Scout and the Mystery of the Marsh Ponies

by Belinda Rapley

  “Mrs Valentine never gave Alice the loan agreement she’d promised her at the start,” Mia finished. “In fact, Mrs Valentine disappeared completely for a year, and the first time Alice saw her again was yesterday at the show…”

  “… when Mrs Valentine turned up out of the blue,” Rosie finished, “announcing that Scout was up for sale.”

  “So you went to Hollow Hill to find Mrs Valentine, but found Beth instead, right?” Sammy asked, looking over at the girls.

  Charlie nodded, and explained exactly what Beth had said.

  “Well, Beth was partly right,” Sammy nodded. “I did own him, and I did fall off and break my leg pretty badly. But it didn’t exactly happen the way she told you.”

  “So how did it happen?” Alice asked in a small voice. She was struggling to take everything in, but she had to – she was a Pony Detective after all, and Scout was depending on her. She would have to piece together his past all over again, like a brand new jigsaw puzzle. The information from Beth was the first piece and now, from Sammy, they were about to get the second. She took a jagged breath, picking at a hole in her jods as Sammy started to speak.

  “Well, I got Scout when he was just five years old, and my parents weren’t that sure about it because they were convinced he was too young,” she explained. “But I fell in love with him when I saw his ad in the local paper. I could tell as soon as I tried him that although he was only young he was really sweet natured and sensible. And he never put a hoof wrong until one day when we were coming back from a ride. Just as we walked past number twelve, Mrs Hawk dropped a metal dustbin lid on her garden path. It totally spooked Pip, understandably. His hooves skidded out from under him and he fell over, crushing my leg. But it was weird, because I remember Mrs Hawk watching us riding up the lane. Then she dropped the lid just as we reached her.”

  “So it wasn’t Scout’s fault, then?” Charlie asked, looking over to Alice. Sammy shook her head, frowning.

  “Definitely not!” Sammy continued. “Mrs Hawk never owned up to anyone what really happened. I kept trying to tell my parents but they just said that I was covering up for Pip. After the accident she persuaded them to sell Pip, saying that he was dangerous.”

  “Beth said that Mrs Hawk kept him,” Mia pointed out. “Is that right?”

  Sammy nodded.

  “Apparently, she knew about an auction that was coming up while I was still in hospital, Roger Green Auctions it was, and said that she’d take him and get the highest bid for him,” she explained. “But that bid happened to be very low, and from her, so she basically bought him at a knock-down price. I found out afterwards that she kept several horses on Hollow Common, out of sight of the lane. I think she was a dealer of some kind, so I was always worried about what would happen to Pip. Anyway, this all went on when I was in hospital, and when I got out Mrs Hawk had disappeared and Pip had gone too. I never even got to say goodbye.”

  “So have you ever heard of Mrs Valentine?” Rosie asked, looking puzzled.

  Sammy shook her head, looking at Poppy, who said that she hadn’t heard of her either.

  “But the person you bought Scout – or Pip – off, was she local?” Alice asked.

  “She was. It was a lovely woman called Iris Evergreen. She’d had him for a while,” Sammy explained, “since he was about three. She broke him in, but I don’t know who had him before then, sorry. Iris emigrated to Australia, so couldn’t keep him. She was really happy that at least she could see he was going to a good home. I felt like I let her down as well as Pip when he was sold.”

  “That wasn’t your fault, though,” Charlie said as Rosie popped another fairy cake in her mouth.

  “What I don’t get”, Alice said, feeling mystified, “is what happened after Mrs Hawk bought Scout. I mean, where does Mrs Valentine fit in to all this?”

  “I guess if Mrs Hawk was a dealer she must have sold Pip on to Mrs Valentine,” Poppy suggested.

  “Poor Scout,” Rosie said through a mouthful of cake. “What bad luck to have two horrible owners in a row.”

  “Do you remember when Mrs Hawk took Pip to the auction?” Mia asked as she stood up, finding a crumb on her on her pink and purple-starred jods and flicking it off.

