by Dick Francis
‘Morally indefensible,’ I agreed, ‘but pragmatically an effective solution.’
Litsi’s gaze was thoughtful on my face. ‘Do you think she’s such a threat?’
‘I think she could be like water dripping on a stone, wearing it away. Like water dripping on a man’s forehead, driving him mad.’
‘The water torture,’ Litsi said, ‘I’m told it feels like a red hot poker after a while, drilling a hole into the skull.’
‘She’s just like that,’ Danielle said.
There was a short silence while we contemplated the boring capacities of Beatrice de Brescou Bunt, and then Litsi said consideringly, ‘It might be a good idea to tell her about the document you witnessed. Tell her the bad news that all four of us would have to agree to the guns, and assure her that even if she drives Roland to collapse, she’ll still have to deal with me.’
‘Don’t tell her,’ Danielle begged. ‘She’ll give none of us any peace.’
Neither of them had objected to the use made of them in their absence; on the contrary, they had been pleased. ‘It makes us a family,’ Danielle had said, and it was I, the witness, who had felt excluded.
‘Upstairs,’ I said, reflecting, ‘I’ve got what I think is a duplicate of the form Henri Nanterre wanted Monsieur de Brescou to sign. It is in French. Would you like to see it?’
‘Very much,’ Litsi said.
‘Right.’
I went upstairs to fetch it and found Beatrice Bunt in my bedroom.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘I came to fetch something,’ I said.
She was holding the bright blue running shorts I usually slept in, which I had stored that morning in the bedside table drawer on top of Nanterre’s form. The drawer was open, the paper presumably inside.
‘These are yours?’ she said in disbelief. ‘You are using this room?’
‘That’s right.’ I walked over to her, took the shorts from her hand and returned them to the drawer. The form, I was relieved to see, lay there undisturbed.
‘In that case,’ she said with triumph, ‘there’s no problem. I shall have this room, and you can have the other. I always have the bamboo suite, it’s the accepted thing. I see some of your things are in the bathroom. It won’t take long to switch them over.’
I’d left the door open when I went in and, perhaps hearing her voice, the princess came enquiringly to see what was going on.
‘I’ve told this young man to move, Casilia,’ Beatrice said, ‘because of course this is my room, naturally.’
‘Danielle’s fiancé,’ the princess said calmly, ‘stays in this room as long as he stays in this house. Now come along, Beatrice, do, the rose room is extremely comfortable, you’ll find.
‘It’s half the size of this one, and there’s no dressing room.’
The princess gave her a bland look, admirably concealing irritation. ‘When Kit leaves, you shall have the bamboo room, of course.’
‘I thought you said his name was Christmas.’
‘So it is,’ the princess agreed. ‘He was born on Christmas day. Come along, Beatrice, let’s go down for this very delayed lunch …’ She positively shepherded her sister-in-law out into the passage, and returned a second later for one brief and remarkable sentence, half instruction, half entreaty.
‘Stay in this house,’ she said, ‘until she is gone.’
After lunch, Litsi, Danielle and I went up to the disputed territory to look at the form, Litsi observing that his money was on Beatrice to winkle me out of all this splendour before tomorrow night.
‘Did you see the dagger looks you were getting across the half-defrosted mousseline?’
‘Couldn’t miss them.’
‘And those pointed remarks about good manners, unselfishness, and the proper precedence of rank?’
The princess had behaved as if she hadn’t heard, sweetly making enquiries about Beatrice’s health, her dogs, and the weather in Florida in February. Roland de Brescou, as very often, had remained upstairs for lunch, his door barricaded, I had no doubt. The princess with soft words would defend him.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘here’s this form.’
I retrieved it from under my blue shorts and gave it to Litsi, who wandered with it over to a group of comfortable chairs near the window. He read it attentively, sitting down absent-mindedly, a big man with natural presence and unextended power. I liked him and because of Danielle feared him, a contradictory jumble of emotion, but I also trusted his overall air of amiable competence.
