Twelve Horses and the Hangman's Noose (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “Quite all right, but thanks for ringing. Where exactly are you speaking from?”

  “The pub here.”

  “Oh, I see. Don’t mix sherry with champagne. Bye-bye.”

  Laura rang off, returned to the bar, and drank beer thoughtfully.

  “Something on your mind?” asked her escort.

  “Yes. Have another with me. Same again, William, please. Can’t tell you now. I’ve got my scooter thing stabled here. It’s got a pillion seat. Can I give you a lift anywhere when we leave here?”

  “No, thanks. Well, cheers. Cigarette?”

  “Thank you. I suppose you see a lot of what goes on in this remote spot?”

  “On and off. What’s on your mind?”

  “Smuggling. I suppose this place was once a smugglers’ haunt,” she added, addressing the barman.

  “Smugglers? Bless you, yes. Haven’t you never seen our cellars? Made specially for the Gentlemen, as they used to call ’em. Brandy and silk across the Channel from France, you know. Don’t need to touch Southampton to put in here. Oh, yes, they used to slip up this creek and put the stuff in the cellars ’til it was a good night to bring the horses—”

  “Horses? Oh, yes,” said Laura, with the smoothness of an actress taking a cue, “the stables here are pretty big, too. You’ve got room for half a dozen horses, I suppose?”

  “Nearer a dozen. The stables is bigger nor the house itself, I reckon.”

  “I suppose they’re not much used nowadays,” suggested Laura disingenuously. The barman wagged his head.

  “Off and on, you know. Off and on,” he answered, avoiding her eye and swabbing swipes off the counter. Laura finished her beer and she and her cavalier departed, took leave of one another, and went their separate ways, he to the Yacht Club, she to follow the gipsy to find out, if she could, where he was going and what he was up to.

  The path she was following was badly surfaced and was never, owing to the high tides, quite dry. It was at a very moderate pace, therefore, that she rode her motor-scooter round the edge of the basin. The harbour, which was a natural one and possessed neither bar nor mole, was shaped rather like a large figure eight with an extremely broad waist and with an unfinished top loop which meandered out to the Sound.

  She passed the row of cottages which had screened the gipsy from her view and then came in sight of him. He was some distance in front of her, so she rode a little closer and then parked the motor-scooter on a bit of waste ground and followed on foot. He was cutting out a fast pace, faster than she had realised. She began to trot, slipping sometimes on the mud which the retreating tide had left behind it, and not gaining very much ground.

  At the curve which formed the bottom of the figure eight, as the harbour verge swung away to the right, the man altered course and ceased to follow the line of the shallow water. He bore to the left, where a lane led away from the sea to the high road into Southampton.

  Laura followed like a leopard stalking prey. Her fear was lest the gipsy should glance behind him, for the lane was fairly straight and the hedges were cut well back, so that there was no chance of slipping into cover.

  Fortunately, he seemed to be so intent on his own business and so anxious to pursue it at top speed that he did not once look back, but maintained a wolf’s deceptive pace until he reached the highway. There he slowed to cross the road, obviously heading for the bus-stop. Laura turned tail and walked back the way she had come, slowing down occasionally as though in contemplation of the beauties of what had turned out to be a particularly delightful spring afternoon. The gipsy must certainly be given no reason to suppose that she had been keeping him under observation.

  As soon as she was back beside the harbour she tore to the waste ground on which she had left her motor-scooter. The tide had turned, but there was plenty of time before it covered the path. She mounted and rode to the bus-stop. The gipsy was still there, but, even as she was hoping that he would not recognise her in her crash-helmet—for she had been bare-headed during their previous conversation and he had not seen her with her motor-scooter—the bus came and he signalled it and climbed on board. Laura shot past while he was mounting to the top deck, remained ahead of the bus for about a mile, and then turned off into a lane. The bus went by. She swung the machine round and followed it at a safe distance into Southampton. The gipsy did not get off, and the bus turned into the bus station. Laura pulled up and waited. There were a great many buses and there were streams of people. In the crowd she missed seeing him. She hung about for ten minutes and then returned to the Blue Finn. It was the stabling that she proposed to visit this time, to see whether the horses were still there.

