by Dick Francis
‘And a very strong voice.’
‘And we’re no further forward,’ Litsi said.
I started the car and drove us to London, where we found that nothing of any interest had happened at all, with the result that Sammy was getting bored.
‘Just by being here,’ I said, ‘you earn your bread.’
‘No one knows I’m here, man.’
‘They sure do,’ I said dryly. ‘Everything that happens in this house reaches the ears of the man you’re guarding its owner against, so don’t go to sleep.’
‘I’d never,’ he said, aggrieved.
‘Good.’ I showed him the Towncrier’s photograph. ‘That man, there,’ I said, pointing. ‘If ever you see him, that’s when you take care. He carries a gun, which may or may not have bullets in it, and he’s full of all sorts of tricks.’
He looked at the photograph long and thoughtfully. ‘I’ll know him,’ he said.
I took Lord Vaughnley’s offerings up to the bamboo room, telephoned Wykeham, picked up my messages, dealt with them: the usual routine. When I went down to the sitting room for a drink before dinner, Litsi, Danielle and the princess were discussing French impressionist painters exhibiting in Paris around 1880.
Cézanne … Pissarro … Renoir … Degas … at least I’d heard of them. I went across to the drinks tray and picked up the scotch.
‘Berthe Morisot was one of the best,’ Litsi said to the room in general. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘What did he paint?’ I asked, opening the bottle.
‘He was a she,’ Litsi said.
I grunted slightly and poured a trickle of whisky. ‘She, then, what did she paint?’
‘Young women, babies, studies in light.’
I sat in an armchair and drank the scotch, looking at Litsi.
At least he didn’t patronise me, I thought. ‘They’re not all easy to see,’ he said. ‘Many are in private collections, some are in Paris, several are in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.’
I was unlikely, he must have known, to chase them up.
‘Delightful pictures,’ the princess said. ‘Luminous.’
‘And there was Mary Cassatt,’ Danielle said. ‘She was brilliant too.’ She turned to me. ‘She was American, but she was a student of Degas in Paris.’
I would go with her to galleries, I thought, if that would please her. ‘One of these days,’ I said casually, ‘you can educate me.’
She turned her head away almost as if she would cry, which hadn’t in the least been my intention; and perhaps it was as well that Beatrice arrived for her ‘bloody’.
Beatrice was suffering a severe sense of humour failure over Sammy who had, it appeared, said, ‘Sorry, me old darlin’, not used to slow traffic,’ while again cannoning into her on the stairs.
She saw the laugh on my face, which gravely displeased her, and Litsi smothered his in his drink. The princess, with twitching lips, assured her sister-in-law that she would ask Sammy to be more careful and Beatrice said it was all my fault for having brought him into the house. It entirely lightened and enlivened the evening, which passed more easily than some of the others: but there was still no one telephoning in response to the advertisements, and there was again no sound from Nanterre.
Early next morning, well before seven, Dawson woke me again with the intercom, saying there was a call for me from Wykeham Harlow.
I picked up the receiver, sleep forgotten.
‘Wykeham?’ I said.
‘K … K … Kit.’ He was stuttering dreadfully. ‘C … C … Come down here. C … Come at once.’
FIFTEEN
He put the receiver down immediately, without telling me what had happened, and when I instantly rang back there was no reply. With appalling foreboding, I flung on some clothes, sprinted round to the car, did very cursory checks on it, and drove fast through the almost empty streets towards Sussex.
Wykeham had sounded near disintegration, shock and age trembling ominously in his voice. By the time I reached him, they had been joined by anger, which filled and shook him with impotent fire.
He was standing in the parking space with Robin Curtiss, the vet, when I drove in.
‘What’s happened?’ I said, getting out of the car.
Robin made a helpless gesture with his hands and Wykeham said with fury. ‘C … Come and look.’
I followed him into the courtyard next to the one which had held Cascade and Cotopaxi. Wykeham, shaky on his knees but straight backed with emotion, went across to one of the closed doors and put his hand flat on it.
