by Dick Francis
He nodded. “I thought so. You saw those slashes. Two of them, one relatively superficial, one very deep. The first one cut her clothes open. Why wasn't there a third? You know what I think? I think it was an aborted murder. I think he changed his mind.”
I stared.
“You can call me crazy,” he said.
“No, I think you're clever.”
“I've seen knife murders. They often look like frenzy. Dozens of stab wounds. Deranged mind at work. They can't stop. Do you see?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I don't know why I'm telling you. Pay no attention. With luck Dorothea will live to tell us herself.”
“How much luck does she need?”
“Frankly,” he said dispiritedly, “quite a lot. Concussion's unpredictable. I don't think she has intra-cranial bleeding, but I can't be sure. But that abdominal wound ... it's bad ... it depends on infection ... and she's eighty next month ... but she's well in herself ... healthy for her age, I mean. I've grown fond of them both, though I used to fight with Valentine on the surface, obstinate old cuss.”
I thought Robbie Gill a good doctor, and I said so. He brushed off my words.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Of course.”
“Well... how long ago was Dorothea attacked?”
“How long ago?”
“Yes. I mean, was she attacked before the trashing of the house? All this damage must have taken quite a while to achieve. Or had she been out, and come back at the wrong moment? Or did someone try to beat some information out of her and go too far, and then pull the place apart looking for whatever he wanted?”
“Hey, slow down,” he protested. “You think like a policeman.”
Like a film-maker, I thought. I said again, “How long since she was attacked?”
He pursed his lips. “The house was trashed first.”
We digested it in silence.
“You're sure?” I asked finally.
Gill said, “Judging from the comparatively small amount of swelling and the rate of bleeding, Dorothea hadn't been in that state very long before her friend Betty found her. I came at once when Betty phoned me. I wasn't much longer than five minutes on the way. Betty might be lucky that she didn't arrive here ten minutes sooner.” He sighed. “It isn't our problem, I'm glad to say. We can leave it to the police.”
He looked at his watch and said it had been a long day, and I agreed with that too. When he told the police he was leaving, they decided to take his fingerprints. They took mine also, and Betty's: for elimination, they said. They wrote brief statements from Betty and me, and we told them Paul's fingerprints would be everywhere, like our own.
Betty's husband came to collect her with wide consoling arms, and at length I drove back to Bedford Lodge and downed a medicinal large one with Moncrieff.
Summoned by Ed on my say-so, all available crews, technicians, wardrobe people and actors (except Nash) gathered in the stable yard at dawn on Sunday morning.
I mounted a wooden chair to address them and, in the fresh ever-moving East Anglian air, wondered how Shakespeare could have expected Henry V's words before Agincourt to be heard by any but the nearest knights, given the clinking noises of armour on horseback and the absence of microphones.
I at least had a megaphone, equipment perhaps over-familiar to my audience.
“I expect,” I said loudly, when movement in the company had diminished to restless impatience, “that most of you have by now read yesterday's "Hot from the Stars" column in the Daily Drumbeat.”
I reaped stares, nods, and a good many sardonic smiles. No overt sneers. Something, at least.
“As you can guess,” I went on, “the column badly disturbed our parent company in Hollywood. Fortunately our producer assured them that you are all doing a very good job here. Some of you may like it, some may not, but Hollywood has confirmed that I continue to direct. Nash Rourke has told them he is in favour of this. In consequence, nothing has changed. Whether or not you agree with the Drumbeat's assessment of my character, if you want to continue to be employed on this enterprise, you will please make a private commitment to give this film your best shot. For all our sakes, the creation of a well-made, visually exciting commercial motion picture should take priority over any personal feelings. I want you to be able in the future to say with satisfaction that you worked on this film. So it's back to business as usual, which means will the lads now saddle the horses and everyone else continue with the schedule that Ed has distributed. OK? Good.”
