Death at Epsom Downs

by Robin Paige

  “But murder!” Bradford exclaimed. “Do you really think the Club would stoop to it?”

  “The stewards have a motive,” Charles said firmly. “I can’t overlook it. But I want to interview Eddie Baggs. According to Badger’s clerk, he threatened to kill Badger. Murray is getting a line on him. I hope to be able to see him tomorrow or the next day.”

  “What of the clerk himself?” Bradford asked. “Might Sobersides have done it? You say he fled and is hiding out.”

  “He’s afraid of Baggs,” Charles said. “After talking with the fellow, I doubt he’d have the courage to fire a gun, even in self-defense.” He paused. “But there’s no shortage of other suspects. I wonder what we should make of this business of Day’s being cheated of sixty thousand pounds by John Bass. Seems like a great amount of money.” Frowning, he added, “I suppose I ought to have a look in the safe at Alfred Day’s home and see what can be found there.”

  Still talking, Charles and Bradford turned through the gate and up the path to Hardaway House. As they mounted the stoop, a figure slipped out of the shadows and stepped forward. Charles was startled, until he saw that it was Patrick.

  “I’ve brought the bottle, Lord Charles,” he said, holding out a brown-paper package. “It’s got a label on it.”

  For a moment, Charles had to ransack his memory. Then he exclaimed: “The dope bottle! A label, you say?”

  “With the veterinary’s name on it,” Patrick said. “I hadn’t noticed it before, but it’s there.”

  “Very good, boy,” Bradford said. He held open the door. “Come in. Let’s go upstairs where there’s light and see what you’ve brought.”

  Now, in the best of all possible worlds, events would have fallen out exactly as Kate had described in her instructions to Amelia that afternoon. Charles would have been mounting the dark stairs behind Bradford and Patrick when the door to Mrs. Hardaway’s apartment opened and that lady appeared in the hallway, wearing a lace nightcap and a flowered wrapper and holding an envelope in her hand, sealed with a blob of red sealing wax. Waving the envelope, she would have called up the stairs after him. Charles would have turned, surprised, then gone back downstairs for the envelope. In Bradford’s rooms, he would have stood next to the lamp and taken out the two notes folded together, the one in Kate’s neat, careful script, the other in a strange hand. He would have read Kate’s first, with growing surprise, and then unfolded the other and read it, too—and some, at least, of the mystery would have been revealed to him, and his detective work substantially shortened.

  But this is not the best of all possible worlds. Mrs. Hardaway, a poor widow who had to rely upon her own strenuous efforts for all her support, had spent a long and trying morning dealing with the hired roofing-men who were supposed to stop up the leaks over the kitchen. She had been so distressed by the poor quality of their work that she had lost her temper with them, and afterwards with the butcher and the greengrocer. These disagreements had taken a severe toll on her limited energies, so that, while she fully intended to sit up with Lady Sheridan’s envelope until Lord Sheridan returned, she had fallen asleep in her chair beside the gas grate.

  Thus, since the lady was still sleeping soundly when Charles followed Bradford and Patrick up the stairs, no apartment door opened, no Mrs. Hardaway appeared, no envelope was handed over, no message from Kate was read. And Charles—who could not know that his wife had written urgently to him and was even at that moment lying wide-awake, staring into the dark and thinking over all her suspicions—had no idea what might have been.

  Consequently, when he reached Bradford’s apartment, he turned directly to Patrick, while Bradford went to the grate and lit the small fire that was laid there. “Well, Patrick,” he said heartily, “let’s have a look at this bottle you’ve brought. It’s the one you nicked after the doping at the Derby, I take it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Patrick said, unwrapping the brown paper to produce a bottle that, according to the colorfully printed label, had once contained Dr. March’s Licorice Cough Syrup, Guaranteed to Cure Coughs in Man or Beast. He reversed the bottle and pointed with a grubby finger. “And that’s the veterinary’s label, sir, with his address on it.”

