Straight (29 page)

This one needed no explanation. This was the microcassette recorder that went with the tiny tapes I’d found in the hollowed-out books.

“That’s voice activated,” June said, looking at it. “It will sit quietly around doing nothing for hours, then when anyone speaks it will record what’s said. Mr. Franklin used it sometimes for dictating letters or notes because it let him say a bit, think a bit, and say a bit more, without using up masses of tape. I used to listen to the tapes and type straight onto the word processor.”

Worth her weight in pearls, Greville had judged. I wouldn’t quarrel with that.

I put the microcassette player beside the other things and brought out the last two gadgets. One was a tiny Minolta camera, which June said Greville used quite often for pictures of unusual stones for Prospero Jenks, and the last was a gray thing one could hold in one’s hand that had an on/off switch but no obvious purpose.

“That’s to frighten dogs away,” June said with a smile. “Mr. Franklin didn’t like dogs, but I think he was ashamed of not liking them, because at first he didn’t want to tell me what that was, when I asked him.”

I hadn’t known Greville didn’t like dogs. I fiercely wanted him back, if only to tease him about it. The real trouble with death was what it left unsaid: and knowing that that thought was a more or less universal regret made it no less sharp.

I put the dog frightener back beside the passport and also the baby camera, which had no film in it. Then I closed and locked the shallow drawer and fitted the piece of veneer back in place, pushing it home with a click. The vast top again looked wholly solid, and I wondered if Greville had bought that desk simply because of the drawer’s existence, or whether he’d had the whole piece specially made.

“You’d never know that drawer was there,” June said. “I wonder how many fortunes have been lost by people getting rid of hiding places they didn’t suspect?”

“I read a story about that once. Something about money stuffed in an old armchair that was left to someone.” I couldn’t remember the details: but Greville had left me more than an old armchair, and more than one place to look, and I too could get rid of the treasure from not suspecting the right hiding place, if there were one at all to find.

Meanwhile there was the problem of staying healthy while I searched. There was the worse problem of sorting out ways of taking the war to the enemy, if I could identify the enemy in the first place.

I asked June if she could find something I could carry the Wizard and the other things in and she was back in a flash with a soft plastic bag with handles. It reminded me fleetingly of the bag I’d had snatched at Ipswich but this time, I thought, when I carried the booty to the car, I would take with me an invincible bodyguard, a long-legged, flat-chested twenty-one-year-old blonde half in love with my brother.

The telephone rang. I picked up the receiver and said, “Saxony Franklin” out of newly acquired habit.

“Derek? Is that you?”

“Yes, Milo, it is.”

“I’m not satisfied with this horse.” He sounded aggressive, which wasn’t unusual, and also apologetic, which was.

“Which horse?” I asked.

“Dozen Roses, of course. What else?”

“Oh.”

“What do you mean, oh? You knew damn well I was fetching it today. The damn thing’s half asleep. I’m getting the vet round at once and I’ll want urine and blood tests. The damn thing looks doped.”

“Maybe they gave him a tranquilizer for the journey.”

“They’ve no right to, you know that. If they have, I’ll have Nicholas Loder’s head on a platter, like you should, if you had any sense. The man does what he damn well likes. Anyway, if the horse doesn’t pass my vet he’s going straight back, Ostermeyers, or no Ostermeyers. It’s not fair on them if I accept shoddy goods.”

“Um,” I said calmingly, “perhaps Nicholas Loder wants you to do just that.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Wants you to send him straight back.”

“Oh.”

“And,” I said, “Dozen Roses was the property of Saxony Franklin Limited, not Nicholas Loder, and if you think it’s fair to the Ostermeyers to void the sale, so be it, but my brother’s executor will direct you to send the horse anywhere else but back to Loder.”

There was a silence. Then he said with a smothered laugh, “You always were a bright tricky bastard.”

“Thanks.”

“But get down here, will you? Take a look at him. Talk to the vet. How soon can you get here?”

“Couple of hours. Maybe more.”

“No, come on, Derek.”

“It’s a long way to Tipperary,” I said. “It never gets any nearer.”

“You’re delirious.”

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Soon as you can, then,” he said. “See you.”

