by Simon Raven
‘Milo…’
‘Yes, little one? Not frightened of your gypsy prince, I hope?’
‘No. Not really. But…well…my Auntie Maisie. You must promise me, Milo, to be careful. I cannot bear the idea of hurting, of shaming, Auntie Maisie. I will adore you, worship you, serve you and grovel before you. But you will be careful?’
‘Yes, little one. I shan’t even pop your maidenhead if you don’t wish it. And so I always said.’
‘Why do you speak so coarsely? I want you to do everything you want to do…if only you will be careful.’
‘What an old-fashioned girl you are. Abortions are ten for tuppence these days, or hadn’t you heard? Raisley would fix you up in no time with his old friend, Doctor La Soeur; you could have it on the house, little one, with a complimentary box of liqueur choccies thrown in.’
‘Oh, Milo. Why will you talk like that?’
‘Well, I see what you mean. You don’t want Auntie Maisie to think that anyone has spoiled you. Very well, little Tessa. Have no fear: all will be well tomorrow if you will only obey. “Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, Quique amavit cras amet.”’
‘I want you and lover Pie looking your best tomorrow,’ said Raisley Conyngham to Marius Stern.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Marius, who was sitting to the right of the fireplace in the long, low library at Ullacote, while Conyngham stood with his back to the flame, sipping at a small tumbler of calvados.
‘So Jenny will be responsible for the Lover’s appearance,’ said Raisley, ‘and you will manage your own.’
‘What do you want me to turn up in, sir?’
‘Grey suit and school tie. Black shoes, highly polished.’
‘But at Regis Priory–’
‘–Never mind Regis Priory. Although tomorrow will be the same in many ways, it will be different in others. Suit and school tie. Black shoes polished like a guardee’s. Those brogues of yours will do very well.’
‘Any other instructions, sir.’
‘Just carry on as you did last time.’
‘But some things will be different, you say?’
‘You’ll know how to deal with them when they happen. You’re not a fool: no need to cross ‘t’s and dot ‘i’s. But one thing: when you’ve removed Lover Pie’s blanket and seen him off down the course, take it straight to the horsebox, where you will find that Jenny has prepared a large bucket of disinfectant solution which will be in the far left-hand corner. Put the blanket in the bucket to soak. Then return to the course as quickly as you can and watch the rest of the race from the paddock gate. You should be back there about the time the horses start the second of the three circuits. Do not stir an inch, Marius, unless instructed by Milo or myself, until all the horses which are still running have passed the winning post. Then go to meet Lover Pie and Jimmy in the usual way, but of course without his blanket. If one is needed, Jenny will come out with a fresh one…or one of Jenny’s assistants.’
‘So it doesn’t seem very different after all, sir, except for the bit about the blanket.’
‘Just you wait and see, and keep your wits about you.’
‘I hope you’ll let me come with you both,’ said Palairet’s Auntie (Flo), who had been explaining that mares were sometimes brought into season by the mere proximity of stallions and (unlike bitches) were unpredictable in the matter. ‘Sounds like an interesting old day out.’
‘Of course you must come,’ said Theodosia. ‘From what Galahad tells me, it was you rather than he, that spotted something odd in the first place.’
‘Rather more than odd I think,’ said Auntie Flo, taking a swill out of a bucket-sized tumbler of whisky. ‘Years ago, I remember, I saw rather a good film about a coven of witches and warlocks in New England. Valentine Dyall was in it, with that lovely deep voice of his. They all lived together, the witches and warlocks, in a remote village on the seashore – where there was nobody else except them. Then along came the hero, quite by accident: his car had broken down along the road and he wanted a garage. As he came into the charming little square at the centre of the village, he realised that he was being watched. All round the square, the witches – though we didn’t yet know that’s what they were – were standing in pairs, man by woman, witch by warlock, and staring at him, quietly and intently, as if they were adding him up and getting his number. I was reminded of this film by the scene in the paddock. Although in this case there were only some six or seven people looking at Marius Stern, it seemed much more, it seemed as if everyone, all round the paddock, had suddenly stopped what they were doing and were standing stock still and stone silent, all turned towards young Stern, all deliberately staring at him.’
Theodosia remembered the hedgehog which Palairet and she had watched as it went past them down the Ull, and rubbed her hands together and shivered.
