The Lord God Made Them All Read online

  “She is that,” Jack said. “I’m glad we persevered with ’er.” (It was nice of him to say “we.”) “Ah’ve had ’er served, and she should be calvin’ just right for Darrowby show.”

  “Well, that will be interesting. She’s certainly a show animal.”

  And there was no doubt that Bramble had developed into a classical Dairy Shorthorn with all the delicacy and grace of that now-lost breed—the beautifully straight back, the neat tail-head and the makings of a fine udder. She was a picture.

  She was even more of a picture a few months later as she stood in the centre of the show ring with the August sun glinting on her rich, dark coat. She had recently produced a calf, and her udder, tight and flat-based, with a small teat thrusting proudly from each corner, bulged between the back limbs.

  She would take some beating, and it was a pleasant thought that the seemingly doomed little creature of two and a half years ago might be just about to win a championship trophy.

  However, Bramble was in pretty hot company. The judge, Brigadier Rowan, had narrowed the field down to three after much cogitation, and the other two contestants, a red-and-white and a light roan, were beautiful animals. It would be a close thing.

  Brigadier Rowan himself was a splendid sight. He was a distinguished soldier, a gentleman farmer and an unrivalled judge of dairy cattle in the district.

  His dress and general bearing were fully in keeping with his position. That tall, lean figure would have been aristocratic and impressive enough without the beautifully cut check suit, yellow waistcoat, cravat and bowler hat. The fact that he was one of the few people I have ever seen wearing a monocle added the final touch.

  The brigadier strolled up and down the little row of cattle, shoulders high, hands clasped behind his back, occasionally screwing the glass tighter into his eye as he bent to inspect a particular point. Clearly, he was having difficulty in deciding.

  His normally pink face was bright red, not, I felt, from the sunshine, but from the long succession of brandies and sodas I had seen him consuming in the president’s tent. He pursed his lips and approached Bramble, who stood patiently at the end of the row nearest to me with her head held by Jack Scott on a halter.

  The brigadier leaned forward and peered into the animal’s face as though to examine the eyes. Something happened then. I was standing behind Bramble and could not see her face, but my suspicion is that she gave the little twitch which had startled me. In any case, something undoubtedly pierced the brigadier’s patrician calm. His eyebrows shot up and the monocle dropped to the end of its cord, where it dangled for a few seconds before he retrieved it, gave it a thorough polish and returned it to his eye.

  He again studied Bramble fixedly for quite a long time, and even after he had moved away, he glanced back at her once or twice. I could read his mind. Had he really seen that, or was it the brandy?

  As he came slowly back down the row, he had the look of a man who was definitely going to make up his mind this time, even though he was confronted by three superb animals. He finished up in front of Bramble, and as he gave her a final appraising stare, he flinched suddenly, and I had a strong conviction that she had done her trick again.

  The brigadier kept a grip on himself this time, but though the monocle remained in position, the man was obviously shaken. It seemed, however, to remove all doubts from his mind. He immediately placed Bramble first, the red-and-white second and the light roan third.

  The brigadier, having made his decision, strode straight as a cadet, albeit a red-faced one, to the edge of the ring where he was greeted by a beaming Jack.

  “A bonny lass, ’ant she, Brigadier? Almost human, ye might say.

  “Quite,” said the brigadier, adjusting his monocle. “Actually, she reminded me of someone I used to know … briefly.”

  Chapter

  28

  “DISASTER! DISASTER! DISASTER!”

  The voice at the other end was so shrill and panic-stricken that I almost dropped the telephone. “Who … who is that?” “It’s Mrs. Derrick! Oh, such a disaster!” “Yes, Mrs. Derrick, what on earth has happened?” “It’s my goat, Mr. Harriot! It’s really terrible!” The Derricks were a young couple who had recently come to live in one of the villages near Darrowby. They were in their early thirties, and Ronald Derrick was a businessman who commuted daily to Brawton. His wife was extremely attractive and a pleasant young woman in every way, but she was slightly scatterbrained, and I had felt misgivings in the first place when she told me she had bought a goat. I gripped the receiver tightly. “Has the goat had an accident?” “No, no, it’s not the goat I’m worried about. It’s the tomatoes!”

  “Tomatoes?”

  “Yes, the wretched thing has eaten all my husband’s tomatoes. I left the greenhouse door open by mistake.”

  A chill swept through me. Ronald Derrick loved his tomatoes dearly and since I, too, found them fascinating things, I had been very interested when he had shown me his plants.

  Like many people coming to live in a country district, he and his wife had been seized with a passion for the country things, like growing all sorts of vegetables in the big garden behind the house and keeping livestock. They had a few hens, ponies for their children and, of course, the goat. But with Ronald, the tomatoes were his great joy.

  There was a little greenhouse in the garden, and on my last visit there he had shown me the twelve plants with justifiable pride. It was early July, and the young fruits were still green and small but obviously thriving.

  “Magnificent trusses,” I remembered saying. “You are going to have a wonderful crop.” I could recall the smile of gratification on his face as his wife continued on the phone.

  “He counts them every morning, Mr. Herriot. In fact, before he left for the office today, he told me there were two hundred and ninety-three. Do please come. I’m afraid that when he gets home he’ll kill the goat and me!” There was a pause. “I think I can see him through the window. Oh, yes, my God, here he is now!”

  There was a thud in my ear as she crashed the receiver down, and I found I was shaking slightly. What was I supposed to do? Act as peacemaker? Prevent a murder? Anyway, Ronald Derrick was a gentle, good-humoured man who would certainly not resort to violence. But, by heck, he was going to be annoyed—and maybe the goat would be ill after that feast. I dashed out to the car.

  I was at the scene of the catastrophe within ten minutes. The Derricks’ home was a gracious old manor house with an open drive at one side leading to the garden. I roared down there, leaped from my car and the whole sad spectacle lay before me.

  Mrs. Derrick, still very attractive despite the tears which trickled down her cheeks, was standing on a strip of lawn, twisting a sodden handkerchief in her fingers.

  “Darling,” she was saying, “I just went in for a moment to get the watering can. I can’t think why I forgot to close the door.”

  Her husband did not answer, and I could see that his was a bereavement too deep for words. He was leaning against the open doorway, gazing into the greenhouse. He was quite motionless, and plainly he had not moved since his arrival because he was like a business executive who had been frozen to the spot: dark-suited, bowler-hatted, briefcase dangling from one hand.

  I stepped forward and looked over his shoulder, and the sight was even more bizarre than I had expected. The tastes and eating habits of goats are often unfathomable, but this one had, for some reason, consumed all the tomatoes and leaves and left the slender green stalks, naked and pathetic, still neatly tied to the canes that led up to the glass roof.

  As a fellow tomato lover, I felt for him deeply, but there was nothing I could do. I patted him on the shoulder and murmured a few words of sympathy, but still he continued to stare at the row of stalks.

  I could see the goat on its tether at the other end of the garden. That was another point—how had it got free to wreak this devastation? But I wasn’t going to add more tension to the situation by bringing that up.

&nbs