  Charles held it up to the light. “Doctor Septimus Polter, Exning,” he read aloud. “Well done, Patrick! Well done, indeed. We shall certainly have a visit with Doctor Polter tomorrow. He should be able to tell us what he used to dope Gladiator, and by whose orders.”

  “It don’t matter now,” the boy said, and dropped his head.

  “It doesn’t matter?” Charles put his hand on Patrick’s shoulder, noticing for the first time the boy’s evident dejection. “Come, come, Paddy. This isn’t like you. Your information will help us get to the bottom of the doping. Why doesn’t it matter?”

  Patrick looked up, blinking away tears. In a low voice, he said, “I’m to ride Gladiator in the ten-furlong handicap on Friday.”

  “Hey, now!” Bradford put a lump of coal on the struggling fire and straightened up. “Why so glum, boy? Your first ride as a jockey—it’s a time for celebrating! If you were a little older, we’d pop a cork and have some bubbly.” He looked around the room. “If we had any bubbly, that is. We seem to be fresh out.”

  Patrick shook his head. “No celebrating for me,” he said. “We rode trials this afternoon, and Pinkie said that Lord Hunt wants me up. But only if I promise to follow instructions.”

  “I don’t see anything wrong in that,” Charles said.

  “I do,” the boy said fiercely. “I know what they’ll be. I’ll be told to stop the horse. Gladiator could win that race, I know it! But he isn’t supposed to win. He’s supposed to lose.”

  “Ah,” said Bradford, comprehending. “So that’s their game.”

  “The game?” Charles asked, looking from one to the other. “I’m not sure I understand. Would someone explain it to me, please?”

  “There’s no great mystery to it,” Bradford said, putting his hands in his pockets and backing up to the fire. “It’s a classic method of cheating, one that’s practiced all the time. The owner or the stable picks a horse and consistently runs him to lose, usually by telling the jockey to pull him, sometimes by doping him with some sedative. After running slow in a half-dozen races, the horse is low in the handicap and unbacked. Then he’s put up to win at long odds against horses he ought to be able to beat—in the case of Gladiator, by boosting him with a dose of dope. He wins, his backers clean up, and they haul their earnings home in a handcart.”

  “But Gladiator didn’t win in the Derby,” Charles objected.

  “No, but he might have,” Bradford responded. “If it hadn’t been for the melee at Tattenham Corner, he’d likely have beaten Flying Fox, or perhaps have finished second. You watch the postings in that ten-furlong handicap on Friday, Charles. Gladiator will be a short-odds favorite, especially with a light rider up.” He squinted at Patrick, measuring him. “What are you, Paddy? Seven stone?”

  “Six stone ten,” Patrick said with a sad sort of pride. “Pinkie’s been telling me to keep myself light.”

  “Right. Carrying that weight, the horse will go short odds and the stable will bet heavily against him. If Patrick does as he’s told, Gladiator will finish out of the money, and they’ll clean up again.”

  “At least,” Patrick said bitterly, “I don’t have to worry that they’ll dope him to win—at least not for this race.”

  “You might keep an eye out still, though,” Bradford said in a cautionary tone. “If they don’t trust you, they may dope him to lose.”

  Patrick groaned.

  “But don’t the stewards keep a strict control over this sort of thing?” Charles asked, with an eye on Patrick. If he was set on becoming a jockey, the lad ought to know the rules of the game—especially those that that were not in any handbook or manual. “Isn’t it the Club’s job to make sure that the horses are run fairly?”

  Bradford shrugged. “That’s the beauty of putting up an inexperienced
jockey. If the owner or the stable is called to account, they blame the boy. They say that he didn’t ride as he was told, or that he just didn’t know enough to get the best from the horse. They may be faulted for giving the ride to an inexperienced jockey, but they can’t be warned off for generosity.” At the look on Patrick’s face, he shrugged. “Sorry, Paddy, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Maybe,” Patrick said quietly. “But it’s not the way it ought to be. Maybe I don’t want to be a jockey after all. I want to ride, but even more, I want the horse to do as well as he can. For the horse’s sake, though, not the owner or the stable. And I want the races to be fair!”

