Straight

by Dick Francis

  “He’s inside that box,” I pointed, “being saddled.”

  “Harley and I have had a marvelous idea,” she said sweetly, her eyes sparkling.

  “Now, Martha,” Harley said. He sounded faintly alarmed as if Martha’s marvelous ideas weren’t always the best possible news.

  “We want you to dine with us when we get back to London,” she finished.

  Harley relaxed, relieved. “Yes. Hope you can.” He clearly meant that this particular marvelous idea was passable, even welcome. “London at weekends is a graveyard.”

  With a twitching of an inward grin I accepted my role as graveyard alleviator and, in the general good cause of cementing Ostermeyer-Shandy-Franklin relations, said I would be very pleased to stay to dinner. Martha and Harley expressed such gratification as to make me wonder whether when they were alone they bored each other to silence.

  Dozen Roses emerged from his box with his saddle on and was led along toward the parade ring. He walked well, I thought, his good straight hocks encouraging lengthy strides, and he also seemed to have woken up a good deal, now that the excitement was at hand.

  In the horse’s wake hurried Nicholas Loder and his friend Rollo, and it was because they were crowding him, I thought, that Dozen Roses swung round on his leading rein and pulled backward from his lad, and in straightening up again hit the Rollo man a hefty buffet with his rump and knocked him to his knees.

  Martha with instinctive kindness rushed forward to help him, but he floundered to his feet with a curse that made her blink. All the same she bent and picked up a thing like a blue rubber ball which had fallen out of his jacket and held it toward him, saying “You dropped this, I think.”

  He ungraciously snatched it from her, gave her an unnecessarily fierce stare as if she’d frightened the horse into knocking him over, which she certainly hadn’t, and hurried into the parade ring after Nicholas Loder. He, looking back and seeing me still there, reacted with another show of fury.

  “What perfectly hornd people,” Martha said, making a face. “Did you hear what that man said? Disgusting! Fancy saying it aloud!”

  Dear Martha, I thought, that word was everyday coinage on racecourses. The nicest people used it: it made no one a villain. She was brushing dust off her gloves fastidiously as if getting rid of contamination and I half expected her to go up to Rollo and in the tradition of the indomitable American female to tell him to wash his mouth out with soap.

  Harley had meanwhile picked something else up off the grass and was looking at it helplessly. “He dropped this too,” he said. “I think.”

  Martha peered at his hands and took the object out of them.

  “Oh, yes,” she said with recognition, “that’s the other half of the baster. You’d better have it, Derek, then you can give it back to that obnoxious friend of your trainer, if you want to.”

  I frowned at what she’d given me, which was a rigid plastic tube, semitransparent, about an inch in diameter, nine inches long, open at one end and narrowing to half the width at the other.

  “A baster,” Martha said again. “For basting meat when it’s roasting. You know them, don’t you? You press the bulb thing and release it to suck up the juices which you then squirt over the meat.”

  I nodded. I knew what a baster was.

  “What an extraordinary thing to take to the races,” Martha said wonderingly.

  “Mm,” I agreed. “He seems an odd sort of man altogether.” I tucked the plastic tube into an inside jacket pocket, from which its nozzle end protruded a couple of inches, and we went first to see Dozen Roses joined with his jockey in the parade ring and then up onto the stands to watch him race.

  The jockey was Loder’s chief stable jockey, as able as any, as honest as most. The stable money was definitely on the horse, I thought, watching the forecast odds on the information board change from 2/1 on to 5/2 on. When a gambling stable didn’t put its money up front, the whisper went round and the price eased dramatically. The whisper where it mattered that day had to be saying that Loader was in earnest about the “trot-up,” and Alfie’s base imputation would have to wait for another occasion.

  Perhaps as a result of his year-by-year successes, Loder’s stable always, it was well-known in the racing world, attracted as owners serious gamblers whose satisfaction was more in winning money than in winning races; and that wasn’t the truism it seemed, because in steeplechasing the owners tended to want to win the races more than the money. Steeplechasing owners only occasionally made a profit overall and realistically expected to have to pay for their pleasure.

