by Dick Francis
There was another little wooden horse between two thin layers of cotton wool.
It had a label round its neck.
It had a broken leg.
I didn’t know what exactly was in my face when I looked up at Alessandro, but the smirk deteriorated into a half-anxious bravado.
‘He said you wouldn’t like it,’ he remarked defiantly.
‘Come with me, then,’ I said abruptly. ‘And see if you do.’ I set off up the yard towards the drive, but he didn’t follow: and before I reached my destination I was met by George hurrying towards me with a distressed face and worried eyes.
‘Mr Neil … Indigo’s got cast and broken a leg in his box … same as Moonrock … you wouldn’t think it could happen, not to two old’uns like them, not ten days apart.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ I said grimly, and walked back with him into Indigo’s box stuffing the vicious message in its tin into my jacket pocket.
The nice-natured gelding was lying in the straw trying feebly to stand up. He kept lifting his head and pushing at the floor with one of his forefeet, but all strength seemed to have left him. The other forefoot lay uselessly bent at an unnatural angle, snapped through just above the pastern.
I squatted down beside the poor old horse and patted his neck. He lifted his head again and thrashed to get back on to his feet, then flopped limply back into the straw. His eyes looked glazed, and he was dribbling.
‘Nothing to be done, George,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and telephone the vet.’ I put only regret into my voice and kept my boiling fury to myself. George nodded resignedly but without much emotion: like every older stableman he had seen a lot of horses die.
The young chubby Dainsee got out of his bath to answer the telephone.
‘Not another one!’ he exclaimed, when I explained.
‘I’m afraid so. And would you bring with you any gear you need for doing a blood test?’
‘Whatever for?’
‘I’ll tell you when you get here …’
‘Oh,’ he sounded surprised, but willing to go along. ‘All right then. Half a jiffy while I swap the bath towel for my natty suiting.’
He came in jeans, his dirty Land Rover, and twenty minutes. Bounced out on to the gravel, nodded cheerfully, and turned at once towards Indigo’s box. George was along there with the horse, but the rest of the yard stood quiet and empty. Etty, showing distress at the imminent loss of her lead horse, had taken the string down to Southfields on the racecourse side, and Alessandro presumably had gone with her, as he was nowhere about, and his chauffeur was waiting as usual in the car.
Indigo was up on his feet. George, holding him by the headcollar, said that the old boy just suddenly seemed to get his strength back and stood up, and he’d been eating some hay since then, and it was a right shame he’d got cast, that it was. I nodded and took the headcollar from him, and told him I’d see to Indigo, and he could go and get on with putting the oats through the crushing machine ready for the morning feeds.
‘He makes a good yard man,’ Dainsee said. ‘Old George, he was deputy head gardener once at the Viceroy’s palace in India. It accounts for all those tidy flowerbeds and tubs of pretty shrubs which charm the owners when they visit the yard.’
I was surprised. ‘I didn’t know that …’
‘Odd world.’ He soothed Indigo with a touch, and peered closely at the broken leg. ‘What’s all this about a blood test?’ he asked, straightening up and eyeing me with speculation.
‘Do vets have a keep-mum tradition?’
His gaze sharpened into active curiosity. ‘Professional secrets, like doctors and lawyers? Yes, sure we do. As long as it’s not a matter of keeping quiet about a spot of foot and mouth.’
‘Nothing like that.’ I hesitated. ‘I’d like you to run a private blood test … could that be done?’
‘How private? It’ll have to go to the Equine Research Labs. I can’t do it myself, haven’t got the equipment.’
‘Just a blood sample with no horse’s name attached.’
‘Oh sure. That happens all the time. But you can’t really think anyone doped the poor old horse!’
‘I think he was given an anaesthetic,’ I said. ‘And that his leg was broken on purpose.’
‘Oh glory.’ His mouth was rounded into an O of astonishment, but the eyes flickered with the rapidity of his thoughts. ‘You seem sane enough,’ he said finally, ‘so let’s have a look see.’
