‘The man’s mad,’ I remarked.
‘I hear you’re going to the Watermeads’ for lunch again tomorrow,’ Isobel said. ‘I’ll go on doing the bookings, shall I?’
‘Yes, please,’ I said gratefully. ‘And who told you?’
‘Tessa Watermead. She came by. I taught her a few things. That’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sure.’
‘Goodnight, then.’
‘Goodnight.’
Guggenheim, sitting beside me in the Fourtrak, repudiated my suggestion that we stop for something to eat. I’d had no lunch and was hungry. Guggenheim’s hunger for truth won the day. Besides, he said, rationalising it and silencing me, Peterman needed the tetracycline as soon as possible.
For poor old Peterman, however, it was already too late. When Guggenheim and I went out into the dark garden, my game old partner was lying in the shadows on my lawn barely a yard from where I’d left him, his visible eye already dull, the stillness of death unmistakable.
Guggenheim’s grief was for his own career; mine for the long-ago races and the speed of a great horse.
Guggenheim had brought not soap for finding ticks but a very small battery-powered hand-held vacuum cleaner. He tried his best all over Peterman, but an inspection of the collected debris from the horse’s skin disappointed him abysmally.
He bent over his microscope in my kitchen uttering soft despairing moans.
‘Nothing. Nothing. You must have brought all of them on the soap.’ He sounded almost accusing, as if I’d ruined things on purpose. ‘But this is typical. The carrier of E. risticii is brutally elusive. Ticks feed on blood. They burrow their heads right through the skin of their host. The Ehrlichiae that live in the tick pass from the tick into the blood of the host and combine with certain blood cells. I won’t bore you with it, it’s incredibly complicated... but they’re only viable in living cells, and this horse has been dead for hours.’
‘Have a drink?’ I suggested.
‘Alcohol’s irrelevant,’ he said.
‘Mm.’
I poured for myself, however, and after a minute he took the whisky bottle out of my hand and half filled the glass I’d set out for him.
‘Anaesthetic for lost hopes,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
‘When I was your age,’ I said, ‘I rode the wind. Quite often.’
He looked at me over his glass. ‘You’re saying there will be other days? You don’t understand.’
‘I do, you know. I’ll try to get you some more of those ticks.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll sleep on it.’
We found a dinner of sorts in the fridge and cupboard, and he slept in Lizzie’s room silently all night.
In the morning I telephoned John Tigwood and told him Peterman was dead.
Tigwood’s voice, pompous as ever, full of bogus fruitiness, was also defensive and querulous.
‘Marigold English complained to me that the horse was ill and she said he had ticks. Rubbish. Utter rubbish, I told her so. Horses don’t have ticks, dogs and cattle do. I’m not having her or you going round spreading such malicious rumors.’
I saw with clarity that he feared his whole act would fall apart if no one would board his geriatrics. No more collecting tins. No more self-important bustling about. He had as powerful a reason for keeping quiet as I had.
‘The horse is at my house,’ I said. ‘I’ll get the knackers to collect him, if you like.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed.
‘How are the other old horses?’ I asked.
‘Perfectly well,’ he said furiously. ‘And it’s your fault Peterman went to Mrs English. She refused point blank to take any of the others.’
I made soothing noises and put down the receiver.
Looking about sixteen, Guggenheim came mournfully downstairs and stared out of the window at Peterman’s carcass as if willing him back to tick-infested life.
‘I’d better go back to Edinburgh,’ he said despondently, ‘unless any other horses are ill.’
‘I can find out at lunch. All the gossip and news in Pixhill will be available then, at Michael Watermead’s house.’
He said if it was all right with me he would stay until after that and then leave: he had on-going work in the laboratory that he shouldn’t be neglecting. Fine, I agreed; and he could come back instantly, of course, if anything significant happened.
He gloomily watched the knackers position their van by my garden gate and winch the thin old corpse away. What would become of him? Guggenheim asked. Glue factory, I said. He looked as if he’d just as soon not have known.
He couldn’t believe, he said, the state of my sitting-room, still in a mess. He couldn’t believe the impact that had destroyed the helicopter and the car. The mind that had done it, I told him, was still wandering around somewhere, still in possession of the axe.
‘But aren’t you... well... scared?’ he asked.
‘Careful,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m not taking you with me to lunch. I don’t want anyone knowing I know a scientist, especially one who’s an expert on ticks. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not.’ He looked at the axe-slashed room and shivered.
I took him to the farmyard, though, and showed him the horseboxes which impressed him by their size. I explained about the containers under three of them and said I thought the ticks had come into England that way on the rabbits.
‘There would have to be air holes in the containers,’ he said.
‘So there would.’
‘Haven’t you looked?’
‘No.’
He was surprised, but I didn’t explain. I took him back to my house and left him there while I went to the Watermeads’ lunch.
Maudie greeted me with affection and Michael with warmth. Many of the usual people were there: the Ushers and Bruce Farway included. Tessa indulged in back-turning and whispering into Benjy’s ear. The younger children were missing: they’d gone to stay with Susan and Hugh Palmerstone for the weekend. ‘They get on so well with Cinders,’ Maudie said. ‘Such a nice little girl.’ I realised that I’d hoped Cinders would again be at the Watermeads’. Don’t think about her, I told myself. Couldn’t help it.
I asked Michael if he’d accepted any of the old horses yet.
‘Two of them,’ he said, nodding. ‘Skittish old things. Running about in my bottom paddock like two-year-olds.’
I asked Dot the same question and got a different answer.
‘Benjy says we can put Tigwood off for a few days. Don’t know what’s got into the old shit, actually doing what I asked.’
‘What did that old horse die of, last year?’
‘Old age. Some sort of fever. What does it matter? I hate having them about the place.’
The vet who’d given my geriatric passengers the all clear was there, comparing notes with Bruce Farway.
‘How’s trade?’ I asked them. ‘How are the sick of Pixhill? Anything interesting?’
‘I hear the knackers were at your house this morning,’ the vet observed.
‘News zooms round,’ I said, resignedly. ‘One of the old horses died.’
‘You didn’t call me in.’
‘I didn’t know he was that ill, or I would have done.’
He nodded. ‘They’re old. They die. Can’t be helped, it’s nature.’
‘Is anyone else in trouble? Anyone got last year’s bug?’
‘No, thank goodness. Just the usual tendons and teeth.’
‘What was last year’s bug?’ Farway asked.
The vet said, ‘Some unspecified infection. Horses got feverish. I gave them various antibiotics, and they recovered.’ He frowned. ‘It was worrying, really, because all those horses lost their speed and form after it. But, thank goodness, it wasn’t widespread.’