Longshot. Part 34

He seemed vaguely surprised that someone should be engaged on such an enterprise and said lamely, 'Very interesting, I'm sure.'

'Yes, indeed.'

'And- er- did you know the deceased?'

'Angela Brickell? No, I didn't. She vanished last summer, I believe, and I've been here only a short time, roughly ten days.'

'But you knew about her, sir,' he said shrewdly.

'Let me show you how I knew,' I said. 'Come and look.'

I led him into the dining-room and showed him the piles of clippings, explaining they were the raw materials of my future book.

'This is my workroom,' I said. 'Somewhere in that pile of cuttings,' I pointed, 'is an account of Angela Brickell's disappearance. That's how I know about her, and that's all I know. No one has mentioned her outside of this room since I've been here.'

He looked through the past year's cuttings and found the pieces about the girl. He nodded a few times and laid them back carefully where he'd found them, and seemed rea.s.sured about me personally. I got the first hint of the garrulity to come.

'Well, sir,' he said, relaxing, 'you can start introducing me to all the people here and explain why I'm asking questions and, as I've found on other cases when only remains are found that people tend to think the worst and imagine all sorts of horrors so that it makes them feel sick and wastes a good deal of time altogether, I'll tell you, sir, and you can pa.s.s it on, that what was found - was bones, sir, quite clean and no smell, nothing horrible, you can a.s.sure people of that.'

'Thank you,' I said, a shade numbly.

'Animals and insects had cleaned her, you see.'

'Don't you think that fact alone will make people feel sick?'

'Then don't stress it, sir.'

'No.'

'We have her clothes and shoes and her handbag and lipstick back at the police station- they were scattered around her and I've had my men searching-' He stopped, not telling me then where the search had occurred; except that if she'd been scavenged it had to have been out of doors. Which for a stable girl, in a way, made sense.

'And, if you don't mind, sir, will you please just tell everyone she's been found, not that she was strangled.'

'How do you know that she was strangled, if there's nothing much left?'

'The hyoid bone, sir. In the throat. Fractured. Only a direct blow or manual pressure does that. Fingers, usually, from behind.'

'Oh, I see. All right, I'll leave it to you. We'd better start with Mr Vickers' secretary, Dee-Dee.'

I steered him into the office and introduced him. Detective Constable Rich followed everywhere like a shadow, a non-speaking taker of notes. I explained to Dee-Dee that Angela Brickell had probably been found.

'Oh good,' she said spontaneously, and then, seeing it wasn't good at all, 'Oh dear.'

Doone asked to use the telephone, Dee-Dee at once a.s.senting. Doone called his people back at base.

'Mr Vickers identified the horse as one that Angela Brickell tended in his stable, and the man as the owner of the horse, or rather the owner's husband. I'd say it's fairly sure we have Angela Brickell in the mortuary. Can you arrange to send round a WPC to her parents? They live out Wokingham way. The address is in my office. Do it p.r.o.nto. We don't want anyone from Sh.e.l.lerton upsetting them first. Break it to them kindly, see? Ask if they could recognise any clothes of hers, or handbag. Ask Mollie to go to them, if she's on duty. She makes it more bearable for people. She mops up their grief. Get Mollie. Tell her to take another constable with her, if she wants.'

He listened for a moment or two and put down the receiver.

'The poor la.s.s has been dead six months or more,' he said to Dee-Dee. 'All that's left is sweet clean bones.'

Dee-Dee looked as if that thought were sick-making enough, but I could see that Doone's rough humanity would comfort in the end. He was like a stubby-fingered surgeon, I thought: delicate in his handiwork against the odds.

He asked Dee-Dee if she knew of any reason for Angela Brickell's disappearance. Had the girl been unhappy? Having rows with a boyfriend?

'I've no idea. We didn't find out until after she'd gone that she must have given chocolate to Chickweed. Stupid thing to do.'

Doone looked lost. I explained about the theobro-mine. 'That's in those clippings, too,' I said.

'We found some chocolate bar wrappers with the la.s.s,' Doone said. 'No chocolate. Is that what was meant in our notes by "possibly doped a horse in her charge"?'

'Spot on,' I said.

'Chocolate!' he said disgustedly. 'Not worth dying for.' I said, enlightened, 'Were you looking for a big conspiracy? A doping ring?' 'Have to consider everything.'

Dee-Dee said positively, 'Angela Brickell wouldn't have been in a doping ring. You don't know what you're talking about.'

Doone didn't pursue it but said he'd like to talk to the rest of the stable staff, asking Dee-Dee meanwhile not to break the news to anyone else as he would prefer to do it himself. Also he didn't want anyone springing the tragedy prematurely onto the poor parents.

'Surely I can tell Fiona,' she protested.

'Who's Fiona?' He frowned, perhaps trying to remember.

'Fiona Goodhaven, who owns Chickweed.'

'Oh, yes. Well, not her either. Especially not her. I like to get people's first thoughts, first impressions, not hear what they think after they've spent hours discussing something with all their friends. First thoughts are clearer and more valuable, I've found.'

He said it with more persuasion than command, with the result that Dee-Dee agreed to stay off the grapevine. She didn't ask how the girl had died. If she realised Doone's remarks best fitted a murder scenario, she didn't say so. Perhaps she simply shied away from having to know.

Doone asked to be taken out to the stables. On the way I asked him to remember, if he met Mackie, Tremayne's daughter-in-law and a.s.sistant trainer, that she was newly pregnant.

He gave me a sharp glance.

'You're considerate,' I said mildly. 'I thought you might want to modify the shocks.'

He looked disconcerted but made no promise either way and, as it happened, by the time we reached the yard, Mackie had gone home and Bob Watson was alone there, beavering away with saw, hammer and nails, making a new saddle-horse to hold the saddles in the tack room. We found him outside the tack-room door, not too pleased to be interrupted.

I introduced Bob to Doone, Doone to Bob. Doone told him that some human remains discovered by chance were thought to be those of Angela Brickell.

'No!' Bob said. 'Straight up? Poor little b.i.t.c.h. What did she do, fall down a quarry?' He looked absent-mindedly at a piece of wood he held as if he'd temporarily forgotten its purpose.

'Why should you say that, sir?' Doone asked attentively.

'Manner of speaking,' Bob said, shrugging. 'I always thought she'd just scarpered. The guv'nor swore she'd given Chickweed chocolate, but I reckon she didn't. I mean, we all know you mustn't. Anyway, who found her? Where did she go?'

'She was found by chance,' Doone said again. 'Was she unhappy over a boyfriend?'

'Not that I know of. But there's twenty lads and girls here, and they come and go all the time. Truth to tell, I can't remember much about her, except she was s.e.xy. Ask Mrs Goodhaven, she was always kind to her. Ask the other girls here, some of them lived in a hostel with her. Why did you want to know about a boyfriend? She didn't take a high jump, did she? Is that what she did?'