When the Devil Drives (30 page)

‘Taking the news to the prime minister?'

‘Could be.'

We stared at each other.

‘So you knew the lady?' he said.

‘She came out riding with me on Bella. How did she die?'

He looked down at the grey's large hooves. ‘Throat cut.'

‘Where have they taken her?'

He gestured over his shoulder. ‘Into the barracks, from what I heard.'

‘Why in the world did they take a woman's body into the barracks?'

He shrugged. ‘It was the soldiers who found her.'

But I thought he guessed the real answer, as I did. She'd been whisked away from public sight and, more than that, from the workings of the law. The discovery of her body was news that had to be carried to Downing Street by the fastest horses in the royal stables.

A cart was turning into the street where we were standing, the driver making signs that we should get out of the way.

‘Need somewhere quieter than this,' Amos said.

He led the mare down the street, through a small gateway and back into the park. Three miles or so in the distance, the horse and rider were still celebrating a triumph on their hilltop. After a first glance, I didn't look at them. Amos found a tree trunk and, in spite of my protests, spread his jacket for me to sit.

‘You haven't told me why you're working at the mews,' I said. ‘Or can I guess?'

He held the mare's reins while she ate grass and told me the story in his usual won't-be-hurried way. ‘I couldn't leave things as they were, not after the way they set on me. If it had been one man, even two men and I'd got the worst of it, then I'd have had to own they'd bettered me and that would have been that. But a whole gang on one man's not fair dealing and I won't stand for it. So I went looking for them, and I thought I knew where it started.'

‘Down here, that first weekend you came down to Egham?'

‘Yes. That Saturday night, I was in one of the other public houses further along the street, the White Lion. It's a bit of a run-down place and the beer's nowhere near as good as the Red Lion, but a man who had a horse he thought I might be interested in was going to meet me there. So I was sitting there waiting for him, drinking my beer, when the door opens and this gang of men comes in as if they owned the place. Pleased with themselves, they were, already half cut. There were five of them, two foreigners. Two of the ones who weren't foreigners were wearing some sort of uniform I didn't recognize, though I know it now.'

‘What?'

‘Windsor uniform. What the people from the castle wear. The others were dressed like sporting gentlemen, only they weren't gentleman, more the neither one thing nor the other riff-raff you get hanging round race courses. Any road, they heard me asking the landlord for another beer and one of them, little runt of a man, started trying to imitate the way I talk, only he didn't hit it off right. They never do. So I stood it for a while, then I just went across, picked him up by his collar and the seat of his pants and hung him on a beam.'

‘Hung him!'

‘Not by the neck. There was this low beam across the room. I just put him over it, quite gentle, stomach down, his legs threshing away on one side and his arms the other, making little peeping noises like a puppy dog. I thought one of his friends would take him down, but they were laughing fit to do themselves a mischief, making fun of him. In the end, I had to put him back on his feet myself. So after that, one of the foreign ones buys me a drink and they all start acting as if we were bosom friends.'

A line of cavalry went by us and away up the Long Walk, helmets and harness buckles glinting even on this sunless day. The rocking horse mare raised her head for a few seconds to watch them, then went back to her grazing. Amos went on with his story.

‘By then, I'd got the measure of them and I thought if there was summut dirty going on, they'd be just the types to know about it. So we talk about racing for a while, then I turn the conversation to gentlemen's sporting clubs and of course they know every gambling hell and what have you from one side of London to the other. So then I slip in a word about the devil's chariot and the air changes as if a fox had walked up to a hen run. One of the foreign ones steps in quickly and says they haven't heard about anything like that. Not likely, was it, with everybody in London going on about it? After that, the same man keeps looking at me sideways on, then starts trying to draw me out about who I am and where I come from. I say that's my business. The way the foreigner's looking at me, I'm thinking I'm going to have to have him up over the beam as well, but then the man I'm supposed to be meeting walks in. I tell him we'll have our talk at the Red Lion instead because the company's better, wish them all good evening and go.'

He paused for breath.

‘Did they come after you?' I said.

‘Not that I noticed, not then any road. But when we got outside, there was this chariot parked, reins hitched round a post, slovenly-like. It was standing near the lamplight from the door, so I had a good look at it. A black laquered dress chariot, hammercloth and wheels black as well. Two dock-tailed dark bay cobs in the shafts, well matched except the near one had a white sock on the off hind where most people wouldn't notice on account of it being on the inside. I knew it must be what some of the gang in the White Lion had arrived in and it was just their style to leave a nice outfit like that without anyone to hold it and no water bucket for the horses. Anyway, I went back to the Red Lion and settled the business with my man. When he'd gone, about an hour later, I strolled back down the street and there was the chariot, still hitched outside. And bother me, nobody had thought even then to bring a bucket of water for those horses and by then they were so desperate to get to the trough they'd got the reins all tangled round and one of them had a leg over the traces and could have broken it. I felt like putting my head inside and yelling for the crew of them to come out and see to it, but it was quicker to do it myself. So I got them sorted, found a couple of buckets and scooped some water out of the trough. They each sucked down two bucketfuls so quick you didn't see it go. Nearly died of thirst while those galumphuses were pouring beer down their throats inside.'

Cruelty to horses was one of the few things that could disturb Amos's calm. But I guessed this wasn't the point of the story and waited. After a while, he went on in his usual tone.

‘So I stayed with them a bit, making sure they'd calmed down. The reins and traces were all cut up, where I'd had to take a knife to them to get the horse untangled, but that served them right. Still, from habit, I tidied up as best I could. In the ruckus, the hammercloth from the top of the driver's box had slipped a bit. You know there's a space under the box where the driver can keep a few things? Anyroad, there was this horn sticking out of the box.'

