A Season for Murder

by Ann Granger

  ‘Rupert Green, you mean?’ Markby said non-committally.

  Pringle chuckled. ‘Oh, yes him, the playboy. Bright chap, mind you. And he’s got guts, I’ll say that for him. He’s far from the best rider around but he sticks to it, or to the horse which is more important I suppose! I suspect he’s happier in sports cars, but he’s determined to be a country gent!’

  ‘Which is he?’ asked Meredith, looking around.

  ‘Over there.’ Markby touched her elbow and pointed.

  Beyond the crowd, almost out of the Market Square altogether, two male riders waited as if they mistrusted the milling crowd. They were both immaculately turned out, top-hatted, gleaming-booted.

  ‘Green is the chap on the left,’ Markby said. ‘He’s a big financial fish in the city. He bought the old Cherton Manor about a year ago and has set about turning himself into the local squire.’

  Meredith turned her attention from Green and his companion to the rest of the assembly. Goodness, that was a familiar face! Geoffrey Haynes, his red features as furious as ever, stood on the opposite side of the square with his hands in his raincoat pockets and glowering at anyone who had the temerity to walk in front of him. Christmas with their daughter had lasted just the one day, it seemed. Was that because Geoffrey wanted to return to the hermit-like seclusion of Pook’s Common, or because the daughter and her family couldn’t stand more than one day of Geoffrey? There was no sign of poor Lucy. Perhaps she’d stayed behind to enjoy her grandchildren. But Geoffrey wasn’t the sort to tolerate independent action on the part of his wife. He would have dragged the unfortunate woman back here with him. Meredith was beginning to share Harriet’s feelings towards Geoffrey Haynes.

  Her attention was distracted by a clatter of hoofs as a rider on a grey came up to them. The rider bent down and reached out a hand to shake that of Markby and of Pringle.

  ‘Morning, Tom,’ Markby called up to him. ‘No more alarms?’

  ‘All quiet, but we kept a round-the-clock watch on the stables last night, just in case. Took shifts. If I’d caught the buggers I tell you, there would have been murder done.’

  ‘Tom Fearon,’ Markby said to Meredith, introducing her. ‘Who keeps Pook’s stables.’

  She had already recognised him and the grey. The horse was immaculate, mane braided, tack buffed to perfection. He complemented his rider who, viewed nearer to hand, was indeed a strikingly handsome man in a slightly foreign, gipsy fashion, black curls bunching round the rim of his hard hat, his skin tanned walnut by an outdoor life. Meredith felt, rather than saw, his dark eyes run appraisingly over her. Instinct would have told her even if Markby hadn’t that this was one who liked the girls. She felt defensive hackles rise on the back of her neck.

  Fearon leaned smiling from the saddle and reached out his hand. ‘Nice to see you here. You’re Meredith Mitchell, aren’t you? Harriet was telling me you’d taken the cottage opposite hers. Settled in all right?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘Come down to the stables some time. I’ll show you round. And if you’re interested in riding, we can certainly find you a suitable mount.’

  ‘That’s very kind.’ She knew she sounded rather sniffy but she couldn’t help it. If Fearon fancied she could be lured into a loose-box for a quick romp in the hay, he was wrong. Beside her, Alan Markby was grinning to himself as if he knew what she was thinking.

  Pringle interrupted the conversation, perhaps fortunately, exclaiming, ‘There’s Harriet!’

  Fearon twisted abruptly in the saddle and the grey stamped a nervous hoof. Meredith, bearing in mind Harriet’s warning that this horse might kick, prudently moved away a little.

  The crowd had parted to let Harriet through to the centre of the square. She looked magnificent, her athletic figure showing to its best in the tightly fitting black jacket and her red hair confined in a velvet snood beneath her hard hat. But she also looked, Meredith noticed, very pale and rather subdued. Fearon turned his horse’s head and rode towards her. He leaned across and spoke to her, his face and gestures urgent, but she shook her head.

  ‘Harriet looks a bit ropey,’ said Pringle thoughtfully. ‘Must have sunk a bit of booze yesterday.’ He sounded deeply concerned and Meredith glanced curiously at him. Pringle raised his arm and beckoned, calling, ‘Harriet! Over here!’

