Enquiry

by Dick Francis

  I looked at the steel blade beside Roberta’s pearly skin and knew that he would indeed do as she said. As I would.

  ‘And then, see,’ she said, ‘I’ll just stick the knife into him, not into her. See? See?’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  She nodded extravagantly and her hand shook.

  ‘And then what?’ I asked.

  ‘Then what?’ She looked puzzled. She hadn’t got any further than killing Cranfield. Beyond that lay only darkness and confusion. Her vision didn’t extend to consequences.

  ‘Edwin Byler could send his horses away to someone else,’ I said.

  ‘No. No. Only Dexter Cranfield. Only him. Telling him he ought to have a more snobbish trainer. Taking him away from us. I’m going to kill him. Then he can’t have those horses.’ The words tumbled out in a vehement monotone, all the more frightening for being clearly automatic. These were thoughts she’d had in her head for a very long time.

  ‘It would have been all right, of course,’ I said slowly. ‘If Mr Cranfield hadn’t got his licence back.’

  ‘Yes!’ It was a bitterly angry shriek.

  ‘I got it back for him,’ I said.

  ‘They just gave it back. They just gave it back. They shouldn’t have done that. They shouldn’t.’

  ‘They didn’t just give it back,’ I said. ‘They gave it back because I made them.’

  ‘You couldn’t…’

  ‘I told everyone I was going to. And I did.’

  ‘No. No. No.’

  ‘Yes.’ I said flatly.

  Her expression slowly changed, and highly frightening it was too. I waited while it sank into her disorganised brain that if Byler sent his horses to Cranfield after all it was me alone she had to thank for it. I watched the intention to kill widen to embrace me too. The semi-cautious restraint in her manner towards me was transforming itself into a vicious glare of hate.

  I swallowed. I said again, ‘If I hadn’t made the Stewards give Mr Cranfield’s licence back, he would still be warned off.’

  Roberta said in horror, ‘No, Kelly. Don’t. Don’t do it.’

  ‘Shut up.’ I said. ‘Me or your father… which has more chance? And run, when you can.’

  Grace wasn’t listening. Grace was grasping the essentials and deciding on a course of action.

  There was a lot of white showing round her eyes.

  ‘I’ll kill you,’ she said. ‘I’ll kill you.’

  I stood still. I waited. The seconds stretched like centuries.

  ‘Come here,’ she said. ‘Come here, or I’ll cut her throat.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I took myself crutch by crutch towards her. When I was half way there Mrs Cranfield gave a moaning sigh and fainted, falling awkwardly on the rug and scattering the brass fire irons with a nerve-shattering crash.

  Grace jumped. The knife snicked into Roberta’s skin and she cried out. I stood half unbalanced, freezing into immobility, trying to will Grace not to disintegrate into panic, not to go over the edge, not to lose the last tiny grip she had on her reason. She wasn’t far off stabbing everything in sight.

  ‘Sit still,’ I said to Roberta with dreadful urgency and she gave me a terrified look and did her best not to move. She was trembling violently. I had never thought I could pray. I prayed.

  Grace was moving her head in sharp birdlike jerks. The knife was still against Roberta’s neck. Grace’s other hand still grasped Roberta’s shoulder. A thread of blood trickled down Roberta’s skin and was blotted up in a scarlet patch by her white jersey.

  No one went to help Roberta’s mother. I didn’t even dare to look at her, because it meant turning my eyes away from Grace.

  ‘Come here,’ Grace said. ‘Come here.’

  Her voice was husky, little more than a loud whisper. And although she was watching me come with unswerving murder in her eyes, I was inexpressibly thankful that she could still speak at all, still think, still hold a purpose.

  During the last few steps I wondered how I was going to dodge, since I couldn’t jump, couldn’t bend my knees, and hadn’t even my hands free. A bit late to start worrying. I took the last step short so that she would have to move to reach me and at the same time eased my elbow out of the right-hand crutch.

