When the Devil Drives (29 page)

‘Shut your noise, Caesar.'

A man carrying a curry comb came out of one of the boxes. He was too big and broad-shouldered to have been a jockey, but had that sceptical, seen-it-all look of a man who'd spent all his life with horses and horsemen. He didn't seem surprised to see a woman on her own at this hour, or even particularly curious.

‘Mr Dunn?'

‘That's me.'

‘I believe you've met a friend of mine, Amos Legge. I wondered if you knew where he went after you saw him.'

He looked at me, sizing me up. ‘Is he in some kind of trouble, then?'

It worried me that both he and Mr Webster had the same thought.

‘Not as far as we know, only he's been away from his work longer than is usual with him.'

‘He came to try a horse.'

It wasn't an answer. Mr Dunn was still trying to judge whether I meant trouble for Amos or not.

‘What did he think of it?' I said.

He wouldn't be rushed into anything. He turned, went into a box and came out leading a rangy looking dark bay gelding by the halter rope.

‘You know him. What do you think he thought of him?' he said.

The horse was rolling his eyes and pressing his ears back in a fine show of bad temper. He looked a shade lacking in bone to me, and too narrow in the chest. Yet his length of body and his bearing, like an arrow waiting to be loosed from a bow, told another story.

‘Outrun most things over half a mile, but not a stayer,' I said.

He grinned a slow grin. I'd passed some kind of test. ‘Pretty much what he said. He told me if I hadn't sold him by the time he came back this way, we might have a deal.'

Hope flared.

‘He's coming back soon, then?'

‘Said it might be a while,' Mr Dunn said.

Hope sank again. He led the gelding back into his box and came out looking thoughtful.

I tried again. ‘So do you have any idea where he was going when he left here?'

For answer, I got that over-the-shoulder nod, as from the landlord at the Red Lion. This time I knew how to interpret it.

‘The castle? Why was he going there?'

‘Thought he might get work. I reckon that was why he came to see me. He was interested in the horse, right enough, but he'd found out from Mr Webster I used to work there.'

‘At the mews?'

‘Yes. He wanted to know what his chances were if he turned up asking for work. Not good usually, I told him. They like to keep it in the family, so no chance of a regular post unless you've got a brother or a father in there. But now and then, if they're short-handed, they might take on a man casual for a few days if he looks useful, for the rough jobs like buckets and mucking out. You wouldn't want that, I told him.'

‘But he did?'

‘Seemed to. That surprised me, because a man who knows horses like he knows them could do better for himself. Then I thought maybe he'd had some falling out with his employer and was down on his luck.'

He looked at me, obviously wondering whether I was that employer, had sacked my groom and now regretted it. I decided to let him go on suspecting it.

‘So Mr Legge went from here to ask for a job in the Royal Mews?'

‘Yes. I gave him the name of a man he could try asking. Last I saw of him, he was walking across the park there.'

Another nod towards the castle. A big park and a walk of miles and miles.

‘I wonder if you have a horse you'd hire me,' I said.

NINETEEN

T
he only side-saddle horse in his stable was a docile grey mare with a rocking-horse canter. I rode her westwards into Windsor Great Park on a morning of low grey cloud, threatening rain. Damp had changed the autumn gold of the oak trees to tarnished bronze. For the first part of the ride we saw no other riders, only deer that galloped away from us. This early, it wasn't surprising that we had the park to ourselves. After two miles or so we came to our first horseman, standing high on a hill, a gigantic figure against the grey sky. He was no flesh and blood creature. The Copper Horse was what they called him locally, a huge equestrian statue of George III. When I'd last been in the park as a child, the statue had not been there but I'd seen engravings of it. The king himself, looking infinitely more noble than was likely in real life, was dressed in the approximate fashion of a Roman emperor, riding a magnificent horse with flowing mane and tail. The engraving had not prepared me for the sheer size of it, or the way it dominated this part of the park. It stood on a high and rocky plinth, looking down on Windsor Castle, as if prepared to trample anything that challenged it under its lordly hooves.

I admired it from a distance, but as we came closer it started to trouble me. It reminded me too much of the Achilles statue – the same immense size, the same harking back to classical times, but above all the flaunting arrogance of it. The mare and I trotted towards the base of the hill. There was a path going towards the statue, but we had no reason to ride up to it. We could simply skirt the base of the hill to come on to the Long Walk. From there, a good canter on the grass between an avenue of old elm trees would bring us to Windsor town. In spite of that, I found I'd shortened the rein and turned the mare up the path towards the statue. We'd only taken a few steps before two men on bay cobs came riding down it. They were wearing dark uniforms and looked like park rangers. The first one turned his horse across the path, barring our way.

‘Sorry ma'am, you can't go up there.'

The apology was perfunctory, his face grim.

‘Why not?'

‘Stones falling off,' said his companion from behind him, in a voice that suggested he didn't care whether he was believed or not.

From what I could see, the stone plinth looked as solid as Snowdon. I didn't argue with them. It would have been no use, and in any case I was gripped by a cold and shivery feeling that made me want to get away from there. I was sure I knew now where the chariot had taken the contessa's body. These men might be part of it, keeping strangers away while others arranged her under those arrogant hooves. If they thought I was a threat to them, there was no chance that my mare could outrun their cobs.

‘Where were you going, ma'am?' said the first man. English. His voice sounded hoarse from a cold.

‘Windsor.'

‘Just on that way.'

He pointed down the Long Walk with his whip. I turned the mare downhill and onto the flat grass between the lines of elms. At first we walked. When I looked back, the three of them were still there, the giant horse on its hill and the two men near the foot of the hill, watching us go. I put the mare into a canter, wishing I were on the arrow-swift sprinter rather than this gentle rocking horse, anything to get away from what I dreaded.

