Odds against sh-1

by Dick Francis

We lunched companionably together downstairs, discussing in civilised tones the mechanics of divorce. Jenny, it appeared, did not want me to use the justified grounds of desertion: I, she said, should ‘arrange things’ instead. I must know how to do it, working for the agency. Charles was apologetic: Jenny’s prospective husband was in the Diplomatic Service like Tony, and would prefer her not to be the guilty party.

  Had I, Charles enquired delicately, already been… er… unfaithful to Jenny? No, I replied, watching him light his cigar, I was afraid I hadn’t. For much of the time, owing to one thing and another, I hadn’t felt well enough. That, he agreed with amusement, was a reasonable excuse.

  I indicated that I would fix things as Jenny wanted, because it didn’t affect my future like it did hers. She would be grateful, Charles said. I thought she would very likely take it for granted, knowing her.

  When there was little else to say on that subject, we switched to Kraye. I asked Charles if he had seen him again during the week.

  ‘Yes, I was going to tell you. I had lunch with him in the Club on Thursday. Quite accidentally. We both just happened to be there alone.’

  ‘That’s where you met him first, in your club?’

  ‘That’s right. Of course he thanked me for the week-end, and so on. Talked about the quartz. Very interesting collection, he said. But not a murmur about the St Luke’s Stone. I would have liked to have asked him straight out, just to see his reaction.’ He tapped off the ash, smiling. ‘I did mention you, though, in passing, and he switched on all the charm and said you had been extremely insulting to him and his wife, but that of course you hadn’t spoiled his enjoyment. Very nasty, I thought it. He was causing bad trouble for you. Or at least, he intended to.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said cheerfully. ‘But I did insult him, and I also spied on him. Anything he says of me is fully merited.’ I told Charles how I had taken the photographs, and all that I had discovered or guessed during the past week. His cigar went out. He looked stunned.

  ‘Well, you wanted me to, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You started it. What did you expect?’

  ‘It’s only that I had almost forgotten… this is what you used to be like, always. Determined. Ruthless, even.’ He smiled. ‘My game for convalescence has turned out better than I expected.’

  ‘God help your other patients,’ I said, ‘if Kraye is standard medicine.’

  We walked along the road towards where Charles had left his car. He was going straight home again.

  I said, ‘I hope that in spite of the divorce I shall see something of you? I should be sorry not to. As your ex-son-in-law, I can hardly come to Aynsford any more.’

  He looked startled. ‘I’ll be annoyed if you don’t, Sid. Jenny will be living all round the world, like Jill. Come to Aynsford whenever you want.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I meant it, and it sounded like it.

  He stood beside his car, looking down at me from his straight six feet.

  ‘Jenny,’ he said casually, ‘is a fool.’

  I shook my head. Jenny was no fool. Jenny knew what she needed, and it wasn’t me.

  When I went into the office (on time) the following morning, the girl on the switchboard caught me and said Radnor wanted me straight away.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had Lord Hagbourne on the telephone telling me it’s time we got results and that he can’t go to Seabury today because his car is being serviced. Before you explode, Sid… I told him that you would take him down there now, at once, in your own car. So get a move on.’

  I grinned. ‘I bet he didn’t like that.’

  ‘He couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough. Get round and collect him before he comes up with one.’

  ‘Right.’

  I made a quick detour up to the Racing Section where Dolly was adjusting her lipstick. No cross-over blouse today. A disappointment.

  I told her where I was going, and asked if I could use Chico.

  ‘Help yourself,’ she said resignedly. ‘If you can get a word in edgeways. He’s along in Accounts arguing with Jones-boy.’

  Chico, however, listened attentively and repeated what I had asked him. ‘I’m to find out exactly what mistakes the Clerk of the Course at Dunstable made, and make sure that they and nothing else were the cause of the course losing money.’

  ‘That’s right. And dig out the file on Andrews and the case you were working on when I got shot.’

  ‘But that’s all dead,’ he protested, ‘the file’s down in records in the basement.’