‘And yet,’ she said, ‘it’s all so respectable. A rich schoolmaster with a string of horses and a Private Trainer…a pupil who likes riding, being trained to groom one of them and allowed to exercise him…for the rest just an old-fashioned reading party, with sword practice, tennis, walks on the moors… What can be wrong?’
‘Milo Hedley, for one thing,’ said Palairet, ‘and Raisley Conyngham for another.’
‘What have you got – what has anyone got – against either?’
‘Milo Hedley never stops smiling. Raisley Conyngham’s fingernails look as if they’ve been manicured.’
‘Neither morally nor personally offensive,’ said Theodosia; ‘you must do better than that.’
Palairet thought.
‘I once saw Hedley swimming in Baths,’ he said: ‘he is as white as a corpse and he has no hair on his legs or his chest – but he does on his back. A thick tuft between his shoulder-blades.’
Theodosia shivered as she had when she remembered the hedgehog.
‘At least we shall be spared a view of that,’ she said.
‘He may not even be there. He wasn’t at Regis Priory.’
‘Where was he?’
‘I expect he was looking after Tessa Malcolm. Marius always used to say that she couldn’t stand horses – and horses couldn’t stand her.’
‘A little girl who hates horses,’ said Theodosia; ‘a stallion brave enough to run over fences – not just hurdles but fences; a mare in season – quite possibly brought into season by the presence of the stallion at Regis Priory; a man with manicured nails; and an ever smiling boy with hair between his shoulder-blades. Trainers and jockeys staring like gorgons. Prideau Glastonbury – why is he running his horse when his son lies dead? Poor Myles. He did not deserve what happened to him.’
‘What did happen to him?’ Aunt Flo asked.
‘He fell into a coma and died.’
‘What of?’
‘Nobody really knows.’
‘Sickly, I expect,’ said Aunt Flo; ‘like his mother. She went off pretty quick…when Myles was about ten. Raisley Conyngham was mixed up in all that as well. It seems that Prideau’s wife – Konya, she was called – didn’t like the way Conyngham used to put his hands on little Myles’ head. Neither did little Myles. Konya asked Conyngham not to, and although she was perfectly polite, Conyngham resented it. They quarrelled at some dinner party – or it might have been at a race meeting. Then she got a bad cold, either at the race meeting or coming home from the dinner, got weaker and weaker…then fell unconscious and died.’
‘What did the doctors say?’
‘Dicey heart,’ said Aunt Flo, ‘weakened by incipient pneumonia.’
‘After running foul of Conyngham,’ said Theodosia. ‘Like poor Myles. We know,’ she said to Aunt Flo, ‘that Myles tried to or intended to warn his father against Conyngham, and so constituted a threat to Conyngham. And now we hear that Konya Glastonbury constituted a rather similar threat. Presumably, she implied that Conyngham’s attentions to Myles were those of a pederast. Is he a pederast?’ she said to Palairet.
‘He’s neuter,’ said Pally with loathing, ‘neuter as a gelded toad.’
&nbs
p; ‘But not a man to cross, it seems.’
‘All eunuchs are spiteful,’ said Aunt Flo, ‘but Raisley Conyngham is far too canny, from what I’ve heard, to commit casual acts of spite, let alone criminal ones. Raisley Conyngham, they used to say in my London days, never did anything without a sound and serious reason.’
‘A heavy blanket on a warm day…the choice of Marius as groom…round we go in circles. What sort of chance,’ Theodosia asked Aunt Flo, ‘has Lover Pie got in the Hamilton Cup?’
‘Better than the last time out. He badly needed a race, and this time the handicap is slightly in his favour. He’ll start at about seven or eight to one.’
‘With a lot of money on him?’
‘Raisley never had a bet in his life. Some of the public will have a bit of a punt. Nothing out of the way.’
‘So no one will have any reason worth mentioning to dope the horse either to win or to lose?’
‘Not the teeny-weeniest, my dear,’ said Aunt Flo. ‘The trophy is silver gilt, of feeble design (if one considers its provenance and period), and the prize money wouldn’t keep a cab-horse in rations from Michaelmas to All Hallows.’
