i

Miss Harkness, parcelled in canvas, lay in the ambulance, her uncle was in his office with the doctor, and Julia and Bruno had been driven home to L’Espérance by Carlotta. Ricky and Jasper still waited in the stable yard because they didn’t quite like to go away. Ricky wandered about in a desultory fashion, half looking at what there was to be seen but unable to dismiss his memory of Dulcie Harkness. He drifted into the old coach house. Beside the car, a broken-down gig, pieces of perished harness, and a heap of sacks, a coil of old and discarded wire hung from a peg. Ricky idly examined it and found that the end had recently been cut.

He could hear the sorrel mare blowing through her nostrils — she was in a loose-box with her leg bandaged, having a feed. The vet came out.

“It’s a hell of a sprain, in her near fore,” said the vet. “And a bad cut in front, halfway down the splint bone. I can’t quite understand the cut. There must have been something in the gap to cause it. I think I’ll go down and have a look at the terrain. Now they’ve taken away — now — er — it’s all clear.”

“The police sergeant’s there,” Ricky said. “He went back after he’d seen Mr. Harkness.”

“Old Joey Plank?” said the vet. “He’s all right. I’d be obliged if you’d come down with me, though. I’d like to see just where this young hopeful of yours took off when he cleared the jump. I don’t like being puzzled. Of course, anything can happen. For one thing, he’ll be very much lighter than Dulcie. She’s a big girl but all the same it’s a pretty good bet Dulcie Harkness wouldn’t go wrong over the same sticks on the same mount as a kid of thirteen. She’s — she would have been in the top class if she’d liked to go in for it. Be glad if you’d stroll down. OK?”

In one way, there was nothing in the wide world Ricky wanted to do less, and he fancied Jasper felt much the same, but they could hardly refuse and at least they would get away from the yard and the ambulance with its two men sitting in front and its closed doors with Miss Harkness behind them. Jasper did point out that they were the width of the paddock away when Bruno jumped, but Mr. Blacker paid no attention and led the way downhill.

The turf was fairly soft and copiously indented with hoof prints. When they got to within a few feet of the gap the vet held up his hand and they all stopped.

“Here you are, then,” he said. “Here’s where they took off and here’s the mark of the hind hooves, the first lot with the boy up being underneath, with the second overlapping at the edges and well dug in. Tremendous thrust, you know, when the horse takes off. See the difference between these and the prints left by the forefeet.”

Sergeant Plank, in his shirtsleeves and red with exertion, loomed up in the gap.

“This is a nasty business, Joey,” said the vet.

“Ah. Very. And a bit of a puzzle, at that. Very glad these two gentlemen have come down. If it’s all the same I’ll just get a wee statement about how the body was found, like. We have to do these things in the prescribed order, don’t we? Half a mo’.”

He didn’t climb through the gap but edged his way down the hedge to where he’d hung his tunic. From this he extracted his notebook and pencil. He joined them and fixed his gaze — his eyes were china-blue and very bright — upon Ricky.

“I understand you was the first to see deceased, sir,” he said.

Ricky experienced an assortment of frissons.

“Mrs. Pharamond was the first,” he said. “Then me.”

“Pardon me. So I understood. Could I have the name, if you please, sir?”

“Roderick Alleyn.”

A longish silence followed.

“Oh yes?” said the sergeant. “How is that spelt, if you please?”

Ricky spelled it.

“You wouldn’t,” Sergeant Plank austerely suggested, “be trying to take the Micky, would you, sir?”

“Me? Why? Oh!” said Ricky, blushing. “No, sergeant, I wouldn’t dream of it. I’m his son.”

A further silence.

“I had the pleasure,” said Sergeant Plank, clearing his throat, “of working under the Chief Superintendent on a case in the West Country. In a very minor capacity. Guard duty. He wouldn’t remember, of course.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Ricky.

“He still wouldn’t remember,” said Sergeant Plank, “but it was a pleasure, all the same.”

Yet another silence was broken by Mr. Blacker. “Quite a coincidence,” he said.

“It is that,” Sergeant Plank said warmly. And to Ricky: “Well then, sir, even if it seems a bit funny, perhaps you’ll give me a few items of information.”

“If I can, Mr. Plank, of course.”

So he gave, at dictation speed, his account of what he saw when Julia called him down to the gap. He watched the sergeant laboriously begin every line of his notes close to the edge of the page and fill in to the opposite edge in the regulation manner. When that was over he took a statement from Jasper. He then said that he was sure they realized that he would, as a matter of routine, have to get statements from Julia and Bruno.

“There’ll be an inquest, sir, as I’m sure you’ll realize, and no doubt your wife will be called to give formal evidence, being the first to sight the body. And your young brother may be asked to say something about the nature of his own performance. Purely a matter of routine.”

“I suppose so,” said Jasper. “I wish it wasn’t, however. The boy’s very upset. He’s got the idea, we think, that she wouldn’t have tried to jump the gap if he hadn’t done it first. She seemed to be very excited about him doing it.”

“Is that so? Excited?”

Mr. Blacker said: “She would be. From what I can make out from Cuth Harkness, it’d been a bit of a bone of contention between them. He told her she shouldn’t try it on and she kind of defied him. Or that’s what I made out. Cuth’s in a queer sort of state.”

“Shock,” said the sergeant still writing. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Who broke the news?”

“My wife and I did,” said Jasper. “He insisted on coming down here to look for himself.”

“He’s fussed. One minute it’s the mare and the next it’s the niece. He didn’t seem,” Sergeant Plank said, “to be able to tell the difference, if you can understand.”

“Only too well.”

The vet had moved away. He was peering through the gap at the ditch and the far bank. The remains of a post-and-rail fence ran through the blackthorn hedge and was partly exposed. He put his foot on the lower rail as if to test whether it would take his weight.

“I’d be obliged, Mr. Blacker,” said the sergeant raising his china-blue gaze from his notes, “if you didn’t. Just a formality, but it’s what we’re instructed. No offense.”

“What? Oh. Oh, all right,” said Blacker. “Sorry, I’m sure.”

“That’s quite all right, sir. I wonder,” said the sergeant to Ricky, “if you’d just indicate where you and Mrs. Pharamond were when you noticed the body.”

For the life of him, Ricky could not imagine why this should be of interest but he described how Julia had called him to her and how he had dismounted, giving his horse to Bruno, and had gone to her, and how she, too, had dismounted and he had peered through the gap. He parted some branches near the end of the gap.

“Like that,” he said.

He noticed that the post at his left hand was loose in the ground. Near the top on the outer side and almost obscured by brambles was a fine scar that cut through the mossy surface and bit into the wood. The opposite post at the other end of the gap was overgrown with blackthorn. He crossed and saw broken twigs and what seemed to be a scrape up the surface of the post.

“Would you have noticed,” Sergeant Plank said behind him, making him jump, “anything about the gap, sir?”

Ricky turned to meet the sergeant’s blue regard.

“I was too rattled,” he said, “to notice anything.”