  ‘Send Jones-boy down for it,’ I suggested, grinning. ‘It’s probably only a coincidence, but there is something I want to check. I’ll do it tomorrow morning. O.K.?’

  ‘If you say so, chum.’

  Back at my flat, I filled up with Extra and made all speed round to Beauchamp Place. Lord Hagbourne, with a civil but cool good morning, lowered himself into the passenger seat, and we set off for Seabury. It took him about a quarter of an hour to get over having been manoeuvred into something he didn’t want to do, but at the end of that time he sighed and moved in his seat, and offered me a cigarette.

  ‘No, thank you, sir. I don’t smoke.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I do?’ He took one out.

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘This is a nice car,’ he remarked, looking round.

  ‘It’s nearly three years old now. I bought it the last season I was riding. It’s the best I’ve ever had, I think.’

  ‘I must say,’ he said inoffensively, ‘that you manage extremely well. I wouldn’t have thought that you could drive a car like this with only one effective hand.’

  ‘Its power makes it easier, actually. I took it across Europe last Spring… good roads, there.’

  We talked on about cars and holidays, then about theatres and books, and he seemed for once quite human. The subject of Seabury we carefully by-passed. I wanted to get him down there in a good mood; the arguments, if any, could take place on the way back; and it seemed as if he was of the same mind.

  The state of Seabury’s track reduced him to silent gloom. We walked down to the burnt piece with Captain Oxon, who was bearing himself stiffly and being pointedly polite. I thought he was a fool: he should have fallen on the Senior Steward and begged for instant help.

  Captain Oxon, whom I had not met before, though he said he knew me by sight, was a slender pleasant looking man of about fifty, with a long pointed chin and a slight tendency to watery eyes. The present offended obstinacy of his expression looked more like childishness than real strength. A colonel manqué, I thought uncharitably, and no wonder.

  ‘I know it’s not really my business,’ I said, ‘but surely a bulldozer would shift what’s left of the burnt bit in a couple of hours? There isn’t time to settle new turf, but you could cover the whole area with some tons of tan and race over it quite easily, like that. You must be getting tan anyway, to cover the road surface. Surely you could just increase the order?’

  Oxon looked at me with irritation. ‘We can’t afford it.’

  ‘You can’t afford another cancellation at the last minute,’ I corrected.

  ‘We are insured against cancellations.’

  ‘I doubt whether an insurance company would stand this one,’ I said. ‘They’d say you could have raced if you’d tried hard enough.’

  ‘It’s Monday now,’ remarked Lord Hagbourne thoughtfully. ‘Racing’s due on Friday. Suppose we call in a bulldozer tomorrow; the tan can be unloaded and spread on Wednesday and Thursday. Yes, that seems sound enough.’

  ‘But the cost…’ began Oxon.

  ‘I think the money must be found,’ said Lord Hagbourne. ‘Tell Mr Fotherton when he comes over that I have authorised the expenditure. The bills will be met, in one way or another. But I do think there is no case for not making an effort.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to point out that if Oxon had arranged for the bulldozer on the first day he could have saved the price of casual labour for six hand-
diggers for a week, but as the battle was already won, I nobly refrained. I continued to think, however, that Oxon was a fool. Usually the odd custom of giving the managerships of racecourses to ex-army and navy officers worked out well, but conspicuously not in this case.

  The three of us walked back up to the stands, Lord Hagbourne pausing and pursing his lips at their dingy appearance. I reflected that it was a pity that Seabury had a Clerk of the Course whose heart and home were far away on the thriving course at Bristol. If I’d been arranging things, I’d have seen to it a year ago, when the profits turned to loss, that Seabury had a new Clerk entirely devoted to its own interests, someone moreover whose livelihood depended on it staying open. The bungle, delay, muddle, too much politeness and failure to take action showed by the Seabury executive had been of inestimable value to the quietly burrowing Kraye.

