Break In

by Dick Francis

  Money troubles abound for Robertson (Bobby) Allardeck (32), still training a few racehorses in his grandfather’s once-bustling stables in Newmarket. Local traders threaten court action over unpaid bills. Bobby weakly denies the owners of the remaining horses should be worried, although the feed-merchant has stopped deliveries. Where will it end?

  Not with manna from heaven from Daddy.

  Maynard ‘Moneybags’ Allardeck (50), cross with Bobby for marrying badly, won’t come to the rescue.

  Maynard, known to be fishing for a knighthood, gives all his spare cash to charity.

  Needy Bobby’s opinion? Unprintable.

  Watch this space for more.

  ‘If Bobby doesn’t sue for libel,’ I said, ‘his father surely will.’

  ‘Greater the truth, greater the libel,’ the feed-merchant said dryly, and added, ‘Tell Bobby his credit’s good with me again. I’ve been thinking it over. He’s always paid me regularly, even if always late. And I don’t like being manipulated by muck like that.’ He pointed to the paper. ‘So tell Bobby I’ll supply him as before. Tell him to tell his owners.’

  I thanked him and went back to Bobby’s house, and read Intimate Details again over a cup of coffee in the kitchen. Then I pensively telephoned the feed-merchant.

  ‘Did you,’ I said, ‘actually tell anyone that you intended to stop making deliveries to Bobby?’

  ‘I told Bobby.’ He sounded equally thoughtful. ‘No one else.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Not even your secretary? Or your family?’

  ‘I admit that on Friday I was very annoyed and wanted my money immediately, but no one overheard my giving Bobby a talking to about it, I’m quite certain. My secretary doesn’t come in until eleven on Fridays, and as you know, my office is an annexe. I was alone when I telephoned him, I assure you.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘The informant must be at Bobby’s end,’ he insisted.

  ‘Yes. I think you’re right.’

  We disconnected and I began to read the Daily Flag from start to finish, which I’d never done before, seeking enlightenment perhaps on what made a newspaper suddenly attack an inoffensive man and aim to destroy him.

  The Flag’s overall and constant tone, I found, was of self-righteous spite, its message a sneer, its aftertaste guaranteed to send a reader belligerently out looking for an excuse to take umbrage or to spread ill-will.

  Any story that would show someone in a poor light was in Praise was out. The put-down had been developed to a minor art, so that a woman, however prominent or successful, did not ‘say’; instead she ‘trilled’, or she ‘shrilled’, or she ‘wailed’. A man ‘chortled’, or he ‘fumed’, or he ‘squeaked’.

  The word ‘anger’ appeared on every single page. All sorts of things were ‘slammed’, but not doors. People were reported as denying things in a way that interpreted ‘deny’ as ‘guilty but won’t own up’; and the word ‘claims’, in the Flag’s view, as, for instance, in ‘He claims he saw…’ was synonymous with ‘He is lying when he says he saw…’

  The Flag thought that respect was unnecessary, envy was normal, all motives were sleazy and only dogs were loved; and presumably it was what people wanted to read, as the circulation (said the Flag) was increasing daily.

  On the premise that a newspaper ultimately reflected the personality of its owner, as the Towncrier did Lord Vaughnley’s, I thought the proprietor of the Daily Flag to be destructive, calculating, mean-spirited and dangerous. Not a good prospect. It meant one couldn’t with any hope of success appeal to the Flag’s better nature to let up on Bobby, because a better nature it didn’t have.

  Holly came downstairs looking wan but more cheerful, Bobby returned from the Heath with reviving optimism, and I found the necessity of demolishing their fragile recovery just one more reason to detest the Flag.

  Holly began to cry quietly and Bobby strode about the kitchen wanting to smash things, and still there was the unanswerable question: Why?

  ‘This time,’ I said, ‘you consult your lawyer, and to hell with the cost. Also this time we are going to pay all your worst bills at once, and we are going to get letters from all your creditors saying they have been paid, and we’ll get those letters photocopied by the dozen, and we’ll send a set of them out to everyone who got a copy of the Flag, and to the Flag itself, to Sam Leggatt, the editor, special delivery, and to all the owners, and to anyone else we can think of, and we’ll accompany these with a letter of your own saying you don’t understand why the Flag is attacking you but the attacks have no foundation, the stable is in good shape and you are certainly not going out of business.’

