by Dick Francis
Lord Gowery made no attempt to put him at ease but simply asked questions and let him get on with the answers as best he could.
‘What orders did Mr Cranfield give you before the race? How did he tell you to ride Cherry Pie? Did he instruct you to ride to win?’
Tommy stuttered and stumbled and said Mr Cranfield had told him to keep just behind Squelch all the way round and try to pass him after the last fence.
Cranfield said indignantly: ‘That’s what he did. Not what I told him to do.’
Gowery listened, turned his head to Tommy, and said again, ‘Will you tell us what instructions Mr Cranfield gave you before the race? Please think carefully.’
Tommy swallowed, gave Cranfield an agonised glance, and tried again. ‘M.. M.. M.. Mr Cranfield s.. s.. said to take my p.. p.. pace from S .. S .. Squelch and s.. s.. stay with him as long as I c.. c.. could.’
‘And did he tell you to win?’
‘He s.. s.. said of course g.. g.. go on and w.. w.. win if you c.. c.. can, sir.’
These were impeccable instructions. Only the most suspicious or biased mind could have read any villainy into them. If these Stewards’ minds were not suspicious and biased, snow would fall in the Sahara.
‘Did you hear Mr Cranfield giving Hughes instructions as to how he should ride Squelch?’
‘N.. No, sir. M .. Mr Cranfield did .. didn’t g.. give Hughes any orders at all, sir.’
‘Why not?’
Tommy ducked it and said he didn’t know. Cranfield remarked furiously that Hughes had ridden the horse twenty times and knew what was needed.
‘Or you had discussed it with him privately, beforehand?’
Cranfield had no explosive answer to that because of course we had discussed it beforehand. In general terms. In an assessment of the opposition. As a matter of general strategy.
‘I discussed the race with him, yes. But I gave him no specific orders.’
‘So according to you,’ Lord Gowery said, ‘You intended both of your jockeys to try to win?’
‘Yes. I did. My horses are always doing their best.’
Gowery shook his head. ‘Your statement is not borne out by the facts.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Cranfield demanded.
Gowery didn’t answer. But yes, he was.
They shooed a willing Tommy Timpson away and Cranfield went on simmering at boiling point beside me. For myself, I was growing cold, and no amount of central heating could stop it. I thought we must now have heard everything, but I was wrong. They had saved the worst until last, building up the pyramid of damning statements until they could put the final cap on it and stand back and admire their four square structure, their solid, unanswerable edifice of guilt.
The worst, at first, had looked so harmless. A quiet slender man in his early thirties, endowed with an utterly forgettable face. After twenty-four hours I couldn’t recall his features or remember his voice, and yet I couldn’t think about him without shaking with sick impotent fury.
His name was David Oakley. His business, enquiry agent. His address, Birmingham.
He stood without fidgeting at the end of the Stewards’ table holding a spiral bound notebook which he consulted continually, and from beginning to end not a shade of emotion affected his face or his behaviour or even his eyes.
‘Acting upon instructions, I paid a visit to the flat of Kelly Hughes, jockey, of Corrie House training stables, Corrie, Berkshire, two days after the Lemonfizz Crystal Cup.’
I sat up with a jerk and opened my mouth to deny it, but before I could say a word he went smoothly on.
‘Mr Hughes was not there, but the door was open, so I went in to wait for him. While I was there I made certain observations.’ He paused.
Cranfield said to me, ‘What is all this about?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.’
Gowery steamrollered on. ‘You found certain objects.’
‘Yes, my Lord.’
Gowery sorted out three large envelopes, and passed one each to Tring and Plimborne. Ferth was before them. He had removed the contents from a similar envelope as soon as Oakley had appeared, and was now, I saw, watching me with what I took to be contempt.
The envelopes each held a photograph.
Oakely said, ‘The photograph is of objects I found on a chest of drawers in Hughes’s bedroom.’
Andy Tring looked, looked again, and raised a horrified face, meeting my eyes accidentally and for the first and only time. He glanced away hurriedly, embarrassed and disgusted.