  She was almost too fast. She struck at me instantly, in a flashing thrust directed at my throat, and although I managed to twist the two inches needed to avoid it, the hissing knife came close enough, through the collar of my coat. I brought my right arm up and across, crashing crutch against her as she prepared to try again.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Roberta wrench herself out of Grace’s clutching grasp, and half stumble, half fall as she got away from the chair.

  ‘Kill you,’ Grace said. The words were distorted. The meaning clear. She had no thought of self defence. No thought at all, as far as I could see. Just one single burning obsessive intention.

  I brought up the left-hand crutch like a pole to push her away. She dived round it and tried to plunge her knife through my ribs, and in throwing myself away from that I overbalanced and half fell down, and she was standing over me with her arm raised like a priest at a human sacrifice.

  I dropped one crutch altogether. Useless warding off a knife with a bare hand. I tried to shove the other crutch round into her face, but got it tangled up against an armchair.

  Grace brought her arm down. I fell right to the floor as soon as I saw her move and the knife followed me harmlessly, all the impetus gone by the time it reached me. Another tear in my coat.

  She came down on her knees beside me, her arm going up again.

  From nowhere my lost crutch whistled through the air and smashed into the hand which held the knife. Grace hissed like a snake and dropped it, and it fell point down on to my plaster. She twisted round to see who had hit her and spread out her hands towards the crutch that Roberta was aiming at her again.

  She caught hold of it and tugged. I wriggled round on the floor, stretched until I had my fingers round the handle of the knife, and threw it as hard as I could towards the open door into the hall.

  Grace was too much for Roberta. Too much for me. She was appallingly, insanely, strong. I heaved myself up on to my left knee and clasped my arms tight round her chest from behind, trying to pin her arms down to her sides. She shook me around like a sack of feathers, struggling to get to her feet.

  She managed it, lifting me with her, plaster and all. She knew where I’d thrown the knife. She started to go that way, dragging me with her still fastened to her back like a leech.

  ‘Get that knife and run to the stables,’ I gasped to Roberta. A girl in a million. She simply ran and picked up the knife and went on running, out into the hall and out of the house.

  Grace started yelling unintelligibly and began trying to unclamp the fingers I had laced together over her thin breastbone. I hung on for everyone’s dear life, and when she couldn’t dislodge them she began pinching wherever she could reach with fierce hurting spite.

  The hair which she usually wore screwed into a fold up the back of her neck had come undone and was falling into my face. I could see less and less of what was going on. I knew only that she was still headed towards the doorway, still unimaginably violent, and mumbling now in a continuous flow of senseless words interspersed with sudden shrieks.

  She reached the doorway and started trying to get free of me by crashing me against the jamb. She had a hard job of it, but she managed it in the end, and when she felt my weight fall off her she turned in a flash, sticking out her hands with rigid fingers towards my neck.

  Her face was a dark congested crimson. Her eyes were stretched wide in a stark screaming stare. Her lips were drawn back in a tight line from her teeth.

  I had never in all my life seen anything so terrifying. Hadn’t imagined a human could look like that, had never visualised homicidal madness.

  She would certainly have lolled me if it hadn’t been for Tony, because her strength made a joke of mine. H
e came tearing into the hall from the kitchen and brought her down with a rugger tackle about the knees, and I fell too, on top of her, because she was trying to tear my throat out in handfuls, and she didn’t leave go.

  It took all Tony could do, all Archie could do, all three other lads could do to unlatch her from me and hold her down on the floor. They sat on her arms and legs and chest and head, and she threshed about convulsively underneath them.

  Roberta had tears streaming down her face and I hadn’t any breath left to tell her to cheer up, there was no more danger, no more… no more… I leant weakly against the wall and thought it would be too damned silly to pass out now. Took three deep breaths instead. Everything steadied again, reluctantly.

  Tony said, ‘There’s a doctor on his way. Don’t think he’s expecting this, though.’

  ‘He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Mother!’ Exclaimed Roberta suddenly. ‘I’d forgotten about her.’ She hurried past me into the drawing-room and I heard her mother’s voice rising in a disturbed, disorientated question.