  ‘But,’ Holly said, gulping, ‘the bank manager won’t honour our cheques.’

  ‘Get the worst bills,’ I said to Bobby, ‘and let’s have a look at them.’ Specially the blacksmith, the vets and the transport people. We’ll pay those and any others that are vital.’

  ‘What with?’ he said irritably.

  ‘With my money.’

  They were both suddenly still, as if shocked, and I realised with a thrust of pleasure that that plain solution simply hadn’t occurred to them. They were not askers, those two.

  Holly couldn’t disguise her upsurge of hope, but she said doubtfully, ‘Your new house, though. It must be taking you all you’ve saved. You haven’t been paid for the cottage yet.’

  ‘There’s enough,’ I assured her. ‘And let’s get started because I’ll have to be off to Plumpton pretty soon.’

  ‘But we can’t…’ Bobby said.

  ‘Yes, you must. Don’t argue.’

  Bobby looked pole-axed but he fetched the bunch of accounts and I made out several cheques.

  ‘Take these round yourself this morning and get watertight receipts, and in a minute we’ll write the letter to go with them,’ I said. ‘And see if you can get them all photocopied and clipped into sets in time to catch this afternoon’s post. I know it’s a bit of a job, but the sooner very much the better, don’t you think?’

  ‘And one set to Graves?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘Certainly to Graves.’

  ‘We’ll start immediately,’ Holly said.

  ‘Don’t forget the feed-merchant,’ I said. ‘He’ll write you something good. He didn’t like being made use of by the Flag.’

  ‘I don’t like to mention it…’ Holly began slowly.

  ‘The bank?’ I asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘Leave the bank for now. Tomorrow maybe you can go to the manager with a set of letters and see if he will reinstate you. He darned well ought to. His bank’s making enough out of you in interest, especially on the yearling loans. And you do still have the yearlings as security.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Bobby said.

  ‘One step at a time,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll telephone my solicitor straight away,’ he said, picking up the receiver and looking at his watch. ‘He’ll be in by now.’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t,’ I said.

  ‘But you said…’

  ‘You’ve got an informant right inside this house.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your telephone,’ I said, ‘I should think.’

  He looked at it with disgusted understanding and in a half-groan said, ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘It’s been done before,’ I said: and there had in fact been a time in Lambourn when everyone had been paranoid about being overheard and had gone to elaborate lengths to avoid talking on their home telephones. Illegal it might well be to listen uninvited, but it was carried on nevertheless, as everyone knew.

  Without more ado we unscrewed all the telephones in the house, but found no limpet-like bugs inside. Horses, however, not electronics, were our speciality, and Bobby said he would go out to a public box and ring up the telephone company and ask them to come themselves to see what they could find.

  It happened at one point that Bobby was on his knees by the kitchen wa
ll screwing together the telephone junction there and Holly and I were standing side by side in the centre of the room, watching him, so that when the newcomer suddenly arrived among us unannounced it was my sister and I that he saw first.

  A tall man with fair hair fading to grey, immensely well brushed. Neat, good-looking features, smoothly shaven rounded chin; trim figure inside a grey City suit of the most impeccable breeding. A man of fifty, a man of power whose very presence filled the kitchen, a man holding a folded copy of the Daily Flag and looking at Holly and me with open loathing.

  Maynard Allardeck; Bobby’s father.

  Known to me, as I to him, as the enemy. Known to each other by frequent sight, by indoctrination, by professional repute. Ever known, never willingly meeting.

  ‘Fieldings,’ he said with battering hate; and to me directly, ‘What do you think you’re doing in this house?’

  ‘I asked him,’ Bobby said, straightening up.

  His father turned abruptly in his direction, seeing his son for the first time closely face to face for more than four years.

