by Dick Francis
He answered at once, “Ken McClure.”
“Where are you?” I asked. “It’s Peter.”
“On my way to a dicky tendon. What do you need?”
“I thought we might go and see the Mackintoshes ... or the Nagrebbs.”
He drew in an audible breath. “You do think of vicious ways of passing the afternoon. No thanks.”
“Where do I find them?” I asked.
“You don’t mean it?”
“Do you or don’t you want your reputation back?”
After a silence he gave me directions. “Zoe Mackintosh is a tigress and her old man’s in dreamland. I’ll meet you outside there in, say, fifteen minutes.”
“Fine.”
I drove through Riddlescombe and stopped on a hillside looking down on the Mackintoshes’ village. Slate roofs, yellow-gray Cotswold stone walls, winter trees not yet swollen in bud. Charcoal and cream sky, heaped and hurrying. Sleeping fields waiting for spring.
The sense of actual déjà vu was immensely strong. I’d come over these hills before and seen these roofs. I’d run down the road where I now sat in the car. Jimmy and I, laughing ourselves sick over an infantile joke, had chucked off our clothes and splashed naked in the stream going down to the valley. I couldn’t see the stream from where I sat but I knew it was there.
Near the appointed time for meeting Ken, I started the engine, released the brake and rolled down the hill. I still couldn’t see the stream. Must have muddled the places, I thought, but I’d been so certain. I shrugged it away. Memory was unreliable enough after a week: hopeless after twenty years.
Ken met me at the entrance to the drive to a long gray house with gables and ivy. I’d been there before. I knew the patterns on the folded-back wrought-iron entrance gates.
“Hi,” I said prosaically, getting out of my car.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said with resignation, looking out of the driver’s window of his own car.
“Often,” I said.
“Oh God.” He paused. “Zoe knows my car. She’ll attack me.”
“Get in mine, then, coward.”
He climbed out of his car and folded his length in with me and put an arresting hand on mine when I moved to put the car in gear.
“Carey says he’s resigning,” he said. “I thought I’d better tell you.”
“That’s unthinkable.”
“I know. I believe he does mean it, though. And he’s all that holds us together.”
“When did he say he was resigning?”
“In the office. You know, after you left, when I went along there? Carey was there with that superintendent.”
I nodded.
“Carey had more or less collapsed. When I went in, the policeman was giving him a glass of water. Water! He should have had brandy. The moment he saw me he said he couldn’t go on, it was all too much. I told him we needed him, but he didn’t answer properly. All he said was that Scott had worked for the practice for ten or more years and we’d never find an anesthetist like him.”
“And will you?”
He made a shrugging gesture that involved not just his shoulders but his neck and head.
“If Carey disbands the partnership,” he said, “because that’s what will happen if he resigns, we’ll have to start again.”
“And to start again,” I pointed out, “you need a clean slate. So we walk up the drive here and jerk the bellpull.”
His long head turned slowly towards me.
“How do you know about jerking the bellpull?”
I couldn’t answer. I hadn’t realized when I was speaking that I was drawing on memory.
“Figure of speech,” I said lamely.
He shook his head. “You know things you couldn’t know. I’ve noticed before. You knew my father’s name was Kenny, that very first evening. How did you know?”
After a while I said, “If I do any good for you, I’ll tell you.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
I started the car, drove in through the gates and stopped in a circular graveled area short of the house. Then, alone, I got out of the car and I walked along the last piece of driveway and jerked the bellpull, which was a wrought-iron rod with a gilded knob on the end. I knew, before I heard them, what the distant chimes would sound like inside the house.
I couldn’t remember who should be opening the door, but it certainly wasn’t the woman who did. Of indeterminate age, she was sandy-colored with dry curly hair, fair eyelashes and noticeable down on her upper lip and lower jaw. Thin and strong, dressed in jeans, checked shirt and faded sweater, she made no attempt at personal show but was not unattractive, in an unconventional sort of way. She looked me up and down, and waited.
