Free Mrs. Malory and A Time To Die by HAZEL HOLT

“I mean, I had to see if there was anything I could do for Jo. The police had gone when I got there, but there was still all that tape stuff they put round things. I was going up to the house—well, I thought Jo would be resting, I mean, after a shock like that, but, do you know, she was there in the stables seeing to the horses!”
    “Well,” I said, “when there are animals . . .”
    “But she’s got those two girls for all that sort of thing.”
    “She probably wanted to keep busy,” Rosemary said, “to keep her mind off things.”
    “I don’t see how mucking out stables would take your mind off a dreadful thing like that! No, I said to her, ‘You should be lying down. You go up to the house and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.’ But she said Peggy had just made some and would I like a cup. Just as though nothing had happened.” She pushed her plate to one side and drank a little of her coffee. “No, what it is, she’s in denial—that’s what they call it now, isn’t it? She can’t bring herself to face up to it. Well, it’s not surprising—Charlie was her life, really; she gave up her career for him, after all. If she’d gone on in the theater she’d have been a dame by now.” She paused for a moment to allow us to take in the magnificent implications of this fact. “Still, I suppose they were happy, or as happy as anyone is nowadays.”
    “Oh yes,” I said, “they were very happy.”
    Esther spooned some sugar into her cup and stirred it vigorously. “This coffee’s very strong. No, what I mean to say is that she only took up all this horse business because of Charlie and now she can give it up. After all, she’s seventy-four—quite a bit older than me, and, goodness knows, I get tired sometimes. All this hard work, looking after all those horses, is heavy work and too much for someone that age.”
    “She couldn’t bear to give up,” Rosemary said. “The stables are her life, just like Charlie was; they’ll mean everything to her now that he’s gone.”
    “That’s all very well, but she’ll have to give up sometime. From what I hear, those stables are practically running at a loss.”
    “That’s as may be,” Rosemary persisted, “but she’ll carry on to the bitter end if need be.”
    “Anyway,” I said, “there’s every chance she can turn things round. She’s got a lot of new people coming for lessons and livery.”
    “Yes, but now Charlie’s gone,” Esther said, “she’ll have to get someone to replace him, and that will cost money.”
    “You couldn’t replace Charlie,” I said sadly. “But I’m sure she’ll manage. Liz and Peggy are splendid girls and she has a lot of voluntary help from all those horse-mad youngsters, and, of course, Simon is a great help.”
    “Oh, Simon—he’s always up there. It’s that or work,” Esther said. “I often say to him he ought to be getting out more, but, of course he never listens to me. Boys are so difficult. Not that Vicky is much better. Thinks of nothing but work. She’s in America now. Simon rang her to tell her about Charlie, but she can’t get back for the funeral. You’d have thought a family crisis like that would come first, but she said she’s on a deadline, whatever that may mean.”
    “If she’s in America,” Rosemary said, “she might not be able to get a flight anyway. Of course, we don’t know when the funeral’s going to be, and the postmortem will hold things up.”
    “It’s perfectly awful,” Esther said, “all this business with the police and everything. It’s bad enough for poor Jo without all this.”
    “And she’s perfectly right,” Rosemary said when Esther had gone. “It must make things ten times worse—churning up her feelings with every question, not being able to lay him to rest properly.”
    “I know. And if they do manage to catch the person who did this horrible thing, there’ll be the trial and the whole business brought up all over again.”
    I collected