Wimsey let his eye rove meditatively over the large field. At its far side was a thickish clump of spinney, from which the little stream emerged, meandering quietly through the coarse grass.
‘Look how nicely those trees screen it from the road, and the village. A pleasant, private spot for horse-stealing. How tiresome of, Mr Newcombe to have filled this gap. Aha! What is this, Watson?’
‘I’ll buy it.
‘There is another gap a few yards down, which has been filled in a more workmanlike manner with posts and a rail. Nothing could be better. We approach it — we climb the rail, and we are in the field. Permit me — oh! you are over. Good! Now, which animal will you put your money on?’
‘Not the black. He looks too big and heavy.’
‘No, not the black, certainly. The chestnut might do, as regards size, but he has seen his best days and has hardly got class enough for our work. The jolly little bay cob rather takes my fancy. Coo-op, pretty,’ said Wimsey, advancing delicately across the field, shaking the oats in the hat. ‘Coo-op, coo-op.’
Harriet had often wondered how people ever managed to catch horses in large fields. It seemed so silly of the creatures to allow themselves to be taken — and indeed, she remembered distinctly having; once stayed in a country: rectory where it always took at least an hour for ‘the boy to catch the pony, with the result that the pony-trap frequently failed to catch the train. Possibly ‘the boy’ had not gone the right way about it, for, as by the miracle by which the needle turns to the pole, all three horses came lolloping steadily across the field to poke: soft noses into the hatful of oats. Wimsey stroked the chestnut, patted the black, weeded out the bay from between them and stood for a little talking to it and running a hand gently over its neck and shoulders. Then he stooped, passing his palm down the off-fore leg. The hoof came obediently up into his hand, while the muzzle went round and gently nibbled his ear.
‘Hi, you!’ said Wimsey, ‘that’s mine. Look here, Harriet’
Harriet edged round to his side and stared at the hoof.
‘New shoe.’ He put the foot down and reached in turn for the other legs. ‘Better make sure they haven’t made an all-round job of it. No; old shoes on three feet and new shoe on off-fore, corresponding exactly to the specimen picked up on the beach. You notice the special arrangement of the nails. The bay mare brings home the bacon all right. Wait a bit, my girl, we’ll try your paces.’
He slipped the halter neatly over the bay mare’s head and swung himself up.
‘Come for a ride?’ Your toe on my foot, and up she comes! Shall we ride away into the sunset and never come back?’
Better get on with it. Suppose the farmer comes.’
‘How right you are!’ He gave the halter a shake and cantered off. Harriet mechanically picked up his hat and stood squeezing the crown absently in and out, with her eyes on the flying figure.
‘Allow me, miss.’
Bunter held out his hand for the hat; she relinquished, it with a little start. Bunter shook out the remaining oats, dusted the hat with care inside and out and restored it to its proper shape.
‘Handy to ride or drive,’ said Wimsey, coming back and slipping down from his mount. ‘Might do nine miles an hour on the road — on the shore, through shallow water, say eight. I’d like — my God! how I’d like — to take her along to the Flat-Iron. Better not. We’re trespassing.’
He pulled the halter off and sent the mare off with a clap on the shoulder.
‘It all looks so good,’ he mourned, but it won’t work. It simply won’t work. You see the idea. Here’s Martin. He comes and camps here; evidently he knows all about this place beforehand, and knows that horses are kept out in this field in summer. He arranges for Alexis to be at the Flat-Iron at two o’clock I don’t know how, but he works it somehow. At 1.30 he leaves the Feathers, comes down here, gets the mare and rides off along the shore. We see where he spilt the oats with which he got her to come to him and we see the gap he made getting her through the hedge. He rides along through the edge of the water, so as to leave no marks. He tethers the mare to the ring that he has driven into the rock; he kills Alexis and rides back in a deuce of a hurry. In crossing the rough pebbles below Pollock’s cottage, the mare casts a shoe. That doesn’t worry him, except that it lames the nag a bit and delays him. When he gets back, he doesn’t return the mare to the field, but lets her run. Like that, it will look as though she broke out of the field on her own, and will easily explain the gap, the lameness, and the shoe, if anybody finds it Also, if the horse should be found still blown and sweaty, it will appear perfectly natural. He is back at three o’clock, in time to go round to the garage about his car, and at some subsequent period he burns the halter. It’s so convincing, so neat, and it’s all wrong.’
‘Why?’
‘The time’s too tight, for one thing. He left the inn at 1.30. After that, he had to come down here, catch, the mare and ride four and a half miles. We can’t very well allow him to do more than eight miles an hour under the conditions of the problem, yet at two o’clock you heard the scream. Are you sure your watch was right?’
‘Positive. I compared it with the hotel clock when I got to Wilvercombe; it was dead right, and the hotel clock—’
‘Is set by wireless time, naturally. Everything always is.’
‘Worse than that all the hotel clocks are controlled by a master-clock which is controlled directly from Greenwich.
That was one of the first things I asked about.’ ‘Competent woman.?
‘Suppose he had had the horse all ready before he went to the Feathers — tied up to the fence, or something?’
‘Yes; but if these Darley people are right, he didn’t go from here to the Feathers; he came by car from the Wilvercombe side. And even if we allow that, he’s still got to make rather over nine miles an hour to get to the Flat-Iron by two o’clock. I doubt if he could do it though, of course, he might, if he leathered the poor beast like fury. That’s why I said I’d like to do the ride:’
‘And the scream I heard may not have been the scream. I thought it was a gull, you know and perhaps. it was. I took about five minutes to gather my stuff together and come out into view of the-Flat-Iron. You might put the death at 2.05, I think, if you felt you had to.’
‘All right. But that still leaves it all quite impossible. You see, you were there at 2.10 at the very latest. Where was the murderer?’
‘In the cleft of the rock. Oh, ah — but not the horse. I see. There wouldn’t be room for a horse too. How exasperating! If we put the murder too early, he wouldn’t have time to get there, and if we put it too late, he wouldn’t have time to get away. It’s maddening.’