Gently at a Gallop (19 page)

She turned on him savagely. ‘Perhaps you’d better stop your prying there! The Stogumber secrets are dangerous to know, even for a Superintendent from Scotland Yard.’

‘But Berney discovered them.’

‘He was a fool. He had to be prying, just like you.’

‘And it wasn’t merely that you had a lover.’

‘It was too much for a fool – and he paid the penalty!’

‘Too much for him to stand.’

Mrs Berney loomed close to him, her breath coming in jerky gasps. Her eyes were distended and her mouth squared, her long fingers hooked and working.

‘You’re not God,’ she said. ‘You’re another little man. And little men have never been a match for me. On this heath I command Lucifer and bring him riding on the storms. Yes, Charlie learned secrets, fatal secrets, secrets that turned his foolish brain. And the madness brought him on the heath, and I conjured my demon lover to meet him. And what can you do about that?’ She thrust her face close to Gently’s. ‘Nothing! Unless I myself were to conjure my love into your arms.’

‘Does your demon lover write letters?’

‘Letters! Ha!’ She pulled away from him.

‘And does he sometimes borrow a horse – when the storms, of course, are not convenient?’

‘Little man,’ she said. ‘Remember where you are and who you’re with.’

‘I think I’m with a phoney,’ Gently said. ‘And a pretty obvious one at that.’

Mrs Berney’s hand flew up, the fingers crooked, and her eyes flared destruction.

‘Don’t,’ Gently said. ‘You couldn’t do it. And it wouldn’t be clever to try.’

‘You peasant,’ she spat. ‘You bloody peasant!’

‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘The Stogumber curse.’

‘May it light on you, may it, may it!’

‘In the meantime,’ Gently said, ‘put down your hand.’

Her eyes savaged him, but abruptly she dropped her hand to her side.

‘You’re probably right,’ she said. ‘You’re not worth it. My nails are too good for your ugly face.’ She gave a shudder. ‘Let’s get this over – before I’m sick, or have a miscarriage.’

Gently nodded. ‘Whatever it might be.’

She tossed her head furiously and strode on.

They were passing the ridges on their right and keeping to the level plains of heather. A very slight incline suggested to Gently that now they were working towards the track. Somewhere across there, among the vapoury bushes, Docking perhaps was picking them up again – relieved, no doubt, to see Gently returning in the same shape as he went. But if Docking was there, he was well concealed. The wrack-blurred heathscape stretched emptily as ever. From the coombes below the ridges mist crawled out serpent-like, urged up from the lower level by a feeble breeze.

‘Nearly there now,’ Mrs Berney said. ‘You won’t need your patience much longer, policeman. You want to understand and you shall understand – but don’t blame me if it isn’t any use to you.’

‘Everything is of use to me,’ Gently said quietly.

Mrs Berney’s laughter was hoarse. ‘You have your philosophy, policeman,’ she said. ‘But what you’ll see now is a little outside it. Stand here.’

She pointed to a burn of gravel which lay naked and glimmering amongst the heather. It was roughly circular, and its centre was marked by a mat of black flints.

‘Stand on that.’ She moved Gently on to it, then turned him to face towards the ridges. Once again he felt surprise at finding himself looking into the valley where the body had been found. ‘Now stay still. Don’t move from the centre. Just keep facing down the valley. Then, when I lift the veil, you’ll be able to see what you’ve come to see.’

She placed her feet on the flints beside his, turned, and began pacing a line to his left. Almost compulsively, he found himself counting each of her precisely measured steps. At seventy-seven she reached a stony mound that lifted a little above the heather. At ninety-nine she reached the summit, halted, and turned to face the valley. She raised her arms. She began to incant. At the distance he couldn’t hear the words. When she’d finished, she crossed her arms seven times, then sank them slowly, with fingers extended.

‘Now policeman – listen! Can you hear him?’

She stood with arms pressed back, her face raised and intent. And Gently heard it: from down the valley, a dull beat, like a muffled drum.

It came out of the mist, and it was black, a black rider on a black horse – and it was huge, seeming above life-size as it cantered majestically up the valley. The rider sat straight, his hands low, his head and face a blotted blank. Man and horse, they moved together in an unhurried, rhythmic progress.

‘Do you see him?’ Mrs Berney cried. ‘Do you see my lover coming, mortal?’ She burst into a peal of hysterical laughter, her hands clasping about her belly. ‘You wanted to meet him – now he’s here! What have you to say to him? How will you greet him?’ She swayed from side to side: her laughter sounded like agony.

