‘What then?’
‘Cortisone cream.’
She looked at my non-comprehension and smiled. ‘Cortisone cream is fine for eczema and allergies, but not for general healing. In fact, if you scratched a horse and smeared some dirt into the wound to infect it and then religiously applied cortisone cream twice a day you would get a nice little ulcer which would never heal. Until, of course, you sent your horse to Calder, who would lay his hands upon your precious... and apply antibiotics at once, to let normal healing begin.’
‘Dear God in heaven.’
‘Never put cortisone cream on a cut,’ she said. ‘A lot of people do. It’s stupid.’
‘I never will,’ I said fervently.
Pen grinned. ‘They always fill toothpaste from the blunt end. We looked very closely and found that the end of the tube had been unwound and then re-sealed. Very neat.’
She seemed to have stopped, so I asked ‘Is that the lot?’
‘That’s the lot.’
We sat for a while and pondered.
‘It does answer an awful lot of questions,’ I said finally.
‘Such as?’
‘Such as why Calder killed Ian Pargetter,’ I said. ‘Ian Pargetter wanted to stop something... which must have been this illness caper. Said he’d had enough. Said also that he would stop Calder too, which must have been his death warrant.’
Pen said, ‘Is that what Calder actually told you?’
‘Yes, that’s what he said, but at the time I didn’t understand what he meant.’
‘I wonder,’ Pen said, ‘why Ian Pargetter wanted to stop altogether? They must have had a nice steady income going between the two of them. Calder must have recruited him years ago.’
‘Selenium,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Selenium was different. Making horses ill in order to cure them wasn’t risking much permanent damage, if any at all. But selenium would be forever. The foals would be deformed. I’d guess when Calder suggested it the idea sickened Ian Pargetter. Revolted him, probably, because he was after all a vet.’
‘And Calder wanted to go on with it all... enough to kill.’
I nodded. ‘Calder would have had his sights on a fortune as well as an income. And but for Ginnie somehow getting hold of that shampoo, he would very likely have achieved it.’
‘I wonder how she did,’ Pen said.
‘Mm.’ I shifted uncomfortably on the bed. ‘I’ve remembered the name of the lad Calder had who looked like Ricky Barnet. It was Jason. I remembered it the other night... in that yard... funny the way the mind works.’
‘What about him?’ Pen said sympathetically.
‘I remembered Calder saying he gave the pills to Jason for Jason to give to the horses. The herb pills, he meant. But with Ian Pargetter gone, Calder would have needed someone else to give those double-edged capsules to horses... because he still had horses in his yard with those same troubles long after Ian Pargetter was dead.’
‘So he did,’ she said blankly. ‘Except...’
‘Except what?’
‘Only that when we got to the yard last Saturday, before I heard you calling, we looked into several other boxes, and there weren’t many horses there. The place wasn’t full, like it had been.’
‘I should think,’ I said slowly, ‘that it was because Jason had been busy working for three months or more at Oliver’s farm, feeding selenium in apples.’
A visual memory flashed in my brain. Apples... Shane, the stable lad, walking across the yard, swinging a bucket and eating an apple. Shane, Jason: one and the same.
‘What is it?’ Pen said.
‘Photos of Ricky Barnet.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘They say I can leave here tomorrow,’ I said, ‘if I insist.’
She looked at me with mock despair. ‘What exactly did you break?’
‘They said this top lot was scapula, clavicle, humerus, sternum and ribs. Down there,’ I pointed, ‘they lost me. I didn’t know there were so many bones in one ankle.’
‘Did they pin it?’
‘God knows.’
‘How will you look after yourself?’
‘In my usual clumsy fashion.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘Stay until it stops hurting.’
‘That might be weeks... there’s some problem with ligaments or tendons or something.’
‘What problem?’
‘I didn’t really listen.’
‘Tim.’ She was exasperated.
‘Well... it’s so boring,’ I said.
She gave an eyes-to-heaven laugh. ‘I brought you a present from my shop.’ She dug into her handbag. ‘Here you are, with my love.’
I took the small white box she offered, and looked at the label on its side.
Comfrey, it said.
She grinned. ‘You might as well try it,’ she said. ‘Comfrey does contain allantoin, which helps to knit bones. And you never know... Calder really was an absolute expert with all sorts of drugs.’
On Tuesday, June fifth, Oliver Knowles collected me from the hospital to drive me on some errands and then take me to his home, not primarily as an act of compassion but mostly to talk business. I had expected him to accept my temporary disabilities in a straightforward and unemotional manner, and so he did, although he did say dryly when he saw me that when I had invited myself over the telephone I had referred to a ‘crack or two’ and not to half an acre of plaster with clothes strung on in patches.
‘Never mind,’ I said, ‘I can hop and I can sit and my right arm is fine.’
‘Yes. So I see.’
The nurse who had wheeled me in a chair to his car said however, ‘He can’t hop, it jars him,’ and handed Oliver a slip of paper. ‘There’s a place along that road...’ she pointed, ‘... where you can hire wheel-chairs.’ To me she said, ‘Get a comfortable one. And one which lets your leg lie straight out, like this one. You’ll ache less. All right?’
‘All right,’ I said.
‘Hm. Well... take care.’
She helped me into the car with friendly competence and went away with the hospital transport, and Oliver and I did as she advised, storing the resulting cushioned and chromium comfort into the boot of his car.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Then the next thing to do is buy a good instant camera and a stack of films.’
Oliver found a shop and bought the camera while I sat in the front passenger seat as patiently as possible.
‘Where next?’ he said, coming back with parcels.
‘Cambridge. An engineering works. Here’s the address.’ I handed him the piece of paper on which I’d written Ricky Barnet’s personal directions. ‘We’re meeting him when he comes out of work.’
‘Who?’ Oliver said. ‘Who are we meeting?’
‘You’ll see.’
We parked across the road from the firm’s gate and waited, and at four-thirty on the dot the exodus occurred.
Ricky Barnet came out and looked this way and that in searching for us, and beside me I heard Oliver stir and say, ‘But that’s Shane’ in surprise, and then relax and add doubtfully, ‘No it isn’t.’
‘No, it isn’t.’ I leaned out of the open window and called to him ‘Ricky... over here.’
He crossed the road and stopped beside the car.
‘Hop in,’ I said.
‘You been in an accident?’ he said disbelievingly.
‘Sort of.’
He climbed into the back of the car. He hadn’t been too keen to have his photograph taken for the purpose I’d outlined, but he was in no great position to refuse; and I’d made my blackmailing pressure sound like honey, which I wasn’t too bad at, in my way. He still wasn’t pleased however, which had its own virtues, as the last thing I wanted was forty prints of him grinning.