Longshot. Part 39

We arrived back at Sh.e.l.lerton before Tremayne returned from Chepstow. Fiona dropped Mackie off at her side of the house and I walked round to Tremayne's, unlocking the door with the key he'd given me and switching on lights.

There was a message from Gareth on the family room corkboard: 'GONE TO MOVIE. BACK FOR GRUB.' Smiling, I kicked the hot logs together and blew some kindling sticks to life with the bellows to revive the fire and poured some wine and felt at home.

A knock on the back door drew me from comfort to see who it was, and I didn't at first recognise the young woman looking at me with a shy enquiring smile. She was pretty in a small way, brown haired, self-effacing- Bob Watson's wife, Ingrid.

'Come in,' I said warmly, relieved to have identified her. 'But I'm the only one home.'

'I thought maybe Mackie. Mrs Vickers-' 'She's round in her own house.' 'Oh. Well-' She came over the threshold tentatively and I encouraged her into the family room where she stood nervously and wouldn't sit down.

'Bob doesn't know I'm here,' she said anxiously. 'Never mind. Have a drink?' 'Oh no. Better not.'

She seemed to be s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g herself up to something, and out it all finally came in a rush.

'You were ever so kind to me that night. Bob reckons you saved me from frostbite at the least- and pneumonia, he said. Giving me your own clothes. I'll never forget it. Never.'

'You looked so cold,' I said. 'Are you sure you won't sit down?'

'I was hurting with cold.' She again ignored the chair suggestion. 'I knew you'd come back just now- I saw Mrs Goodhaven's car come up the road- I came to talk to you, really. I've got to tell someone, I think, and you're- well- easiest.'

'Go on then. Talk. I'm listening.'

She said in a small burst, unexpectedly, 'Angela Brickell was a Roman Catholic, like I am.'

'Was she?' The news meant very little.

Ingrid nodded. 'It said on the local radio news tonight that Angela's body was found last Sunday by a gamekeeper on the Quillersedge Estate. There was quite a bit about her on the news, about how the police were proceeding with their enquiries and all that. And it said foul play was suspected. They're such stupid words, foul play. Why don't they just say someone probably did her in? Anyway, after she'd vanished last year Mrs Vickers asked me to clear all her things out of the hostel and send them to her parents, and I did.'

She stopped, staring searchingly at my face for understanding.

'What,' I asked, feeling the way, 'did you find in her belongings? Something that worries you- because she's dead?'

Ingrid's face showed relief at being invited to tell me.

'I threw it away,' she said. 'It was a do-it-yourself home kit for a pregnancy test. She'd used it. All I found was the empty box.'

CHAPTER 11.

Tremayne came home and frightened Ingrid away like Miss m.u.f.fet and the spider.

'What did she want?' he asked, watching her scuttling exit. 'She always seems scared of me. She's a real mouse.'

'She came to tell me something she thinks should be known,' I said reflectively. 'I suppose she thought I could do the telling, in her place.'

'Typical,' Tremayne said. 'What was it?'

'Angela Brickell was perhaps pregnant.'

'What?' He stared at me blankly. 'Pregnant?'

I explained about the used test. 'You don't buy or use one of those tests unless you have good reason to.'

He said thoughtfully, 'No, I suppose not.'

'So,' I said, 'there are about twenty l.u.s.ty males connected with this stable and dozens more in Sh.e.l.lerton and throughout the racing industry; and even if she were pregnant - and from what Doone said about bones I don't see how they can tell yes or no, even if she were - it still might have nothing to do with her death.'

'But it might.'

'She was a Roman Catholic, Ingrid says.'

'What's that got to do with it?'

'They're against abortion.'

He stared into s.p.a.ce.

I said, 'Harry's in trouble. Have you heard?'

'No, what trouble?'

I told him about Doone's accusations, and also about duckweed's way of winning and about Lewis's more or less explicit admission of perjury. Tremayne poured himself a gin and tonic of suitably gargantuan proportions and told me in his turn that he'd had a rotten day at Chepstow. 'One of my runners broke down and another went cras.h.i.+ng down a.r.s.e over tip at the last fence with the race in his pocket. Sam dislocated his thumb, which swelled like a balloon, and although he's OK he won't realistically be fit again until Tuesday, which means I have to scratch around for a replacement for Monday. And one lot of owners groused and groaned until I could have knocked their heads together and all I can do is be nice to them and sometimes it all drives me up the b.l.o.o.d.y wall, to tell you the truth.'

He flopped his weight into an armchair, stretched out his legs and rested his gaze on his toecaps, thinking things over.

'Are you going to tell Doone about the pregnancy test?' he asked finally.

'I suppose so. It's on Ingrid's conscience. If I don't pa.s.s on what she's said, she'll find another mouthpiece.'

He sighed. 'It won't do Harry much good.'

'Nor harm.'

'It's a motive. Juries believe in motives.'

I grunted. 'Harry won't come to trial.'

'Nolan did. And a good motive would have jailed him, you can't say it wouldn't.'

'The pregnancy test is a non-starter,' I said. 'Ingrid threw the empty box away; there's no proof it really existed; there's no saying if Angela used it or when; there's no certainty about the result; there's no knowing who she'd been sleeping with.'

'You should have been a lawyer.'

Mackie and Perkin came through for their usual drink and news-exchange and even Chickweed's win couldn't disperse the general gloom.

'Angela pregnant?' Mackie shook her head, almost bewildered. 'She didn't say anything about it.'

'She might have done, given time,' Tremayne said, 'if the test was positive.'

'd.a.m.ned careless of her,' Perkin said. 'That b.l.o.o.d.y girl's nothing but trouble. It's all upsetting Mackie just when she should be feeling relaxed and happy, and I don't like it.'