‘He will be sure Energise is here?’
‘He certainly should be,’ I said. ‘He’ll ask his box driver about the journey and his box driver will tell him about the census. Jody will question closely and find that Pete Duveen was there too. Jody will, I think, telephone to ask Pete Duveen if he saw anything unusual and Pete, who has nothing to hide, will tell him he brought a black horse from here. He’ll tell him he took a black horse home again. And he’ll tell him I was there at the census point. I didn’t ask him not to tell and I am sure he will, because of his frank and open nature.’
Rupert’s lips twitched into the first hint of a smile. He straightened it out immediately. ‘I don’t really approve of what you’ve done.’
‘Broken no laws,’ I said neutrally, neglecting to mention the shadowy area of Bert’s police-impression uniform.
‘Perhaps not.’ He thought it over. ‘And the security firm is here both to prevent the theft of Energise and to catch Jody red-handed?’
‘Exactly so.’
‘I saw them in the yard this evening. Two men. They said they were expecting instructions from you when you arrived, though frankly at that point I was so angry with you that I was paying little attention.’
‘I talked to them on my way in,’ I agreed. ‘One will patrol the yard at regular intervals and the other is going to sit outside the horse’s box. I told them both to allow themselves to be enticed from their posts by any diversion.’
‘To allow?’
‘Of course. You have to give the mouse a clear view of the cheese.’
‘Good God.’
‘And I wondered... whether you would consider staying handy, to act as a witness if Jody should come a-robbing.’
It seemed to strike him for the first time that he too was Jody’s victim. He began to look almost as Charlie had done, and certainly as Bert had done, as if he found counter-measures attractive. The tugging smile reappeared.
‘It depends of course on what time Jody comes... if he comes at all... but two of my guests tonight would be the best independent witnesses you could get. A lady magistrate and the local vicar.’
‘Will they stay late?’ I asked.
‘We can try.’ He thought for a bit. ‘What about the police?’
‘How quickly can they get here if called?’
‘Um... Ten minutes. Quarter of an hour.’
‘That should be all right.’
He nodded. A bell rang distantly in the house, signalling the arrival of more guests. He stood up, paused a moment, frowned and said, ‘If the guard is to allow himself to be decoyed away, why plant him outside the horse’s door in the first place?’
I smiled. ‘How else is Jody to know which box to rob?’
The dinner party seemed endless, though I couldn’t afterwards remember a word or a mouthful. There were eight at table, all better value than myself, and the vicar particularly shone because of his brilliance as a mimic. I half-heard the string of imitated voices and saw everyone else falling about with hysterics and could think only of my men outside in the winter night and of the marauder I hoped to entice.
To groans from his audience the vicar played Cinderella at midnight and took himself off to shape up to Sunday, and three others shortly followed. Rupert pressed the last two to stay for nightcaps: the lady magistrate and her husband, a quiet young colonel with an active career and a bottomless capacity for port. He settled happily enough at the sight of a fresh decanter, and she with mock resignation continued a mild flirtation with Rupert.
The wheels inside my head whirred with the same doubts as in the morning. Suppose I had been wrong. Suppose Jody didn’t come. Suppose he did come, but came unseen, and managed to steal the horse successfully.
Well... I’d planned for that, too. I checked for the hundredth time through the ifs. I tried to imagine what I hadn’t already imagined, see what I hadn’t seen, prepare for the unprepared. Rupert cast an amused glance or two at my abstracted expression and made no attempt to break it down.
The door bell rang sharply, three long insistent pushes.
I stood up faster than good manners.
‘Go on,’ Rupert said indulgently. ‘We’ll be right behind you, if you need us.’
I nodded and departed, and crossed the hall to open the front door. My man in a grey flannel suit stood outside, looking worried and holding a torch.
‘What is it?’
‘I’m not sure. The other two arc patrolling the yard and I haven’t seen them for some time. And I think we have visitors, but they haven’t come in a horsebox.’
‘Did you see them? The visitors?’
‘No. Only their car. Hidden off the road in a patch of wild rhododendrons. At least... there is a car there which wasn’t there half an hour ago. What do you think?’
‘Better take a look,’ I said.
He nodded. I left the door of Rupert’s house ajar and we walked together towards the main gate. Just inside it stood the van which had brought the security guards, and outside, less than fifty yards along the road, we came to the car in the bushes, dimly seen even by torchlight.
‘It isn’t a car I recognise,’ I said. ‘Suppose it’s just a couple of lovers?’
‘They’d be inside it on a night like this, not out snogging in the freezing undergrowth.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Let’s take the rotor arm, to make sure.’
We lifted the bonnet and carefully removed the essential piece of electrics. Then, shining the torch as little as possible and going on grass whenever there was a choice, we hurried back towards the stable. The night was windy enough to swallow small sounds, dark enough to lose contact at five paces and cold enough to do structural damage to brass monkeys.
At the entrance to the yard we stopped to look and listen.
No lights. The dark heavy bulk of buildings was more sensed than seen against the heavily overcast sky.
No sounds except our own breath and the greater lungs of the wind. No sign of our other two guards.
‘What now?’
‘We’ll go and check the horse,’ I said.
We went into the main yard and skirted round its edges, which were paved with quieter concrete. The centre was an expanse of crunchy gravel, a giveaway even for cats.
Box fourteen had a chair outside it. A wooden kitchen chair planted prosaically with its back to the stable wall. No guard sat on it.
Quietly I slid back the bolts on the top half of the door and looked inside. There was a soft movement and the sound of a hoof rustling the straw. A second’s flash of torch showed the superb black shape patiently standing half-asleep in the dark, drowsing away the equine night.
I shut the door and made faint grating noises with the bolt.
‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if we can find the others.’
He nodded. We finished the circuit of the main yard and started along the various branches, moving with caution and trying not to use the torch. I couldn’t stop the weird feeling growing that we were not the only couple groping about in the dark. I saw substance in shadows and reached out fearfully to touch objects which were not there, but only darker patches in the pervading black. We spent five or ten minutes feeling our way, listening, taking a few steps, listening, going on. We completed the tour of the outlying rows of boxes, and saw and heard nothing.
‘This is no good,’ I said quietly. ‘There isn’t a sign of them, and has it occurred to you that they are hiding from us, thinking we are the intruders?’
‘Just beginning to wonder.’
‘Let’s go back to the main yard.’
We turned and retraced our steps, taking this time a short cut through a narrow alleyway between two sections of boxes. I was in front, so it was I who practically tripped over the huddled bundle on the ground.