The Stabbing in the Stables (14 page)

She was interrupted by the flustered arrival of Alec Potton. He came rushing through the gates of the yard, what remained of his hair sticking out at odd angles. He was once again wearing his corduroy suit, which seemed baggier than ever, and no topcoat.

“Good morning, Lucinda. And hello.” He knew he'd met Jude, but he couldn't place exactly where or how. And he was too rushed to work it out. “Is Immy here?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

The girl came out of Conker's stable and stood leaning on a broom. There was an expression almost of insolence on her face, challenging her adoring father to be angry with her.

“I had a call from the school. They wanted to know where you are.”

“I'm here. As you see.”

“Immy, you can't bunk off lessons like that.”

“Why not?” She jutted her lower lip and her right hip in the perfect posture of adolescent rebellion. “They never teach us anything.”

“That's not the point. You're breaking the school rules. You're breaking the law, come to that.”

“Am I?”

Alec Potton wasn't sure enough of his legal ground to answer that. “Never mind. Come on, you must come straight back to school with me. And you'd better think of something pretty good to tell your headmistress.”

“Why?”

“Because I say so, Imogen!”

This sudden outburst was the anger of a weak man, but it was so little expected by his daughter that she immediately burst into tears. Her mouth fell open, revealing the full ugliness of the braces on her teeth. Totally disarmed, and unable to maintain his pose of fury, her father moved instinctively forward and put his arms round the girl's shoulders.

“Come on, Immy, let's pick up something to eat on the way back to school.” And, with an embarrassed wave of good bye to the two women, he led his daughter away from the stables.

Jude moved to the gate and saw that, as arranged earlier in the morning and punctual to the minute, Carole's Renault had arrived in the car park. “Donal,” she said, “can I buy you a drink by way of thank you?”

“What are you thanking me for? Chieftain's not your horse.”

“No. But I tried to heal him, and failed. So I owe you a thank-you for getting it right.”

He nodded. “That's fair enough. There's no pub very close to here, though.”

“No. My friend over there will drive us.”

“Ah. Where to?”

“Just down the road to Fethering.”

“All right.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “Yes, I haven't been to Fethering for a while now. And it could be just the place that I need to settle back into.”

With which enigmatic comment, he started towards the Renault. Jude looked forward with some glee to the incongruous introduction to Carole that lay ahead.

She said good-bye to Lucinda, who was standing on exactly the spot in the stable yard where her husband had died. For the first time in their acquaintance, the sole owner of Long Bamber Stables looked slightly vulnerable, as if the enormity of what had happened had finally sunk in.

“M
Y FRIEND
C
AROLE
.
And Carole, this is Donal.”

Jude would treasure for always the expression on her friend's face, seen through the open passenger door, as Carole grimaced a smile and said, “Very nice to see you, Donal.”

He didn't think this greeting worthy of more acknowledgment than a curt nod. Donal had changed now he was parted from Chieftain; he was jumpier, on edge. The element of danger that Jude had noticed in the Cheshire Cheese had returned.

“You sit in the front,” she said, only for the mischievous pleasure of seeing Carole's reaction. The thought of Donal's filthy clothes touching the Renault's pristine upholstery would be bad enough, but to have this creature in such immediate proximity to her, well, it would take Carole a long time to get over that.

Suppressing a grin, Jude got into the back of the car and said they were going to take Donal to Fethering.

“Erm…,” said Carole, for all the world like her ex-husband, “are you going to put on your seat belt?”

“No,” said Donal.

Unwilling to take issue with him, she started the engine, and drove out of the Long Bamber Stables car park. They drove along the Fethering Road in silence for a while.

“So tell me, Donal,” said Carole eventually, “where do you live?”

“Nowhere.”

“Ah.”

“According to the police, I am ‘of no fixed abode.'”

“Ah. Ah.” Carole was rather thrown for a genteel Fethering response to that. “It must be nice not to have the responsibility of a house.”

Donal didn't think this worthy of comment. He was growing even more fidgety. From her seat in the back, Jude could see the tensing of his neck muscles and a slight gleam of sweat on his temple. She diagnosed that he was suffering from a hangover. He'd held himself together for healing the horse; now he was in desperate need of a drink.

“So,” Carole went on, still battling to maintain polite middle-class conversation, “are you Irish, Donal?”

“No, I'm bloody Serbo-Croat! What do you think?”

