A Cotswold Ordeal (19 page)

‘Course he was,’ said Jocelyn. ‘And it might be nasty of me, but I can’t help feeling pleased that we didn’t clean up that smelly corpse.’

Thea clapped a hand to her mouth. ‘God, I’d forgotten all about that. We should have warned them. He’ll be
furious
.’

Jocelyn’s expression was a classic.

The pony was standing passively in the barn, one front foot tilted so that only the tip of the hoof was in contact with the ground. His eyes were half-closed and his ears seemed droopy. Thea was reminded of a copy of
Black Beauty
she’d possessed as a child, which carried an illustration of a row of deeply depressed horses. They’d looked very much like this wretched Pallo currently looked.

‘Hey, cheer up!’ she urged him. ‘Only another week to go. Don’t go sick on me now, there’s a good boy.’ A wave of helplessness engulfed her as the animal refused to co-operate. He acted as if he had neither heard nor seen her, deep in his own gloomy thoughts. He paid no attention to the small quantity of corn and the two carrots she’d provided, either. Thea’s scanty veterinary knowledge frustrated her – was he just having a
mood, or had his condition taken a turn for the worse? Presumably the fact that he was still standing up was a good sign. Perhaps she’d overdone the starvation rations, one way or the other.

‘Hepzie!’ Thea called, glimpsing the spaniel sniffing around the yard outside. ‘Come here, will you.’ The faint hope that the fragile friendship between pony and dog might go some way towards enlivening Pallo was all she could come up with for the moment.

Hepzibah came obediently, looking up at her mistress for an explanation. ‘Good girl!’ praised Thea. ‘Come and talk to poor old Pallo.’

But the pony ignored his new friend as comprehensively as he’d ignored Thea. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ she burst out. ‘What on earth is the matter with you?’

‘Are you sure he’s got clean water?’ came a voice from the doorway. ‘He looks rather dehydrated to me.’

It was Cecilia Clifton, dressed in a beige cotton jumper and dark brown trousers, standing with hands on hips, gazing critically at the pony.

Thea, feeling like an incompetent stable girl, went to examine the water bucket tucked in a corner between the feed trough and the barn wall. ‘It’s all a bit makeshift in here,’ she defended. ‘But I topped his water up last night.’ The bucket seemed
to be almost as full as she’d left it. ‘It looks all right to me.’

‘Ponies can be very fussy about their water. Where did you get it from?’

‘The tap,’ said Thea, resisting the following
of
course
.

‘Too much chlorine, probably. Isn’t there a water butt somewhere?’

Thea couldn’t remember a water butt. ‘I’m not sure,’ she admitted, before adding in a rush of self-pity, ‘Gosh, he’s a worry, this old chap. With everything else going on, I have to keep checking on him and keeping his spirits high. They’re really worried about him, being so old, and having that disease, whatever it’s called.’

‘Laminitis?’ asked Cecilia. ‘Is that what they told you?’

Thea nodded. ‘That’s why he isn’t allowed outside. Grass is bad for him.’

‘He might have had a touch of it in the spring, but believe me, that pony hasn’t a trace of laminitis now. He’s as fit as a flea, apart from being old and crotchety and his feet needing a good trim.’

‘That can’t be right,’ Thea argued, bewildered. ‘Why would they lie about it?’

‘To make you feel needed, I imagine.’

‘But – what do you mean?’

Cecilia cast an exasperated glance at the sky, and said no more. Outside, Hollis and Franklyn were
still in the doorway to the stable. Cecilia Clifton seemed not to be aware of them, which struck Thea as odd, as did her sudden coincidental arrival. ‘Where’s your car?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I left it at Frannie’s and walked up. I thought I should come and see how you were. Is that a police car?’ She indicated the Mondeo, but still didn’t glance towards the two men.

‘Superintendent Hollis,’ Thea confirmed. ‘He’s keeping a good eye on us, but at the moment he’s doing something mysterious that he hasn’t explained.’

‘Hmmm,’ was all Cecilia said, accompanied by a brief shrug, as if the behaviour of the police was of total unconcern to her.

They found a metal trough, tucked against the far side of the barn, half full of greenish water. ‘Surely he’s not meant to drink this?’ Thea protested. ‘It’s revolting.’

‘It is a bit,’ Cecilia agreed. ‘But bring him out, and see what he thinks.’

