A Very Private Murder (15 page)

The ground was uneven, criss-crossed with ridges and mounds, picked out by their moon shadows. Here and there bits of stone wall protruded from the earth for a few feet and clumps of thistles grew everywhere. I’d been here before, on my first visit to Curzon House. It was the deserted medieval village of Low Ogglethorp.

‘Toby,’ I called, very softly. ‘It’s me, Charlie. Where are you?’

‘Charlie?’ I heard her reply, almost under my feet. ‘What are you doing here?’ She was sitting on the ground in a pool of shadow, back against a fallen tree, legs sticking out in front of her. Nestling between them was something I didn’t like the look of.

‘That looks suspiciously like a shotgun,’ I said.

‘That’s because it is a shotgun.’

‘And what were you hoping to shoot?’

‘The badger diggers. I think they’re coming tonight. There were peanuts scattered all around yesterday. Badgers love peanuts. I think the diggers put them there. It’s only a four-ten; it wouldn’t kill them. Well, it might not.’ She was sobbing as she spoke.

I stooped alongside her and reached for the gun. I broke it and extracted the cartridges. ‘You can’t shoot people you don’t like,’ I told her. ‘If you did I’d have to arrest you and take you to the station. C’mon, I’ll walk you home.’

‘Mummy’s buried over there,’ she announced, pointing into the darkness.

‘Is she?’ I said, knocked off guard a little.

‘Just her ashes. It’s called Coneywarren Field because the rabbits have lived there for hundreds of years. Mummy liked to watch them, and so do I.’

‘Do you remember your mummy?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘That’s a shame. C’mon, let’s go.’

‘It’s all right. I pretend I remember her, and I have some photographs. Daddy planted a tree.’

We strolled up the lane holding hands, Toby babbling on about the things the diggers did to badgers. I asked about the dolls’ houses and the tennis, but she kept returning to the badgers.

‘What happened to the people in the lost village?’ I wondered.

‘They died of plague. And the farmers want to kill all the badgers because they say they spread TB,which isn’t true.’

The moon was riding high by now, and the path was bathed in its light, making the shadows on either side even deeper. In another attempt to change the subject I said: ‘How are you tonight? Have you got over the pneumonia?’

‘I haven’t got pneumonia. Who told you that?’

‘Um, I think it was Grizzly.’

‘I’ve got cystic fibrosis.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

She said: ‘I looked it up on Google. It said that my life expectancy is thirty-seven years.’

And that left me speechless. After what felt like about five minutes I thought of saying that I knew someone aged eighty-five who had cystic fibrosis, but I’d lost the moment. I squeezed her hand and pulled her closer.

As we approached the front door she said: ‘Will you tell Daddy?’

I’d been wondering about that and the shotgun as we walked. ‘Yes, I’ll have to,’ I replied.

‘Oh.’

‘Does he keep the gun locked up?’

‘Yes, but I know where he keeps the key.’

I made her promise to go straight to bed and stay there, and when she was safely inside I started on the long walk back to High Ogglethorpe and its feather bed, the shotgun hooked over my forearm. As I approached the road a pair of headlights came into view over a crest. They were close together, which meant an elderly Land Rover. No surprise there – this was Land Rover country. It slowed as it approached the turn-off, as if coming to the house. I stepped behind a tree and made myself invisible.

The barrier was down, so it had to stop. The driver climbed out and walked into the headlights’ glare as he raised the barrier. He was wearing what looked like an evening suit with a dicky bow, but it wasn’t Mr Curzon and it certainly wasn’t Kevin. As he drove into the grounds, leaving the barrier raised, I made a note of the registration number. He’d conveniently left the driver’s door open as he dealt with the barrier, so I could plainly see his passenger. It was Ghislaine Curzon.

Her driver wasn’t invited in for coffee and they didn’t talk for long. His reward for his troubles was a perfunctory peck and she let herself into the house. He came past my hiding place again in a spray of gravel and squealed the tyres as he came onto the road, the engine roaring in low gear, the barrier left pointing at the sky.

I crossed the lane, climbed over the stile and turned my back on Curzon House before another act in the late-night melodrama could keep me from my bed. I thought the countryside was supposed to be quiet, but it had been quite a night. I slept like a top for what was left of it, the shotgun propped in the corner for extra reassurance.