Though clearly offended, Carole didn't rise to the rudeness. “And I'm sorry, Donal, I didn't get your second name…?”

“No, you didn't, because nobody's bloody mentioned it.” But, after that put-down, to Jude's surprise, he volunteered the name. “Geraghty. Donal Geraghty. Is that enough of the central-casting Irishman for you?”

Belatedly, Carole decided she had expended sufficient conversational effort on him. After a silence, Jude said, “Donal cured Sonia Dalrymple's horse, where I failed. I'm going to buy him a drink to say thank-you. You will join us, won't you?”

Carole was torn. The potential of actually getting some useful information about the case had to be weighed against the shame of being seen around Fethering in the company of this uncouth ragamuffin. Her detective instinct triumphed. “Yes, that'd be very nice, thank you. I'd love to join you for a drink.”

“Talking of drink,” said Donal edgily, “I'm dying for a drop. You wouldn't happen to have some with you, would you?”

“Alcohol?”

“Yes.”

“Alcohol in my Renault?”

Jude was sorry she couldn't at that moment see Carole's face full on. But what she could glimpse in the driving mirror was satisfying enough. She swallowed down an incipient giggle.

 

It was rather terrifying to see how quickly the first large Jameson's restored Donal Geraghty. One moment he was sweating, twitching and as jumpy as a kitten; a few sips later his body was still, and there was even a sardonic smile playing around the corners of his mouth, as he looked around the snug interior of the Crown and Anchor.

“Carole and I are going to have lunch here. Maybe you'd like to have something too?”

He laughed. “I don't, as they say, ‘do lunch.' I'm restricted to a liquid diet.”

“Is that on doctor's orders?” asked Carole, misunderstanding.

“The only order the doctor's ever given to me was to get the hell out of his surgery. His view was that he couldn't help me, unless I was prepared to make certain changes in my lifestyle.”

“Which you weren't,” said Jude.

“Take away the lifestyle, you take away the life. Take away the life, you take away the man.” He downed the remains of his glass, and looked at it rather wistfully.

Jude took the hint and went for a refill from the nose-pierced girl at the bar. Ted Crisp was either out in the kitchen or having a rare day off.

Left alone with Donal Geraghty, Carole's upbringing forced her to forget the earlier snubs and continue to prosecute her conversational campaign. “I hope you don't mind my mentioning your recent encounter with the police…”

“Why should that bother me?” asked Donal, mellowed by the first drink. “It's no secret they grilled me. The entire country knows, and no doubt when some other crime occurs locally, the police'll drag me in even quicker after this.”

“But you did know Walter Fleet, didn't you?” Carole persisted.

“Oh yes, I knew him.”

“And, I believe, had a disagreement with him?”

“It wasn't a disagreement—it was a fight I had with him.” He looked up to see Jude approaching with his refill, took it without a word and downed a long swallow. “And the fight happened in this very pub,” he added mischievously.

The two women exchanged horrified looks. Preoccupied by their opportunity to do a private grilling of the police's first suspect, they had both forgotten about Ted Crisp having banned the man from the Crown and Anchor. Thank God the landlord didn't appear to be about that day.

Donal Geraghty understood exactly what they were thinking. He had knowingly let them bring him into a pub where he was banned, and the fact that they had done so gave him great satisfaction. He giggled gleefully. “Smart ladies like you should be a bit more careful about the company you keep.”

Jude grinned and raised her glass of Chilean chardonnay to him. “I've known worse.” That won a chuckle, so she pursued her advantage. “Carole, Donal was telling me he thought the murderer of Walter Fleet was definitely a woman.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes,” Donal confirmed. “Using that knife—it's a woman's crime if ever I saw one.”

“So who would that make a suspect for the murder?” asked Carole.

He snickered. “Well, Lucinda and Walter's wasn't the epitome of an happy marriage.”

Again his choice of words betrayed a much better education than was promised by his exterior blarney.

“So you think she might have done away with him?”

“Usual rule of police investigation: if the victim has a live-in partner, haul them in for questioning—that is, of course, after they've hauled
me
in for questioning. But if they can't pin it on me, then they go for the partner.”

Carole was thoughtful. “Lucinda certainly doesn't seem to be making any pretence of being upset by having lost her husband.”

“Maybe she didn't do it herself,” Jude speculated. “Paid someone else actually to do the deed, while she established an alibi for herself.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Donal in mock affront. “So that'd bring the accusation back to me, would it? ‘Donal Geraghty's always helping Lucinda with odd jobs round the yard at Long Bamber. I'm sure he'd be only too glad to top the lady's husband for her.' Is that what you're suggesting?”

