knows our routine?”

  “It’s possible, but it doesn’t necessarily follow. It could have been a lucky guess; you aren’t the only household in the country where the last one to bed locks up and sets the alarm. Or he may have watched and seen David working in there with the French windows open once before. But yes, we should consider the possibility that it’s someone you know, maybe someone who’s been here while you’ve been locking up. Does that suggest anyone to you?”

  Ellen considered for the briefest of moments and answered without hesitation. “You two and my mother.”

  There are those who will tell you that my husband has no sense of humour. They are mistaken. What he has is a rather solemn sense of humour. Deadpan, he said, “Apart from us.”

  She sighed. The weariness came back to envelop her. “Oh Harry, I don’t know. I can’t think. Of course we’ve had people here—owners and other riders mostly—but I don’t know if any of them knows when we lock up, or cares. I’m sorry.”

  Harry stood up. “No, I’m sorry, Ellen—to keep you sitting here at one in the morning after the evening you’ve had. Are you up to a quick look round the study before you go to bed?”

  We went together. I saw Ellen stiffen as the shock which had hit me earlier hit her, but then she walked purposefully into the centre of the room and stood looking round her. Fortunately David’s wound had bled very little, though I still found his tumbled chair disturbing.

  Ellen pointed at a brighter rectangle of wallpaper over the desk. “Gilgamesh was there. The cash-box was in the bottom drawer of the desk, although it wasn’t up to shoeing more than two horses at a time. There was nothing at all in those other drawers—old schedules and programmes, paperwork for the VAT-man, cuttings he’d kept for one reason or another. Nothing of any value.”

  “What about the filing cabinet?’”‘

  Ellen looked surprised. “There’s nothing valuable in there. It’s for storage, not security. We don’t even lock it.”

  “Can you tell if it’s been rifled?”

  She opened it, ran her fingers over the folders rather vaguely. “It all looks pretty normal.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Harry. “Which is a little strange. You’d be surprised how many valuables are kept in filing cabinets, even unlocked ones, but no thief would. It’s one of the places a professional thief would always look. David was using it just before he was shot, but still the intruder didn’t bother checking it, even though he hunted for the cash-box and broke that open.” His broad face creased up. Another mistake people make about Harry is thinking he’s thick. “It’s odd, that.”

  I had followed his reasoning. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Amateur night?”

  “Could be, I suppose.” His eyes were travelling slowly round the cornice of the room, seeking inspiration. “Ellen, does David have any enemies? Do people in his line make the kind of enemies who would hurt someone like that and make it look like robbery to cover their tracks?”

  The appalling idea sank visibly into Ellen’s mind. “You mean someone came here to kill David?”

  “Oh no.” Harry was quite firm on that. “No. Whether or not it was a robbery, whoever shot him never intended him to die. There’s powder-burn on his shirt, so he was shot at close range. The only bullet fired got him in the lower back. That’s a long way from heart or head, and if it was just a bad shot, he’d have fired again.

  “Also, it was a .240. A deer rifle. You can certainly kill with a .240, but it’s not really an assassin’s gun. For murder you can’t beat a shotgun: they’re everywhere in the countryside, lethal in comparatively inexpert hands, and it’s a lot harder to pin a particular injury on a particular gun the way you can with a rifle. Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt David, short of killing him?”

  Again Ellen answered without hesitation. “No. My husband has never made an enemy like that. I doubt if anyone in eventing has. It’s not that sort of business. With everything against you, from the weather and the bank and the course-builders and the horses to plain old fate itself, a rider’s only friends are other riders. It’s not as if it was a race: each of them competes against the conditions, not the other entries. You don’t make rivals that way, let alone enemies. I don’t believe it.”

  And perhaps she was right. It was a world, a kind of life, she knew much better than I. What I knew of professional sport, of any sport above the college level, I had learned from newspapers and TV. But perhaps not being involved, watching from a distance, gave me a perspective she could not share. I could believe it. I could believe almost anything of sportsmen, except sportsmanship.

  Long before dawn the four-poster in Ellen’s guest-room stopped feeling historically romantic and started feeling lumpy. No wonder Queen Elizabeth I slept in so many: she was looking for one that gave her a decent night’s rest.

  The bed was the main reason I was up at six-thirty. Ellen had a stronger one. Finally alone in the sprawling house, we ate breakfast together in the kitchen, and then I helped her to feed the horses.

