A Room Full of Bones: A Ruth Galloway Investigation

dripping milk onto the floor. It is rare for the horses to neigh at night. A neigh is often a warning, a signal to the rest of the herd. Perhaps he should check the CCTV cameras in Caroline’s cottage? No, it would be impossible for an intruder to get past the electric gates. Danforth pours the cocoa, blinking in the glare. Then he stops again. There shouldn’t be any glare, just the discreet spotlights above the range (Romilly is excellent at lighting). But the room is bathed in an unnatural white glow.
    The security lights are on.
    Danforth goes to the window. He can see through the arch and into the yard, see the horses heads silhouetted in the sudden brightness. Maybe a fox has got in. Only yesterday one of the lads had had some story about seeing a big cat ‘the size of a cheetah’ prowling on the edge of the wood. There are always stories about big cats, lions escaped from the nearby zoo, panthers living wild in suburban gardens. But a loose animal could disturb the horses. They need their sleep too.
    Barbours and boots are kept by the kitchen door. Danforth shrugs on a coat and treads into his gumboots. He walks quickly across the carport where his Range Rover is parked in solitary splendour. Romilly’s Fiat andRandolph’s Porsche are both missing. Romilly is probably watching a dreary film with subtitles and doubtless Randolph is out with some highly unsuitable girl, two-timing that nice Clary. Danforth walks quickly around the house. The stable cat, Lester, appears from the darkness and rubs himself round his legs. Was it Lester who sparked the rumour about the big cat?
    The yard is still lit up. Some horses are peering sleepily out of their stalls but most are hidden. The clock over the archway says twelve twenty-five. The grass is grey in the moonlight, the stable doors ghostly white. Lester runs happily along the plastic-coated hay bales, his tail in the air. There is nothing and nobody to be seen.
    Danforth Smith stomps back to the house. Maybe now he’ll be able to sleep. He’ll definitely have a brandy, perhaps a double. He stops by the back door to take off his boots. It is some minutes before he notices the dead snake on the doorstep.

CHAPTER 9
     
    Morning at Slaughter Hill, and the horses are thundering over the gallops. Caroline is clinging to the saddle of a grey gelding and hoping that he’ll stop when she asks him to; she had too much to drink last night and the horse knows it, even if her father doesn’t. Danforth Smith, also feeling slightly fragile after his broken night, is in the office sorting out the declarations. He has told no one about the snake. Lester the cat found the body on the manure pile and has taken it behind the barn to investigate. Head Lad Len Harris is getting the next lot of horses ready, giving a leg up to a young jockey and thinking sourly about the immigration laws. Romilly Smith is in the bathroom, getting ready for a hard day designing curtains. Randolph is still asleep.
    Len Harris looks in through the office door.
    ‘That new boy – Ali Baba or whatever his name is – thinks a lot of himself, doesn’t he?’
    Danforth sighs. He’s not exactly politically correct himself but Len’s casual racism depresses him.
    ‘His name’s Mikelis,’ he says. ‘He’s from Latvia and he’s an excellent jockey.’
    ‘If you say so,’ grunts Len. He’s been at Slaughter Hill for twenty years and Danforth couldn’t run the place without him. Doesn’t stop him wishing that he could sometimes.
    ‘I’ve got to be at the museum this morning,’ he says. ‘Can you manage here?’
    ‘Course I can, governor.’ Sometimes Len gives a good impersonation of a faithful old retainer. He almost tugs his forelock. It doesn’t fool Danforth for a minute, but he needs Len. Caroline is a good manager but she’s too soft with the horses, and with the owners. Randolph … but Danforth doesn’t even finish this sentence in his own head.
    ‘I’m meeting some archaeologist woman,’ he says, turning back to his paperwork. ‘Hope she’s not the squeamish type.’
    Ruth is not the squeamish type but she does hope, as she parks in front of the museum, that all traces of Neil Topham’s final agony have been cleared away. She has had roughly four hours’ sleep and doesn’t think she could cope with bloodstains or police tape. But as she approaches the entrance, the building has the smug, shuttered look of a place that has been empty for years. A sign on the door says