Hoof clashed on stone and thudded on heather. Involuntarily, Gently turned to run. But there was no cover. The spot where she’d brought him was a bare heather flat, dotted only with dwarf gorses. Distantly he could see the crowns of trees peeping over the big crevasse – too far off, but there was nothing else: he began to sprint in that direction.

‘Run, run policeman!’

Mrs Berney was running too. From the corner of his eye he could see her red raincoat trailing along on a parallel course. The ponderous rhythm behind him didn’t quicken but insensibly, regularly, drew closer, the hoofbeats gaining in articulation, the rough breathing of the stallion beginning to sound over them. Another hundred, hundred and twenty yards . . .

Then, away to his right, he heard a shout. Two figures, one of whom he recognized as Docking, were racing jerkily across the heather towards him. But they were quarter of a mile off, and what could they do? As though conscious of this, they had come to a standstill. But almost immediately Gently heard a vicious whine, followed by a report, and a commotion behind him.

Docking had a rifle!

Panting, Gently wheeled about. The stallion and its rider were only fifty yards behind him. It hadn’t been hit, but it was rearing and struggling, its white-rimmed eyes starting from their sockets.

‘Get him – get him!’ Mrs Berney was screaming. ‘The others don’t matter, but you must get him!’

The rider climbed high in his stirrups above the stallion, driving him down, driving him forwards.

Gently rushed on. Another bullet split air. This time he didn’t wait to see the effect. Before him the track was snaking through the heather-bush and beyond the track opened the gulf of the crevasse. His feet banged stones and snagged in the heather. A clamp seemed screwed across his lungs. The hoofbeats were gaining on him much too fast, were increasing tempo, were bearing in on him. He stumbled over the track. There were still ten yards. Hooves clattered on the track straight behind him. A bullet whanged by his head, he tripped, sprawled, rolled, was plunging suddenly into wet, rasping bracken. Hooves flailed above him: the stallion neighed. There was darkness, then light, then a dragging silence. Then, some way below, he heard a crashing thud, followed by the spine-chilling screams of the stallion.

He clawed out of the bracken. Forty feet beneath him the stallion was pawing at the slope with desperate forefeet. Its hind-quarters were paralysed, and it was sliding, shrieking, farther and farther down the incline. Some yards above it lay the black-clad rider, blood rippling through his stocking mask. His head looked flattened, his trunk misshaped; one arm was bent in the wrong place.

Gasping painfully, legs trembling, Gently began lowering himself towards the body; but then the red-clad figure of Mrs Berney darted over the top and came thrusting past him.

‘No. No. Oh no – no!’

She tumbled and fought through the clinging bracken. Sobbing, wailing, she threw herself on the body, grabbing the mangled trunk to her, nuzzling the bloody head.

Gently staggered down beside her. He took hold of the stocking mask and wrenched. For a second he stared without recognition at the crushed and bloodstained features the mask had hidden. Then he knew. The hair was auburn. He was looking at Lachlan Stogumber. The wailing woman clutching the body was bathing her face in her brother’s blood.

D
OCKING SHOT THE
stallion.

He had taken alarm when he’d seen Gently leave the cars with Mrs Berney. He’d sent a Panda to Creke’s stable, and finding it empty, had asked for a gun.

The stallion wasn’t easy to shoot. Though crippled, it had gone for Docking with its teeth. He’d shot it at last, blasting out one of the eyes, and was violently sick directly afterwards. Now he stood around looking dazed and wretched while the ambulance men fetched up Lachlan Stogumber’s body.

‘But what are we going to do about her . . . ?’

Docking’s eyes kept straying to Mrs Berney. Mrs Berney was sitting slumped in the back of the car with a policewoman at her side. They’d had to use force to get her off the body and for a while she’d seemed to go out of her mind; then the hysteria had collapsed suddenly and she’d fallen into a staring-eyed stupor.

Gently looked blankly towards the car. ‘She’s disturbed . . . we’d better take her home.’

‘You mean to the Lodge?’

‘No – the Manor. There’s a housekeeper there who may understand her.’

‘But . . . there’ll have to be charges?’

Gently’s shoulder twitched. ‘That’s something we can talk about later. Just now we’re taking her to the Manor. I’ve still some business to finish there.’