‘I give up,’ said Theodosia. ‘Bedtime, chums. An early start tomorrow.’
Jeremy Morrison leaned over the white railing and watched Marius lead Lover Pie round the paddock. By contrast with most of the stable lads and lasses, who were informally if not scruffily turned out, Marius was wearing a well pressed dark grey suit, his school tie (dark blue with narrow pink stripes) and a pair of brilliantly polished black brogues. When, as was bound to happen and as Jeremy intended to happen, Marius spotted him on the rail, Jeremy smiled and waved and received a diffident grin in return. There doesn’t seem much the matter with him, Jeremy thought, and God alone knows why he’s got up for Speech Day. He would follow Marius’ progress through the afternoon, he decided, and take the first opportunity of talking to him. Since it had cost a lot of money, effort and ingenuity to arrange the logistic alterations in his plans that had made his presence at Bellhampton possible, Jeremy was keen to get good value; and the very least he could do now that he was here, he thought, was to say a proper farewell to Marius.
Although he had come in response to Carmilla’s grave prognosis that wickedness was brewing, a prognosis which, knowing how level-headed Carmilla usually was, he had been inclined to believe, he now found himself lulled by the warmth of the spring sun, the good humour of the crowd and the comfortable normality of the proceedings. What wickedness could possibly be brewing here? All that was happening – all that could conceivably be happening in such a place – was that those concerned were making leisurely but punctual preparation for the big race of the afternoon (an unimportant race as races went but the principal offering of a modest card), on a pleasant country racecourse in West Sussex.
Marius came past again with Lover Pie and again grinned at Jeremy. Jeremy blew a kiss back. This was noticed by two men who were standing on the grass: a scrawny man and a sleek man. Honi soit, thought Jeremy, qui mal y pense. The sleek man, he knew, was Raisley Conyngham, by whom he had been taught while at school and who would probably recognise him. Either way, thought Jeremy, no harm done and no harm in prospect. What harm could possibly be wrought or intended, here under the trees in this homely little paddock? Now he came to think of it, thought Jeremy, Milo Hedley had quite definitely assured him, as they walked back along Pioneers’ Path after their pleasing bout in the hayloft, that Marius would not come to harm while in the care of Conyngham. Of course he wouldn’t. Whatever was Carmilla thinking of? She should have had more sense than to listen to some fantasy of that silly old woman, Fielding Gray, a fantasy based on a sick man’s babbling. He should never have come, thought Jeremy; but come he had, and now he was here he would enjoy the ’Chase for the Hamilton Cup, put a pony or two on Lover Pie for old times’ sake, seek out Marius that they might exchange civilised blessings, and then go forth on his oriental travels to gather the experience and to secrete the wisdom that were to make him a voice among mankind.
Fielding Gray, loitering near the paddock in a huge panama hat with the 49th Light Dragoons’ riband round it, decided that the best thing he could do was to keep his one eye firmly on Jeremy Morrison. Jeremy was as likely as anyone was to lead him to any action there might be, and while he, Fielding, had him in sight, he could indulge himself in dreams of protection and rescue. For although he bitterly resented the manner in which Jeremy had deserted him, he still loved him as his own.
Milo and Tessa hung around in the park for horseboxes. Identically dressed from head to foot, both having their hair hidden beneath voluminous floppy cloth caps, they might have been two gypsy brothers, elder and younger, both up to no good. Whereas Marius had travelled with Lover Pie and Gat-Toothed Jenny in the horsebox, Milo and Tessa had been ferried to the course by Jack Lamprey in his Ferrari.
‘Christ, you both pong,’ Jack had said: ‘I’ll be glad when this business is done with.’
‘What business?’ said Tessa.
‘You’ll see,’ said Milo. ‘Just obey my orders and keep your eyes open and you’ll have a front seat view of everything.’
‘No horses, I hope.’
‘Not near enough to matter.’
But now they were in among the horseboxes, and Tessa was becoming uneasy.
‘Not long now,’ said Milo, sensing this. ‘Christ, you look attractive, dressed like that, with your lovely face and that putrescent smell.’
