The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries (14 page)

“I haven’t put a foot outside since, and it’s been nothing but people at the door with bills, bills, bills. When he was alive, you see, they all knew he’d meet them, but now he’s gone they don’t have any pity and there’s not so much money in the house as a third-class fare back to London.”

She bent her head and wept in earnest. I tried to comfort her, although there was very little I could do or say. She looked up at last, eyes brimming with tears.

“I was fond of him, you know. I really was fond of him.”

Before I left I asked if she knew anybody who owned a white Arab stallion. No more than the man in the moon, she said.

I borrowed a hack from Harry and spent the rest of the afternoon riding out to Sir Percy’s estate to look at the island, to no effect whatsoever. When I got back to the livery stables we had supper, chops and eggs cooked on the old stove in Harry’s den next to the saddle room. It seemed that my rescue of Lucy Dester from the butcher was the talk of the town and he made a few heavy-hooved jokes on the theme.

“You’re right, though, she seems a decent enough woman in her way, and she has nothing to gain from his death – quite the reverse.”

We’d already agreed that I should stay the night in the hayloft, and we were sorting out horse rugs when there was a knocking at the yard gate. Harry’s head came up.

“Who the devil is it at this hour?”

It was past ten o’clock, deep dusk, with no sound but the horses munching hay in their boxes. The big double gates to the yard were bolted, but there was a smaller door cut into them. Harry unlatched it and we both looked out. At first there was nothing to see, then a figure stepped out of the shadows and in at the door as quickly as a bat flying. It came in a swish of silk, black garments fluttering.

“I want to buy a horse.”

It was a woman’s voice, a young woman’s. There was a desperate determination in the way she spoke and moved. She had a black bonnet covering her hair, framing a small face as pale as a frost-struck white rose. Her sudden arrival and the unlikeliness of her words left me speechless, although she’d addressed them to me. But Harry, by nature and calling, couldn’t help responding to an opening like that, whether it came from man, woman, or hobgoblin.

“What kind of a horse, ma’am?”

“The white Arab.”

I was on the point of explaining that he wasn’t ours to sell when Harry nudged my arm and drew me to one side. He whispered in my ear, “The widow.” Then, back to her: “He’s not a lady’s horse, ma’am.”

“I don’t care about that. What’s your price?”

If you listened very hard you could hear the tremor in her voice, like a high note on a violin, but to look at her she was snow and steel.

“Fifty guineas, ma’am.”

A black-gloved hand came out of her draperies, holding a small pouch.

“Count them out.”

Harry counted them on the edge of the mounting block, the coins gleaming in the last of the light, and gave the diminished pouch back to her.

“Where shall I send him, ma’am?”

“Don’t send him anywhere. Shoot him.”

I’d never have thought to see Harry thunderstruck, but if the heavens had landed on him he couldn’t have been more amazed.

“Sh . . . shoot him?”

“Shoot him tonight and bury him.”

“But . . .”

Her black glove came up, signing him to be quiet.

“He’s my horse now. I’ve bought him and paid for him, and I can have done as I like with him.”

Then, as suddenly as she’d come, she stepped out through the little door and was gone. In the stunned silence I could hear her feet tapping away round the corner. Harry looked sick.

“Well here’s a fine thing,” I said. “You’ve accepted money for another man’s horse and now you’re obliged to shoot him.”

“I’d shoot my brother first. The sheer malice of it, to want a good horse shot just because she thinks it killed her husband.”

Now she’d taken that frost-rose face away, my mind was moving again, faster than poor Harry’s.

“I don’t think that’s the game.”

“Then what is it? For pity’s sake, what is she at?”

“I think I know. I really think I see it. Harry, you should see it too.”

“I’ve got no time for guessing games. The thing is now, I’ve got to get that horse away before . . .”

“Leave it where it is.”

“I can’t do that. If she comes back in the morning and . . .”

“She won’t do that. Now listen, you know this town. Is there a public house where all the grooms drink?”

“’Course there is, The Three Tuns, but . . .”

“Will it still be open this time of night?” He nodded. “Then get over there as quick as you can and tell everybody who’ll listen what’s just happened, only don’t let them know her name. Tell them you’re going to shoot the horse first thing in the morning, then come back here.”

He looked at me, snatched up his hat from the tack room, and went at a run.

There was an empty box next to the Arab. We spread rugs on the straw by the light of a candle lantern and lay down. Aware of our presence, the white horse snorted and fidgeted on the other side of the partition. Harry had got back from The Three Tuns at about midnight, with beer on his breath and a gleam in his eye.

“Every household from here to Swindon will know about it by morning.”

“Did anybody ask questions?”

“Plenty, but I only answered what I wanted to.” He pressed something metallic against my hand. “Pistols, in case we need them. Is this person you’re expecting dangerous?”

“I should say not to us. I don’t know.”

Through the short night, between sleeping and waking, he was trying to make me tell him a name. Wait and see, I said, or guess. He knew all that I knew. By half-past three in the morning a pale light was coming in through the half door of the box. The horses in the main yard began to shuffle their straw and whinny. From the box beside us the Arab responded with gentle whickering sounds. I felt Harry’s pistol by my side and thought of that pale face.

Then: “It’s the door latch.”

