High stakes - By Dick Francis Page 0,16

was short and straight, her mouth curved up at the corners, and her cheeks had faint hollows in the right places. Assembled, the components added up not to a standard type of beauty, but to a face of character and vitality. Part of the story written, I thought. Lines of good fortune, none of discontent. No anxiety, no inner confusion. A good deal of self assurance, knowing she looked attractive and had succeeded in the job she’d chosen. Definitely not a virgin: a girl’s eyes were always different, after.

‘Are all your days busy,’ I asked, ‘Between now and Thursday?’

‘There are some minutes here and there.’

‘Tomorrow?’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘Not a chink tomorrow. Monday if you like.’

‘I’ll collect you,’ I said. ‘Monday morning, at ten.’

4

Rupert Ramsey’s voice on the telephone sounded resigned rather than welcoming.

‘Yes, of course, do come down to see your horses, if you’d like to. Do you know the way?’

He gave me directions which proved easy to follow, and at eleven thirty, Sunday morning, I drove through his white painted stone gateposts and drew up in the large gravelled area before his house.

He lived in a genuine Georgian house, simple in design, with large airy rooms and elegant plaster-worked ceilings. Nothing self-consciously antique about the furnishings: all periods mingled together in a working atmosphere that was wholly modern.

Rupert himself was about forty-five, intensely energetic under a misleadingly languid exterior. His voice drawled slightly. I knew him only by sight and it was to all intents the first time we had met.

‘How do you do?’ He shook hands. ‘Care to come into my office?’

I followed him through the white painted front door, across the large square hall and into the room he called his office, but which was furnished entirely as a sitting-room except for a dining table which served as a desk, and a grey filing cabinet in one corner.

‘Do sit down.’ He indicated an armchair. ‘Cigarette?’

‘Don’t smoke.’

‘Wise man.’ He smiled as if he didn’t really think so and lit one for himself.

‘Energise,’ he said, ‘is showing signs of having had a hard race.’

‘But he won easily,’ I said.

‘It looked that way, certainly.’ He inhaled, breathing out through his nose. ‘All the same, I’m not too happy about him.’

‘In what way?’

‘He needs building up. We’ll do it, don’t you fear. But he looks a bit thin at present.’

‘How about the other two?’

‘Dial’s jumping out of his skin. Ferryboat needs a lot of work yet.’

‘I don’t think Ferryboat likes racing any more.’

The cigarette paused on its way to his mouth.

‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.

‘He’s had three races this autumn. I expect you’ll have looked up his form. He’s run badly every time. Last year he was full of enthusiasm and won three times out of seven starts, but the last of them took a lot of winning… and Raymond Child cut him raw with his whip… and during the summer out at grass Ferryboat seems to have decided that if he gets too near the front he’s in for a beating, so it’s only good sense not to get near the front… and he consequently isn’t trying.’

He drew deeply on the cigarette, giving himself time.

‘Do you expect me to get better results than Jody?’

‘With Ferryboat, or in general?’

‘Let’s say… both.’

I smiled. ‘I don’t expect much from Ferryboat. Dial’s a novice, an unknown quantity. Energise might win the Champion Hurdle.’

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he said pleasantly.

‘No… I expect you to get different results from Jody. Will that do?’

‘I’d very much like to know why you left him.’

‘Disagreements over money,’ I said. ‘Not over the way he trained the horses.’

He tapped ash off with the precision that meant his mind was elsewhere. When he spoke, it was slowly.

‘Were you always satisfied with the way your horses ran?’

The question hovered delicately in the air, full of inviting little traps. He looked up suddenly and met my eyes and his own widened with comprehension. ‘I see you understand what I’m asking.’

‘Yes. But I can’t answer. Jody says he will sue me for slander if I tell people why I left him, and I’ve no reason to doubt him.’

‘That remark in itself is a slander.’

‘Indubitably.’

He got cheerfully to his feet and stubbed out the cigarette. A good deal more friendliness seeped into his manner.

‘Right then, Let’s go out and look at your horses.’

We went out into his yard, which showed prosperity at every turn. The thin cold December sun shone on fresh paint, wall-to-wall tarmac, tidy flower tubs and