by Dick Francis
“The police will find Jogger’s killer,” Nina said, “and you will have no more trouble and I will go home and that will be that.”
“I don’t want you to go home.”
I said it without thinking, and surprised myself as much as her. She looked at me thoughtfully, unerringly hearing what I hadn’t meant to say.
“That’s loneliness speaking,” she said slowly.
“I’m happy alone.”
“Yes. Like I am.”
She finished her coffee and patted her mouth on a napkin with an air of finality.
“Time to go,” she said. “Thanks for the dinner.”
I paid the bill and we went out to the cars, hers and mine, both our workhorse wheels.
“Good night,” she said matter-of-factly. “See you in the morning.” She climbed without pause or tension into her seat, adept at unembarrassing partings. “Good night, Freddie.”
“Night,” I said.
She drove away with a smile, friendly, nothing else. I wasn’t sure whether or not to feel relieved.
SOMETIME DURING THE night I woke suddenly, hearing again in my mind Sandy’s insistent voice, “You have to ask the right questions.”
I’d thought of a question I should have asked, and hadn’t. I’d been slow and dim. I would ask the question first thing in the morning.
First thing in the morning, rousing me from depths of renewed slumber, the telephone bell brought Marigold’s loud voice into my wincing ear.
“I’m not too happy about your friend Peterman,” she said, coming at once to the point. “I’d like your advice. Can you call round here? Say, at about nine o’clock?”
“Mm,” I said, surfacing as sluggishly as any half-drowned swimmer. “Yes, Marigold. Nine o’clock. Fine.”
“Are you drunk?” she demanded.
“No, just asleep.” In bed, supine, eyes shut.
“But it’s seven already,” she pointed out severely. “The day’s half over.”
“I’ll be there.” I fumbled the receiver towards its bedside cradle.
“Good,” her voice said from a distance. “Great.”
Sleep was alluring, sleep a temptress, sleep as beckoning as a drug. Only the remembrance of the essential question I hadn’t asked got me out of bed and into the bathroom.
Saturday morning. Coffee. Cornflakes.
Still bleary-brained, I padded from the kitchen into the wreck of the sitting room and switched on the computer. There was no crash of hard disk. I called up Isobel’s new entries of details of the drivers and found them still basic and abbreviated: names, addresses, dates of birth, next-of-kin, driving license numbers, journeys driven that week, hours spent at the wheel.
Invading her privacy, I typed Nina’s name, and read her address, care of Lauderhill Abbey, Stow-on-the-Wold, and her age, forty-four.
Nine years older than myself. Eight and a half, to be accurate. I drank my second cup of coffee very hot and wondered how much that age gap mattered.
I answered four telephone calls in quick succession, receiving, altering, agreeing to trips for that day and typing them into the program for Isobel, who worked in the office most Saturday mornings from eight until noon. At ten to eight she phoned me herself, reporting her arrival, allowing me gratefully to switch the business line to the farmyard.
I drove along there myself to watch the day’s journeys begin and to sort out any last-minute hitches, but again Isobel and Harve seemed to have everything running smoothly.
Nina (forty-four) gave me a small hello smile as she arrived to go to Lingfield, her appearance as determinedly unattractive as ever. Harve, Phil and the crowd were in and out of the canteen, stretching, picking up work sheets, flirting mildly with Isobel. Any Saturday morning. Another race day. Twenty-four hours in a life.
Most of the fleet had gone by eight-thirty. I went into Isobel’s office to find her typing the day’s adjusted programs into her computer, working mostly from what I’d typed in at home.
“How’s things?” I asked vaguely.
“Always frantic.” She smiled, happy enough.
“I want to ask you to remember something.”
“Fire away.” She went on typing, looking at the screen.
“Um,” I said, “last August . . .” I paused, waiting for more of her attention.
“What about last August?” she asked vaguely, still typing. “You go away in August.”
“Yes, I know. When I was away last August, what did Jogger find in the inspection pit?”
