Scout and the Mystery of the Marsh Ponies

by Belinda Rapley

  They were sitting out in the field with the ponies grazing around them, coming up to them occasionally to nibble the girls’ outstretched boots. They were all enjoying their day off in the field after being turned out once Jock left the yard.

  “Well, she’s either got lots of daughters…” Mia agreed, putting a tick against another name on Jock’s list.

  “… who all just happen to be ill,” Charlie pointed out.

  “… or one ill daughter with lots of ponies that she supposedly can’t bear to part with,” Rosie finished.

  “And all the ponies just happen to be called Sunny,” Alice added quietly, standing up and scratching Scout’s withers until his top lip jutted out and he turned his head to nibble Alice’s back. “I guess that makes it easier for Mrs Valentine to remember…”

  As they’d sat with the ponies after Jock left, Mia had called all the numbers he’d written down to ask the people on the list about their ponies. All five people on the list had agreed to talk, especially when Mia introduced herself. Mia and Wish had won in the showing ring all around the county, so even though the phone numbers were spread right out they’d all heard of her.

  It turned out that all the people on the list had responded to adverts placed in Pony Mad. All the ponies had started off on permanent loan. Three ponies were still on what the owners took to be permanent loan, although none of them had been given loan agreements. And none of them had heard from Mrs Valentine since taking on the ponies. They all said how much they’d put into the ponies, who meant even more to them after coming off the Marsh looking a bit bedraggled and scared. Mia glanced at the others as one of the owners said how well their ‘Sunny’ was starting to do at shows, and how lucky they were to have an owner like Mrs Valentine because she never interfered. Mia thanked them, then called the next number on the list.

  The fourth owner told Mia she’d taken Sunny on loan just a couple of months after Alice had got Scout. This pony had already been sold. The story sounded amazingly similar to Scout’s: Mr Hackett’s daughter, Rebekah, had seen an advert and they’d met Mrs Valentine by Dragonfly Marsh. The pony had looked promising, but it was definitely in need of care and attention and lots of schooling. After they took ‘Sunny’ on loan, Mrs Valentine had disappeared. Rebekah had clicked instantly with the pony and after lots of schooling they started to take dressage competitions by storm. Then Mrs Valentine had reappeared suddenly, announcing that ‘Sunny’ was for sale. When Mr Hackett had said that he couldn’t afford the huge price she was asking, Mrs Valentine had changed from charming to snakelike in an instant. The pony was sold, leaving Rebekah devastated.

  The last number on the list provided a similar story. This time Mrs Wright took their ‘Sunny’ on loan for her son, Josh. It was his ambition to become a jockey and he patiently trained his pony until he began to win on the pony racing circuit. Mrs Wright had been infuriated when Mrs Valentine appeared and told them she was putting ‘Sunny’ up for sale for a hugely inflated price.

  “She didn’t care that me and Josh had put all the money and effort in to turn him into a winner,” Mrs Wright explained with a sigh, “so we ended up getting a bank loan to afford to keep him.”

  As Mia ended the final phone call, scribbling down more information in her notebook, it confirmed their suspicions that nothing Mrs Valentine had told Alice about Scout was true, or was special to him. Mrs Valentine had no idea about the history of the pony she was selling. More to the point, she didn’t seem to care.

  “One thing,” Mia said, carefully studying the rough dates she’d been given for the ponies being advertised and taken on loan. “It looks from these dates that each time one pony was taken on loan, another turned up on Dragonfly Marsh to replace it. Every two months, just like Jock said.”

  “How mean’s that?” Rosie said, plucking at the grass beside her crossly. “Imagine being turned out on that huge, scary marsh without any company. Mrs Valentine really must be hardhearted, that much is clear. I feel sorry for Scarlett, having a mum like that.”

  “If Scarlett even exists,” Alice said as she flumped back down on the grass after giving Scout some more fuss. “I mean, I never met her. I just heard about her from Mrs Valentine.”

  “I reckon it must be a scam!” Mia concluded. “Mrs Valentine gets hold of cheap ponies and turns them out on Dragonfly Marsh. She doesn’t bother taking care of them, but advertises them for loan and gives the unsuspecting person who turns up to try them a sob story about why she can’t possibly sell them. They all think they’ve got the ponies for life and put everything into them!”