‘In there,’ he said.
The box door was closed but not bolted. Not bolted, because the horse inside wasn’t going to escape.
I pulled the doors open, the upper and the lower, and saw the body lying on the peat.
Bright chestnut, three white socks, white blaze.
It was Col.
Speechlessly I turned to Wykeham and Robin, feeling all of Wykeham’s rage and a lot of private despair. Nanterre was too quick on his feet, and it wouldn’t take much more for Roland de Brescou to crumble.
‘It’s the same as before,’ Robin said. ‘The bolt.’ He bent down, lifted the chestnut forelock, showed me the mark on the white blaze. ‘There’s a lot of oil in the wound … the gun’s been oiled since last time.’ He let go of the forelock and straightened. ‘The horse is stone cold. It was done early, I should say before midnight.’
Col… gallant at Ascot, getting ready for Cheltenham, for the Gold Cup.
‘Where was the patrol?’ I said, at last finding my voice.
‘He was here,’ Wykeham said. ‘In the stable, I mean, not in the courtyard.’
‘He’s gone, I suppose.’
‘No, I told him to wait for you. He’s in the kitchen.’
‘Col,’ I said, ‘is the only one … isn’t he?’
Robin nodded. ‘Something to be thankful for.’
Not much, I thought. Cotopaxi and Col had been two of the princess’s three best horses, and it could be no coincidence that they’d been targeted.
‘Kinley,’ I said to Wykeham. ‘You did check Kinley, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, straight away. He’s in the corner box still, in the next courtyard.’
‘The insurers aren’t going to like this,’ Robin said, looking down at the dead horse. ‘With the first two, it might have been just bad luck that they were two good ones, but three …’ he shrugged. ‘Not my problem, of course.’
‘How did he know where to find them?’ I said, as much to myself as to Robin and Wykeham. ‘Is this Col’s usual box?’
‘Yes,’ Wykeham said. ‘I suppose now I’ll have to change them all around, but it does disrupt the stable …’
‘Abseil,’ I said, ‘is he all right?’
‘Who?’
‘Yesterday’s winner.’
Wykeham’s doubts cleared. ‘Oh, yes, he’s all right.’
Abseil was as easy to recognise as the others, I thought. Not chestnut, not nearly black like Cascade, but grey, with a black mane and tail.
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
‘In the last courtyard, near the house.’
Although I was down at Wykeham’s fairly often, it was always to do the schooling, for which we would drive up to the Downs, where I would ride relays of the horses over jumps, teaching them. I almost never rode the horses in or out of the yard, and although I knew where some of the horses lived, like Cotopaxi, I wasn’t sure of them all.
I put a hand down to touch Col’s foreleg, and felt its rigidity, its chill. The foreleg that had saved us from disaster at Ascot, that had borne all his weight.
‘I’ll have to tell the princess,’ Wykeham said unhappily. ‘Unless you would, Kit?’
‘Yes, I’ll tell her,’ I said. ‘At Sandown.’
He nodded vaguely. ‘What are we running?’ he said.
‘Helikon for the princess, and three others.’
‘Dusty has the list, of course.’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
Wykeham took a long look again at the dead splendour on the peat.
‘I’d kill the shit who did that,’ he said, ‘with his own damned bolt.’
Robin sighed and closed the stable doors, saying he would arrange for the carcass to be collected, if Wykeham liked.
Wykeham silently nodded, and we all walked out of the courtyard and made our way to Wykeham’s house, where Robin went off to telephone in the office. The dog-handler was still in the kitchen, restive but chastened, with his dog, a black Dobermann, lying on the floor and yawning at his feet.
‘Tell Kit Fielding what you told me,’ Wykeham said.
The dog-handler, in a navy blue battle-dress uniform, was middle-aged and running to fat. His voice was defensively belligerent and his intelligence middling, and I wished I’d had the speedy Sammy here in his place. I sat at the table across from him and asked how he’d missed the visitor who had shot Col.