  Wondering if the Rollo man was one of the big Loder gamblers, I flicked back the pages of the race-card and looked up his name beside the horse of his that had won the sprint. Owner, Mr. T. Rollway, the card read. Rollo for short to his friends. Never heard of him, I thought, and wondered if Greville had.

  Dozen Roses cantered down to the start with at least as much energy and enthusiasm as any of the seven other runners and was fed into the stalls without fuss. He’d been striding out well, I thought, and taking a good hold of the bit. An old hand at the game by now, of course, as I was also, I thought dryly.

  I’d ridden in several Flat races in my teens as an amateur, learning that the hardest and most surprising thing about the unrelenting Flat race crouch over the withers was the way it cramped one’s lungs and affected one’s breathing. The first few times I’d almost fallen off at the finish from lack of oxygen. A long time ago, I thought, watching the gates fly open in the distance and the colors spill out, long ago when I was young and it all lay ahead.

  If I could find Greville’s diamonds, I thought, I would in due course be able to buy a good big yard in Lambourn and start training free of a mortgage and on a decent scale, providing of course I could get owners to send me horses, and I had no longer any doubt that one of these years, when my body packed up mending fast, as everyone’s did in the end, that I would be content with the new life, even though the consuming passion I still felt for race-riding couldn’t be replaced by anything tamer.

  Dozen Roses was running with the pack, all seven bunched after the first three furlongs, flying along the far side of the track at more than cruising speed but with acceleration still in reserve.

  If I didn’t find Greville’s diamonds, I thought, I would just scrape together whatever I could and borrow the rest, and still buy a place and set my hand to the future. But not yet, not yet.

  Dozen Roses and the others swung left-handed into the long bend round the far end of the track, the bunch coming apart as the curve element hit them. Turning into the straight five furlongs from the winning post, Dozen Roses was in fourth place and making not much progress. I wanted him quite suddenly to win and was surprised by the strength of the feeling; I wanted him to win for Greville, who wouldn’t care anyway, and perhaps also for Clarissa, who would. Sentimental fool, I told myself. Anyway, when the crowd started yelling home their fancy I yelled for mine also, and I’d never done that before as far as I could remember.

  There was not going to be a trot-up, whatever Nicholas Loder might have thought. Dozen Roses was visibly struggling as he took second place at a searing speed a furlong from home and he wouldn’t have got the race at all if the horse half a length in front, equally extended and equally exhausted, hadn’t veered from a straight line at the last moment and bumped into him.

  “Oh dear,” Martha exclaimed sadly, as the two horses passed the winning post. “Second. Oh well, never mind.”

  “He’ll get the race on an objection,” I said. “Which I suppose is better than nothing. Your winnings are safe.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Certain,” I said, and almost immediately the loudspeakers were announcing “Stewards’ inquiry.”

  More slowly than I would have liked to be able to manage, the three of us descended to the area outside the weighing room where the horse that was not my horse stood in the place for the unsaddling of the second, a net rug over his back and ste
am flowing from his sweating skin. He was moving about restlessly, as horses often do after an all-out effort, and his lad was holding tight to the reins, trying to calm him.

  “He ran a great race,” I said to Martha, and she said, “Did he, dear?”

  “He didn’t give up. That’s really what matters.”

  Of Nicholas Loder there was no sign: probably inside the Stewards’ room putting forward his complaint. The Stewards would show themselves the views from the side camera and the head-on camera, and at any moment now...

  “Result of the Stewards’ inquiry,” said the loudspeakers. “Placing of first and second reversed.” Hardly justice, but inevitable: the faster horse had lost. Nicholas Loder came out of the weighing room and saw me standing with the Ostermeyers, but before I could utter even the first conciliatory words like, “Well done,” he’d given me a sick look and hurried off in the opposite direction. No Rollo in his shadow, I noticed.

