Gently at a Gallop (6 page)

‘Not if he was put to it?’

Rising feinted a spit. ‘Can’t you see that’s where you’ve gone wrong?’ he said. He came closer to Gently. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’s a horse, a stallion, with a vicious temper. We’ve had him here on service a couple of times, and I wouldn’t let a customer as much as see him. He’s on the spot. He gets loose. He runs into Charlie along that gully. Charlie sees he’s a stray and he makes to collar him – and whacko! That’s Charlie’s lot. Doesn’t that make sense – a lot more sense than somebody having a go at Charlie?’

Gently hesitated. ‘Which horse is this?’

‘The one that’s been under your nose all the time! That evil black bastard at the Home Farm. His stable’s only a mile from where you found Charlie.’

‘A
black
horse?’

‘Right. A black. Bred a hunter, stands eighteen hands.’

‘With a killer temper?’

‘Right again. Nat Creke can handle him, but I wouldn’t try.’

‘Creke’s the farmer, sir,’ Docking put in. ‘We have checked that horse sir, if you remember. It was in its stable all day Tuesday. Creke exercised it in the evening.’

Rising laughed. ‘That’s Nat’s tale. Show me how you’re going to prove it.’

‘Can you disprove it, sir?’ Docking said.

Rising slitted his eyes at him, laughed again.

Gently gave a few pats to Ned’s munching muzzle. ‘So we’ll follow it up,’ he said. ‘It’s a possible theory. And meantime you weren’t at Low Hale this afternoon – just out of curiosity, to look at the spot?’

‘No I wasn’t,’ Rising said. ‘I was where I told you.’

‘Then we’ll get on to something else,’ Gently said. ‘Last Sunday Berney and his wife were here riding. Perhaps you can tell me something about that.’

Rising pulled back a little, his eyes probing, his heavy hands crooking at his sides.

‘That’s a queer sort of thing to ask me,’ he said. ‘What’s last Sunday got to do with it?’

‘That’s what I want to know,’ Gently said. ‘The Berneys did come here riding, didn’t they?’

‘Suppose they did,’ Rising said. ‘Sunday’s the day when everyone comes.’

‘So tell me about it,’ Gently said.

Rising shook his head, his hands working. ‘It was just like any other Sunday,’ he said. ‘Charlie rang in the morning to book two horses. We were full up in the afternoon. Charlie’d booked for three p.m. Leo Redmayne and her brother were here. They all went riding down to the beach.’

‘They went together?’ Gently said.

‘Near enough,’ Rising said. ‘Marie and her brother went off first, then Leo, then Charlie. Charlie’s saddle was loose, he says, so he waited for me to tighten the straps for him. But the beach was where they were going. They’d decided that before they mounted.’

Gently nodded. ‘What other riders went that way?’

Rising flipped his hand. ‘I don’t keep an eye on them. Jill took her pony-string down there, but mostly the customers stick to the heath.’

‘Your wife went that way?’

‘Yes. Maybe she can tell you.’

‘She set out about the same time as the Berneys?’

‘She let them go first to get them out of the way. The pony-string isn’t a fast mover.’

‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘So it went like this. First, Mrs Berney in company with her brother. Then Mr Redmayne. Then Mr Berney. Then your wife with the string of ponies.’

‘Right,’ Rising said. ‘Is that supposed to add up to something?’

Gently shrugged. ‘Would you say it did?’

Rising slitted his eyes for a moment, then hooked a thumb in his breeches pocket.

‘Let’s come to that party now,’ Gently said. ‘When did you get your invitation?’

‘They spoke to Jill about it,’ Rising said sulkily. ‘I was out with a starter when they got back.’

‘Didn’t you want to go to it?’

‘Right,’ Rising said. ‘There’s plenty to do here without parties. Only Jill and Marie are great buddies, so it was fixed up over my head.’

‘Jill and Marie,’ Gently said. ‘So you went to this party a bit reluctantly. But no doubt you cheered up when you got there – a few drinks, dancing, some amusing people?’

Rising aimed a kick at the stable wall. ‘All right, it wasn’t so brilliant. I’ve been to some other parties of Charlie’s, and they had more steam than Monday’s.’

‘How wasn’t it brilliant?’

‘It didn’t jell. Charlie and Marie didn’t circulate. Marie was stuck with her brother and Leo. Charlie acted like he couldn’t be bothered.’

‘He stayed in the background.’

Rising nodded. ‘That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? And it’s true enough, he just sat around. The party was dead on its feet by eleven.’

‘Didn’t he dance?’

‘Yes. With his wife.’

‘With nobody else?’