  Harriet rode slowly towards them. When she saw Meredith she said, ‘Oh, hi!’ slurring the two syllables together and smiling uncertainly.

  ‘Good morning,’ Meredith returned. Harriet really did look far from well.

  ‘Take it from me as a medico,’ called Pringle up to her, ‘no stirrup cups today! Sure you will be able to keep up?’

  ‘I’m all right, Jack. Don’t make a fuss!’ said Harriet brusquely, making an obvious effort to pull herself together.

  ‘You look distinctly hung-over, my lovely.’

  ‘Then fresh air and exercise is the best thing for it. I’ll know when I can’t sit in the blasted saddle.’

  ‘I’ll follow behind with the stretcher!’ said Pringle drily.

  ‘Happy New Year!’ said Miss Needham tartly by way of response and rode away.

  It was at that moment Meredith caught a glimpse of another familiar figure. From somewhere the anti-bloodsports protesters had arrived. They must have assembled in a side street and now they were here, mostly young and apparently in fairly good mood. Two of them carried a banner proclaiming their cause and on the outer ring of the group stood Meredith’s whiskery acquaintance, minus his clipboard today, but defiantly carrying a placard of his own, declaring the hunt to be a bastion of class privilege. His grubby ex-army greatcoat flapped around his spindly legs in the shabby jeans, underlining the contrast between him and his fellow-protesters, most of whom were clean and reasonably dressed in country wear. It was as if he had mounted the wrong protest in the wrong place, or was simply the wrong person to do it. It struck her that he seemed to have tacked himself on to the others. None of them talked to him though they chatted otherwise amongst themselves. Occasionally one of them would glance the youth’s way as if expressing some general unease about him.

  Meredith caught hold of Markby’s sleeve. ‘That’s him! The one I told you about. He stopped me last Friday in the High Street and wanted me to sign his protest. He looks just as unhinged today as he did then, poor lad.’

  ‘He looks as though he could do with a decent meal,’ Markby observed. The police had arrived now in the shape of a wpc who was talking amiably to the protesters who moved back a little apparently in response to her request. ‘Wpc Jones, that one,’ murmured Markby as if to himself, ‘and doing her job very well.’ But Meredith noticed that the movement of the group backwards had served further to isolate her adversary with the placard and the beard. He now stood alone, grim-faced.

  ‘You know,’ Pringle said in worried tones. ‘Harriet must have had a real skinful yesterday. She does look less than secure aboard.’

  Both Meredith and Markby looked towards Harriet. Whilst they had been watching the protesters, a waitress had come out of The Crossed Keys hotel on the corner of the square carrying a tray of interesting-looking glasses. She took it from rider to rider. Harriet had picked up one and tilting back her head, drained it at a single gulp.

  ‘Told her not to have any of that, didn’t I?’ growled Pringle. ‘She’s the most difficult, awkward, obstinate woman I ever came across, even if she is one of the best-looking.’

  Fearon was watching her too and looking concerned. As if aware of his scrutiny and annoyed by it, she jerked Blazer’s head round and turned the horse’s tail towards Tom. This led her to stare straight towards Rupert Green and his companion who still waited on the outskirts of the throng. Then she turned her head deliberately aside from them, touched her heels against the chestnut’s gleaming flanks and moved away.

  ‘I just hope,’ Meredith said, ‘that she doesn’t see the chap with the placard. He asked her to sign his wretched petition on Friday after he asked me, and got sent awa
y with a flea in his ear. If she sees him today she might go over there and tell him his name for nothing again.’

  ‘Had a bit of a set-to, did they?’ Markby sounded interested.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that. But she did give him a hefty shove and he nearly fell. The silly chap ought to have expected it. I mean, she was all kitted out in breeches and boots and he surely didn’t think he had a likely candidate for a signature?’

  She fixed a doubtful gaze on the whiskery young protester, willing him by some telepathy to keep back out of the way. That he had quite the opposite intention was obvious. The placard was swaying in the air, his lean face was twisted in excitement. Thrill of the chase, she thought. What motivates him is the same thing as motivates the riders. He’s got a quarry and he means to run it down.