Thea hesitated, feeling deeply uncertain. What if this was a callous ploy to get at Julia Phillips through her daughter’s pony? If Frannie and Valerie were right, and just about everybody in the area disliked Julia, then it made sense to be cautious. ‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘I mean – it does look horrible.’

‘He won’t drink it if it’s bad for him. Anyway,
we’ll get a better idea of how he is, if we take him for a little walk.’

Thea remembered his ‘little walk’ of the previous evening, but made no reference to it. Clumsily, she put the halter on the pony’s unresisting head and tried to chivvy him out of the barn. ‘He doesn’t want to move,’ she reported to Cecilia, who was making no attempt to help.

‘Smack him.’

With some trepidation, Thea did as instructed, slapping the pony’s neck, hoping to push him towards the barn door. The effect was dramatic. Pulling the halter out of her hand, he tossed his head, dancing several steps sideways, before lashing out blindly with a vigorous kick from one back leg. The kick connected with a strut holding up the barn roof, but appeared not to do any damage. ‘Oh, God!’ Thea cried. ‘Stop him, will you?’

With a jerky noisy clatter of hooves, Pallo easily evaded Cecilia in the doorway, and set off across the yard.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He can’t go far.’

Thea was in the first stages of an uncharacteristic panic. ‘Of course he can!’ she shouted. ‘The road gate’s open. The
field
gate’s open. He can go
miles
, if he has a mind to.’

Where was Jocelyn? And Hollis? ‘Help!’ Thea shouted, uninhibitedly. This damned pony was her central responsibility. She was being paid to keep it
safe, and she was going to do her absolute best to achieve just that.

‘For heaven’s sake,’ tutted Cecilia tightly. ‘Don’t make such a fuss. At his age, he’s not likely to make for the hills. Just nip round the back of the barn, and head him off. I’ll close in quietly behind him. Grab the halter if you get a chance.’

But the pony wasn’t interested in making a break out down the road. Nor did he seem to fancy the field. Instead, he headed purposefully across the yard to his old home. This struck Thea as seriously perverse, after his refusal to enter it only the previous evening. But it made the task of catching him easier – or so she assumed.

When Thea gave her yell for help, Hollis and his companion had been in the stable, and Jocelyn was in the house. Hepzibah was sniffing in corners at the other end of the barn. Suddenly, they all emerged in response to her shout. Hollis and Franklyn were met full on by the pony, who although not very big, seemed suddenly very determined. ‘Grab his halter!’ Cecilia called to Hollis. ‘He’s resisting arrest.’

Thea watched the resulting tug of war with some amusement. Managing to catch the halter only by its furthest extremity, the man was unable to prevent the animal from plunging and tossing his head. ‘Hold it closer!’ Cecilia ordered him, but without effect. Thea realised he was nervous of
getting too near to the agitated pony. The Franklyn man had followed Hollis out of the stable and was standing listlessly on the other side of the pony’s head. As it stamped and lunged and then brought its haunches round in a sharp semi-circular swing, it caught him and knocked him against the doorpost.

It hadn’t looked like a hard knock, and any sane person would have stepped quickly out of the way. But this man must have been consumed by the image of his son hanging from the rafters, or bemused by whatever Hollis had been saying to him, and in no condition for defensive self-protection. He let the pony’s hindquarters press him more tightly against the unyielding wood, and then, when the animal detected the presence of yet another annoying human being, it kicked hard for good measure.

Cecilia Clifton had seen enough. ‘Here!’ she said, striding across the yard. ‘What a useless lot you are.’ She seized the halter, yanking it out of Hollis’s hand, and crowded herself up to the pony’s head. ‘Behave yourself!’ she snapped, with a vicious jerk on the leather.

Instantly peace was restored. The pony remained wild-eyed, but followed docilely when led to the water trough and tied to a convenient hook attached to the side of the barn. ‘He can cool down there for a bit,’ said Cecilia, wiping her hands
together. ‘Anybody would think he was a half-broken stallion, the way you people carry on.’

‘But I thought he was a quiet little child’s pony,’ Thea complained. ‘What on earth came over him?’

‘That’s anybody’s guess. It looked to me as if he’d had enough of being messed about, and just wanted to get back to his old home. But I’ve never been much of a mind reader.’

Only then, walking back towards the shed, did the women understand that damage had been done beyond anything they’d expected. Thea had simply assumed that once the pony had been moved, Mr Franklyn would walk away unscathed, perhaps slightly abashed. Even in her scant experience of country life, she’d been kicked once or twice by cows and ponies. It happened, you whimpered for a moment and then forgot about it. This man was sitting white-faced on the ground, clutching his right knee with both hands. Hollis was squatting beside him, a mobile phone to one ear.