  Mr Fotherton might have been worried, as he said, but he had done little except mention it in passing to Charles in his capacity as Steward at some other meeting. Charles, looking for something to divert my mind from my stomach, and perhaps genuinely anxious about Seabury, had tossed the facts to me. In his own peculiar way, naturally.

  The casualness of the whole situation was horrifying. I basely wondered whether Fotherton himself had a large holding in Seabury shares and therefore a vested interest in its demise. Planning a much closer scrutiny of the list of shareholders, I followed Lord Hagbourne and Captain Oxon round the end of the stands, and we walked the three hundred yards or so through the racecourse gates and down the road to where Captain Oxon’s flat was situated above the canteen in the stable block.

  On Lord Hagbourne’s suggestion he rang up a firm of local contractors while we were still there, and arranged for the urgent earth-moving to be done the following morning. His manner was still ruffled, and it didn’t improve things when I declined the well-filled ham and chutney sandwiches he offered, though I would have adored to have eaten them, had he but known. I had been out of hospital for a fortnight, but I had another fortnight to go before things like new bread, ham, mustard and chutney were due back on the agenda. Very boring.

  After the sandwiches Lord Hagbourne decided on a tour of inspection, so we all three went first round the stable block, into the lads’ hostel, through the canteen to the kitchen, and into all the stable administrative offices. Everywhere the story was the same. Except for the rows of wooden boxes which had been thrown up cheaply after the old ones burned down, there was no recent maintenance and no new paint.

  Then we retraced our steps up the road, through the main gate, and across to the long line of stands with the weighing room, dining-rooms, bars and cloakrooms built into the back. At one end were the secretary’s office, the press room and the Stewards’ room: at the other, the first-aid room and a store. A wide tunnel like a passage ran centrally through the whole length of the building, giving secondary access on one side to many of the rooms, and on the other to the steps of the stands themselves. We painstakingly covered the lot, even down to the boiler room and the oil bunkers, so I had my nostalgic look inside the weighing room and changing room after all.

  The whole huge block was dankly cold, very draughty, and smelt of dust. Nothing looked new, not even the dirt. For inducing depression it was hard to beat, but the dreary buildings along in the cheaper rings did a good job of trying.

  Captain Oxon said the general dilapidation was mostly due to the sea air, the racecourse being barely half a mile from the shore, and no doubt in essence he was right. The sea air had had a free hand for far too long.

  Eventually we returned to where my car was parked inside the gate, and looked back to the row of stands: forlorn, deserted, decaying on a chilly early November afternoon, with a salt-laden drizzle just beginning to blur the outlines.

  ‘What’s to be done?’ said Lord Hagbourne glumly, as we drove through the rows of bungalows on our way home.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shook my head.

  ‘The place is dead.’

  I couldn’t argue. Seabury had suddenly seemed to me to be past saving. The Friday and Saturday fixtures could be held now, but as things stood the gate money would hardly cover expenses. No company could go on making a loss indefinitely. Seabury could plug the gap at present by drawing on their reserve funds, but as I’d seen from their balance sheets at Company House, the reserves only amounted to a few thousands. Matters were bound to get worse. Insolvency waited round a close corner. It might be more realistic to admit that Seabury had no future and to sell the land at the highest price offered as soon as possible. People were, after all, crying out for flat land at the seaside. And there was no real reason why the shareholders shouldn’t be rewarded for their long loyalty and recent poor dividends and receive eight pounds for each one they had invested. Many would gain if Seabury came under the hammer, and no one would lose. Seabury was past saving: best to think only of the people who would benefit.

  My thoughts stopped with a jerk. This, I realised, must be the attitude of the Clerk, Mr Fotherton, and of the Manager, Oxon, and of all the executive. This explained why they had made surprisingly little attempt to save the place. They had accepted defeat easily and seen it not only to be harmless, but to many, usefully profitable. As it had been with other courses, big courses like Hurst Park and Birmingham, so it should be with Seabury.

  What did it matter that yet another joined the century’s ghost ranks of Cardiff, Derby, Bournemouth, Newport? What did it matter if busy people like Inspector Cornish of Dunstable couldn’t go racing much because their local course had vanished? What did it matter if Seabury’s holiday makers went to the Bingo halls instead?