I put down the receiver with an inward groan. I did not want to go belting down to Lambourn to a crisis, however easily resolved. I wanted to let my aches unwind.

I telephoned the car and heard the ringing tone, but Brad, wherever he was, didn’t answer. Then, as the first step toward leaving, I went along and locked the vault. Alfie in the packing room was stretching his back, his day’s load finished. Lily, standing idle, gave me a repressed look from under her lashes. Jason goosed Tina in the doorway to the stockrooms, which she didn’t seem to mind. There was a feeling of afternoon ending, of abeyance in the offing, of corporate activity drifting to suspense. Like the last race on an October card.

Saying goodnights and collecting the plastic bag, I went down to the yard and found Brad there waiting.

“Did you find those papers OK?” I asked him, climbing in beside him after storing the crutches on the back seat.

“Yerss,” he said.

“And delivered them?”

“Yerss.”

“Thanks. Great. How long have you been back?”

He shrugged. I left it. It wasn’t important.

“Lambourn,” I said, as we turned out of the yard. “But on the way, back to my brother’s house to collect something else. OK?”

He nodded and drove to Greville’s house skillfully, but slowed just before we reached it and pointed to Greville’s car, still standing by the curb.

“See?” he said. “It’s been broken into.”

He found a parking place and we went back to look. The heavily locked trunk had been jimmied open and now wouldn’t close again.

“Good job we took the things out,” I said. “I suppose they are still in my car.”

He shook his head. “In our house, under the stairs. Our mum said to do it with your car outside our door all night. Dodgy neighborhood round our part.”

“Very thoughtful,” I said.

He nodded. “Smart, our mum.”

He came with me into Greville’s garden, holding the gate open.

“They done this place over proper,” he said, producing the three keys from his pocket. “Want me to?”

He didn’t wait for particular assent but went up the steps and undid the locks. Daylight: no floods, no dog.

He waited in the hall while I went along to the little sitting room to collect the tapes. It all looked forlorn in there, a terrible mess made no better by time. I put the featherweight cassettes into my pocket and left again, thinking that tidying up was a long way down my urgency list. When the ankle had altogether stopped hurting; maybe then. When the insurance people had seen it, if they wanted to.

I had brought with me a note which I left prominently on the lowest step of the staircase, where anyone coming into the house would see it.

“Dear Mrs. P. I’m afraid there is bad news for you. Don’t clean the house. Telephone Saxony Franklin Ltd. instead.”

I’d added the number in case she didn’t know it by heart, and I’d warned Annette to go gently with anyone calling. Nothing else I could do to cushion the shock.

Brad locked the front door and we set off again to Lambourn. He had done enough talking for the whole journey and we traveled in customary silence, easy if not comrades.

Milo was striding about in the yard, expending energy to no purpose. He yanked the passenger-side door of my car open and scowled in at Brad, more as a reflection of his general state of mind, I gathered, than from any particular animosity.

I retrieved the crutches and stood up, and he told me it was high time I threw them away.

“Calm down,” I said.

“Don’t patronize me.”

“Is Phil here?”

Phil was Phil Urquhart, veterinary surgeon, pill pusher to the stable.

“No, he isn’t,” Milo said crossly, “but he’s coming back. The damned horse won’t give a sample. And for a start, you can tell me whether it is or isn’t Dozen Roses. His passport matches, but I’d like to be sure.”

He strode away toward a box in one corner of the yard and I followed and looked where he looked, over the bottom half of the door.

Inside the box were an obstinate-looking horse and a furious red-faced lad. The lad held a pole which had on one end of it an open plastic bag on a ring, like a shrimping net. The plastic bag was clean and empty.

I chuckled.

“It’s all right for you,” Milo said sharply. “You haven’t been waiting for more than two hours for the damned animal to stale.”

“On Singapore racecourse, one time,” I said, “they got a sample with nicotine in it. The horse didn’t smoke, but the lad did. He got tired of waiting for the horse and just supplied the sample himself.”

“Very funny,” Milo said repressively.

“This often takes hours, though, so why the rage?”

