Enquiry

by Dick Francis

  I pulled myself across the floor, dragging the plaster, aiming for the telephone which had crashed on to the floor with the little table. Found the receiver. Pulled the cord. The telephone bumped over the carpet into my hand.

  Put my finger on the button. Small ting. Dialling tone. Found the numbers. Three… nine… one…

  ‘Yeah?’ Tony’s voice, thick with sleep.

  Dead careless, I was. Didn’t hear a thing. The crutch swung wickedly down on the back of my head and I fell over the telephone and never told him to gallop to the rescue.

  I woke where Oakley had left me, still lying on the floor over the telephone, the receiver half in and half out of my hand.

  It was daylight, just. Grey and raw and raining. I was stiff. Cold. Had a headache.

  Remembered bit by bit what had happened. Set about scraping myself off the carpet.

  First stop, back on to the bed, accompanied by bedclothes. Lay there feeling terrible and looking at the mess he had made of my room.

  After he’d knocked me out, he had nothing to be quiet about. Everything had been pulled out of the closet and drawers and flung on the floor. Everything smashable was smashed. The sleeves of some of my suits were ripped and lying in tatters. Rosalind’s picture had been torn into four pieces and the silver frame twisted and snapped. It had been revenge more than a search. A bad loser, David Oakley.

  What I could see of the sitting-room through the open door seemed to have received the same treatment.

  I lay and ached in most places you could think of.

  Didn’t look to see if Oakley had found the piece of manifold because I knew he wouldn’t have. Thought about him coming, and about what he’d said.

  Thought about Cranfield.

  Thought about Gowery.

  Once I got the plaster off and could move about again, it shouldn’t take me too long now to dig out the enemy. A bit of leg work. Needed two legs.

  Oakley would shortly be reporting no success from the night’s work. I wondered if he would be sent to try again. Didn’t like that idea particularly.

  I shifted on the bed, trying to get comfortable. I’d been concussed twice in five days once before, and got over it. I’d been kicked along the ground by a large field of hurdlers, which had been a lot worse than the crutches. I’d broken enough bones to stock a cemetery and this time they were all whole. But all the same I felt sicker than after racing falls, and in the end realised my unease was revulsion against being hurt by another man. Horses, hard ground, even express trains, were impersonal. Oakley had been a different type of invasion. The amount you were mentally affected by a pain always depended on how you got it.

  I felt terrible. Had no energy at all to get up and tidy the mess.

  Shut my eyes to blot it out. Blotted myself out, too. Went to sleep.

  A voice said above my head, ‘Won’t you ever learn to keep your door shut?’

  I smiled feebly. ‘Not if you’re coming through it’

  ‘Finding you flat out is becoming a habit.’

  ‘Try to break it.’

  I opened my eyes. Broad daylight. Sull raining.

  Roberta was standing a foot from the bed wearing a blinding yellow raincoat covered in trickling drops. The copper hair was tied up in a pony tail and she was looking around her with disgust.

  ‘Do you realise it’s half past ten?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you always drop your clothes all over the place when you go to bed?’

  ‘Only on Wednesdays.’

  ‘Coffee?’ she said abruptly, looking down at me.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She picked her way through the mess to the door, and then across the sitting-room until she was out of sight. I rubbed my hand over my chin. Bristly. And there was a tender lump on the back of my skull and a sore patch all down one side of my jaw, where I hadn’t dodged fast enough. Bruises in other places set up a morning chorus. I didn’t listen.

  She came back minus the raincoat and carrying two steaming mugs which she put carefully on the floor. Then she picked up the bedside table and transferred the mugs to its top.

  The drawer had fallen out of the table, and the envelope had fallen out of the drawer. But Oakley hadn’t apparently looked into it: hadn’t known it was there to find.

  Roberta picked up the scattered crutches and brought them over to the bed.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘You take it very calmly.’

  ‘I’ve seen it before,’ I pointed out.

  ‘And you just went to sleep?’

