Dead Man Riding (33 page)

‘Would it be possible for Nathan to be out long enough and you and the others not notice?'

‘In theory, I suppose so. But Nathan snores.' He said it so seriously that I almost laughed, wondering if I should warn Midge.

‘Loudly?'

‘Yes. There was a certain amount of ribaldry about it. We persuaded him to move his pallet further away from the rest of us.'

‘Meaning he could have got out more easily without your noticing?'

‘The reverse. Even sleeping further away, he was very audible. If you happened to wake up during the night, you'd be very conscious of Nathan still with you.'

‘So you heard him snoring all night?'

‘I can't say that. All I can say is that on the occasions when I was awake, I was very conscious of Nathan snoring.'

We'd got to the gate at the top of the drive by then. We paused, leaning on it.

‘So that's another hypothesis of mine collapsed,' I said. ‘You might have told me that back at the waterfall.'

‘I did have other things on my mind.'

He smiled at me, looking so vulnerable suddenly that I touched his hand that was resting on the top bar of the gate. His hand grabbed mine, as fiercely as if I were pulling him out of the pool all over again, and his head came down on my shoulder.

‘Nell, I'm so sorry.'

Then his head came up again, his hand released mine and we were walking down the track side by side. I was sorry too, but I wasn't sure whether for the same thing.

Chapter Twenty

T
HE OTHERS HARDLY ASKED US ANY QUESTIONS
. For a party of talkative people it was amazing how quiet we'd become. Dulcie was owed something and I managed to get a moment on my own with her in the kitchen.

‘We've seen Mr Morrisey. Arthur Mawbray was with him that night.'

There was no surprise or relief on her face. She just gave me her usual smile and nodded as if some minor problem had been sorted out. When I left the house I found Alan sitting on an old barrel in the yard, a panama hat tipped down over his eyes for shade. He looked tired and his face had gone pink from the sun. It turned out that he'd been waiting for me.

‘Meredith said you might have something to tell me.'

That came as no surprise. The news was hardly my private property after all and he had a right to know if anyone did. He suggested we should go somewhere we could talk without being interrupted, so we went up the track to the barn field and found a shady place on a bank under some hawthorn trees. I guessed he might have been there before with Imogen.

‘Your great uncle didn't kill anybody,' I said. ‘Arthur Mawbray's alive and well.'

He listened, sucking on a grass stem, while I told him about young Mawbray and Dulcie.

‘And he has an alibi for that night?'

‘As solid as taking tea with the Queen at Balmoral. Probably more so, as far as people round here are concerned.'

He threw his grass stem away, pulled another one.

‘Odd, isn't it? A fortnight ago if you'd told me the Old Man wasn't a murderer, I'd have felt as if every care I had in the world had been lifted from my shoulders.'

‘And now?'

‘What do you think? Have you decided what you're going to say at the inquest?'

He'd turned away from me when he said it, but the grass stem was trembling in his hand. Then he noticed the tremble and clenched his fist on it.

‘Sooner or later the police will have to know that young Mawbray's alive – if they haven't guessed already,' I said. ‘But I don't think that's relevant to the inquest.'

‘No, it would only complicate matters and we don't want them complicated any more than they are already, do we?' Then more urgently, when I didn't answer at once, ‘Well, do we?'

‘No.'

‘I'm afraid Imogen's got it into her head that you are trying to complicate things.'

‘I know she has. I'm sorry.'

‘I thought what we wanted was a verdict that he killed himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed. Then we can all go away and get on with our lives.'

‘Yes.'

‘Has Imogen told you that she and I had an argument over his money?'

‘She said you thought you couldn't take it because it was tainted. What did you mean by that?'

‘I'm not even sure. But I have this strong feeling that it would be cheating him. I didn't do anything to help him and he's left me a small fortune.'

‘You came here. He wanted that. He'd almost certainly decided to kill himself while you were here. I think Imogen's right about that.'

‘I really thought he'd killed the Mawbray fellow. Now we know he didn't, it's too late.'

‘Wouldn't you be untainting the money if you did something good and useful with it?'

