by Dick Francis
The policeman consulted his list.
“Mrs. Floyd?”
“Yes,” Yvonne said, uncrossing the spectacular legs and crossing them the other way. “Like I told you, I went home at seven.”
“And home is?”
“Painswick Road. About a couple of miles from here. My husband was away on business but the kids were in.”
“Er ... how old are your children?”
“They’re not mine. They’re my husband’s. Fifteen and sixteen. Boys. They listen to pop music and chew gum, hey man.” Her impersonation in the last few words brought the first cracking smiles of the morning.
“And could they vouch for you, madam?”
“Vouch for me?” She gave him a comical grin. “They were doing their homework. How anyone can do homework with a million decibels battering their eardrums beats me, but they get fidgety in silence. They have a room each. Just as well. I always go up and tell them when I get in. They give me a wave. We get on pretty well.”
“So you went downstairs, madam, I’m guessing, and cooked some food and spent the evening more or less alone?”
“I suppose so. Read the day’s letters and a magazine. Watched the news. Then Oliver phoned and said this place was on fire, so I hopped upstairs and told the boys why I’d be going out. They’d got their videos going by then but of course they wanted to come too but I wouldn’t let them, it was already late and they had tests the next day. I told them to go to sleep. My name was shit.”
The policeman didn’t bother to smother his smile and made the briefest of notes.
“Oliver Quincy, large animals?” he asked next.
“That’s me,” Oliver said.
Oliver got the same contemplative inspection as Lucy.
“Sir, your evening?”
“Oh, well, I was bloody tired. We’d had that damned horse die and we’d had all sorts of postmortems, the real thing and endless checks of the equipment and we couldn’t come up with anything wrong. But I was knackered by the end, we all were. I was supposed to be going to the rugby club annual dinner but I couldn’t face the monkey suit and the speeches and the din, so I drove out to a pub and had a couple of pints and some bar food.”
“Did you pay with a credit card, sir?”
“No. Cash.”
“Are you married, sir?”
“My wife goes where she likes and so do I.”
There was something in his voice that belied the comfort-giving exterior, that belonged more to the ruthlessness with which he angled to supplant Carey.
“How did you hear the building was on fire, sir?”
“I phoned him,” Carey said. “He was a long time answering but he was the first I’d tried to reach. I think of Oliver as my second-in-command. It was natural to get to him first and ask him to phone everyone else.”
None of them met any eyes. A real case of et tu Brute in the making. Poor old Carey.
“The phone was ringing when I got home,” Oliver confirmed, still not looking at his Caesar. “I phoned Yvonne, Lucy and Jay and told them, but got no answer from the others.”
“I was in the pub,” Scott said.
The policeman nodded, looking at his list.
“Mr. McClure?” he asked.
“I took my fiancée, Belinda here, and her parents, out to dinner. Peter was with us too.”
The policeman again reviewed his list.
“Belinda Larch, qualified veterinary nurse? Peter Darwin, general assistant?”
We both silently nodded.
“And you three were together all evening, with Miss Larch’s parents? In a restaurant?”
“Right,” Ken said. “We were just about to leave when Lucy phoned me there.”
Lucy nodded. “When we all got here I realized Ken was missing. I remembered he was on call, so I phoned his portable phone from the hospital office. Does all this matter?”
“Some things matter, some don’t,” said our philosopher policeman. “We can’t tell yet.” He consulted the list. “Mr. Jay Jardine?”
Jay alone resented the questions. “I told you.”
“Yes, sir. Could you go on from after the sick cow?”
With unsuppressed irritation, in snapping tight-mouthed syllables, Jay said he’d gone home and had a row with his live-in girlfriend. She’d stormed out to cry on her best friend’s shoulder. So what?
So nothing, it seemed. His answer got written down without comment and it appeared the present session of questions had come to an end. The constable conveniently returned at that moment with Carey’s keys, speaking quietly into his senior officer’s ear so that probably only Carey himself, who was nearest, could overhear.
The senior policeman nodded, turned and handed the bunch to its owner. Then, glancing round our expectant faces, he said matter-of-factly that the pharmacy key did fit the lock in question. As no one had expected it wouldn’t, the news fell short of uproar. Carey, looking worried, said he thought he’d checked the door was locked, but he’d had so much else on his mind that now he couldn’t swear . . .
“But I did lock it,” Yvonne said. “I’m sure I did. I always do.”
“Don’t worry too much about it, madam. It’s quite easy to get duplicate keys cut and, frankly, between you, you already have so many keys in use here that I doubt if any would-be intruder would have much difficulty in borrowing and reproducing the whole bunch.”
Into a moderately stunned silence he poured a little professional advice. “If you’re thinking of rebuilding, sir, I would definitely consider electric locks. No one can pop into the nearest hardware shop to copy that sort of key.”
He had to leave with his constable and Carey stood and went with them, leaving a roomful of thoughtfulness behind.
“I did lock it,” Yvonne repeated doubtfully. “I always do.”
“Of course you did,” Oliver said. “It’s typical of Carey not to know whether he checked it or not. That’s just what I mean. He’s past it. The sooner we tell him, the better.” He stood up, stretching. “There’s no point in waiting about here. I’m off to play golf. Who’s on call?”
