by Dick Francis
The man himself was somewhere among the scarves, sitting separately because there hadn’t been two seats available together. He had brought with him minimal overnight necessities, a huge amount of hope and a large bag of scientific field instruments. Nothing would have stopped him in his quest for the unnamed vector of E. risticii. He quivered with hunger. He reached out with percipient fingertips, like Handel to Hallelujah, like Newton to calculus, like Ehrlich, no doubt, to arsenic for syphilis. Reached out with genius towards recognition.
“It’s early in the year for Potomac fever,” he had said. “It’s a warm weather thing, usually . . .”
“The ticks came from down south in France,” I told him. “From the Rhône Valley.”
“A river! But usually May through October.”
“We had a dead rabbit crawling with ticks in August last year.”
“Yes. Yes. August.”
“We had a bug going round locally in Pixhill last summer that put a small number of horses out of action for the season.”
He groaned. With pleasure, as far as I could see.
“They had the same sort of unspecified feverish illness also in places in France,” I said. “I read it again in the newspaper only this week.”
“Find the newspaper.”
“Yes, OK.”
“No one would have tested for equine ehrlichiosis . . . it’s still almost an unknown infection. Rare. Sporadic. Not an epidemic. Hard to find. This is wonderful.”
“Not to the horse owners.”
“But this is history . . .”
It was a hopeless disaster, I thought, if I couldn’t clear everything up quickly. “Freddie Croft’s horse vans brought Potomac horse fever to Britain.” I could just see the headlines. “Freddie Croft’s drivers brought fever to Britain.” Perhaps it would be safer not to employ Freddie Croft’s transport? Sorry and all that, Freddie, but I can’t take the risk.
Confidence was fragile. Loyalty was fickle. Rabbits bringing ticks? No, thanks very much.
Freddie Croft Raceways out of business.
I sweated.
One of the Watermead rabbits had been missing on the previous Sunday. There were only fourteen, not fifteen, the children had said. Maybe Lewis, the trusted rabbit handler, had taken that one rabbit with him to France. Taken it in a hidden compartment, out of sight above the fuel tanks. Last August it had been Lewis who had brought from France the dead rabbit crawling with ticks . . . Jogger’s dead nun.
Ticks. Jogger’s voice came distinctly through the roaring rugby songs . . . “Poland had the same five” . . . A childhood rhyme presented itself in synchronizing time with the singing. One, two, buckle my shoe/ three, four, knock at the door/ five, six, pick up sticks . . . “Poland had the same five” . . . six, sticks, ricks, mix, fix . . . Poland had the same . . . ticks.
Poland had the same ticks on a horse last summer, and it died.
Who was Poland?
Oh, God, I thought. Not Poland and Waleska. Not Poland and coal or Poland and Danzig or Poland and corridor or Poland and solidarity. No . . . Poland and Russia.
Russia . . . Usher.
Benjy Usher had the same ticks . . .
Dot’s voice, “Those old wrecks. They died. I hate it. They were always outside the drawing room window . . .”
A well-pinched flight attendant asked if she could fetch me anything, raising her voice above the joyful surrounding din.
“Treble scotch . . . well, no, just one. Got to drive home.”
Pictures crowded my inner eye. Benjy Usher, training through his upstairs window. Benjy never touching his horses. Benjy getting me to saddle his runners at Sandown.
Benjy couldn’t have known, surely, that his old dying lodgers probably carried Ehrlichiae . . . Could he? Benjy . . . afraid the microscopic organisms would hop onto himself?
But if he’d feared that, why was he proposing to take two more old horses? Did he know that they, too, might carry ticks?
Lewis drove for him often.
The flight attendant brought my drink.
Benjy entered his horses in small-field races and had had the luck of the devil with walkovers.
It had to be coincidental. Benjy was rich.
What if what he hankered for were winners, not money? Harve’s voice, Mr. Usher’s “a rotten trainer . . .”
It was nonsense. It had to be.