It was raining again, a soft rain, sheeting in quietly from the sea. Gently’s Lotus led the small cavalcade that bumbled down the track to the road. He drove slowly. Docking rode with him. At the junction in the grove they parted with the ambulance. Creke, a sack draped round his shoulders, was waiting at his lane’s end; he waved them to stop, but Gently ignored him. They reached the Manor. A Panda car was parked there. The driver was standing at the foot of the steps. On the steps stood Stogumber, bare-headed in the rain, his face a wet smudge against the gloom of the doorway. They parked and got out. The second car parked. The policewoman handed out Mrs Berney. Stogumber came down the steps; his body was trembling, his gnarled hands on the flutter.

‘Marie . . .’

Mrs Berney stared through him. Her eyes were icy, her mouth sagged.

‘Marie. Marie. My daughter . . .’

She drew a sudden, fierce breath and turned aside.

Stogumber rocked a little. He looked for Gently. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Where have you taken him?’

‘To the mortuary.’

‘He mustn’t come . . . here?’

‘I don’t think you’d want that,’ Gently said.

They went into the hall. Redmayne was waiting there. Mrs Berney stalked past him and flopped on a chair. She sat hugging her belly and gazing at the rush matting, her lips very thin and skewed to the side. Stogumber shambled up near her, his hands still fluttering, his lips framing words he didn’t speak. Tears, it may have been of rheum, were dribbling down his grey cheeks.

Gently halted by Redmayne. ‘And you . . . you warned nobody.’

Redmayne was pale, his eyes bright. He made a resigned motion with his hand. ‘Jimmy probably guessed . . . in the end.’

‘But you could have told him. Long since.’

‘It wouldn’t have helped.’

‘It would have helped Berney.’

‘Charlie . . .’ Redmayne shook his head. ‘He bought it, you know . . . with his own weakness.’

‘His weakness – and your silence.’

Redmayne hunched, his head sinking. ‘They were kin,’ he said. ‘Stogumber kin. How could you expect me to come out with it?’

Mrs Berney gave a crowing laugh. ‘My God, you hypocrites,’ she said. ‘Furtive, craven, beastly hypocrites. My love was noble. Let the world know!’

‘Hush, Marie, hush,’ Redmayne said.

‘I won’t be hushed,’ Mrs Berney said. She rose from the chair to stand challengingly, head drawn back, eyes glittering. ‘We dared. Our love was immortal. He was a king and I a queen. Ours was the love of royal people – of Pharaohs, emperors. Of the gods.’

‘Be quiet, be quiet,’ Redmayne said.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘What should I be afraid of? The peasant laws are for peasant people, they can never touch such ones as us. Here.’ She felt in her bosom and pulled out a piece of folded paper. ‘Here it is – Charlie Berney’s death warrant. He looked on this and had to die.’

She threw it on the matting at Gently’s feet. Gently picked it up and unfolded it. Written on it was the first sonnet, in Lachlan Stogumber’s hand, headed:
To My Sister-mistress
, and signed:
Lachlan Rex
.

‘He was doomed,’ Mrs Berney said. ‘He read the riddle and it was death to him. We knew what he’d do, where he would go. It was I who decreed that Charlie should die.’

‘Marie – no!’ Redmayne exclaimed.

‘Yes – I, I!’ Mrs Berney said. ‘Tell the world – do you think I care? There’s nothing left now in this place of graves.’

A grasping groan came from Stogumber. He shuffled a step forward to confront his daughter. His mouth hung open, his eyes were searching, his wandering hands shook like leaves.

‘Marie . . .’

It ended in a choking sound, rattling deep in his throat. Then he fell, going down quickly. He landed lumpingly on his back on the matting.

‘Get her out of here!’ Gently snapped. ‘Take her back to the car.’

‘Die, old man!’ Mrs Berney screamed. ‘Don’t let the peasants drag you back!’

She was grabbed by Docking and the policewoman and hustled, laughing crazily, out of the hall. Redmayne had dropped beside his cousin. He was supporting Stogumber’s lolling head on his arm. Gently knelt, took Stogumber’s wrist.

‘I think he’s gone,’ Redmayne whispered. ‘My God . . . she’s killed him too. Poor Jimmy. Poor old Jimmy.’

There was no pulse. Gently released the wrist. Stogumber’s cheeks were drained and pallid. The jaw sagged, and below sunken lids the eyes showed rolled and white. He was dead.

‘Oh heavens,’ Redmayne whispered.

Very tenderly, he lowered Stogumber’s head. He took the dead man’s hand and squeezed it till his own knuckles went pale.