The postmistress had told me where Motty Dermot, head lad at Jonty Hargrave’s yard, lived, and after one of Phyllis’s hearty breakfasts I was back in Dunkley, looking for his house number. It was a brick bungalow in a twee development designed to house a token few of the more elderly villagers, surrounded by a neat communal lawn with borders of pansies and other small flowers giving a modicum of individuality to each plot. The weather was due to change, but it was a bright morning and the man himself was sitting on a bench next to his front door, enjoying the fresh air. A white stick leant against his knee.

‘Mr Dermot?’ I asked as I approached him. He turned his head and I saw his eyes, milky white through staring into too many sunrises. ‘My name’s Charlie Priest. I’m a police officer. Do you mind if I sit down?’

He didn’t speak but moved slightly to one side in a gesture that I interpreted as an invitation to join him. He was a small man but his head and the hands that rested lightly on the stick were disproportionately large, like Michelangelo’s David. His mouth had a slight twist to it, as if he’d had a stroke sometime in the past, and I wondered if there was a pension plan for retired jockeys.

‘Can you see me, Mr Dermot?’ I asked, twisting on the seat to face him.

He nodded and said: ‘See you.’

‘My name’s Charlie. I’m a police officer. Is it all right if I call you Motty?’

‘Motty,’ he repeated, nodding again. ‘And Charlie.’

‘That’s right. How well can you see me?’

‘Blunt,’ he said. ‘See you blunt … blunt … not blunt …’

‘Blurred,’ I suggested.

He seized the word. ‘Blurred, see you blurred.’

‘Good. Do you have cataracts?’ I pointed to my own eyes.

‘That’s right. Cat … cat … cat’racts.’

‘Are you receiving any treatment for them? Are you on the waiting list?’

‘Waiting list. Long time. Long time. Put drops in. Nice comes. Not nice … not nice … put drops in.’

‘A nurse,’ I said. ‘A nurse comes and puts drops in for you.’

He nodded his agreement.

‘A nice nurse,’ I said, and he grinned.

He could have had them fixed privately for about a thousand pounds, which was pocket money to the people who lived all around him. And surely there was a jockey’s benevolent fund?

‘I believe you were Jonty Hargrave’s head lad,’ I said, and a smile flickered across his lined and weathered face.

‘The boss,’ he replied, nodding again. The nod, I decided, was his chief method of communication. It was easier for him to agree than it was for his brain to send signals down pathways that probably were dead ends as they looked for the right words.

‘Did you enjoy working for Jonty?’

More nodding, with enthusiasm.

‘He trained some good horses, I believe.’

‘Tha’s right. Good horses. Good man.’

‘Any you remember?’

That caused him problems. His face screwed up with concentration and he made noises in his throat until I galloped to his rescue. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you that. Did you stay on at the yard after Jonty sold it?’

The nods weren’t anything like as enthusiastic now.

‘Do you remember who bought it?’

‘Thrup … Thrup … Thruppance.’ The effort was agonising for him, but the connections in his brain were all wrong and the name wouldn’t come.

‘Was it Mr Threadneedle?’

His face brightened with recognition. ‘Aye. Thread … Thread …’

‘Threadneedle. Arthur George Threadneedle.’

‘Aye, him.’

‘You didn’t get on with him?’

‘No. A fool. Not like the
meister
, not like the boss. Fool.’

‘It’s about Threadneedle that I’ve come to see you,’ I said. ‘He was murdered on Monday morning. Have you any idea who might have done such a thing?’

‘Dead!’ he exclaimed. ‘Mur … murdered?’

‘That’s right. Who do you think I should talk to?’

He shook his head. ‘Long time ’go.’

‘Nobody comes to mind?’

‘No. Long time ’go.’

‘We think he was shot with a humane killer. Do you remember having one at the yard?’

Yes, he told me, after a great deal of hard work, all yards kept a humane killer to deal with any horse that broke a leg, but he didn’t know what happened to it. He didn’t have it.

I said: ‘There was a fire, I believe. Was that while Threadneedle owned the yard?’

His already dark complexion grew darker than the clouds that were heaping up in the south as he remembered one of the less favourable periods in the stable’s golden history. ‘Aye. Fire.’

‘Were you there at the time?’

He was.

‘A horse died, I’m told.’

‘Aye. Perki … Perki …’ But the name wouldn’t come.

‘Was that the end of the stable for racing?’ I asked.

‘Aye.’

