by Dick Francis
The recorder played twenty seconds of silence after each take, and began again at the next sound. The next piece was very short.
‘Yola?’ A man’s voice, very loud. ‘Yola! Where the hell is everybody?’ A door slammed. Silence.
‘That’s Matt Clive,’ I told Walt. ‘He came back before breakfast.’
The voices began again. Yola speaking, coming indoors. ‘… say the tracks go straight up the hill, but he turned back at the high patch of scree and came down again.’
That was a bit of luck.
‘They’ll just have to go on looking,’ Matt said. ‘Yola, for God’s sake, we can’t lose that horse.’ His voice was strained and furious. ‘I’ll go over to the house and see if any of those kids had a hand in it.’
‘I don’t think so. Not a darned one of them looks nervous.’
‘I’ll try, anyway.’ His footsteps receded.
Yola picked up the telephone and made a call.
‘That you, Jim? Have you seen any horse vans coming through Pikelet since last night?…
‘Well no, I just wondered if you’d seen one. Not this morning, early?…
‘No, it was just a chance. Sure. Yeah. Thanks anyway.’ She put down the receiver with a crash.
Walt raised his eyebrows. ‘Pikelet?’
‘Couple of shops and a filling station where the Clives’ own road joins the main road to Jackson.’
‘Just as well we didn’t …’ he began, and then changed it to, ‘Is that why you insisted on the long way round?’
‘Partly,’ I agreed. ‘I wanted it to look as if Chrysalis had gone off by himself. I wanted to avoid them realizing he’d been deliberately stolen. Keep them guessing a bit, give us time to get well clear.’
The tape began again. Matt came back running.
‘Yola. That man. That damned man.’
‘What man?’ She was bewildered.
‘The man that pulled Teller out of the river. How long has he been here?’
Yola said almost in a whisper, ‘Here?’
Matt was shouting. ‘Here. Having breakfast. Staying here, you stupid bitch.’
‘I don’t … I don’t …’
‘I saw him at Reading too,’ Matt said. ‘He called to see Teller in the hospital. They let him in past all the watchdogs. I saw him looking out of the window. How the hell did he get here? Why in God’s name didn’t you spot him, you stupid, stupid … He’s the one that’s taken the horse. And I’ll damn well make him bring it back.’
‘How?’ Yola said, wailing.
‘Excuse me,’ said the voice of the girl who waited at table. ‘Excuse me, Miss Clive. Mr Hochner wants his bill.’
‘There on the desk,’ Yola said.
‘Which is Hochner?’ Matt, urgent.
‘The German in cabin three.’
‘Where was he sitting at breakfast? What does he look like?’
‘He had his back to the door from the hall,’ the girl said. ‘He’s wearing a blue-and-white check shirt, and he’s quite tall and has dark brown hair and a tired sort of face.’
‘Give him the bill then,’ Matt said, and waited until she had gone. ‘Hochner!’ The voice was almost incoherent with rage. ‘How long has he been here?’
‘Since … Tuesday.’ Yola’s voice was faint.
‘Get your rifle,’ Matt said. ‘If he won’t give us that horse back … I’ll kill him.’
There were small moving about sounds, and the tape went quiet. The time they had spent in my cabin telescoped into twenty seconds of silence; and the recording began again.
‘He was right, Matt,’ Yola said. ‘We should have let him go.’ Her voice had gone quiet with despair, but Matt’s still rode on anger.
‘He had his chance. He should have told us what he’d done with Chrysalis.’
After a pause Yola said, ‘He wasn’t going to do that. He said so. Whatever you do, he said, you won’t recover the horse.’
‘Shut up,’ Matt said violently.
‘Matt.’ A wail in her voice. ‘He was right. We won’t recover the horse and his friends will come looking for him, like he said.’
‘They’ll only find an accident.’
‘But they won’t believe it.’
‘They won’t be able to prove any different,’ Matt insisted.
After another pause Yola said almost without emotion, ‘If he got the horse clean away … if someone else has him now, and he’s on his way back to Teller … they’ll know we had Chrysalis here. We’ll be arrested for that.’