  “That way she gets someone else to take them on, feed them up and school them,” Charlie continued, “then when they’ve improved hugely she steps in out of nowhere and announces that they’re for sale!”

  “Making Mrs Valentine a fat profit in the process, without having had to do any of the work or spend any money herself,” Rosie said indignantly.

  “And leaving lots of people broken-hearted,” Alice sighed, wishing that Scout hadn’t done so well over the summer holidays at all the shows. She was convinced now that Mrs Valentine had been keeping an eye on her from a distance, waiting for signs of serious improvement before swooping.

  “And no prizes for guessing where she finds her cheap ponies,” Mia said, stroking Wish’s soft muzzle as she cropped the grass beside her.

  “Roger Green Auctions,” Rosie, Alice and Charlie all piped up in unison. Wish stopped grazing for a second, her big brown eyes peeping through her long cream forelock, as she swished away a fly with her tail.

  “Well, if it is,” Mia said, “we won’t have too long to wait before finding out.”

  “Talking of that, what are we going to wear tomorrow?” Charlie asked, looking round at the others. “If we turn up like this, Mrs Valentine will recognise us in a second…”

  “We need disguises!” Rosie exclaimed, holding her finger in the air. “And I know where we might be able to find some!”

  Rosie raced into the cottage with the others following her, giggling as they thundered up the stairs. At the top Rosie stood on tiptoe and pushed a hatch door, then she pulled down a ladder and led them up into a dusty, stuffy attic. Rosie tugged a light pull and a bare bulb flashed on, swinging brightly in the eaves.

  “Mum’s got some old bits and pieces in here that we might be able to use…” Rosie said, flinging open some dust-laden cardboard boxes and rummaging around in them. “There’s still loads of stuff we haven’t unpacked since we moved…”

  Mia glanced around at the dust and chaos surrounding them with a look of mild horror, then carefully prised open the nearest box. She picked through the contents with the tips of her fingers, while next to her Rosie was busy throwing the insides of another box over her shoulder in her search.

  “Nice!” Charlie laughed, opening a shoebox and finding an old picture of Rosie sitting on a swing with some seriously dodgy clothes on and an even dodgier haircut, before turning her attention to a different pile.

  Alice started to unwrap the newspaper around a tray of face paint.

  “Ooh!” Rosie suddenly squealed, leaning over Alice’s shoulder. “Look!”

  “Okay, stop right there!” Mia exclaimed, noticing at once where Rosie was looking. “There is no way I’m putting that greasy make-up on as a disguise, not for anything. Sorry, Alice.”

  “I’m not talking about the make-up!” Rosie tutted, picking up the bit of paper that Alice had just dropped. “I was talking about this!”

  As Mia leaned in to get a closer look, Rosie started to sneeze wildly. Mia squealed as she got sprayed, setting off Charlie and Alice.

  “Rosie, we’re meant to be looking for disguises,” Charlie said when she’d recovered, “not reading bits of old newspaper.”

  “But this might be important,” Rosie said as she scanned down the page. “Listen: ‘Woman Flees Following Pony-Owning Ban’! You’ll never guess who it is!”

  “Mrs Valentine?” Alice said hopefully, tryin
g to see what Rosie was reading.

  “Guess again,” Rosie said, looking round at each of them like a quizmaster.

  “Just get on with it, Rosie!” Charlie said, striking gold as she pulled out a bright red wavy wig. She shoved it on, getting some dust up her nose and starting to sneeze too, sending the wig falling over her face.

  “Okay, okay,” Rosie replied, “keep your hair on.”

  “Never mind all that,” Mia said impatiently. “Who’s it about?”

  “Mrs Hawk,” Rosie announced dramatically, her face lit up unnaturally as she knelt below the light bulb.

  The others all looked over at the crumpled page from Rosie’s old local paper while she read it out:

  A LOCAL WOMAN has gone on the run after a number of ponies owned by her were found on Hollow Common, near Hollow Hill, in poor condition. The field they were grazing could not be seen from the roadside.