‘I'm not sure I trust myself as much as I did.'

‘If you turn it down, I suppose it will all go to Dulcie Berryman.'

‘Let it. I don't care.'

‘That wasn't the way you felt the day the will was read. You seemed angry.'

‘It caught me off balance, finding out all the things I hadn't been told. I really don't mind about Mrs Berryman. All I want is to get away from this nightmare as soon as I can and have a life with Imogen.'

‘I'm sure that's what she wants to.'

‘Then we must make sure she gets it. On Tuesday, you stick to the story about the Old Man trying to kill himself on the beach the day before…'

‘He really did. I'm sure of that.'

‘Yes, but the coroner might take some convincing. Still, you can be very persuasive when you want to be.'

‘Thank you.'

He missed the sarcasm. ‘And I can tell them how depressed he was about this Mafeking business, probably without bringing young Mawbray into it.'

‘I'm not sure depressed is quite the word. Embattled, more like.'

‘Nell, this is an inquest, not a
viva voce
for finals. I don't think we need to be too critical about the exact word.'

‘What a waste, after all that Plato.'

This time he did notice the edge to my voice. His tone changed and he stretched out his hand to me on the grass, almost touching mine.

‘All right, I know you hate the idea of it. So do I. For two pins I'd follow Nathan's example and do a bunk until it's all blown over.'

‘You think that's all it is with Nathan?'

‘I'm sure of it. He's a cheerful sort of creature, just not made for unpleasantness. Anyway, we can't do a bunk, you and I. All we can do is wait for Tuesday morning and put as good a front on it as we can.'

‘Only I want to know,' I said. ‘Yes, I'll play my part at the inquest if that's what's best for everybody. But I want to know what happened.'

‘Perhaps there are simply some things we shouldn't know.'

‘That's a new doctrine for us, isn't it? Weren't we all meant to be fearless seekers after truth? Away with lies and hypocrisy and pretending not to see things that don't suit us.'

‘Of course. Nothing that's happened changes that.'

I was angry already and the way he said that, humouring me, made it worse.

‘So nothing's changed? In spite of hiding things from each other and lying to each other?'

‘Who's lied?'

‘We all have, by implication at any rate. I'm as guilty of it as anybody.'

‘I haven't lied.'

‘Perhaps it's because nobody's asked you the right questions yet. Like what happened with you and Imogen on the night he died.'

He went red, ‘Nell, you can't expect me to—'

‘I'm not talking about that. There was something you heard or saw, the two of you. I asked Imogen and she was angry with me. Whatever it was, it was serious enough for you to leave her and let her walk back on her own – on that night of all nights.'

‘You've got no right to ask.'

‘Haven't I? If you're expecting me to help mislead an inquest, I think I've got every right to ask.'

‘It's got nothing to do with what happened to the Old Man.'

‘How do you know? Whatever happened to him happened in those few hours between sunset when Robin saw him with Sid in the paddock and just after sunrise when I was out and about. That's no more than six or seven hours and for some of that time you two were out here in the fields. Anything you saw or heard matters.'

He said nothing for a while then sighed. ‘If I tell you, will you promise me that it goes no further?'

‘If it's really got nothing to do with this, yes.'

‘It hasn't, but it is embarrassing. To all three of us.'

‘Three?'

‘Imogen and me and Kit. You know that Imogen and I had an arrangement to meet that night?'

‘Yes.'

‘We were sitting on the bank in this field, but further up under that maple there.'

I looked where he was pointing, to an old hedge maple with a knobbly trunk throwing a fan of shade over the field.

‘That's not very far from where Robin last saw the Old Man, in the paddock just the other side of the track.'

‘Nell, I told you, this is nothing to do with the Old Man. We didn't hear him or see him or even think about him. Do get that clear.'

‘All right.'

‘So Imogen and I were sitting under that maple in the moonlight – it was just a day after full moon – watching a hare in the field. And I remember thinking that I'd never felt as entirely happy as I did then, as if my whole life had been leading up to that moment, sitting there with the woman I loved, watching a hare in the moonlight. Can you understand that?'