She stopped typing and looked at me in puzzlement.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“What did Jogger find in the pit? Something dead. What did he find dead in the pit?”
“But Jogger . . . he was dead in the pit, wasn’t he?”
“Last Sunday Jogger was dead in the pit, yes. But last August, apparently he found something else dead there . . . a dead nun, he said, but it can’t have been a dead nun. So can you remember what he found? Did he tell you? Did he tell anyone?”
“Oh.” Her forehead developed lines of thought as she raised her eyebrows. “I do vaguely remember, but it wasn’t anything to worry you about. I mean, it was so silly.”
“What did he find?”
“I think it was a rabbit.”
“A rabbit?”
“Yes. A dead rabbit. He said it was crawling with maggots or something and he threw it in the Dumpster. That was all.”
“Are you sure?” I asked doubtfully.
She nodded. “He didn’t know what else to do with it, so he threw it in the Dumpster.”
“I mean, are you sure it was a rabbit?”
“I think so. I didn’t see it. Jogger said it must have hopped in there somehow and once it had fallen into the pit of course it couldn’t get out.”
“No,” I agreed. “Do you remember what day it was?” She shook her head decisively. “If you can’t remember it, it must have been when you were away.” She turned automatically to the computer and again the familiar frustration crossed her face. “It might have been in the records we lost, though I don’t really think so. I can’t remember bothering to enter anything like that.”
“Did anyone else see Jogger’s rabbit?”
“I simply can’t remember.” It was clear from her expression that she couldn’t see any importance in it either.
“Oh, well. Thanks anyway,” I said.
She smiled without guile and turned back to her work.
Nuns, I thought. Rabbits. Nuns and monks, nuns and sisters . . . nuns and habits.
Jogger’s words. “Take a butcher’s at them nuns. There was a dead one in the pit last August—and it was crawling.”
The only rabbits that I could think of that he might mean were the rabbits belonging to the Watermead children, but even if one of those rabbits had somehow escaped and got as far as the inspection pit, it would hardly have been crawling with maggots, unless, of course, it had been there dead for days when Jogger found it. It didn’t seem to be of any importance . . . but to Jogger it had seemed important enough for him to tell me about it—in his own unintelligible way—seven months after the event.
I looked at my watch. Approaching nine o’clock. What was I supposed to be doing at nine o’clock? The sleep-filled assignation with Marigold English swam to the surface.
I told Isobel where I was going and to reach me by mobile phone for a while if she needed me, and drove to Marigold’s yard.
She was outside in her woolly hat and came hurrying towards me when I appeared, carrying with her a bowl of horse nuts.
“Don’t get out,” she commanded. “Drive me to look at Peterman.”
Accordingly I followed her directions, which involved bumping down a grassy track to a distant paddock behind her house. The paddock sloped down to a brook and was edged with tall willow trees that would give great shade for old horses when the leaves came out.
Peterman, however, was up near the gate and looked thoroughly miserable. He p
ut his nose down to Marigold’s offered horse nuts and then moved his head away as if offended.
“See?” she said. “He won’t eat.”
“What are the nuts?” I asked.
She mentioned a standard brand much used and well respected. “All horses like them, they never fail.”
I looked at Peterman, puzzled. “What’s the matter with him, then?”
Marigold hesitated. “I phoned my old veterinarian on Salisbury Plain to ask him, but he said just to give the old chap time to settle in. Then I came down here again yesterday evening, and you know what a nice sunny evening it was? The sun was shining low and yellow on the old horse, and you could see them.”
“See what?”
“Ticks.”
I stared at her.
