When Jude had described Sonia Dalrymple as “quite well heeled,” she had been guilty of understatement. Her client was extremely well heeled. Unwins, where the Dalrymples lived, was what West Sussex estate agents would describe as “an equestrian estate,” off the Fedborough Road roughly a half mile nearer Fethering than Long Bamber Stables were. But Jude didn’t have to go on the main roads for her visit; “the pretty way,” along the tow path of the River Fether, would get her there in a brisk twenty minutes.
Her refusal of Carole’s offer of a lift had been only partly for health reasons. Jude’s deep understanding of the human body left her in no doubt as to the importance of exercise. She ate sensibly and walked whenever she had the opportunity. This regime didn’t seem to have any effect on her bulk, which had been quietly expanding since her early forties, but it made her feel good in herself.
Apart from that, though, Jude didn’t really want Carole with her for this visit. Sonia Dalrymple, for all her confident exterior, was a highly sensitive, even shy woman. And, though Carole would probably have intended just to drop Jude at the gates, there was a danger she might expect to be asked to wait-or decide, out of her natural curiosity, that she wanted to wait. Carole’s presence on the premises would undoubtedly have put Sonia on her guard, and destroyed the confidential mood in which Jude hoped to find her.
The February air was sharp on Jude’s cheeks. The tidal Fether, swollen by recent rains, churned in full spate, ominously close to the tow path. On Jude’s horizon the South Downs undulated away, green mounds giving way to ever mistier grey. A startled pheasant flew up from the grass by her side, creaking like an old football rattle. The landscape’s harsh beauty contributed to a sense within Jude of well-being-and also of excitement.
Sonia Dalrymple’s husband Nicky worked for an international bank. His actual role there was never defined; all Fethering gossip knew was that, whatever he did, he was paid an enormous amount of money for doing it. Unwins, the house that Jude approached, was one of the family’s three residences; there was also a mansion flat overlooking the Thames in London, and a villa in Barbados.
Their Fethering place had been built in the early nineteenth century as a farmhouse. Over the years, as with so many farms in the area, the land had been sold off for development, but some ten acres, now converted to gardens and paddocks, had been retained. The Dalrymples had renovated and designer-decorated the house so completely as to erase any vestiges of its humble agricultural origins. The same transformation had been wrought on the outbuildings. A barn had been converted into luxury guest flats, and the old cowshed into a state-of-the-art stable yard.
Sonia’s Range Rover was parked on the gravel outside the front door. Open garages revealed a couple of random Mercedes. And Sonia herself, as ever, maintained the image of casual wealth. Above tight black trousers and black buckled shoes, she wore an off-white Aran sweater, which on her contrived to look like a designer garment.
She offered the option of coffee before they went to see Chieftain, and Jude accepted. The more opportunity they had to talk, the better.
“How’re you feeling?” asked Jude, when she was settled at the breakfast bar of a kitchen that looked as if it had stepped straight out of a lifestyle magazine. The question was posed casually, but both women understood its importance.
Sonia Dalrymple, however, was not about to go into “client” mode. Jude was there to see to the horse, not to her own troubles. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“Is Nicky around at the moment?”
“He’s in Frankfurt on business. Left early this morning.”
“And the girls are well? Presumably they’ve heard about what happened at the stables?”
“Yes, I rang the school that night. Rather they heard it from me than on the television news.”
Jude looked around the kitchen. There was evidence of the twins everywhere: childish drawings of horses laminated and preserved from their first school days, photographs of them in riding hats, cartoon character fridge magnets, proud clusters of fading rosettes. Maybe all that was wrong with Sonia Dalrymple was empty-nest syndrome. Since their birth, she’d devoted all her time and attention to the girls’ needs. Suddenly they were away at boarding school and her role had been taken away from her. Add to that a frequently absent husband and the awareness the forties bring of beauty’s finite nature, and it was no wonder that, in spite of all her material comforts, Sonia should feel out of sorts. But Jude suspected there might be some other, more deep-rooted explanation.
This, however, was not the time for psychological probing. Keep the conversation light. “You must be relieved to have got your horses out of Long Bamber.”
“Yes. They’re both much more relaxed now they’re here. Horses are very sensitive, you know. They could tell there was something wrong, and they didn’t like the police clumping round the place.”
“Any idea how long it’s going to be closed?”
“I asked Lucinda. The sooner they reopen the better, so far as she’s concerned.”
“But presumably she needs some time to adjust to her husband’s death.”
“I think getting back to work is going to be her best therapy. She’s losing money, apart from anything else. She can’t charge owners if their horses aren’t there. And then she can’t do any riding lessons or anything like that.”
“No. When you talked about Lucinda earlier…”
“Hm?”
“You know, before Walter’s death, you implied that theirs wasn’t the happiest of marriages.”
Sonia looked flustered and busied herself with the coffee machine. “Oh, did I? I can’t remember.”
“I remember. You did.”
“Well, it doesn’t do to speak ill of the dead.”