  They stared at each other for a long moment as if frozen, as if re-learning familiar features, taking physical stock. Seeing each other perhaps as partial strangers, freshly. Whatever any of us might have expected or wished for in the way of reconciliation, it turned out to be the opposite of what Maynard had in mind. He had come neither to help nor even to commiserate, but to complain.

  Without any form of greeting he said, ‘How dare you drag me into your sordid little troubles.’ He waved his copy of the Flag. ‘I won’t have you whining to the Press about something that’s entirely your own fault. If you want to marry into a bunch of crooks, take your consequences and keep me out of it.’

  I imagine we all blinked, as Bobby was doing. Maynard’s voice was thick with anger and his sudden onslaught out of all proportion, but it was his reasoning above all which had us stunned.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Bobby said, almost rocking on his feet. ‘I mean, I haven’t talked to the Press. I wouldn’t. They just wrote it.’

  ‘And this part about me refusing you money? How else would they know, if you hadn’t told them? Answer me that.’

  Bobby swallowed. ‘You’ve always said… I mean, I thought you meant it, that you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Of course I mean it.’ His father glared at him. ‘I won’t. That’s not the point. You’ve no business snivelling about it in public and I won’t have it. Do you hear?’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Bobby protested, but without conviction.

  I thought how much father and son resembled each other in looks, and how little in character. Maynard had six times the force of Bobby but none of his sense of fair play. Maynard could make money work for him, Bobby worked to be paid. Maynard could hold a grudge implacably for ever, Bobby could waver and crumble and rethink. The comparative weaknesses in Bobby, I thought, were also his strength.

  ‘You must have been blabbing.’ Maynard was uncompromisingly offensive in his tone, and I thought that if Bobby ever wanted to announce to the whole world that his father would let him sink, he would have every provocation and every right.

  Bobby said with a rush, ‘We think someone may have been tapping our telephone.’

  ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ Maynard said ominously, casting an angry look at the silent instrument. ‘So it’s on the telephone you’ve been bleating about me, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Bobby said, half stuttering. ‘I mean, no I haven’t. But one or two people said ask your father for money, and I told them I couldn’t.’

  ‘And this bit,’ Maynard belted the air furiously with the newspaper, ‘about me fishing for a knighthood. I won’t have it. It’s a damned lie.’

  It struck me forcibly at that point, perhaps because of an undisguisable edge of fear in his voice, that it was the bit a bout the knighthood which lay at the real heart of Maynard’s rage.

  It was no lie, I thought conclusively. It was true. He must indeed be trying actively to get himself a title. Grandfather had said that Maynard at nine had wanted to be a lord. Maynard at fifty was still the same person, but now with money, with influence, with no doubt a line to the right ears. Maynard might be even then in the middle of delicate but entirely unlawful negotiations.

  Sir Maynard Allardeck. It certainly rolled well off the tongue. Sir Maynard. Bow down to me, you Fieldings. I am your superior, bow low.

  ‘I didn’t say anything about a knighthood,’ Bobby protested with more force. ‘I mean, I didn’t know you wanted one. I never said anything about it. I never thought of it.’

  ‘Why don’t you sue the newspaper?’ I said.

  ‘You keep quiet,’ he said to me vehemently. ‘Keep your nose out.’ He readdressed himself to Bobby. ‘If you didn’t mention a knighthood on the telephone, how did they get hold of it? Why did they write that… that damned lie? Answer me that.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Bobby said, sounding bewildered. ‘I don’t know why they wrote any of it.’

  ‘Someone has put you up to stirring up trouble against me,’ Maynard said, looking hard and mean and deadly in earnest.

  We all three stared at him in amazement. How anyone could think that was beyond me.

  Bobby said with more stuttering, ‘Of course not. I mean, that’s stupid. It’s not you that’s in trouble because of what they wrote, it’s me. I wouldn’t stir up trouble against myself. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Three people telephoned me before seven this morning to tell me there was another paragraph in today’s Flag,’ Maynard said angrily. ‘I bought a copy on my way here. I was instantly certain it was your poisonous brother-in-law or his pig of a grandfather who was at the back of it, it’s just their filthy sort of thing.’

  ‘No,’ Holly said.

