Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,35

Eaton Square house. Even diluted by the princess, Litsi and Danielle, an evening spent with Beatrice de Brescou Bunt had opened vistas of social punishment I would as soon have remained closed. I had excused myself early, to openly reproachful looks from the others, but even in sleep I seemed to hear that insistent complaining voice.

When I’d left in the morning, Litsi had said he would himself spend most of the day with Roland after John Grundy had left. The princess and Danielle would occupy Beatrice. Danielle, working evening shifts in her television news company, would have to leave it all to the princess from soon after five-thirty. I had promised to return from Plumpton as soon as possible, but truthfully I was happy to be presented with a very good reason not to, in the shape of a message awaiting me in the changing room. Relayed from the stable manager at Newbury racecourse, the note requested me to remove my car from where I’d left it, as the space was urgently required for something else.

I telephoned to Eaton Square, and as it happened Danielle answered.

I explained about the car. ‘I’ll get a lift from Plumpton to Newbury. I think I’d better sleep at home in Lambourn, though, as I’ve got to go to Devon to race tomorrow. Will you apologise to the princess? Tell her I’ll come back tomorrow night, after racing, if she’d like.’

‘Deserter,’ Danielle said. ‘You sound suspiciously pleased.’

‘It does make sense in terms of miles,’ I said.

‘Tell it to the marines.’

‘Look after yourself,’ I said.

She said, ‘Yes,’ on a sigh after a pause, and put the phone down. Sometimes it seemed that everything was the same between us, and then, on a sigh, it wasn’t. Without much enthusiasm, I went in search of Dusty who had arrived with the right horses, the right colours for me to wear and a poor opinion of the detective constable for trying to question the lads while they were working. No one knew anything, anyway, Dusty said, and the lads were in a mood for the lynching of any prowling stranger. The head lad (not Dusty, who was the travelling head lad) had looked round the courtyards as usual at about eleven on Saturday night, when all had appeared quiet. He hadn’t looked into all the eighty boxes, only one or two whose inmates weren’t well, and he hadn’t looked at either Cascade or Cotopaxi. He’d looked in on Kinley and Hillsborough to make sure they’d eaten their food after racing, and he’d gone home to bed. What more could anyone do, Dusty demanded.

‘No one’s blaming anybody,’ I said.

He said, ‘Not so far,’ darkly, and took my saddle away to put it on the right horse for the first race.

We stage-managed the afternoon between us, as so often, he producing and saddling the horses, I riding them, both of us doing a public relations job on the various owners, congratulating, commiserating, explaining and excusing. We ended with a typical day on two winners, a second, two also rans and a faller, the latter giving me a soft landing and no problems.

‘Thanks, Dusty,’ I said at the end. ‘Thanks for everything.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said suspiciously.

‘I just meant, six races is a busy day for you, and it all went well.’

‘It would have gone better if you hadn’t fallen off in the fifth,’ he said sourly.

I hadn’t fallen off. The horse had gone right down under me, leaving grass stains on its number cloth. Dusty knew it perfectly well.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘thanks, anyway.’

He gave me an unsmiling nod and hurried off: and in essential discord we would no doubt act as a team at Newton Abbot the next day and at Ascot the next, effective but cold.

Two other jockeys who lived in Lambourn gave me a lift back with them to Newbury, and I collected my car from its extended parking there and drove home to my house on the hill.

I lit the log fire to cheer things up a bit, ate some grilled chicken and telephoned to Wykeham.

He’d had another wearing day. The insurers had been questioning his security, the detectives had annoyed all the lads, and the dog-patrol man had been found asleep in the hay barn by the head lad when he arrived at six in the morning. Wykeham had informed Weatherbys, the Jockey Club secretariat, of the horses’ deaths (a routine obligation) and all afternoon his telephone had been driving him mad as one newspaper after