Rising hesitated. ‘If he did, I didn’t notice,’ he said. ‘I happened to be dancing with my wife, too.’

‘Of course,’ Gently said. ‘And there were no incidents.’

Rising swung his foot, said nothing.

‘Then . . . or later.’

Rising looked at him. A flush was showing in his creased cheeks.

‘Now look,’ Rising said. ‘Me, I’m an Aussie, and I don’t much like your bloody methods. Where I come from we talk straight, and if that won’t do we try this.’ He stropped the knuckles of one hand across the palm of the other. ‘So what are you getting at, sport?’ he said.

Gently laid a finger on Rising’s fist. ‘This won’t help you,’ he said. ‘Drop it.’

Rising’s eyes thinned. ‘You think I wouldn’t,’ he said.

‘I think you wouldn’t,’ Gently said.

Rising snatched his fist away suddenly. ‘You bastard,’ he said. ‘You’re on about Jill and Charlie, aren’t you? That’s how your stinking policeman’s mind works – Jill and Charlie, and me for patsy.’

‘That’s how my mind works,’ Gently shrugged.

‘Yeah, that’s how it works,’ Rising said. ‘And you’d better make it work some other way, sport, because there’s no percentage in that.’

‘The gossip isn’t true?’

‘What gossip?’ Rising snarled.

‘Gossip we’ve been hearing,’ Gently said smoothly.

‘There hasn’t been any gossip!’

Gently shook his head, stared mildly at Rising’s furious glare.

‘Look,’ Rising said, moving closer, ‘it’s a bloody try-on, and you know it. Charlie’s been pals with us for years and never a whisper about him and Jill. There wouldn’t be. She isn’t that sort of woman. She couldn’t do it and me not know. And if any creeping bastard had said so I’d have beat him into a pulp.’

‘The way we found Berney,’ Gently said.

Rising’s eyes thinned to points. ‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It won’t do, sport. You’re never going to hang that one on me. I was right here all day Tuesday.’

‘Can you prove it?’

‘Can you disprove it?’ Rising sent a leer at Docking. ‘I say I was here, and I was here. Look, you can see what I was doing.’

He turned abruptly and marched across to a building which had probably been the old coach-house. Gently and Docking followed. Rising pushed open the door, stood aside to let them enter.

‘There. Run your eye over them.’

The interior had been converted into a workshop. Along one side ran a carpenter’s bench with racks of tools mounted behind it. A miniature circular saw stood under the window and a stack of new timber lay by the wall. In the centre of the floor stood four freshly painted jumps, with splashings of paint lying around them.

‘That’s what I was doing Tuesday – finishing off these new jumps. And Jill, she was out with the kids – and she didn’t take them to High Hale.’

‘You were here alone . . . ?’

‘When Jill wasn’t here. Our domestic only comes mornings.’

‘So she’s your alibi, you’re hers.’

‘Try to beat it,’ Rising said. ‘Try to beat it.’

Gently moved to one of the jumps and ran his fingers over the moistly silky fresh paint. ‘I may do just that,’ he said. ‘Who were the kids who went with your wife?’

‘You leave the kids out of it,’ Rising said. ‘I wouldn’t know who they were anyway.’

‘But your wife will know?’

‘And leave her out of it! I’m not having Jill upset with dirty scandal.’

A shadow fell in the doorway: they turned to look. The woman in riding drag was standing there.

‘And what scandal can that be?’ she asked coolly.

‘Jill!’ Rising said. ‘You get out of here.’

Jill Rising didn’t get out. She stood looking at the policemen with a determined expression on her handsome face. She was younger than her husband, perhaps in her mid-thirties, and she had firm brown eyes and dark hair worn short. Her figure was majestic. A voluptuous bust rounded out pushingly beneath the black jacket, and the fine spring of hip and calf were not concealed by her jodhpurs.

‘What scandal?’ she repeated. ‘I can’t think of any that would upset me.’

‘Jill,’ Rising said appealingly. ‘Just do what I say, Jill. I can handle what’s going on here.’

Jill Rising laughed. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘The tone of your voice didn’t sound reassuring. And if there’s scandal being talked which I shouldn’t hear, then of course it has to do with me and Charlie.’

‘Look, Jill, will you leave it?’ Rising implored.

‘Don’t be absurd, Jerry,’ Jill Rising said. ‘If these gentlemen have been listening to gossip, they’ll certainly want to ask me if there’s any truth in it.’

‘It’s filthy lies!’

‘Is it?’ she said.

‘Oh my God, you know it is.’

‘I know nothing of the sort,’ Jill Rising said. ‘Charlie made passes at me from the start.’