  Maynard ignored her as if she hadn’t spoken.

  ‘I came in here to tell you it served you right,’ he said to Bobby, ‘and to insist on your forcing the Fieldings to get a full retraction printed in the paper.’

  ‘But,’ Bobby said, shaking his head as if concussed, ‘it wasn’t Kit. He wouldn’t do that. Nor his grandfather.’

  ‘You’re soft,’ Maynard said contemptuously. ‘You’ve never understood that someone can smile into your face while they shove a knife through your ribs.’

  ‘Because of Holly,’ Bobby insisted, ‘they wouldn’t.’

  ‘You’re a naive fool,’ his father said. ‘Why shouldn’t they try to break up your marriage? They never wanted it, any more than I did. They’re a wily, shifty, vengeful family, the whole lot of them, and if you trust any one of them, you deserve what you get.’

  Bobby gave me a quick glance in which I read only discomfort, not doubt. Neither Holly nor I offered any sort of defence because mere words wouldn’t dent the opinions that Maynard had held all his life, and nor would hitting him. Moreover we had heard the same sort of invective too often from Grandfather on the subject of the Allardecks. We were more or less immune, by then, to violent reaction. It was Bobby, interestingly, who protested.

  ‘Kit and Holly care what becomes of me,’ he said. ‘You don’t. Kit came to help, and you didn’t. So I’ll judge as I find, and I don’t agree with what you say.’

  Maynard looked as if he could hardly believe his ears, and nor, to be honest, could I. It wasn’t just that what Bobby was expressing was a heretical defection from his upbringing, but that he also had the courage to stand up to his father and say it to his face.

  He looked, as a matter of fact, slightly nervous. Maynard, it was said, inspired wholesale nervousness in the boardroom of any business his eye fell on, and as of that morning I understood why. The unyielding ruthlessness in him, clearly perceptible to all three of us, was central to his success, and for us at least he made no attempt to disguise it or dress it with a façade of charm.

  Bobby made a frustrated gesture with both hands, walked over to the sink and began to fill the kettle.

  ‘Do you want any coffee?’ he said to his father.

&n
bsp; ‘Of course not.’ He spoke as if he’d been insulted. ‘I’ve a committee meeting at the Jockey Club.’ He looked at his watch, and then at me. ‘You,’ he said, ‘have attacked me. And you’ll suffer for it.’

  I said calmly but distinctly, ‘If I hear you have said in the Jockey Club that a Fielding is responsible for what has appeared in the Flag, I will personally sue you for slander.’

  Maynard glared. He said, ‘You’re filth by birth, you’re not worth the fuss that’s made of you, and I’d be glad to see you dead.’

  I felt Holly beside me begin to spring forward in some passionate explosion of feeling and gripped her wrist tight to stop her. I was actually well satisfied. I had read in Maynard’s eyes that he was inclined to take me seriously, but he didn’t want me to know it, and I understood also, for the first time, and with unease, that the very fact of my being successful, of being champion, was to him, in his obsession, intolerable.

  Along at the Jockey Club, which had its ancient headquarters in Newmarket’s main street, and where he had been one of its members for four or five years, Maynard would with luck now pass off the whole Flag thing with a grouchy joke. There, in the organisation which ruled the racing industry, he would show all courtesy and hide the snarl. There, where he served on dogsbody committees while he made his determined way up that particular ladder, aiming perhaps to be a Steward, one of the top triumvirate, before long, he would now perhaps be careful to say nothing that could get back to my ears.

  There were no active professional jockeys in the Jockey Club, nor any licensed trainers, though a few retired practitioners of both sorts sprinkled the ranks. There were many racehorse owners, among whom I had real friends. The approximately 140 members, devoted to the welfare of racing, were self-perpetuating, self-elected. If Maynard had ever campaigned quietly to be chosen for membership it might have helped him to be a member of an old-established racing family, and it might have helped him to be rich, but one thing was certain: he would never have unsheathed for the civilised inspection of his peers the raw, brutal anti-Fielding prejudice he had given spleen to in the kitchen. Nothing alienated the courteous members more than ill-mannered excess.