  Grace was crying out, but her voice sounded like seagulls and nothing she said made sense. One of the lads said sympathetically, ‘Poor thing, oughtn’t we to let her get up?’ and Tony answered fiercely, ‘Only under a tiger net.’

  ‘She doesn’t know what’s happening,’ I said wearily. ‘She can’t control what she does. So don’t for God’s sake let go of her.’

  Except for Tony’s resolute six foot they all sat on her gingerly and twice she nearly had them off. Finally and at long last the front door bell rang, and I hopped across the hall to answer it.

  It was the local doctor, looking tentative, wondering no doubt if it were a hoax. But he took one look at Grace and was opening his case while he came across the hall. Into her arm he pushed a hypodermic needle and soon the convulsive threshing slackened, and the high pitched crying dulled to murmurs and in the end to silence.

  The five men slowly stood up and stepped away from her, and she lay there looking shrunk and crumpled, her greying hair falling in streaks away from her flacidly relaxing face. It seemed incredible that such thin limbs, such a meagre body, could have put out such strength. We all stood looking down at her with more awe than pity, watching while the last twitches shook her and she sank into unconscious peace.

  Half an hour later Grace still lay on the floor in the hall, but with a pillow under her head and a rug keeping her warm.

  Dexter Cranfield had come back from watching the horses work and walked unprepared into the aftermath of drama. His wife’s semi-hysterical explanations hadn’t helped him much.

  Roberta told him that Grace had come to kill him because he had his licence back and that she was the cause of his losing it in the first place, and he stamped around in a fury which I gathered was mostly because the source of our troubles was a woman. He basically didn’t like women. She should have been locked up years ago, he said. Spiteful, petty minded, scheming, interfering… just like a woman, he said. I listened to him gravely and concluded he had suffered from a bossy nanny.

  The doctor had done some intensive telephoning, and presently an ambulance arrived with two compassionate looking men and a good deal of special equipment. The front door stood wide open and the prospect of Grace’s imminent departure was a relief to everyone.

  Into this active bustling scene drove Jack Roxford.

  He scrambled out of his car, took a horrified look at the ambulance, and ploughed in through the front door. When he saw Grace lying there, with the ambulance men preparing to lift her on to a stretcher, he went down on his knees beside her.

  ‘Grace dear…’ He looked at her more closely. She was still unconscious, very pale now, looking wizened and sixty. ‘Grace dear!’ There was anguish in his voice. ‘What’s the matter with her?’

  The doctor started to break it to him. Cranfield interrupted the gentle words and said brutally, ‘She’s raving mad. She came here trying to kill me, and she could have killed my wife and daughter. It’s absolutely disgraceful that she should have been running around free in that state. I’m going to see my solicitors about it.’

  Jack Roxford only heard the first part. His eyes went to the cut on Roberta’s neck and the blood-stain on her jersey, and he put his hand over his mouth and looked sick.

  ‘Grace,’ he said. ‘Oh Grace…’

  There was no doubt he loved her. He leant over her, stroking the hair away from her forehead, murmuring to her, and when he finally looked up there were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks.

  ‘She’ll be all right, won’t she?’

  The doctor shifted uncomfortably and said one would have to see, only time would tell, there were marvellous treatments nowadays…

  The ambulance men loaded her gently on to the stretcher and picked it up.

  ‘Let me go with her,’ Jack Roxford said. ‘Where are you taking her? Let me go with her.’

  One of the ambulance men told him the name of the hospital and advised him not to come.

  ‘Better try this evening, sir. No use you waiting all day, now, is it?’ And the doctor added that Grace would be unconscious for some time yet and under heavy sedation after that, and it was true, it would be better if Roxford didn’t go with her.

  The uniformed men carried Grace out into the sunshine and loaded her into the ambulance, and we all followed them out into the drive. Jack Roxford stood there looking utterly forlorn as they shut the doors, consulted finally with the doctor, and with the minimum of fuss, drove away.

  Roberta touched his arm. ‘Can’t I get you a drink, Mr Roxford?’