He squatted down beside the affected limb and ran his fingers very lightly down over the skin. Indigo shifted under his touch and ducked and raised his head violently.
‘All right, old fellow,’ Dainsee said, standing up again and patting his neck. He raised his eyebrows at me, ‘Can’t say you’re wrong, can’t say you’re right.’ He paused, thinking it over. The eyebrows rose and fell several times, like punctuations. ‘Tell you what,’ he said at length. ‘I’ve got a portable X-ray machine back home. I’ll bring it along, and we’ll take a picture. How’s that?’
‘Very good idea,’ I said, pleased.
‘Right.’ He opened his case, which he had parked just inside the door. ‘Then I’ll just freeze that leg, so he’ll be in no discomfort until I come back.’ He brought out a hypodermic and held it up against the light, beginning to press the plunger.
‘Do the blood test first,’ I said.
‘Eh?’ He blinked at me. ‘Oh yes, of course. Golly, yes, of course. Silly of me.’ He laughed gently, laid down the first syringe and put together a much larger one, empty.
He took the sample from the jugular vein, which he found and pierced efficiently first time of asking. ‘Bit of luck,’ he murmured in self-deprecation, and drew half a tumbler full of blood into the syringe. ‘Have to give the lab people enough to work on, you know,’ he said, seeing my surprise. ‘You can’t get reliable results from a thimbleful.’
‘I suppose not …’
He packed the sample into his case, shot the freezing local into Indigo’s near fore, nodded and blinked with undiminished cheerfulness, and smartly departed. Indigo, totally unconcerned, went back contentedly to his hay net, and I, with bottled anger, went into the house.
The label on the little wooden horse had ‘Indigo’ printed in capitals on one side of it, and on the other, also in capitals, a short sharp message.
‘To hurt my son is to invite destruction.’
Neither George nor Etty saw any sense in the vet going away without putting Indigo down.
‘Er …’ I said. ‘He found he didn’t have the humane killer with him after all. He thought it was in his bag, but it wasn’t.’
‘Oh,’ they said, satisfied, and Etty told me that everything had gone well on the gallops and that Lucky Lindsay had worked a fast five furlongs and afterwards wouldn’t have blown out a candle.
‘I put that bloody little Alex on Clip Clop and told him to take him along steadily, and he damn well disobeyed me. He shook him into a full gallop and left Lancat standing, and the touts’ binoculars were working overtime.
‘Stupid little fool,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll speak to him.’
‘He takes every opportunity he can to cross me,’ she complained. ‘When you aren’t there he’s absolutely insufferable.’ She took a deep, troubled breath, considering. ‘In fact, I think you should tell Mr Griffon that we can’t keep him.’
‘Next time I go to the hospital, I’ll see what he says,’ I said. ‘What are you giving him to ride, second lot?’
‘Pullitzer,’ she replied promptly. ‘It doesn’t matter so much if he doesn’t do as he’s told on that one.’
‘When you get back, tell him I want to see him before he leaves.’
‘Aren’t you coming?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ll stay and see to Indigo.’
‘I rather wanted your opinion of Pease Pudding. If he’s to run in the Lincoln we ought to give him a trial this week or next. The race is only three weeks on Saturday, don’t forget.’
‘We could give him
a half-speed gallop tomorrow and see if he’s ready for a full trial,’ I suggested, and she grudgingly agreed that one more day would do no harm.
I watched the trim jodhpured figure walk off towards her cottage for breakfast, and would have felt flattered that she wanted my opinion had I not known why. Under an umbrella, she worked marvellously: out in the open, she felt rudderless. Even though in her heart she knew she knew more than I did, her shelter instinct had cast me as decision maker. What I needed now was a crash course in how to tell when a horse was fit … and that old joke about a crash course for pilots edged itself into a corner of my mind, like a thin gleam in the gloom.