  CHAPTER 12

  EXPLORATION OF AVENUES

  I pray you greet well my horse and pray him to give you four of his years to help you withal: and I will at my coming home give him four of my years and four horse loaves till amends. Tell him that I prayed him so.

  THOMAS BETSON

  Dame Beatrice, after all, had not gone to London with Gavin.

  “The most interesting point that emerged at the inquest,” she said to Sir Mallory, who had come again and whom she was entertaining to lunch, “is the discrepancy between Miss Gauberon’s evidence and that of Mrs. Mapsted.”

  “Quite. How fortunate you are in your cook. I have always understood and sympathised with Bertie Wooster’s aunt, Mrs. Travers, when she conspired to relieve the Bingo Little household of the services of the cook Anatole.”

  “I hope you’re not conspiring to relieve me of the services of the cook Henri,” said Dame Beatrice. “Are you so much immersed in the pleasures of the table that you haven’t listened to what I was saying?”

  “I heard every syllable. And, of course, I do agree with you. Whether Mapsted’s death was an accident—and it was, if we accept the verdict given at the inquest—or whether, as we suspect it was contrived, it certainly is interesting that apparently the poor chap was in two places at once on the evening of his death.”

  “You speak in self-satisfied tones. Am I to understand that you have solved that particular mystery?”

  “Indeed, yes. Or, rather, the superintendent has. There is unimpeachable evidence that Mapsted was at Seahampton that evening. He went there on business of some sort, according to the landlord of the Blue Finn, but what that business was the fellow seems not to know.”

  “I am not at all sure that I should believe the landlord. Are there any other details?”

  “Not really. Mapsted had lunch at the pub with a man the landlord hadn’t seen before, and went off with this fellow at about two o’clock. He came back without him at seven or thereabouts, got the barmaid to fix him up with ham sandwiches, drank a pint of stout, and left at eight.”

  “Possibly to return to Elkstonehunt, don’t you think? How did he travel to Seahampton? Do you know that?”

  “Not on a horse, according to the landlord. The superintendent made rather a point of that, because they’ve still got plenty of stabling at the Blue Finn. He made the journey in his own old car. It’s of no particular account, as far as I can see, except—yes, I see what you mean. He would have been home, even in that old crock of his, inside half an hour.”

  “Therefore old Mrs. Mapsted could have been telling the truth when she declared that she left her son downstairs at half-past nine that night.”

  “Equally, then,” argued Sir Mallory, “Miss Gauberon could have been right when she told about the telephone call from Seahampton. He could have left the house as soon as his mother went upstairs, gone back to Seahampton in the car, and telephoned from there to say he was not coming home.”

  “Or from anywhere else.”

  “Eh?—Oh, I see what you mean. Well, a bachelor can please himself about that sort of thing, I suppose, although I shouldn’t really have thought he was the type. Anyway, if it was Seahampton, it’s really rather interesting when one comes to think of Jenkinson’s body having been found at the school there. There must be a tie-up somewhere, but�
��you see it’s all so pointless unless both men were murdered.”

  “I am acting on the assumption that they were both murdered. Although it is likely that Jenkinson’s death was not foreseen, it does not do to burke the possibilities.”

  “But there’s no evidence beyond the peculiar business of putting Jenkinson’s body among those flowers and plants, and even that is only evidence of some sort of mental derangement.”

  “‘A nice derangement of epitaphs,’” said Dame Beatrice, with a grim cackle.

  “Well, I’ve been taking thought, and putting two and two together, and I’m pretty sure I know who administered the tetraethyl-thiuram-disulphide, or, at any rate, caused this to be done and supervised the doing,” said the chief constable.

  “Really? That is interesting. What have you to go on?”

  “What the incomparable Jeeves called ‘the psychology of the individual.’ A great many actions carry the stamp of an individual personality, and, to the student of human nature, can provide a clue to identity in the same way as a writer’s style can speak a name to an informed and critical reader. Don’t you agree?”

