Comeback (15 page)

I nodded. “But you might say I grew out of it in other ways.”

“What ways?”

“Total lack of opportunity.”

“I was a pony freak,” she said, nodding, “and one fine day there was more to life than riding.”

She wore black and white all over: black boots and thin legs, checked skirt, white turtleneck, black short coat and a huge fluffy white scarf with black pompom fringes. She looked at times sixteen and at times double that and had an overall air of competence, when not hurling herself against language barriers.

“Do you live in London?” I asked.

“Fulham Road, if you can call that London. And you?”

“Homeless.”

I got a disillusioned stare worthy of the remark. “Does that mean a grating in Trafalgar Square?”

“Are there any good gratings down Fulham way?”

She answered with a look that said games had gone far enough, and I thought to myself that, if I didn’t start searching soon for somewhere to lay my head, a nice warm grating where hot air vented up from subterranean tunnels would have its attractions. I’d slept rough in the capital several times in my student days: guessed I was too old for it now.

The Japanese came back happily waving tickets and we all went up on the stands to watch the fittest. He survived to the last hurdle and there turned end over end in a flurry of legs.

I apologized. They said it wasn’t my fault. The horse got up and galloped riderless past the stands, looking ready to go round twice more without panting. The Japanese put their useless tickets in their pockets along with their dashed hopes and decided that for the next race they would like to walk down to the fences, as they had seen other people do. I was ready to say I’d go with them when I spotted Ken walking alone slowly, looking at his race card, stopping in indecision.

“I’ll be here when you come back,” I said hastily in two languages, “but I have to speak to someone. Please, please excuse me.”

I left them in midbow and reached Ken before he moved off, slowing to a stop at his elbow.

“I want to talk to you,” I said.

“Fire away.” He lifted his gaze briefly from the race card.

“Alone and uninterrupted.”

“But Belinda...”

“If you want me to do anything useful, I need some of your time.”

“All right.” He made up his mind. “How about the bar?”

The bar turned out to be worse than useless because as we reached the door we came face-to-face with J. Rolls Eaglewood, who was on his way out, limping along with his walking stick.

“Afternoon, sir,” Ken said. I hoped his tremble was detectable by me alone: I felt his panic flow across like a breeze. His impulse to turn and run couldn’t have been clearer.

J. Rolls stopped dead, fixing a dire glare on Ken’s face.

“You killed my horse,” he said.

Ken shook his head weakly. “He died. We couldn’t save him.”

“Sheer bloody incompetence, and I won’t put up with it any longer.”

Eaglewood at close quarters, though thin, gray-haired and with age-freckled skin, still generated the power and threat I associated with his name. His voice held the rasp of one long used to instant obedience, and he could and did score several patriarchal points over a vet less than half his age.

“I’ve put up with you this long because of my granddaughter’s infatuation with you,” he said, “and out of respect, too, for your father’s memory, but I’ve had to tell Carey that you’re never to attend my horses again or I’ll be transferring my business to another firm of vets, and I’d be sorry to do that after all these years, as I told him, but this slaughter has got to stop.”

Ken miserably made no attempt at defense. Eaglewood gave him a brief fierce nod, gestured to him with his stick to get out of the way, and stumped off out of earshot.

“You see?” Ken said, shaking and as pale as ever. “I can’t even blame him. The horse that died on Thursday morning—with the split cannon bone—came from his stable.”

“It sounded as if it might not have been the first disaster.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t. Another of his died on the table about a month ago while I was doing respiratory-tract surgery. And one died in its own box....” His voice took the by-now familiar note of desperation. “I don’t do anything wrong, I’m always careful. They just
died.”

“Mm. Well, why don’t you give me a complete chronological list of all the things that have ended badly? Also the names of all the owners and trainers and anything special or particular about them? If you’re sure what you did was OK, we have to find another explanation.”

“What explanation?”

“Villainy, wouldn’t you think?”