  ‘Opted out,’ I agreed.

  She looked more closely at ray face and rolled my head over on the pillow. I winced. She took her hand away.

  ‘Did you get the same treatment as the flat?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For being stubborn.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ she said incredulously, ‘That you could have avoided all this… and didn’t?’

  ‘If there’s a good reason for backing down, you back down. If there isn’t, you don’t.’

  ‘And all this… isn’t a good enough reason?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ she said.

  ‘You’re so right.’ I sighed, pushed myself up a bit, and reached for the coffee.

  ‘Have you called the police?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Not their quarrel.’

  ‘Who did it. then?’

  I smiled at her. ‘Your father and I have got our licences back.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’ll be official sometime today.’

  ‘Does Father know? How did it happen? Did you do it?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t know yet. Ring him up. Tell him to get on to all the owners. It’ll be confirmed in the papers soon, either today’s evening editions, or tomorrow’s dailies.’

  She picked the telephone off the floor and sat on the edge of my bed, and telephoned to her father with real joy and sparkling eyes. He wouldn’t believe it at first.

  ‘Kelly says it’s true,’ she said.

  He argued again, and she handed the telephone to me.

  ‘You tell him.’

  Cranfield said, ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Lord Ferth.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘Just that the sentences had been reviewed… and reversed. We’re back, as from today. The official notice will be in next week’s Calendar.’

  ‘No explanation at all?’ he insisted.

  ‘They don’t have to give one,’ I pointed out.

  ‘All the same…’

  ‘Who cares why?’ I said. ‘The fact that we’re back… that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Did you find out who framed us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will you go on trying?’

  ‘I might do,’ I said. ‘We’ll see.’

  He had lost interest in that. He bounded into a stream of plans for the horses, once they were back. ‘And it will give me great pleasure to tell Henry Kessel…’

  ‘I’d like to see his face,’ I agreed. But Pat Nikita would never part with Squelch, nor with Kessel, now. If Cranfield thought Kessel would come crawling apologetically back, he didn’t know his man. ‘Concentrate on getting Breadwinner back,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll be fit to ride in the Gold Cup.’

  ‘Old Strepson promised Breadwinner would come back at once… and Pound Postage of his… that’s entered in the National, don’t forget.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ I assured him, ‘forgotten.’

  He ran down eventually and disconnected, and I could imagine him sitting at the other end still wondering whether to trust me.

  Roberta stood up with a spring, as if the news had filled her with energy.

  ‘Shall I tidy up for you?’

  ‘I’d love some help.’

  She bent down and picked up Rosalind’s torn picture.

  ‘They didn’t have to do that,’ s
he said in disgust.

  ‘I’ll get the bits stuck together and rephotographed.’

  ‘You’d hate to lose her…’

  I didn’t answer at once. She looked at me curiously, her eyes dark with some unreadable expression.

  ‘I lost her,’ I said slowly. ‘Rosalind… Roberta… you are so unalike.’

  She turned away abruptly and put the pieces on the chest of drawers where they had always stood.

  ‘Who wants to be a carbon copy?’ she said, and her voice was high and cracking. ‘Get dressed… while I start on the sitting-room.’ She disappeared fast and shut the door behind her.

  I lay there looking at it.

  Roberta Cranfield. I’d never liked her.

  Roberta Cranfield. I couldn’t bear it… I was beginning to love her.

  She stayed most of the day, helping me clear up the mess.

  Oakley had left little to chance: the bathroom and kitchen both looked as if they’d been gutted by a whirlwind. He’d searched everywhere a good enquiry agent could think of, including in the lavatory cistern and the refrigerator; and everywhere he’d searched he’d left his trail of damage.

  After midday, which was punctuated by some scrambled eggs, the telephone started ringing. Was it true, asked the Daily Witness in the shape of Daddy Leeman, that Cranfield and I…? ‘Check with the Jockey Club,’ I said.

  The other papers had checked first. ‘May we have your comments?’ they asked.