‘Was the fire an accident?’

No reply. I tried again. ‘Do you think the fire was started deliberately?’ But I’d lost him. He was at a different time and place, somewhere behind the walls of chalk that defined his horizon. He was at the gallops. Hooves were thundering, shaking the earth, as a gaggle of horses came over the brow and swooped down the hill, the early morning sun glancing off the flanks of the most beautiful creatures in God’s vast repertoire. I stood up to leave.

‘Thanks for talking to me, Motty,’ I said, offering my hand. He took it, clasping my fingers rather than giving a deep handshake. He pulled me closer and for a moment I thought he was going to say something, but the moment passed and he let go of my fingers. ‘Look after yourself, and get those eyes fixed,’ I told him. ‘It’s a simple enough operation. I know lots of people who’ve had it done.’

I’d walked down his little path out onto the pavement when I heard him make a noise behind me. I turned and he was waving his stick, attracting my attention. I walked back to him.

‘Peck … Peck …’ he was saying. ‘Peck … Peck …’

‘What is it, Motty?’

‘Peck … Peck … Peccadillo.’ He flopped back onto the seat as if exhausted by his efforts to speak.

‘Peccadillo?’ I repeated. ‘Is that the name of a horse?’

Enthusiastic nodding.

‘Well done, Motty. Was it one of Jonty’s horses?’

Head shaking, downcast expression.

‘The horse that died in the fire?’

Nodding.

‘The horse that died in the fire was called Peccadillo. Is that what you’re telling me?’

It was.

‘Thanks, Motty,’ I said. ‘You’ve been a big help,’ but I didn’t see how he could have been.

Mad Maggie, with the help of the PNC, informed me that the late-night Land Rover was owned by Martin Chadwick, and further digging by her told me that he was a veterinary surgeon and unmarried. He lived only a mile from Dunkley so I decided to pay him a visit.

His home was a long, low bungalow with a triple garage at one end and an added-on surgery and waiting room at the other. A ranch fence surrounded the entire plot, which was about the size of a football pitch, give or take a penalty area. A sheep and a donkey were quietly grazing at the far end of the paddock, and a man in a country check shirt and pressed jeans was polishing a rather tasty Mercedes 280 outside the middle garage. The Land Rover I’d seen last night was parked immediately by the front door, and the man was about the same height and build as Ghislaine’s companion. He straightened up as I approached and dropped a yellow duster into a plastic box that held his car-cleaning stuff.

‘Mr Chadwick?’ I asked.

‘Yes. How can I help you?’

‘Nice car. How old is it?’

‘1971. Three and a half litres, V8, one lady owner and six boy racers. Want to buy it?’

‘No thanks. I had an E-type, once. Nearly put me in the poorhouse.’ I showed my ID and introduced myself. ‘Can we have a word?’ Actually, I sold the Jaguar at a decent profit, but he wasn’t to know that.

‘Let’s go inside,’ he suggested. ‘What’s it about?’

After declining a coffee I told him about Threadneedle’s demise and more or less everything I knew about his time in Dunkley. Chadwick nodded his agreement in appropriate places and tut-tutted a few times but didn’t add anything of substance.

Eventually I got to the important bit. ‘Do you own a humane killer?’ I asked.

He didn’t. He specialised in small animals and cattle, not horses, and sodium pentobarbitone was much less messy. He was pink and pear-shaped, with thinning fair hair and the sun-damaged capillaries of the countryman. I wondered where he bought jeans to fit him. Did some people have them made to measure?

‘Motty Dermot told me about the fire,’ I said, ‘but he’s not easy to talk to. Is there anyone else you can think of who was there?’ We were in a
Country Life
kitchen with an oil-fired Aga slumbering against the wall. Chadwick shuffled in his seat, then said: ‘Well, I suppose I was.’

I sat up. ‘You were present at the fire? I didn’t think you’d be old enough.’

‘It was back in 1997,’ he said. ‘I’d be … oh, thirty-fiveish. Yes, thirty-five.’

I did a lightning calculation and made him about twenty years older than Grizzly. ‘So you were there in your role of veterinary surgeon.’

‘Fairly inexperienced with racehorses – they guard them jealously, won’t let just anybody near them – but yes, I was. It was all over by the time I was called. I did a post-mortem of sorts on the horse that died, certified that it had a broken leg for the insurance claim, and that was it.’