‘I want to see that photograph,’ I said hoarsely.
‘Certainly.’ Lord Gowery turned his copy round and pushed it across the table. I got up, walked the three dividing steps, and looked down at it.
For several seconds I couldn’t take it in, and when I did, I was breathless with disbelief. The photograph had been taken from above the dressing chest, and was sparkling clear. There was the edge of the silver frame and half of Rosalind’s face, and from under the frame, as if it had been used as a paperweight, protruded a sheet of paper dated the day after the Lemonfizz Cup. There were three words written on it, and two initials.
‘As agreed. Thanks. D.C.’
Slanted across the bottom of the paper, and spread out like a pack of cards, were a large number of ten pound notes.
I looked up, and met Lord Gowery’s eyes, and almost flinched away from the utter certainty I read there.
‘It’s a fake,’ I said. My voice sounded odd. ‘It’s a complete fake.’
‘What is it?’ Cranfield said from behind me, and in his voice too everyone could hear the awareness of disaster.
I picked up the photograph and took it across to him, and I couldn’t feel my feet on the carpet. When he had grasped what it meant he stood up slowly and in a low biting voice said formally, ‘My Lords, if you believe this, you will believe anything.’
It had not the slightest effect.
Gowery said merely, ‘That is your handwriting, I believe.’
Cranfield shook his head. ‘I didn’t write it.’
‘Please be so good as to write those exact words on this sheet of paper.’ Gowery pushed a plain piece of paper across the table, and after a second Cranfield went across and wrote on it. Everyone knew that the two samples would look the same, and they did. Gowery passed the sheet of paper signficantly to the other Stewards, and they all compared and nodded.
‘It’s a fake,’ I said again. ‘I never had a letter like that.’
Gowery ignored me. To Oakley he said, ‘Please tell us where you found the money.’
Oakley unnecessarily consulted his notebook. ‘The money was folded inside this note, fastened with a rubber band, and both were tucked behind the photo of Hughes’s girl friend, which you see in the picture.’
‘It’s not true,’ I said. I might as well not have bothered. No one listened.
‘You counted the money, I believe?’
‘Yes my Lord. There was five hundred pounds.’
‘There was no money,’ I protested. Useless. ‘And anyway,’ I added desperately, ‘Why would I take five hundred for losing the race when I would get about as much as that for winning?’
I thought for a moment that I might have scored a hit. Might have made them pause. A pipe dream. There was an answer to that, too.
‘We understand from Mr Kessel, Squelch’s owner,’ Gowery said flatly, ‘That he pays you ten per cent of the winning stake money through official channels by cheque. This means that all presents received by you from Mr Kessel are taxed; and we understand that as you pay a high rate of tax your ten per cent from Mr Kessel would have in effect amounted to half, or less than half, of five hundred pounds.’
They seemed to have enquired into my affairs down to the last penny. Dug around in all directions. Certainly I had never tried to hide anything, but this behind-my-back tin-opening made me feel naked. Also, revolted. Also, finally, hopeless. And it wasn’t until then that I realised I had
been subconsciously clinging to a fairy tale faith that it would all finally come all right, that because I was telling the truth I was bound to be believed in the end.
I stared across at Lord Gowery, and he looked briefly back. His face was expressionless, his manner entirely calm. He had reached his conclusions and nothing could overthrow them.
Lord Ferth, beside him, was less bolted down, but a great deal of his earlier heat seemed to have evaporated. The power he had generated no longer troubled Gowery at all, and all I could interpret from his expression was some kind of resigned acceptance.
There was little left to be said. Lord Gowery briefly summed up the evidence against us. The list of former races. The non use of the whip. The testimony of Charlie West. The bets struck on Cherry Pie. The riding orders given in private. The photographic proof of a pay off from Cranfield to Hughes.
‘There can be no doubt that this was a most flagrant fraud on the racing public… No alternative but to suspend your licences… And you, Dexter Cranfield, and you, Kelly Hughes, will be warned off Newmarket Heath until further notice.’
