Comeback (21 page)

Jeez again, I thought.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I thought he might possibly be in great danger, but all I said was, “Go on to the next one.”

“Don’t forget,” he said, “that in between all those I saw dozens of other horses, racehorses, hunters and so on, that were quite all right. For every horse that died here, I operated on many others without incident. We get quite a few referrals from other veterinary practices, and none of them died. Telling the dead ones all at once makes it sound as if they were one after the other without interval.”

“I’ll remember.”

“OK. Then the next one that died was the one out in the intensive-care box, which I told you about this morning.”

I nodded. He seemed to have finished with that one, but I asked, “Who owned it?”

“Chap called Fitzwalter. Decent sort of man. Took it philosophically and didn’t blame me.”

“And do you have reservations, or do you think that that one did die of natural causes?”

He sighed heavily. “I took some of the colt’s blood for testing, though he’d been dead too long really. The results came back negative for any unexplained substance.”

I studied his pale worried face.

“Even if the tests were negative, do you have even a faint suspicion?”

“I suspect it because it happened.”

That seemed reasonable enough for the circumstances. “And straight after that, the second Mackintosh horse came in, and it died on the table exactly like the first one.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t until after that second one that I thought of atropine. Because the pupils were dilated, you see. I thought I might have missed that the first time, or not seen the significance, anyway, because at that point there wasn’t any
reason
to be suspicious.”

“No.” I sighed.

“Then last Thursday, the day you came, we lost the Eaglewood horse with the cannon bone. Just the same. Failing heart and diving blood pressure. I took blood samples before we began that operation and Oliver took more when the horse was beyond saving, but we’ll never know the results of those as they were in the fridge in the path lab. I was going to send them to a professional lab for analysis.”

“Was there anything—anything at all—different in the two Mackintosh operations from the one I saw you do on the mare? Apart from not finding any physical obstructions, I mean?”

“Nothing, except naturally that it was Scott and Belinda who were with me, not you. Belinda runs the room, Scott does the anesthetic. We always work that way.”

“Just the three of you?”

“Not always. Any of the others might come in. Lucy assists with ponies, sometimes. Oliver’s often helping. I’ve assisted Jay with cows and bulls. Carey keeps an eye on things generally. He can turn his hand to anything if he has to, though nowadays he does small animals only. Yvonne, for all her glamour, is a neat, delicate surgeon, a pleasure to watch. I’ve seen her put car-struck dogs and cats back together like jigsaw puzzles. Even a pet rabbit, for one little boy. She microstitched its half-severed leg back on. It was hopping around later.” He paused. “The hospital has been our pride and joy, you see. Not many vets’ practices have such good facilities. It’s brought us a lot of outside work.”

“Go back to last Thursday morning,” I said. “By then all of you were apprehensive over almost every operation, right?”

He nodded mutely.

“So you checked everything twice. You had Oliver there. You were operating on a leg, not an abdomen. Go through it all in your mind, right from when the horse arrived. Don’t skip anything. Go slowly. I’ll just wait. Take your time.”

He raised no objections. I watched him think, watched the small movements in his facial muscles as he passed from procedure to procedure. Watched him shake his head and frown and finally move his whole body in distress.

“Absolutely nothing,” he burst out. “Nothing, except—” He stopped indecisively, as if unconvinced by what he was thinking.

“Except
what?”
I asked.

“Well, Oliver was watching the screen, like you were. I glanced over a couple of times. I can’t swear to it but I think now that the trace on the electrocardiograph—the line that shows the heartbeat—had changed slightly. I didn’t stand and watch it. Perhaps I should have done, considering. But then of course the trace did change anyway because the heart wasn’t working properly.” He frowned heavily, thinking it over. “I’ll have to look a few things up.”

“Here?” I asked, looking round the bare office.

“No, at home. All my books are at home. And thank God they are. Carey kept all his in his office so that we could all use them for reference if something cropped up we weren’t sure of. What the fire didn’t ruin, the water will have done.” He shook his head. “Some of those books are irreplaceable.”

