Dead Man Riding (26 page)

But we all knew that unnecessary hiking wasn't like Nathan, and it was no surprise when Meredith came in ten minutes or so later, shaking his head.

‘I've been up as far as the woods and down to the crossroads. No sign of him.'

‘But where's he
gone
?' Imogen insisted.

Alan said, ‘Home, I suppose, or back to Oxford. He'd probably just had enough.'

‘But he wouldn't do that without telling…' Imogen had obviously been going to say ‘Midge' but made it more tactful ‘… without telling somebody.'

Midge said, her voice harsh from keeping the tears back, ‘After it happened, he was trying to persuade all of us to go away with him.'

Alan was clearly hurt by the desertion too, but determined not to show it.

‘It's not as if he could do anything, after all. Perhaps we'll get a polite note in a couple of days saying thank you for the hospitality.'

‘It's simply not like him,' Imogen said. ‘I've never known a man who'd do more for his friends than Nathan.'

All she got was another shrug from Alan.

*   *   *

For the rest of the day Midge kept glancing up the track from the road, hoping to see Nathan walking down it and thinking that Imogen and I weren't noticing. Towards the middle of the afternoon she decided she'd go up to the barn with a book and for once discouraged Imogen and me from coming with her. I went to look for Meredith and found him in the vegetable patch, weeding onions.

‘Shouldn't you be working at the book?' I said.

He smiled. ‘Most people get along without philosophy but we all need onions.' Then, more seriously, ‘Yes, I know I should be but I can't concentrate.'

‘Nathan?'

‘Yes. It is very uncharacteristic.'

‘What does uncharacteristic mean, after all? Only something that we didn't know about him so far.'

He pulled up a groundsel plant. ‘That sounds bitter.'

‘It is bitter. He's hurt Midge very badly.'

I knelt down and for a while we weeded companionably. When we got to the end of a row I made up my mind to tell him.

‘Somebody put the knots on the fire last night.'

He stared. I told him what had happened and what I'd done, not trying to give explanations or excuses.

‘Are you quite sure they were the same ones? After all, you only saw them for a moment in the firelight.'

‘I'm sure. Leather thongs like the ones in the tack room and that thick string that went under the horse's belly.'

‘We dragged a lot of things up for that bonfire. I suppose they could have caught on something without the person being aware of it.'

‘Yes, but that would mean they'd been hidden somewhere for the past five days, wouldn't it? I've been looking on and off and haven't found them in any of the likely places.'

‘You realise they're evidence – or would have been?'

‘Yes. I can't justify it, but I think if I had it to do again, I'd make the same decision.'

‘That's honest at any rate.' From his expression, he was seeing me in a new light. I was sorry about that. ‘You must have had some reason.'

‘At the time, no. At least I didn't think so. But I suppose I knew that if they'd been put on the fire deliberately, or hidden somewhere and put on accidentally, it had to be by somebody here.'

The kitchen door opened. Dulcie came out, threw a handful of crumbs to the hens, gave us one of her slow smiles and went back inside. We stopped talking until the door closed behind her.

‘Where does this leave your hypothesis?' he said.

‘Major Mawbray? It wrecks it, I admit that. He couldn't have hidden the leather thongs and string in the first place and he certainly couldn't have put them on the fire last night.'

And yet, stubbornly, I didn't want to give up my theory. I decided not to tell Meredith, for the meantime at least, about my tea with Major Mawbray and how he'd reacted to the news about Dulcie. I knew I'd given him more than enough to think about and quite probably wrecked my reputation in his eyes. I was comforted a little because he'd said I was honest – but he must have realised when he said it that what I was being honest about was dishonesty. He could even, if he wanted, go to the coroner and tell him Miss Bray had deliberately destroyed evidence. I didn't think he'd do that – at least not without telling me first.

*   *   *

I left Meredith in the vegetable patch and went through to the stable yard to wash the dirt off my hands in the drinking trough. Imogen was sitting on the edge of it, staring down into the water. She watched as I dabbled my hands.

‘Weeding with Meredith,' I explained.

‘Has he any more idea why Nathan's gone?'