Cranfield, pale and shaking, said, ‘I protest that this has not been a fair hearing. Neither Hughes nor I are guilty. The sentence is outrageous.’
No response from Lord Gowery. Lord Ferth, however, spoke for the second time in the proceedings.
‘Hughes?’
‘I rode Squelch to win,’ I said. ‘The witnesses were lying.’
Gowery shook his head impatiently. ‘The Enquiry is closed. You may go.’
Cranfield and I both hesitated, still unable to accept that that was all. But the official near the door opened it, and all the ranks opposite began to talk quietly to each other and ignore us, and in the end we walked out. Stiff legged. Feeling as if my head were a floating football and my body a chunk of ice. Unreal.
There were several people in the waiting-room outside, but I didn’t see them clearly. Cranfield, tight lipped, strode away from me, straight across the room and out of the far door, shaking off a hand or two laid on his sleeve. Dazed, I started to follow him, but was less purposeful, and was effectively stopped by a large man who planted himself in my way.
I looked at him vaguely, Mr Kessel. The owner of Squelch.
‘Well?’ he said challengingly.
‘They didn’t believe us. We’ve both been warned off.’
He hissed a sharp breath out between his teeth. ‘After what I’ve been hearing, I’m not surprised. And I’ll tell you this, Hughes, even if you get your licence back, you won’t be riding for me again.’
I looked at him blankly and didn’t answer. It seemed a small thing after what had already happened. He had been talking to the witnesses, in the waiting-room. They would convince anyone, it seemed. Some owners were unpredictable anyway, even in normal times. One day they had all the faith in the world in their jockey, and the next day, none at all. Faith with slender foundations. Mr Kessel had forgotten all the races I had won for him because of the one I had lost.
I turned blindly away from his hostility and found a more welcome hand on my arm. Tony, who had driven up with me instead of seeing his horses work.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
I nodded and went down with him in the lift, out into the hall, and towards the front door. Outside there we could see a bunch of newspaper reporters waylaying Cranfield with their notebooks at the ready, and I stopped dead at the sight.
‘Let’s wait till they’ve gone,’ I said.
‘They won’t go. Not before they’ve chewed you up too.’
We waited, hesitating, and a voice called behind me, ‘Hughes.’
I didn’t turn round. I felt I owed no one the slightest politeness. The footsteps came up behind me and he finally came to a halt in front.
Lord Ferth. Looking tired.
‘Hughes. Tell me. Why in God’s name did you do it?’
I looked at him stonily.
‘I didn’t.’
He shook his head. ‘All the evidence…’
‘You tell me,’ I said, rudely, ‘Why decent men like Stewards so easily believe a lot of lies.’
I turned away from him, too. Twitched my head at Tony and made for the front door. To hell with the press. To hell with the Stewards and Mr Kessel. And to everything to do with racing. The upsurge of fury took me out of the building and fifty yards along the pavement in Portman Square and only evaporated into grinding misery when we had climbed into the taxi Tony whistled for.
Tony thumped up the stairs to the darkened flat. I heard him calling.
‘Are you there, Kelly?’
I unrolled myself from the bed, stood up, stretched, went out into the sitting-room and switched on the lights. He was standing in the far doorway, blinking, his hands full of tray.
‘Poppy insisted,’ he explained.
He put the tray down on the table and lifted off the covering cloth. She’d sent hot chicken pie, a tomato, and about half a pound of Brie.
‘She says you haven’t eaten for two days.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Get on with it, then.’ He made an instinctive line for the whisky bottle and poured generously into two tumblers.
‘And here. For once, drink this.’
I took the glass and a mouthful and felt the fire trickle down inside my chest. The first taste was always the best. Tony tossed his off and ordered himself a refill.
I ate the pie, the tomato, and the cheese. Hunger I hadn’t consciously felt rolled contentedly over and slept.
‘Can you stay a bit?’ I asked.
‘Natch.’