“But it’s impossible. That’s the trouble. I’ve checked everything over and over again. Gone over everything in my mind. I can’t sleep ... And what’s the
point
of killing them?”

I sighed. “Let’s start with the list.”

“I’d need my notes.” He broke off, freshly appalled. “All my notes are
burnt.”

We’d moved away from the door to the bar and stood in the area outside the weighing room. Several people, I’d noticed, gave Ken sidelong glances, but I thought it might have been only because of his visible distress until I later heard Eaglewood spreading his opinions far and wide. “... ruining a good old firm ...” and “... three of mine dead ... can’t go on.” At what point, I wondered, did opinion become slander?

“What you’ve got to do,” I told Ken, “is stop worrying what you did wrong and start wondering how you would have set about killing the horses that died. Think about a needle and thread in a broodmare’s gut. Think, in fact, of all the ways you know to commit equine murder.”

“But I...” His voice tailed off indecisively.

“Knowledge isn’t guilt,” I said. “Knowing where to shove a dagger between the ribs doesn’t mean you’ve done it.”

“But if you know how, then it
might
have been you.”

“So you do know ways.”

“Well . . . every vet does.”

I looked at his long unhappy face with its troubled light eyes and understood his unwillingness to part with information that might sound like confession. It was the same hesitation I’d noticed on the night of the fire. I would get him to tell me in the end, I thought, but the sooner the safer, on the whole.

Over his shoulder I saw Belinda making her way purposefully towards us and regretted not being hidden away in the depths of the bar.

“Think out the list,” I urged Ken. “Meet me early tomorrow at the hospital. Alone.”

“How early?”

“Eight?”

“Well ...” He turned to see what I was looking at. Belinda had six paces to go. “All right,” he said. “Eight.”

“Eight what?” Belinda asked, overhearing.

“Number eight in the next race,” I explained.

Ken closed his eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Belinda asked.

“Nothing.” He opened his eyes again, smiling at her and fishing around for his wallet. “Go and put a fiver on number eight for me, there’s a darling. You know I don’t like people to see me bet.”

“Eight hasn’t a hope,” she said.

“All the same ...”

“All right, but you’re mad.”

She walked off towards the Tote windows and Ken at once said, “Why don’t you want Belinda there too, in the morning?”

“You’ll tell me more and clearer on your own. I can ask her later for her impressions.”

He thought it over. “You’re probably right. And you’re a shocking liar.”

“I thought I was quite good.”

“I mean, you shocked me. So fast.”

“Years of practice.”

“That’s pretty shocking too.”

When Belinda returned we climbed the stands to watch the race and to everyone’s blank surprise number eight came in first. The stunned crowd received the no-hoper’s victory in silence, and Belinda stopped Ken’s wide grin in its tracks by announcing a shade defiantly that she hadn’t put his fiver on eight but on the favorite instead.

“People have been divorced for less,” Ken said, just about managing civility.

“Number eight was useless,” Belinda insisted. “I wanted you to win.”

Number eight paid a fortune on the Tote, which caused a further chill between the betrothed. I left them fuming over the problem and made tracks for Annabel as she brought her retinue back to the paddock.

After twenty minutes apart we greeted each other as old friends. The expedition to the closer action had raised heartbeats, it appeared, and also quite clearly the spirits. The two Japanese talked animatedly between themselves about what looked fittest for the next race, and Annabel and I looked at each other with a lot of unspoken questions.

When she finally asked, it was solely a search for information.

“Who,” she said, “were you talking to when we came back? A tall thin man with fair hair and a tetchity girl.”

“Tetchity?”

She shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Ken McClure and Belinda Larch. The wedding is three weeks today.”

She frowned, but not at that news. “Is he a vet?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Friend of yours?”

“I met him the day before yesterday, and yes, to that extent, he is.”

I waited a bit, and she said, “I owe you for your help. I wouldn’t want you to make a mistake in getting too friendly with that vet. They were talking about him upstairs.”

“Who upstairs?”

