Mrs. Malory and A Time To Die (8 page)

“Certainly, if someone had been prowling around they’d have been upset.”

“Yes, that’s right. Anyway, I must get on. I came out only to get some paracetamol for Jo. She’s got a rotten headache and we’ve run out.”

“Give her my love. I’ll be round to see her soon, but I didn’t want to intrude.”

“I think she’d like to see you—anyone who knew Charlie—you know.”

It’s peculiar, really; some days you can go round the shops and never see anyone you know, but other days you bump into several people all in one morning. In quick succession I saw Thea (on her way to pick up Alice from her friend Emma’s), Anthea (who wanted me to fill in for Maureen at the next coffee morning) and, finally, Rosemary, who said, “Come and have some lunch at the Buttery. I’m absolutely shattered. I’ve just been taking Mother to buy a new pair of shoes and you can imagine what
that
was like!”

“Did you find any that she liked?”

Rosemary gave a hollow laugh. “What do you think!”

“Difficult?”

“Difficult. The floor of the shop was
strewn
with shoes and the poor girl—it was Shelley, you know, Mrs. Carter’s daughter—was at her wits’ end but trying desperately to be polite.” She sighed. “I doubt if I’ll ever be able to enter that shop again!”

It was quite early when we got to the Buttery and not too crowded.

“I’m going to have soup and an
enormous
piece of chocolate gâteau,” Rosemary said. “And I’ll be obliged if you’ll have the same so that I can be indulgent without feeling guilty.”

“Actually, I could do with a little indulgence myself,” I said. “I saw Liz earlier on and asked her about poor Charlie. It was awful; she was very upset—so I feel the need of a little something myself.”

We carried our trays down to the far end of the room where it was quiet.

“Did Liz say how Jo is?” Rosemary asked.

“Coping, of course. Carrying on as usual, as you’d expect. Liz thinks it would be all right to go to see her. Actually, Alice has a lesson on Saturday—I don’t imagine they’ll have canceled it—so I’ll just go along then. Why don’t you come too?”

“Yes, that would be best.”

“I wonder when the funeral will be,” Rosemary said.

“I suppose there’ll have to be a postmortem, after the way he died, so I don’t expect it’ll be for a while.”

“I imagine Simon will help her make all the arrangements. He’s been so good, like a son to her—better than some sons, actually—and I’m so glad she’s got someone like him to support her.” She broke off and muttered, “Oh no!”

Esther’s voice behind me said, “I thought I saw you two lurking down here. Do you mind if I join you?” Without waiting for an answer (and what answer could there be?), she put her tray on the table, moved my shopping bag from the spare chair and sat down.

“I don’t often come here; I mean, it’s just snacks really, not proper food, isn’t it? But I had to do some shopping and get Gordon’s suit from the cleaners, and I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Davis about my new glasses at two thirty, so it didn’t seem worthwhile going home. Oh dear, the pastry on this quiche is very hard. I don’t think I can eat that! Perhaps I should have had the soup like you—what is it?”

“Onion and potato,” I said. “It’s homemade and very good.”

“Oh, I can’t eat anything with onion. It gives me dreadful indigestion; the same with garlic. In a restaurant, whatever they may say, I can tell in a moment if there’s even a
whiff
of garlic in anything!”

Esther settled herself more comfortably and began picking at the quiche. “So, wasn’t it dreadful about poor Charlie! Of course, the moment I heard—Simon rang me—I went round straightaway.” Rosemary and I exchanged glances. “I mean, I had to see if there was anything I could do for Jo. The police had gone when I got there, but there was still all that tape stuff they put round things. I was going up to the house—well, I thought Jo would be resting, I mean, after a shock like that, but, do you know, she was there in the stables seeing to the horses!”

“Well,” I said, “when there are animals . . .”

“But she’s got those two girls for all that sort of thing.”

“She probably wanted to keep busy,” Rosemary said, “to keep her mind off things.”