“Carey is,” Lucy told him, “and Ken.”
Oliver said without humor, “Then let’s hope it is a quiet Sunday.”
He walked purposefully out of the Portakabin, followed immediately by his chief admirer, Jay. Everyone else stood and in varying degrees of unsettlement moved in their wake. Scott, his internal dynamos whizzing again after the short inactivity, announced he was spending the day by the lake stripping down the engines of his speedboat in preparation for the waterskiing season, and marched briskly out of the rear of the car park. We heard the roar of his engine starting, and presently saw his strong figure riding a motorbike past the entrance.
“Does he always ride a bike?” I asked.
“He hasn’t a car,” Ken said.
Lucy said tolerantly, “He pumps iron, he’s got pectorals you’d hardly believe, he’s as physical as they come.”
“He’s a good nurse,” Ken said to me. “You saw him.”
I nodded.
“Loyal to Carey, too,” Lucy went on approvingly. “I couldn’t live the way he does, but he seems happy enough.”
“How does he live?” I prompted.
Yvonne answered, “In a caravan park. He says he hates permanence. He’s kind though. We took our boys to his lake one day last summer and he spent hours teaching them to ski.”
Lucy nodded. “Such a mixture.”
“Unmarried?” I asked.
“A chauvinist,” Belinda stated, and the other two women nodded.
“We may as well all go home,” Yvonne said. “Oliver was right, we can’t do any more here.”
“I suppose not,” Lucy agreed reluctantly. “It’s all dreadfully upsetting.”
The two women walked together to the gate. Belinda urged Ken to come with her to Thetford Cottage because her mother was a disastrous cook and she, Belinda, had said she would do the Sunday lunch for everyone.
“You go on, darling,” Ken said, “I just want to go over a few things with Peter.”
She went with bad grace, disliking it, delivering a parting shot about us not being late. Ken waved to her lovingly and walked purposefully ahead of me into the office.
“Right,” he said, settling into the chair behind the desk and stretching for a note pad to write on. “No secrets, no reservations, and don’t use what I tell you against me.”
“Not a chance.”
He must have heard more commitment in my voice than he expected, because he looked briefly puzzled and said, “You’ve known me less than three days.”
“Mm,” I agreed, and thought about his father and my mother, and the promises I’d made her.
7
Chronologically,” Ken said, ”if we’re counting horses that’ve died when I wouldn’t expect them to, the first one was months ago, last year, September, maybe. Without my notes I can’t be certain.”
“What happened?” I said.
“I got called out to Eaglewood’s at six one morning. The head lad phoned me. Old man Eaglewood was away for the night and the head lad was in charge. Anyway, he said one of the horses was down and extremely ill, so I went over there and he was by no means exaggerating. It was a three-year-old colt that I’d been treating for a strained tendon, but otherwise he’d been perfectly healthy. But he was lying on his side in his box in a coma, with occasional tremors and twitches in his muscles, obviously dying. I asked the head lad how long he’d been like that but he didn’t know. He’d come in early to feed as usual, and found him in that state but with stronger spasms in the muscles.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he was too far gone to be helped. I just took some blood samples for analysis, and put him out of his misery.”
“And what was wrong with him?”
Ken shook his head. “Everything in his blood was just about within normal limits though the blood sugar was low, but . . .” He stopped.
“But what?”
“Well, there were other things. It had been a good colt before the tendon injury. A winner several times over. Even if the tendon had mended decently it would have been surprising if he’d been as good again. I asked the head lad if he’d been insured, because you can’t help wondering, but he didn’t know. I asked old man Eaglewood later, but he said it wasn’t my business. Then before he died, the colt’s heart rate was very high and there was swelling round his eyes.”
He paused. I said he would have to explain.
“He looked as if he’d been suffering for quite a while before I got there. I began to think about poisons, about what would cause spasms, high heart rate and coma. I thought a specialist lab’s blood analysis would tell us, but it cost a lot and showed nothing. But horses don’t die like that, I mean, not in the normal course of events. I talked it over with Carey several times and in the end he asked Eaglewood himself about the insurance, but it seemed the owner actually hadn’t insured the colt at all.”
“But you weren’t really satisfied?”
“Well, I mean, it was a mystery. I began thinking how the colt had behaved before the head lad found him, I mean, maybe for several hours alone in his box during the night. What he’d been like before he got to that final state. I wondered if he’d had seizures, perhaps like epileptic fits. The tremors at the end might have been just the last twitches of something absolutely terrible. I hate horses to suffer.... If that colt had suffered the way I was imagining, and if it was the result of poison, I thought I’d never stop before I got whoever had done it prosecuted.” He shrugged. “I never did get anyone prosecuted because there was no way of knowing who’d done it, but I woke up one morning with the answer in my head, and I’m certain that that colt was deliberately killed even if there wasn’t an obvious reason for it”
“So what killed him?” I asked, fascinated.
“Insulin,” he said, “though I can’t prove it.”
“Insulin?”