From somewhere, mingled with the rugby songs, a sentence I’d read once surfaced into consciousness: “It isn’t necessary to speculate about the driving force within us, it leaps out and reveals itself. Under pressure, it can’t be hidden.”
What if Benjy Usher’s driving force were a hunger for winners, a hunger his own skill wasn’t enough to assuage . . . ?
No. Impossible. Yet winners gave him orgasmic pleasure.
Lewis often drove for Benjy.
Lewis had cut off his ringlets last summer.
Had Lewis been afraid he would get ticks in his long hair?
He’d transported the tick-infested nun in Jogger’s pit. Jogger.
Benjy hadn’t killed Jogger. Benjy had been playing tennis on the Watermeads’ court at about the time Jogger had died.
Lewis hadn’t killed Jogger. He’d been in France.
Lewis had come back to the farmyard later than intended, at two in the morning on Monday-to-Tuesday night. He’d stabled Michael’s two-year-olds in the farmyard and left me a note to say he had flu. I’d driven his super-six on Tuesday morning with the two-year-olds to Michael’s yard, and I’d had breakfast and watched Irkab Alhawa gallop. Then the super-six had gone racing for the day with one of the fleet’s other drivers.
What if Lewis had in fact taken the missing rabbit to France to pick up its sick-making cargo? What if it had still been there, now tick-infested, in the hidden container, when I’d driven the super-six to Michael’s yard? What if it had still been there until the van returned from the races in the evening? What if Lewis, with only a cold after all, had gone late to the yard to retrieve the rabbit . . . and what if I had walked in there while this retrieval was in progress?
Did it make sense?
As much sense as anything else.
What had Jogger walked in on, then?
What had occurred on Sunday morning in the farmyard that Jogger had seen, and would tell me about, that it wasn’t intended that he should see?
What had happened in the farmyard on that Sunday morning?
“Ask the right questions,” Sandy had said.
That Sunday morning had been March 6th, the day the office computer had been switched on in order to activate the Michelangelo virus. Jogger wouldn’t have understood the computer. It wasn’t what he’d seen in the farmyard office that mattered, but who.
The rugger songs swelled round me.
I had an acute sense of danger.
ON THE WAY home from Heathrow I phoned Isobel, apologizing for the lateness of the hour.
Think nothing of it, she said. The day had gone well. Harve had taken two winners to Chepstow. Aziz and Dave had returned all right from Ireland but Aziz had said Dave wasn’t in good shape. Dave, Isobel thought, might be developing flu.
“Bugger,” I said.
Nina had taken a winner to Lingfield, and so had Nigel. Lewis had driven three of Benjy Usher’s jumpers to Chepstow, and had been reminded to bring his overnight things on Monday for going to Italy. Phil had been phlegmatically to Uttoxeter. Michael Watermead and Marigold English had both booked two vans for Tuesday to take horses to Doncaster sales.
“Great,” I said thankfully. Marigold had disregarded Peterman’s problem: so far, at least.
Jericho Rich had reportedly fallen out already with his new trainer, Isobel said. She thought we might be bringing the whole string back to Pixhill any day soon.
“The man’s mad,” I remarked.
“I hear you’re going to the Watermeads’ for lunch again tomorrow,” Isobel said. “I’ll go on doing the bookings, shall I?”
“Yes, p
lease,” I said gratefully. “And who told you?”
“Tessa Watermead. She came by. I taught her a few things. That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sure.”
“Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
Guggenheim, sitting beside me in the Fourtrak, repudiated my suggestion that we stop for something to eat. I’d had no lunch and was hungry. Guggenheim’s hunger for truth won the day. Besides, he said, rationalizing it and silencing me, Peterman needed the tetracycline as soon as possible.
For poor old Peterman, however, it was already too late. When Guggenheim and I went out into the dark garden, my game old partner was lying in the shadows on my lawn barely a yard from where I’d left him, his visible eye already dull, the stillness of death unmistakable.