“Miss Zoe Mackintosh?” I asked.
“I’m not buying anything. Good afternoon.”
The door began closing.
“I’m not a salesman,” I said hastily.
“What then?” The door paused.
“I’m from Hewett and Partners.”
“Then why didn’t you say so?” She opened the door wider. “But I didn’t send for anyone.”
“We’re . . . er ... working on the question of why two of your horses died in our hospital.”
“Bit late for that,” she said crisply.
“Could we possibly ask you a few questions?”
She put her head on one side. “I suppose so. Who’s we?” I looked back to the car. “Ken McClure’s with me.” “Oh, no. He killed them.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Couldn’t you please listen?” She hesitated. “He told me some rubbish about atropine.”
“What if it wasn’t rubbish?”
She gave me a straight uncompromising inspection, then made up her mind at least to hear the case for the defense.
“Come in, then,” she said, stepping back. She looked across to the car and said grudgingly, “I told Ken he’d never set foot in here again, but he can come too.”
“Thank you.”
I made a beckoning arm movement to Ken but he approached warily and stopped a full pace behind me.
“Zoe . . .” he said tentatively.
“Yes, well, you’ve brought a devil’s advocate, I see. So come in and get on with it.”
We stepped into a black-and-white-tiled hallway and she closed the door behind us. Then she led the way across the hall, down a short passage and into a square room crowded with office paraphernalia, racing colors, photographs, sagging armchairs and six assorted dogs. Zoe scooped several dogs off the chairs and invited us to sit.
In an obscure way I thought the interior of the house was somehow wrong: it didn’t smell the way it should, and there was an absence of sound. Zoe’s room smelled of dogs. I couldn’t get back past that, the way one can’t remember a particular tune with a different one bombarding one’s eardrums.
“Have you lived here long?” I asked,
She raised her eyebrows humorously, glancing round at the clutter.
“Doesn’t it look like it?” she said.
“Well, yes.”
“Twenty-something years,” she said. “Twenty-three, twenty-four.”
“A long time,” I agreed.
“Yes. So what about these horses?”
“I think they and several others died as a result of insurance swindles.”
She shook her head decisively. “Our two weren’t insured. Their owners don’t let us forget it.”
I said, “Horses can be insured without the owner or the trainer knowing.”
Her eyes slowly widened in memory. “Russet Eaglewood did that once. Good job she did.”
“Yes, she told me.”
Ken gave me a hard stare.
Zoe reflected. “So you went to see her about the Eaglewoods’ dead horses?”
“Yours and theirs died in the same way.”
Zoe looked at Ken. I shook my head. “Not his fault.”
“Whose then?”
“We’re trying to find out.” I paused. “The horses all died in the hospital, except perhaps one. . . .”
“How many died?” she interrupted.
“Eight or nine,” I said.
“You’re kidding!”
Ken protested, “You shouldn’t have told her.”
“One death could be put down to your carelessness,” I said. “Perhaps even two. But eight unexplained deaths? Eight, when you are an expert surgeon? You’ve been carrying the can for someone else, Ken, and sensible people like Miss Mackintosh will realize it.”
The sensible Miss Mackintosh gave me an ironic glance, but all the same looked on Ken as victim not villain from then on.
“To get the horses to the hospital, after they’d been insured, of course,” I said, “they had to be made ill. Which is why we’d like you to concentrate hard on who had any opportunity to give your horses emergency-sized colic by feeding them atropine.”
Instead of answering directly she said, “Did the Eaglewood horses have atropine?”
“No,” I said. “They had appointments.”
She turned a gasp into a laugh. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Peter. Friend of Ken’s.”
“I’d say he’s lucky.”
I gave her the ironic look back.
“All right,” she said. “After Ken said that, even though I was furious, I did think about it. To be frank, any one of our lads would have fed their mothers to the horses for a tenner. A doctored apple? A quick agreement in the pub? Too easy. Sorry.”
