'Will you be coming to your table soon, Mr. Rogers? There's one or two waiting.'
'My wife will be here in a minute or two,' I said.
I went back to rejoin Phillpot. I thought perhaps that Ellie might have had a puncture.
'We'd better go in,' I said, 'they seem getting rather upset about it. They've got quite a crowd today. I'm afraid,' I added, 'that Ellie isn't the most punctual of people.'
'Ah,' said Phillpot in his old-fashioned style, 'the ladies make a point of keeping us waiting, don't they? All right, Mike, if that's all right by you. We'll go in and start lunch.'
We went into the dining-room, chose steak and kidney pie off the menu and started.
'It's too bad of Ellie,' I said, 'to stand us up like this.'
I added that it was possibly because Greta was in London.
'Ellie's very used, you knows' I said, 'to Greta helping her to keep appointments, reminding her of them and getting her off in time and all that.'
'Is she very dependent on Miss Andersen?'
'In that way, yes,' I said.
We went on eating and passed from the steak and kidney pie to apple tart with a self-conscious piece of phoney pastry on top of it.
'I wonder if she's forgotten all about it,' I said suddenly.
'Perhaps you'd better ring up.'
'Yes, I think I'd better.'
I went out to the phone and rang. Mrs. Carson, the cook, answered.
'Oh, it's you, Mr. Rogers, Mrs. Rogers hasn't come home yet.'
'What do you mean, hasn't come home. Home from where?'
'She hasn't come back from her ride yet.'
'But that was after breakfast. She can't have been riding the whole morning.'
'She didn't say anything different. I was expecting her back.'
'Why didn't you ring up sooner and let me know about it?' I asked.
'Well, I wouldn't know where to get at you, you see. I didn't know where you'd gone.'
I told her I was at the George at Bartington and gave her the number. She was to ring up the moment Ellie came in or she had news of her. Then I went back to join Phillpot. He saw from my face at once that something was wrong.
'Ellie hasn't come home,' I said. 'She went off riding this morning. She usually does most mornings but it only lasts half an hour to an hour.'
'Now don't worry before you need to, boy,' he said kindly. 'Your place is in a very lonely part, you know. Maybe her horse went lame and she might be walking it home. All that moorland and downs above the woods. There's nobody much in that part to send a message by.'
'If she decided to change her plans and ride over and see anyone, anything like that,' I said, 'she'd have rung here. She'd have left a message for us.'
'Well, don't get het up yet,' Phillpot said. 'I think we'd better go now, right away, and see what we can find out.'
As we went out to the car park, another car drove away. In it was the man I had noticed in the dining-room and suddenly it came to me who it was. Stanford Lloyd or someone just like him. I wondered what he could be doing down here. Could he be coming to see us? If so, it was odd he hadn't let us know. In the car with him was a woman who had looked like Claudia Hardcastle, but surely she was in London with Greta, shopping. It all floored me rather…
As we drove away Phillpot looked at me once or twice. I caught his eye once and said rather bitterly,
'All right. You said I was fey this morning.'
'Well, don't think of that yet. She may have had a fall and sprained an ankle or something like that. She's a good horsewoman, though,' he said. 'I've seen her. I can't feel an accident is really likely.'
I said 'Accidents can happen at any time.'
We drove fast and came at last to the road over the downs above our property, looking about us as we went. Now and again we stopped to ask people. We stopped a man who was digging peat and there we got the first news.
'Seen a riderless horse I have,' he said. 'Two hours ago maybe or longer. I would-a caught it but it galloped off when I got near it. Didn't see anyone though.'
'Best drive home,' suggested Phillpot, 'there may be news of her there.'
We drove home but there was no news. We got hold of the groom and sent him off to ride over the moorland in search of Ellie. Phillpot telephoned his own house and sent a man from there too. He and I went up a path together and through the wood, the one that Ellie often took, and came out on the downs there.
At first there was nothing to be seen. Then we walked along the edge of the wood near where some of the other paths came out and so – we found her. We saw what looked like a huddled heap of clothes. The horse had come back and was now standing cropping near that huddled heap. I began to run. Phillpot followed me faster than I'd have thought a man of his age could have kept up.
She was there – lying in a crumpled up heap, her little white face turned up to the sky. I said,
'I can't – I can't -' and turned my face away.
Phillpot went and knelt down by her. He got up almost at once.
'We'll get hold of a doctor,' he said. 'Shaw. He's the nearest. But – I don't think it's any use, Mike.'
'You mean – she's dead?'
'Yes,' he said, 'it's no good pretending anything else.'
'Oh God,' I said and turned away. 'I can't believe it. Not Ellie.'
'Here, have this,' said Phillpot.
He took a flask out of his pocket, unscrewed it and handed it to me. I took a good deep pull at it.
'Thanks,' I said.
The groom came along then and Phillpot sent him off to fetch Dr. Shaw.
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.
