The Daffodil Affair Read Free

called a livery stables. Means just a business you hire from. But there’s the older meaning of a place you put your own horses to board. And somebody was doing that. Captain Somebody who has to do with tanks down there but likes to get on a horse from time to time. In a loose box next to Daffodil he had an animal that was worth hundreds of pounds. And this brute was stolen first .’
    Appleby looked up sharply. ‘You don’t mean that–?’
    ‘Yes. This whopping valuable brute was stolen in the night. In the morning there was a great rumpus, and nobody much bothered about Daffodil or the stable any more. Anything of the sort would have been like locking–’
    ‘Quite so, sir.’
    ‘And then in the course of the day up drove one of those motor things for horses, returned Captain Somebody’s brute, and carried off Daffodil instead – this without anybody being more than vaguely aware of what was happening. Apparently a mistake had been made the first time. Daffodil was the wanted horse.’
    ‘And Daffodil is really worth almost nothing?’
    ‘Apparently not – except to my sister’s sense of security round and about the streets of Harrogate. Not very old, apparently – but broken-kneed or winded or something.’
    Appleby shook his head. ‘I doubt whether Lady Caroline ought to have confidence in a horse that has been down.’
    ‘My dear man, she no doubt likes its face. Anyway, Daffodil was not a valuable horse.’
    ‘There could be no question of pedigree, stud purposes – that sort of thing?’
    ‘Good Heavens, man! Bodfish – I mean Daffodil – wasn’t – um – that sort of horse.’
    ‘I suppose not.’ Appleby got up. ‘It does seem a little queer. I’ll catch the first train on Friday.’ He paused by the Assistant-Commissioner’s door. ‘There’s nothing else you can tell me about Daffodil?’
    ‘As a matter of fact there is. It’s an odd thing to say about a horse. But it appears – this despite Caroline’s good opinion of the creature – well, that it was rather a half-witted sort of horse. What would you say was implied by that? Don’t know much about the animals myself.’
    Daffodil, the half-witted horse. Appleby wandered down the corridors of the Yard and seemed to see – for indeed he was tired – a host of these dubious creatures in his inward eye, tossing their heads in sprightly dance, curvetting and bowing to an equal number of Captain Somebody’s whopping valuable brutes. A policeman could not but be gay in such a jocund company…
    A half-witted horse.

 
     
2
    In vain the soft warm air washed over Superintendent Hudspith; he marched unmollified from one investigation to the next. It was June, and for another man Piccadilly Circus might have been filled with the ghosts of flowers: violets in little bunches wafting on bus tops to distant suburbs; roses to be carried off by sheaves in limousines; carnations that slip singly down St James’s, glow duskily from tail-coats in the bow window of White’s, adorn tweeds in the rustic Boodle’s, vie with the more appropriate orchid in the Travellers’ – haunt of those hardy souls who have journeyed out of the British Islands to a distance of at least 500 m from London in a direct line. But these wraiths were nothing to Hudspith’s purpose. Fleetingly he allowed himself a glance of suspicion down Jermyn Street, as fleetingly a nod of sanction at the Athenaeum – and stumped down the steps and across to the park. The park was like green stuff spilt on a counter, shot with the sheen of a long fragment of blue–grey silk. The waterfowl were there as usual; statesmen paused in perambulations to observe their habits with attention; shadowing detectives, distantly known to Hudspith, exercised their corresponding vigilance behind. Hudspith marched on. His visual field was all inward and shadowy – no more than a floating wreath of cheated girls. Sometimes they had been drugged, hypnotized; and sometimes they had been robbed