Guggenheim’s grief was for his own career; mine for the long-ago races and the speed of a great horse.
Guggenheim had brought not soap for finding ticks but a very small battery-powered hand-held vacuum cleaner. He tried his best all over Peterman, but an inspection of the collected debris from the horse’s skin disappointed him abysmally.
He bent over his microscope in my kitchen uttering soft despairing moans.
“Nothing. Nothing. You must have brought all of them on the soap.” He sounded almost accusing, as if I’d ruined things on purpose. “But this is typical. The carrier of E. risticii is brutally elusive. Ticks feed on blood. They burrow their heads right through the skin of their host. The Ehrlichiae that live in the tick pass from the tick into the blood of the host and combine with certain blood cells. I won’t bore you with it, it’s incredibly complicated . . . but they’re only viable in living cells, and this horse has been dead for hours.”
“Have a drink?” I suggested.
“Alcohol’s irrelevant,” he said.
“Mm.”
I poured for myself, however, and after a minute he took the whisky bottle out of my hand and half filled the glass I’d set out for him.
“Anesthetic for lost hopes,” he said. “I suppose you’re right.”
“When I was your age,” I said, “I rode the wind. Quite often.”
He looked at me over his glass. “You’re saying there will be other days? You don’t understand.”
“I do, you know. I’ll try to get you some more of those ticks.”
“How?”
“I’ll sleep on it.”
We found a dinner of sorts in the fridge and cupboard, and he slept in Lizzie’s room silently all night.
In the morning I telephoned John Tigwood and told him Peterman was dead.
Tigwood’s voice, pompous as ever, full of bogus fruitiness, was also defensive and querulous.
“Marigold English complained to me that the horse was ill and she said he had ticks. Rubbish. Utter rubbish, I told her so. Horses don’t have ticks, dogs and cattle do. I’m not having her or you going around spreading such malicious rumors.”
I saw with clarity that he feared his whole act would fall apart if no one would board his geriatrics. No more collecting tins. No more self-important bustling about. He had as powerful a reason for keeping quiet as I had.
“The horse is at my house,” I said. “I’ll get the knackers to collect him, if you like.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“How are the other old horses?” I asked.
“Perfectly well,” he said furiously. “And it’s your fault Peterman went to Mrs. English. She refused point-blank to take any of the others.”
I made soothing noises and put down the receiver.
Looking about sixteen, Guggenheim came mournfully downstairs and stared out of the window at Peterman’s carcass as if willing him back to tick-infested life.
“I’d better go back to Edinburgh,” he said despondently, “unless any other horses are ill.”
“I can find out at lunch. All the gossip and news in Pixhill will be available then, at Michael Watermead’s house.”
He said if it was all right with me he would stay until after that and then leave: he had ongoing work in the laboratory that he shouldn’t be neglecting. Fine, I agreed; and he could come back instantly, of course, if anything significant happened.
He gloomily watched the knackers position their truck by my garden gate and winch the thin old corpse away. What would become of him? Guggenheim asked. Glue factory, I said. He looked as if he’d just as soon not have known.
He couldn’t believe, he said, the state of my sitting room, still in a mess. He couldn’t believe the impact that had destroyed the helicopter and the car. The mind that had done it, I told him, was still wandering around somewhere, still in possession of the ax.
“But aren’t you . . . well . . . scared?” he asked.
“Careful,” I said. “That’s why I’m not taking you with me to lunch. I don’t want anyone knowing I know a scientist, especially one who’s an expert on ticks. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Of course not.” He looked at the ax-slashed room and shivered.
I took him to the farmyard, though, and showed him the horse vans, which impressed him by their size. I explained about the containers under three of them and said I thought the ticks had come into England that way on the rabbits.
“There would have to be airholes in the containers,” he said.
“So there would.”
“Haven’t you looked?”
“No.”
He was surprised, but I didn’t explain. I took him back to my house and left him there while I went to the Watermeads’ lunch.
