by Dick Francis
“Mm.” I leaned forward, picked up one of the remaining two tubes lying on the paper plate and asked her if she’d seen anything like it before.
“I don’t think so. Why?”
“They were being carried in one of my horse vans, hidden inside this thermos flask.”
She came to full alertness, all the tired lines shed.
“What are they?”
“I don’t know. But it’s possible—possible’s the strongest I’d put it—that they might be what the masked intruder was looking for in the cab of my nine-van, because that’s where they were, in the cab. In a carrier with these uneaten sandwiches in this thermos of undrunk coffee.”
She took the tube from me and held it to the light.
“What’s inside?”
“I don’t know. I thought Patrick Venables might be able to find out.”
She lowered the tube and looked at me, smothering excitement and saying, “They’re the first concrete piece of evidence that anything’s going on.”
I picked up the packet of sandwiches and showed her the labels.
“Brett, the driver who took the nine-van to Newmarket last Thursday with the two-year-olds . . .”
“And who has left?”
I nodded. “Brett—I think probably Brett because Dave had diarrhea—anyway, one of them bought sandwiches like these on that journey, because there was an empty packet just like this in some trash that came back in the cab. They threw the trash away on Friday morning when they cleaned out the van. Anyway, suppose Brett’s sandwiches came from the shop in the South Mimms service station, and suppose . . . well, why not suppose . . . that these sandwiches here came from the same place . . . ?” I paused, but she simply listened, not commenting or disagreeing. I went on. “Dave picked up our hitchhiker at South Mimms. So . . . well . . . what if these sandwiches and this thermos were traveling with Kevin Keith Ogden?”
Given the supposition, her reasoning followed the same path that mine had and came up with the same observations.
“If the tubes belonged to the dead passenger, they can’t be relevant to the containers under the vans. They might well not have anything to do with you at all. The man didn’t know he was going to die. He probably meant to take these tubes with him.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“All the same, very interesting. And . . .” She stopped pensively.
“Yes?”
She told me her emerging conclusions, and I nodded. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“You don’t need me, really, do you?” she said.
“I need your eyes.”
Harve finished his chores and joined us in the office, asking Nina how she’d fared and whether she had any questions. She thanked him, cutting down, I noticed, on the purity of her blue-blooded vowels, but not to an insulting extent. I wondered how often and how regularly she transformed herself for Patrick Venables.
The phone rang and I answered it, finding Sandy on the line.
“Inquest on Jogger,” he said. “It’s just come through.
Wednesday, ten A.M., Winchester Coroner’s Court. All they’ll do is open the inquest and adjourn it pending results of inquiries. Normal for accident cases. I asked if they’d need you but they said not yet. They’ll want Harve, as he found him, and Bruce Farway, of course. Also the inquest on Kevin Keith Ogden, they want Dave to attend. I’ll brief him about where to go, OK?”
“Yes, thanks, Sandy.”
I put down the receiver and told Harve he’d be needed briefly on Wednesday. Harve made a face of disinclination and shrugged. The phone rang again at once as if in continuation of the same conversation, but in fact there was a strange nasal voice in my ear, full of self-importance and busy-busy.
“John Tigwood here,” he said.
“Oh. Yes?”
“Maudie Watermead told me to get in touch.”
“John Tigwood. Friend of Maudie’s sister, Lorna?”
He corrected me briskly. “Director of Centaur Care.”
“Yes, I know.”
“John Tigwood,” Harve muttered disapprovingly. “Potty little pipsqueak. Always on the cadge.”
“What can I do for you?” I asked the phone temperately.
“Collect some horses for me,” Tigwood said.
“Certainly,” I agreed with warmth. “Anytime.” Business was business, after all. Whatever I thought of John Tigwood personally, I was all for taking his money.
“A retirement farm is closing in Yorkshire,” he told me gravely, making it sound portentous. “We’ve agreed to take the horses and find new homes for them. The Watermeads have agreed to put two in their bottom paddock. Benjy Usher’s taking two others. I’m on to Marigold English, even though she’s new here. How about yourself? Can I rope you in?”