“Worth a try,” Ken said.
A buzzer rasped loudly into the pause. “My father,” Zoe said briefly, rising. “I’ll have to go.”
“I’d very much like to meet your father,” I said.
She raised fair bushy eyebrows. “You’re five years too late. But come if you like.”
She went out into the passage and we followed her back into the hall and in through double doors to a large splendid drawing room whose far wall was glass from floor to ceiling. Just outside the glass was a mill wheel, a huge wooden paddle wheel, more than half of it visible, the lower part below floor level. It was decoration only; there was no movement.
“Where’s the stream?” I said, and remembered what was wrong about the house. No musty smell of everlasting water. No sound of the mill wheel turning.
“There isn’t one. It dried up years ago,” Zoe said, crossing the floor. “They mucked around with the water table, taking too much for a bloody power station. Dad,” she finished, coming to a halt by a high-backed chair, “you’ve got some visitors.”
The chair made no reply. Ken and I walked round to the front of it and met the man who had been Mac Mackintosh.
10
Mackintosh was small and wrinkled, an old dried apple of a horseman. Set in the weather-beaten face, his startlingly deep blue eyes looked alert and intelligent enough, and it was only gradually one realized that the thoughts behind them were out of sequence, like a jumbled alphabet.
He was sitting facing the immobile wheel, looking through it, I supposed, to the field and hedge beyond. There was an impression that he’d sat there for a long time; that he sat there habitually. The arms of the chair, where his thin hands rested, had been patched and repatched from wear.
He said in a high scratchy voice, “Have you forgotten evening stables?”
“Of course not, Dad,” Zoe said patiently. “They’re not for another half hour.”
“Who’s that with you? I can’t see faces against the light.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Mackintosh,” Ken said.
“It’s Ken McClure,” Zoe informed him, “and a friend of his.”
“Peter,” Ken said.
“I thought you said Ken,” Mackintosh complained testily.
“I’m Peter,” I said.
Zoe reintroduced everyone with clarity but it was doubtful if the old man grasped it, as he kept looking at me with bewilderment every few seconds.
“You said,” he told Zoe, “that only Carey would come.”
“Yes, I know I did, but I’ve changed my mind. Carey will still come to play cards with you but Ken is back looking after the horses.” To us she quietly added, “They’ve played cards together for years but it’s a farce these days. Carey just pretends now, which is good of him.”
“What did you say?” Mackintosh asked crossly. “Do speak up.”
“Where’s your hearing aid, Dad?” Zoe asked.
“I don’t like it. It whistles.”
Ken and I were both standing in front of him, between him and the window, and it seemed to displease him that he couldn’t see the whole wheel, as he kept moving his head to look round and beyond us. Ken must have sensed the same thing, because he turned sideways as if to minimize the obstruction.
The backlight from the window fell on half of Ken’s bony face, the rest being still in shadow, and Mackintosh sat up sharply in his chair and stared at him joyfully.
“Kenny!” he said, “did you bring the stuff? I thought you were . . .” He broke off, fearfully confused. “Dead,” he said faintly.
“I’m not Kenny,” Ken said, moved.
Mackintosh flopped back in the chair. “We lost the money,” he said.
“What money?” I asked.
Zoe said, “Don’t bother him. You won’t get a sensible answer. He’s talking about the money he lost in a bad property investment. It preys on his mind. Every time anything worries him or he doesn’t understand something, he goes back to it.”
I asked Ken, “Is that what your mother was talking about?”