  “Well, I don’t know exactly, but it was when I was in hospital,” Sammy said. “So it must have been some time in April last year.”

  “I took Scout on loan in June,” Alice said, stepping back out into the sunshine from the shade of the office and feeling the warmth hit her as she bent down to pick up her tack. “And I saw him for the first time in May, when his frightened little grey face just appeared through the long grass as I cycled along. But if Mrs Hawk bought Scout in April and had him for about a month, Mrs Valentine must only have had him for about two minutes before she put him out onto Dragonfly Marsh.”

  “So why did she say she’d had him since he was a foal?” Charlie asked, as she and the others called out to their ponies. “Why did she need to lie?”

  But as the ponies came thundering over, that was one question none of them could answer.

  After they’d got back to Blackberry Farm, untacked and turned out the ponies, the girls headed straight round to the hay barn, just beyond the yard. They rushed through the huge open barn doors and bounced over the floor of spilt, loose hay and straw to the round snug of hay bales they’d pulled together. The walls were covered with lots of their favourite pony pics and posters from Pony Mad. The air was still; it was cool and peaceful in there, and they could watch the ponies grazing in the paddock.

  Mia immediately picked up her notebook and flipped past the page headed ‘Moonlight’ from their last mystery, and in her neatest writing wrote Scout’s name at the top of the new page:

  Scout

  Alice got a picture of Scout off the barn wall and handed it to Mia, who stuck it in her notebook at the top of the page. Alice shivered seeing his name written there, just like Moonlight’s had been at the beginning of the summer when the Pony Detectives had taken on their first case. Now Scout had turned into their second. He might not have been stolen like the piebald, but he was in danger of being taken away from Alice unless they could get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding his past.

  As they sat on the edge of the hay bales Mia started to write down all the information they’d picked up that morning while the others pitched in:

  1 – Mrs Valentine told Alice that she’d owned Scout since he was a foal and would never, ever sell him because he belonged to her ill daughter, Scarlett.

  2 – Mrs V. said Alice could have Scout on permanent loan, but she never sent the loan agreement.

  3 – Turns out that Mrs V. didn’t own Scout since he was a foal, and that a woman called Iris had him when he was 3, before Sammy bought him when he was 5. He was then sold cheaply at Roger Green Auctions in April last year to Mrs Hawk, who sounds suspiciously like a dealer.

  4 – Mrs Valentine must have bought Scout very soon afterwards because Alice discovered him on Dragonfly Marsh in May and took him on loan last June after seeing an advert for him in PONY MAD.

  5 – Mrs V. gave Alice a false address – but one that happened to be right next to where Scout used to be kept, first by Sammy, then by Mrs Hawk.

  “There’s definitely something seriously dodgy going on,” Charlie said, reading the list. “Nothing Mrs Valentine’s told Alice is true, and we have to find out why before she manages to sell Scout.”

  Mia chewed her pen thoughtfully.

  “Well, one thing’s obvious looking at all this: it’s pointless us trying to find Scarlett so we can change her mind,” she said, “because if she’d only had him for a couple of months, and most of that time he was on Dragonfly Marsh, I seriously doubt she’ll be bothered about the prospect of him being sold.”

  “So that’s our first plan of action out of the window,” Rosie agreed, dismissing the apples that Mia offered round, and bringing out a slightly squished chocolate bar instead.

  “The question is,” M
ia said quietly, reading and re-reading the clues and hoping that something would suddenly jump out at her and start making sense, “where do we go from here?”

  “SORRY I’m here so early.” Alice shivered as she sat down at Rosie’s kitchen table the next morning, her foot tapping edgily. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might as well come over.”

  “S’fine,” Rosie replied. She’d been hauled out of bed almost an hour earlier than usual after hearing Alice’s anxious knocking at the door. She sat in her pyjamas and yawned as she cradled a hot chocolate. Mrs Honeycott pottered about in the background, her hair piled up haphazardly on her head, her dressing gown splattered with a rainbow of paint colours. She had been heading for her studio to work on her latest painting when Alice arrived, but before she disappeared she’d put on milk for hot chocolate. She absently patted Alice on the head, knowing that something was up with her daughter’s friend.