‘No.'

‘Perhaps Alan's right after all. He's simply deserted us. Poor Midge is devastated.'

‘I hadn't realised she felt quite like that about him. I knew they got on well but…'

‘I don't think she'd realised either. It's funny how suddenly it can come to you. You think you know somebody as a friend, then…'

‘Like you and Alan?'

‘Yes.' She swung her foot in its white stocking and tennis shoe worn for coolness and stared at it. ‘Alan and I have had an argument, Nell.'

‘I shouldn't worry. Aren't lovers' tiffs considered a normal part of the process?'

‘What's normal? I feel so bad about it now, making things even worse for him, but we had to talk about it.'

‘What?'

‘About that awful will. He says he's not going to accept the Old Man's legacy.'

‘Five thousand pounds is a lot of money.'

‘I know. Enough to start a school.'

That didn't come as a complete surprise. We'd all of us discussed educational reform, especially as a way of levelling inequality between classes and sexes. Still, I'd never thought of either Imogen or Alan as teachers.

‘That's what you think he should do with it?'

‘Yes. Not the usual sort of school. It's something we've talked about and he's discussed it with Meredith too. A new school for a new century with boys and girls being encouraged to ask questions, develop their minds, take nothing for granted. It would be quite small at first, but we'd write a book about what we were doing, perhaps train teachers to start other schools like it and…'

‘I suppose you could still do that in time, even if he turns down the Old Man's money.'

‘Time, time, time.' She flicked the surface of the water, ruffling it. ‘If he's got no money he'll have to be an ordinary teacher in some awful boys' public school and all the ideas we have will get ground down to nothing or even if we believe in them still we shall get scared and conventional and not do anything because it might offend people. And in time we'll be a housemaster and his wife and have lots of ordinary children and go to chapel and die without doing anything with our lives. That's what time does.'

Perhaps she wanted me to argue, but the sheer bleakness of the picture and the anger in her voice took my breath away. She went on talking, looking down into the water.

‘It's when you're young that you need to do things, when you still believe in them, but most people can't because they haven't got the money. Now it's happened and Alan wants to throw it away.'

‘Has he told you why he doesn't want to accept the money?'

‘Nothing that makes sense. There's this business of not burning the body as his uncle wanted…'

‘But that was a codicil, not a condition of inheriting.'

‘I know. So then he said he'd feel the money was tainted.'

‘You mean because of young Mawbray, or the way the Old Man died, or Dulcie?'

‘I don't know. Alan won't talk about it. He just says it's his decision. He wants us to get engaged but keep it secret for a while, go back to Oxford and be patient.'

‘And you don't agree?'

‘It all seemed so clear a few days ago but so much has happened I don't know any more, except that I still love him. But I know it would be wrong to refuse the money.'

‘I think I agree with you.'

‘Good, because I want you to help me persuade him.'

‘If he won't listen to you, I'm sure he won't listen to me.'

‘You seem to be getting on well with Meredith. No, don't blush and look away from me. I saw your faces when you came in the other night. Will you talk to Meredith for me? If he tells Alan it's his moral duty, he might listen to him more than me.'

‘I haven't got that sort of influence with Meredith. Anyway, I'm not sure he'd say it was a moral duty.'

‘If money gives you power to do things, isn't it right that good men should have it rather than bad?'

‘If good men can be guaranteed to stay good.'

‘Nell, don't start a debate. Just help me.' She leaned against me, heavy with the accumulated weariness of the past few days. I put an arm around her to stop her sliding off the edge of the trough and into the water. As far as their argument was concerned I was on her side, but my mind was full of another problem.

‘Imogen, that night – the night he died. Did you and Alan see or hear anything?'

She went tense. ‘What do you mean?'

‘The horse was still in the top paddock at sunset and the tack's kept in the room under our loft. Somebody had to do a lot of coming and going in the dark, whether it was the Old Man or somebody else. You and Alan were out there until about one o'clock so I wondered—'

‘Nell, what is this?'

‘Did you see anything?'

‘No.'

‘Hear anything?'

‘No, no, no. And don't go asking Alan. He's had enough from the police without your interrogating him.'

