The Anodyne Necklace(40)

She tried to distract him from that particular line of questioning. "It reminds me of something, I can't think what." She frowned. "It looks different colored, doesn't it?"

Peter turned the map this way and that. "It doesn't look like anything to me except like some fool treasure map. What do you mean it reminds you of something?"

Emily screwed up her eyes and studied a moth floating above the ceiling light. "I'll think of it in a minute."

His face was like a thundercloud. "Don't you go playing that game with me, now. I'm not about to fill you up with crisps and sweets."

When he turned away to ball up the paper and chuck it in the dustbin, she stuck out her tongue again at his back. It wasn't a game. She would think of it.

Peter herded her out the door, flashed her another dark look, got in his car, and sped off down the High. When he was out of sight, Emily sneaked back into the station, rescued the map and smoothed it out.

On the way to Rookswood, she stopped in at Polly Praed's and was much more satisfied with the response there than at Peter's. It was Polly who had taken her to the London zoo and let her ride all over the city on the Underground.

To say nothing of the response-amounting to several fresh cream cakes-this latest revelation earned her in the Rookswood kitchen.

II

"You're crazy!" said Cyril Macenery, half-rising from his chair before Jury pushed him back down.

Jury had run the gauntlet-literally-of the cross little nurse, several aides, a medicine trolley, and a woman who looked quite capable of tackling him and dragging him from the hospital by his heels. Matron, surely. But when he flashed his warrant card in her face, she could only clamp her mouth shut and accept the situation.

Katie was as he had left her. He resisted the temptation to hold a mirror to her lips before he led Cyril Macenery from the room.

At the moment, they were in a room reserved for mourning families. Wiggins had his notebook open, sitting beneath a hospital lamp. He had taken down everything.

"Listen, I was here in this hospital-you saw me. I could hardly have been in Littlebourne murdering somebody."

"I'm not talking about that at the moment. We're on the subject of what happened to that necklace. The police knew Tree took it, no matter we've never found it."

Macenery looked absolutely wrung out. "To think Trevor would have trusted me enough to toss a quarter-million-quids' worth of jewelry into my violin case and walk away is ridiculous. He didn't trust anybody."

"He must have done, in some way. Somebody else was in on that theft with him. The somebody to whom he sent or left that diagram of the Underground."
 
 

 

Wiggins had stopped writing and was turning his pencil over and over in his fingers, tapping it on his notebook. "The thing is, sir, it just doesn't fit Macenery here. Tree was taken in by police and then watched all the while until that auto accident. He knew he was under surveillance. So since he couldn't get to the necklace himself, he got this Wizards map off to his accomplice. Rather dirty trick, I'd say-leaving it to his mate to figure out what it meant. Well, it couldn't very well have been you," Wiggins said to Macenery. "Not if you had the necklace in the first place. Unless you'd given it back to him, but that's not likely in the circumstances."

Macenery's relief was palpable. "You're goddamned right it couldn't have been me."

Jury smiled. "I guess I run faster than I think, Wiggins."

Wiggins sat there beneath the hospital lamp, bathed in his own little glow, and unwound the tiny red strip from a fresh box of cough drops.

III

Only a slant of murky light showed through the partially open stable door where Emily was in Shandy's box, about to remove the pony's saddle. She had exercised him for twenty minutes, until the cream cakes seemed to start oozing around in her stomach, and then brought him back to the stable.

As she started to unbuckle the saddle, the stable door slowly shut, cutting off what light there was.

No place was darker than the stable at night when the door was shut. No windows, no chinks between boards, no knotholes were here that light might filter through. The structure was as sturdily built as a house. She hadn't bothered to switch on the electric light because she knew the stables like a blind man knows his own roomful of furniture.

Although she might have been afraid in her own room in the dark, she had never felt afraid in the stable; it had always been her sanctuary.

She was afraid now.

Anyone who had a legitimate reason for being out here would not have shut the door, would have flicked the switch inside, and, above all, would not have simply melted into the silence as though purposely becoming a part of it, the thick silence that fell after the first shuffling response of the horses to the sudden, sharp clatter of the door. The only sounds now were the usual rustling sounds of threshing hooves, soft whinnies and snorts.

