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 assistant 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 bitch. 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 sexy. 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?’
Doone didn’t say yes or no, and I understood what he’d meant by preferring to listen to unadulterated first thoughts, to the first pictures and conclusions that minds leaped to when questioned.
He talked to Bob for a while longer but as far as I could see learned nothing much.
‘You want to see Mackie,’ Bob said in the end. ‘That’s young Mrs Vickers. The girls tell her things they’d never tell me.’
Doone nodded and I led him and the ubiquitous Rich round the house to Mackie and Perkin’s entrance, ringing the bell. It was Perkin himself who came to the door, appearing in khaki overalls, looking wholly artisan and smelling, fascinatingly, of wood and linseed oil.
‘Hello,’ he said, surprised to see me. ‘Mackie’s in the shower.’
Doone took it in his stride this time, introducing himself formally.
‘I came to let Mrs Vickers know that Angela Brickell’s been found,’ he said.
‘Who?’ Perkin said blankly. ‘I didn’t know anyone was lost. I don’t know any Angela... Angela who did you say?’
Doone patiently explained she’d been lost for seven or more months. Angela Brickell.
‘Good Lord. Really? Who is she?’ A thought struck him. ‘I say, is she the stable girl who buggered off sometime last year? I remember a bit of a fuss.’
‘That’s the one.’
‘Good then, my wife will be glad she’s found. I’ll give her the message.’
He made as if to close the door but Doone said he would like to see Mrs Vickers himself.
‘Oh? All right. You’d better come in and wait. John? Come in?’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
He led the way into a kitchen-dining room where I hadn’t been before and offered us rattan armchairs round a table made of a circular slab of glass resting on three gothic plaster pillars. The curtains and chair covers were bright turquoise overprinted with blowsy grey, black and white flowers, and all the kitchen fitments were faced with grey-white streaked Formica; thoroughly modern.
Perkin watched my surprise with irony and said, ‘Mackie chose everything in a revolt against good taste.’
‘It’s happy,’ I said. ‘Light-hearted.’
The remark seemed somehow to disturb him, but Mackie herself arrived with damp hair at that point looking refreshed and pleased with life. Her reaction to Doone’s first cautious words was the same as everyone else’s. ‘Great. Where is she?’
The gradual realisation of the true facts drained the contentment and the colour from her face. She listened to his questions and answered them, and faced the implications squarely.
‘You’re telling us, aren’t you,’ she said flatly, ‘that either she killed herself... or somebody killed her?’
‘I didn’t say that, madam.’
‘As good as.’ She sighed desolately. ‘All these questions about doping rings... and boyfriends. Oh God.’ She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them to look at Doone and me.