I hadn’t heard it above the horse sounds, but Harry’s hearing is acute as an animal’s. He signed to me to be quiet and listen and I heard steps coming across the yard. To the horses at that time of the morning a human being signaled the first feed, and the whinnying became a fanfare. The steps hesitated at the onslaught then came on faster, almost running round the corner towards us. We were both on our feet and Harry was bounding for the door of the box, pistol in hand. I grabbed his arm and mouthed, “Wait.” The steps came past us and stopped at the box next-door. The white Arab had been whinnying along with the rest of the chorus but now his tone changed to a squeal of relief and recognition. Then there was a bolt being drawn, a man’s voice making wordless, soothing sounds, and the click of a buckle tongue on a head collar.

“Now,” I said, and Harry and I burst out just as the white Arab was being led from his box. The man on the end of the leading rope looked at first as if he intended to make a run for it, taking the horse with him, but then he looked at our pistols and stood stock still. His face was as white as hers had been, emphasizing the likeness.

“I think,” I said, “Your sister has bought the horse.”

“You had no right to sell him. Talisman is mine.”

He recovered his nerve and stood very upright at the stallion’s head. He was a good-looking young man, though a shade too fine and highly strung, like the horse itself. It struck me that he looked like a young knight from the works of the poet laureate, Mr Alfred Tennyson, and that he was possibly conscious of that fact.

“He’s a horse that killed a man,” Harry said. I don’t know if he believed it or was trying to put young Clawson at a disadvantage. The young man practically came to attention.

“Talisman isn’t guilty of killing him. I am.”

“Suppose,” I said, “you come inside and tell us about it.”

With Talisman back in his box and the three of us sitting in Harry’s cramped little den, it was hard for the young fellow to go on being noble. He told his story straightforwardly enough once he realised that I’d guessed it anyway. The point I had to help him over was the centre of it all – those twice-weekly visits by Sir Percy to my lady of the butcher’s bill. Young Clawson was ashamed of a father who’d married off his sister for money and that shame turned to raging disgust when news got to him that the brute couldn’t even be faithful to her. He was in his final term at Oxford when he heard (well provided with money and horses by that same mercenary father, but that’s by the by). He’d taken Talisman from his stable and ridden two days from Oxford to Maybridge to give his sister’s lecherous husband a piece of his virtuous young mind.

“I knew he’d be going to that woman on the Tuesday evening. Talisman and I waited on the edge of his grounds, near the lake. All I meant to do was reason with him, make him turn back and beg Emily on his knees for forgiveness.”

Harry made a noise that might have been a suppressed sneeze from the hay dust.

“He came riding along in the dusk on that mare of his. I went through the gate and rode towards him. He must have panicked. He tried to gallop away from us, but there’s no speed in that mare and he rode like a sack of coals. When he heard us gaining on him he turned her into the lake, or perhaps she bolted that way, and up onto the island. We followed. The mare shied away from us. He fell and cracked his head against a statue. I took his mare and rode away. I thought Talisman would follow, but he didn’t.”

He was panting a little, even from telling it. Then he took a long breath and looked at me.

“So now you have it. I am guilty of the death of Sir Percy Whitton and you can’t shoot the horse for it. Now, sir, if you would be kind enough to give me the loan of your pistol for a few minutes . . .”

I almost wished I had Excalibur to give him. Instead, I put on a very steely air.

“That’s all very well, Mr Clawson, but you haven’t told us the truth. The point you’ve left out of your story is that you yourself were overcome by brute, animal lust.”

Another explosive sneeze from Harry and a “Sir!” from Claw-son, equally explosive. He glared, and I think he’d have challenged me if duelling weren’t out of fashion, but he had to listen.

“I’ve no doubt you’re a fine horseman, but even a fine horseman couldn’t have induced that Arab to swim into a lake. Only one power on earth could make him do that, and she’s standing in a loose box in this yard.”

“By God,” said Harry, “Sir Percy’s mare. A mare in season.”

“A case of man proposes but horse deposes. Oh, I believe you about the first part of your story, Mr Clawson. But both your horses had interests that were nothing to do with your concerns. The female fled, the male followed and had his way with her. In the grip of that force of nature there was nothing whatsoever that either of you could do about it. In short, you were bolted with too.”

In confessing to murder, young Clawson had been a picture of dignity and control. Now he went as red as a schoolboy and hung his head. I went on more gently.

“While your Talisman was having his way, Sir Percy fell off the mare and cracked his head on the plinth.” (Paying, with ghastly appropriateness, a final tribute to Venus, though I didn’t add that at the time.) “When you found he was dead, you panicked. Your own horse-once his appetite was sated – wouldn’t cross the water back again in cold blood even for you. You took the mare and swam her to land, hoping he’d follow, just as you said. I’m right, aren’t I?”

He murmured yes without looking up. I put a hand on his shoulder.

“You mustn’t blame your sister for wanting the horse killed. The moment they told her about him she knew he was yours. She was only trying to protect you. Now, I suggest you start on your way back to Oxford before people are up and about. You can write to her from there.”

Harry led out Talisman and held the stirrup while young Clawson mounted. I said, standing close to the horse’s shoulder:

“Forget it all now. You meant no harm, and nobody will know about it from me.”

We opened the gates for him and stood watching while they rode away across the deserted market square, the rider motionless, the horse looking like something going back into a legend. When they were out of sight Harry went back across the yard and stood looking over the half door at Sir Percy’s cushion-quiet mare.

“Wonder if she took. Could be a good foal with that Arab blood.” I suggested he might make an offer for her to the young widow when he took her fifty guineas back, but knowing Harry, thought it unlikely that the lady would ever see her money again or her husband’s mare at all.