  Martha, Harley and I returned to the luncheon room for the University’s tea where the Knightwoods were being gracious hosts and Clarissa, at the sight of me, developed renewed trouble with the tear glands. I left the Ostermeyers taking cups and saucers from a waitress and drifted across to her side.

  “So silly,” she said crossly, blinking hard as she of fered me a sandwich. “But wasn’t he great?”

  “He was.”

  “I wish...” She stopped. I wished it too. No need at all to put it into words. But Greville never went to the races.

  “I go to London fairly often,” she said. “May I phone you when I’m there?”

  “Yes, if you like.” I wrote my home number on my race-card and handed it to her. “I live in Berkshire,” I said, “not in Greville’s house.”

  She met my eyes, hers full of confusion.

  “I’m not Greville,” I said.

  “My dear chap,” said her husband boomingly, coming to a halt beside us, “delighted your horse finally won. Though, of course, not technically your horse, what?”

  “No, sir.”

  He was shrewd enough, I thought, looking at the intelligent eyes amid the bonhomie. Not easy to fool. I wondered fleetingly if he’d ever suspected his wife had a lover, even if he hadn’t known who. I thought that if he had known who, he wouldn’t have asked me to lunch.

  He chuckled. “The professor says you tipped him three winners.”

  “A miracle.”

  “He’s very impressed.” He looked at me benignly. “Join us at any time, my dear chap.” It was the sort of vague invitation, not meant to be accepted, that was a mild seal of approval, in its way.

  “Thank you,” I said, and he nodded, knowing he’d been understood.

  Martha Ostermeyer gushed up to say how marvelous the whole day had been, and gradually from then on, as such things always do, the University party evaporated.

  I shook Clarissa’s outstretched hand in farewell, and also her husband’s, who stood beside her. They looked good together, and settled, a fine couple on the surface.

  “We’ll see you again,” she said to me, and I wondered if it were only I who could hear her smothered desperation.

  “Yes,” I said positively. “Of course.”

  “My dear chap,” her husband said. “Any time.”

  Harley, Martha and I left the racecourse and climbed into the Daimler, Simms following Brad’s routine of stowing the crutches.

  Martha said reproachfully, “Your ankle’s broken, not twisted. One of the guests told us. I said you’d ridden a gallop for us on Wednesday and they couldn’t believe it.”

  “It’s practically mended,” I said weakly.

  “But you won’t be able to ride Datepalm in that race next Saturday, will you?”

  “Not really. No.”

  She sighed. “You’re very naughty. We’ll simply have to wait until you’re ready.”

  I gave her a fast smile of intense gratitude. There weren’t many owners who would have dreamed of waiting. No trainer would; they couldn’t afford to. Milo was currently putting up one of my arch-rivals on the horses I usually rode, and I just hoped I would get all of them back once I was fit. That was the main trouble with injuries, not the injury itself but losing one’s mounts to other jockeys. Permanently, sometimes, if they won.

  “And now,” Martha said as we set off south toward London, “I have had another simply marvelous idea, and Harley agrees with me.”

  I glanced back to Harley who was sitting behind Simms. He was nodding indulgently. No anxiety this time.

  “We think,” she said happily, “that we’ll buy Dozen Roses and send him to Milo to train for jumping. That is,” she laughed, “if your brother’s executor will sell him to us.”

  “Martha!” I was dumbstruck and used her Christian name without thinking, though I’d called her Mrs. Ostermeyer before, when I’d called her anything.

  “There,” she said, gratified at my reaction, “I told you it was a marvelous idea. What do you say?”

  “My brother’s executor is speechless.”

  “But you will sell him?”

  “I certainly will.”

  “Then let’s use the car phone to call Milo and tell him.” She was full of high good spirits and in no mood for waiting, but when she reached Milo he apparently didn’t immediately catch fire. She handed the phone to me with a frown, saying, “He wants to talk to you.”