“Tick bites,” she said. “I think that’s what’s wrong with him. I phoned John Tigwood not half an hour ago to tell him to do something about it and he said it was rubbish and impossible, and anyway you, Freddie, had got the local veterinarian round on Tuesday when the horses got to Pixhill, and you’d insisted on an examination, and the veterinarian had passed the horses fully fit and had signed a document to that effect which he would show me if I liked, and really, I didn’t like his tone much and I nearly told him to fetch the horse back again, but then I’d already asked you to come and look, and knowing that you wanted this old thing well looked after . . . well, I decided to wait until you came and to ask you what you thought.” She stopped, running out of breath. “What do you think?”
“Um . . . where were the ticks?”
“On his neck.”
I peered at Peterman’s neck, but could see only his bay coat, still thick for winter. Come warmer weather he would shed a lot of it, revealing the short cooler coat of summer.
“What were they like?” I asked Marigold.
“Tiny brown things. The same color as his coat. I would never have seen them except for the sun, and because one of them moved.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know . . . maybe seven or eight. I couldn’t see them very clearly.”
“But, Marigold . . .”
“You think I’m potty? What about the bees?”
“Er . . .”
She said impatiently, “Bees, Freddie. Bees. Varroa jacobonsi.”
“Start at the beginning,” I begged.
“They are mites,” she said. “They live on bees. They don’t kill them, they just suck their blood until the bees can’t fly.”
“I didn’t know bees had blood.”
She gave me a withering look. “My brother panics about varroa,” she said. “He’s a fruit farmer and half his trees don’t bear fruit because the bees are too weak to pollinate .”
“Oh. Yes. I see.”
“So he smokes a pipe at them.”
“For God’s sake . . .”
“Pipe tobacco smoke is about the only thing that knocks out varroa mites. If you blow pipe tobacco smoke into a beehive all the mites fall down dead.”
“Um,” I said. “It’s fascinating, but what has it got to do with Peterman?”
“Don’t be so slow,” she commanded. “Ticks carry illnesses, don’t they? I can’t risk the ticks on Peterman hopping onto my two-year-olds, now can I?”
“No,” I said slowly, “you can’t.”
“So regardless of what John Tigwood says, I’m not going to keep this old horse here. I’m very sorry, Freddie, but you’ll have to find him another home.”
“Yes,” I said. “I will.”
“When?”
I thought of her star-studded stable and of my own strong desire to transport them forever to the winners’ enclosures.
I said, “I’ll walk him down to my house. There’s a patch of garden he can stay in temporarily. Then I’ll walk back for my car. Would that do?”
She nodded with approval. “You’re a good lad, Freddie.” “I’m sorry to have given you this trouble.”
“I just hope you understand.”
I assured her I did. I drove back along the grassy track to her stable yard, where she lent me a leading-rein for Peterman and then led me by the arm to peer over a half-door at her absolute pride and joy, the three-year-old colt that, if all went well, would be contesting the 2000 Guineas and the Derby against Michael Watermead’s sensation, Irkab Alhawa. In her, as in Michael, the fledgling excitement shimmered in the eyes, the wild hope growing.
“You do see,” she reiterated, “about Peterman.”
“Of course,” I said. I kissed her cheek. She nodded. I could slaughter John Tigwood, I thought, for putting me in such an awkward position, even though, I thought more fairly, it wasn’t actually his fault, as I had myself asked Marigold specifically to take Peterman.
Sighing at my folly, I returned to the paddock, put on the leading-rein and led my old friend out of his idyllic pasture and along the road to the very much smaller patch of shaggy lawn in the walled garden behind my house.
“Don’t eat the bloody daffodils,” I told him.
He looked at me balefully. As I took off the leading-rein to walk away I noticed he wasn’t even interested in the grass.
I collected my Fourtrak from Marigold’s yard and went home again. Peterman stood more or less where I’d left him, looking miserable, the daffodils intact. If it hadn’t been for the fallacy of endowing animals with human feelings, I’d have said the old horse was depressed. I gave him a bucket of water, but he didn’t drink.
Various thoughts had been popping into my mind, almost as if a couple of sleeping cylinders had resumed firing. I sat down at the computer in my battered room and looked up the instruction manuals again for a renewed expedition through the old information on the healthy disks.
