“Bruno,” Julia said, “could you?”
Bruno, with evident relief, went into the nearest loose-box. Characteristic sounds — snorts, occasional stamping, the clump of a saddle dumped across the half-door and the bang of an iron against wood — lent an air of normality to the stable yard.
Mr. Harkness dived into the next-door box so suddenly that he raised a clatter of hooves.
He could be heard soothing the gray hack: “Steady girl. Stand over,” and interrupting himself with an occasional sob.
“This is too awful,” Julia breathed. “What can one do?”
Carlotta said: “Nothing.”
Ricky said: “Shall I see if I can get him a drink?”
“Brandy? Or something?”
“He may have given it up because of hellfire,” Julia suggested. “It might send him completely bonkers.”
“I can but try.”
He went into the house by the back door and, following the sound of Jasper’s voice, found him at the telephone in an office where Mr. Harkness evidently did his bookkeeping.
Jasper said: “Yes. Thank you. As quick as you can, won’t you?” and hung up the receiver. “What now?” he asked. “How is he?”
“As near as damn it off his head. But he’s doing stables at the moment. The girls thought perhaps a drink.”
“I doubt if we’ll find any.”
“Should we look?”
“I don’t know. Should we? Might it send him utterly cuckoo?”
“That’s what we wondered,” said Ricky.
Jasper looked around the room and spotted a little corner cupboard. After a moment’s hesitation he opened the door and was confronted with a skull and crossbones badly drawn in red ink and supported by a legend:
BEWARE!!!
This Way Lies Damnation!!!
The card on which this information was inscribed had been hung around the neck of a whisky bottle.
“In the face of that,” Ricky said, “what should we do?”
“I’ve no idea. But I know what I’m going to do,” said Jasper warmly. He unscrewed the cap and took a fairly generous pull at the bottle. “I needed that,” he gasped and offered it to Ricky.
“No thanks,” Ricky said. “I feel sick already.”
“It takes all sorts,” Jasper observed, wiping his mouth and returning the bottle to the cupboard. “The doctor’s coming,” he said. “And so’s the vet.” He indicated a list of numbers above the telephone. “And the ambulance.”
“Good,” said Ricky.
“They all said: ‘Don’t move her.’ ”
“Good.”
“The vet meant the mare.”
“Naturally.”
“God,” said Jasper. “This is awful.”
“Yes. Awful.”
“Shall we go out?”
“Yes.”
They returned to the stable yard. Bruno and Mr. Harkness were still in the loose-boxes. There was a sound of munching and an occasional snort.
Jasper put his arm round his wife. “OK?” he asked.
“Yes. You’ve been drinking.”
“Do you want some?”
“No.”
“Where’s Bruno?”
Julia jerked her head at the ioose-boxes. “Come over here,” she said and drew the two men toward the car. Carlotta was in the driver’s seat, smoking.
“Listen,” Julia said. “About Bruno. You know what he’s thinking, of course?”
“What?”
“He’s thinking it’s his fault. Because he jumped the gap first. So she thought she could.”
“Not his fault if she did.”
“That’s what I say,” said Carlotta.
“Try and persuade Bruno of it! He was told not to and now see what’s come of it. That’s the way he’s thinking.”
“Silly little bastard,” said his brother uneasily.
Ricky said: “She’d made up her mind to do it before we got here. She’d have done it if Bruno had never appeared on the scene.”
“Yes, Ricky,” Julia said eagerly. “That’s just it. That’s the line we must take with Bruno. Do say all that to him, won’t you? How right you are.”
“There’ll be an inquest, of course, and it’ll come out,” Jasper said. “Bruno’s bit’ll come out.”
“Hell,” said Carlotta.
A car appeared, rounded the corner of the house and pulled up. The driver, a man in a tweed suit carrying a professional bag, got out.
“Doctor Carey?” Jasper asked.
“Blacker’s the name. I’m the vet. Where’s Cuth? What’s up, anyway?”
“I should explain,” Jasper said and was doing so when a second car arrived with a second man in a tweed suit carrying a professional bag. This was Dr. Carey. Jasper began again. When he had finished Dr. Carey said: “Where is she then?” and being told walked off down the horse paddock. “When the ambulance comes,” he threw over his shoulder, “will you show them where? I’ll see her uncle when I get back.”
“I’d better talk to Cuth,” said the vet. “This is a terrible thing. Where is he?”
As if in answer to a summons, Mr. Harkness appeared, like a woebegone Mr. Punch, over the half-door of a loose-box.
“Bob,” he said. “Bob, she’s dead lame. The sorrel mare, Bob. Bob, she’s dead lame and she’s killed Dulcie.”
And then the ambulance arrived.
Ricky stood in a corner of the yard, feeling extraneous to the scenes that followed. He saw the vet move off and Mr. Harkness, talking pretty wildly, make a distracted attempt to follow him and then stand wiping his mouth and looking from one to the other of the two retreating figures, each with its professional bag, rather like items in a surrealistic landscape.
Then Mr. Harkness ran across the yard and stopped the two ambulance men who were taking out a stretcher and canvas cover. Lamentations rolled out of him like sludge. The men seemed to calm him after a fashion and they listened to Jasper when he pointed the way. But Mr. Harkness kept interrupting and issuing his own instructions. “You can’t miss it,” he kept saying. “Straight across there. Where there’s the gap in the hedge. I’ll show you. You can’t miss it.”
“We’ve got it, thank you, sir,” they said. “Don’t trouble yourself. Take it easy.”
They walked away, carrying the stretcher between them. He watched them and pulled at his underlip and gabbled under his breath. Julia went to him. She was still very white and Ricky saw that her hand trembled. She spoke with her usual quick incisiveness.
“Mr. Harkness,” Julia said. “I’m going to take you indoors and give you some very strong black coffee and you’re going to sit down and drink it. Please don’t interrupt because it won’t make the smallest difference. Come along.”
She put her hand under his elbow and, still talking, he suffered himself to be led indoors.
Carlotta remained in the car. Jasper went over to talk to her. Bruno was nowhere to be seen.
It occurred to Ricky that this was a situation with which his father was entirely familiar. It would be at about this stage, he supposed, that the police car would arrive and his father would stoop over death in the form it had taken with Miss Harkness and would dwell upon that which Ricky turned sick to remember. Alleyn did not discuss his cases with his family, but Ricky, who loved him, often wondered how so fastidious a man could have chosen such work. And here he pulled up. “I must be barmy,” he told himself, “I’m thinking about it as if it were not a bloody accident but a crime.”
Presently Julia came out of the house.
“He’s sitting in his parlor,” she said, “drinking instant coffee with a good dollop of Scotch in it. I don’t know whether he’s spotted the Scotch and is pretending he hasn’t or whether he’s too bonkers to know.”