“Very bad luck,” I said.

“There’s no saying the troubles are over, either.”

“Particularly not with an unknown body lying around.”

He rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “Let’s go along to Thetford Cottage.”

“OK. But Ken . . .”

“What?”

“Until they find out whose body it is, well, don’t go down any dark alleys.”

He stared. He didn’t seem to have worried in the least about the body or seen it as any warning to be careful.

“It was the arsonist,” he protested.

“Maybe. But why was he setting fire to the place?”

“I’ve no idea. No one has.”

“It sounds to me as if the arsonist himself didn’t know he was going to start a fire until just before he did it”

“Why do you think that?”

“Cleaning fluid. Paint. They happened to be there. If you intended to set fire to a building would you rely on breaking into it and finding inflammable liquids just lying around?”

He said slowly, “No, I wouldn’t”

“So just take care.”

“You scare me, you know.”

“Good.”

He studied my face. “I didn’t expect you to be like this.”

“Like what?”

“So . . . so
penetrating.”

I smiled lopsidedly. “Like a carpet needle! But no one remembers everything all the time. No one sees the significance of things all at once. Understanding what you’ve seen comes in fits and starts and sometimes when you don’t expect it. So if you remember anything else that you haven’t told me about the dead horses, well, tell me.”

“Yes,” he said soberly, “I will.”

 

 

VICKY DID HER best to charm Ken’s mother—Josephine—but in truth they were incompatible spirits. Vicky, spontaneous, rounded, generous, essentially young despite the white hair, was having to break through to a defensive, plainly dressed angular woman in whom disapproval was a habit.

Belinda, taking refuge in the kitchen, was knocking back a huge Bloody Mary (to settle her nerves and stop her screaming, Ken said, mixing it for her) and in consequence seemed more human.

Greg and I batted some conversation around without saying anything worth remembering and eventually we all sat down to roast lamb with potatoes, peas, carrots and gravy, the sort of meal I’d almost forgotten existed.

It wasn’t very difficult, once everyone had passed, poured and helped the food and was safely munching, to introduce the subject of Ken’s brilliant work on the colicky mare being met with suspicion and ingratitude from its owner.

“A most extraordinary man,” I said. “Wynn Lees, his name is. I didn’t like him at all.”

Josephine McClure, sitting next to me, raised her head from the forkful she’d been about to eat and paid attention.

I went on. “He showed no fondness for his mare. He didn’t seem to care about her. It almost seemed as if he wanted her dead.”

“No one could be so heartless,” Vicky exclaimed.

Josephine McClure ate her forkful.

“Some people are born heartless,” I said.

Ken recounted the story of his having got permission to operate from Wynn Lees’s wife. He chuckled. “He said she couldn’t have spoken to me in the middle of the night because she always took sleeping pills.”

Josephine McClure said tartly, “Anyone married to Wynn Lees would take sleeping pills as a matter of course.”

God bless you, dear lady, I thought, and in an amused chorus with the others, begged her to enlarge.

“Ken,” she said severely, “you didn’t tell me you’d done any work for Wynn Lees. That name! Unforgettable. I thought he’d gone to live abroad. Stay away from him.”

Ken said, bemused, “I didn’t know you knew him.”

“I don’t know him. I know of him. That’s not the same.”

“What do you know
of
him?” I asked in my most persuasive voice. “Do tell us.”

She sniffed. “He tortured some horses and went to jail.”

Vicky exclaimed in horror, and I asked, “When?”

“Years ago. Probably forty years ago. It was a frightful scandal because his father was a magistrate.”

Ken looked at her open-mouthed. “You never told me any of that”

“There’s never been any reason to. I haven’t heard his name for years. I’ve never given him a thought. He’d gone away. But if your man was heartless to his mare, it must be the same person come back again. There can’t be hundreds of people called Wynn Lees.”

“You have a good memory,” I said.

“I pride myself on it.”

“Ken’s also been having a spot of trouble with Ronnie Upjohn,” I said. “Do you know any scandal about
him?”