In surveying the drivers’ journeys I had not, I’d remembered, pulled out Jogger’s own. Even when I did, I learned little, as he’d driven very seldom; barely half a dozen times the previous year and nearly all on Bank Holiday Mondays, the days when with all the holiday race meetings country-wide, we were always scraping the barrel for chauffeurs.
I rubbed my nose, thought a bit more, and began to bring to the screen the horse vans themselves, one by one, identifying them by registration number.
The columns on the screen came up looking completely different: the same information as before but illuminated from the side, like Marigold’s view of otherwise invisible ticks.
Identified by registration number, each van’s history now gave me dates, journeys, purpose of journey, drivers, engine hours logged, odometer readings, maintenance schedules, repairs, licensing, roadworthy certificates, unladen weights, fuel capacity, fuel actually used day by day.
After some taxing cerebration, much consultation with the manuals and a few false starts, I came up next with details of all maintenance work performed by Jogger the previous August. This time I’d sorted the work by chronology, and had provided myself more simply with the date, the horse van registration number and the work done.
Day by summer day I looked back through that one month in Jogger’s life, and there I found her, the dead nun.
August 10th. The registration number of the horse van regularly driven by Phil. Oil change over the inspection pit. Tanks of air for the air brakes drained. Air brake compressor checked. All grease nipples filled. At the end, a note entered on the day by Isobel and forgotten: “Jogger says a dead rabbit fell out of the horse van into the pit. Crawling with ticks, he said. Disposed of in Dumpster.”
I sat looking vaguely into space.
After a while I went back to the beginning and called Phil’s records to the screen, to find out where he’d been on August 10th or 9th or 8th.
Phil, my faithful aid told me, had not been driving that particular horse van on any of those days. He’d been driving another van, an older one, which I had, I remembered, subsequently sold.
Back to the drawing board: back to registration numbers, the sideways illumination.
On August 7th the horse van Phil nowadays drove had gone t
o France with two runners for Benjy Usher. They had run on the 8th at Cagnes-sur-Mer, down on the Mediterranean Sea, and returned to Pixhill on the 9th.
That horse van, on that journey, had been driven by Lewis.
Lewis had actually driven that particular van most of the previous year, as I knew perfectly well once I’d thought about it. I’d transferred Lewis to the sparkling new super-six I’d bought in the autumn to replace the old one; transferred him so that the Usher and Watermead horses should go in my best style to their destinies. Lewis had driven one of Michael’s horses to Doncaster in September in the new super-six to win the last Classic race of the year, the St. Leger.
At about ten-fifteen I telephoned Edinburgh.
“Quipp here,” a pleasant voice said. English, not a Scot.
“Um . . . Excuse me phoning you,” I said, “but do you happen to know where I could find my sister, Lizzie?”
After the briefest of pauses he said, “Which are you, Roger or Freddie?”
“Freddie.”
“Hold on.”
I held, and heard his voice yelling, “Liz, your brother Fred . . .” and then she was, moderately startled, saying, “Is it your head?”
“What? No. Except it’s been slow and stupid. Look, um, Lizzie, do you know anyone who knows anything about ticks?”
“Ticks?”
“Yeah. Little biters.”
“For God’s sake . . .”
She told Professor Quipp what I wanted and he came back on the line.
“What sort of ticks?” he asked.
“That’s what I want to find out. The sort that live on horses and . . . er . . . rabbits.”
“Do you have any specimens?”
“I’ve got a horse in the garden which probably has some.”
After a silence Lizzie came back. “I’ve tried to explain to Quipp that you’re concussed.”
“Far from it, at last.”
“What horse in the garden?”
“Peterman. One of the geriatrics from last Tuesday. Seriously, Lizzie, ask your professor how I get information about ticks. There are too many multimillion animals in Pixhill for messing about if ticks could make them ill.”
“Ye Gods.”