I lowered the megaphone, stepped off the chair and turned my back to the company to join Moncrieff, who had been standing behind me in support.
“Socked it to them,” he approved with irony. “We could make a film of making this film.”
“Or a book,” I said.
Our female star, Silva Shawn, loped across the stable yard to join us. As usual, when not dressed in character, she wore flapping dark voluminous layers of clothes reaching to her ankles, with black Doc Marten boots below and a charcoal hat above, a hat that looked like a soft collapsed topper sitting on her eyebrows. She walked with long strides and arrived at most meetings with her shapely chin thrust forward in the body language of belittle-me-if-you-dare.
O'Hara had strongly warned me not to pay her any compliment she could possibly construe as sexual harassment, which I found difficult to comply with, as the adjectives which sprang first and naturally to my mind, apart from delicious, were divine, bewitching and ultra-desirable: but “Never call her darling,” O'Hara had instructed.
“Why did you pick her if she's so touchy?” I'd asked him, and he had said succinctly, “She can act.”
To date, her acting in the film had chiefly consisted of the notably explicit bedroom scenes with Nash (punctuated by No, no, no, moans from Howard) that we had captured the previous week. We had in fact faithfully adhered to Howard's script in the matter of words: what infuriated him was that I had ignored his intention to have Nash and Silva deliver their lines fully clothed. He had set their restrained show of affection in the drawing-room. I had transferred it to the bedroom, letting the verbal restraint remain, but contrasting it with growing physical desire. Silva, without self-consciousness ('bodies are natural'), had allowed delicately lit shots of her nudity in the bathroom. The rushes had quickened many pulses, including my own.
Whether she chose to admit it or not, there was a sensual quality in Silva's acting diametrically opposite to her chosen off-screen stance.
She had been away from Newmarket for the past week fulfilling an unbreakable commitment somewhere else, but was due to ride a horse on the Heath that morning, making use of an equestrian skill she was proud of. As happened in almost all films, we were not shooting the scenes chronologically: the coming encounter between the trainer and Gibber's wife was their first, their meeting, all innocence at the start but with, in no time, a promise developing in their eyes.
Silva said disapprovingly, “I hope you got me a good horse.”
“He's fast,” I said, nodding.
“And good looking?”
“Of course.”
“And well trained?”
“I've been riding him myself.”
Without comment she transferred her near-universal disapproval to Moncrieff, whom she considered a male chauvinist despite his spectacular ability to make even ugly women look beautiful on screen.
After so many years spent studying female curves one might have expected Moncrieff to have grown an impervious skin, but every time we'd worked together he had fallen in love with the leading lady, and Silva looked like being no exception.
“Platonic,” I'd advised him. “Strictly hands off. OK?”
“She needs me,” he'd pleaded.
“Light her and leave her.”
“Such cheekbones!”
Silva had fortunately so far given him the reverse of encouragement. I'd noticed from the first day I met her that she looked with more favour on men wit
h suits, ties, short haircuts and clean-shaven faces, an inclination that should ensure the comparative invisibility of straggle-bearded, shambling, sloppily-dressed Moncrieff.
“I think,” I said to Silva politely, “they're expecting you in make-up.”
She demanded, “Are you telling me I'm late?”
I shook my head. 'The meeting has set everyone back. But I hope to finish the Heath scenes by lunchtime.'
She loped off, skirts flapping, making her own sort of statement.
“Gorgeous,” Moncrieff breathed.
“Dangerous,” I said.
Nash arrived, yawning, in his Rolls, and went into the house to the wardrobe and make-up departments. He was followed into the stable yard almost immediately by a man of very similar build, riding a bicycle which braked hard with a spraying of gravel beside Moncrieff and me.
“Morning,” the newcomer said briefly, dismounting. No deference in sight.
“Good morning, Ivan,” I answered.
“Are we still in business?”
“You're late,” I said.
He rightly took the comment as disapproval and wordlessly retreated, with his bicycle, into the house.