  There were eight of them in the stables, more in the fields. David had a couple of girl grooms who came in on a daily basis to help with them, but they didn’t arrive until eight and by then either the horses had been fed or the stable doors had been kicked off their hinges. So it was eight buckets of breakfast cereal and eight haynets, eight pairs of wickedly mobile ears laid ba
ck, and eight big, muscular rumps swinging our way, thirty-two ironclad hooves dancing an impatient tattoo on the brick floor.

  “Don’t mind Lucy, she’s all talk,” said Ellen, pushing past the snake-headed grey mare with the curled lip and the glittering eye. “But watch the big bay bastard at the end: he’ll have you as soon as look at you.”

  She strode from box to box, the full bucket in each hand apparently no handicap, her fair hair tied back with a scarf. When the animals were fed, she washed her hands and face while I telephoned the hospital. Then we drove down there.

  Grace Markham wasn’t there, but her oppo was. The news was encouraging. David had recovered well from the surgery and had been moved to a single room in the main block. He had had a good night, waking briefly around six—” That’s when the alarm clock goes at home,” said Ellen—and again and more completely at eight. He was rallying well from the triple trauma of shooting, operation, and anaesthetic.

  I hoped this evident satisfaction with the patient’s progress wouldn’t lead Ellen to expect too much. “He’s going to be very groggy, you know. Disorientated. He won’t really know what’s happened to him yet. He’ll be very glad to see you.”

  “He’ll know it’s me?”

  “Oh yes.”

  There was a policeman posted in the corridor. I went with Ellen as far as the door. From there, I could see David’s face, pale as the sheet over him. They had a tube up his nose and another dripping into a vein in the back of his hand. His eyes were half-closed. Lying there, big and awkward and desperately still in the white bed, he looked very young and very vulnerable. I wondered if this was what the man who shot him had intended, or if he thought that a slug of whisky, a quick wiggle with a penknife, and a square of sticking-plaster would fix him up as good as new, as in the movies. Or if he had intended to kill him.

  I stayed just long enough to watch his white face light up at the sight of Ellen; then I left them alone and went to talk to the houseman. “Any indications yet on the paralysis?”

  He looked offended, as well he might. “Give the poor chap a bit of time. He’s still trying to work out which end of the sky fell on him. Ask me again in a week, by then we may have some idea. Or quite possibly we may not.”

  “Yes, I know.” And I did; it was only that personal interest was obscuring my professional judgement. If you can still lay claim to a profession which you haven’t practised for five years.

  “He’s a friend of yours, is he?”

  “Yes. His wife was about the first person I met when I came to live here. They live at Foxford, up on The Brink. Their land backs onto our garden. David trains event horses. He was in line for the World Championships team this autumn. I was up there when it happened. We were celebrating.” I became aware that I was babbling and stopped.

  “Autumn—four, five months?” The houseman sighed. “I can’t see it. Maybe the next one?”

  “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

  “No,” he agreed. “He may be lucky, he may make a good recovery. But it won’t be the same as if it had never happened. Who did it—who shot him?”

  I shrugged. “A burglar. For £37 and a painting.”

  “Have the police picked him up?”

  I returned the look he had bestowed on me. “Give the poor chaps a bit of time. Ask me again in a week.”

  Chapter Four

  It came of something of a surprise that the disaster we had been coping with for some ten hours only became public knowledge with the breakfast-time news on the local radio station. When we returned to Foxford, we found three cars in the drive and a cross-section of neighbours from all over The Brink clustering uncomfortably in shocked little knots, hoping they weren’t intruding, anxious to hear the latest on David, wondering if there was anything they could do to help.

  Ellen was marvellous. She’d been considerably cheered by seeing and talking to David, even in the state he was in, and she accepted the intrusion of these awkward, well-meaning people in the spirit they intended it. She told them how David was and what the doctor had said, and promised that when she was sufficiently organised to know what help she needed, she would ask for it. Reassured on both counts, they left.

  “Thank God for that,” sighed Ellen, dropping into a chair in the kitchen. “I thought they’d come for their holidays.”

  “Sorry, Ellen, there’s still us.” It was Colonel Fane and, two steps behind, his daughter, Sally. They’d come from the yard, through the back door.

  “Oh, you don’t count,” said Ellen, “you’re practically family. Stay for coffee. In fact, if you wouldn’t mind making it, I’d better tell the girls what’s happening. Are they down the yard?”

  “Actually,” said Sally, “that’s why we’re here. Jane’s mother came by to say Jane won’t be back until matters are cleared up to her satisfaction. She managed to make it sound as if being shot in your own study is only marginally more respectable than having AIDS. Karen’s on the yard; she says she can cope with the stables on her own but she won’t have time to ride exercise and anyway there’s a couple of those hooligans she wouldn’t be safe on. So I thought, if it’s all right with you and David, I’d come by and get them out for an hour apiece every day. At least until you can fix up something better.”

