“Peaceful scene, sir?” Sergeant Plank suggested.
“Isn’t it?” Alleyn agreed. “Would that be the Old Barn?” He pointed to a building at some distance from the stables.
“That’s it, sir. That’s where they hold their meetings. It’s taken on surprising in the district. By all accounts he’s got quite a following.”
“Ever been to one, Plank?”
“Me, Mr. Alleyn? Not in my line. We’re C of E, me and my Missus. They tell me this show’s very much in the blood-and-thunder line.”
“We’ll take a look at the barn later.”
They walked down to the gap in the hedge.
An improvised but sturdy fence had been built, enclosing the area where the sorrel mare had taken off for her two jumps. Pieces of raised and weathered board covered the hoofprints.
“Who ordered all this?” Alleyn asked. “The Super?”
After a moment Plank said: “Well, no sir.”
“You did it on your own?”
“Sir.”
“Good for you, Plank. Very well done.”
“Sir,” said Plank, crimson with gratification.
He lifted and replaced the boards for Alleyn. “There wasn’t anything much in the way of human prints,” he said.
“There’s been heavy rain. And, of course, horses’ hoofprints all over the shop.”
“You’ve saved these.”
“I took casts,” Plank murmured.
“You’ll be getting yourself in line for a halo,” said Alleyn and they moved to the gap itself. The blackthorn in the gap had been considerably knocked about. Alleyn looked over it and down and across to the far bank where a sort of plastic tent had been erected. Above and around this a shallow drain had been dug.
“That’s one hell of a dirty great jump,” Alleyn said.
There was a massive slide down the near bank and a scramble of hoofprints on the far one.
“As I read them,” Plank ventured, “it looks as if the mare made a mess of the jump, fell all ways down this bank, and landed on top of her rider on the far side.”
“And it looks to me,” Alleyn rejoined, “as if you’re not far wrong.”
He examined the two posts on either side of the gap. They were half hidden by blackthorn, but when this was held aside, scars, noticed by Ricky, were clearly visible: on one post thin, rounded grooves, obviously of recent date; on the other, similar grooves dragged upwards from the margin. Both posts were loose in the ground.
At considerable discomfort to himself, Alleyn managed to clear a way to the base of the left-hand post and crawl up to it.
“The earth’s been disturbed,” he grunted. “Around the base.”
He backed out, groped in his pocket, and produced his three inches of fencing wire from the coach house.
“Here comes the nitty-gritty bit,” said Fox.
He and Plank wrapped handkerchiefs around their hands and held back obstructing brambles. Alleyn cupped his scratched left hand under one of the grooves and with his right finger and thumb insinuated his piece of wire into it. It fitted snugly.
“Bob’s your uncle,” said Fox.
“A near relation at least. Let’s try elsewhere.”
They did so with the same result on both posts.
“Well, Plank,” Alleyn said, sucking the back of his hand, “how do you read the evidence?”
“Sir, like I did before, if you’ll excuse my saying so, though I hadn’t linked it up with that coil in the coach house. Should have done, of course, but I missed it.”
“Well?”
“It looks like there was this wire, strained between the posts. It’d been there a long time because coming as we now know from the lot in the coach house it must have been rusty.” Plank caught himself up.‘ “Here. Wait a mo,” he said. “Forget that. That was silly.”
“Take your time.”
“Ta. No. Wipe that. Excuse me, sir. But it had been there a long time because the wire marks are overgrown by thorn.”
Fox cleared his throat.
“What about that one, Fox?” Alleyn said.
“It doesn’t follow. Not for sure. It wants closer examination,” Fox said. “It could have been rigged from the far side.”
“I think so. Don’t you, Plank?”
“Sir,” said Plank, chastened.
“Go on, though. When was it removed from the barn?”
“Recently. Recently it was, sir. Because the cut end was fresh.”
“Where is it?”
“We don’t know that, do we, sir?”
“Not on the peg in the coach house, at least. That lot’s in one piece. What does all this seem to indicate?”
“I’d kind of thought,” said Plank carefully, “it pointed to her having cut it away before she attempted the jump. It’s very dangerous, sir, isn’t it, in horse jumping — wire is. Hidden wire.”
“Very.”
“Would the young chap,” Fox asked, “have noticed it if it was in place when he jumped?”
Alleyn walked back to the prints of the sorrel mare’s takeoff and looked at the gap.
“Old wire. It wouldn’t catch the light, would it? We’ll have to ask the young chap.”
Plank cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “I did carry out a wee routine check along the hedgerow, and there’s no wire there. I’d say never has been.”
“Right.” Alleyn hesitated for a moment. “Plank,” he said, “I can’t talk to your Super till he’s off the danger list so I’ll be asking you about matters I’d normally discuss with him.”
“Sir,” said Plank, fighting down any overt signs of gratification.
“Why was it decided to keep the case open?”
“Well, sir, on account really of the wire. I reported what I could make out of the marks on the posts and the Super had a wee look-see. That was the day he took bad with the pain, like. It were that evening his appendix bust and they operated on him and his last instructions to me was: ‘Apply for an adjournment and keep your trap shut. It’ll have to be the Yard.’ ”
“I see. Has anything been said to Mr. Harkness about the wire?”
“There has but bloody-all come of it. Far’s I could make out it’s been there so long he’d forgotten about it. Was there, in fact before he bought the place. He reckons Dulcie went down and cut it away before she jumped, which is what I thought seemed to make sense if anything he says can be so classed. But Gawd knows,” said Plank removing his helmet and looking inside it as if for an answer, “he was that put about there was no coming to grips with the man. Would you care to take a look at the far bank, sir? Where she lay?”
They took a look at it and the horses in the field came and took a look at them, blowing contemptuously through their nostrils. Plank removed his tent and disclosed the pegs he had driven into the ground around dead Dulcie Harkness.
“And you took photographs, did you?” Alleyn asked.
“It’s a bit of a hobby with me,” Plank said and drew them from a pocket in his tunic. “I carry a camera round with me,” he said. “On the off-chance of a nice picture.”
Fox placed his glasses, looked, and clicked his tongue. “Very nasty,” he said. “Very unpleasant. Poor girl.”
Plank, who contemplated his handiwork with a proprietary air, his head slightly tilted, said absently: “You wouldn’t hardly recognize her if it wasn’t for the shirt. I used a sharper aperture for this one,” and he gave technical details.
Alleyn thought of the picture in the office of a big blowsy girl in a check shirt, exhibiting the sorrel mare. He returned the photographs to their envelope and put them in his pocket. Plank replaced the tent.
Alleyn said: “From the time the riding party left until she was found, who was here? On the premises?”
“There again!” Plank cried out in vexation. “What’ve we got? Sir, we’ve got Cuth Harkness and that’s it. Now then!” He produced his notebook, wetted his thumb, and turned pages. “Harkness. Cuthbert,” he said and changed to his police-court voice.