“No, I'm not.”

“Well, be very careful. Don't forget you're dealing with a very dangerous paranoid Paddy who has a lot of form for acts of violence.” Yet again he demonstrated an ironical awareness of his image, the fact that he could choose when he wanted to live up to it.

“Putting Lucinda on one side,” said Carole, “who else might be in the frame?”

“Ah.” Donal squinted at her. “I didn't have you down as a racing woman, Carole.”

“What do you mean? I've never been to the races in my life. I'm certainly not a racing woman.”

“No, but you use racing talk.”

“I'm sorry?”

“‘In the frame.' Now isn't that a reference to horses in a photo finish?”

“I don't know. Is it?”

“Well, what else could it be?”

“I thought it had something to do with pictures, or photographs, that kind of frame.”

“No, no, I've done my research. The phrase definitely comes from the racing world.”

“It's funny, Donal,” said Jude. “I wouldn't have had you down as an expert on semantics.”

“Which just shows how wrong you can be. Never judge a book by its cover.”

“No. Well, you are a dark horse.”

“Ah, you see now, Jude. You're a racing woman too.”

Jude chuckled. “I have been racing, and I love it, but I wouldn't say I was a racing woman.”

“Well, I think you both are racing women.” Donal looked down at his empty glass. “Mind you, you don't seem to be very fast-drinking women.”

Jude's eyes flashed a quick message to Carole, who stood up and said, “Let me get this one. You still all right, Jude?”

“Nearly ready for another.” Her glass was half full, but she reckoned drinking with Donal might make him more relaxed and communicative.

With Carole at the bar, Jude plunged straight back into interrogation mode. “We did hear something about the circumstances of your being banned from this pub, actually.”

“Oh yes?”

“Your having a fight with Walter Fleet…”

“Uh-huh.” He didn't seem upset by her line of questioning, just waiting to see where she was really heading.

“Presumably the police knew about that?”

“Of course. Another reason for them to make me their first suspect.”

“We did also hear about something you said when you were arguing with Walter…”

“Well, you have been doing your research, haven't you?” he commented sardonically.

“Apparently you said, ‘You're not worthy of her! She's beautiful and you don't deserve her!'”

“What if I did?”

“To the casual listener, that could make it sound as if your argument with Walter was about a woman.”

“I suppose it could.”

“So was it about a woman?”

“You're a nosey cow, aren't you, Jude?” But it was said without malice; he was still feeling the benefits of two large Jameson's and a third in prospect.

“Yes, I am a nosey cow, which is why I would quite like an answer.”

“And why should I give you one?”

“Why not?”

She had taken the right approach; he appeared tickled by her response. “So you're reckoning maybe I was having a bit of the old illicit sex with Lucinda. Is that where you're coming from?”

“It'd fit the known facts.”

“But it might fail rather badly to tie in with the unknown facts, mightn't it?” He smiled teasingly, as if weighing up what kind of answer to give her—and indeed whether to give her an answer at all. Eventually he said, “Suppose I was talking about a horse.”

“The ‘she' who Walter was ‘not worthy of '?”

“Why not? It could have been a horse.”

“I think the odds are against it.”

Donal Geraghty chuckled. “You're doing it again. You are a racing woman, you know.”

“Maybe,” Jude conceded with a smile. “But is the horse answer the best I'm going to get?”

“It is so,” he replied, affecting an even heavier brogue. “That's the best you'll have from me. And, as it happens, it's God's honest truth. The owner of the stables and the mad Irish tinker had words about a horse—that's all there was to it.”

“But surely—”

“Here are the drinks,” said Carole.

Donal smiled at Jude, as if he'd engineered the end of their previous conversation. “And that's all I'm going to tell you,” he said, reaching for his glass, without any thanks, and taking a long swallow.

“All you're going to tell me about that,” Jude countered. “Maybe you'll tell me more about something else?”

Carole, recognising that Jude might be getting somewhere, sat down quietly with her drink.

“And what might that something else be?” asked Donal.

“Ooh…” Jude teased. “What about blackmail?”

He chuckled. “I don't think there's anything I could be blackmailed about by anyone in the world. You see, the one qualification you have to have for being blackmailed is to have something to lose, and”—he shrugged—“that counts me out.”