by Dick Francis
Col put his leading foot to the ground and it bent and buckled under him. His nose went down to the grass. The reins slid through my fingers to their full extent and I leaned back and gripped fiercely with my legs, trying not to be thrown off. By some agile miracle, his other foreleg struck the ground solidly, and with all his half-ton weight on that slender fetlock, Col pushed himself upright and kept on going.
I gathered the reins. The race had to be lost, but the fire, so long arriving, couldn’t easily be put out. Come on, now, you great brute, I was saying to him: now’s the time, there is one to beat, get on with it, now show me, show everyone you can do it, you still can do it.
As if he understood every word he put his head forward and accelerated in the brief astonishing last-minute spurt that had snatched last-second victories before from seeming impossibilities.
We nearly made it that time, very nearly. Col ate up the lengths he’d lost and I rode him almost as hard as Cascade but without the fury, and we were up with the other horse’s rump, up with the saddle, up with the neck … and the winning post flashed back three strides too soon.
The princess had said she wouldn’t come down to the unsaddling enclosure unless we won, as it was a long way from her box.
Maynard was there, however, balefully staring at me as I slid to the ground, his eyes dark and his face tight with hate. Why he came near me I couldn’t understand. If I’d hated anyone that much, I would have avoided the sight of them as much as possible: and I did loathe Maynard for what he’d tried to do to Bobby, to brainwash his own son into killing.
Dusty put the sheet over Col’s heaving chestnut sides with a studied lack of comment on the race’s result, and I went and weighed in with much of the afternoon’s dissatisfaction drifting around like a cloud.
I rode the next race for the Lambourn trainer and finished third, a good way back, and with a feeling of having accomplished nothing, changed into street clothes, done for the day.
On my way out of the weighing room, en route to the princess’s box, a voice said, ‘Hey, Kit,’ behind me, and I turned to find Basil Clutter walking quickly in my wake.
‘Are you still looking for Henri Nanterre?’ he said, catching me up.
‘Yes, I am.’ I stopped and he stopped also, although almost jogging from foot to foot, as he could never easily stand still.
The Roquevilles are here today; they had a runner in the first race. They’ve someone with them who knows Henri Nanterre quite well. They said if you were still interested perhaps you’d like to meet her.’
‘Yes, I would.’
He looked at his watch. ‘I’m supposed to be joining them in the owners’ and trainers’ bar for a drink now, so you’d better come along.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘very much.’
I followed him to the bar and, armed with Perrier to their port, met the Roquevilles’ friend, who was revealed as small and French-looking, with a gamine chic that had outlasted her youth. The elfin face bore wrinkles, the club-cut black hair showed greyish roots, and she wore high-heeled black boots and a smooth black leather trouser-suit with a silk scarf knotted at the back of her neck, cowboy fashion.
Her speech, surprisingly, was straightforward earthy racecourse English, and she was introduced to me as Madame Madeleine Darcy, English wife of a French racehorse trainer.
‘Henri Nanterre?’ she said with distaste. ‘Of course I know the bastard. We used to train his horses until he whisked them away overnight and sent them to Villon.’
TEN
She talked with the freedom of pique and the pleasure of entertaining an attentive audience.
‘He’s a cock,’ she said, ‘with a very loud crow. He struts like a rooster. We have known him since he was young, when the horses belonged to his father Louis, who was a very nice man, a gentleman.’
‘So Henri inherited the horses?’ I said.
‘But yes, along with everything else. Louis was soft-headed. He thought his son could do no wrong. So stupid. Henri is a greedy bully. Villon is welcome to him.’
‘In what way is he a greedy bully?’ I asked.
Her plucked eyebrows rose. ‘We bought a yearling filly with nice blood lines that we were going to race ourselves and breed from later. Henri saw her in the yard – he was always poking round the stables – and said he would buy her. When we said we didn’t want to sell, he said that unless we did, he would take all his horses away. He had eight … we didn’t want to lose them. We were furious. He made us sell him the filly at the price we’d paid for her … and we’d kept her for months. Then a few weeks later, he telephoned one evening and said horse-boxes would be arriving in the morning to collect his horses. And pouf, they were gone.’