  Out of the corner of her eye she was aware of the group of horses and riders. One horse had detached itself and ambled towards the line of protesters but it was not for a moment that Meredith realised, with a pang of dismay, that it was Blazer carrying Harriet. Miss Needham was now slumped slightly in the saddle. At first, just for a second, Meredith thought she had seen the placard and was going over to argue the point. But one look at the lacklustre picture presented by the normally spirited Harriet convinced Meredith that she was not even aware the protesters were there, let alone that she had approached so close. Meredith found herself involuntarily raising an arm to attract attention. She wanted to shout out, ‘No, Harriet – not over there!’ But even if she had, it was unlikely Harriet would have heard her.

  The protesters themselves seemed surprised and, as a group, moved back out of her way by some joint instinct. Blazer was a large animal. The one person amongst them who didn’t move back was the young man with the whiskers and the private placard of his own. He was already standing apart and when he saw Harriet coming, he alone moved forward as if to challenge her.

  It all seemed to happen at once. Meredith thought, he’s recognised her! The silly idiot is going to shout some sort of stupid abuse at her and she’ll bite his head off!

  Pringle exclaimed, ‘Who’s the silly sod with the placard! Harriet!’ he yelled.

  At the same time, Markby muttered, ‘She’s going too close! Where’s Wpc Jones and her partner?’

  Wpc Jones was in fact several yards away and for the moment unaware of any change in the situation. But her partner, a young constable with a fresh complexion, spotted a potential flashpoint and began to walk briskly towards the group.

  They were all too slow. The whiskery young man gave a sudden outlandish yell, causing everyone to look that way, several horses to dance skittishly and their riders to curse. Perhaps Harriet had been roused by Pringle’s stentorian cry. Whatever the case, it seemed she only then became aware of the protester as he flourished the placard. She hauled on the reins and tried to back Blazer, his eyes rolling white, out of trouble. But the protester hurled himself forward, brandishing his placard under the startled chestnut’s nose. Blazer snorted wildly and reared.

  As Harriet fought for control, the Master rode forward shouting, ‘Stand clear! Get back there!’ and from the constable came a shout of, ‘Oy, you, stop that!’

  But the youth seemed possessed by his own particular demon. He darted forward, heedless of the flailing hooves and cursing rider and struck out towards her with his placard.

  Time froze and events unrolled before Meredith’s horror-struck gaze as if in a slow-motion and silent film. All noise was muffled and cut out. Blazer’s forelegs cut through the air almost with grace as if he were swimming. Vaguely Meredith was aware that the protesters and the other surrounding crowd members had parted like the waves of the Red Sea, falling back on either side leaving Harriet, Blazer and the protester isolated.

  Then Harriet fell . . . toppling slowly sideways, losing reins and stirrup, flinging out her hands, her hat failing off, the snood loosening so that a lock of flaming auburn hair fluttered like an oriflamme above her collapsing body.

  Then she landed on the Market Square flagstones with a sickening crash to lie motionless.

  Noise, after a moment’s horror-filled hush, returned. Now everything seemed to happen at top speed. Faces frozen in the crowd became animated. Limbs caught and held stiffly in awkward attitudes jerked into life as if an electric current had been applied to them. They surged forward around the prostrate figure on the ground and then shrank back.

  Pringle bellowed the classic formula, ‘Let me through, I’m a doctor!’ and hurtled across the square, scattering dogs and horses, his duffel coat flapping to either side like great brown wings.

  Blazer had bucked away riderless, empty stirrups flailing, reins trailing loose. Someone, Meredith saw it was Fearon, grabbed at the bridle. It must have been an automatic reaction because he was looking down at the motionless figure and shouting, ‘Harriet!’

  The protesters looked appalled, suddenly all very young and frightened, huddling together pathetically beneath their joint banner. The bearded youth stood alone over his victim, seeming swept up in a euphoria of victory. He turned, like a winning boxer, and raised up both arms, still brandishing the placard. The constable grabbed it from him and grabbed his arm at the same time. Wpc Jones ran up, the Master dismounted and hurried towards the huddled figure on the ground. Markby started forward and the rest of the crowd fell back, silent. Even the hounds sensed something was amiss and became still, tails pressed between hind legs, watching.

