“Ah. That wouldn’t have impressed Dorcas. She’s a damned good rider, too, but she tends to go about the place on shaggy ponies without a saddle. They follow her around like dogs. Trot at her heel in an obsequious way. I’ve seen beasts cross fields to come and nuzzle her neck. I think she prefers animals to people. I’d make faster headway with Dorcas if I were a deer-hound or a hairy-heeled Shire horse. She spent too many of her days with her father yarning around gypsy campfires when she was a little thing and she picked up some unusual skills. Her father’s a painter. A very good one, too, but he went through a stage of imagining he was Augustus John. You know—caravans, corduroy britches and clay-baked hedgehogs.” Joe shuddered gently.
“I see. Not a meeting of minds planned, then, in this invitation of Lavinia’s.”
“Not if she knew anything about Dorcas, no. I’m sure you’ve guessed correctly, Hunnyton, that this was really a rivalry over an imagined interest in or influence over Sir James. Imagined by the man’s wife, I mean. But how the hell are we to guess at the contents of that lady’s head on this occasion? She may have exaggerated the dangers of the situation.” Then, in a rush of confidence and a copper’s seeking after the full truth he added: “No, let me be clear. I have to say in Lavinia’s defence that her fears may well not have been entirely the product of hysteria and jealousy. Dorcas has confided to me that, though Sir James’s attentions to her have never been less decorous than would befit his position of mentor and sponsor, nevertheless, he has made it known that …” Joe hesitated, aware that he had plunged into a whirlpool of circumlocution to disguise his awkwardness.
“He wouldn’t mind at all getting into her knickers, like. Men! Buggers! I don’t know why women go on putting up with us. Got it. What we’re saying then is, as I suspected, all this horse stuff was a bluff, a diversionary tactic, an exchange of snowballs when bullets are not appropriate.”
“That’s exactly what I’d guess, knowing Dorcas as I do …” Joe fell silent.
“And knowing Lavinia as I did … I’d agree with you that the two women under one roof was an explosive situation. But, Sandilands, what are we on about? There was no explosion. Let’s hang on to this—Miss Dorcas had only just put in an appearance and was nowhere near the stables that night.”
Joe was soothed to hear the quiet good sense.
“It really was the horse that did it! He was caught red-toothed, you might say. The whole nasty business was witnessed by the most credible witnesses in the land. Two Suffolk boys. No one got pushed off a roof, bashed on the head with a candlestick or stuck with an assegai. It’s all right, sir. I’m sure you’ve no cause to fret.”
“I’ve always fretted!” Joe spoke through gritted teeth, trying to smile. “Cause or no cause, Dorcas is the hostage I handed over to Dame Fortune eight years ago and neither lady lets me forget it.”
“I can see why you’d want to get to the bottom of it.”
“Hang on, Hunnyton. Before we go inside and pick up the rest of the bottle to help us get through the notes again, explain that comment, will you. Tell me: Is there a bottom to get to?”
“Yes. I believe there is. And there’s a lot of murk to sink through before we touch it. It sounds quite mad but I’ll say what I’m thinking: Lavinia Truelove was murdered.”
“Murdered, Hunnyton? You’ve read the pathologist’s report. She died of sudden copious blood loss from a severed neck and shock producing cardiac arrest, probably only a second or two before her head was smashed to a pulp by the hooves of a very heavy horse. There was no one else about but the two young stable lads hiding behind the corn-hutch. They raised the alarm and made contact with one of the house footmen who happened to be in the environs and he it was who organised medical attention.” Joe noted but did not comment on the way Hunnyton kept reversing his position to test him out. He’d done the same thing himself in interviews. “Hmm … it might be interesting to ask this footman what he was doing in the vicinity of the stables before dawn.”
“Agreed. But think, Sandilands. Imagine, let’s say, Captain Hook makes a sailor walk the plank. The poor soul shuffles to the end, drops in and is chewed up by a passing shark. Who’s to blame? The shark? What I’m saying is that I believe Lady Truelove’s death was engineered. Someone wanted her to die and the horse was just the instrument. About as culpable as the candlestick or the dagger that comes conveniently to a murdering hand in a twopenny whodunit.”