  Charles put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, loving his youthful idealism, regretting that he was inevitably to be disappointed by a world in which very little happened the way it ought. “You don’t have to go back to the stable, you know,” he said softly. “You can come back with Lady Sheridan and me to Bishop’s Keep.”

  Patrick looked up at him. “I’d like to, but I can’t,” he said stoutly. “I have to see that Gladiator’s safe.” He glanced at Bradford. “I thought I didn’t have to worry about doping. Now I see that I do. So I have to convince them that I’ll ride the race as I’m told.” He was silent for a moment, then broke into a sudden grin. “But you should have seen him run in the trial today, Lord Charles! He beat both Rag and Cannon, and he loved it.” The grin faded. “I wish he could win on Friday,” he said wistfully. “He would love it so.”

  Charles looked at him, wishing that he could give the boy what he wanted, but knowing that he could not.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Wednesday, June 7, 1899

  In Oxford Street

  The widow who considers with seriousness whether she will best express her sense of loss by a Marie Stuart cap or an Alsatian Bow of tarlatan, is already half consoled, and will return in a month for another which will express “mitigated” grief by various lightsome pleatings. The black dress will soon require a dainty frilled fichu of tulle to make it endurable. She will, ere long, bestring herself with jet beads that will take the place of the tears that have ceased to flow, and the day when grey, and violet, are permissible, is one characterized by a sober but genuine joy.

  The Gentlewoman’s Book of Dress, 1890

  Mrs. F. Douglas

  Leaving a note to let Mrs. Hardaway know that they would not require breakfast (and thereby once again thwarting the delivery of Kate’s letter), Charles and Bradford left Hardaway House well before seven on Wednesday morning, to have breakfast at the Stag Hotel with Jack Murray. Over poached eggs, broiled sheep’s kidneys, mutton chops, toast and marmalade, fresh strawberries, and coffee, they discussed the plan for the day’s investigations.

  Jack Murray had not yet got a lead to Eddie Baggs, so he would continue working in that direction by questioning some of Baggs’s known associates, including both of the men in whose company he had been seen at the Great Horse on Monday night: Pinkie Duncan and Jesse Clark. Charles was not anxious to intrude on the grief of the widowed Mrs. Day, but felt it necessary to discover whether there might be anything helpful in Alfred Day’s safe. He also thought it would be useful to have a conversation with Owen North. Bradford, meanwhile, would drive to Exning for a visit with Dr. Septimus Polter. If possible, they would meet back at the Stag sometime around one o’clock and decide what directions should be pursued next.

  The Alfred Day family resided at Number 32 Oxford Street, in one of a row of dignified two-story brick houses set close to the street, behind a low iron fence and a pocket garden with an ornate multi-tiered fountain in the center. The house was obviously in mourning, for straw had been laid on the street so that the family’s grief should not be disturbed by passing carts and the brass door knocker was muffled by a black wrapping and adorned with a large crape bow.

  The door was opened by a shy parlor maid in a black dress and black apron, who took Charles’s hat and his card and ushered him into the sitting room. Like that in the Hogsworth home, it was crowded with furnishings, but Mrs. Day’s taste in decor ran more to family snapshots, African violets, and lace curtains than to red velvet, tiger-skin rugs, and exotic Indian souvenirs. A state photograph of the long-dead Prince Consort hung on one wall, on another two gold-rimmed plates bearing the images of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and opposite, a large photograph of the Queen in an oval frame, taken on her Jubilee. The photographs and plates were dressed in swags and bows of black crape, as were the lampshades, the potted plants, the chair backs, and the fireplace mantel. Centered on the mantel, between two black candles in gold candlesticks, stood the black-draped photograph of a prosperous-looking man, slightly above middle age, posed in front of Number 29 St. James Street, the words “Alfred Day, Racing Commissions” visible on the plate-glass window of the building behind him. He wore a gray frock coat with a pale gray top hat and an unsuitably mirthful smile on his round face. The deceased Alfred Day looked like a man who was proud of his accomplishments.