“Sorry, no,” I said firmly. “When do you want them transported?”
“Tomorrow do you?”
“Certainly,” I said.
“Good. Lorna herself wants to go with your van, acting as groom.”
“All right, fine.”
He gave me directions and I told him the fee.
“Oh, look here, I was hoping you’d do it for charity.”
“Sorry, no.” I was friendly and apologetic as far as it went.
“But it’s for Lorna!” he insisted.
“I don’t expect Maudie said I would do the job for nothing.”
After a pause he said grudgingly, “She did warn me.”
“Mm. So do you want me to fetch them, or not?”
A shade huffily he said, “You’ll get paid. Though I do think you might be more generous. After all, it’s a good cause.”
“You could ask someone else to fetch them,” I suggested. “You might get someone else to do it for nothing.”
His silence suggested that he’d already tried someone else. Several someones, perhaps. It was a long way from Pixhill to the place in Yorkshire from where he wanted me to collect seven geriatric cases, shaky on their old legs, to deliver them to their new homes.
When Tigwood had gone off the line I handed the directions to Harve. Nina, having listened to my side of the exchange, asked what it had been all about.
Harve told her disgustedly, “There’s this wacky home for very old horses. This John Tigwood, he boards them out all over the place. He charges the owners of the old horses for looking after them, but he doesn’t pay the people who give the horses homes. It’s a racket! And then he has the cheek to ask Freddie for free transport, in the name of charity.”
I smiled. “It’s one of the local good causes. People organize fund-raisers. They twist a lot of arms. I daresay I ought to have offered the transport for nothing but to be honest I don’t like being pressured or conned, and as I’ll bet the owners of the horses will have to pay Tigwood to get their old pensioners brought down here, I don’t see why he shouldn’t pay me.”
“The point is,” Harve said, “who’s doing the job?”
“Whoever goes, takes Lorna Lipton, Mrs. Watermead’s sister, as groom,” I told him, looking over the chart. “We’ll have to send a nine-van . . . The new driver, Aziz what’s his name, will be driving Brett’s nine-van from now on. He may as well start with the geriatrics.”
“What new driver?” Harve said.
“I engaged him this morning, after you’d gone. Best of the five who came for interviews.”
I wrote Centaur Care in the chart square for the nine-van, and put “Aziz” at the head of the column.
Centaur Care, the name of Tigwood’s outfit, sounded so like Center Care that for years I’d thought that was how it was spelled. A tiny institution of its kind, the Centaur Care office occupied a small one-story economically built hut, for want of a grander word, on the edge of a two-acre paddock on the outskirts of Pixhill. Adjoining ramshackle wooden stables, capable of holding six pathetic customers with low expectations, just about passed county regulation inspections, the charitable status of the enterprise shielding it from blasts of il
l authoritarian will. John Tigwood’s public manner elevated this setup in Pixhill’s collective consciousness to major good works: I was sure that many who gave to the noble cause hadn’t set eyes on its headquarters.
There were “Centaur Care” collecting boxes scattered throughout Pixhill, round tins with slots into which one was exhorted to pour “long life for old friends.” John Tigwood came round regularly to empty the containers and write fulsome receipts. He’d left one tin in our canteen but had fumed to find gifts in it of buttons, crackers and an out-of-date condom. “Be glad it hasn’t been used,” I’d said, which he hadn’t seen as funny.
Harve was looking over the whole chart, and shrugging philosophically at the news that the computer wasn’t working. Like me, he still preferred a written chart, though he inclined to the blackboard on the wall we’d had until I got rid of it. Too much chalk dust in the air, once we’d installed the computer.
I told Harve that all the tools had been stolen from Jogger’s van. He swore briefly but saw no great significance in it. We would need, I said, another slider for inspecting the undersides of the vans and Harve, nodding, suggested I ask Nigel to make one.
“All he needs is a bit of plasterboard and some casters,” Harve said. “He’s good with his hands, I’ll say that for him.”