‘I couldn’t help it, could I?’ he said. ‘Not with those bombs going off.’
‘What bombs?’ I glanced at Wykeham, who’d clearly heard about the bombs before. ‘What bombs, for God’s sake?’
The dog-handler had a moustache which he groomed frequently with a thumb and forefinger, working outwards from the nose.
‘Well, how was I to know they wasn’t proper bombs?’ he said. ‘They made enough noise.’
‘Just start,’ I said, ‘at the beginning. Start with when you came on duty. And er … have you been here any other nights?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Monday to Friday, five nights.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Describe last night.’
‘I come on duty sevenish, when the head lad’s finished the feeding. I make a base here in the kitchen and do a recce every half hour. Standard procedure.’
‘How long do the recces take?’
‘Fifteen minutes, maybe more. It’s bitter cold these nights.’
‘And you go into all the courtyards?’
‘Never miss a one,’ he said piously.
‘And where else?’
‘Look in the hay barn, tack room, feed shed, round the back where the tractor is, and the harrow, muck-heap, the lot.’
‘Go on, then,’ I said, ‘how many recces had you done when the bombs went off?’
He worked it out on his fingers. ‘Nine, say. The head lad had been in for a quick look round last thing, like he does, and everything was quiet. So I comes back here for a bit of a warm, and goes out again half eleven, I should say. I start on the rounds, and there’s this almighty bang and crashing round the back. So I went off there with Ranger …’ he looked down at his dog. ‘Well, I would, wouldn’t I? Stands to reason.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where exactly, round the back?’
‘I couldn’t see at first because there isn’t much light round there, and there was this strong smell of burning, got right down your throat, and then another one went off not ten feet away. Nearly burst my eardrums.’
‘Where were the bombs?’ I said again.
‘The first one was round the back of the muck-heap. I found what was left of it with my torch, after.’
‘But you don’t use your torch all the time?’
‘You don’t need to in the courtyards. Most of them have lights in.’
‘Mm. OK. Where was the second one?’
‘Under the harrow.’
Wykeham, like many trainers, used the harrow occasionally for raking his paddocks, keeping them in good shape.
‘Did it blow up the harrow?’ I said, frowning.
‘No, see, they weren’t that sort of bomb.’
‘What other sort is there?’
‘It went off through the harrow with a huge shower of sparks. Golden sparks, all over. Little burning sparks. Some of them fell on me … They were fireworks. I found the empty boxes. They said “bomb” on them, where they weren’t burned.’
‘Where are they now,’ I asked.
‘Where they went off. I didn’t touch them, except to kick them over to read what was on the side.’
‘So what was your dog doing all this time?’
The dog-handler looked disillusioned. ‘I had him on the leash. I always do, of course. He didn’t like the bangs or the sparks or the smell. He’s supposed to be trained to ignore gun shots, but he didn’t like the fireworks. He was barking fit to bust, and trying to run off.’
‘He was trying to run in a different direction, but you stopped him?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Maybe he was trying to run after the man who shot the horse.’
The dog-handler’s mouth opened and snapped shut. He smoothed his moustache several times and grew noticeably more aggressive. ‘Ranger was barking at the bombs,’ he said.
I nodded. It was too late for it to matter.
‘And I suppose,’ I said, ‘that you didn’t hear any other bangs in the distance … you didn’t hear the shot?’
‘No, I didn’t. My ears were ringing and Ranger was kicking up a racket.’
‘So what did you do next?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I thought it was some of those lads who work here. Proper little monkeys. So I just went on with the patrols, regular like. There wasn’t anything wrong … it didn’t look like it, that’s to say.’
I turned to Wykeham, who had been gloomily listening. ‘Didn’t you hear the fireworks?’ I asked.
‘No, I was asleep.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘I don’t sleep very well … I can’t seem to sleep at all these days without sleeping pills. We’d had four quiet nights and I’d been awake most of those, so … last night I took a pill.’
I sighed. If Wykeham had been awake, he would anyway have gone towards the commotion and nothing would have been different.