  “Indubitably. And you conclude—?”

  “That the mind which conceived the idea of teaching Jenkinson a lesson, if not of actually killing him, could belong only to old Mrs. Mapsted. What do you say to that?”

  “I congratulate you upon your insight. In a woman it would be fobbed off as intuition, would it not?”

  “Don’t you agree with me, then?”

  “Psychologically speaking, undoubtedly you are right, but there may have been other factors, don’t you think? Tell me, has anything more been found out about smuggling at the airport?”

  “We’ve held a watching brief, but there’s nothing suspicious. I imagine the tip-off was given and therefore that operations, if there were any, have been suspended for the time being. What are you telling me about old Mrs. Mapsted? Don’t you think she did administer that stuff to Jenkinson?”

  “If she did, you will never prove it. I am certain of that. Even if she admits that she administered the tetraethyl-thiuram-disulphide, you won’t be able to show that she did so in the hope that the result would be Jenkinson’s death. For one thing, it is an unreliable substance. One couldn’t be certain of the effect in the way one could of prussic acid, for example, or belladonna, or even our old friend arsenic, although a resistance to the latter can be acquired if one takes precautions. If she chose to say, and adhered to it, that she intended nothing but good to Jenkinson, known to her as a confirmed alcoholic, and had no idea that she might have killed him, you could not touch her. There is only one thing that might shake her resolution.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There is a readily available and very inexpensive treatise on psychiatry which gives information about the possible effects of tetraethyl-thiuram-disulphide. If it could be shown that she had read the book, it might be possible to force a confession from her, but I doubt it.”

  “She’d retract it,” said Sir Mallory, “and any defending counsel would get the accusation laughed out of court. Personally, I wouldn’t even risk arresting her, especially on the strength of what you’ve just said. Mind you, granted that my surmise is correct, she may have definite knowledge that Jenkinson was responsible for John Mapsted’s death.”

  “We have only Jenkinson’s word for it that there was blood on the stable floor and on the horse’s hoof. On the other hand, I don’t see at present what Jenkinson had to gain by killing Mapsted, and he certainly had no reason for blaming Percheron if the horse was not guilty.”

  “How do you mean?” asked Sir Mallory.

  “Percheron, but for his uncertain temper, is a very good horse. Someone might have been willing to risk the temper if he could buy the horse cheap. Again, it might be to someone’s advantage to get the horse destroyed on the plea that he had proved to be a killer. Either of these theories would lead away from Jenkinson. After all, Percheron isn’t his horse. What about Miss Gauberon?”

  “I’d thought of Miss Gauberon, too. She is mistress of the Elkstonehunt stables now.”

  “I know. But it seems as though they are more or less of a white elephant unless she can get more capital. Did you know that she had asked Laura to go into partnership there?”

  “Yes. Gavin told me his wife had received that offer. I think she showed good sense in refusing it. Well, now, what do we do about Mrs. Mapsted? I can’t say I fancy the idea of bullyragging the poor old lady.”

  “You can leave her to me, if you like. I am likely to get more out of her, if it is there to be obtained, than a policeman would. By the way, if the question does not embarrass you, why do you invariably refer to the Seahampton superintendent as that, and never mention his name?”

  “Because his name’s Humblederry, and, before he was introduced, the late high sheriff, who writes the most vile hand I’ve ever had to try to decipher, sent me a letter about him. All I could make of the superintendent’s name was Rumblebelly. I felt that this was unlikely, and it set up a complex in me, so now I call him Superintendent to everybody, including himself when I address him. It is better so.”

  “Let’s have coffee in the next room,” said Dame Beatrice. “I have a fine Jamaica rum I should like you to try.”

  “That chap Grinsted, whom I do not like,” said Sir Mallory a little later, “has a theory to account for Mapsted’s death, but I can’t say I think much of it.”

  “Yes, he gave it to Laura. She did not give it credence either. Besides, it does not dispose of the main difficulty.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “That Percheron made all his fuss seven hours or so after John Mapsted was killed.”

