Longshot. Part 42

'If Mr Goodhaven went alone to Uttoxeter,' Doone insinuated, 'and Mrs Goodhaven was at home tucked up in bed feeling ill-'

'You really don't know what you're talking about,' Tremayne interrupted. 'Angela Brickell was in charge of a horse. She couldn't just go off and leave it. And she came back here with it in the horse-box. I'd have known if she hadn't, and I'd have sacked her for negligence.'

'But I understood from your travelling head lad, sir,' Doone said with sing-song deadliness, 'that they had to wait for Angela Brickell that day at Uttoxeter because when they were all ready to go home she couldn't be found. She did leave her horse unattended, sir. Your travelling head lad decided to wait another half-hour for her, and she turned up just in time, and wouldn't say where she'd been.'

Tremayne said blankly, 'I don't remember any of this.'

'No doubt they didn't trouble you, sir. After all, no harm had been done- had it?'

Doone left one of his silences hovering, in which it was quite easy to imagine the specific harm that could have been done by Harry.

'There's no privacy for anything odd on racecourses,' Tremayne said, betraying the path his own thoughts had taken. 'I don't believe a word of what you're hinting.'

'Angela Brickell died about six weeks after that,' Doone said, 'by which time she'd have used a pregnancy test.'

'Stop it,' Tremayne said. 'This is supposition of the vilest kind, aimed at a good intelligent man who loves his wife.'

'Good intelligent men who love their wives, sir, aren't immune to sudden pa.s.sions.'

'You've got it wrong,' Tremayne said doggedly.

Doone rested a glance on him for a long time and then transferred it to me.

'What do you think, sir?' he asked.

'I don't think Mr Goodhaven did anything.'

'Based on your ten days' knowledge of him?'

'Twelve days now. Yes.'

He ruminated, then asked me slowly, 'Do you yourself have any feeling as to who killed the la.s.sie? I ask about feeling, sir, because if it were solid knowledge you would have given it to me, wouldn't you?'

'Yes, I would. And no, I have no feeling, no intuition, unless it is that it was someone unconcerned with this stable.'

'She worked here,' he said flatly. 'Most murders are close to home.' He gave me a long a.s.sessing look. 'Your loyalties, sir,' he said, 'are being sucked into this group, and I'm sorry about that. You're the only man here who couldn't have had any hand in the la.s.sie's death, and I'll listen to you and be glad to, but only if you go on seeing straight, do you get me?'

'I get you,' I said, surprised.

'Have you asked Mr Goodhaven about the day he went racing without his wife?' Tremayne demanded.

Doone nodded. 'He denies anything improper took place. But then, he would.'

'I don't want to hear any more of this,' Tremayne announced. 'You're inventing a load of rubbish.'

'Mr Goodhaven's belongings were found with the la.s.sie,' Doone said without heat, 'and she carried his photograph, and that's not rubbish.'

In the silence after this sombre reminder he took his quiet leave and Tremayne, very troubled, said he would go down to the Goodhavens' house to give them support.

Fiona however telephoned while he was on his way, and I answered the call because Dee-Dee had already gone home, feeling unwell.

'John!' she exclaimed. 'Where's Tremayne?'

'On his way down to you.'

'Oh. Good. I can't tell you how awful this is. Doone thinks- he says-'

'He's been here,' I said. 'He told us.'

'He's like a bulldog.' Her voice shook with distress. 'Harry's strong, but this- this barrage is wearing him down.'

'He's desperately afraid you'll doubt him,' I said.

'What?' She sounded overthrown. 'I don't, for a minute.'

'Then tell him.' 'Yes, I will.' She paused briefly. 'Who did it, John?'

'I don't know.'

'But you'll see. You'll see what we're too close to see. Tremayne says you understand things without being told, more than most people do. Harry says it comes of all those qualities his Aunt Erica wouldn't allow you, insight through imagination and all that.'

They'd been discussing me; odd feeling.

I said, 'You might not want to know.'

'Oh.' It was a cry of admission, of revelation. 'John- save us all.'

She put the phone down without waiting for a response to her extraordinary plea, and I wondered seriously what they expected of me, what they saw me to be: the stranger in their midst who would solve all problems as in old-fas.h.i.+oned Westerns, or an eminently ordinary middling writer who was there by accident and would listen to everyone but in the end be ineffectual. Given a choice, I would without question have opted for the latter.

By Tuesday the press had been drenched with leaks from all quarters. Trial by public opinion was in full swing, the libel laws studiously skirted by a profligate scattering of the word 'alleged' but the underlying meaning plain: Harry Goodhaven had allegedly bedded a stable girl, got her pregnant, and throttled her to save his marriage to a 'wealthy heiress', without whose money he would be penniless.

Wednesday's papers, from Harry's point of view, were even worse, akin to the public pillory.

He phoned me soon after lunch.

'Did you see the b.l.o.o.d.y tabloids?'

'Yes,' I said.

'If I come and pick you up, will you just come out driving with me?'

'Sure.'

'Fine. Ten minutes.'

Without many twinges of conscience I laid aside my notes on Tremayne's mid-career. With two weeks already gone of my four-week allocation, I was feeling fairly well prepared to get going on the page, but as usual any good reason for postponing it was welcome.

Harry came in his BMW, twin of Fiona's, and I climbed in beside him, seeing more new lines of strain in his face and also rigidity in his neck muscles and fingers. His fair hair looked almost grey, the blue eyes altogether without humour, the social patina wearing thin.