I moved across the room to join him, and Danielle also, and after a while he raised his head and frowned.
‘For a start,’ he said, ‘this is not an application form for a licence to make or export arms. Are you sure that’s what Nanterre said it was?’
I thought back. ‘As far as I remember, it was the lawyer Gerald Greening who said it was a government form for preliminary application for a licence. I understood that that was what Henri Nanterre had told the princess in her box at Newbury.’
‘Well, it isn’t a government form at all. It isn’t an application for any sort of licence. What it is is a very vague and general form which would be used by simple people to draw up a contract.’ He paused. ‘In England, I believe one can buy from stationers’ shops a printed form for making a will. The legal words are all there to ensure that the will is properly executed. One simply inserts in the spaces what one wants done, like leaving the car to one’s grandson. It’s what’s written into the spaces that really counts. Well, this form is rather like that. The legal form of words is correct, so that this would be a binding document, if properly signed and properly witnessed.’ He glanced down at the paper. ‘It’s impossible to tell of course how Henri Nanterre had filled in all the spaces, but I would guess that overall it would say merely that the parties named in the contract had agreed on the course of action outlined by the accompanying documents. I would think that this form would be attached to, and act as page one, of a bulk of papers which would include all sorts of things like factory capacity, overseas sales forces, preliminary orders from customers and the specifications of the guns proposed to be manufactured. All sorts of things. But this simple form with Roland’s signature on it would validate the whole presentation. It would be taken very seriously indeed as a full statement of intent. With this in his hands, Henri Nanterre could apply for his licence immediately.’
‘And get it,’ I said. ‘He was sure of it.’
‘Yes.’
‘But Uncle Roland could say he was forced into signing,’ Danielle said. ‘He could repudiate it, couldn’t he?’
‘He might have been able to nullify an application form quite easily, but with a contract it’s much more difficult. He could plead threats and harassment, but the legal position might be that it was too late to change his mind, once he’d surrendered.’
‘And if he did get the contract overthrown,’ I said reflectively, ‘Henri Nanterre could start his harassment over again. There could be no end to it, until the contract was re-signed.’
‘But all four of us have to sign now,’ Danielle said. ‘What if we all say we won’t?’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘if your uncle decided to sign, you would all follow his lead.’
Litsi nodded. ‘The four-signature agreement is a delaying tactic, not a solution.’
‘And what,’ Danielle said flatly, ‘is a solution?’
Litsi looked my way. ‘Put Kit to work on it.’ He smiled. ‘Danielle told me you tied all sorts of strong men into knots last November. Can’t you do it again?’
‘This is a bit different,’ I said.
‘What happened last time?’ he asked. ‘Danielle told me no details.’
‘A newspaper was giving my sister Holly and her husband a lot of unearned bad publicity – he’s a racehorse trainer and they said he was going broke – and basically I got them to apologise and pay Bobby some compensation.’
‘And Bobby’s appalling father,�
�� Danielle said, ‘tell Litsi about him.’
She could look at me, as now, as if everything were the same. I tried with probably little success to keep my general anxiety about her from showing too much, and told the story to Litsi.
‘The real reason for the attacks on Bobby was to get at his father, who’d been trying to take over the newspaper. Bobby’s father, Maynard Allardeck, was in line for a knighthood, and the newspaper’s idea was to discredit him so that he shouldn’t get one. Maynard was a real pain, a ruthless burden on Bobby’s back. So I … er … got him off.’
‘How?’ Litsi asked curiously.
‘Maynard,’ I said, ‘makes fortunes by lending money to dicky businesses. He puts them straight and then calls in the loan. The businesses can’t repay him, so he takes over the businesses, and shortly after sells off their assets, closing them down. The smiling shark comes along and gobbles up the grateful minnows, who don’t discover their mistake until they’re half digested.’
‘So what did you do?’ Litsi said.
‘Well … I went around filming interviews with some of the people he had damaged. They were pretty emotional stuff. An old couple he’d cheated out of a star racehorse, a man whose son committed suicide when he lost his business, and a foolish boy who’d been led into gambling away half his inheritance.’