  “I know.”

  “That is why I am perfectly certain it was murder.”

  “And I am equally certain that Jenkinson knew something about it and it could have been he who put the body into Percheron’s stable.”

  “Yes, that all hangs together. And Mrs. Mapsted, you think, blamed Jenkinson for her son’s death and revenged herself on him. Be that as it may—and we’ve agreed we’re unlikely to get to the bottom of it—there are one or two further difficulties which may or may not be important. For instance, there is the ambiguous position of Miss Merial Trowse.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t thinking of her. I was thinking of that small syndicate in Lymington who own a horse called Ancreon. There’s something fishy there, I think. The Lymington police are keeping an eye skinned. What about Miss Trowse?”

  “According to Laura, Miss Trowse denies that there was anything in the rumour that she was to marry John Mapsted. There is no reason at present to suppose that the point has any importance in itself, but it is interesting as showing another discrepancy. It seems curious that she should deny that there was an understanding that they were to marry unless she had guilty knowledge of his death. After all, to ask for her hand is still the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman. One would have thought—”

  “Yes, I see what you mean. Did Mapsted leave a will?”

  “I did not hear of one. If he did not, I suppose Mrs. Mapsted and Miss Gauberon would carry on the place as before.”

  “Is there anything else you know, or surmise?”

  “No. I cannot help wondering, though, about Mrs. Cofts and the mare Viatka. You know she lamed the animal?”

  “What’s strange about that?”

  “Probably nothing.”

  “It couldn’t have any bearing on these two deaths.”

  “Probably not, but it is an interesting little mystery, none the less. And there is another interesting little mystery, too.”

  “Oh?”

  “The Elkstonehunt horses, including the three ponies, number twelve.”

  “Yes?”

  “Percheron and three others are never let out on hire. Laura has often remarked on it.”

  “We know about Percheron. Who are the other three?”

  “A chestnut named Tennessee, a strawberry r
oan named Criollo, and a grey named Appaloosa.”

  “I suppose they haven’t yet been schooled to hacking.”

  “They have been at the stables for the past two years, and, according to Laura, they are not hacks but racehorses.”

  “Hm! It does sound a bit odd. What do you make of it?”

  “I don’t make anything of it. I merely mention that it has a certain amount of mystery about it. Of course, Laura may be wrong. It is from her that I received the information that they are never let out on hire.”

  “I don’t think she would be wrong about a thing like that,” said Sir Mallory thoughtfully. “But still, as I say, it couldn’t have anything to do with Mapsted’s death, or Jenkinson’s either. I’d like to know more about old Mrs. Mapsted and our friend the chemical compound, though. Do find out what you can.”

  He went off soon after that, and Dame Beatrice, acting on impulse, walked over to the Elkstonehunt stables. She found Cissie Gauberon entangled with Miss Temme and the May children.

  “You can have Basuto and Connemara,” she was saying, “but you can’t have Shan. He’s got a cough.”

  “Shan’s the only decent pony you’ve got,” said Ursula. “If I can’t have him you’ll have to let me have a real horse. Why can’t I have Mustang?”

  “He’s Mrs. Gavin’s horse.”

  “But she isn’t riding today. She went off on her motor-scooter. We saw her. Why can’t I have Mustang?”

  “Because you can’t,” said Miss Temme. “He’s much too high in the leg for you. Wait until you’re older.”

  “Then I’ll have Barb.”

  “I want Barb,” said Dick. “He’s my beautiful Arab steed. ‘Fret not to roam the desert now with all thy winged speed. I may not mount on thee again. Thou’rt sold, my Arab steed.’”

  “Gah!” retorted Ursula.

  “That’s enough,” said Miss Temme.

  “You’d better toss for it,” said Cissie wearily. “Anyway, Sarah gets Connemara, as usual. That’s one settled.”

  At last the party was mounted, and Cissie herself took Jennet with the intention of escorting the children. For the first time she became aware of Dame Beatrice and reined in.