Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,40

Mercedes, Litsi driving, was unlikely to decide things one way or another.

For all the speed and risks of the job, jump jockeys were seldom killed: it was more dangerous, for instance, to clean windows for a living. All the same, there were occasional days when one ended in hospital, always at frustrating and inconvenient moments. I wouldn’t say that I rode exactly carefully that day at Newton Abbot, but it was certainly without the reckless fury of the past two weeks.

Maybe she would finally come back to me, maybe she wouldn’t: I had a better chance right under her eyes than two hundred miles away in traction.

The chief topic of conversation all afternoon on the racecourse as far as I was concerned was the killing of Cascade and Cotopaxi. I read accounts in the sports pages of two papers on the train and saw two others in the changing room, all more speculation and bold headlines than hard fact. I was besieged by curious and sympathetic questions from anyone I talked to, but could add little except that yes, I had seen them in their boxes, and yes, of course the princess was upset, and yes, I would be looking for another ride in the Grand National.

Dusty, from his thunderstorm expression, was putting up with much the same barrage. He was slightly mollified when one of the princess’s runners won, greeted by applause and cheers that spoke of her public popularity. The Clerk of the Course and the Chairman of the Board of Directors called me into the directors’ room, not to complain of my riding but to commiserate, asking me to pass on their regrets to the princess and to Wykeham. They clapped me gruffly on the shoulder and gave me champagne, and it was all a long way from Maynard Allardeck.

I caught the return train on schedule, dined on a railway sandwich, and was back at Eaton Square before nine. I had to get Dawson to let me in because the lock had indeed been changed, and I went up to the sitting room, opening the door there on the princess, Litsi, and Beatrice Bunt, all sitting immobile in private separate silences, as if they were covered by vacuum bell jars and couldn’t hear each other speak.

‘Good evening,’ I said, my voice sounding loud.

Beatrice Bunt jumped because I’d spoken behind her. The princess’s expression changed from blank to welcoming, and Litsi came alive as if one had waved a wand over a waxwork.

‘You’re back!’ he said. ‘Thank God for that at least.’

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

None of them was quite ready to say.

‘Is Danielle all right?’ I said.

The princess looked surprised. ‘Yes, of course. Thomas drove her to work.’ She was sitting on a sofa, her back straight, her head high, every muscle on the defensive and no ease anywhere. ‘Come over here,’ she patted the cushions beside her, ‘and tell me how my horses ran.’

It was her refuge, I knew, from unpleasant reality: she’d talked of her runners in the direst of moments in the past, clinging to a rock in a tilting world.

I sat beside her, willingly playing the game.

‘Bernina was on the top of her form, and won her hurdle race. She seems to like it in Devon, that’s the third time she’s won down there.’

‘Tell me about her race,’ the princess said, looking both pleased and in some inner way still disorientated, and I told her about the race without anything in her expression changing. I glanced at Litsi and saw that he was listening in the same detached way, and at Beatrice, who appeared not to be listening at all.

I passed on the messages of sympathy from the directors, and said how pleased the crowd had been that she’d had a winner.

‘How kind,’ she murmured.

‘What’s happened?’ I said again.

It was Litsi who eventually answered. ‘Henri Nanterre telephoned here about an hour ago. He wanted to speak to Roland, but Roland refused, so he asked for me by name.’

My eyebrows rose.

‘He said he knew my name as one of the three others who had to sign business directives with Roland. He said Danielle and the princess were the others: his notary had remembered.’

I frowned. ‘I suppose he might have remembered if someone had told him the names … he might have recognised them.’

Litsi nodded. ‘Henri Nanterre said that his notary had left his briefcase in Roland’s sitting room. In the briefcase could be found a form of contract with spaces at the bottom for signatures