  All the ponies have been seized by the RSPCA after the identity of the local woman was revealed as that of Mrs Nora Hawk (47). She already faced a ban from owning ponies after neglecting them in the past. It’s now understood that Mrs Hawk has previously been on the run, in an attempt to avoid detection – and the ban. However, once she moved into this county she flouted the ban and continued to buy and sell ponies.

  Local residents were shocked by the news.

  “Mrs Hawk always kept herself to herself and I had no idea this was happening just down the road from me,” said one Hollow Hill resident, Mr Colin Bright (38). “I didn’t know anything about the ponies on Hollow Common because it’s hidden, but I do know she had a pony in the paddock out the back of her cottage when she disappeared.”

  Mrs Hawk left her Hollow Hill address in the middle of the night with this particular pony and fled once more before the ban could be issued. Any news on her whereabouts should be reported to the RSPCA immediately. She is described as tall and thin, with short black hair. She is considered extremely devious.

  At the end of the article was a grainy black-and-white photo of a woman with short dark hair and small, beady eyes.

  “Mr Bright – that must be Beth’s dad,” Charlie said after they’d looked at the picture. “Beth said that Mrs Hawk had been involved in some kind of scandal when she left.”

  “The date on this newspaper’s April the twenty-ninth,” Mia pointed out.

  “Sammy said Mrs Hawk bought Scout at auction in April,” Alice said, frowning. “If the RSPCA had seized all her other ponies from Hollow Common and were onto her, she’d have had to sell Scout in a serious hurry. Mrs Valentine must have picked him up really cheaply, I bet.”

  “And now she’s trying to sell him on for a huge profit,” Rosie tutted.

  “This doesn’t just mean there’s a link between Mrs Valentine and all the ponies on Dragonfly Marsh,” Mia said. “It confirms what we’d all suspected – that there’s also a link between Mrs Valentine and not just any old dealer, but a very dodgy one in Mrs Hawk.”

  As the four girls sat among the boxes and discarded paper they suddenly realised that the case had taken a sinister twist. They sat stony-faced, until Rosie glanced sideways and suddenly perked up.

  “Bingo!” she cried, pulling some old baseball caps out of a box. “Our disguises!”

  Jock hooted outside Blackberry Farm’s gate at seven thirty the next morning, ready for the hour’s drive ahead. The girls had all slept over at the farm ready for their early start, and they’d already been out in the yard, mixing feeds and taking them out for their ponies to eat in the field. After they’d got back in, Rosie, Alice and Charlie had groaned as they lounged across the kitchen table yawning, their dusty baseball caps pulled low over their faces. Mia, who was refusing to wear hers until the very last possible moment, had piled her glossy black hair up first thing in preparation while Mrs Honeycott made everyone tea and thick slices of toast with melted butter and strawberry jam.

  “Mia, it’s officially wrong that you can look so neat and together this early in the morning,” Rosie sighed as she heard the toot and scraped back her chair. She called out goodbye to her parents, and kissed Beanie, who was rustling round the kitchen, and Pumpkin, who was curled up near the Aga.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Charlie agreed sleepily as she pushed her brown fringe under the peak of her hat.

  “It’s a talent, I know.” Mia smiled sweetly as they bundled out of the cottage and clambered into Jock’s jeep, clanging shut the rattly door and saying hello.

  As Jock drove, the girls chattered away, laughing as they got bounced around on the hard seats every time they went over the tiniest bump in the road. They told him what they’d uncovered about Mrs Hawk, which he remembered hearing about at the time, and described Mrs Valentine to him. He agreed to keep an eye out for her too.

  Rosie somehow managed to doze as they rattled along until Charlie, realising they were getting close, gave her a nudge. She’d caught sight of the brush fences and white rails curling around the smooth green turf of their local point-to-point racetrack where the auction was being held. As they craned their necks, they saw a huge, slightly grubby-looking marquee with ‘Roger Green Auctions’ emblazoned in a rich emerald green across the arch of a tunnel, which led to a circular main tent.