“I don’t see how mucking out stables would take your mind off a dreadful thing like that! No, I said to her, ‘You should be lying down. You go up to the house and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’ But she said Peggy had just made some and would I like a cup. Just as though nothing had happened.” She pushed her plate to one side and drank a little of her coffee. “No, what it is, she’s in denial—that’s what they call it now, isn’t it? She can’t bring herself to face up to it. Well, it’s not surprising—Charlie was her life, really; she gave up her career for him, after all. If she’d gone on in the theater she’d have been a dame by now.” She paused for a moment to allow us to take in the magnificent implications of this fact. “Still, I suppose they were happy, or as happy as anyone is nowadays.”

“Oh yes,” I said, “they were very happy.”

Esther spooned some sugar into her cup and stirred it vigorously. “This coffee’s very strong. No, what I mean to say is that she only took up all this horse business because of Charlie and now she can give it up. After all, she’s seventy-four—quite a bit older than me, and, goodness knows, I get tired sometimes. All this hard work, looking after all those horses, is heavy work and too much for someone that age.”

“She couldn’t bear to give up,” Rosemary said. “The stables are her life, just like Charlie was; they’ll mean everything to her now that he’s gone.”

“That’s all very well, but she’ll have to give up sometime. From what I hear, those stables are practically running at a loss.”

“That’s as may be,” Rosemary persisted, “but she’ll carry on to the bitter end if need be.”

“Anyway,” I said, “there’s every chance she can turn things round. She’s got a lot of new people coming for lessons and livery.”

“Yes, but now Charlie’s gone,” Esther said, “she’ll have to get someone to replace him, and that will cost money.”

“You couldn’t replace Charlie,” I said sadly. “But I’m sure she’ll manage. Liz and Peggy are splendid girls and she has a lot of voluntary help from all those horse-mad youngsters, and, of course, Simon is a great help.”

“Oh, Simon—he’s always up there. It’s that or work,” Esther said. “I often say to him he ought to be getting out more, but, of course he never listens to me. Boys are so difficult. Not that Vicky is much better. Thinks of nothing but work. She’s in America now. Simon rang her to tell her about Charlie, but she can’t get back for the funeral. You’d have thought a family crisis like that would come first, but she said she’s on a deadline, whatever that may mean.”

“If she’s in America,” Rosemary said, “she might not be able to get a flight anyway. Of course, we don’t know when the funeral’s going to be, and the postmortem will hold things up.”

“It’s perfectly awful,” Esther said, “all this business with the police and everything. It’s bad enough for poor Jo without all this.”

“And she’s perfectly right,” Rosemary said when Esther had gone. “It must make things ten times worse—churning up her feelings with every question, not being able to lay him to rest properly.”

“I know. And if they do manage to catch the person who did this horrible thing, there’ll be the trial and the whole business brought up all over again.”

I collected Alice on Saturday afternoon and drove her to the stables. As she was getting her things out of the back of the car she said, “Gran, Delia said that Charlie was dead. Is he?”

“I’m afraid so, darling.”

“So we won’t see him ever again?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She considered this for a moment. “That’s sad,” she said.

I was pleased to see that the stables seemed to be as busy as usual, with quite a few people about and Liz and Peggy leading out the horses and adjusting the girths, just, as Esther said, as if nothing had happened. I looked around for Jo and saw that she was in the yard at the back of the stables, bent over the engine of their ancient Land Rover. In addition to her other skills, Jo is also a useful amateur mechanic.

Just then Rosemary arrived with Delia, who immediately took charge of Alice and led her off to the stables. We heard her say, “It’s all right, Alice. I can tack up Cracker for you if Peggy’s busy.”

Rosemary smiled and I said, “Alice thinks she’s wonderful; it’s ‘Delia says this’ and ‘Delia says that’ all day long.”

“We’re just grateful—especially Alex—that Delia’s got someone else to boss around!”

Just then they came out and we watched while Delia helped Alice to mount and then spent a long time meticulously checking the girth and adjusting the stirrups. Finally she took hold of the bridle and led the pony off into the ring, then handed her over to Peggy.

“Very professional,” I said. “No, really, she’s quite excellent.”

“She says she doesn’t want to do A levels and go to university—just wants to work with horses. We’re hoping she’ll grow out of it!”

“Well, there are horse management courses at some universities, I believe.”

“Oh well, there’s plenty of time yet.” She looked around. “Have you seen Jo?”