‘I’d like to tell you about the Enquiry.’
‘Shoot,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘I’ve been waiting.’
I told him all that had happened, almost word for word. Every detail had been cut razor sharp into my memory in the way that only happens in disasters.
Tony’s astonishment was plain. ‘You were framed!’
‘That’s right.’
‘But surely no one can get away with that?’
‘Someone seems to be doing all right.’
‘But was there nothing you could say to prove…’
‘I couldn’t think of anything yesterday, which is all that matters. It’s always easy to think of all the smart clever things one could have said, afterwards, when it’s too late.’
‘What would you have said, then?’
‘I suppose for a start I should have asked who had given that so called enquiry agent instructions to search my flat. Acting on instructions, he said. Well, whose instructions? I didn’t think of asking, yesterday. Now I can see that it could be the whole answer.’
‘You assumed the Stewards had instructed him?’
‘I suppose so. I didn’t really think. Most of the time I was so shattered that I couldn’t think clearly at all.’
‘Maybe it was the Stewards.’
‘Well, no. I suppose it’s barely possible they might have sent an investigator, though when you look at it in cold blood it wouldn’t really seem likely, but it’s a tear drop to the Atlantic that they wouldn’t have supplied him with five hundred quid and a forged note and told him to photograph them somewhere distinctive in my flat. But that’s what he did. Who instructed him?’
‘Even if you’d asked, he wouldn’t have said.’
‘I guess not. But at least it might have made the Stewards think a bit too.’
Tony shook his head. ‘He would still have said he found the money behind Rosalind’s picture. His word against yours. Nothing different.’
He looked gloomily into his glass. I looked gloomily into mine.
‘That bloody little Charlie West,’ I said. ‘Someone got at him, too.’
‘I presume you didn’t in fact say “Brakes on, chaps?” ’
‘I did say it, you see. Not in the Lemonfizz, of course, but a couple of weeks before, in that frightful novice ’chase at Oxford, the day they abandoned the last two races because it wa
s snowing. I was hitting every fence on that deadly bad jumper that old Almond hadn’t bothered to school properly, and half the other runners were just as green, and a whole bunch of us had got left about twenty lengths behind the four who were any use, and sleet was falling, and I didn’t relish ending up with a broken bone at nought degrees centigrade, so as we were handily out of sight of the stands at that point I shouted ‘O.K., brakes on, chaps,’ and a whole lot of us eased up thankfully and finished the race a good deal slower than we could have done. It didn’t affect the result, of course. But there you are. I did say it. What’s more, Charlie West heard me. He just shifted it from one race to another.’
‘The bastard.’
‘I agree.’
‘Maybe no one got at him. Maybe he just thought he’d get a few more rides if you were out of the way.’
I considered it and shook my head. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was that much of a bastard.’
‘You never know.’ Tony finished his drink and absent-mindly replaced it. ‘What about the bookmaker?’
‘Newtonnards? I don’t know. Same thing, I suppose. Someone has it in for Cranfield too. Both of us, it was. The Stewards couldn’t possibly have warned off one of us without the other. We were knitted together so neatly.’
‘It makes me livid,’ Tony said violently. ‘It’s wicked.’
I nodded. ‘There was something else, too, about that Enquiry. Some undercurrent, running strong. At least, it was strong at the beginning. Something between Lord Gowery and Lord Ferth. And then Andy Tring, he was sitting there looking like a wilted lettuce.’ I shook my head in puzzlement. ‘It was like a couple of heavy animals lurking in the undergrowth, shaping up to fight each other. You couldn’t see them, but there was a sort of quiver in the air. At least, that’s how it seemed at one point…’
‘Stewards are men,’ Tony said with bubble-bursting matter-of-factness. ‘Show me any organisation which doesn’t have some sort of power struggle going on under its gentlemanly surface. All you caught was a whiff of the old brimstone. State of nature. Nothing to do with whether you and Cranfield were guilty or not.’
He half convinced me. He polished off the rest of the whisky and told me not to forget to get some more.