Harry and Fiona simultaneously said no. Fiona was on a couple of committees for good causes, but there’d been no meetings that day. Harry, whose personal fortune seemed to equal Fiona’s in robust good health, had in the past negotiated the brilliant sale of an inherited tyre-making company (so Tremayne had told me) and now passed his time lucratively as occasional consultant to other private firms looking for a golden corporate whale to swallow them. He couldn’t remember any consultations for most of June.
‘We went to see Nolan ride Chickweed at Uttoxeter near the end of May,’ Fiona said worriedly. ‘Angela was there looking after the horse. That was the day someone fed him theobromine and caffeine, and if she didn’t give Chickweed chocolate herself then she must have let someone else do it. Sheer negligence, probably. Anyway, Chickweed won and Angela went back to Shellerton with him and we saw her a few days later and gave her an extra present, as we were so pleased with the way she looked after the horse. I mean, a horse’s success is always partly due to whoever cares for it and grooms it. And I can’t remember seeing the wretched girl again after that.’
‘Nor can I,’ Harry said.
They went over and over the same old ground all the way to Sandown and it was clear they had spoken of little else since Doone’s devastating identification of Harry’s belongings.
‘Someone must have put those things there to incriminate Harry,’ Mackie said unhappily.
Fiona agreed with her, but it appeared that Doone didn’t.
Harry said, ‘Doone believes it was an unpremeditated murder. I asked him why and he just said that most murders were unpremeditated. Useless. He said people who commit unpremeditated murder often drop things from extreme agitation and don’t know they’ve dropped them. I said I couldn’t even remember ever talking to the girl except in the company of my wife and he simply stared at me, not believing me. I’ll tell you, pals, it was unnerving.’
‘Awful,’ Mackie said vehemently.
Harry, trying to sound balanced, was clearly horribly disconcerted and was driving without concentration, braking and accelerating jerkily. Fiona said they had thought of not going to Sandown as they weren’t in a fun-day mood, but they had agreed not to let Doone’s suspicions ruin everything. Doone’s suspicions were nevertheless conspicuously wrecking their equilibrium and it was a subdued little group that stood in the parade ring watching Fiona’s tough hunter, the famous Chick-weed, walk round before the Wilfred Johnstone Hunter Chase.
No one, one hoped, had given him chocolate.
Fiona had told Nolan about Doone’s accusations. Nolan told Harry that now he, Harry, knew what it was like to have a charge of murder hanging over him he would in retrospect have more sympathy for him, Nolan. Harry didn’t like it. With only vestiges of friendliness he protested that he, Harry, had not been found with a dead girl at his feet.
‘As good as, by the sound of things,’ Nolan said, rattled.
‘Nolan!’ Fiona wasn’t amused. ‘Everyone, stop talking about it. Nolan, put your mind on the race. Harry, not another word about that
Harry gave her a fond but rueful glance and, over her shoulder, caught my eye. There was something more in his expression, I thought, and after a moment identified it as fear: maybe faint, but definitely present. Harry and fear hadn’t, until then, gone together in my mind, particularly not since his controlled behaviour in a frozen ditch.
Mackie,
‘I want to tell you something,’ he said, ‘but not Fiona.’
‘Fire away.’
He looked quickly around him, checking no one could hear.
‘Doone said... Christ... he said the girl had no clothes on when she died.’
‘God, Harry.’ I felt my mouth still open, and closed it consciously.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said.
‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘Doone asked what I was doing there with my belt off.’
The shock still trembled in his voice.
‘The innocent aren’t found guilty,’ I protested.
He said miserably, ‘Oh, yes, they are. You know they are.’
‘But not on such flimsy evidence.’
‘I haven’t been able to tell Fiona. I mean, we’ve always been fine together, but she might start