‘I saw the film,’ Danielle said. ‘It hit like hammers … it made me cry. Kit threatened to send video tape copies to all sorts of people if Maynard did any more harm to Bobby. And you’ve forgotten to say,’ she said to me, ‘that Maynard tried to get Bobby to kill you.’
Litsi blinked. ‘To kill …’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘He’s paranoid about Bobby marrying my sister. He’s been programmed from birth to hate all Fieldings. He told Bobby when he was a little boy that if he was ever naughty, the Fieldings would eat him.’
I explained about the depth and bitterness of the old Fielding–Allardeck feud.
‘Bobby and I,’ I said, ‘have made it up and are friends, but his father can’t stand that.’
‘Bobby thinks,’ Danielle said to me, ‘that Maynard also can’t stand you being successful. He wouldn’t feel so murderous if you’d been a lousy jockey.’
‘Maynard,’ I told Litsi, smiling, ‘is a member of the Jockey Club and also now turns up quite often as a Steward at various racecourses. He would dearly like to see me lose my licence.’
‘Which he can’t manage unfairly,’ Litsi said thoughtfully, ‘because of the existence of the film.’
‘It’s a stand-off,’ I agreed equably.
‘OK,’ Litsi said, ‘then how about a stand-off for Henri Nanterre?’
‘I don’t know enough about him. I’d known Maynard all my life. I don’t know anything about arms or anyone who deals in them.’
Litsi pursed his lips. ‘I think I could arrange that,’ he said.
EIGHT
I telephoned to Wykeham later that Sunday afternoon and listened to the weariness in his voice. His day had been a procession of frustrations and difficulties which were not yet over. The dog-patrol man, complete with dog, was sitting in his kitchen drinking tea and complaining that the weather was freezing. Wykeham was afraid most of the patrolling would be done all night indoors.
‘Is it freezing really?’ I asked. Freezing was always bad news because racing would be abandoned, frosty ground being hard, slippery and dangerous.
‘Two degrees off it.’
Wykeham kept thermometers above the outdoor water taps so he could switch on low-powered battery heaters in a heavy freeze and keep the water flowing. His whole stable was rich with gadgets he’d adopted over the years, like infra-red lights in the boxes to keep the horses warm and healthy.
‘A policeman came,’ Wykeham said. ‘A detective constable. He said it was probably some boys’ prank. I ask you! I told him it was no prank to shoot two horses expertly, but he said it was amazing what boys got up to. He said he’d seen worse things. He’d seen ponies in fields with their eyes gouged out. It was c … c … crazy. I said Cotopaxi was no pony, he was co-favourite for the Grand National, and he said it was b … bad luck on the owner.’
‘Did he promise any action?’
‘He said he would come back tomorrow and take statements from the lads, but I don’t think they know anything. Pete, who looked after Cotopaxi, has been in tears and the others are all indignant. It’s worse for them than having one killed accidentally.’
‘For us all,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘It didn’t help that the slaughterers had so much trouble getting the bodies out. I didn’t watch. I couldn’t. I l … loved both those horses.’
To the slaughterers, of course, dead horses were just so much dogmeat, and although it was perhaps a properly unsentimental way of looking at it, it wasn’t always possible for someone like Wykeham, who had cared for them, talked to them, planned for them and lived through their lives. Trainers of steeplechasers usually knew their charges for a longer span than Flat-race trainers, ten years or more sometimes as opposed to three or four. When Wykeham said he loved a horse, he meant it.
He wouldn’t yet have the same feeling for Kinley, I thought. Kinley, the bright star, young and fizzing. Kinley was excitement, not an old buddy.
‘Look after Kinley,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’ve moved him. He’s in the corner box.’
The corner box, always the last to be used, couldn’t be reached directly from any courtyard but only through another box. Its position was a nuisance for lads, but it was also the most secret and safe place in the stable.