  Jock wound down his window as they turned off the busy road and bumped across an uneven field. He announced himself as the official farrier, making the girls feel very important, before being waved off to park on the right. He rumbled forward, then ground to a juddering halt in the area of the car park reserved for ‘officials’, away from a huge mass of ancient trailers and old horseboxes. As the humming engine was switched off, its noise was replaced at once by the buzz of hundreds of voices.

  As soon as they jumped out into an already sweltering day, Alice, Charlie, Mia and Rosie were almost swallowed up by the people bustling backwards and forwards. It was still early but the air was filled with the smell of burgers, horse manure and lots of people packed in together. They made their way through the crowds from the car park, past ponies which were already being exercised in far corners of the field, with numbered stickers on their rumps. They continued past the temporary stables where they could hear the shrill neighs of hundreds of nervous horses and ponies. They were being led in and out and trotted up on the wide concrete walkways in front of groups of potential buyers.

  “I had no idea it would be so busy!” Rosie squealed, narrowly missing being trotted over by a huge grey horse as they made their way to the auction tent.

  Mia peered down the roped entrance into the gloom beyond and saw a ring with sawdust in the middle and rows of metal-framed seats curled around it. On the opposite side was the auctioneer’s rostrum, a wooden, boxed-in platform about waist height with a wide shelf. Mia saw a vast man with a yellow checked waistcoat and a large, ruddy face leaning forward over it. He watched everyone who wandered in closely over his half-moon glasses, his eyes darting in every direction as he rubbed a bushy moustache. A few people called out and he waved to them, replying in a deeply booming rich voice.

  They paused for a moment outside the tent as the next ‘lot’, a tall, temperamental-looking bay, disappeared down into the tunnel out of sight. They heard the auctioneer’s quick-fire sales chatter start at once and pick up into a continuous crescendo, floating out of the ring to where they were standing.

  “He can’t have time to breathe!” Charlie laughed as they listened to his voice rising and falling, getting the bidding started and then taking the price up without a pause. He could be heard encouraging everyone inside the tent to have a go, listing all the pony’s good points in any of the gaps between bids before racing up through the increases. Suddenly, the bidding stopped. The girls listened, peering down into the ring, and caught sight of the auctioneer going round the ring encouraging more buyers to join in, announcing that lot 23 was going once, twice, then a dramatic pause before the final slamming hammer fall.

  “Sold!”

  Alice stood back from the roped entrance as
the bay horse, which had started to sweat up, jogged out of the marquee. He was followed by an excited-looking couple who walked with the handler back to the stables. The girls watched as the next lot, a small chestnut pony, trotted towards the ring, the whites of his eyes showing. There was a scuffle of hooves as he refused to enter for a moment, half rearing and pulling back on the reins. Alice could see his sides heaving as he neighed at the top of his voice, trying to turn his head back to the stable block before finally barging forward into the ring.

  She wondered if Scout had been as terrified with all the commotion and strange sounds and smells bombarding him when he’d been brought to the sale. She wished for a second that she could rush up and hug the pony, tell him he would be all right, but she couldn’t. He had disappeared and the bidding was starting, the auctioneer racing off at high speed until the hammer fell and the pony was led out. Alice felt relieved as she saw a young boy and his parents rush to meet the pony, thinking that at least it looked as if he’d gone to someone who’d love him as much as she loved Scout.

  “Right, we need to focus,” Mia announced after they’d each bought ice-cold cans of fizzy drink from a nearby stand. “The auction is only on this morning, so we don’t have long.”

  “And what exactly is it we’re meant to be focusing on again?” Rosie asked as she snapped back the ring pull on her can and took a glug of drink. It was so cold that the bubbles went up her nose and made her eyes water.

  “Mrs Valentine,” Charlie said, squinting into the sun, “and I think I might have just found her…”

  The others followed Charlie’s gaze and saw a tall, wiry woman dressed smartly all in navy, with a floppy hat, long blonde hair and huge dark sunglasses, slip across from the car park and disappear in front of them through the crowds and into the marquee.

  “Quick – don’t lose sight of her!” Mia instructed as they ducked down and raced forward, bumping into each other. They rushed into the relative gloom of the marquee. Keeping low, they tiptoed up the metallic stairs then dived into some seats halfway up, sitting right by the entrance where there were thick metal frames to the edges of the seats to give them some cover.