  Charles was studying the photograph when he heard the rustle of skirts and turned, bowing to the woman who had just entered the room. She was petite and slender, with an attractive face and pale blond hair, and seemed considerably younger than her husband. She was dressed entirely in black, with a full skirt banded in crape, a pleated bodice, and a tulle fichu at her throat, also of black. On her gleaming hair, she wore a becoming Marie Stuart cap with black lace veil behind, and jet earrings on her ears. She carried a black lace handkerchief in one hand and Charles’s card in the other.

  “Mrs. Day,” Charles murmured, with another bow. “Please accept my deepest condolences upon the death of your husband. I am sure it is a very great loss.”

  “Thank you, Lord Sheridan,” the widow sighed, sinking into a black-dressed chair. “You were an acquaintance of my dearest Alfred?” Her glance went from Charles’s card to the photograph on the mantel. Her pretty blue eyes brimmed with tears.

  “I fear I had not the honor of knowing him,” Charles said regretfully. On the way to Oxford Street, he had considered various pretexts and ruses, but none seemed to quite fit the sad circumstances. In default of a plausible lie, he had determined upon the truth, although he hoped to tell as little of it as possible. “I am deeply sorry to intrude upon your grief at this time, Mrs. Day, but I fear it is necessary. I have been asked to undertake a private investigation of your husband’s death. I understand that he kept a safe here, and hoped . . .” He paused, knowing that what he was asking must seem unforgivably presumptuous to the grief-stricken widow. He took a breath and plunged on. “I hoped you might permit me to take a look into it, to see if I might find anything there that could lead me to his killer.”

  The widow regarded him thoughtfully, and an expression of something very like shrewdness came into her eyes. She did not ask upon whose authority he had come or precisely what he was seeking—questions she should certainly have felt entitled to ask. Instead, she said, in a low, calm voice: “I should not object to your looking into the safe, Lord Charles, but I very much regret that it is impossible. I myself have desired to do so. Unfortunately, I do not have a key.” She produced the black handkerchief and touched it to one eye. “My darling Alfred kept it always with him, but it was not with his effects when they were returned to me. I very much fear that his assailant took it from him.”

  “Ah,” Charles said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the key he had found in Alfred Day’s trousers. “I wonder if this might be what you have been looking for.” He held it out, adding apologetically, “I examined your husband’s belongings yesterday in the surgeon’s office. I felt the key might be material to the investigation, so I retained it.”

  The widow leaned forward and snatched the key from him. “Yes!” she exclaimed, with evident relief. “This is the very key! Lord Sheridan, I do thank you!”

  “You are most welcome.” Charles bowed deferentially. “Would you mind—That is, do you think—?”

  The widow did not wait to hea
r his request repeated. She stood with alacrity. “Come with me to the library, your lordship,” she commanded, sweeping purposefully out of the room, Charles following in some surprise. He had not expected quite so eager a compliance with a request that he considered rude and peremptory.

  The library was devoid of books, containing only a desk, a leather sofa, and two wooden chairs. One of the chairs was placed in front of a window. On it sat an elderly manservant holding an ancient percussion cap shotgun across his knees.

  “Thank you, Fisher,” the widow said. “You may end your watch now. I have the key.”

  “Very good, ma’am,” the old man mumbled, and shuffled out of the room, carrying the gun.

  Mrs. Day apparently felt that some explanation was necessary. “I feared,” she remarked, “that if my husband’s assailant had taken the key, he might attempt to enter this room and open the safe. I asked Fisher to station himself here as a guard.”

  “Very prudent, I’m sure,” Charles murmured.

  Mrs. Day went to the opposite wall, took down a gilt-framed print of a Constable landscape, and exposed a metal safe concealed in the wall. Charles watched as she deftly inserted the key into the lock and swung open the door. Swiftly, before he could move, she had reached inside and seized a large packet of bank notes, thrusting it into the recesses of her full-skirted dress. Leaving the safe door open, she retrieved the key from the lock and turned with great dignity.

  “Thank you, my lord,” she said, inclining her head. “It was a great kindness to bring me the key to my dearest Alfred’s safe. I am sure that I shall be forever grateful.”