I smothered a smile. “He can do it tomorrow, then,” I said. I pondered briefly and came to a decision. “On Wednesday Nigel can go to France to collect the show jumper for Jericho Rich’s daughter. Nina, here, will go with him as a second driver.”
Harve gave her a startled sideways glance and raised his eyebrows to me comically.
“I did warn her,” I said. “She says she’s Nigel-proof.”
“She doesn’t know him!”
“She’s experienced with horses,” I explained. “Jericho’s daughter wants us to send an attendant to travel back with the horse. Nina can double that with driving.”
“But you said Dave was to go, with Phil driving his six-van,” Harve protested.
“I’ve changed my mind. Nina’s going with Nigel. They can take the four-van Nina was driving today. It will be better, more economical.” To her I said, “You’ll need overnight things. OK?”
She nodded and, when Harve had gone out to meet the other incoming van, said, “You’ll want one of us to sleep in the van, won’t you?”
“It has that tube on the underside,” I said agreeing.
“Yes. Well, hang out the bait. Let everyone know that that particular van is going to France. Someone might bite.”
“Um,” I said hesitantly. “No one expects you to do anything dangerous.”
She smiled slightly. “Don’t be too sure. Patrick can be bloody demanding.” She seemed unconcerned. “And I won’t exactly be parachuting into occupied France behind German lines.”
She was, I saw, exactly the kind of woman who had done just that in World War II and, as if reading my thoughts, she nodded and said, “My mother did it, and survived to have me afterwards.”
“That takes a bit of living up to.”
“It’s in the blood.”
“Do you have any children?” I asked.
She wiggled long fingers in the dismissive gesture of unsentimental nanny-assisted mothers. “Three. All grown out of Pony Club age, all flown the nest. Husband long dead. Life suddenly empty, boring, no further point in showing or eventing. So . . . Patrick to the rescue. Need any more?”
“No.”
I understood her deeply, and she realized it, moved despite herself to an internal wave of emotion and self-knowledge. She shook her head as if to disown the moment and got to her feet, tall and competent, a horsewoman for whom horses ultimately were not enough.
“If you don’t need me tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll deliver the tubes to Patrick in London and discuss things with him, and be back on Wednesday. What time?”
“You’ll need to set off from here at seven. You’ll cross from Dover to Calais and reach your French destination at about six. Returning on Thursday, you’ll have to go to Jericho Rich’s daughter’s place, of course, to deliver the horse. You’ll be back here late, perhaps ten o’clock.”
“Right.”
She wrapped the two amber tubes carefully in a handkerchief and stowed them in her purse. Then with a brief nod of farewell she walked out to her car and inconspicuously departed.
Retrieving the four other tubes from the desk drawer, I wrapped each one in a tissue and put them in my jacket pocket. Then I poured the mug’s contents back into the thermos, screwed on the inner stopper and the outer cap and restored it with the sandwiches to the carrier for onward transport to my house.
The workday was ending. There were still vans out on the road, though I wouldn’t wait for their return. The drivers never expected it and might have taken too much close checking as a lack of trust. There had, however, been phone messages during the day both from the nine-van I’d sent to Ireland with broodmares and from the van in France that was bringing the two two-year-olds over to join Michael Watermead’s stable, all the calls to the effect that neither van would be arriving back until two or three in the morning.
For us, that was quite normal. For Michael Watermead, it was bound to be an intolerable inconvenience. I had already arranged with the driver to come straight back to home base and to keep the two young horses in the farmyard’s stables until morning, but remembered I’d forgotten to tell Michael himself.
Stifling a yawn, I pressed his numbers and found him at home.
“Two in the morning!” he protested. “You know I don’t like it. It disturbs the whole yard, noise and lights when the other horses are asleep. They do need a good sleep, you know.”
“If you like we could keep your two-year-olds here in the farmyard stables until morning.” I suggested it as if I’d just thought of it. “They’d come to no harm. They’re traveling well, my driver says. They’re calm and eating.”