“No, but everyone’s going to. I’m afraid, when a murder happens, the people involved become public property.”
“I agree. But that’s not something I would wish to encourage.” Sonia sounded almost prissily righteous. Jude wondered whether such righteousness was a convenient excuse to keep away from the subject. When they’d last spoken about the Fleets, Sonia had shown no such inhibition. “I think,” she continued piously, “that gossiping about her and Walter can only make Lucinda’s situation worse.”
“Maybe. Though I wonder how bad her situation actually is.”
“Jude, what on earth do you mean? Her husband’s just been murdered. Isn’t that enough to make any wife feel pretty desolated?”
“She just didn’t seem to feel desolated when she first heard the news. Almost relieved, I thought.”
“She was in shock. She didn’t know what she was saying.”
“She seemed much more worried about the idea of one of the horses having been injured.”
“Well, that is horrible. There have been some very nasty incidents recently. This ghastly Horse Ripper. The thought of someone doing that to Chieftain or Conker…” Sonia Dalrymple’s slender frame shuddered. “It just doesn’t bear thinking of.”
“Why do people attack horses?” asked Jude gently. The question had been exercising her mind recently, and she had been doing some research into the matter.
“God knows. They must be sick. And, actually thinking about it, Chieftain would probably not be in any danger. But Conker…”
“Sorry? What do you mean?”
“Conker’s a mare. These people, they always seems to go for mares. Particularly pregnant mares. They slash them round”-she blenched-“round the genital area. It’s so cruel. A horse’d never hurt anyone-well, only in exceptional circumstances.” Another shudder. “No, it’s horrible.”
Sonia handed across a cup of coffee with a finality that suggested the cue for a change of subject. But Jude was not to be so easily deflected. “So Lucinda and Walter weren’t love’s young dream, were they?”
“I’m not saying that. Obviously there were tensions. There are tensions in every marriage…” The wistfulness with which this was said might have led to some revelation about the Dalrymples’ own marriage, but Sonia visibly restrained herself. Maybe giving away the Fleets’ secrets was preferable to giving away their own.
“Look, Jude, Lucinda reckoned life had dealt her a pretty rotten hand, and in many ways you could see her point. Just before they got married, she and Walter were the golden couple. They were both eventers. He was reckoned to be a shoo-in for the British team at the next Olympics, and she wasn’t far behind his standard. They were both very good-looking and became media darlings, photographs in the tabloids, the lot. Walter was set fair to clean up-sponsorship, media appearances, the after-dinner circuit. It all looked very promising.
“And then, just before they were due to have this big society wedding, he had this really bad fall at Burghley. It was the worst kind-his horse reared and fell on him. Fractured ribs, pelvis, both legs, God knows what else. He was lucky to survive. Took more than a year for the surgeons to put him back together. At the time there was quite a lot of publicity. Lots of cameras at their wedding when it did finally happen. Oh, and a charity fund was set up for him, whip-rounds in equestrian circles. He even appeared in a wheelchair on the BBC’s Sports Review of the Year, saying what a good recovery he was making and how positive he felt about the future, but…people forget. The money raised didn’t last for long. His earning potential was massively diminished…
“Anyway, rumour had it that Lucinda didn’t take well to this change in their circumstances. You can’t blame her. It would take a very exceptional woman to handle that situation without complaint and…”
Sonia paused, wondering whether she had gone too far, so Jude tentatively prompted, “And Lucinda Fleet isn’t a very exceptional woman?”
“She…well, I don’t think the role of carer came naturally to her. She’s quite selfish and certainly used to be very ambitious. Walter’s long hospitalisation put a damper on her own eventing career, and by the time he was fit again, they couldn’t afford to continue. All the money they’d got they put into buying Long Bamber Stables. From being a jet-set golden couple, they ended up mucking out, dealing with stroppy owners and giving their spoilt little brats riding lessons. I got the impression Lucinda blamed Walter for that.”
“How did you get that impression?”
“Not very difficult. She kept blaming him in public. Not just for that, but for everything else, as far as I can tell. I don’t really know why I felt coy about telling you all this. You’d hear it from anyone else who had met them. The Fleets are one of those couples who are constantly sniping at each other, very publicly failing to get on. Being with them socially was like sitting next to someone with an open wound.”
Sonia shook her head with distaste at the image, but, after her initial reticence, she seemed relieved to have gotten all that off her chest.
“So I suppose,” Jude suggested, “if the marriage was that bad, then Lucinda Fleet definitely had a motive to kill her husband?”
“But why now? If she was going to do it, why didn’t she do it years ago? They’d stayed together for over fifteen years.”
“The final straw. None of our backs are immune to the final straw.”
“Suppose not. Just seems unlikely to me, though.”
“Well, maybe-”
They were interrupted by a ring at the doorbell, which Sonia went to answer. She returned with a girl of about thirteen or fourteen, thin-faced and spotty, still uneasy with the new conformation of her body. Her top teeth were transacted by a metal brace, and a ginger streak had been inexpertly dyed into the front of her wispy brown hair. She wore a puffa jacket a couple of sizes too small for her, grubby jeans and smart ankle-length riding boots. A battered riding hat hung by the strap from her hand.