“I don't like him,” Moncrieff said. “Saucy bugger.”
“Never mind. Make him look like St George, a shining champion.”
Nash himself had great presence just sitting on a horse but any speed faster than a walk revealed deficiencies, so for distance shots of him trotting or cantering we were using a stuntman, Ivan, instead. Ivan made a living riding in front of cameras and had picked up a truculent manner that would prevent his ever getting further in his profession. He had a habit, I'd been told, of holding forth in pubs about how close he was to Nash Rourke, for whom he had doubled on an earlier picture. Nash this, Nash that, Nash and I ... In actual fact, they met seldom and conversed less. Ivan had mushroomed a relationship from a few short businesslike exchanges.
Trainers in many other racing centres drove out in Land-Rovers to watch their strings work, but on Newmarket's mainly roadless Heath it was still the norm to oversee everything from horseback and there was no doubt Nash looked more imposing in the saddle than operating a four-wheel drive. The mega-star's sex appeal brought in the pennies. My job was to make it powerful while looking natural, which in Nash's case wasn't hard.
Moncrieff was driven off up one of the few roads in a camera truck, with a second crew following, to positions we'd agreed the previous evening. The string of horses would canter up a hill, be followed broadside by one camera and head-on by a second as they came over the brow into the low-in-the-sky sunlight; rather, I hoped, like an orchestral flourish of brass after a muted but lyrical introduction. I often heard soundtracks in my head long before any composer approached them.
Ed, knowing to the minute when to start the action, remained down by the stable. Though I could easily have driven, I chose to ride up onto the Heath to join Moncrieff; and I rode the horse we'd allotted to Silva, to get its back down: that is to say, to warm him up so that he would go sweetly with her and not buck. Silva might be proud of her riding, but O'Hara wouldn't thank me for getting her dumped on her exquisite backside.
The terrible Ivan was to canter alone to the brow of the hill, riding Nash's usual mount. He was to stop there, turn his horse, and stand silhouetted against the brightening sky. I'd asked him particularly not to waste the precious light-slot by getting it wrong.
He'd been insulted that I should expect him to get it wrong.
“Don't then,” I said.
I joined Moncrieff by the truck positioned halfway up the hill, and breathed sighs of relief when Ivan obliged us with a beautifully ridden canter up the hill, stopping and turning at the right place, horse and rider stark and splendidly black against a halo of gold.
“Holy Moses,” Moncrieff said, intently looking through the lens. “It's a beaut.” He ran a long fifteen seconds' worth before cutting.
“Again?” I suggested.
Moncrieff checked that the film had run properly through the camera gate and shook his head. “It was about perfect.”
“Great. Print. Let's reload fresh stock for the next long shot of the rest of the horses.”
I called down to Ed on our walkie-talkie system, told him to stick to schedule, had the shot numbered as always by the clapper board operator and watched while the string was filmed streaming uphill at a fast canter. I called up the out-of-sight camera over the brow of the hill to start rolling, but perfection was an elusive quality and it was only after I'd ridden over the hill myself to organise things from up there, only after some huffing and puffing and two retakes, that I got my flourish of trumpets.
With the crowd shots at last in the can, everyone on horseback milled around waiting for clearance and instructions. Ivan was still importantly riding Nash's horse, but a little apart, and I myself was now down on foot conferring with Moncrieff, eyes concentrating on his records of exposed footage.
I didn't see what happened. I heard an indignant shout from Ivan and a clamour from other voices. I sensed and felt a lot of startled movement among the riders, but at first I assumed it to be the sort of everyday commotion when one in a company of horses lets fly with his heels at another.
Ivan, swearing, was picking himself up off the ground. One horse with its rider detached itself from the group and raced off over the hill in the direction of Newmarket town. I thought with irritation that I'd need to rap a knuckle or two and grudged the waste of time.
Ivan came storming up to me with his complaint.
“That madman,” he said furiously, “came at me with a knife!”