Rising pulled back from her. ‘That’s a lie!’

‘Oh, relax, Jerry,’ Jill Rising said. ‘Charlie couldn’t help it. He was made that way. With him it was like a nervous twitch.’

‘But you never told me,’ Rising snapped.

‘Because you’re too impetuous,’ Jill Rising said. ‘You’d have knocked him about, then there’d have been a lawsuit, and all about nothing except Charlie’s being Charlie.
I
didn’t mind. I rather liked it. I’d have felt hurt if he’d made me an exception.’

‘But . . . holy Josephine!’ Rising said.

‘Isn’t that what the policemen want to know?’

‘You can bet it is!’

‘So,’ Jill Rising said. ‘Now they know it – for what it’s worth.’

She turned calmly to Gently. Gently cleared his throat. ‘And . . . this . . . had been going on for some time?’

‘Ever since Charlie began coming here,’ Jill Rising said. ‘Even before we’d been introduced.’

‘The slimy Casanova!’ Rising burst out.

‘Did he make a pass at you on Sunday?’

Jill Rising shook her head. ‘Not since he married Marie. Charlie had reformed. He really loved her, you know.’

‘He made no approach to you?’

‘Not of that kind. I rode part of the way to the beach with him. He seemed a bit absent-minded, not quite his old self. I thought perhaps he’d had a tiff with Marie.’

Gently nodded. ‘Did you speak to her?’

‘Yes. We all met up on the beach.’

‘Was she her old self?’

‘Oh yes, Marie. It takes a good deal to throw her.’

‘But I’d have thrown
him
,’ Rising growled in his throat. ‘Hell, when I think about that party . . .’

‘He means parading me there,’ Jill Rising said quickly. ‘In a plunge-neck dress, for Charlie to ogle. But really, it wasn’t a very bright party. Charlie was dull as an old bear. If you think he had a woman on his mind you could be right, but it wasn’t anybody at the party.’

Gently hesitated. ‘Is that what you thought?’

Jill Rising smiled brightly. ‘It crossed my mind. It couldn’t have been money, because Charlie was rolling, and with Charlie there was practically only one other thing.’

‘And you had a guess,’ Gently said. ‘Knowing Berney so well?’

‘Perhaps,’ Jill Rising said. ‘But I’d nothing to go on. As I told you, Charlie’d reformed after he married Marie. He’d broken off with all his old playmates.’ She looked at Gently squarely, her brown eyes forceful. ‘I’m your best bet,’ she said, ‘only it wasn’t me. Charlie knew he had nothing coming from me. Over the years, the message had got through.’

Gently paused, still holding her eyes. ‘But he’d tried,’ he said, ‘over the years?’

‘I’ve admitted that. He made passes.’

‘Including writing you poems . . . like this?’

He pulled out the poem and shoved it at Jill Rising. She flushed suddenly and put her hand out with reluctance. Gerald Rising stepped closer to her. His mouth was pressed tight. Jill Rising fumbled with the sheet, got it open, began reading. Then she laughed a little breathlessly.

‘Charlie never wrote this!’

‘Here, let me look,’ Gerald Rising said. He took hold of the sheet, his eyes puckering, and read the poem right through.

‘You agree?’ Gently said.

Rising nodded. ‘We’ve only got one poet round here, sport.’

‘It’s one of Lachlan’s,’ Jill Rising laughed. ‘And it wasn’t written to me, I assure you.’

‘You’ve never seen it before?’

‘I . . . never!’

‘For example, on Monday.’

She shook her head, her face hot.

‘You?’ Gently said to Rising.

‘Me neither,’ Rising said. ‘If you want to know about this you’d better ask Marie’s brother.’

Gently took the poem and stowed it away again. The two Risings stood silent, their eyes turned from him. Jill Rising’s starch had gone out of her. Gerald Rising’s thumbs had crept back into his pockets.

‘That leaves me with one question,’ Gently said. ‘I’d like the names of the children who accompanied Mrs Rising on Tuesday.’

‘I can give them to you,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But it may not help much. I picked them up after school.’

‘After school,’ Gently said. ‘When was that?’

‘It was quarter to four,’ Jill Rising said.

‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘Still, I’ll have the names.’

Gerald Rising’s thumbs hooked tighter.

T
HE LOTUS WAS
hot. Gently switched on the fan as they turned out of the stable yard. From Rising’s drive one could see the sea, but there was little breeze coming from that direction. A black thunder-fly was trapped behind the windscreen and Docking squashed it with a well-aimed prod. They tinkered through the gates into the narrow road and coasted down to the silent village.

‘Amusing people,’ Gently said.