Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,55

an aching anxiety with no certainty ahead.

Breakfast, warmth and newspapers were to be found each day down in the morning room, whose door was across the hall from Litsi’s. I was in there about nine on that Thursday morning, drinking orange juice and checking on the day’s runners at Bradbury, when the intercom buzzed, and Dawson’s voice told me there was a call from Mr Harlow.

I picked up the outside receiver fearfully.

‘Wykeham?’

‘Oh, Kit. Look, I thought I’d better tell you, but don’t alarm the princess. We had a prowler last night.’

‘Are the horses all right? Kinley?’

‘Yes, yes. Nothing much happened. The man with the dog said his dog was restless, as if someone was moving about. He says his dog was very alert and whining softly for a good half hour, and that they patrolled the courtyards twice. They didn’t see anyone, though, and after a while the dog relaxed again. So … what do you think?’

‘I think it’s a bloody good job you’ve got the dog.’

‘Yes … it’s very worrying.’

‘What time was all this?’

‘About midnight. I’d gone to bed, of course, and the guard didn’t wake me, as nothing had happened. There’s no sign that anyone was here.’

‘Just keep on with the patrols,’ I said, ‘and make sure you don’t get the man that slept in the hay barn.’

‘No. I told them not to send him. They’ve all been very sharp, since that first night.’

We discussed the two horses he was sending to Bradbury, neither of them the princess’s. He sometimes sent his slowest horses to Bradbury in the belief that if they didn’t win there, they wouldn’t win anywhere, but he avoided it most of the time. It was a small country course, with a flat circuit of little more than a mile, easy to ride on if one stuck to the inside.

‘Give Mélisande a nice ride, now.’

‘Yes, Wykeham,’ I said. Mélisande had been before my time. ‘Do you mean Pinkeye?’

‘Well … of course.’ He cleared his throat. ‘How long are you staying in Eaton Square?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll tell you, though, when I leave.’

We disconnected and I put a slice of wholemeal bread in the toaster and thought about prowlers.

Litsi came in and poured himself some coffee. ‘I thought,’ he said conversationally, assembling a bowl of muesli and cream, ‘that I might go to the races today.’

‘To Bradbury?’ I was surprised. ‘It’s not like Ascot. It’s the bare bones of the industry. Not much comfort.’

‘Are you saying you don’t want to take me?’

‘No. Just warning you.’

He sat down at the table and watched me eat toast without butter or marmalade.

‘Your diet’s disgusting.’

‘I’m used to it.’

He watched me swallow a pill with black coffee. ‘What are those for?’ he asked.

‘Vitamins.’

He shook his head resignedly and dug into his own hopelessly fattening concoction, and Danielle came in looking fresh and clear-eyed in a baggy white sweater.

‘Hi!’ she said to neither of us in particular. ‘I wondered if you’d be here. What are you doing today?’

‘Going to the races,’ Litsi said.

‘Are you?’ She looked at him directly, in surprise. ‘With Kit?’

‘Certainly, with Kit.’

‘Oh. Then … er … can I come?’

She looked from one of us to the other, undoubtedly seeing double pleasure.

‘In half an hour,’ I said, smiling.

‘Easy.’

So all three of us went to Bradbury races, parting in the hall from the princess who had come down to go through some secretarial work with Mrs Jenkins and who looked wistfully at our outdoor clothes, and also from Beatrice, who had come down out of nosiness.

Her sharp round gaze fastened on me. ‘Are you coming back?’ she demanded.

‘Yes, he is,’ the princess said smoothly. ‘And tomorrow we can all go to see my two runners at Sandown, isn’t that nice?’

Beatrice looked not quite sure how the one followed on the other and, in the moment of uncertainty, Litsi, Danielle and I departed.

Bradbury racecourse, we found when we arrived, was undergoing an ambitious upgrading. There were notices everywhere apologising for the inconvenience of heaps of builders’ materials and machines. A whole new grandstand was going up inside scaffolding in the cheaper ring, and most of the top tier of the members’ stand was being turned into a glassed-in viewing room with tables, chairs and refreshments. They had made provision up there also for a backward-facing viewing gallery, from which one could see the horses walk round in the parade ring.

There was a small model on a table outside the weighing room, showing what it would all be like when finished, and the