Dainsee came back in his Land Rover when the string had gone out for second lot, and we ran the cable for the X-ray machine through the office window and plugged it into the socket which served the mushroom heater. There seemed to be unending reinforcements of cable: it took four lengths plugged together to reach Indigo’s box, but their owner assured me that he could manage a quarter of a mile, if pushed.
He took three X-rays of the dangling leg, packed everything up again, and almost as a passing thought, put poor old Indigo out of his troubles.
‘You’ll want evidence for the police,’ Dainsee said, shaking hands and blinking rapidly.
‘No … I shan’t bother the police. Not yet, anyway.’ He opened his mouth to protest, so I went straight on, ‘There are very good reasons. I can’t tell you them … but they do exist.’
‘Oh well, it’s up to you.’ His eyes slid sideways towards Moonrock’s box, and his eyebrows asked the question.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do you think? Looking back.’
He thought for several seconds, which meant he was serious, and then said, ‘It would have taken a good heavy blow to smash that hock. Wouldn’t have thought anyone would bother, when a pastern like Indigo’s would be simple.’
‘Moonrock just provided the idea for Indigo?’ I suggested.
‘I should think so.’ He grinned. ‘Mind it doesn’t become an epidemic.’
‘I’ll mind,’ I said lightly; and knew I would have to.
Alessandro showed no sign that Etty had given him my message about wanting to see him. He strode straight out of the yard towards his waiting car and it was only because I happened to be looking out of the office window that I caught him.
I opened the window and called to him. ‘Alessandro, come here a minute …’
He forged straight on as if he hadn’t heard, so I added, ‘To talk about your first races.’
He stopped in one stride with a foot left in the air in indecision, then changed direction and came more slowly towards the window.
‘Go round into the owners’ room,’ I said. ‘Where you were lying on the sofa …’ I shut the window, gave Margaret a whimsical rueful placating smile which could mean whatever she thought it did, and removed myself from earshot.
Alessandro came unwillingly into the owners’ room, knowing that he had been hooked. I played fair, however.
‘You can have a ride in an apprentice race at Catterick four weeks today. On Pullitzer. And on condition that you don’t go bragging about it in the yard and antagonizing all the other boys.’
‘I want to ride Archangel,’ he said flatly.
‘It sometimes seems to me that you are remarkably intelligent and with a great deal of application might become a passable jockey,’ I said, and before his self-satisfaction smothered him, added, ‘and sometimes, like today, you behave so stupidly and with such little understanding of what it takes to be what you want to be, that your ambitions look pathetic.’
The thin body stiffened rigidly and the black eyes glared. Since I undoubtedly had this full attention, I made the most of it.
‘These horses are here to win races. They won’t win races if their training programme is hashed up. If you are told to do a half-speed gallop on Clip Clop and you work him flat out and tire him beyond his capacity, you are helping to make sure he takes longer to prepare. You won’t win races unless the stable does, so it is in your own interest to help train the horses to the best of your ability. Disobeying riding orders is therefore just plain stupid. Do you follow?’
The black eyes looked blacker and sank into the sockets. He didn’t answer.
‘Then there is this fixation of yours about Archangel. I’ll let you ride him on the Heath as soon as you show you are good enough, and in particular responsible enough, to look after him. Whether you ever ride him in a race is up to you, more than me. But I’m doing you a favour in starting you off on less well-known horses at smaller meetings. You may think you are brilliant, but you have only ridden against amateurs. I am giving you a chance to prove what you can do against professionals in private, and lessening the risk of you falling flat on your face at Newbury or Kempton.’
The eyes were unwavering. He still said nothing.
‘And Indigo,’ I went on, taking a grip on my anger and turning it out cold and biting, ‘Indigo may have been of no use to you because he no longer raced, but if you cause the death of any more of the horses there will be just one less for you to win on.’
He moved his jaw as if with an effort.
‘I didn’t … cause the death of Indigo.’