“Yes. Well horses don’t get diabetes, except so rarely it’s almost never. You wouldn’t give horses insulin for anything. If you gave a horse a big overdose his blood sugar would fall catastrophically and he would go into hypoglycemic shock, with convulsions and then coma, and death would be inevitable. It fitted the symptoms of the colt. I began looking for mentions of insulin in veterinary case reports, but there isn’t much anywhere about normal insulin levels in horses. As they don’t get diabetes, there isn’t the need for research. But I found enough to know better what to look for next time in the blood chemistry—if there is a next time. And I found that in America three or four racehorses had almost certainly been killed that way for the insurance. I showed Carey the case reports and we both told Oliver what I thought so that he would be on the lookout, but we haven’t come across it again.”
“It must have been for the insurance,” I said, pondering.
“But Mr. Eaglewood said it wasn’t insured.”
“Did he own the colt himself?”
“No. As a matter of fact, it belonged to the man who owns the mare. Wynn Lees.”
I drew in a breath sharply enough for him to wonder why, and he sought for and found an explanation.
“I suppose it is a coincidence,” he said. “But the mare didn’t die.”
“But for you, she would have.”
“Have you still got that bit of gut?” he asked.
“I transferred it into the freezer,” I said.
“Oh.” He nodded. “Good.”
“How much do you know about Wynn Lees?” I asked.
“Nothing much. I’d never met him before Friday morning. Why did you tell me not to trust him?”
I thought briefly about letting him know, but decided not to. Not yet. I might find a more oblique path. There were more ways of revealing truths than marching straight up to them, and if one could get a truth revealed without disclosing one’s own hand in it, it gave one an advantage next time around.
Ken waited for his answer.
“Instinct,” I said. “Natural antipathy. Hostile vibes. Call it what you like. He gave me the shivers.”
There was enough truth in all that to be convincing. Ken nodded and said the man had had much the same effect on himself.
After a moment I said, “Is your mother still alive?”
“Yes, she is. Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know ... I just wondered if she’d had a chance yet of enjoying Greg and Vicky being here. They’d have a lot to talk about, with the wedding just ahead. And I’d like to meet her, too.”
He looked at me in dawning dismay. “Why in hell haven’t I arranged it? I must be mad. But there’s been so much on my mind. How about today, for lunch?” He stretched a hand out to the phone. “I’ll ask the old lady at once.”
“Check with Belinda first, I should. Er ... to make sure there’s enough food.”
He gave me a sideways glance but saw the wisdom of asking Belinda first. It was actually Vicky who answered and who received the suggestion with enthusiasm, who said it was a lovely idea and that she would tell Belinda it was fixed. Ken disconnected with a smile and redialed, reaching his own parent and evoking a more moderate response. Ken was persuasive, his mother slowly let herself be persuaded. He would pick her up, he promised, and take her home afterwards, and she would be quite safe.
“My mother’s not like Vicky,” he said, putting down the receiver. “She likes things planned well in advance. I mean, at least days in advance, if not weeks. She thinks we’re hurrying the wedding, but the truth is she’s been against me marrying anyone.” He sighed. “She’ll never make friends with Belinda. She calls her Miss Larch half the time. Parents!”
“Do you remember your father?”
“Only vaguely. I was ten when he died so I ought to remember him clearly, but I don’t. I know him from his photographs. I know he played with me and was fun. I wish ...” he paused, “... but what’s the point of wishing
? I wish I knew why he died.”
I waited without movement, and he said, “He killed himself.” It was clearly still a painful thought. “The older I get the more I want to know why. I wish I could talk to him. Silly, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Anyway, it explains a lot about my mother.”
“I’ll remember,” I said. I looked down at his note pad on which he’d written the single word “insulin.” “How about if you let me write the notes while you talk?”
He pushed the pad and pen across gladly. I turned to a new page, and after a bit of thought he began again on the saga.
“The next one I can’t explain was soon after Christmas. That was the one I thought had been given atropine.”
“What sort of horse?” I asked, writing.
“Racehorse. A hurdler. Trained by Zoe Mackintosh out past Riddlescombe.”
“Zoe Mackintosh?”
“Quite a lot of women train,” Ken said reasonably.
Sure, I thought, but Mackintosh in my shadowy memory was a man.
“Is she a trainer’s daughter?” I asked.
Ken nodded. “Her father, old Mac, he’s still there, but his memory’s going. Zoe holds the license and does what she wants when he isn’t looking. He’s a cantankerous old man and he’s always breathing over her shoulder. She still employs Hewett and Partners because she’s known Carey all her life—he and Mac are great buddies—but she’s been huffy to me about the dead horses, and I can’t blame her.”
“More than one?”
“Two. And I’d swear they were both given atropine. After the second one, I tackled Zoe about it and she practically threw me over her left shoulder. Very muscular lady, our Zoe. But it does no good to have her going round implying I’m crazy as well as incompetent, which she does.”
I thought it over.
“Were both these horses owned by the same person?” I asked.
“No idea.”
“And were they insured?”
“I don’t think so. You’d have to ask Zoe or the owners, and frankly, I’m not going to.”