The murder of Walter Fleet was duly reported on national and local news, and made the front page of the Fethering Observer. But there was no announcement of an arrest, and, as ever, beyond bland statements at press conferences, the police gave away little of their thinking or their progress in the investigation. Which, to Carole and Jude, was extremely frustrating.
The one new piece of information that did emerge in a television bulletin was the nature of the murder weapon, which had been discovered at the crime scene. Carole and Jude had not spotted it because it had been lying up against the corpse. The stabbing and slashing at Walter Fleet’s front had, it was announced, been done with a bot knife. Helpfully, for people with little equestrian knowledge-like Carole and Jude-the inspector holding the press conference showed a photograph and explained what a bot knife was.
Amongst the many medical complaints suffered by horses is infestation by botflies, a condition sometimes known as the “bots”-or even “botts.” A bot knife is used to scrape the eggs of the parasite out of a horse’s hair. In the illustration shown on the television, viewers saw a black-handled knife with a curved serrated end, which looked more suited for slicing grapefruit than committing murder.
But clearly it was an object that could be found around any stable yard, which suggested to Carole and Jude that the stabbing of Walter Fleet was a spur-of-the-moment rather than a premeditated action. The unsuitability of the bot knife as a means of killing someone served only to support that theory.
From Sonia Dalrymple Jude found out more about botflies and their treatment, data which she gleefully passed on to Carole. The adult botfly looks not unlike a bee, and favours laying its small yellowish eggs in the thick hair on a horse’s chest or behind its front legs. The presence of the eggs irritates the host, who tries to remove them by biting and licking the infested area, but these actions have the opposite effect of encouraging growth inside the eggs. They also give an opportunity for the tiny maggots to get transferred into the horse’s mouth and thence into its digestive tract. Here the maggots feed away, taking essential nutrients from the host and sometimes even creating a total blockage that can cause the animal to starve. When they are full grown, the maggots are excreted in the horse’s faeces, and in the comfort of the warm dung hatch out into adult botflies. And so the cycle continues.
Carole found all this was rather more information than she required.
But she was very keen on the idea of Jude staying in touch with Sonia Dalrymple. The owner of Chieftain was their one legitimate link to Long Bamber Stables and, on the assumption that the police didn’t instantly solve the case and make an arrest, she could be of great value to the two inquisitive women.
The stables did constitute a rather unusual crime scene. In most cases, after a murder the police seal off the relevant area, move all the people out and strictly control who is allowed back in. Horses present a different problem. There is a limit to the time they can be kept locked up in their stalls, but nothing is likelier to destroy a crime scene than having a large number of horses trampling over it. As a result, the police had to work fast on their forensic investigations.
Then, before the normal business of the stables could continue, owners were encouraged, if possible, to find alternative short-term accommodation for their horses. In Sonia Dalrymple’s case, this was not a problem. Her substantial home, Unwins, had its own stabling, which had accommodated Chieftain and the children’s pony Conker for some years. But the departure of Sonia’s twin daughters to boarding school and the increasing amount of travel undertaken by her and her husband Nicky had led to putting the horses into Long Bamber Stables. Returning them to their home stabling until the police investigations were complete was the obvious solution. And also meant that Jude’s visit of potential healing to Chieftain could be easily rescheduled.
She fixed to go to the Dalrymples’ house at three-thirty on the Friday afternoon and that morning invited Carole to Woodside Cottage for a cup of coffee.
“Can I give you a lift to Sonia’s?”
“Bless you, but it’s no distance. I can walk. I need the exercise.”
Carole’s tightening mouth showed her disappointment. She didn’t want to be excluded from any part of the potential investigation. Jude could feel her unease, and also sensed that there was something else troubling her neighbour. There was a secret Carole wanted to confide. Knowing better than to prompt, Jude waited for the revelation to be made naturally.
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Oh, yes?”
“It concerns Walter Fleet’s murder.”
“Mm?”
“Well…”
Jude looked evenly at her friend, a smile playing round the edges of her lips.
“You know, after you’d found the body…”
Jude nodded.
“…you went off to the Fleets’ house…”
Another nod.
“…and I stayed by the body…”
“Yes. Because, as you had pointed out to me, it would have been very irresponsible for either of us to do any investigation of the crime scene.”
“Mm.” There was a long, awkward silence. “Well, I’m afraid I did.”
“Did what?”
“A little investigation of the crime scene.”
“Oh, Carole, brilliant!”
“I know I shouldn’t have done but-”
“Never mind that. What did you find out? Did you go into the tack room or whatever it was?”
Carole nodded, her shame now giving way to excitement. “Yes. And I reckon it was a tack room. Full of bridles and halters and bits of leather and rope and what-have-you. But there was a second level too. Not quite a second floor, but one half of the space was boarded over, and there was a wooden ladder leading up to it.”
“Did you go up the ladder, Carole?”
This time the nod was defiantly proud. “There was a little lamp switched on. A sleeping bag, a few other oddments. It looked as though someone had been camping out up there.”
“Any sign that whoever-it-was had been there recently?”
“The sleeping bag was half unzipped and crumpled. Looked as if someone had just leapt out of it.”
“I suppose you didn’t feel as to whether it was still warm?”
“As a matter of fact I did, Jude. Hard to tell, though. The night was cold, any warmth would have dissipated pretty quickly.”
“Hm…I wonder who’d been up there.”
“Well, unlikely to have been Walter Fleet, given the fact that his house was right next door.”
“Unless he was up there on guard.”
“How do you mean, Jude?”
“Well, going back to the Horse Ripper theory…”
“Oh, I see what you mean. The Fleets were worried about someone breaking into the stables at night, so Walter would be up there, keeping watch for intruders?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Yes. But it was a quarter past six in the evening when you found his body. He wouldn’t have been in his sleeping bag at that time of night.”
“True. So the more likely scenario is that someone else was upstairs in the tack room…Walter surprised them…an argument and a fight ensued…and he got killed…by this…person…whoever it was.”
“Mm.”
“Hell having no information, isn’t it, Carole?”
“Yes. If only we had one fact…like the time the murder took place.”
“Well, I think it was only moments before I found the body.”
“Why, because the blood was still flowing?”
“I don’t think it was still flowing, but it certainly hadn’t started to congeal. And blood would dry pretty quickly when the weather’s as cold as that. Also, there had been a sudden commotion from the horses. Something had disturbed them only moments before I went into the stables. In fact, it was the noise that made me go into the stables. I thought Sonia must be inside.”
“So maybe the murderer-”
“And I’ve just remembered another thing.” Jude’s brown eyes focused intently as she tried to recapture the scene. “Just as I entered the stables, I heard a clattering, like a gate shutting. I think, if I’d gone in a few seconds earlier, I would actually have seen the murderer.”