“He can't have done.”
“Look, then.” He raised his left arm so that I could see his jacket, the tweed coat identical to that usually worn in the training scenes by Nash. At about waist level the cloth was cut open for seven or eight inches from front to back.
“I'm telling you!” Ivan was rigid with fear on top of indignation. “He had a knife.”
Convinced and enormously alarmed, I glanced instinctively to find the horse I'd been riding, but he was being led around a good way off. Nearest in the matter of transport stood one of the camera trucks, though pointing in the wrong direction. I scrambled behind its steering wheel, made a stunt-worthy three-point turn and raced across the turf in the direction of Newmarket, coming into view of the fleeing horseman in the distance as soon as I was over the hilltop.
He was too far ahead for me to have a realistic chance of catching up with him. Over grass, a horse was as fast as the truck; and he had only to reach the town and to slow to a walk to become instantly invisible, as Newmarket was threaded through and through with special paths known as horse-walks which had been purpose-laid to allow strings of horses to transfer to the gallops on the Heath from their stables in the town without having to disrupt traffic on the roads. Any rider moving slowly on a horse-walk became an unremarkable part of the general scenery, even on a Sunday morning.
It crossed my mind that I should perhaps try to catch him on film, but the camera on the truck was bolted to face backwards, as normally it was driven along in front of its subject, filming advancing cars, people or horses. If I stopped to turn the truck and change places to operate the camera my quarry would be too far off even for blow-ups, if not entirely out of sight.
I was just about to give up when the distant horse was suddenly and violently reined to a halt, the rider reversing his direction and starting back towards me. The truck's engine raced. His head came up. He seemed to see me speeding down the hill towards him. He whirled his horse round again and galloped towards Newmarket at an even faster pace than before.
Even though the distance between us had closed, he'd travelled too far towards safety. It was already hard to distinguish his outline against the buildings ahead. I had to admit to myself that I wasn't going to catch him, and if so I would settle for second best and try to discover what had made him stop and reverse.
I braked the truck to a stan
dstill as near as I could judge to the place where he'd turned, then jumped out onto the grass, trying to see what he might have seen, that could have been important enough to interrupt his flight.
He'd been facing the town. I looked that way and could see nothing to alarm him. There seemed no reason for him to have doubled back, but no one escaping at that pace would have stopped unless he had to.
If I were filming it... why might he stop?
Because he'd dropped something.
The uphill stretch of well-grassed exercise ground was as wide as an airport runway and almost as long. I couldn't be sure I was in the right place. If the rider had dropped something small I could search all day. If he had dropped something insignificant I wouldn't see any importance in anything I might come across. Yet he had stopped.
I took a few irresolute strides. There was simply too much space. Grass all round; miles of it. I looked up the hill, to the brow, and saw all the film horses and riders standing there, like Indians appearing on the skyline in an old pioneer movie. The sun was rising behind them.
I'd dropped my walkie-talkie up there in my hurry. I decided to drive the truck back up the hill, having left a mark where I was currently standing, and get all the lads to walk down in that strung-out sideways fashion, to see if they could find anything odd on the ground.
I marked the spot by taking off my light blue sweater and dropping it in a heap: anything smaller couldn't be seen. I walked back to climb into the truck.
The sun rose brilliantly over the hill, and in the grass twenty paces ahead of me, something glinted.
I went on foot to see what it was, as nothing should glint where racehorses worked; and I stood transfixed and breathless.
The escaping rider had dropped his knife.
No wonder he'd tried to retrieve it. I stared down at the thing which lay on the turf in front of my toes, and felt both awed and repelled. It was no ordinary knife. It had a wide double-edged blade about eight inches long, joined to a handle consisting of a bar with four finger holes like substantial rings attached to one side of it. The blade was steel and the grip yellowish, like dulled brass. Overall the knife, about a foot long, was thick, strong, frightening and infinitely deadly.