“Jude, this is Imogen.”
The girl said a quiet hello, without making eye contact.
“Imogen’s been riding Conker-that’s the girls’ pony-while they’re away at school. You know, to see she gets some exercise.”
“Mrs. Fleet up at Long Bamber said you’d brought him back here. She said you might not want me to ride him here, but I knew you would. You don’t mind, do you, Mrs. Dalrymple?” There was a desperate plea in the girl’s voice.
Sonia contemplated turning down the request, but decided against it. “Not a problem, Imogen. She could do with stretching her legs. But just in the nearest paddock, no further. I’ll close the gates to the others.”
“Yes, that’s fine. Thank you very much, Mrs. Dalrymple.”
Sonia looked at her watch. “Shouldn’t you be at school, Imogen?”
“No,” the girl replied quickly. “We finish early on Fridays.”
“Ah.” For a moment Sonia looked as if she might question this, but she didn’t. “So have you been home already?”
“Just to change.”
“Was anyone there? Your mother…or your father?”
“No. Mum’s gone off to work, and Dad…I don’t know where Dad is. He’ll be back later to get my supper.”
There was a defiance in her girl’s tone and Jude was aware of some subtext between Sonia and Imogen in what was said. But what that subtext was she had no idea.
“Jude’s come to look at Chieftain-see if she can sort out the old boy’s lameness.”
“Oh, right.”
“Actually, Jude, you may as well come out with us now. And, Imogen, that hat doesn’t look very safe. Maybe you should borrow one of the girls’…”
They collected Conker’s saddle and tack from a utility room off the kitchen. “We used to leave this stuff in the stables, but there’ve been so many break-ins locally, that, what with a decent saddle costing over a thousand pounds…”
After the warmth of the kitchen, the outside air stung their faces, as Sonia led them through a garden gate to the stable yard. She had put on a weather-beaten Barbour, which on her contrived to look like a designer original. “You saddle her up, Imogen, while I close the gates, then wait till I’ve checked everything before you mount her.”
“I’ve done it lots of times, Mrs. Dalrymple. You don’t need to check anything.”
“I will check, though, thank you.”
The firmness in Sonia’s voice cast the girl down, but her mood was swiftly changed by the sound of a cheerful whinnying from the stables. The three women had just come into the horses’ eyeline, and were accorded an appropriate welcome.
“See, she recognises me,” Imogen shouted gleefully, and rushed off. “It’s all right, Conker. It’s all right, lovely girl. Immy’s here to look after you…”
Jude grinned at Sonia’s raised eyebrow. “Little girls and horses, eh?”
“Yes.”
“So much easier to deal with than boys.”
“At this stage, certainly, Jude.” A shadow crossed her face. “Mind you, things change. I’ll just go and do the gates.”
“I can help. You do that one; I’ll do the one over here.”
They reassembled outside the stables. Chieftain, tall and black, intrigued by the activity, leant curiously over the gate of his stall and let out a few breathy snorts. Conker, a solid brown-and-white pony, was saddled up ready to ride, and Imogen, standing holding her reins, could not disguise her impatience to be off. She was wearing her own battered headgear and, although one of the twins’ hats was once again offered, was determined not to change.
Sonia checked the tension of the saddle girths, and passed them as fine.
“I told you they would be, Mrs. Dalrymple.”
“I still needed to be sure. If you had a fall, it’d be my responsibility.”
Chastened by the slight asperity in these words, Imogen said, “Yes, of course, Mrs. Dalrymple. May I get up?”
“Sure.” Sonia held the pony’s reins, while Imogen, with practised ease, swung herself up into the saddle. “Just in this paddock?” she asked wistfully, eyeing the neat course of jumps that were set out in the field beyond.
“Just in this one for today.” As the girl and pony trotted meekly off, Sonia’s eyes followed them. “Poor kid.”
“Poor? Why?”
“Parents are going through a very sticky divorce, and focusing all her energies on Conker seems to be Immy’s way of coping. She’s actually been very helpful, you know, constantly up at Long Bamber, mucking out for her, all that stuff. But the trouble is, of course, that Conker’s not her pony, and when Alice and Laura come back for the Easter holidays…Well, they squabble enough about getting fair shares on Conker with just the two of them. I see ructions ahead.”
“So maybe you should start to restrict Imogen’s access to the pony?”
“Yes, I should. But I have to tread carefully. That girl’s in a highly emotional state at the moment. She’s very fragile.”
Jude looked across at the paddock. Imogen and Conker seemed to be one creature, cantering around without a care in the world. But if riding the pony represented the only peace in the girl’s fraught teenage life…Jude understood Sonia’s problem.
“Anyway, enough of that. Will you have a look at Chieftain? See if your magic healing hands can do anything for the poor old boy?”