  Pringle had reached her first and dropped on to his knees beside her. Markby had come up behind him. Wpc Jones was keeping back the crowd and he called to her, ‘Send for the ambulance!’

  ‘Get up, Harriet,’ Meredith whispered uselessly. ‘Move . . . please move . . . just move a hand . . .’

  But it was obvious Harriet was not going to get up and remount. ‘Has she broken something?’ asked an anxious voice in the crowd.

  Pringle looked up at Alan Markby stooping down beside him. He spoke quietly but in the silence which had fallen his words were all too clearly heard.

  ‘She’s dead!’ he said. As he spoke a dark pool of blood began to gather under the luxuriant mane of Harriet’s auburn hair which had escaped from the loosened snood and spread slowly over the ground.

  The clip-clop of a hoof came almost like a gunshot in the quiet which followed. Rupert Green had ridden forward from his position to the rear of the crowd. He looked down at Harriet’s motionless body and took off his top hat. The traditional, yet so unexpected, sign of respect in the presence of death shocked Meredith almost more than anything else that had happened. The other male riders, all of whom looked stunned, seemed jolted by Green’s gesture and there was a scramble to imitate it. Fearon, his swarthy face as white as a ghost beneath the tan, removed his hard hat slowly, the last to do so, and with an angry look at Green as if he felt the financier had somehow insulted rather than honoured the lifeless form sprawled on the flagstones.

  Holding his top hat to his chest, Green leaned from the saddle towards the bearded young man, securely grasped between the two constables.

  ‘You killed her!’ he said in cold accusing tones. ‘You killed her and you meant to!’

  Markby began, ‘Just a moment—’

  But before he could finish a clang of metal and a shattering crash of glass caused them all to spin round. The waitress from The Crossed Keys, unsuspecting, had come out with a fresh supply of punch. Harriet’s body lay directly in her line of sight. She had promptly dropped her tin tray and her shrill shrieks began to split the crisp winter air.

  Geoffrey Haynes, forgotten by Meredith and unseen by her for some time, strode out of the crowd, up to the waitress and slapped her face. ‘Stop that, you stupid woman!’ he ordered.

  ‘All right, sir, all right, I’ll take care of her!’ Wpc Jones shouldered him brusquely aside.

  Faintly, in the distance and coming nearer, growing louder, the two-tone cry of a siren announced the imminent arrival of the ambulance. It really need not have hurried.

&
nbsp; ‘I tell you, I didn’t know she was going to fall off, did I?’ Simon Pardy mumbled for the third or fourth time in the aggressive undertone which seemed to be his preferred manner of replying to any remark. He accompanied his words with a defiant glare from beneath his brows and chewed at the corner of his lip.

  ‘What did you think might happen?’ Markby returned, increasingly irritated.

  Everything about this sullen youth annoyed him and it was hard not to show it. But a rational discussion with the young Pardy was not something easily achieved. He understood now what Meredith had meant. Simon naturally put people’s backs up. He had entered the police station in a storm of self-righteous protest and had been by turn hectoring, belligerent and spiteful. As the reality of his situation dawned on him, he turned whingeingly self-defensive. Underneath it all, Markby suspected, Simon was badly frightened at the result of his action – but that did not mean he had not intended to do it. A deed planned in cold blood may appear very different to the perpetrator if he ever gets round to carrying it out. Young Pardy could be terrified at his own success. Markby had seen such things before.

  Simon, for all his shambling manner and muttered speech was a highly articulate young man and Markby had learned upon enquiry that he was the product of a minor public school – although it was doubtful whether the school would have cared to broadcast his presence amongst its alumni. In appearance he was singularly unprepossessing. His age, Markby now knew, was twenty. His clothing was grimy. His nails were bitten to the quicks. His face was gaunt and unshaven. He had a nervous twitch which jerked at a muscle at the corner of his thin-lipped mouth and a malevolent stare. The nervous twitch might well be newly acquired and the result of present circumstances.

  ‘I didn’t know she’d fall off like that!’ Simon repeated again. ‘Those people are supposed to be good riders, aren’t they? Anyway, they’re always falling off riding across country and they know how to fall. You know, like acrobats do, head tucked in and roll over. But she went down like a sack of spuds and cracked her head open. I didn’t expect that, did I?’