I liked her, couldn’t help it.
She went on, ‘You’re not like my brother said. I’m afraid I didn’t explain that it is my brother who is out in the field with the vet. It was he who said I should phone you. He didn’t say you were cozy, he said you were flint. I should have introduced you to him, but you can see how things are… Anyway, I rely on him dreadfully. He lives in the next village. He came at once when I woke him.’
‘Is he,’ I asked neutrally, ‘your nephew’s father?’ ‘Goodness, no. My nephew… Jonathan…’ She stopped, shaking her head. ‘You don’t want to hear about Jonathan.’
‘Try me.’
‘He’s our sister’s son. Fifteen. He got into trouble, expelled from school… on probation… his step-father can’t stand him. My sister was at her wits’ end so I said he could come here for a bit. It’s not working out, though. I can’t get through to him.’ She looked suddenly aghast. ‘You don’t think he had anything to do with the colt?’
‘No, no. What trouble did he get into? Drugs?’
She sighed, shaking her head. ‘He was with two other boys. They stole a car and crashed it. Jonathan was in the back seat. The boy driving was also fifteen and broke his neck. Paralyzed. Joy-riding, they called it. Some joy! Stealing, that’s what it was. And Jonathan isn’t repentant. Really, he can be a pig. But not the colt… not that.’
‘No,’ I assured her, ‘positively not.’ I drank hot tea and asked, ‘Is it well known hereabouts that you have this great colt in that field?’
She nodded. ‘Eva, who looks after him, she talks of nothing else. All the village knows. That’s why there are so many people here. Half the men from the village, as well as the ramblers. Even so early in the morning.’
‘And your friends?’ I prompted.
She nodded gloomily. ‘Everyone. I bought him at the Premium Yearling Sales last October. His breeding is a dream. He was a late foal — end of April — he’s… he was going into training next week. Oh dear.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. I screwed myself unhappily to ask the unavoidable question, ‘Who, among your friends, came here in person to admire the colt?’
She was far from stupid, and also vehement. ‘No one who came here could possibly have done this! People like Lord and Lady Dexter? Of course not! Gordon and Ginnie Quint, and darling Ellis? Don’t be silly. Though I suppose,’ she went on doubtfully, ‘they could have mentioned him to other people. He wasn’t a secret. Anyone since the Sales would know he was here, like I told you.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
Ellis.
We finished the tea and went back to the drawing room. Jonathan, the nephew, stared at me again unwaveringly, and after a moment, to test my own impression, I jerked my head in the direction of the door, walking that way; and, with hardly a hesitation, he stood up and followed.
I went out of the drawing room, across the hall and through the still-wide-open front door onto the drive.
‘Sid Halley,’ he said behind me.
I turned. He stopped four paces away, still not wholly committed. His accent and general appearance spoke of expensive schools, money and privilege. His mouth and his manner said slob.
‘What is it that you know?’ I asked.
‘Hey! Look here! What do you mean?’
I said without pressure, ‘You want to tell me something, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know. Why do you think so?’
I’d seen that intense bursting-at-the-seams expression too often by then to mistake it. He knew something that he ought to telclass="underline" it was only his own contrary rebelliousness that had kept him silent so far.
I made no appeal to a better nature that I wasn’t sure he had.
I said, guessing, ‘Were you awake before four o’clock?’
He glared but didn’t answer.
I tried again, ‘You hate to be helpful, is that it? No one is going to catch you behaving well — that sort of thing? Tell me what you know. I’ll give you as bad a press as you want. Your obstructive reputation will remain intact.’
‘Sod you,’ he said.
I waited.
‘She’d kill me,’ he said. ‘Worse, she’d pack me off home.’
‘Mrs Bracken?’
He nodded. ‘My Aunt Betty.’
‘What have you done?’
He used a few old Anglo-Saxon words: bluster to impress me with his virility, I supposed. Pathetic, really. Sad.
‘She has these effing stupid rules,’ he said. ‘Be back in the house at night by eleven-thirty.’
‘And last night,’ I suggested, ‘you weren’t?’
‘I got probation,’ he said. ‘Did she tell you?’
‘Yeah.’
He took two more steps towards me, into normal talking distance.
‘If she knew I went out again,’ he said, ‘I could get youth custody.’
‘If she shopped you, you mean?’
He nodded. ‘But… sod it… to cut a foot off a horse…’
Perhaps the better nature was somewhere there after all. Stealing cars was OK, maiming racehorses wasn’t. He wouldn’t have blinded those ponies: he wasn’t that sort of lout.
‘If I fix it with your aunt, will you tell me?’ I asked.
‘Make her promise not to tell Archie. He’s worse.’
‘Er,’ I said, ‘who is Archie?’
‘My uncle. Aunt Betty’s brother. He’s Establishment, man. He’s the flogging classes.’
I made no promises. I said, ‘Just spill the beans.’
‘In three weeks I’ll be sixteen.’ He looked at me intently for reaction, but all he’d caused in me was puzzlement. I thought the cut-off age for crime to be considered ‘juvenile’ was two years older. He wouldn’t be sent to an adult jail.
Jonathan saw my lack of understanding. He said impatiently, ‘You can’t be underage for sex if you’re a. man, only if you’re a girl.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘She says so.’
‘Your Aunt Betty?’ I felt lost.
‘No, stupid. The woman in the village.’
‘Oh… ah.’
‘Her old man’s a long-distance truck driver. He’s away for nights on end. He’d kill me. Youth custody would be apple pie.’
‘Difficult,’ I said.
‘She wants it, see? I’d never done it before. I bought her a gin in the pub.’ Which, at fifteen, was definitely illegal to start with.
‘So… um…’ I said, ‘last night you were coming back from the village… When, exactly?’
‘It was dark. Just before dawn. There had been more moonlight earlier, but I’d left it late. I was running. She — Aunt Betty — she wakes with the cocks. She lets the dogs out before six.’ His agitation, I thought, was producing what sounded like truth.
I thought, and asked, ‘Did you see any ramblers?’
‘No. It was earlier than them.’
I held my breath. I had to ask the next question, and dreaded the answer.
‘So, who was it that you saw?’
‘It wasn’t a “who”, it was a “what”.’ He paused and reassessed his position. ‘I didn’t go to the village,’ he said. ‘I’ll deny it.’
I nodded. ‘You were restless. Unable to sleep. You went for a walk.’
He said, ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ with relief.
‘And you saw?’
‘A Land-Rover.’
Not a who. A what. I said, partly relieved, partly disappointed, ‘That’s not so extraordinary, in the country.’
‘No, but it wasn’t Aunt Betty’s Land-Rover. It was much newer, and blue, not green. It was standing in the lane not far from the gate into the field. There was no one in it. I didn’t think much of it. There’s a path up to the house from the lane. I always go out and in that way. It’s miles from Aunt Betty’s bedroom.’