The mare was labouring hard long before we covered the three miles or so to town, so I slowed to a walk. By then, I'd got back some measure of calm. I might be wrong. After all that had happened, it wasn't surprising if I started imagining things. At first, the feeling of normality in the little town under the great walls of the castle helped to convince me that my nerves had got the better of my brain. Shops were open, people going about their business, fashionable carriages jamming the narrow streets. I asked a group of lads if they could direct me to the Royal Mews and they pointed down a side street. A few spectators stood on either side of a pair of closed doors. I waited with them. After a while, the doors were opened from the inside and a carriage drawn by two finely-matched greys came out. The spectators pressed forward.

‘Is it them?' a woman said.

The carriage rolled past, the driver on the box and the footman at the back as impassive as waxworks. There was nobody inside.

‘Just out for the exercise,' another spectator said, disappointed.

By then the great doors had been closed from the inside. A brass bell knob gleamed on one of the doorposts, but I guessed it was no use pulling it and asking if they'd recently engaged a casual worker named Amos Legge. If he'd succeeded in being taken on, he'd probably be too low in the hierarchy to be known by name, let alone allowed callers.

I sat there on the grey mare and considered. The other spectators were talking amongst themselves, wondering whether it was worth waiting. What they hoped to see, of course, was the happy royal couple. I caught scraps of their conversation.

‘ . . . out shooting yesterday. Just him, not her.'

‘We came to see them last week, when they were supposed to have a military review in the park here, only they postponed it because of the rain. It's tomorrow now.'

‘They have a band on the terrace on Sundays. She almost always walks there.'

Some of them decided they were waiting in the wrong place and drifted away. A stubborn few stayed, to have their hopes briefly raised when a two-horse barouche turned into the narrow street. But the only occupant was a stern-faced elderly gentleman whom not even the most hopeful could mistake for young Prince Albert. Somebody inside the doors must have been expecting it, because when the barouche was halfway down the street, they opened as if by magic. The barouche turned into the doorway. Without thinking about it, I pressed my heel into the mare's flank, picked up the rein and followed as if I were meant to be there. The doors closed behind us.

Instantly, grooms and boys appeared to take charge of the barouche. Every buckle on the harness seemed to have its own attendant. Within a minute, the horses were unharnessed and being led into an inner yard and the stern-faced man had disappeared through a doorway. The mare and I followed the carriage horses. Any second, somebody would want to know what a bedraggled young woman on an undistinguished hack was doing in such a well ordered yard, so there was no time to waste.

I rode her into the middle of the yard, stopped by the water trough and called as loudly as I could,

‘Amos Legge.' Silence for a moment, then from inside a loose box, a bucket clanked. A man appeared, ducking his head so as not to hit it on the loose box lintel.

‘Hello, Miss Lane.'

He didn't sound particularly surprised to see me, but not best pleased either. He was looking less than his usual dapper self, in rough corduroy breeches and a navy blue jacket that strained across his broad shoulders. The bruises had faded to a light lemon colour with streaks of purple.

‘Amos, I need to speak to you.'

‘You there, what do you think you're doing?'

A man with side-whiskers, red face and a brass-buttoned jacket had appeared from a doorway and was shouting at Amos.

‘Talking to the lady,' Amos said.

He wasn't used to being shouted at or called ‘you there' and let the man know by his tone that he didn't like it.

‘You're supposed to be doing buckets. Get back to it. As for what you think you're doing, madam . . .'

The ‘madam' was entirely contemptuous. Amos didn't move a step, simply seemed to grow six inches taller and broader in the shoulders.

‘The lady is doing me the kindness to call and ask after my health,' he said, in his broadest Herefordshire accent. ‘I'll see her out, so you needn't be bothering yourself.'

He took hold of the grey's rein and led us through the archway into the outer yard, dignified as an ambassador at a foreign court. A couple of lads were standing by the closed doors to the street. At a nod from Amos they jumped forward and pulled them open, surrendering to his natural authority. He kept up his ambassador act, not turning or saying a word to me, until we'd turned the corner and were out of sight of the mews. Once he'd led us into another side street away from the traffic, he stopped and turned round at last.

‘What's the trouble, then?' he said.

I was so relieved at finding him that I didn't try to explain and just said what was in my head. ‘Did they find a woman's body at the Copper Horse this morning?'

He looked up at me, then nodded. ‘Round the town already then, is it? They were trying to keep it quiet.'

‘I was riding past it, and there were two men there, keeping people away. I knew they were bringing her here, you see. That is, I didn't know, but . . .' I wasn't making sense, more shocked and tired than I'd realized. I started to dismount and Amos caught me as I slid out of the saddle. Standing there, hand on the mare's shoulder, I told him about the ice cellar, the contessa and the chariot driving westwards.

‘I'd guessed they were going to leave her in a public place somewhere, like the other two, only I hadn't guessed it would be outside London. But I knew somehow this morning, even before I met the men. They looked like rangers, but they might have been anybody.'

‘What time was it you saw them?' Amos said.

I had to think back. ‘It was nearly nine before I left the stables. Say around ten o'clock at the Copper Horse.'

‘They'd have been rangers, then. It was earlier than that they found her, just after it got light. Some officers from the barracks had gone riding up there. There's a military review going on in the park tomorrow and they were getting ready for it.'

‘How did you hear?'

‘The men were talking about it at the Mews. Not outright though, and I wasn't meant to hear. But I knew something was going on – people all buttoned up and shocked-looking, carriages coming in and out. Then they had to get a chariot harnessed up to go to Downing Street sharpish.'

‘Who was in it?'

‘Somebody from the castle. Didn't know him, only they put two of their fastest horses and one of their best drivers on, so it must have been important.'