The Shadowy Horses

Quinnell assured him that I was. "Verity, this is Wally Tyler. Jeannie's father."

She didn't resemble him much. Where her features were soft, his were sharp, and his thinning hair had once been red. But his eyes, like his daughter's, were alive with canny good humor, and they crinkled kindly at the comers as he took my hand in a firm and certain grip, looking accusingly at Quinnell. "She's no blond."

"Yes, I know."

David smiled broadly. "Did Jeannie not tell you, Wally?"

"She never let dab. And Robbie only said the new lass was a stoater."

Robbie stopped poking around in the hedgerow and turned, his face coloring. "Aw, Grandad!"

Quinnell laughed, a warm melodic sound. "It's all right, Robbie. I don't think our Miss Grey can speak Scots, can you, my dear? No. So there you are, you see? She likely won't know what a stoater is."

He was quite right, of course—I didn't have a clue, but as no one seemed inclined to enlighten me I tried my best to act as though I didn't care.

Instead I looked down, at the broad rectangle marked in the grass. The pungent smell of damp earth touched my nostrils like a sweet seductive scent, and I couldn't help but feel that tiny catch of excitement deep in my chest, that tingling thrill that all explorers must have felt from time immemorial. Because you never knew what worlds were waiting underneath that ground, to be discovered. That was the beauty of it—you never really knew.

And on this perfect spring morning, with my breath leaving mist in the air and the sun warming my shoulders and a little bird singing for all he was worth in the may-blossom hedge at my back, it was easy to forget there wasn't a shred of hard evidence to support this excavation. Easy to forget that we didn't have a hope of finding anything. I simply wanted to pick up a spade and get on with it, to start the actual digging.

"Adrian's coming," Robbie announced, swinging himself down from the fencing that ran behind the hedge.

Quinnell relaxed. "Good, good. Overslept, I imagine."

Fabia's firm voice corrected him. "Car trouble."

She spoke from directly behind me, her sudden arrival startling until I realized she had come, not from the house, but from Rose Cottage, just the other side of the drive. It meant a bit of a scramble over a crumbling stone wall and a sagging wire fence, but Fabia looked as though she'd rather enjoyed the challenge, and the telephone at the cottage was, at any rate, closer than the one at Rosehill House.

"Morning," she greeted me shortly. "Finally got tree of the kitchen, I see. Did Jeannie force you to eat her horrid porridge?"

"I had eggs, actually—"

Quinnell interrupted, his long face enquiring. "Car trouble, did you say?"

"What?" Fabia glanced round. "Oh, yes. He couldn't get the motor started."

Robbie, who'd been poking at a hillock with a sturdy bit of stick, looked swiftly upwards and I fancied that his large eyes held a faint reproach. My first thought was: He's caught her in a lie; and then I gently shook myself and smiled, remembering that no one could really be psychic.

Still, it wouldn't have surprised me to learn that Fabia was lying. She and Adrian weren't at all eager to sec the southwest corner excavated, and Quinnell hadn't helped matters last night, going on and on over dinner about his plans, as though the ground-penetrating radar survey had been genuine. I, for my part, had kept my promise to Quinnell and not said a word about it, and if I didn't exactly enjoy watching Adrian's discomfort, I could salve my guilty conscience with the knowledge that it probably did him good.

"Yes, well, these things happen," Quinnell said now, with a rather deliberate innocence, and I thought I caught the shadow of a smile as he turned to talk to Wally Tyler.

Certainly, Adrian's car appeared healthy enough when he finally turned into the drive, ten minutes later. He parked at the top of the hill, by the house, and came slowly down to meet us, frowning. "D'you know," he said to Quinnell, "I've been re-examining the results of that survey, and I can't be absolutely sure, but—"

"Yes?"

"Well, that anomaly doesn't look quite the right size, you know, for what we're after..."

"Ah. Perhaps we ought to double-check." Quinnell smiled. "Robbie?" Robbie, still poking about with his stick, looked around a second time. "Aye, Mr. Quinnell?"

"Mr. Sutton-Clarke's afraid we might be digging in the wrong place for our ditch."

"The ditch the soldiers dug?"

"That's right."

Robbie screwed his eyes up while he gave the matter thought. "No, it's here. It's all filled up, like, but it's here."

"Good lad." Quinnell turned back to Adrian like a proud father. "You see? There's no need to worry. If you'd just be so kind as to verify my measurements ..."

A few minutes later, as Wally Tyler's spade attacked the toughened sod, my shoulders lifted in a little sigh.

Such a pity, I thought, that Quinnell would be disappointed. It didn't seem fair.

"The ditch is here," repeated Robbie, but he wasn't talking to Quinnell. He'd come around to stand beside me and his blue eyes tilted up to meet my doubting ones, offering reassurance. "It's OK, he's going to find it."

No one can really be psychic, I reminded myself firmly. But Robbie only smiled as though I'd told him something funny, and went bouncing off to throw his stick for Kip.