  Alice drank a few sips of her hot chocolate while Rosie went upstairs to get dressed, but what she really wanted was to be out in the yard, with Scout. She didn’t know how long they had left together, and she wanted to spend every second with him that she could. When Rosie reappeared a few moments later in scruffy outgrown navy jodhpurs and a yellow T-shirt, they trooped out of the kitchen, grabbed headcollars and went to collect the four ponies from the paddock. They brought them in, Rosie leading Dancer and Wish, and Alice with Scout and a jogging Pirate. Then they made up the feeds. The ponies ate tied up in the yard outside their stables. As Scout chomped, Alice leaned against his withers trying to take in every detail about him, as if she were recording them in her memory, just in case. She stopped herself, not wanting to believe that Scout might really go. Then she took a deep breath and went to fetch her grooming kit from the tack room.

  When Scout had finished his feed and licked every hidden corner of his bucket, Alice tried to distract herself by grooming him. She fussed around the grey pony, brushing off all the grass stains on his hocks, withers and neck, and making his dapples sparkle. Then she trimmed his feathers, levelled off his tail and pulled his mane to neaten it up. Scout loved nothing more than having tons of attention and he dozed in the early morning sunshine, blinking round at Alice and rummaging in her pockets for treats when she tried to brush his forelock.

  She’d just finished when Charlie arrived on her bike. Almost before she’d had a chance to get onto the yard, a car drove up the drive. A door slammed, and a second later Mia came running onto the yard too. Normally Mia was a picture of calm collectedness, whatever the situation, but it was obvious from the moment she stopped in front of Alice, her almond eyes wide, that something had seriously rattled her.

  “What’s the matter?” Charlie asked, following Mia across the yard. Rosie threw her mane comb back into Dancer’s grooming kit and rushed over to join them.

  “I glanced behind me in the car as Dad drove here just now,” Mia explained, raking her hand through her long, silky black hair. “I don’t know what made me look, but there was a car right behind us. When I saw who was driving I made Dad speed up, just so we could get here quicker to give me a chance to warn you!”

  The others stared at Mia. At that moment, they heard another car bump down the drive.

  “Who was driving?” Rosie asked, looking over to the drive as a sleek dark grey Range Rover appeared near the cottage and parked.

  “Mrs Valentine,” Mia told them, looking anxiously at Alice.

  Alice gasped. Her first panicked thought was that she should untie Scout, leap on him bareback and gallop him miles into the woods at the back of Blackberry Farm. Her heart started to race as she reached for the lead rope with shaking fingers. But deep down she knew she couldn’t hide him among the trees for ever. Or even for a week.

  “Did you know she was coming?” Rosie asked, looking dismayed.

  Alice frowned, shaking her head and racking her brain over what the unannounced and unexpected visit could possibly be about.

  “Maybe she’s come to her senses and changed her mind about selling Scout!” Charlie suggested optimistically, squeezing Alice’s arm. At Charlie’s words, Alice felt a surge of excitement.

  “Do you reckon?” she said, almost allowing herself a smile.

  “Well, one thing’s for sure,” Mia said quietly as they heard a car door slam. “At least this gives us a chance to find some answers to the questions we came up with yesterday.”

  Alice took a huge deep breath to try to steady her nerves as Mrs Valentine appeared on the yard, her sunglasses and large-brimmed hat still in place. She walked straight over to Scout, smiling her approval at his appearance and quietly sizing up the yard. Seeing her smiling face, Alice felt a glow of warmth. Maybe things would be fine after all. Just as she was about to relax the teeniest fraction, she heard a loud rumble from the drive. She looked up and Mrs Valentine followed her gaze, then checked her watch.

  “Right on time,” she said smoothly.

  “Er, what is?” Rosie asked, looking round at the others.

  “The first person who’s come to try Scout, of course,” Mrs Valentine purred.

