The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

the provisions of the Act.’ He spoke as if from some depth of mournful experience. ‘I’d have been taken up. What else is the likes of you paid to go about after? Taking people up over the Act.’ Mr Gee’s beaming eye looked very shrewdly at Appleby. ‘Police everywhere,’ he said. ‘Gawd!’
    Appleby, feeling the shoe leather thicken under his feet and a shadowy metropolitan helmet hover on his brow, concluded that Mr Gee was a man to reckon with; he contrived to combine a mild mania with an accurate appraisal of men. ‘Well, Mr Gee, we’ll say you felt the thing to be irregular and would have nothing to do with it. And the result was that the horse disappeared. I don’t want to know how or when, for I’ve no doubt at all that has been gone over already. But I want you to tell me something about the horse itself.’
    ‘About Daffodil?’ Mr Gee’s cheerful face clouded, so that it was logical to suppose he was about to attempt a stroke of humour. ‘Well, I always suspected rareying with Daffodil – though, mind you, it may have been galvayning all the same.’ And Mr Gee stooped down and fondled the ear of the dish-faced dog.
    Appleby sat down placidly on a bench. ‘My dear sir, I quite realize that an erudite hippologist like yourself–’
    ‘’Ere,’ said Mr Gee, ‘civil is civil, I’ll have you know. And none of that language in my yard.’
    ‘Very well, I’ll say nothing at all.’ Appleby took out a pipe. ‘But I’m staying here until you give me a reasonable account of that horse.’
    Mr Gee looked deliberately about him, plainly searching for a particularly ponderous shaft of wit. ‘The trouble about Daffodil,’ he said at length, ‘was always in the carburettor. And for that matter I never cared for his overhead valves.’ And at this Mr Gee laughed so suddenly and loudly that the pily dog rose and took to its heels.
    ‘Come off it.’ Appleby filled his pipe. ‘A joke’s a joke, Mr Gee. But business is business, after all. And I may tell you I hate the stink of petrol. I mayn’t know about galvayning – but I’d take a cab every time, just the same.’
    The effect of this mendacious statement was immediate. Mr Gee sat down on the bench in a most companionable way. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said – and lowered his voice. ‘I never half liked that horse. There were old parties that liked him and would order him regular. They thought him almost ’uman. But if there’s one thing I like less than an almost ’uman dog it’s an almost ’uman horse.’
    ‘I see. By the way, how did Daffodil come to you in the first place?’
    ‘I had him of a man.’ Mr Gee spoke at once darkly and vaguely. ‘It would have been at Boroughbridge fair, I reckon.’
    ‘But you don’t know anything about his previous owner?’
    ‘I reckon I was told.’ Mr Gee was gloomily silent. ‘I suppose you come from London?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And I suppose you’ve heard of the Cities of the Plain? Well, add all the lies was ever told in London, mister, to all the hanky-panky Sodom and Gomorrah ever knew – and that’s a horse fair. So you may take it that anything I was told about Daffodil down Boroughbridge way isn’t what you’d call evidence. I’ve bought horses, man and boy, for forty years. And I shuts my ears and opens my eyes.’
    It was clear that on what the dusty man would call the provenance of Daffodil there was little to be discovered. Appleby tried another tack. ‘How was he almost human? Was he particularly intelligent?’
    Mr Gee shook his head emphatically. ‘Nowise. I don’t think I ever knew a horse more lacking in – well, in horse sense, if you follow me. And that’s what I said to the police when they first came after him. “The horse was half-witted,” I said, “and if he’s gone I’ll cut my losses.” And now I say it again. For who wants a half-witted, almost human horse?’
    Appleby looked in some perplexity at Daffodil’s late owner. Mr Gee seemed to be