The Shadowy Horses

The truths that never can be proved

Until we close with all we loved

Tennyson, "In Memoriam", CXXX

XXXVI

The storm had passed by teatime but the sullen sky, flat gray and dreary, pressed heavily upon the sodden Melds and dripping walls of Rosehill.

"For God's sake," Peter said, "do put a light on, somebody." Stretching himself in his cracked leather armchair he took up his half-finished drink and settled his free hand on Murphy's black back. "I've had enough of shadows, for one day."

I reached to switch the lamp on, and the red walls warmed. The gray cat Charlie, on my lap, stirred and blinked in the sudden light, then burrowed her small face against my leg with a tiny sigh. She and I, I thought, were rather the odd ones out in this room—two females being suffered by a gathering of men. But then this was, essentially, a man's room. Wally, with his feet up in one corner, eyes half closed against the drifting haze of his cigarette, looked perfectly at home here, as did David, slouched beside me on the old worn leather sofa, one arm slung lazily along my shoulders while the other cradled Robbie close against his other side.

Robbie, wide awake now, showed no ill effects from his morning's adventure. He couldn't remember leaving Rose-hill, or walking cross-country to Coldingham Moor—a trip that must surely have taken him two and a half hours, by David's estimate. Nor could he even clearly tell us why he'd done it. "The Sentinel needed me," was the only explanation he could give.

I suspected that the Sentinel, lacking human hands, had needed Robbie to fetch the Fortuna medallion from the finds room, as well, and leave it on David's desk. But Robbie couldn't recall being in the Principia, either. His memory of the day's events were blurred at best. "Was I really in Mr. Sutton-Clarke's car?"

"Indeed you were." Adrian, lounging in a corner chair beyond the reach of lamplight, chased down another headache tablet with a swallow of stiff gin. "I've got the water-stains on the seats to prove it."

Adrian, I thought, was bearing up remarkably well, all things considered. I'd expected histrionics when we'd arrived at Rosehill with the Jaguar in tow, but Adrian had merely looked in mournful silence at the dents and scratches, then he'd sighed and turned to David. "Well, at least you're in one piece. That's something, anyway." With which surprising speech he'd left us, and gone back inside the house.

David had raised his eyebrows. "What was that, d'ye think?"

"A beginning," I'd told him, linking my arm through his with a smile.

Adrian, I knew, had meant it as a peacemaking of sorts; a gesture of conciliation and acceptance. Not that he and David were ever likely to become firm friends, I admitted, as I looked from one face to the other now in the cozy red-walled sitting room, but still... I had seen stranger things today, and could no longer call anything impossible.

The comforting thing about the past, to me, had always been that it repeated itself in predictable patterns. One knew which result to expect from which circumstance. But today, here at Rosehill, the past had come loose like a runaway cart and the present ran on in confusion, a horse still in harness with nothing behind it and no one controlling the reins.

And so Adrian, who had always read me the riot act if I so much as slammed his car door, was now sitting across from me, holding his tongue. And Wally, who had always hated Brian, had spent the past hour praising what his son-in-law had done.

And what Brian had done, I decided, was in itself a fine example of how the patterns of the past had been disrupted. Brian, selfish and conceited, who lived at his own whims for pleasure and gain, had today risked his own neck to save Peter's. Once word had reached him that Robbie was safe, he had set about clearing the cellar of anything incriminating. At the height of the storm and in three separate carloads, he'd shuttled the crates of vodka and cigarettes from Rosehill House to their new hiding place, in the town. "And efter a' that," Wally'd told us, complaining, "the dampt exciseman didna even come."

But at least, if they did come, the house would be clean. There'd be no damage done, now, to Peter's credibility—no scandalous headlines, no ruinous charges. The only news would be that Peter Quinnell’s granddaughter, still suffering from nerves after her father's suicide, had been admitted to an undisclosed private hospital, where she'd be receiving counseling and treatment.

"So it was Fabia," said David, "who did all that messing about with the computers."

"And mislaid Peter's notebook," I added. "And told Connelly about our ghost hunt in the field, that night, saying it was all Peter's idea. She would have done anything, I think, to be sure our dig didn't succeed."

Peter, from his corner, gently reminded me that he, and not the dig, had been the true target of Fabia's campaign of sabotage. "At the end of the day," he said, "it all comes down to her wanting to discredit me, to see me—as she put it—suffer."

Had she been able to see him now, I thought, she would have felt quite satisfied. The lines of suffering were still etched plainly in his handsome face, for all of us to see. Still, Peter, I reflected, had remained consistent in his actions. Saddened but unbowed, he'd spent the afternoon dispensing drinks and comfort, telephoning doctors, taking care of everything. It was, as Nancy Fortune said, his nature—taking care of things.

"Good heavens," I said, suddenly remembering. "Your mother."