Stables S.O.S. (11 page)

I couldn't wait to get to the yard the next day and tell everyone. To say I was freaked was an understatement—but how I felt was nothing compared to how Bean took the news.

“You mean that lunatic we called up on the Ouija board really existed?” she screeched at me, throwing her arms around like a windmill.

I knew she was a little bit upset, because she had Tiffany on the end of the lead rope, and she never, ever does anything around her pony that might upset her. Tiffany reminded her of this policy by throwing her head up and backing up across the yard in a frenzy, yelling, “What? What? What?”

“Oh, Tiff, sorry, sorry, it's all right,” soothed Bean, focusing on her pony and putting her own feelings on the back burner until Tiffany had calmed down and was convinced that nothing terrible was about to happen—for the time being anyway. Once Bean had put Tiffany in her stable, she turned on me again.

“Are you sure that's the name Alex gave you?” she asked, her face white.

“What's the commotion about?” said a voice. We both jumped about a mile in the air. Talk about edgy!

“Oh, James, you scared us half to death!” scolded Bean.

“What? What did I do?” asked James, all innocent—which, of course, he was.

We explained. A low whistle escaped James. “That is so cool!” he said, grinning. “That Adam Rowe fellow, the one we got at the séance, moaning about his
bad
death
, that must have been the dad. His younger son must have murdered him!”

“That's what Carol said,” I told him.

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

“I told you I wasn't pushing the little pointer thing, didn't I?” said James.

I had already thought of that. So didn't want to. Bean shuddered. “Stop it!”

“Oh, Bean, it happened years and years ago,” said James, his eyes glinting with the excitement of it all.

“It was only last summer!” protested Bean.

“I mean the Rowe family feud and possible bad death,” explained James, giving me a look.

“Well, it grosses me out!” Bean replied.

“And me,” I admitted.

We couldn't wait to tell the others—not Cat, of course. Any mention of the séance and she got grumpy. I wished
I
didn't know about it. I'd gladly exchange freaked out for grumpy any day.

“So the old man was murdered by his son?” asked Katy. “How horrible!”

“That's a pretty bad death in my book,” said Dee ghoulishly. “This is so fantastic!”

“You're weird, do you know that?” said Bean, looking at her in amazement.

“Do you reckon he poisoned him?” I asked.

“Or smothered him with a pillow, like in that movie,” suggested Dee, still smiling.

“What movie?”

“Can't remember its name. Old black-and-white one. The woman smothers the faithful old servant with a pillow, and he's too weak to cry out. I bet that's what he did. No evidence, you see.”

“Can you all
please
shut up?” asked Bean, hugging herself.

“Why did she kill off a faithful old servant?” asked James.

“Dunno,” Dee replied. “I didn't see all of it, just that part. She was evil, though.”

“La la la la la la la,” chanted Bean, her fingers in her ears.

Standing in front of her, James opened his eyes wide and made a slashing motion across his throat. Bean took one hand down to give James a shove, then put it back up to her exposed ear again.

“So they all lived in the big house?” asked Katy.

“According to Alex's story,” I said. “And the family is buried in St. Mark's churchyard.”

“Let's go and look at the graves!” yelled Dee, jumping up.

“No way!”

“Get lost!”

“Don't think so!”

“What are you all saying?”

“Take your fingers out of your ears, and you'll hear us!”

“Shhhh, here comes Cat. You know how she hates us talking about it,” hissed Katy as Cat came along the drive.

“What's going on?” asked Cat. “Why have you got your fingers in your ears, Bean?”

“Oh, nothing,” said James, winking at me. My knees went all wobbly. I hate myself, sometimes. I mean, it's so pathetic. “We're just talking about Laurel Heights, again!”

“Why have you got your fingers in your ears, Bean?” repeated Cat.

“Coming riding?” Katy asked her. “We're all going for a ride in the woods since it's so hot.”

“Mmmm, OK. I'll get Bambi,” said Cat. “But why has…?”

Bean took her fingers out of her ears and narrowed her eyes. “Have you all finished?” she said, looking at us all.

James bundled her off to the barn, with Bean's protests drowned out by James telling her to come and get Tiffany's grooming kit—even though it was in the tack room.

“What
is
going on?” asked Cat again.

“Oh, you know Bean!” said Katy, grinning and shrugging her shoulders, and we all fled to get the ponies ready for their ride.

We all had a great ride. Sophie was in a particularly mellow mood so Dee had been allowed to come with us, providing we all rode
sensibly
, Sophie had insisted, with a particularly threatening look. Of course, five minutes away from the yard
that
went out of the window when Dee suggested we all play cowboys and Indians. James, Cat, and Bean were the Indians, and Katy, Dee, and I were the cowboys, and we took turns finding one another after a one-hundred-count start. It was a bit like hide-and-seek, only on ponies. James would insist on making whooping noises, which totally freaked out Tiffany, not that Bean seemed to care. She was too freaked out by the Rowe connection to worry about Tiffany bolting off through the trees.

Drummer loved it. He especially loved trying to find Bambi, which he did every time—which was annoying because I'd rather have found James. All the ponies, not just Tiff, got thoroughly overexcited, and we had to walk them home to cool off and get them to settle.

“My mom will never let me come out with you all again if I take Dolly back in this state!” Dee warned us as Dolly jogged along, fighting for her head and sweating, chanting,
Let's do it again!
over and over. “For goodness sake, Pia, have a word, will you?”

“It was your idea!” I mumbled, trying to convince Dolly to walk quietly.

By the time we got back to the yard the ponies were cool and—with the exception of Tiffany—walking calmly. Jessica was in the yard with Alex, and she had news.

