“I never thought Mr. Brian was killed falling from his horse. He was too good a rider. Born on a horse, like as not, and knew what he was about. And you don’t ride a valuable animal through sea-wet rocks, not if you’ve got any sense, with the risk of ruining his legs! It were murder, pure and simple, that happened that day—to man and mount!”

Chapter 12

12

Caught off balance, Rutledge stared at the old man. “Did you say this to anyone at the time? When Brian FitzHugh died?”

Wilkins gave him a toothless grin, “Lord, and lose my job on the spot? Which I nearly did anyway, when Miss Rosamund gave up the racing stables. And come to that, what was I to say to her? Or to the police?” He drank his ale, belched with pleasure, and shrugged his shoulders with almost Gallic expressiveness.

“But if you believed it was murder—”

“Aye, it were murder,” he said bluntly. “I were there when they raised the alarm, running for all I was worth to see what were wrong and to look to the horse. I’d saddled him for Mr. FitzHugh, I knew which mount he’d taken out!”

“Tell me, then.”

“Mr. FitzHugh was lying face down in the sea, blood on his head, and they found blood on one of the rocks just there, where he’d been thrown and then rolled into the surf. But the horse were deeper among the rocks, wild-eyed and shaking. A spur had raked one flank, not the other. I’d never known Mr. FitzHugh to use a spur on his horses, and I’d never known Lucifer to need more than the lightest rein, he were that clever. Read your mind almost! Something happened that put the fear of God into him, and he bolted. But with an empty saddle, if I know anything about it!”

“What makes you say that?”

“There were neither horse hair nor blood on Mr. Fitz-Hugh’s spurs. And if he’d been throwed, just there, where he would hit his head on the rocks coming down, then roll over, his face into the water, why was there water in his hoots when I pulled ‘em off him, so’s they could carry him back to the house?”

“Surely the police asked that same question?”

“Aye, and they answered it, too, that the sea’d come in with the tide, soaking his trousers and his stockings. There were no footprints on the shingle but ours and Master Nicholas’, coming up from his boat, no signs of a struggle or trouble of any kind, and the doctor, he said Mr. FitzHugh had drowned, before he’d regained his wits from the fall.” He finished his ale, then went to stir the stew, squinting in the heat of the fire.