Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,22

prolific winners all year, it semed. Both the Sheik and Larry Trent had been excellent judges of potential, and were lucky as well.

‘We’ll be losing all of these horses, I suppose,’ Flora sighed. ‘Jack says it will be a heavy financial loss for us.’

‘What will happen to them?’ I asked.

‘Oh… I expect the Sheik’s will be sold. I don’t know. I don’t know if he has any family. And Larry Trent’s five, of course, will go back to their owners.’

I raised my eyebrows slightly but because of Howard’s unctuous presence said no more, and it wasn’t until Flora and I were at length walking back towards my van that I asked her what she meant.

‘Larry Trent’s horses?’ she repeated. ‘They weren’t his own property. He leased them.’

‘Paid rent for them?’

‘My dear, no. A lease is only an agreement. Say someone owns a horse but can’t really afford the training fees, and someone else wants to have a horse racing in his name and can afford the training fees but not the cost of the horse itself, then those two people make an agreement, all signed and registered, of course. The usual terms are that when the horse earns any prize-money it’s divided fifty-fifty between the two parties. It’s done quite often, you know.’

‘No, I didn’t know,’ I said numbly.

‘Oh yes. Larry Trent always did it. He was pretty shrewd at it. He would lease a horse for a year, say, and if it turned out all right he might lease it for another year, but if it won nothing, he’d try another. You can lease a horse for as long as you like, as long as you both agree, for a year or a season or three months… whatever you want.’

I found it interesting and asked, ‘How are the leases fixed up?’

‘Jack has the forms.’

‘No, I meant, how does anyone know who has a horse they will lease but not sell?’

‘Word of mouth,’ she said vaguely. ‘People just say. Sometimes they advertise. And sometimes one of our owners will ask Jack to find someone to lease their horse so they don’t have to pay the training bills. Very often they do it with mares, so that they can have their horse back for breeding afterwards.’

‘Neat,’ I said.

Flora nodded. ‘Larry Trent always liked it because it meant he could run five horses instead of owning only one outright. He was a great gambler, that man.’

‘Gambler?’

‘A thousand on this, a thousand on that… I used to get tired of hearing about it.’

I gave her an amused glance. ‘Didn’t you like him?’

‘I suppose he was all right,’ she said dubiously. ‘He was always friendly. A good owner, Jack always said. Paid regularly and understood that horses aren’t machines. Hardly ever blamed the jockey if he lost. But secretive, somehow. I don’t really know why I think that, but that’s how he seemed to me. Generous, though. He took us to dinner only last week at that place of his, the Silver Moondance. There was a band playing… so noisy.’ She sighed. ‘But of course you know about us going there… Jimmy said he told you about that whisky. I told him to forget it… Jack didn’t want Jimmy stirring up trouble.’

‘Mm,’ I said. ‘The trouble got stirred, all the same, not that it matters.’

‘What do you mean?’

I told her of Jimmy’s semi-conscious wanderings and my visit with Detective Sergeant Ridger to the Silver Moondance Saloon, and she said ‘Good heavens’ faintly, with round eyes.

‘Someone in that place had a great fiddle going,’ I said. ‘Whether Larry Trent knew or not.’

She didn’t answer directly, but after a long pause said, ‘You know, he did something once that I didn’t understand. I happened to be at Doncaster sales last year with some friends I was staying with. Jack wasn’t there, he was too busy at home. Larry Trent was there… He didn’t see me, but I saw him across the sale ring, and he was bidding for a horse… it was called Ramekin.’ She paused, then went on. ‘The horse was knocked down to him and I thought good, Jack will be getting it to train. But it never came. Larry Trent never said a word. I told Jack of course, but he said I must have been mistaken, Larry Trent never bought horses, and he wouldn’t even ask him about it.’

‘So who did train Ramekin afterwards?’ I asked.

‘No one.’ She looked at me anxiously. ‘I’m not crazy, you know. I looked it up in