  Chasing owners, I thought, should rise up in a body and demand that Seabury should be preserved, because no racecourse was better for their horses. But of course they wouldn’t. You could tell owners how good it was, but unless they were horsemen themselves, it didn’t register. They only saw the rotten amenities of the stands, not the splendidly sited well-built fences that positively invited their horses to jump. They didn’t know how their horses relished the short springy turf underfoot, or found the arc and cambers of the bends perfect for maintaining an even speed. Corners at many other racecourses threw horses wide and broke up their stride, but not those at Seabury. The original course builder had been brilliant, and regular visits from the Inspector of Courses had kept his work fairly intact. Fast, true run, unhazardous racing, that’s what Seabury gave.

  Or had done, before Kraye.

  Kraye and the executive’s inertia between them… I stamped on the accelerator in a surge of anger and the car swooped up the side of the South Downs like a bird. I didn’t often drive fast any more: I did still miss having two hands on the wheel. At the top, out of consideration for my passenger’s nerves, I let the speedometer ribbon slide back to fifty.

  He said, ‘I feel like that about it too.’

  I glanced at him in surprise.

  ‘The whole situation is infuriating,’ he nodded. ‘Such a good course basically, and nothing to be done.’

  ‘It could be saved,’ I said.

  ‘How?’

  ‘A new attitude of mind…’ I tailed off.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. But I couldn’t find the words to tell him politely that he ought to chuck out all the people in power at Seabury; too many of them were probably his ex-school chums or personal friends.

  ‘Suppose,’ he said after a few minutes, ‘that you had a free hand, what would you do?’

  ‘One would never get a free hand. That’s half the trouble. Someone makes a good suggestion, and someone else squashes it. They end up, often as not, by doing nothing.’

  ‘No, Sid, I mean you personally. What would you do?’

  ‘I?’ I grinned. ‘What I’d do would have the National Hunt Committee swooning like Victorian maidens.’

  ‘I’d like to know.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  He nodded. As if he could ever be anything else but serious.

  I sighed. ‘Very
well then. I’d pinch every good crowd-pulling idea that any other course has thought of, and put them all into operation on the same day.’

  ‘What, for instance?’

  ‘I’d take the whole of the reserve fund and offer it as a prize for a big race. I’d make sure the race was framed to attract the really top chasers. Then I’d go round to their trainers personally and explain the situation, and beg for their support. I’d go to some of the people who sponsor Gold Cup races and cajole them into giving five hundred pound prizes for all the other races on that day. I’d make the whole thing into a campaign. I’d get Save Seabury discussed on television, and in the sports columns of newspapers. I’d get people interested and involved. I’d make helping Seabury the smart thing to do. I’d get someone like the Beatles to come and present the trophies. I’d advertise free car-parking and free race cards, and on the day I’d have the whole place bright with flags and bunting and tubs of flowers to hide the lack of paint. I’d make sure everyone on the staff understood that a friendly welcome must be given to the customers. And I’d insist that the catering firm used its imagination. I’d fix the meeting for the beginning of April, and pray for a sunny Spring day. That,’ I said, running down, ‘would do for a start.’

  ‘And afterwards?’ He was non-committal.

  ‘A loan, I suppose. Either from a bank or from private individuals. But the executive would have to show first that Seabury could be a success again, like it used to be. No one falls over himself to lend to a dying business. The revival has to come before the money, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I do see,’ he agreed slowly, ‘but…’

  ‘Yes. But. It always comes to But. But no one at Seabury is going to bother.’

  We were silent for a long way.

  Finally I said, ‘This meeting on Friday and Saturday… it would be a pity to risk another last-minute disaster. Hunt Radnor Associates could arrange for some sort of guard on the course. Security patrols, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Too expensive,’ he said promptly. ‘And you’ve not yet proved that it is really needed. Seabury’s troubles still look like plain bad luck to me.’