‘That’s great,’ I said with relief, ‘and now, what about tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Plumpton races.’
There was a slight silence while he reorganised his thoughts. He always sent a bunch of horses to go-ahead Plumpton because it was one of his nearest courses, and as far as I knew I was riding six of them.
‘Dusty has a list,’ he said eventually.
‘OK.’
‘Just ride them as you think best.’
‘All right.’
‘Goodnight, then, Kit.’
‘Goodnight, Wykeham.’
At least he’d got my name right, I thought, disconnecting. Perhaps all the right horses would arrive at Plumpton.
I went down there on the train the next morning, feeling glad, as the miles rolled by, to be away from the Eaton Square house. Even diluted by the princess, Litsi and Danielle, an evening spent with Beatrice de Brescou Bunt had opened vistas of social punishment I would as soon have remained closed. I had excused myself early, to openly reproachful looks from the others, but even in sleep I seemed to hear that insistent complaining voice.
When I’d left in the morning, Litsi had said he would himself spend most of the day with Roland after John Grundy had left. The princess and Danielle would occupy Beatrice. Danielle, working evening shifts in her television news company, would have to leave it all to the princess from soon after five-thirty. I had promised to return from Plumpton as soon as possible, but truthfully I was happy to be presented with a very good reason not to, in the shape of a message awaiting me in the changing room. Relayed from the stable manager at Newbury racecourse, the note requested me to remove my car from where I’d left it, as the space was urgently required for something else.
I telephoned to Eaton Square, and as it happened Danielle answered.
I explained about the car. ‘I’ll get a lift from Plumpton to Newbury. I think I’d better sleep at home in Lambourn, though, as I’ve got to go to Devon to race tomorrow. Will you apologise to the princess? Tell her I’ll come back tomorrow night, after racing, if she’d like.’
‘Deserter,’ Danielle said. ‘You sound suspiciously pleased.’
‘It does make sense in terms of miles,’ I said.
‘Tell it to the marines.’
‘Look after yourself,’ I said.
She said, ‘Yes,’ on a sigh after a pause, and put the pho
ne down. Sometimes it seemed that everything was the same between us, and then, on a sigh, it wasn’t. Without much enthusiasm, I went in search of Dusty who had arrived with the right horses, the right colours for me to wear and a poor opinion of the detective constable for trying to question the lads while they were working. No one knew anything, anyway, Dusty said, and the lads were in a mood for the lynching of any prowling stranger. The head lad (not Dusty, who was the travelling head lad) had looked round the courtyards as usual at about eleven on Saturday night, when all had appeared quiet. He hadn’t looked into all the eighty boxes, only one or two whose inmates weren’t well, and he hadn’t looked at either Cascade or Cotopaxi. He’d looked in on Kinley and Hillsborough to make sure they’d eaten their food after racing, and he’d gone home to bed. What more could anyone do, Dusty demanded.
‘No one’s blaming anybody,’ I said.
He said, ‘Not so far,’ darkly, and took my saddle away to put it on the right horse for the first race.
We stage-managed the afternoon between us, as so often, he producing and saddling the horses, I riding them, both of us doing a public relations job on the various owners, congratulating, commiserating, explaining and excusing. We ended with a typical day on two winners, a second, two also rans and a faller, the latter giving me a soft landing and no problems.
‘Thanks, Dusty,’ I said at the end. ‘Thanks for everything.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said suspiciously.
‘I just meant, six races is a busy day for you, and it all went well.’
‘It would have gone better if you hadn’t fallen off in the fifth,’ he said sourly.
I hadn’t fallen off. The horse had gone right down under me, leaving grass stains on its number cloth. Dusty knew it perfectly well.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘thanks, anyway.’
He gave me an unsmiling nod and hurried off: and in essential discord we would no doubt act as a team at Newton Abbot the next day and at Ascot the next, effective but cold.
Two other jockeys who lived in Lambourn gave me a lift back with them to Newbury, and I collected my car from its extended parking there and drove home to my house on the hill.