Maudie greeted me with affection and Michael with warmth. Many of the usual people were there: the Ushers and Bruce Farway included. Tessa indulged in back-turning and whispering into Benjy’s ear. The younger children were missing: they’d gone to stay with Susan and Hugh Palmerstone for the weekend. “They get on so well with Cinders,” Maudie said. “Such a nice little girl.” I realized that I’d hoped Cinders would again be at the Watermeads’. Don’t think about her, I told myself. Couldn’t help it.
I asked Michael if he’d accepted any of the old horses yet.
“Two of them,” he said, nodding. “Skittish old things. Running about in my bottom paddock like two-year-olds.”
I asked Dot the same question and got a different answer.
“Benjy says we can put Tigwood off for a few days. Don’t know what’s got into the old shit, actually doing what I asked.”
“What did that old horse die of last year?”
“Old age. Some sort of fever. What does it matter? I hate having them about the place.”
The veterinarian who’d given my geriatric passengers the all clear was there, comparing notes with Bruce Farway.
“How’s trade?” I asked them. “How are the sick of Pixhill? Anything interesting?”
“I hear the knackers were at your house this morning,” the veterinarian observed.
“News zooms round,” I said, resignedly. “One of the old horses died.”
“You didn’t call me in.”
“I didn’t know he was that ill, or I would have done.”
He nodded. “They’re old. They die. Can’t be helped, it’s nature.”
“Is anyone else in trouble? Anyone got last year’s bug?”
“No, thank goodness. Just the usual tendons and teeth.”
“What was last year’s bug?” Farway asked.
The veterinarian said, “Some unspecified infection. Horses got feverish. I gave them various antibiotics, and they recovered.” He frowned. “It was worrying, really, because all those horses lost their speed and form after it. But, thank goodness, it wasn’t widespread.”
“Interesting, though,” Farway said.
“You’ll be involved in Pixhill’s fortunes before you know it,” the veterinarian teased him, and Farway looked disconcerted.
Maudie’s sister, Lorna, came proprietorially to Farway’s side, taking his arm and eyeing me with the disapproval left over from my not having transported the g
eriatrics without payment. I found her disapprobation much less alarming than her earlier interest in me. Farway gave her a fond look while sharing her opinions of myself.
I drifted away from them, feeling isolated by how much I had discovered and wondering what else I didn’t know.
Ed, Tessa’s brother, stood alone, looking surly. I talked to him for a bit, trying to cheer him up.
“You remember your showstopper last week?” I asked him. “About Jericho Rich making a play for Tessa?”
“It was true what I said,” he insisted defensively.
“I don’t doubt it.”
“He was pawing her. I saw him. She slapped his face.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you believe me? No one believes a word I say.” Self-pity swamped him. “Jericho Rich swore at her and told her he would take his horses away and Tessa said if he did she’d get even. Silly little bitch. How could she get even with a man like that? So, anyway, he did take the horses away and what has Tessa done about it? Bloody nothing, of course. And Dad isn’t even angry with her, only with me for telling everyone why Jericho Rich left. It isn’t fair.”
“No,” I agreed.
“You’re not too bad,” he said reluctantly.
I sat next to Maudie at lunch but there was little left of the enjoyment I’d found at the table a week ago. Maudie sensed it, trying to dispel my sadness, but I left after the coffee with no great regrets.
There were no feverish horses in Pixhill, I reported to Guggenheim, and drove him in his own depression back to the airport. On the way home I stopped for gas and, after a bit of thought, phoned Nina’s Stow-on-the-Wold number.
“Um,” I said, “when you come to work tomorrow, bring a parachute.”
“What?”
“For landing behind the enemy lines in occupied France.”
“Is this the concussion?”
“It is not. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
“I wish you’d explain.”
“Can I meet you somewhere? Are you busy?”
“I’m alone . . . and bored.”
“Good. I mean, how about the Cotswold Gateway? I could be there before six.”
“All right.”