I took the tin out of my pocket and gave it to him. He opened it slowly, compressed his mouth at the contents, and read the label.
‘I didn’t want … I didn’t mean him to kill Indigo.’ The supercilious smile had all gone. He was still hostile, but defensive. ‘He was angry because Traffic had thrown me.’
‘Did you mean him to kill Traffic, then?’
‘No, I did not,’ he said vehemently. ‘As you said, what would be the point of killing a horse I could win a race on?’
‘But to kill harmless old Indigo because you bumped your head off a horse you yourself insisted on riding …’ I protested with bitter sarcasm.
His gaze, for the first time, switched to the carpet. Somewhere, deep down, he was not too proud of himself.
‘You didn’t tell him,’ I guessed. ‘You didn’t tell him that you insisted on riding Traffic.’
‘Miss Craig told me to,’ he said sullenly.
‘Not the time he threw you.’
He looked up again, and I would have sworn he was unhappy. ‘I didn’t tell my father I was knocked out.’
‘Who did?’
‘Carlo. The chauffeur.’
‘You could have explained that I did not try to harm you.’
The unhappiness turned to a shade of desperation.
‘You have met him,’ he said. ‘It isn’t always possible to tell him things, especially when he is angry. He will give me anything I ask for, but I cannot talk to him.’
He went away and left me speechless.
He couldn’t talk to his father.
Enso would give Alessandro anything he wanted … would smash a path for him at considerable trouble to himself and would persist as long as Alessandro hungered, but they couldn’t talk.
And I … I could lie and scheme and walk a tightrope to save my father’s stables for him.
But talk with him, no, I couldn’t.
Chapter Eight
‘Did you know,’ Margaret said, looking up casually from her typewriter, ‘that Alessandro is living down the road at the Forbury Inn?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I said, ‘but it doesn’t surprise me. It goes with a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, after all.’
‘He has a double room to himself with a private bathroom, and doesn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Susie brought a friend home from school for tea yesterday and she turned out to be the daughter of the resident receptionist at the Forbury Inn.’
‘Any more fascinating intimate details?’ I asked.
She smiled. ‘Alessandro puts on a track suit every afternoon and goes off in the car and when he comes back he is all sweaty and has a very hot bath with nice smelly oil in it.’
/> ‘The receptionist’s daughter is how old?’
‘Seven.’
‘Proper little snooper.’
‘All children are observant … And she also said that he never talks to anyone if he can avoid it except to his chauffeur in a funny language …’
‘Italian,’ I murmured.
‘ … and that nobody likes him very much because he is pretty rude, but they like the chauffeur still less because he is even ruder.’
I pondered. ‘Do you think,’ I said, ‘that via your daughter, via her school chum, via her receptionist parent, we could find out if Alessandro gave any sort of home address when he registered?’
‘Why don’t you just ask him?’ she said reasonably.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘But our Alessandro is sometimes a mite contrary. Didn’t you ask him, when you completed his indentures?’
‘He said they were moving, and had no address.’
‘Mm,’ I nodded.
‘How extraordinary … I can’t see why he won’t tell you. Well, yes, I’ll ask Susie’s chum if she knows.’
‘Great,’ I said, and pinned little hope on it.
Gillie wanted to come and stay at Rowley Lodge.
‘How about the homeless orphans?’ I said.
‘I could take some weeks off. I always can. You know that. And now that you’ve stopped wandering round industrial towns living in one hotel after another, we could spend a bit more time together.’
I kissed her nose. Ordinarily I would have welcomed her proposal. I looked at her with affection.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not just now.’
‘When, then?’
‘In the summer.’
She made a face at me, her eyes full of intelligence. ‘You never like to be cluttered when you are deeply involved in something.’
‘You’re not clutter,’ I smiled.
‘I’m afraid so … That’s why you’ve never married. Not like most bachelors because they want to be free to sleep with any offered girl, but because you don’t like your mind to be distracted.’