  ‘Thrilled to bits,’ I said gravely. ‘You can quote me.’

  A lot of real chums rang to congratulate, and a lot of pseudo chums rang to say they’d never believed me guilty anyway.

  For most of the afternoon I lay flat on the sitting-room floor with my head on a cushion talking down the telephone while Roberta stepped around and over me nonchalantly, putting everything back into place.

  Finally she dusted her hands off on the seat of her black pants, and said she thought that that would do. The flat looked almost as good as ever. I agreed gratefully that it would do very well.

  ‘Would you consider coming down to my level?’ I asked.

  She said calmly, ‘Are you speaking literally, metaphorically, intellectually, financial or socially?’

  ‘I was suggesting you might sit on the floor.’

  ‘In that case,’ she said collectedly, ‘Yes.’ And she sank gracefully into a cross legged sprawl.

  I couldn’t help grinning. She grinned companionably back.

  ‘I was scared stiff of you when I came here last week,’ she said.

  ‘You were what?’

  ‘You always seemed so aloof. Unapproachable.’

  ‘Are we talking about me… or you?’

  ‘You, of course,’ she said in surprise. ‘You always made me nervous. I always get sort of… strung up… when I’m nervous. Put on a bit of an act, to hide it, I suppose.’

  ‘I see,’ I said slowly.

  ‘You’re still a pretty good cactus, if you want to know… but… well, you see people differently when they’ve been bleeding all over your best dress and looking pretty vulnerable…’

  I began to say that in that case I would be prepared to bleed on her any time she liked, but the telephone interrupted me at half way. And it was old Strepson, settling down for a long cosy chat about Breadwinner and Pound Postage.

  Roberta wrinkled her nose and got to her feet.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I said, with my hand over the mouthpiece.

  ‘Must. I’m late already.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. But she shook her head, fetched the yellow raincoat from the bath, where she’d put it, and edged herself into it.

  ‘ ’Bye,’ she said.

  ‘Wait…’

  She waved briefly and let herself out of the door. I struggled up on to my feet, and said, ‘Sir… could you hold on a minute…’ into the telephone, and hopped without the crutches over to the window. She looked up when I opened it. She was standing in the yard, tying on a headscarf. The rain had eased to drizzle.

  ‘Will you come tomorrow?’ I shouted down.

  ‘Can’t tomorrow. Got to go to London.’

  ‘Saturday?’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll try, then.’

  ‘Please come.’

  ‘Oh…’ She suddenly smiled in a way I’d never seen before. ‘All right’

  Careless I might be about locking my front door, but in truth I left little about worth stealing. Five hundred pounds would never have been lying around on my chest of drawers for enquiry agents to photograph.

  When I’d converted the flat from an old hay loft I’d built in more than mod cons. Behind the cabinet in the kitchen which housed things like fly killer and soap powder, and tucked into a crafty piece of brickwork, lay a maximum security safe. It was operated not by keys or combinations, but by electronics. The manufacturers had handed over the safe itself and also the tiny ultrasonic transmitter which sent out the special series of radio waves which alone would release the lock mechanism, and I’d installed them myself: the safe in the wall and the transmitter in a false bottom to the cabinet. Even if anyone found the transmitter, they had still to find the safe and to know the sequence of frequencies which unlocked it.

  A right touch of the Open Sesame. I’d always liked gadgets.

  Inside the safe there were, besides money and some racing trophies, several pieces of antique silver, three paintings by Houthuesen, two Chelsea figures, a Meissen cup and saucer, a Louis XIV snuff box, and four uncut diamonds totalling twenty-eight carats. My retirement pension, all wrapped in green baize and appreciating nicely. Retirement for a steeplechase jockey could lurk in the very next fall: and the ripe age of forty, if one lasted that long, was about the limit.

  There was also a valueless lump of cast iron, with a semicircular dent in it. To these various treasures I added the envelope which Ferth had given me, because it wouldn’t help if I lost that either.

