Endless Night

Chapter 18
Shaw came up in a battered old Land-Rover. I suppose it was the car he used for going to visit isolated farms in bad weather. He barely looked at either of us. He went straight and bent over Ellie. Then he came over to us.

"She's been dead at least three or four hours," he said. "How did it happen?"

I told him how she'd gone off riding as usual after breakfast that morning.

"Has she had any accidents up to this time when been out riding?"

"No," I said, "she was a good rider."

"Yes, I know she's a good rider. I've seen her once or twice. She's ridden since she was a child, I understand. I wondered if she might have had some accident lately and that that might have affected her nerve a bit. If the horse had shied -"

"Why should the horse shy? It's a quiet brute."

"There's nothing vicious about this particular horse," said Major Phillpot. "He's well behaved, not nervy. Has she broken any bones?"

"I haven't made a complete examination yet but she doesn't seem physically injured in any way. There may be some internal injury. Might be shock, I suppose?"

"But you can't die of shock," I said.

"People have died of shock before now. If she'd had weak heart "

"They said in America that she had a weak heart - some kind of weakness at least."

"Hm. I couldn't find much trace of it when I examined her. Still, we didn't have a cardiograph. Anyway no point in going into that now. We shall know later. After the inquest."

He looked at me consideringly, then he patted me on the shoulder.

"You go home and go to bed," he said. "You're the one who's suffering from shock."

In the queer way people materialise out of nowhere in the country, we had three or four people standing near us, by this time. One a hiker who had come along from the main road seeing our little group, one a rosy-faced woman who I think was going to a farm over a short cut and an old roadman. They were making exclamations and remarks.

"Poor young lady."

"So young too. Thrown from her horse, was she?"

"Ah well, you never know with horses."

"It's Mrs. Rogers, isn't it, the American lady from The Towers?"

It was not until everyone else had exclaimed in their astonished fashion, that the aged roadman spoke. He gave us information. Shaking his head he said,

"I must-a seen it happen. I must-a seen it happen."

The doctor turned sharply on him.

"What did you see happen?"

"I saw a horse bolting across country."

"Did you see the lady fall?"

"No. No, I didn't. She were riding along the top of the woods when I saw her and after that I'd got me back turned and I was cutting the stones for the road. And then I heard hoo and I looked up and there was the horse galloping. I didn't think there'd been an accident. I thought the lady perhaps had got off and let go of the horse in some way. It wasn't coming towards me, it was going in the other direction."

"You didn't see the lady lying on the ground?"

"No, I don't see very well far. I saw the horse because it showed against the sky line."

"Was she riding alone? Was there anyone with her, or near her?"

"Nobody near her. No. She was all alone. She rode not very far from me, past me, going along that way. She was bearing towards

the woods, I think. No, I didn't see anyone at all except her and the horse."

"Might have been the gipsy what frightened her," said the rosy- faced woman.

I swung round.

"What gipsy? When?"

"Oh, must have been - well, at must have been three or four hours ago when I went down the road this morning. About quarter to ten

maybe, I saw that gipsy woman. The one as lives in the cottage in the village. Least I think it was she. I wasn't near enough to be sure. But she's the only one as goes about hereabouts in a red cloak. She was walking up a path through the trees. Somebody told me as she'd said nasty things to the poor American young lady. Threatened her. Told her something bad would happen if she

didn't get out of this place. Very threatening, I hear she was."

"The gipsy," I said. Then, bitterly, to myself, thought out loud,

"Gipsy's Acre. I wish I'd never seen the place."