  He looked at her vaguely, and then his whole face crumpled and he couldn’t speak.

  ‘Don’t, Mr Roxford,’ Roberta said with pity. ‘She isn’t in any pain, or anything.’

  He shook his head. Roberta put her arm across his shoulders and steered him back into the house.

  ‘Now what?’ Tony said. ‘I’ve really got to get to Reading, pal. Those runners of mine have to be declared for the second race.’

  I looked at my watch. ‘You could spare another quarter of an hour. I think we should take Jack Roxford with us. He’s got a runner too, incidentally, though I imagine he doesn’t much care about that… Except that it’s one of Edwin Byler’s. But he’s not fit to drive anywhere himself, and the races would help to keep him from brooding too much about Grace.’

  ‘Yeah. A passible idea.’ Tony grinned.

  ‘Go into the house and see if you can persuade him to let you take him.’

  ‘O.K.’ He went off amiably, and I passed the time swinging around the drive on my crutches and peering into the cars parked there. I’d be needing a new one… probably choose the same again, though.

  I leant against Tony’s car and thought about Grace. She’d left on me a fair legacy of bruises from her pinches to add to the crop grown by Oakley. Also my coat would cost a fortune at the invisible menders, and my throat felt like a well developed case of septic tonsils. I looked gloomily down at my plastered leg. The dangers of detection seemed to be twice as high as steeplechasing. With luck, I thought with a sigh, I could now go back to the usual but less frequent form of battery.

  Tony came out of the house with Roberta and Jack Roxford. Jack looked dazed, and let Tony help him into the front of the estate car as if his thoughts were miles away. As indeed they probably were.

  I scrunched across the gravel towards Roberta.

  ‘Is your neck all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Is yours?’

  I investigated her cut more closely. It wasn’t deep. Little more than an inch long.

  ‘There won’t be much of a scar,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she agreed.

  Her face was close to mine. Her eyes were amber with dark flecks.

  ‘Stay here,’ she said abruptly. ‘You don’t have to go to the races.’

  ‘I’ve an appointment with Lord Ferth… Best to get this business thoroughly wrapped up.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She loo
ked suddenly very tired. She’d had a wearing Saturday morning.

  ‘If you’ve nothing better to do,’ I suggested, ‘Would you come over tomorrow… and cook me some lunch?’

  A small smile tugged at her mouth and wrinkled her eyes.

  ‘I fell hopelessly in love with you,’ she said, ‘When I was twelve.’

  ‘And then it wore off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pity,’ I said.

  Her smile broadened.

  ‘Who is Bobbie?’ I asked.

  ‘Bobbie? Oh… he’s Lord Iceland’s son.’

  ‘He would be.’

  She laughed. ‘Father wants me to marry him.’

  ‘That figures.’

  ‘But Father is going to be disappointed.’

  ‘Good,’ I said.

  ‘Kelly,’ yelled Tony. ‘Come on, for Hell’s sakes, or I’ll be late.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said calmly. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  Tony drove to Reading races with due care and attention and Jack Roxford sat sunk in gloomy silence from start to finish. When we stopped in the car park he stepped out of the car and walked dazedly away towards the entrance without a word of thanks or explanation.

  Tony watched him go and clicked his tongue. ‘That woman isn’t worth it.’

  ‘She is, to him,’ I said.

  Tony hurried off to declare his horses, and I went more slowly through the gate looking out for Lord Ferth.

  It felt extraordinary being back on a racecourse. Like being let out of prison. The same people who had looked sideways at me at the Jockeys’ Fund dance now slapped me familiarly on the back and said they were delighted to see me. Oh yeah, I thought ungratefully. Never kick a man once he’s up.

  Lord Ferth was standing outside the weighing room in a knot of people from which he detached himself when he saw me coming.

  ‘Come along to the Stewards’ dining-room,’ he said. ‘We can find a quiet corner there.’

  ‘Can we postpone it until after the third race?’ I asked. ‘I want my cousin Tony to be there as well, and he has some runners…’