Emily started to say, Who's there? and stopped. Instinct told her to hold her tongue. She stood there with the towel she had used to wipe the tack, hearing footsteps on the floor of the stable. If she could get out of Shandy's stall to the barrels . . . Katie had always said they made her think of Ali Baba. But, no, whoever it was would look there . . . for her? Who could be looking for her? The steps seemed to be moving very quickly straight down the line of boxes. Emily could hear the thrust of the outside bolts on each box door being shot-one, two, three-one after another.

Someone was locking each of the doors, locking the horses in. Someone was locking her in. There must have been an electric torch switched on down at the far end, because she saw the play of reflected light dimly on the boards and ceiling.

Why was she being locked in?

She heard the creaking of the door to the loose box at the far end, probably old Nellie's box, and then a high neigh. The horse was objecting to this invasion. The door rattled shut. And once again there was the sound of a bolt thrown.

She pulled her knees right up to her chest, scarcely breathing. Now there came the same set of noises: gate to box opening, rustling of hooves, gate closing, bolt thrown. All repeated in Jupiter's box.

There were seven boxes, three of them empty.

Now she knew what was happening: whoever it was was looking for her, and to make sure she didn't sneak out in the pitch-darkness, sneak through to the outside stable door-that person had locked them all and was now methodically inspecting each one of the loose boxes. Now the next box was being inspected and bolted.

There was no way she could see of getting out. She had her eyes tightly shut in an effort of thinking. What she wanted to do was just sit here, not moving a muscle, and hope that the thin light would pass over her and mistake her for another bag of feed.

The fourth box was being opened, scrutinized, locked.

Very slowly, Emily got up on her knees, then into a crouching position, and then moved quietly to Shandy's side. She gripped the mane for leverage and hoisted herself up on the pony's back. Shandy made snorting sounds, but that was all right, considering the racket the other horses were making at this intrusion.

There was nothing to do now but wait, lying flattened out on Shandy's back, her cheek against his neck. Whoever was there was now in the stall next to hers.

Shandy was whinnying and pawing the ground. He was not at all happy with this odd nocturnal performance. Emily locked her fingers round the reins and got her head as close to his ear as she could and waited . . .

She heard the bolt shoot back, saw the light from the torch stream across the horse's flank, just missing her, saw it searching the corners of the stall-

"Go," she whispered in the pony's ear.

Shandy exploded from the stall. When they got to the outside door, which was closed but not latched, she rammed it with her crop and the pony with his head and they shot through.

They left behind them someone, she thought happily, with the wind against her face, who must now be lying in the dirt.

Emily was across the cobbles and onto the drive in less than a minute. Another minute and she could have cut across the grass to the house-but obviously, she couldn't go there for help, because whoever it was in the stable could easily have come from there. To get to the High, she could ride through the gate at the end of the drive-

Too late she remembered the gate was shut; she'd been directed always to shut it behind her. Could she take the chance that the person (could it be anyone but nasty Derek with his wet mouth?) hadn't picked himself up off the ground and would grab her the moment she stopped long enough to unlock the gate? Any of the other horses in that stable she could have made jump it. But not Shandy. And Rookswood was bounded for a good quarter mile by a stone wall along the Hertfield Road.

There were only two choices-either follow the wall until it finally ended, which meant going through the Horndean wood, or cut back across the pasture, which would allow her to gallop to some point beyond Rookswood. . . .

It came down to one choice. The sound coming down the gravel behind her was not the sound of feet, but of horse's hooves.

So the Horndean wood it would have to be. Emily dug her heels into Shandy's side and slapped the reins. There was no way of doubling back now.

As she galloped along with the wall to her right, the wind was cold on her face and brought the smell of rain. She prayed it would rain. At least it would make some noise; it would cover the noise she herself made. The noise the hooves made behind her spewing up dirt and gravel thundered in her ears.