“What is it?” we asked eagerly, crowding around her on the ponies.

“Have you found anything?” asked Katy.

“Yes, we've found lots of things,” said Jessica, “but the foundations alone, although fascinating, won't help your cause, I'm afraid.”

“But if they're so fascinating, why don't you want to preserve them?” asked Bean.

“I'm sorry, everyone,” Jessica said, ruefully shaking her head. “But our work here is almost done, and although we have put together a fabulous show—and I have you all to thank for that—there is not much else we need. We'll be shooting the final few shots in the next couple of days, and we'll probably be gone by the end of the week.”

“Is there really no way whatsoever you can prevent Robert Collins from building here?” James asked passionately. “Surely this Elizabethan house is important enough to stop any building work?”

“I'd love to say yes, James,” Jessica replied, “really I would, but although National Heritage did show some initial interest in our discoveries, they're really not sufficiently interested in mere foundations. There's nothing to see, nothing to save.”

“It's all been for nothing!” Bean hissed at me.

I didn't reply. I didn't trust myself to speak. In my mind I saw all the ponies being led into trailers and going off in different directions to new homes. I thought of never seeing Bean or Katy or Dee or even Cat again. I couldn't bring myself to imagine going to a stable where James wasn't.

“If only you had something here that was still intact,” Jessica continued, smiling at James. “You know, a gazebo or a summerhouse or something. Anything that would tie in with the historical connections of this place and provide National Heritage with something tangible to latch on to.”

“She means charge people to see,” Bean whispered.

“There's the icehouse,” said James.

The icehouse. Of course! I looked at Bean. She looked at me. We both looked at the others.

“The icehouse!” we all chorused.

“There's an icehouse?” Jessica asked him sharply. James nodded. “About a mile away. Next to the lake—obviously.”

“Icehouses were usually later than Elizabethan,” said Jessica, “but I'd be very interested to see it. They're fascinating.”

“So how old would it be?” asked Katy.

“Probably eighteenth century,” Jessica said. “Can you show me tomorrow?”

“Of course!” I said, my heart soaring. Could the icehouse really help us?

It was our third chance.

We were all at the stables bright and early, the ponies in and saddled, ready to take off. Then we had to wait around for Jessica and Alex. They arrived eventually, and with both of them walking, and all of us riding, we set off. Of course, with two pedestrians, it took forever to get there, but we finally rode past the river and on to the clearing where the icehouse was hidden.

As we approached, I felt my stomach churning with a mixture of excitement and fear. The icehouse was such a spooky place. For a start, you would never find it if you didn't know it was there. It was set in a small clearing surrounded by trees and thick bushes, like it was hiding. When you did force your way through the leaves and branches, all you could see on three sides was a small, grassy mound. The fourth side held an old wooden door with big rusty hinges and looked just like a Hobbit house. The creaking wooden door opened up into a dark, brick-lined space that dropped away below ground and into darkness. Before refrigeration, ice would have been cut from the frozen lake nearby in winter and stored in its cold depths, ready to be used for ices and desserts in the big house subsequently built next to the remains of the Elizabethan mansion.

For something used for such a mundane purpose, the icehouse always gave me the creeps. It had been the hiding place of Jazz, the runaway girl I'd befriended, and Bambi had been held captive there, but even without these connections the place just seemed (to me, anyway) to have a sinister air about it. Hidden in a clearing, few people seemed to know it even existed.

Why hadn't we thought of the icehouse before?

Jessica and Alex didn't seem to have any qualms about its spookiness. They loved it.

“Oh, wow!” exclaimed Jessica, tugging at the door with Alex. “It's fantastic!”

They both disappeared inside while we sat on the ponies in the sunshine.

“Will we be here long?” asked Bambi. She didn't like being there—for obvious reasons, it brought back unwelcome memories for her.

“It's OK, Bambi,” I heard Drummer tell her. “We're all here with you.”

“I hate this place, too,” said Tiffany, looking around for an excuse to bolt home.

“Yes, well, we all know why,” said Bluey, “but it happened a long time ago.”

“What did?” I asked him.

“What did what?” everyone chorused at me.

“I was talking to Bluey,” I explained.

Bluey didn't answer.

“What happened a long time ago, Bluey?” I repeated. Bluey just wrinkled up his muzzle and looked uncomfortable.

“Best you don't know,” said Drummer, in the same sort of voice grown-ups use when they don't want to tell you something about a wayward aunt who's got lots of boyfriends or why they'd argued with the neighbors. It's bad enough when they do it, without having to put up with the same sort of thing from my own pony. Annoying? I think so!

Alex and Jessica returned, interrupting my thoughts.

“This is fabulous!” Jessica enthused. “I'll find out whose land this is, and then I can get the team along to take a look. I mean, there probably won't be anything much to discover, but it's such a well-preserved icehouse, it will make an interesting recording.”

“You mean it won't help stop the development?” asked Katy, getting straight to the point.

“I can't see how it could,” Alex told us. “It's so far away from it.”

“There goes our third chance,” grumbled Bean.

I felt disappointed for another reason. I hadn't really wanted to draw attention to the icehouse. It was sort of the yard secret. Who knew what would happen to it once everyone knew it was there. It would be labeled as dangerous and fenced off. We'd never be able to come and see it again. Not that I particularly wanted to, but it was sort of special, something we knew about that no one else did.

We all trooped back to the stables, feeling down, and it wasn't until I was in bed that night that I remembered we still hadn't found out what the ponies knew about the icehouse. I remember deciding just before I fell asleep that I'd tackle Drum about it the next day. Only the next day so much happened, the icehouse was the last thing on my mind.