“Josephine?” Zoe involuntarily made a face. “She always enjoys a good disaster. Sorry Ken, but it’s true.” To me she added, “Dad lost a small fortune, but he wasn’t alone. The scheme looked all right on paper because you didn’t have to invest any actual cash and it should have been a good return. Dozens of people guaranteed slices of a huge loan to build an entertainment and leisure center between Cheltenham and Tewkesbury, and it did get built, but the location, and the design of it were all wrong and so no one would use it or buy it and the bank called in all the loans. I can’t bear to look at the damn thing. It’s still unfinished and just rotting away, and half my inheritance is in it.” She stopped ruefully. “I’m as bad as Dad, rabbiting on.”
“What was it called?” I asked.
“All our money,” Mackintosh said in his high voice.
“Porphyry Place,” Zoe said, smiling.
Ken nodded. “A great white elephant, except a lot of it’s dark red. I pass it sometimes. Rotten luck.”
“Ronnie Upjohn,” Mackintosh said gleefully, “got his comeuppance.”
Zoe looked resigned.
“What does he mean?” I asked.
“Ronnie Upjohn is a steward,” she explained. “For years he kept reporting Dad to the Jockey Club and accusing him of taking bribes from the bookies, which of course Dad never did.”
Mackintosh shrieked with laughter, his guilt plainly a satisfaction.
“Dad!” Zoe protested, knowing, I saw, that the charges were true.
“Ronnie Upjohn lost a packet.” Mackintosh shook with delight and then, under our gaze, seemed to lose the thread of thought and relapse into puzzlement. “Steinback laid it off at a hundred to six.”
“What does he mean?” I asked Zoe again.
She shrugged. “Old bets. Steinback was a bookie, died years ago. Dad remembers things but muddles them up.” She gave her father a look compounded of affection, exasperation and fear, the last, I guessed, the result of worry over the not-too-distant future. She and Russet Eaglewood had that in common: daughters holding together the crumbling lives of their fathers.
“As you’re here,” Zoe said to Ken, “would you like to look round at evening stables?”
Ken’s pleased acceptance pleased Zoe equally. My mission of reinstatement seemed to have succeeded with her as with Russet. The world, however, remained to be conquered.
“Come on
, Dad,” Zoe said, helping her father to his feet. “Time for stables.”
The old man was physically much stronger than I’d somehow expected. Short, and with slightly bowed legs, he moved without hesitation and without stooping, heading straight down the big room in evident eagerness. The three of us followed him out into the tiled hall and passage, and down past the open door of Zoe’s room. She put her head in there and whistled, and the six dogs came bounding out, falling over their own feet with excitement.
This enlarged party crammed into a dusty Land Rover outside the back door and set off down a rear roadway that led to a brick-built white-painted stable yard a quarter mile distant. From a single-story white house at one side, the head lad had emerged to join us, and I attended the ritual of British evening stables in an invited capacity for the first time ever.
It seemed familiar enough. The slow progress from box to box, the brief discussion between trainer, lad and head lad as to each horse’s well-being, the pat and the carrot from the trainer, the occasional running of the trainer’s hand down a suspect equine leg. Ken discussed the inmates’ old injuries with Zoe, and old man Mackintosh gave the head lad an unending stream of instructions which were gravely acknowledged but which sounded to me contradictory.
At one point I asked Zoe which boxes had been occupied by the two atropine colics.
“Reg,” she said to the head lad, “talk to my friend here, will you? Answer any question.”
“Any?” he queried.
She nodded. “He’s on the side of the angels.”
Reg, small and whippy like Mackintosh himself, gave me a suspicious inspection and no benefit of any doubt. Reg, I thought, might be on the side of the devil.
I asked him anyway about the boxes. Reluctantly he pointed and identified them: numbers 6 and 16. The numbers were painted in black on the white wall above the door of each box. Nothing else to distinguish them from all the others.
Reg, carrying the bag of carrots, was handing them to Zoe and her father at each box and didn’t want me getting in the way.
“Do you know anyone called Wynn Lees?” I asked him.
“No, I don’t.” The answer was immediate, without pause for thought.
Old Mackintosh, taking a carrot, had also heard the question, and gave a different answer.