  Ellen was clearly touched. “Bless your heart, Sally! But you can’t; there’s eight of them.”

  “So I’ll give them forty minutes each. It won’t be for too long; you’ll need to replace Jane, and then Karen can do the sensible ones and I’ll do the loonies.”

  “And when will you do Pasha?”

  “Over lunch, with a sandwich in one hand. Pasha’s no problem; if he could drive the box, he could go eventing without me. Besides, he’s nothing scheduled for three weeks; and besides that, he isn’t going to the World Championships.”

  Ellen said quietly, “Do you suppose David is, now?”

  Sally’s dark head came up with a sharp determination that was almost tactile. She was a very determined person. She was Ellen’s height and broader across the shoulders, and her hair was a mane of black curls tossing round a strong, almost pugnacious face. The laughter in her eyes was usually a saving grace; but she wasn’t laughing now, and without it she looked like an Amazon.

  Her voice was low, full, and rounded. “I don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know. As I understand it, nobody knows that yet. But one thing is sure. If David can ride and if he’s picked to ride, his horses are going to be fit for him to ride.”

  Ellen touched her hand. “Thank you. It’ll be an enormous help, whatever happens. And I don’t suppose we’ll have all eight of them long. Half of them aren’t ours; they’ll probably go when I call the owners and tell them David won’t be riding, at least for a while.”

  “That’s true enough,” grunted Sally. “Owners like you to be out there winning, they haven’t much patience when you hit a problem.”

  Colonel Fane said, “I hoped I could help out with some of the office work. Let me call your owners and explain what’s happened and how we’re dealing with it. If they want to move the horses, I’ll make the necessary arrangements, but they may not get in at a decent yard halfway through the season. They may prefer to leave them here and look for a free-lance jockey.”

  “You can tell them I’ll ride any competitions they want me to,” offered Sally. She grinned, a sudden impish gleam. “I haven’t David’s style or reputation, but I’m probably as good as most freelances. I’ve had a lot of practice getting second-class horses round first-class courses.” Then she said, “What about Gilgamesh?”

  That threw me. I thought, naturally enough, that she was referring to the Herring and wondered what she knew about it. My ears must have pricked perceptibly, because I found Ellen looking at me with amusement.

  “The big bay bastard,” she said. “David called him after the picture. The Colonel bred him and Sally broke him.”

  “He broke several bits of me too,” Sally said ruefully. “But I rode
him then and I can ride him now, and if David wants me to take him to a couple of events to keep him match-fit, I’d enjoy that.”

  Ellen said, “I’ll be honest with you. I wouldn’t get on him to save his life, and I wouldn’t let Karen ride him. I know you can, and I’m grateful for the offer. But I’ve already got my husband in hospital; I don’t want my friend there too. When his head’s a bit clearer, I’ll ask David. In the meantime, ride away at him—but please be careful. I’d sooner knack him now than risk him hurting you.”

  “I shall wear my crash-hat, back protector, and three soft cushions at all times,” promised Sally.

  Fane nodded approval. “Right. And then I thought I’d send one of my lads over to help out with the farm while you’re up and down to the hospital.”

  The Colonel and his daughter had much in common and much that separated them widely. Both were tall and well made; his figure leaned to elegance, while hers favoured strength. He was an officer and a gentleman; she was not, would never have claimed to be, and probably had no wish to be, a lady. Both, from what I had heard, were capable of infinite hard work, and shared—with, it must be admitted, half Warwickshire—a passion for the horse in all its incarnations. The Colonel’s primary interest was in breeding, with all the meticulous study and long-term planning that involved. Sally’s was in the blood and thunder of competition.

  They had a house on the far side of The Brink, behind Foxford Wood, another of these ancient little manor-houses, a pile of sun-bleached bricks with a Tudor heart all but lost in a maze of later additions, and very dubious plumbing. From all reports, however, there were fewer leaks in the roof at Standings, due not so much to the income from Sally’s competition horses or even the Colonel’s foals as the success of the farm.

  The farm at Standings was the business which allowed the Fanes to indulge their hobbies. The farm at Foxford was David’s stopgap for keeping body and soul together while he brought on his eventers. It was a difference in attitude which showed not only in the accounts but in the buildings and the land and the hedges and the stock. It was why the Colonel was offering Ellen a farm-labourer and why Ellen looked as taken aback as if he’d offered to lend her a stuffed moose. If David couldn’t ride again, he was going to make a dreadful farmer.