I said to the dog-handler, ‘You were here on Wednesday, when you had the prowler?’
‘Yes, I was. Ranger was whining but I couldn’t find anyone.’
Nanterre, I thought, had come to the stable on Wednesday night, intending to kill, and had been thwarted by the dog’s presence: and he’d come back two nights later with his diversions.
He must have been at Ascot, I supposed, and learned what Col looked like, but I hadn’t seen him, as I hadn’t seen him at Bradbury either: but among large crowds on racecourses, especially while I was busy, that wasn’t extraordinary.
I looked down at Ranger, wondering about his responses.
‘When people arrive here,’ I asked, ‘like I did a short while ago, how does Ranger behave?’
‘He gets up and goes to the door and whines a bit. He’s a quiet dog, mostly. Doesn’t bark. That’s why I knew it was the bombs he was barking at.’
‘Well, er, during your spells in the kitchen, what would you be doing?’
‘Making a cuppa. Eating. Relieving myself. Reading. Watching the telly.’ He smoothed his moustache, not liking me or my questions. ‘I don’t doze off, if that’s what you mean.’
It was what I meant, and obviously what he’d done, at some point or another. During four long quiet cold nights I supposed it was understandable, if not excusable.
‘Over the weekend,’ I said to Wykeham, ‘we’ll have double and treble patrols. Constant.’
He nodded. ‘Have to.’
‘Have you told the police yet?’
‘Not yet. Soon, though.’ He looked with disgust at the dog-handler. ‘They’ll want to hear what you’ve said.’
The dog-handler however stood up, announced it was an hour after he should have left and if the police wanted him they could reach him through his firm. He, he said, was going to bed.
Wykeham morosely watched him go and said, ‘What the hell is going on, Kit? The princess knows who killed them all, and so do you. So tell me.’
It wasn’t fair, I thought, for him not to know, so I told him the outline: a man was trying to extract a signature from Roland de Brescou by attacking his family wherever he could.
‘But that’s… terrorism.’
Wykeham used the word at arm’s length, as if its very existence affronted him.
‘In a small way,’ I said.
‘Small?’ he exclaimed. ‘Do you call three dead great horses small?’
I didn’t. It made me sick and angry to think of them. It was small on a world scale of terrorism, but rooted in the same wicked conviction that the path to attaining one’s end lay in slaughtering the innocent.
I stirred. ‘Show me where all the princess’s horses are,’ I suggested to Wykeham, and together we went out again into the cold air and made the rounds of the courtyards.
Cascade’s and Cotopaxi’s boxes were still empty, and no others of the princess’s horses had been in the first courtyard. In the second had been only Col. In the one beyond that, Hillsborough and Berina, with Kinley in the deep corner box there.
About a third of the stable’s inmates were out at exercise on the Downs, and while we were leaving Kinley’s yard, they came clattering back, filling the whole place with noise and movement, the lads dismounting and leading their horses into the boxes. Wykeham and I sorted our way round as the lads brushed down their charges, tidied the bedding, filled the buckets, brought hay to the racks, propped their saddles outside the boxes, bolted the doors and went off to their breakfasts.
I saw all the old friends in their quarters; among them North Face, Dhaulagiri, Icicle and Icefall, and young Helikon, the four-year-old hurdler going to Sandown that afternoon. Wykeham got half of their names right, waiting for me to prompt him on the others. He unerringly knew their careers, though, and their personalities; they were real to him in a way that needed no name tags. His secretary was adept at sorting out what he intended when he wrote down his lists of entries to races.
In the last courtyard we came to Abseil and opened the top half of his door. Abseil came towards the opening daylight and put his head out enquiringly. I rubbed his grey nose and upper lip with my hand and put my head next to his and breathed out gently like a reversed sniff into his nostril. He rubbed his nose a couple of times against my cheek and then lifted his head away, the greeting done. Wykeham paid no attention. Wykeham talked to horses that way himself, when they were that sort of horse. With some, one would never do it, one could get one’s nose bitten off.