The Stabbing in the Stables Read Online Free Page A

couldn’t identify him to the police.”
    â€œWell…”
    â€œIt’s not much of a theory,” said Jude.
    â€œIt’s the only one we’ve got,” Carole snapped.
    The arrival of their “to die for” steak-and-ale pies at that moment curtailed further discussion of the crime.

4
    T HE MURDER OF Walter Fleet was duly reported on national and local news, and made the front page of the Fethering Observer . But there was no announcement of an arrest, and, as ever, beyond bland statements at press conferences, the police gave away little of their thinking or their progress in the investigation. Which, to Carole and Jude, was extremely frustrating.
    The one new piece of information that did emerge in a television bulletin was the nature of the murder weapon, which had been discovered at the crime scene. Carole and Jude had not spotted it because it had been lying up against the corpse. The stabbing and slashing at Walter Fleet’s front had, it was announced, been done with a bot knife. Helpfully, for people with little equestrian knowledge—like Carole and Jude—the inspector holding the press conference showed a photograph and explained what a bot knife was.
    Amongst the many medical complaints suffered by horses is infestation by botflies, a condition sometimes known as the “bots”—or even “botts.” A bot knife is used to scrape the eggs of the parasite out of a horse’s hair. In the illustration shown on the television, viewers saw a black-handled knife with a curved serrated end, which looked more suited for slicing grapefruit than committing murder.
    But clearly it was an object that could be found around any stable yard, which suggested to Carole and Jude that the stabbing of Walter Fleet was a spur-of-the-moment rather than a premeditated action. The unsuitability of the bot knife as a means of killing someone served only to support that theory.
    From Sonia Dalrymple Jude found out more about botflies and their treatment, data which she gleefully passed on to Carole. The adult botfly looks not unlike a bee, and favours laying its small yellowish eggs in the thick hair on a horse’s chest or behind its front legs. The presence of the eggs irritates the host, who tries to remove them by biting and licking the infested area, but these actions have the opposite effect of encouraging growth inside the eggs. They also give an opportunity for the tiny maggots to get transferred into the horse’s mouth and thence into its digestive tract. Here the maggots feed away, taking essential nutrients from the host and sometimes even creating a total blockage that can cause the animal to starve. When they are full grown, the maggots are excreted in the horse’s faeces, and in the comfort of the warm dung hatch out into adult botflies. And so the cycle continues.
    Carole found all this was rather more information than she required.
    But she was very keen on the idea of Jude staying in touch with Sonia Dalrymple. The owner of Chieftain was their one legitimate link to Long Bamber Stables and, on the assumption that the police didn’t instantly solve the case and make an arrest, she could be of great value to the two inquisitive women.
    The stables did constitute a rather unusual crime scene. In most cases, after a murder the police seal off the relevant area, move all the people out and strictly control who is allowed back in. Horses present a different problem. There is a limit to the time they can be kept locked up in their stalls, but nothing is likelier to destroy a crime scene than having a large number of horses trampling over it. As a result, the police had to work fast on their forensic investigations.
    Then, before the normal business of the stables could continue, owners were encouraged, if possible, to find alternative short-term accommodation for their horses. In Sonia Dalrymple’s case, this was not a problem. Her substantial home,