  Bolting my front door meant a hazardous trip down the stairs, and another in the morning to open it. I decided it could stay unlocked as usual. Wedged a chair under the door into my sitting-room instead.

  During the evening I telephoned to Newtonnards in his pink washed house in Mill Hill.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘You’ve got your licence back then. Talk of the meeting it was at Wincanton today, soon as the Press Association chaps heard about it.’

  ‘Yes, it’s great news.’

  ‘What made their Lordships change their minds?’

  ‘I’ve no idea… Look, I wondered if you’d seen that man again yet, the one who backed Cherry Pie with you.’

  ‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘But I saw him today. Just after I’d heard you were back in favour, though, so I didn’t think you’d be interested any more.’

  ‘Did you by any chance find out who he is?’

  ‘I did, as a matter of fact. More to satisfy my own curiosity, really. He’s the Honourable Peter Foxcroft. Mean anything to you?’

  ‘He’s a brother of Lord Middleburg.’

  ‘Yeah. So I’m told.’

  I laughed inwardly. Nothing sinister about Cranfield refusing to name his mysterious pal. Just another bit of ladder climbing. He might be one rung up being in a position to use the Hon. P. Foxcroft as a runner: but he would certainly be five rungs down involving him in a messy Enquiry.

  ‘There’s one other thing…’ I hesitated. ‘Would you… could you… do me a considerable favour?’

  ‘Depends what it is.’ He sounded cautious but not truculent. A smooth, experienced character.

  ‘I can’t offer much in return.’

  He chuckled. ‘Warning me not to expect tip offs when you’re on a hot number?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I admitted.

  ‘O.K. then. You want something for strictly nothing. Just as well to know where we are. So shoot.’

  ‘Can you remember who you told about Cranfield backing Cherry Pie?’

  ‘Bef
ore the Enquiry, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Those bookmaker colleagues you mentioned.’

  ‘Well…’ he sounded doubtful.

  ‘If you can,’ I said, ‘Could you ask them who they told?’

  ‘Phew.’ He half breathed, half whistled down the receiver. ‘That’s some favour.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Just forget it.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on, I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. It’s a bit of a tall order, though, expecting them to remember.’

  ‘I know. Very long shot. But I still want to know who told the Stewards about the bet with you.’

  ‘You’ve got your licence back. Why don’t you let it rest?’

  ‘Would you?’

  He sighed. ‘I don’t know. All right then, I’ll see what I can do. No promises, mind. Oh, and by the way, it can be just as useful to know when one of your mounts is not fit or likely to win. If you take my meaning.’

  ‘I take it,’ I said smiling. ‘It’s a deal.’

  I put down the receiver reflecting that only a minority of bookmakers were villains, and that most of them were more generous than they got credit for. The whole tribe were reviled for the image of the few. Like students.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Oakley didn’t come. No one came. I took the chair from under the door knob to let the world in with the morning. Not much of the world accepted the invitation.

  Made some coffee. Tony came while I was standing in the kitchen drinking it and put whisky into a mug of it for himself by way of breakfast. He’d been out with one lot of horses at exercise and was waiting to go out with the other, and spent the interval discussing their prospects as if nothing had ever happened. For him the warning off was past history, forgotten. His creed was that of newspapers; today is important, tomorrow more so, but yesterday is nothing.

  He finished the coffee and left, clapping me cheerfully on the shoulder and setting up a protest from an Oakley bruise. I spent most of the rest of the day lying flat on my bed, answering the telephone, staring at the ceiling, letting Nature get on with repairing a few ravages, and thinking.

  Another quiet night. I had two names in my mind, juggling them. Two to work on. Better than three hundred. But both could be wrong.

  Saturday morning the postman brought the letters right upstairs, as he’d been doing since the era of plaster. I thanked him, sorted through them, dropped a crutch, and had the usual awkward fumble picking it up. When I opened one of the letters I dropped both the crutches again in surprise.