‘Yes.'

‘The hare heard something first. She went bounding away and Imogen said maybe she'd smelled a fox and she thought she'd heard something moving in the hedge behind us. So we turned round to look and there was Kit, standing there on the other side of the hedge, quite still. The first thing I saw was his white sling, then his face. I've never seen anything so … so concentrated. I think he might have been watching us for a long time.'

‘What did you do?'

‘Jumped up and asked Kit what he thought he was doing. Then I pushed through to his side of the hedge and asked him again. He started talking Greek. Do you know that amazing passage from the
Symposium
where—'

‘People cut in half and looking for their other half?'

‘Yes. I kept telling him to go away, but he wouldn't. He started saying things, really wild things, that I didn't want Imogen to have to hear. I … I suppose I made a grab for him, just wanting to stop him, and I got his hurt arm by mistake. He drew in his breath and said, “Go on. Do what you like. You can't hurt me any worse.” Imogen was scared by then, begging us to stop, so I told her to go back to you and Midge and I'd deal with it. She didn't want to, but her being there only made things worse.'

‘What happened after she left?'

‘We … we went on arguing. But I was afraid if I stayed I might hurt him again. So I just left him there and went back to the others in the barn.'

‘Was Nathan snoring?'

‘What?' He'd been staring out over the hay meadow, as if still seeing the hare in the moonlight.

‘When you got back to the barn, was Nathan snoring?'

‘What's that got to do with anything? I suppose so. Nathan was always snoring.'

‘When did you get back?'

‘Some time after one o'clock, probably. I didn't look at my watch.'

We were both silent for a while. Alan had relaxed a little now the story was told but there was a feeling of sadness about him that I thought I understood. He and Kit had been friends from schooldays after all.

‘Poor Kit,' I said. ‘It must be awful to feel so jealous of somebody.'

‘I suppose so.' But he said it off-handedly, like a man who'd never needed to feel jealous of anybody.

‘He's obsessed with that passage about the bodies finding each other,' I said. ‘He quoted it in the letter to Imogen as well.'

‘What letter?' He was suddenly tense again and staring at me. ‘What letter was that?'

Until that moment it hadn't occurred to me that Imogen wouldn't have told him about her letter from Kit. She'd shown it to me after all. I realised I'd blundered and accidentally betrayed a confidence. Still, I couldn't see why Alan was looking so thunderstruck. He was the man who'd won. I stammered out something about Kit writing Imogen a letter begging her to think again – but it hadn't impressed her and to forget I'd said anything.

‘A love letter? Kit wrote Imogen a
love
letter?'

‘A plea more than a love letter. I think he already knew he'd lost her. There's no harm done to you. I'm sorry I mentioned it.'

But the man who, just a couple of minutes ago, had sounded as if jealousy didn't exist for him, was looking like Othello presented with the handkerchief. He seemed beyond speech and just went on staring at me.

‘I don't know why that's so surprising,' I said. ‘Surely you knew how he felt about her.'

He just shook his head.

‘It was obvious. You only had to look at his face when the two of you were together. You really didn't notice?'

Perhaps he and Imogen had been so absorbed in each other that he hadn't. I hoped he'd let the matter of the letter drop, but he went on worrying away at it.

‘Did he give it to her? Post it to her?'

‘If it matters, he just left it in her copy of the
Republic.'

For some reason, it did seem to matter to him. ‘What did he call her? Dear Imogen? My dearest? My darling?'

This was approaching the romantic-morbid. ‘None of those. As far as I remember he just launched straight into it. And please don't go and quarrel with Imogen. I promise you she wasn't impressed by it. Horrified, more like.'

There was nothing else I could think of to put right my mistake, beyond admitting it to Imogen and warning her. It annoyed me, though, to have to add this little worry to the rest of them. Why in the world couldn't you love somebody and still be rational? Like, for instance … well, like a lot of people. People you could drink tarry tea with on a harbour wall and not think about Gretna Green and eloping Highland chieftains – except in jest of course.