‘Hochner wasn’t going to say he’d stolen the horse from here.’
‘But you wouldn’t listen.’ Yola suddenly flared into anger of her own. ‘He was right all the time. We should have let him go. We’d have lost Chrysalis … but this way we’re in terrible trouble, they’ll never believe he died by accident, we’ll have the whole FBI here and we’ll end up … we’ll end up in …’
‘Shut up,’ Matt said. ‘Shut up.’
‘He might not be dead yet … can’t we go and stop it?’ Her voice was urgent, beseeching.
‘And have him accuse us of attempted murder? Don’t be such a fool. No one can prove it isn’t an accident, can they? Can they?’
‘I suppose not …’
‘So you leave him, Yola. You just leave him. He had his chance. I gave him his chance … You just wait for some of the guests to see the smoke and come and tell you, like we said. Don’t you try going up there. Just don’t try it.’
‘No …’
‘And I’m going back on the mountain with the wranglers. Chrysalis went across the bridge. His tracks are there. Well … I’m going tracking. Mr Clever Hochner might be bluffing all along the line. He might have Chrysalis tied to some tree up there, and he might not have told anyone where he is, and no one will come asking.’ He convinced himself that this view of things was reasonable, and in the end Yola halfway agreed.
‘We’ll have to tell Uncle Bark,’ she said finally.
There was a blank pause while they considered this.
‘He’ll blow his top,’ Matt said gloomily. ‘After all that planning.’
‘He’ll have to know,’ Yola said.
‘I’ll call him this evening, if we have to. But we might have found Chrysalis by then.’
‘I sure hope so …’
Matt went away then on his search, and presently, after Yola had left to go back to the ranch house, there was continued silence on the tape.
Walt switched the recorder off and looked across at me with a complete absence of expression.
‘What did they do?’
I told him.
‘Would it have passed as an accident?’
‘I expect so. Neat little picture: man lighting cigarette, throws match absentmindedly in tub of pep instead of waste basket, panics, spills the stuff, steps wildly back from flames, trips over stove and knocks himself out. Bingo.’
‘Do you smoke, though?’
‘Sometimes. They used my own pack from the bedside table. And my own matches. It was impulsive, unpremeditated. They just looked round and used what came to hand. They’re quite good at it.’
‘Lucky you woke up in time,’ Walt said.
‘I suppose so.’ I shut my eyes and wondered how he would react if I asked him to go out for some codeine.
‘I’ve worked with one or two people like you before,’ he said. ‘And I can’t say I like it.’
‘Thanks,’ I said sardonically. No pills.
‘With your kind,’ he said, ‘dying comes easy. It’s living takes the guts.’
I opened my eyes. He was watching me steadily, his sober face removing any possibility that he was intending to be funny.
‘How are you on guts?’ he asked.
‘Fresh out.’
He sighed deeply. ‘That figures.’
‘Walt …’ I began.
‘It struck me first last night, on the mountain. You were sure anxious about Chrysalis, but you didn’t give a goddam about fallin
g off the top yourself. It made me freeze just to watch you leading him along that ledge … and you came back as calm as if it had been your own yard.’
He was apologizing, in his indirect way, for his startling appearance on the path.
‘Walt,’ I said, half smiling. ‘Will you go get me something for a headache?’
Chapter Eleven
Eunice, Lynnie, Sam Kitchens, and stud groom Chub Lodovski leaned in a row on the rail of the stallions’ paddock at Midway and watched Chrysalis eat Kentucky grass with opinions varying from Lodovski’s enthusiasm to Eunice’s resignation.
The half-a-million pounds’ worth looked none the worse for his trip up the Tetons. Better than on the ranch, as Sam Kitchens had removed all the Wyoming dust from his coat on the journey back, and the bay hide shone with glittering good health in the sunshine. There wasn’t, Lodovski assured me, the slightest chance of his going missing again.
Batteries of photographers and pressmen had come and gone: the stallion had been ‘found’ straying on the land of a friend of Dave Teller’s about thirty miles from where he had disappeared. All the excitement was over.
