‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Do you remember what day it was?’
She shook her head decisively. ‘If you can’t remember it, it must have been when you were away.’ She turned automatically to the computer and again the familiar frustration crossed her face. ‘It might have been in the records we lost, though I don’t really think so. I can’t remember bothering to enter anything like that.’
‘Did anyone else see Jogger’s rabbit?’
‘I simply can’t remember.’ It was clear from her expression that she couldn’t see any importance in it either.
‘Oh, well. Thanks anyway,’ I said.
She smiled without guile and turned back to her work.
Nuns, I thought. Rabbits. Nuns and monks, nuns and sisters... nuns and habits.
Jogger’s words. ‘Take a butcher’s at them nuns. There was a dead one in the pit last August — and it was crawling.’
The only rabbits that I could think of that he might mean were the rabbits belonging to the Watermead children, but even if one of those rabbits had somehow escaped and got as far as the inspection pit, it would hardly have been crawling with maggots unless, of course, it had been there dead for days when Jogger found it. It didn’t seem to be of any importance... but to Jogger it had seemed important enough for him to tell me about it — in his own unintelligible way — seven months after the event.
I looked at my watch. Approaching nine o’clock. What was I supposed to be doing at nine o’clock? The sleep-filled assignation with Marigold English swam to the surface.
I told Isobel where I was going and to reach me by mobile phone for a while if she needed me, and drove to Marigold’s yard.
She was outside in her woolly hat and came hurrying towards me when I appeared, carrying with her a bowl of horse nuts.
‘Don’t get out,’ she commanded. ‘Drive me to look at Peterman.’
Accordingly I followed her directions, which involved bumping down a grassy track to a distant paddock behind her house. The paddock sloped down to a brook and was edged with tall willow trees that would give great shade for old horses when the leaves came out.
Peterman, however, was up near the gate and looked thoroughly miserable. He put his nose down to Marigold’s offered horse nuts and then moved his head away as if offended.
‘See?’ she said. ‘He won’t eat.’
‘What are the nuts?’ I asked.
She mentioned a standard brand much used and well respected. ‘All horses like them, they never fail.’
I looked at Peterman, puzzled. ‘What’s the matter with him, then?’
Marigold hesitated. ‘I phoned my old vet on Salisbury Plain to ask him, but he said just to give the old chap time to settle in. Then I came down here again yesterday evening, and you know what a nice sunny evening it was? The sun was shining low and yellow on the old horse, and you could see them.’
‘See what?’
‘Ticks.’
I stared at her.
‘Tick bites,’ she said. ‘I think that’s what’s wrong with him. I phoned John Tigwood not half an hour ago to tell him to do something about it and he said it was rubbish and impossible, and anyway you, Freddie, had got the local vet round on Tuesday when the horses got to Pixhill, and you’d insisted on an examination, and the vet had passed the horses fully fit and had signed a document to that effect which he would show me if I liked, and really, I didn’t like his tone much and I nearly told him to fetch the horse back again, but then I’d already asked you to come and look, and knowing that you wanted this old thing well looked after... well, I decided to wait until you came and to ask you what you thought.’ She stopped, running out of breath. ‘What do you think?’
‘Um... where were the ticks?’
‘On his neck.’
I peered at Peterman’s neck, but could see only his bay coat, still thick for the winter. Come warmer weather he would shed a lot of it, revealing the short cooler coat of summer.
‘What were they like?’ I asked Marigold.
‘Tiny brown things. The same colour as his coat. I would never have seen them except for the sun, and because one of them moved.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know... maybe seven or eight. I couldn’t see them very clearly.’
‘But Marigold...’
‘You think I’m potty? What about the bees?’
‘Er...’
She said impatiently, ‘Bees, Freddie. Bees. Varroa jacobonsi.’
‘Start at the beginning,’ I begged.
‘They are mites,’ she said. ‘They live on bees. They don’t kill them, they just suck their blood until the bees can’t fly.’
‘I didn’t know bees had blood.’
She gave me a withering look. ‘My brother panics about varroa,’ she said. ‘He’s a fruit farmer and half his trees don’t bear fruit because the bees are too weak to pollinate.’
‘Oh. Yes, I see.’
‘So he smokes a pipe at them.’
‘For God’s sake...’
‘Pipe tobacco smoke is about the only thing that knocks out varroa mites. If you blow pipe tobacco smoke into a beehive all the mites fall down dead.’
‘Um,’ I said. ‘It’s fascinating, but what has it got to do with Peterman?’
‘Don’t be so slow,’ she commanded. ‘Ticks carry illnesses, don’t they? I can’t risk the ticks on Peterman hopping onto my two-year-olds, now can I?’
‘No,’ I said slowly, ‘you can’t.’
‘So regardless of what John Tigwood says, I’m not going to keep this old horse here. I’m very sorry, Freddie, but you’ll have to find him another home.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I will.’
‘When?’
I thought of her star-studded stable and of my own strong desire to transport them for ever to the winners’ enclosures.
I said, ‘I’ll walk him down to my house. There’s a patch of garden he can stay in temporarily. Then I’ll walk back for my car. Would that do?’
She nodded with approval. ‘You’re a good lad, Freddie.’
‘I’m sorry to have given you this trouble.’
‘I just hope you understand.’
I assured her I did. I drove back along the grassy track to her stable yard, where she lent me a leading-rein for Peterman and then led me by the arm to peer over a half-door at her absolute pride and joy, the three-year-old colt that, if all went well, would be contesting the 2,000 Guineas and the Derby against Michael Watermead’s sensation, Irkab Alhawa. In her, as in Michael, the fledgling excitement shimmered in the eyes, the wild hope growing.
‘You do see,’ she reiterated, ‘about Peterman.’
‘Of course,’ I said. I kissed her cheek. She nodded. I could slaughter John Tigwood, I thought, for putting me in such an awkward position, even though, I thought more fairly, it wasn’t actually his fault, as I had myself asked Marigold to take specifically Peterman.
Sighing at my folly I returned to the paddock, put on the leading-rein and led my old friend out of his idyllic pasture and along the road to the very much smaller patch of shaggy lawn in the walled garden behind my house.
‘Don’t eat the bloody daffodils,’ I told him.
He looked at me balefully. As I took off the leading-rein to walk away, I noticed he wasn’t even interested in the grass.
I collected my Fourtrak from Marigold’s yard and went home again. Peterman stood more or less where I’d left him, looking miserable, the daffodils intact. If it hadn’t been for the fallacy of endowing animals with human feelings, I’d have said the old horse was depressed. I gave him a bucket of water, but he didn’t drink.