“She’s round the back fiddling with the Land Rover. What do you think—shall we go and have a word, or shall we leave it till later?”

“Oh, let’s go now, I think, don’t you?”

As we walked slowly towards her, Jo looked up and, wiping her hands on a piece of rag, slammed shut the bonnet of the Land Rover.

“Hello, you two,” she greeted us, smiling.

“You look busy,” I said.

“Oh well, got to keep the old girl on the road for a bit longer.”

“Jo,” Rosemary said, “we’re so very sorry about Charlie. Such a terrible thing to have happened, especially a brutal attack like that . . .”

Jo shook her head. “No,” she said, “it wasn’t. We’ve had the postmortem report and it turns out that it was an accident after all.”

Chapter Seven

At first neither of us spoke. Then Rosemary said, “What do you mean? How could it be an accident?”

Jo opened the back door of the Land Rover and threw the piece of dirty rag inside.

“It’s complicated,” she said, “but we’ve more or less managed to piece together what happened. The postmortem showed that the injury was caused by a horseshoe. It had to be Tarquin—we examined his feet and found traces of blood.”

“But how . . . ?” I said.

“Charlie was worried about the horses after that storm, so he went down to the stables very early, while it was still dark. He went into the office to switch the lights on—that was probably when he opened the safe, since he’d been going to bring the takings back to the house—and then went in to see Tarquin, who he knew would have been the one most upset by the storm. Tarquin would have been restless—nervous from the storm and uncomfortable with the laminitis that affects his feet. Charlie would have bent down to examine them and, in doing so, knocked over a bucket—we found it rolled over to one corner of the stall. That, on top of everything else, must have startled Tarquin so that he reared up and caught Charlie a blow on the side of the head.”

“But how did he get to the office?” I asked.

“Apparently it’s perfectly possible to move after a blow to the head. It doesn’t necessarily affect you straightaway. So he probably got up and went into the office to phone for help and then—then collapsed.”

Her voice shook slightly and Rosemary said quickly, “Oh, Jo, I’m so sorry. This must be awful for you, to go over it like this.”

Jo shook her head. “No,” she said, “it’s all right. Somehow when I talk about it, it doesn’t seem as if I’m talking about Charlie, just some other person. And really, you know, it’s such a blessing.”

“A blessing?” I asked.

“Yes. When I thought he’d been killed by someone, deliberately and violently, that was almost the worst thing of all. Do you see what I mean? Charlie—who loved everyone and whom everyone loved—it seemed a sort of negation of all he’d been, his whole life, a
terrible
ending to it. But now I can accept it for what it was, an accident that could have happened to anyone.”

“Will you get Dan Webster to take the horse away?” Rosemary asked.

“No, why should I? It wasn’t Tarquin’s fault; he didn’t
mean
to do it. Actually, we’ve been making a lot of progress with him. He’s a good horse at bottom; it’s just that he hasn’t been treated properly. Liz has been working with him and he’s taken to her very well. I really believe we can get him sorted out. Charlie would have wanted us to try, anyway.”

“Well,” Rosemary said, “I think you’re being marvelous. I don’t know how you can be so strong.”

Jo smiled. “You carry on. The stables mean—meant—a lot to Charlie and me. It’s never been just a business. It’s the people and the horses and—oh, I don’t know—the whole way of life, I suppose. He wouldn’t want me to let everything go, now would he? Talking of which, I’d better get on; I’ve got a class waiting for me. See you later perhaps.”

She moved away, down to the lower ring where Liz was putting up the jumps.

“She is amazing,” Rosemary said. “Not getting rid of the horse and everything. How could she do it?”

“Well, I understand about the horse,” I said, “and about being glad that it was an accident, but I do admire the calm way she goes about things.”

“She’s never been one to show her feelings, of course. I don’t know how these things work, but I suppose all that sort of thing went into her acting.”

“Oh yes,” I said, “there was plenty of feeling there. Do you remember the way she spoke the willow cabin speech in
Twelfth Night
and the ‘patience on a monument’ bit? So moving!”

“And the young girl in
The Seagull
, goodness, that was fantastic. She was really brilliant. I can’t imagine how she could bear to give it up!”