The Stabbing in the Stables Read Online Free

to reinforce the apology. Ted smiled back. For a second their eyes connected. Carole still found it strange to think there had once been—however briefly—a physical relationship between them.
    â€œBut maybe you know something,” Carole went on, “if Walter Fleet was a Crown and Anchor regular…?”
    â€œNo. He didn’t come here very often. Anyway, last thing men go to a pub for is to talk about their wives and marriages. They come here to get away from all that.”
    â€œYes. So all we do know about the Fleets,” said Jude, “is what I’ve heard from Sonia. Which doesn’t amount to very much. She implied that she didn’t particularly care for Lucinda Fleet. She also hinted that the marriage wasn’t a very happy one. That’s all we’ve got.”
    â€œBut we can find out more.” Carole’s pale blue eyes glowed with eagerness. “You’ll still be seeing Sonia, won’t you?”
    â€œOh, sure.” Jude looked at her friend with a half-teasing expression. “But why should we want to find out more?”
    â€œWell, it was a murder. We were on the scene. Natural curiosity dictates that we want to know who killed Walter Fleet.”
    â€œBut surely,” Jude said, maintaining her bantering tone “that’s up to the police to find out.”
    â€œYes,” Carole conceded, “but we’re bound to be interested, aren’t we?”
    â€œNo doubt about it.” Ted Crisp chuckled. “You two are bound to be interested. So tell me, Carole, who do you think did it?”
    â€œWe have no information. We can’t possibly answer questions like that at this point.”
    â€œAnd it is entirely possible,” Jude contributed innocently, “that the police will solve the crime—indeed, that they have already solved the crime. Most murders are pretty straightforward.”
    â€œI agree. Usually the police have to look no further than the person who claims to have discovered the body. Which in this case was you.”
    â€œYes, Carole.”
    â€œAlternatively, they look to the victim’s live-in partner, who is quite frequently standing there with the bloodstained murder weapon still in his or her hand.”
    â€œThough not in this case, Carole. Lucinda Fleet arrived after the murder had been committed.”
    â€œBut we don’t know where she’d come from, do we? She might have been present when the murder was committed—actually committed it—and then she might have run across the fields to where her Land Rover was parked and…”
    â€œPossible, I suppose. Mind you, the same could be true for Sonia Dalrymple.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean, Carole, that I don’t know where she’d been before she came to the stables. I assumed she’d been held up doing something for her kids, but now I think about it, they’re at boarding school. And she did seem to be pretty flustered, even before she saw the body.”
    â€œThen Sonia’s a potential murderer too.”
    Ted Crisp scratched his beard. “It must be difficult going through life, being as suspicious of everyone as you are, Carole.”
    â€œI can assure you,” she replied, “it’s quite easy.”
    He chuckled. “But to be honest, at the moment, you really know nothing, do you?”
    â€œNo,” Jude agreed.
    â€œThat doesn’t stop us having theories, though.”
    â€œAll right, Carole. So what is your current theory, given the virtually complete lack of information from which you are working?”
    â€œWell, Ted, we know Lucinda Fleet was worried that her stables had been visited by a horse mutilator.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSay that was true. A horse mutilator—this Horse Ripper—had got into the stables. He was about to do his dirty work when Walter Fleet surprised him. The Horse Ripper killed Walter so that he