I walked back to Dave’s house with Eunice and Lynnie, and Eunice poured me a drink which was four-fifths whisky and one-fifth ice.
‘Who put you through what meat grinder?’ she said. ‘You look like a honeymoon couple on the tenth night.’
Sam Hengelman had driven into Midway with Chrysalis at lunchtime (Tuesday). I had flown to New York with Walt the day before, and had just backtracked to Lexington, in time to catch the tail end of Eunice interviewing the press. Several of that hard bitten fraternity had tottered out past me with pole-axed expressions and Lynnie had been halfway through a fit of giggles.
I made inroads into the hefty drink.
‘I could do with a good long sleep,’ I admitted. ‘If you could give me a bed? Or there’s the motel …’
‘Stay here,’ Eunice said abruptly. ‘Of course you’re staying here.’
I looked from her to Lynnie. I couldn’t stay in the house with one alone: perfectly proper with both. Silly.
‘Thanks, then. And I must call Dave, in England.’
Dave, still in hospital, sounded incredulous.
‘I heard it on a news flash, not half an hour ago,’ he said. ‘Chrysalis just plain turned up.’
‘He sure did,’ I said dryly.
‘Where had he been?’
‘It’s a long story,’ I said, ‘and wires have ears. But the expenses stand right now at somewhere near six thousand three hundred dollars. Is that enough for you, or do you want to go on for some answers?’
‘To what questions, fella?’ He sounded uncertain.
‘To why Chrysalis was hi-jacked, and why you fell in the river. And another thing: do you want Allyx back?’
‘For God’s sake … do you know where he is?’
‘No. But maybe I could find him. However, if I do, and we get as positive an identification as on Chrysalis, the insurance money on Allyx will have to be repaid to Buttress Life. That will be the equivalent of buying him all over again. He’s three years older now, and you’ll have lost three crops of foals. He may not be a good proposition for you or your syndicate any more. In which case you might prefer not to have him found. It’s up to you.’
‘Jeez,’ he said.
‘Will you think it over, and call back?’ I suggested. ‘Your wife and Lynnie are filling me up with food and drinks, and I guess I’ll be staying here tonight. But if you want me to go on, will you clear it with Keeble? I’m due back at my desk at nine AM next Monday morning, and I might not make it.’
‘Sure,’ he said, somewhat weakly, and I handed the receiver to Eunice.
‘How’s it going, honey?’ she said, and I took a good swallow, put my head back on the chair, and listened to her long-married-wifely conversation with my eyes shut.
‘Don’t ask me how he did it, Dave, I don’t know. All I know is he rang from New York yesterday afternoon and asked me for the name of any close friend of ours who was influential and respected, preferably high up in horsebreeding circles, and whose word would be taken as gospel by the press. So, after a rake around I said I guessed Jeff Roots fitted the bill; and lo and behold Chrysalis turned up on Jeff’s land this morning … Yeah, the horse is as good as new; wherever he’s been they’ve treated him right … Look, Dave, surely enough’s enough? I heard what Gene said about finding Allyx. Well, don’t do it. We need Allyx like a dose of clap. And your boy here is no goddam Hercules, a puff of wind would knock him off, the way he’s come back … Lynnie’s fine, sure. We’re taking a trip tomorrow out to California. I’ll measure up the curtains for the new place, things like that, and Lynnie can have some days on the beach and maybe try some surfing with those de Vesey boys. So look, why don’t we take Gene with us, huh?… Sure, I’ve made reservations at The Vacationer in Santa Barbara … they’re bound to have another room …’
I listened to her plans with disappointment. If I wanted to laze anywhere, it was right where I was, on the Midway Farm. By the peaceful pool in the quiet green garden, sleeping, drinking, and looking at Lynnie.
Eunice put down the receiver, and we had dinner, and late in the evening Dave rang through again.
‘Gene?’ he said. ‘Now listen, fella. Apart from curiosity, is there any good reason for finding those answers you talked about?’
‘Forestalling repetition,’ I said promptly.
‘No more stolen stallions and no more attacks on me?’
‘That’s right.’