Giles Glastonbury, in correct racecourse order of dress, stood on the grass in the paddock with Phil Loche, waiting for Danny Chead. Here he came now: cherry jacket, light blue skull and crossbones on his back, cherry cap. These colours, thought up by Giles in the days when he used to share ownership of horses with Prideau, were based on the rig of the 49th Earl Hamilton’s Light Dragoons, who affected tight cherry trousers, light blue tunic and a skull and crossbones as their badge. Really quite appropriate, thought Giles: the son of a Dragoon (fat Corpy Chead) riding in the Regimental Colours for a Cup originally put up by the founder of the Regiment.
Ex-Corporal-Major ‘Corpy’ Chead hated his son because he was mean and ratty. He had come to this meeting, not to watch Danny, but because he always attended what he regarded as the ‘Regimental’ steeplechase. For many years there had been little or nothing of the Regiment about it; but this year, thought ‘Corpy’ Chead happily, there was Major Glastonbury (they didn’t come like him any more) standing as representative of the owner of a horse which would be ridden by his own son (ratty or not) in what was to all intents the Regimental insignia; there was ‘Sozzler’ Jack Lamprey, who had trained another horse in the race; and this year, too, by all the powers in hell, was Major Gray, and wearing the Regimental riband at that.
Corpy Chead waddled up to Fielding and raised his brown trilby the regulation nine inches from his head.
‘Good afternoon, sir.’
‘Ah, good afternoon, Corporal-Major,’ said Fielding, and raised his panama a precise three inches. ‘Quite a turn out of the old gang.’
‘Yes, sir. It’s a long time since I’ve seen Major Glastonbury. Or Captain Jack. Or you.’
Captain Jack, thought Fielding: Jack Lamprey. He hadn’t been in touch. He had sworn that he would be if there were any danger to Marius. Res Unius, Res Omnium. So if he was a man of his solemnly given word, his silence meant that there could be no danger to Marius.
‘I hope you’re free to watch the race with me, Corporal-Major?’
‘Here on my own, sir.’
‘And I hope you won’t mind helping me to keep an eye on that young fellow there.’
Fielding pointed to Jeremy, who was still leaning on the paddock rail. ‘Jeremy Morrison,’ he said. ‘Son of an old friend.’
‘What’s he up to, Major Fielding?’
‘I don’t really know. There’s a story going round that something’s going to happen here this afternoon. He’s here looking into it, I think. So am I.’
‘What is going to happen, sir?’
‘Whatever it is, Lover Pie and Boadicea are mixed up in it. You’ve heard no word from your boy Danny of any jiggery-pokery?’
‘Danny don’t confide in me, Major Fielding. We live many miles apart – in every sense. But I wouldn’t put anything past him if the price was right. What do we know about that Jimmy Pitts?’
‘Very little. I once saw a horse die under his father, Johnny. At Whereham Races. Funny thing. The horse belonged to Jeremy Morrison’s grandfather. Tiberius, he was called; a stallion, like Lover Pie. Do you believe in echoes, Corporal-Major? Echoes in time?’
Jimmy Pitts (pink jacket, light blue Maltese Cross on his back, pink cap) padded towards Raisley Conyngham and Jack Lamprey.
‘No need to snap at the boy this time,’ said Conyngham: ‘he’ll be under enough pressure without that…just about the right amount, I think.’
‘What’s he doing,’ yapped Pitts, ‘dressed up for a bloody wedding?’
‘At my request, Jimmy. Where’s your sense of occasion?’
Marius led up Lover Pie, who seemed entirely calm and at ease, despite the heavy blanket over his hindquarters.
‘Good luck, Jimmy,’ said Jack Lamprey. ‘Remember to keep well clear of Boadicea until after the second from home. Just in case.’
‘He don’t seem to be bothered by her yet,’ said Jimmy Pitts, bending to peer under the blanket at Lover Pie’s private anatomy.
‘Nor he shouldn’t be neither,’ said Jack Lamprey. ‘He’s never been bothered by a mare yet, in or out of season.’
‘Like ’is owner,’ muttered Pitts, quite audibly. ‘Question is, is he still interested in running?’
‘As to that,’ said Conyngham affably, ‘you have your instructions. Off you go with ’em, Marius.’
Aunt Flo, Theodosia Canteloupe and Pally Palairet were watching the events in the paddock from a side-balcony in the stand.
‘So Jeremy Morrison came,’ said Palairet.