  “What?!” Alice almost choked, feeling her face flush pink and her heart hammer in her throat. “But… but the advert’s not due out until the next issue of Pony Mad! Scout’s not officially for sale yet – no one can come and try him!”

  “Well, this is a bit of a special trial,” Mrs Valentine explained smugly. “You see, I overheard someone asking about me at the Show after I left you. Turned out that this person was particularly keen to buy Sunny – money no object – so obviously I had to introduce myself at once. They persuaded me to let them come and try him today, ahead of the advert coming out. They so wanted first refusal. I had meant to call and let you know I’d be coming, but I didn’t want you to forget and be out, by mistake. I thought it would be better for us just to drop in. So I’m delighted you’ve got him looking so amazing, without any notice. He looks worth every penny of my asking price, don’t you think?”

  With that, Mrs Valentine turned on her heel and marched over to the gate.

  Alice felt faint. She felt sick. She turned to Scout, who was standing, ears pricked, listening to the engine approaching. She put her arms around his neck and stood there, hardly able to breathe.

  “This isn’t fair,” Rosie whispered hoarsely. “She can’t turn up out of the blue like this and just act like Scout’s…”

  “Hers?” Charlie finished. Rosie huffed. Charlie was right, but it didn’t make what she was doing any easier to swallow.

  “So who is it that’s come to try him?” Mia said, frowning as she tried to work it out, all thoughts of questioning Mrs Valentine dissolving at once. “Who would have been talking about him at the show?”

  “There’s only one person I can possibly think of…” Charlie said, glancing over at Alice, who had suddenly turned very pale.

  At that moment the top of a brightly coloured horsebox became visible above the overgrown hedges lining the track before it swung into the parking area beyond the gate.

  More doors slammed, and the next second a girl wearing a bright stripy T-shirt and garish green jodhpurs bobbed round the corner. Before them, grinning like a cat that had got the cream, stood Alice’s worst nightmare – Tallulah Starr. Fear gripped Alice as she turned to look at Scout, standing there quietly, trustingly. There was no way that she wanted Tallulah getting her hands on him, just to dump him in a stable to be looked after by someone else, to ruin him then sell him on like a second-hand car for scrap. No way! Not far behind Tallulah was her dad, swaggering and talking in a loud, brash voice to Mrs Valentine, and acting like he owned the yard.

  “Hi, Alice.” Tallulah smiled brightly, looking straight past Alice to Scout, her eyes loaded with electric blue glittery eyeshadow. “Isn’t it funny, you saying at the show that Scout wasn’t for sale and now, look – here I am, about to buy him!”

  “Here you are,” Alice said through gritted teeth.

  “Normally, I make my instruct
ors pick out the best ponies for me and I don’t bother getting involved – I just ride them when they turn up,” Tallulah gushed. “But my last instructor walked out last week, and my groom, too, come to that – I have no idea why – so I had to come and do it myself. Mind you, this is a bit different because I already know that I want Scout, whatever the price. Oh, tack him up, can you, Alice? He’s still yours, after all.”

  As Tallulah continued to chatter away, Alice scowled before disappearing with leaden legs to fetch the tack.

  “Still, it’s actually really handy that I had to come along today,” Tallulah chirped as Alice put the tack on the top of the half stable door. “After all, I intend to win the Sweetbriar Stud Cup on my new pony, so this trial will give him a chance to get used to me. Oh, and I’m changing his name by the way, look! Do you like it?”

  Tallulah turned round and pointed to the lettering she’d already had printed on the back of her T-shirt:

  Tallulah Starr &Diamond Starr,

  sponsored by Starr Cars, the classiest motors in town

  Alice gasped. She felt the blood race through her body and her hands started to shake. She was so angry and frustrated and protective over Scout, and yet so utterly powerless to do anything about Tallulah taking him.

  “I think the Sweetbriar Stud Cup’s beyond Scout’s scope. You could ruin him if you enter it and scare him over a course that’s too big,” Mia pointed out.