“You might have organized it better,” Michael grumbled, gently reproving, as usual converting any strong feeling into good-mannered restraint.
“There’s been a holdup with the ferry in Calais,” I explained. “Your horses won’t reach Dover until about ten tonight, they say. I’m very sorry, Michael, but it’s out of our hands.”
“Yes, yes, of course I do see. But blast it, it’s bloody irritating. Still, yes, I suppose those two-year-olds won’t come to much harm. Bring them over first thing, though. Six-thirty or soon after, when my grooms come to work. Eh?”
“First thing,” I confirmed.
“All right then.” He paused for a change of subject. “Any . . . er . . . more news of your mechanic, poor fe llow?”
“The police were asking accident-type questions.”
“Too bad he fell.”
“Rotten.”
“Let me know if I can do anything.”
“Thanks, Michael.”
“Maudie sends her love.”
I put the receiver down with a sigh, wishing Maudie meant it, and after a moment’s thought got through to the stud farm that was expecting the delivery from Ireland.
“Your four mares with foals,” I said soothingly, “are on the ferry right now but they won’t get to Fishguard until eleven tonight and if we bring them straight on to you they’ll be with you sometime after three. Is that all right with you?”
“Fine. We’ll be up all night anyway, with mares foaling.”
Jobs done, I stood up tiredly, picked up the carrier, locked the outer office door, leaving the canteen open for the drivers, and went out to shift gears in the Fourtrak, my workhorse buggy. I sometimes felt, climbing behind that practical wheel, as if the Jaguar XJS persona was leaving me altogether; but somewhere below the businessman the jockey still had a pulse, and I now saw that it was essential to keep him alive, not to let him slip away, to be still willing for him to risk his neck daily, even if he no longer did.
I drove home, ate, went to bed.
I would unleash the Jaguar more often, I tho
ught.
SOON AFTER SIX-THIRTYin the morning I was up, dressed and breakfasted, and driving along in the strengthening daylight to the farmyard to see what was what.
The van from France with Michael Watermead’s two-year-olds stood quietly in its accustomed place, its cargo dozing in the stable, its driver nowhere about. There was a folded note from him, however, tucked under the windshield wiper. I opened it and read, “Can someone else take them to Watermead’s? I’m bushed, I’m out of hours, and I think I’ve got flu. Sorry, Freddie.” It was signed “Lewis” and dated two-thirty A.M., Tuesday.
Damn the flu, I thought forcefully. Damn all invisible enemies, in fact.
I unlocked the outer office door and went along to my own room to fetch the duplicate keys of Lewis’s van, deciding that it was easier to drive it along to Michael’s yard myself rather than wait for another driver to be ready. Accordingly I unlocked the horse van, loaded the patient untroubled guests from my stable and took them the scant mile to their destination.
Michael was already out in his yard, looking pointedly at his watch, which stood nearer to seven than the appointed six-thirty.
When I climbed down from the cab his displeasure lessened a little but not altogether. He was, for him, in a comprehensively bad mood.
“Freddie! Where’s Lewis?” he said.
“Lewis came back with flu,” I said ruefully.
“Dammit!” Michael did some arithmetic. “What about Doncaster? This flu takes so long.”
“I’ll give you a good driver,” I promised.
“It’s not the same. Lewis is helpful with saddling and so on. Some of those lazy buggers get to the races and sleep in their cabs until it’s time to go home. That Brett was one of those. I couldn’t stand him.”
Making sympathetic noises, I lowered the ramp for access to the two-year-olds and untied the nearer one to lead him out.
“I thought the bloody French were sending a groom with them,” Michael grumbled, his fair head back, his mild voice plaintive.
In anyone else, the displeasure level would have come roaring out in full-blown anger. In Jericho Rich, for example, intemperate man.
“Lewis told us yesterday on the phone that the French groom went back home from Calais,” I explained. “He apparently thought he would be seasick on the crossing. Lewis assured me he could manage on his own, so we decided not to lose even more time in finding a substitute attendant. Where do you want me to put this fellow?”