“The directors and stewards. One of them was, anyway. He pointed him out to the others as they stood by the window having a drink before lunch. He said your friend would soon be disbarred from practicing, or some such phrase, as he was killing horses left, right and center and was dishonest, sneaky and a disgrace to his profession.”

“As strong as that?”

“Stronger, if anything. There was a lot of hate in it.”

“Really?” I was interested. “Who was he?”

“I was introduced to about eight people very fast and I was trying to present our chums here”—she pointed to her charges—“so I can’t remember his name, but I think he might have been one of the stewards.”

“Let’s see,” I said, and turned my race card back to page one, and there to my confusion found in the list of stewards the name I’d searched all the inner pages for in vain.

R. D. Upjohn, Esq.

“Ronnie!” Annabel exclaimed. “I still can’t remember his last name, but they called him Ronnie.” She studied my face. “Mean something to you?”

I told her why Ronnie Upjohn hated Ken McClure. “Ken made him look a fool. Some men can’t bear it.”

She listened with pursed mouth to the saga of the preserved castoff that went on to win and said, “I understand the spite and envy over the one that was saved, but how about the ones that died? It wasn’t only Ronnie who’d heard about them, some of the others were nodding.”

“What does this Ronnie look like?” I asked.

“You’re changing the subject!”

“I don’t know why the horses died, and nor does Ken. We’re working on it. Could you point out Ronnie Upjohn, by any chance?”

She shook the mop of hair. “Stewards at race meetings all look alike.”

“That’s what people say about the Japanese.”

“Oh no,” she said instantly. “I’d know my three anywhere.” She looked at her watch. “I really ought to take these two back upstairs, where all good little VIPs belong. Would you mind suggesting it?”

They went, it seemed to me, with polite resignation: they were having more fun down in the crowds with the doll of a girl. For me too, unexpectedly, the fizz went out of the hour with their departure, and I said to myself, “Well, well, well, Peter my boy, take it easy, she’ll have half London in tow, and besides that, you know nothing about her except the way she looks and talks....” And who really needed more? Everything had to begin
somewhere,
after all.

I rejoined Greg and Vicky on the stands and learned they’d at length found two seats in the bar and had stayed there for an hour making one gin and tonic last forever and watching the races on closed-circuit television. They had backed two winners on quick forays to the Tote and had won a lot on number eight. “My birthday’s the eighth of the eighth month,” Vicky said. “Eight’s always my lucky number.” They’d quite enjoyed themselves after all, they said.

Belinda, looking glum, came to ask them dutifully if they were managing all right and was infuriated to be told of their winnings on number eight.

“The wretched animal’s useless,” she protested, “and Ken’s kicking up the most ridiculous fuss.”

“Why, dear?” Vicky asked, perplexed.

“He gave me money to back eight for him and I put it on the favorite instead, and you’d think I’d lost him the crock of gold the way he’s going on.”

“He’s under a lot of pressure,” Greg said gently. “You can see he is.”

“He’s proud and he’s stubborn,” Belinda said, “and he’s not speaking to me.” There was a sudden thin glitter of tears along her lower eyelids. She tossed her head as if to disclaim them and blinked hard, sniffing.

Vicky, looking relieved at this sign of emotion in her bossy daughter, said prosaically, “He’ll get over it.”

Belinda said, “I offered to give him the wretched money he would have won. He says that’s not the point. Well, if it’s not, what is?”

“The point is his ego, dear,” Vicky said. “You questioned his decision. Worse still, you overrode it. That’s what’s the matter with him, not the loss of his money.”

Belinda looked at her mother in wide-eyed silent astonishment, and I thought that it might even have been the very first time in her adult life that she’d really listened to what her mother said. After a long pause her gaze slid from Vicky to me, and a good deal of acerbity returned to her expression.

“And you,” she said, not liking me, “what do you say about it?”

“I’d say,” I said without emphasis, “that he’s too used to you obeying him without question in the course of your work.”