‘What happened to the filly?’ I said.
Her mouth curved with pleasure. ‘She contracted navicular and had to be put down, poor little bitch. And do you know what that bastard Nanterre did?’
She paused for effect. About four voices, mine included, said ‘What?’
‘Villon told us. He was disgusted. Nanterre said he didn’t trust the knackers not to patch up the filly, pump her full of painkillers and sell her, making a profit at his expense, so he insisted on being there. The filly was put down on Villon’s land with Nanterre watching.’
Mrs Roqueville looked both sick and disappointed. ‘He seemed a pleasant enough man when we met him at Long-champ, and again at Newbury.’
‘I expect the Marquis de Sade was perfectly charming on the racecourse,’ Madeleine said sweetly. ‘It is where anyone can pretend to be a gentleman.’
After a respectful pause, I said, ‘Do you know anything of his business affairs?’
‘Business!’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘He is the de Brescou et Nanterre construction company. I don’t know anything about his business, only about his horses. I wouldn’t trust him in business. As a man deals with his racehorse trainer, so will he deal in business. The honourable will be honourable. The greedy bully will run true to form.’
‘And … do you know where I could find him in England?’
‘I wouldn’t look, if I were you.’ She gave me a bright smile. ‘He’ll bring you nothing but trouble.’
I relayed the conversation to Litsi and Danielle up in the princess’s box.
‘What’s navicular?’ Litsi said.
‘A disease of the navicular bone in a horse’s foot. When it gets bad, the horse can’t walk.’
‘That Nanterre,’ Danielle said disgustedly, ‘is gross.’
The princess and Beatrice, a few feet away at the balcony end of the box, were talking to a tall, bulky man with noticeably light grey eyes in a big bland face.
Litsi, following my gaze, said, ‘Lord Vaughnley … he came to commiserate with Aunt Casilia over Col not winning. Do you know him? He’s something in publishing, I think.’
‘Mm,’ I said neutrally. ‘He owns the Towncrier newspaper.’
‘Does he?’ Litsi’s agile mind made the jump. ‘Not the paper which attacked … Bobby?’
‘No, that was the Flag.’
‘Oh.’ Litsi seemed disappointed. ‘Then he isn’t one of the two defeated press barons after all.’
‘Yes, he is.’ Lord Vaughnley’s attention was switching my way. ‘I’ll tell you about it, some time,’ I said to Litsi, and watched Lord Vaughnley hesitate, as he always did, before offering his hand for me to shake: yet he must have known he would meet me in that place, as my being there at the end of each day’s racing was a ritual well known to him.
‘Kit,’ he said, grasping the nettle, ‘a great race … such bad luck.’
‘The way it goes,’ I said.
‘Better luck in the Gold Cup, eh?’
‘It would be nice.’
‘Anything I can do for you, my dear fellow?’
It was a question he asked whenever we met, though I could see Litsi’s astonishment out of the side of my eyes. Usually I answered that there wasn’t, but on that day thought there was no harm in trying a flier
. If one didn’t ask, one would never learn.
‘Nothing, really,’ I said, ‘except … I suppose you’ve never come across the name of Henri Nanterre?’
Everyone watched him while he pondered, the princess with rapidly sharpening interest, Litsi and Danielle with simple curiosity, Beatrice with seeming alarm. Lord Vaughnley looked around at the waiting faces, frowned, and finally answered with a question of his own.
‘Who is he?’ he asked.
‘My husband’s business partner,’ the princess said. ‘Dear Lord Vaughnley, do you know of him?’
Lord Vaughnley was puzzled but slowly shook his big head. ‘I can’t recall ever …’
‘Could you … er … see if the Towncrier has a file on him?’ I asked.
He gave me a resigned little smile, and nodded. ‘Write the name down for me,’ he said. ‘In caps.’
I fished out a pen and small note-pad and wrote both the name and that of the construction company, in capital letters as required.
‘He’s French,’ I said. ‘Owns horses. He might be on the racing pages, or maybe business. Or even gossip.’