‘Horn?'

‘First sight, I thought it was a hunting horn, so I gave it a tug, thinking I'd blow a good loud “Gone away” on it, to wake the lot inside up to their duties. But I tugged at it and it wouldn't come. By then, the idea had got in my head, so I opened up the box, still holding on to the end of that horn. Only it wasn't a hunting horn at all, just the other kind. And there was a head attached to it.'

The sky and park seemed to swing round us.

‘A bull's head,' I said.

Amos nodded, face grave. ‘Two of them.'

‘So what did you do?'

‘First thought was, I'd go in there and have it out with the pack of them. Then it struck me that wasn't so sensible, look.'

‘Thank goodness for that.'

‘If I could've got them somewhere with proper sporting men about, I could take on any one of them in a fair fight, one after the other if they liked. But there was more to this. So I thought about it a bit, then I took out my knife and put a couple of little nicks in the hoof of the one with the sock on the off hind – nothing to hurt the horse or that anyone would notice, just so I'd know for sure when I saw it again.'

‘Clever.'

And yet he looked shamefaced and hesitated before going on. ‘Well, maybe what I did after that wasn't so clever.'

I waited. He didn't look at me.

‘I suppose I wanted to unsettle them,' he said. ‘I couldn't stand them swaggering, thinking they were getting clean away with it.'

‘So what did you do?'

‘Picked up the bulls' heads and put them inside on the seat of the chariot. Give them something to think about when they went to sit down in the dark.'

‘Oh Amos.'

‘Waste of breath oh Amosing me. It's done now.'

The cavalry were just a line of glinting helmets in the distance by now, going towards the Copper Horse. I wondered if they knew what had happened there this morning. Probably. It was only a matter of time before all the town heard.

‘And were these the same men who attacked you in Hyde Park?' I said.

‘Yes. Two of them I recognized the voices, one foreign and one the runt I'd put over the beam. But they'd brought in some others as well, big bruisers.'

‘How did they know where to find you?'

‘They might have followed me back. Traffic's heavy once you're past Staines, and I was in a hurry so I might not have noticed. Otherwise they might have found out where I worked from the Red Lion. I didn't make a secret of it. You want people to be able to find you in case they've got a good horse to sell, look.'

‘They must have wanted to kill you.'

‘Very likely, but they found this cock wouldn't let his neck be wrung easy.'

‘There were two men asking for you round the livery stables,' I said.

‘Thought there would be. That's why I didn't let on to anyone where I was going.'

‘So you came down here again to look for men and the horse with the nick in its hoof?' I said.

‘That's right. From the uniforms and they way they were acting, I guessed they were something to do with over there.' He jerked his shoulder back towards the castle.

‘So that's why you took work at the Royal Mews?'

He nodded.

‘And did you find it?'

I knew the answer before it came, because of the angry and baffled air about him.

‘Not hide or hair of them. And the horses don't come from there either. One thing about being on bucket duty, you get a good look at their legs. No dark bay dock-tailed cob with that particular shape of white stocking on its off hind, let alone nicks in its hoof.'

Which settled it. Amos might, just possibly, be wrong about a man, but never a horse.

‘It was a chariot they carried the contessa's body in,' I said. ‘I wish I'd thought to look at the horses' legs.'

‘You shouldn't have done what you did.' The words burst out of Amos so violently that the placid mare raised her head, looking startled. ‘Going down in that pit, knowing what you knew, that was asking for trouble.'

‘I didn't know. I was guessing. What else did you expect me to do?'

‘You should have waited for me.'

I could have pointed out that I didn't know where he was or when he was likely to be back, but he was so hurt and angry I decided against it.

‘When did the news that the woman's body had been found start spreading round the mews?' I said.

‘Early, soon after they found her.'

‘Did people seem shocked?'

‘Hard to tell, seeing I wasn't supposed to know about it.' He thought for a while, staring down at the ground, then said slowly, ‘I'd say they were shocked, but not surprised, if you know what I mean. Some of them go up and down from London and they knew about the other girl, the one they found by the statue.'

‘So people were connecting them at once?'

‘Yes. I heard somebody saying something about coming close to home, then he went quiet when he saw me. Then there's the date, of course.'

‘Date?'

‘Last day of October today. Halloween.'

I hadn't thought of that. It was all part of the pattern, the bodies discovered in ways likely to cause superstitious fear, the way they were kept until the moment for them to take their place in some pattern I still didn't understand.

‘If somebody wanted it to be connected with Halloween, wouldn't he have waited until tonight?' I said.

Amos shrugged and I could see why. The question shouldn't have mattered, but it was part of something larger nagging at my mind.

‘Did anybody say anything about the police being called?' I said.

‘No.'

I guessed that in royal parks, the police would rank some way below the soldiers and even the rangers.

‘So what do we do now?' Amos said.

‘I must go back to London.'

‘Why?'

‘I think – I hope – I may make sense of this.'

A faint hope, but all there was.

‘We'll go together, then,' Amos said.

‘But Tabby's still at the Red Lion. Anyway, what about her?' I looked at the rocking horse mare.

Amos considered. ‘There's a London stage leaves in half an hour,' he said. ‘If I put you on that you'll be safe enough, as long as you go straight home.'

‘I will.'

What happened after that was something I wasn't ready to discuss, even with Amos. Just as well he didn't know about the fire.

‘When will you be back?' he said.

‘Tomorrow, I hope. Where will you be? I don't suppose you'll be welcome at the mews after walking out on them.'