‘Now what?’ said Cecilia.

‘He thinks his knee’s broken,’ said Hollis tightly. ‘I’m calling for an ambulance.’

Thea resisted the general implication that Mr Franklyn’s injured knee was almost entirely her fault. She had let the pony go, admittedly. Hollis was plainly angry about the thwarting of his plans for the morning, as well as embarrassed by the
damage done to his witness. He phoned Mrs Franklyn immediately after summoning the ambulance, and arranged for her to meet her husband at the hospital. ‘You can’t imagine how difficult that was,’ he told the sisters, when peace was at least partially restored.

Jocelyn had hovered uselessly in the yard throughout the fracas, and now seemed to feel that nothing of great moment had happened. Thea was much less tranquil. ‘But why did you bring him here?’ she counter-attacked. ‘What were you hoping to achieve?’

Hollis shook his head. ‘It was at his own request. He wanted to see the stable for himself. Then I was going to take him to the barn. It would have been useful,’ he glowered at Thea. ‘And now it’s all turned into a bloody mess.’

Cecilia Clifton seemed to be withdrawing discreetly. It had begun to strike Thea as odd that she’d hung around for so long, despite her making herself useful with the pony and dog. The fifteen-minute wait for the ambulance had passed in a haze of first aid and reassurances to the injured man, with Hollis barely able to hide his annoyance and Thea striving not to argue with him. Now he was eager to leave, his head obviously overflowing with altered plans and difficult reports.

‘Hang on,’ Thea said. ‘Can we get something straight before either of you leave.’

Cecilia and Hollis looked first at her and then at each other, surprised to find themselves referred to in the same phrase. ‘Cecilia – you hinted at something a little while ago, that’s niggling at me. That having me here to mind the pony was some sort of pretext? Is that what you meant?’

Cecilia stood her ground. ‘More or less, yes. They could very easily have left everything under the eye of Frannie or even Valerie. There are plenty of horsey youngsters who’d have taken care of the pony.’

‘So what am I, then? Why do you think they asked me here?’ Thea felt herself growing agitated, her chest constricted, hands curled tightly at her sides.

Cecilia glanced again at the police detective. ‘Look, Thea, I honestly don’t know how the Phillipses were thinking. But all kinds of trouble have been brewing here for quite some time now, and it seemed like an odd moment to choose to disappear.’

‘But they planned it months ago. Everything seemed completely normal here when I visited in May – and nothing’s changed. Aren’t you exaggerating?’

Hollis stamped an impatient foot. ‘Thea,’ he said, ‘I can’t hang about here. What’s your point?’

Her stomach clenched again. ‘I don’t like feeling I’ve been set up somehow, that’s all. I’m trying to get at the truth.’

‘Well, don’t ask me.’ Cecilia spoke more sharply than before. ‘I’m the last person Julia and Desmond would confide in. If you want to know what they’re up to, you need to ask Robert Craven.’

‘Enough,’ Hollis ordered. ‘Thea, you look pale. Go and have some coffee and calm yourself down. Miss Clifton, if you’ve got more information than you’ve already given us, please go along to the incident room in Cirencester and ask to speak to one of my officers there. Now, I really have to go.’

He took a few steps towards his car, before a thought gave him pause, and he turned back to Thea. ‘And did you know there was something dead in there?’ he accused. ‘I thought Franklyn was going to be sick, even before his knee got kicked.’

‘You didn’t give us a chance to warn you,’ Thea snapped back. ‘We think it must be Milo – Julia’s cat. Somebody’s dumped his body here, just to make us feel really loved and wanted.’

Cecilia’s startled inhalation could be heard across the yard. They all looked at her. ‘B-But—’ she stammered. ‘He’s been dead for nearly a week.’

‘Too right he has,’ said Jocelyn. ‘And there’s maggots to prove it.’

Cecilia’s eyes went to tiny glittering stones in her head. ‘Then they really do want you out of here, don’t they,’ she said.

There didn’t seem to be any answer to that, and
Hollis paid scant attention. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said to Thea, from his driving seat, and she wasn’t entirely sure whether to take that as a threat or a promise.

Thea changed her mind about visiting the Innes establishment. ‘I wouldn’t know what to say to them,’ she admitted to Jocelyn. ‘And I don’t think Phil would be very pleased if I interfered with his investigation.’