“Ronnie Upjohn?” She frowned slightly. “He used to know my husband. It’s very stupid of him to complain about Ken winning with that horse. Ken told me about it.”

I said tentatively, “Is he in business? Does he have a partner?”

“Oh, you mean old Mr. Travers? No, that was Ronnie’s father’s partner.”

I held my breath.

Josephine cut up some meat and fed herself a mouthful.

“I’ve lost you,” Ken said. “What are you talking about?”

“Old Mr. Travers,” his mother said acidly, “was a frightful lecher.”

Vicky looked captivated by the contrast between Josephine’s censorious manner and the pithiness of her words. Vicky would have given “lecher” a laugh. Josephine was serious. Greg, smiling, was maybe thinking that dried-up old Josephine needn’t fear the attentions of lechers: yet she had been a happy wife once and there were still vestiges of that young woman, though her mouth might be pursed now and bitter.

“Upjohn and Travers,” I said.

“That’s right.” She went on eating unemotionally.

“What sort of business was it?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Something to do with finance.” Her voice said that finance to her was a closed book. “Ronnie Upjohn’s never done a day’s work in his life, as far as I know. His father and old Mr. Travers were rolling.”

“You know so much about all these people,” I said admiringly. “How about the Eaglewoods?”

“Oh no, not the Eaglewoods,” Belinda said.

Josephine gave her future daughter-in-law a sharp glance and made a breathtaking statement. “I suppose you’re an advance on that Izzy girl.”

Belinda, although agreeing, looked astonished. Back-handed though it might be, she had received a compliment.

“What was wrong with Izzy Eaglewood?” I asked Josephine.

“Her mother.”

Vicky choked on some peas and needed her back patted.

When order had been restored I said, “What was wrong with Izzy Eaglewood’s mother?”

Josephine compressed her lips but couldn’t resist imparting knowledge. Now wound up, she would run and run.

She said, “Izzy’s mother was and is a tart”

Vicky was fortunately not eating peas. She laughed delightedly and told Josephine she hadn’t enjoyed a meal so much for ages. Josephine’s pale cheeks faintly flushed.

“Hold on a bit,” Ken protested. “It’s not Izzy’s fault what her mother is.”

“Heredity,” Josephine said darkly.

“Who is Izzy’s mother?” I asked neutrally.

“Russet Eaglewood,” Josephine said. “Such a silly name. Izzy is illegitimate, of course.”

“Leave it,” Ken begged her. He looked at me rather wildly. “Change the subject, can’t you?”

I said to Josephine obligingly, “How about Zoe Mackintosh?”

“Who? Oh yes. Should have been born male. She’s never made sheep’s eyes at Ken as far as I know.”

“I didn’t mean ...” I shook my head and left it. “I meant, are there any nice scandals about her or her family?”

“Her old father’s going gaga, if you call that a scandal. He always was a villain. They said he would take a commission from bookmakers for telling them when a hot favorite of his wouldn’t win.”

“Do go on,” said Vicky fervently.

“The Jockey Club could never prove it. Mackintosh was too slippery. I heard he lost a lot of his money a few months back in a property crash. You wouldn’t think people could lose money in property the way the cost of houses goes up, but a lot of people around here did. I don’t feel sorry for them, they shouldn’t have been so greedy.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know exactly. A neighbor of mine lost everything. He said never guarantee a loan. I remember him saying it and I remember what he said. He’s had to sell his house.”

“Poor man,” Vicky said.

“He should have had more sense.”

“Even millionaires can make that mistake,” I said.

Josephine sniffed.

“How about the Nagrebb family?” I asked her.

“She’s the show-jumper, isn’t she? I’ve seen her on television. Ken looks after their horses.”

“And, um, Fitzwalter?”

“Never heard of him.” She finished her plateful, put her knife and fork tidily together and turned to Ken. “Isn’t that man Nagrebb,” she asked, “the one who got into trouble for training show-jumpers cruelly?”

Ken nodded.

“What did he do?” I asked.