‘Anything you want specifically?’ he said, still smiling.
‘He’s over in England just now. Ideally, we’d like to know where he’s staying.’
Beatrice’s mouth opened and closed again with a snap. She definitely knows, I thought, how to reach him. Perhaps we could make use of that, when we had a plan.
Lord Vaughnley tucked the slip of paper away in an inner pocket, saying he would get the names run through the computer that very evening, if it was important to the princess.
‘Indeed it is,’ she said with feeling.
‘Any little fact,’ I said, ‘could be helpful.’
‘Very well.’ He kissed the princess’s hand and made general farewells, and to me he said as he was going, ‘Have you embarked on another crusade?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Then God help this Nanterre.’
‘What did he mean by that?’ Beatrice demanded as Lord Vaughnley departed, and the princess told her soothingly that it was a long story which wasn’t to interfere with my telling her all about Col’s race. Lord Vaughnley, she added, was a good friend she saw often at the races, and that it was perfectly natural for him to help her in any way.
Beatrice, to do her justice, had been a great deal quieter since Nanterre’s telephone call the evening before. She had refused to believe he had killed the horses (‘it must have been vandals, as the police said’) until he had himself admitted it, and although she was still adamant that Roland should go along with Nanterre in business, we no longer heard praise of him personally.
Her hostility towards me on the other hand seemed to have deepened, and on my account of the race she passed her own opinion.
‘Rubbish. You didn’t lose the race at the last fence. You were too far back all along. Anyone could see that.’ She picked up a small sandwich from the display on the table and bit into it decisively, as if snapping off my head.
No one argued with her pronouncement and, emboldened, she said to Danielle with malice, ‘Your fortune-hunter isn’t even a good jockey.’
‘Beatrice,’ the princess immediately said, unruffled, ‘Kit has a fortune of his own, and he is heir to his grandfather, who is rich.’
She glanced at me briefly, forbidding me to contradict. Such fortune as I had I’d earned, and although my grandfather owned several chunks of Newmarket, their liquidity was of the consistency of bricks.
‘And Aunt Beatrice,’ Danielle said, faintly blushing, ‘I am poor.’
Beatrice ate her sandwich, letting her round eyes do the talking. Her pale orange hair, I thought inconsequentially, was almost the same colour as the hessian-covered walls.
The sixth and last race was already in progress, the commentary booming outside. Everyone except Beatrice went on the balcony to watch, and I wondered whether a putative million dollars was worth an unquiet mind. ‘It’s nice to be nice,’ our grandmother had said often enough to Holly and me, bringing us up, and ‘Hate curdles your brains.’ Grandfather, overhearing her heresies, had tried to undo her work with anti-Allardeck slogans, but in the end it was she who’d prevailed. Holly had married Bobby, and apart from the present state of affairs with Danielle and other various past hard knocks, I had grown up, and remained, basically happy. Beatrice, for all her mink-crocodile-Spanish house indulgences in Palm Beach, hadn’t been so lucky.
When it came to going home, Beatrice again went with the princess in the Rolls. I had hoped Litsi would join them, as I was detouring to Chiswick to deliver Danielle to the studio, but he took Danielle’s arm and steered her and himself, chatting away, in the direction of the jockeys’ car park as if there had never been any question. Litsi had his aunt’s precious knack of courteously and covertly getting his own way. He would have made a great king, I thought wryly, given the chance.
We dropped Danielle off (she waved to both of us and kissed neither) and I drove the two of us back to Eaton Square. Beatrice, naturally enough, came into the conversation.
‘You were shocked,’ Litsi said, amused, ‘when she called you a fortune-hunter. You hadn’t even thought of Danielle’s prospects.’
‘She called me a bad jockey,’ I said.
‘Oh, sure.’ He chuckled. ‘You’re a puritan.’
‘Danielle has the money she earns,’ I said. ‘As I do.’
‘Danielle is Roland’s niece,’ he said as if teaching an infant. ‘Roland and Aunt Casilia are fond of her, and they have no children.’
‘I don’t want that complication.’