There was a pause.
‘I’ll buy the answers, then,’ he said. ‘If you can get them. And as for Allyx … if you think there’s any chance of finding him alive and vigorous, then I guess I’m morally obliged to give you the go-ahead. I’d have to syndicate him all over again, of course. He’ll be twelve now. That would give him only about six to eight more years of high potency … But his get from before his disappearance are winning all over Europe. Business-wise I’m not too happy about those three lost years. But blood-wise, it would be criminal not to try to get him back.’
All right,’ I said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
‘What you spent on finding Chrysalis is less than his fee for covering a single mare. You’ve a free hand again for Allyx.’
‘Right,’ I said.
‘Sim Keeble says you’ve got seven days’ extension of leave. Something about it being due to you anyway, from a week you were entitled to at Christmas and didn’t take.’
‘I’d forgotten about that.’
‘I guess I could fix it with him for more, if the extra week isn’t enough.’
‘If I haven’t finished by then I’ll have failed anyway, and might as well go home.’
‘Oh.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘Very well, we’ll leave it like that for the present.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Eunice didn’t seem to think you looked too well.’
‘The boy on the punt who knocked you out did the same thing for me.’
‘Gene!’ His voice was shocked.
‘Yeah. Don’t tell my boss I’m that incompetent. Though come to think of it, he knows.’
He laughed. ‘When you find that boy again give him a one-two from both of us.’
‘Sure,’ I said. But I’d been taught my job by cerebral people who didn’t reckon a screener would ever have to fight for his life, and by the time I proved them wrong I was too old to become expert at boxing or judo, even if I’d liked the idea, which I didn’t. I had learnt instead to shoot straight, and the Luger had in the past three years extricated me unharmed from two sticky situations. But in a stand up hand-to-hand affair with that young bull Matt Clive I would be a five hundred to one loser, and ‘giving him a one-two from both of us’ in any physical sense was a very dim possibility indeed.
‘Keep in touch, fella,’ Dave said.
‘Sure,’ I answered again, meaning it as little: and we rang off.
Curled opposite in a tomato armchair, Euni
ce said gloomily, ‘I gather we’re stuck with that bloody Allyx.’
‘Only if we find him.’
‘Oh, you’ll do that, blast you.’ Her bitterness was so marked that Lynnie stared at her. Too young to understand, I thought, that it wasn’t me particularly that Eunice wanted to hurt, but life in general.
They went upstairs shortly afterwards murmuring about California in the morning, and I switched off the light and sat in near darkness, finishing the fourth of Eunice’s massive ideas on drink and working out the questions I would ask the next day. I could find Allyx on paper, if I were lucky: but he could hardly turn up loose after three years. Three weeks had been strictly the limit. The whole thing might have to be more orthodox, more public. And I wouldn’t again, I decided mildly, put myself within accident reach of the murderous Clives.
After a while I deserted the last half of the drink and wandered upstairs to the spacious air-conditioned room Eunice had given me. With a tired hand I switched on the light inside the door, and yellow pools in frilly shades shone out on brown and gold and white furnishings.
One splash of jarring bright pink. Eunice herself, in a fluffy trimmed wrapper, was lying on my bed.
I walked slowly across the thick white carpet and sat beside her on the white spotted muslin coverlet.
‘What do you want?’ I said gently.
‘What do you think?’
I shook my head.
‘Does that mean no?’ Her voice was abruptly matter of fact.
‘I’m afraid it does,’ I said.
‘You said you weren’t queer.’
‘Well … I’m not.’ I smiled at her. ‘But I do have one unbreakable rule.’
‘And that is?’
‘Not to sleep with the wives … or daughters … of the men I work for.’
She sat bolt upright so that her face was close to mine. Her eyes had the usual contracted pupils of the quarter drunk.
‘That includes Lynnie,’ she said.
‘Yes. It does.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned. You mean that night you spent in New York with her you didn’t even try …’
‘It wouldn’t have been much good if I had,’ I said, half laughing.
‘Don’t you believe it. She never takes her eyes off you, and when you were away she talked about nothing else.’