  “Milo,” I said, “what’s the trouble?”

  “That horse is an entire. They don’t jump well.”

  “He’s a gelding,” I assured him.

  “You told me your brother wouldn’t ever have it done.”

  “Nicholas Loder did it without permission.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No,” I said. “Anyway the horse got the race today on a Stewards’ inquiry but he ran gamely, and he’s fit.”

  “Has he ever jumped?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. But I’ll teach him.”

  “All right then. Put me back to Martha.”

  “Don’t go away when she’s finished. I want another word.”

  I handed the phone to Martha who listened and spoke with a return to enthusiasm, and eventually I talked to Milo again.

  “Why,” I asked, “would one of Nicholas Loder’s owners carry a baster about at the races?”

  “A what?”

  “Baster. Thing that’s really for cooking. You’ve got one. You use it as an inhaler for the horses.”

  “Simple and effective.”

  He used it, I reflected, on the rare occasions when it was the best way to give some sort of medication to a horse. One dissolved or diluted the medicine in water and filled the rubber bulb of the baster with it. Then one fitted the tube onto that, slid the tube up the horse’s nostril, and squeezed the bulb sharply. The liquid came out in a vigorous spray straight onto the mucous membranes and from there passed immediately into the bloodstream. One could puff out dry powder with the same result. It was the fastest way of getting some drugs to act.

  “At the races?” Milo was saying. “An owner?”

  “That’s right. His horse won the five-furlong sprint.”

  “He’d have to be mad. They dope test two horses in every race, as you know. Nearly always the winner, and another at random. No owner is going to pump drugs into his horse at the races.”

  “I don’t know that he did. He had a baster with him, that’s all.”

  “Did you tell the Stewards?”

  “No, I didn’t. Nicholas Loder was with his owner and he would have exploded as he was angry with me already for spotting Dozen Roses’ alteration.”

  Milo laughed. “So that was what all the heat was about this past week?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Will you kick up a storm?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You’re too soft,” he said, “and oh yes, I almost forgot. There was a phone message for you. Wait a tick. I wrote it down.” He went away for a bit and returned. “Here you are. Something about
your brother’s diamonds.” He sounded doubtful. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. What about them?”

  He must have heard the urgency in my voice because he said, “It’s nothing much. Just that someone had been trying to call you last night and all day today, but I said you’d slept in London and gone to York.”

  “Who was it?”

  “He didn’t say. Just said that he had some info for you. Then he hummed and hahed and said if I talked to you would I tell you he would telephone your brother’s house, in case you went there, at about ten tonight, or later. Or it might have been a she. Difficult to tell. One of those middle-range voices. I said I didn’t know if you would be speaking to me, but I’d tell you if I could.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  “I’m not a message service,” he said testily. “Why don’t you switch on your answer phone like everyone else?”

  “I do sometimes.”

  “Not enough.”

  I switched off the phone with a smile and wondered who’d been trying to reach me. It had to be someone who knew Greville had bought diamonds. It might even be Annette, I thought: her voice had a mid-range quality.

  I would have liked to have gone to Greville’s house as soon as we got back to London, but I couldn’t exactly renege on the dinner after Martha’s truly marvelous idea, so the three of us ate together as planned and I tried to please them as much as they’d pleased me.

  Martha announced yet another marvelous idea during dinner. She and Harley would get Simms or another of the car firm’s chauffeurs to drive us all down to Lambourn the next day to take Milo out to lunch, so that they could see Datepalm again before they went back to the States on Tuesday. They could drop me at my house afterward, and then go on to visit a castle in Dorset they’d missed last time around. Harley looked resigned. It was Martha, I saw, who always made the decisions, which was maybe why the repressed side of him needed to lash out sometimes at car-park attendants who boxed him in.

  Milo, again on the telephone, told me he’d do practically anything to please the Ostermeyers, definitely including Sunday lunch. He also said that my informant had rung again and he had told him/her that I’d got the message.