He grunted beside me and said no more on the subject, and after a while I said, ‘Do you know why they have no children? Is it choice, or his illness? Or just that they couldn’t?’
‘His illness, I’ve always supposed, but I’ve never asked. He was about forty, I think, when they married, about fifteen years older than her, and he caught the virus not long after. I can’t remember ever seeing him walk, though he was a good skier, I believe, in his time.’
‘Rotten for them,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘He was lucky in some respects. Some people who get that virus – and thank God it’s rare – lose the use of their arms as well. They never speak of it much, of course.’
‘How are we going to save his honour?’
‘You invent,’ Litsi said lazily, ‘and I’ll gofer.’
‘Gofer a lever,’ I said absentmindedly.
‘A lever?’
‘To move the world.’
He stretched contentedly. ‘Do you have any ideas at all?’
‘One or two. Rather vague.’
‘Which you’re not sharing?’
‘Not yet. Have to think a bit first.’ I told him I’d bought a recording telephone that morning. ‘When we get back, we’ll rig it and work out a routine.’
‘He said he would ring again this evening.’
No need to say who ‘he’ was.
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘The phone I bought is also a conference phone. It has a loudspeaker, so that everyone in the room can hear what the caller’s saying. You don’t need the receiver. So when he rings, if it’s you that answers, will you get him to speak in English?’
‘Perhaps you’d better answer, then he’d have to.’
‘All right. And the message we give is … no dice?’
‘You couldn’t just string him along?’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said, ‘but to fix him we’ve got to find him, and he could be anywhere. Beatrice knows where he is, or at least how to reach him. If we get him out in the open …’ I paused. ‘What we ideally need is a tethered goat.’
‘And just who,’ Litsi enquired ironically, ‘are you electing for that dead-end job?’
I smiled. ‘A stuffed goat with a mechanical bleat. All real goats must be guarded or careful.’
‘Aunt Casilia, Roland and Danielle, guarded.’
‘And the horses,’ I said.
‘OK. And the
horses guarded. And you and I …’
I nodded. ‘Careful.’
Neither of us mentioned that Nanterre had specifically threatened each of us as his next targets: there was no point. I didn’t think he would actually try to kill either of us, but the damage would have to be more than a pin-prick to expect a result.
‘What’s he like?’ Litsi said. ‘You’ve met him. I’ve never seen him. Know your enemy … first rule for combat.’
‘Well, I think he got into all this without thinking it out first,’ I said. ‘Last Friday, I think he believed he had only to browbeat the princess heavily enough, and Roland would collapse. That’s also very nearly what happened.’
‘As I understand it, it didn’t happen because you were there.’
‘I don’t know. Anyway, on Friday night when he pulled the gun out which had no bullets in … I think that may be typical of him. He acts on impulse, without thinking things through. He’s used to getting his own way easily because of his hectoring manner. He’s used to being obeyed. Since his father died – and his father had customarily indulged him – he has run the construction company pretty well as he likes. I’d say he’s quite likely reached the stage where he literally can’t believe he can be defied, and especially not by an old, ill man long out of touch with the world. When Roland rejected him by post, I’d guess he came over thinking, “I’ll soon change all that.” I think in some ways he’s childish, which doesn’t make him less destructive: more so, probably.’
I paused, but Litsi made no comment.
‘Attacking Danielle,’ I said. ‘He thought again that he would have it all his own way. I’ll bet it never once occurred to him that she could run faster than he could. He turned up there in a city suit and polished leather shoes. It was a sort of arrogance, an assumption that he would naturally be faster, stronger, dominant. If he’d had any doubts at all, he’d have worn a jogging suit, something like that, and faster shoes.’
‘And the horses?’ Litsi said.
I hated to think of the horses: ‘They were vulnerable,’ I said. ‘And he knew how to kill them. I don’t know where he would get a humane killer, but he does deal in guns. He carries one. They attract him, otherwise he wouldn’t be wanting to make them. People mostly do what their natures urge, don’t they? He may have a real urge to see things die … wanting to make sure the slaughterers didn’t cheat him could be just the only acceptable reason he could give for a darker desire. People always think up reasonable reasons for doing what they want.’