It sounded always so simple, of course, to take a regulation urine sample from two horses after every race, one nearly always from the winner. In practice it meant waiting around for the horses to oblige. After two hours of nonperformance, blood samples were taken instead, but blood wasn’t as easy to come by. Many tempers were regularly lost while the horses made up their minds.

“Come away,” I said, “he’ll do it in the end. And he’s definitely the horse that ran at York. Dozen Roses without a doubt.”

He followed me away reluctantly and we went into the kitchen where Milo switched lights on and asked me if I’d like a drink.

“Wouldn’t mind some tea,” I said.

“Tea? At this hour? Well, help yourself.” He watched me fill the kettle and set it to boil. “Are you off booze forever?”

“No.”

“Thank God.”

Phil Urquhart’s car scrunched into the yard and pulled up outside the window, and he came breezing into the kitchen asking if there were any results. He read Milo’s scowl aright and laughed.

“Do you think the horse is doped?” I asked him.

“Me? No, not really. Hard to tell. Milo thinks so.”

He was small and sandy-haired, and about thirty, the grandson of a three-generation family practice, and to my mind the best of them. I caught myself thinking that when I in the future trained here in Lambourn, I would want him for my horses. An odd thought. The future planning itself behind my back.

“I hear we’re lucky you’re still with us,” he said. “An impressive crunch, so they say.” He looked at me assessingly with friendly professional eyes. “You’ve a few rough edges one can see.”

“Nothing that will stop him racing,” Milo said crisply.

Phil smiled. “I detect more alarm than sympathy.”

“Alarm?”

“You’ve trained more winners since he came here.”

“Rubbish,” Milo said.

He poured drinks for himself and Phil, and I made my tea; and Phil assured me that if the urine passed all tests he would give the thumbs-up to Dozen Roses.

“He may just be showing the effects of the hard race he had at York,” he said. “It might be that he’s always like this. Some horses are, and we don’t know how much weight he lost.”

“What will you get the urine tested for?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows. “Barbiturates, in this case.”

“At York,” I said thoughtfully, “one of Nicholas Loder’s owners was walking around with an inhaler in his pocket. A kitchen baster, to be precise.”

“An owner?” Phil asked, surprised.

“Yes. He owned the winner of the five-furlong sprint. He was also in the saddling box with Dozen Roses.”

Phil frowned. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing. Merely observing. I can’t believe he interfered with the horse. Nicholas Loder wouldn’t have let him. The stable money was definitely on. They wanted to win, and they knew if it won it would be tested. So the only question is, what could you give a horse that wouldn’t disqualify it? Give it via an inhaler just before a race?”

“Nothing that would make it go faster. They test for all stimulants.”

“What if you gave it, say, sugar? Glucose? Or adrenaline?”

“You’ve a criminal mind!”

“I just wondered.”

“Glucose would give energy, as to human athletes. It wouldn’t increase speed, though. Adrenaline is more tricky. If it’s given by injection you can see it, because the hairs stand up all round the puncture. But straight into the mucous membranes ... well, I suppose it’s possible.”

“And no trace.”

He agreed. “Adrenaline pours into a horse’s bloodstream naturally anyway, if he’s excited. If he wants to win. If he feels the whip. Who’s to say how much? If you suspected a booster you’d have to take a blood sample in the winner’s enclosure, practically, and even then you’d have a hard job proving any reading was excessive. Adrenaline levels vary too much. You’d even have a hard job proving extra adrenaline made any difference at all.” He paused and considered me soberly. “You do realize that you’re saying that if anything was done, Nicholas Loder condoned it?”

“Doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said. “If he were some tin-pot little crook, well then, maybe, but not Nicholas Loder with his classic winners and everything to lose.”

“Mm.” I thought a bit. “If I asked, I could get some of the urine sample that was taken from Dozen Roses at York. They always make it available to owners for private checks. To my brother’s company, that is to say, in this instance.” I thought a bit more. “When Nicholas Loder’s s friend dropped his baster, Martha Ostermeyer handed the bulb part back to him, but then Harley Ostermeyer picked up the tube part and gave it to me. But it was clean. No trace of liquid. No adrenaline. So I suppose it’s possible he might have used it on his own horse and still had it in his pocket, but did nothing to Dozen Roses.”