Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,16

be slightly delayed. Slightly! I’m supposed to be meeting her at a dinner.’ He paused. ‘If I go in a short while, will you make my apologies?’

‘OK,’ I said, a shade surprised. ‘Aren’t you going … er … to reinstate the sandbags?’

It took him a moment to see what I meant, and then he said he would have to ask M. de Brescou what he wanted.

‘It might safeguard him as you intended, don’t you think?’ I said. ‘Especially as Nanterre doesn’t know who else to put pressure on.’ I glanced at the Master Classes leaflet which still lay on the coffee table. ‘Did Danielle and Prince Litsi know their names had been used?’

He shook his head. ‘Princess Casilia couldn’t remember the name of the hotel. It didn’t affect the legality of the document. Their assent at that stage wasn’t necessary.’

A few steps down the road, though, after Nanterre’s show of force, I reckoned it was no longer fair to embroil them without their consent, and I was on the point of saying so when the door quietly opened and Princess Casilia came in.

We stood up. If she had been crying, there was no sign of it, although she did have the empty-eyed look and the pallor of people stretched into unreality.

‘Gerald, we both want to thank you for coming,’ she said, her voice higher in pitch than usual. ‘We are so sorry about your dinner.’

‘Princess,’ he protested, ‘my time is yours.’

‘My husband asks if you could return tomorrow morning.’

Greening gave a small squirm as if jettisoning his Saturday golf and asked if ten o’clock would suit, and with evident relief took his departure.

‘Kit …’ The princess turned to me. ‘Will you stay here in the house, tonight? In case … just in case …’

‘Yes,’ I said.

She closed her eyes and opened them again. ‘It has been such a dreadful day.’ She paused. ‘Nothing seems real.’

‘Can I pour you a drink?’

‘No. Ask Dawson to bring you some food. Tell him you’ll sleep in the bamboo room.’ She looked at me without intensity, too tired for emotion. ‘My husband wants to see you in the morning.’

‘Fairly early,’ I suggested. ‘I have to be at Newbury for the first race.’

‘Goodness! I’d forgotten.’ Some of the faraway look left her eyes. ‘I didn’t even ask how Cotopaxi ran.’

‘He was third. Ran well.’ It seemed a long time ago. ‘You’ll see it on the video.’

Like many owners, she bought video tapes of most of her horses’ races, to watch and re-enjoy their performances over and over.

‘Yes, that’ll be nice.’

She said goodnight much as if she hadn’t had a gun aimed closely against her head half an hour earlier, and with upright carriage went gently away upstairs.

A remarkable woman, I thought, not for the first time, and descended to the basement in search of Dawson who was sitting, jacket off, in front of the television drinking beer. The butler, slightly abashed by having let the uninvited guests outrush him, made no demur at checking with me through the house’s defences. Window locks, front door, rear door, basement door, all secure.

John Grundy, the male nurse, he said, would arrive at ten, assist Monsieur to bed, sleep in the room next to him, and in the morning help him bathe, shave and dress. He would do Monsieur’s laundry and be gone by eleven.

Only Dawson and his wife (the princess’s personal maid) slept in the basement, he said: all the rest of the staff came in by day. Prince Litsi, who was occupying the guest suite on the ground floor, and Miss de Brescou, whose room was beyond the princess’s suite, were away, as I knew.

His eyebrows shot up at the mention of the bamboo room, and when he took me by lift to the floor above the princess and her husband, I could see why. Palatial, pale blue, gold and cream, it looked fit for the noblest of visitors, the bamboo of its name found in the pattern of the curtains and the pale Chinese-Chippendale furniture. There was a vast double bed, a dressing room, a bathroom, and an array of various drinks and a good television set hidden behind discreet louvred doors.

Dawson left me there, and I took the opportunity to make my regular evening telephone call to Wykeham, to tell him how his horses had run. He was pleased, he said, about Cotopaxi, but did I realise what I’d done to Cascade? Dusty, he said, had told him angrily all about the race, including Maynard Allardeck’s