‘Am I interrogating?'

‘Yes. For some reason you and Meredith have got it into your heads to play detectives and you're trying to impress him. I think it's unforgivable to experiment with people's feelings like that.'

She stood up, turned her back on me and walked away towards the house. There was enough truth in what she'd said to leave me feeling sick and shaken. Perhaps because of my wandering life, the friendships I'd made in college meant a lot to me and now it looked as if I'd trampled on one of the closest of them.

*   *   *

The atmosphere in our loft that night was tense, with Imogen not speaking to me and Midge subdued. I guessed from the sighs and rustling of the hay mattresses that we were all sleeping badly but there were none of the whispered conversations we'd had on other nights. Long after midnight it was still oppressively hot. At Midge's suggestion we'd opened all the long windows over the stable yard before going to bed, but it didn't seem to make much difference, so I was at least half-awake when the shouting started. It came at first from the other yard near the house, a man's voice, shouting, ‘Stop. You there, stop.' Then there was the sound of running feet, coming through the arch into the stable yard. All three of us were out of bed and at the open windows in the same instant. A figure came rushing out of the arch, on to the paving just below us. The moon was down and it was too dark to see more than a shape, except looking at it from above there was a glint of pale hair.

‘Stop.' It was Kit's voice shouting, echoing under the arch. The figure swerved, then ran diagonally across the yard making for the gateway that led towards the mares' paddock. Kit came into view, white shirt showing clearly, still shouting but running clumsily because of his arm. The figure got to the gate, vaulted over it and disappeared. I didn't see what happened next because the three of us were running down the stairs and out through the tack room. By the time we got into the yard only Kit was there by the gateway breathing heavily.

‘This confounded arm. There's no point chasing him…'

‘What's happening?'

The three of us must have looked a sight in nightdresses and bare feet, hair down. Kit wasn't much better with his shirt pulled out over his trousers, bare feet pushed into unlaced shoes.

‘I was just going out to the—' Then the impropriety of what he was saying struck him. What he meant, obviously, was that he was on his way to the lavatory beside the cart house. ‘Anyway, I'd been out in the yard and I was on my way back into the house. The kitchen window had been left open, because of the heat, I suppose, and I saw this man climbing in. I thought at first it might be Nathan coming back but he was the wrong shape so I yelled at him and he wriggled out and shot off.'

While he was explaining to us Alan and Meredith arrived in the yard, also in shirt and trousers. Robin came behind them carrying one of the big lamps from the kitchen. He was in his normal working wear of corduroy trousers, waistcoat and boots. When Kit asked if he'd seen anything, he shook his head.

‘Did you get a proper look at him?' Meredith asked Kit.

‘No. Medium height, I'd say, and he must be young from the way he ran.'

They discussed whether it was worth going after him and decided there was no chance of finding him in the fields in the dark. Alan suggested they should go back inside and check that he hadn't set fire to anything.

‘Perhaps it's somebody who doesn't know the Old Man's dead, still trying to burn him out.'

‘But everybody must know by now,' Imogen said. ‘They've got nothing against any of us? How could they have?'

Nobody answered her. I left them to it and walked through the arch to the house, past caring about being in my nightdress, hard earth pleasantly cool to my bare feet. I was looking for the only person who hadn't appeared so far. Dulcie Berryman might be a sound sleeper in the big feather bed, but she could hardly have missed what was going on in the house and outside. The kitchen door had been left open when the men rushed out. I walked inside and there was nothing but the dark shapes of furniture and the smell of ham and cheese. Not a sound from Dulcie's room at the top of the stairs. I waited for a while in case she came down, then noticed something small and white under the windowsill. A piece of folded paper. I had to rustle around in the kitchen drawer for matches to read the writing on it. An educated person's writing, nothing like the scrawl of the other note. ‘I must see you. Usual place on Saturday. Can you get some of the money now? Tell them you need it to pay bills. Ten pounds would do.' No signature. I put the matches back in the drawer and took the note with me. Imogen and Midge were both in the loft when I got back, but the men were still muttering below in the yard. It was beginning to get light.