Enquiry - By Dick Francis Page 0,15

would still have said he found the money behind Rosalind’s picture. His word against yours. Nothing different.’

He looked gloomily into his glass. I looked gloomily into mine.

‘That bloody little Charlie West,’ I said. ‘Someone got at him, too.’

‘I presume you didn’t in fact say “Brakes on, chaps?” ’

‘I did say it, you see. Not in the Lemonfizz, of course, but a couple of weeks before, in that frightful novice ’chase at Oxford, the day they abandoned the last two races because it was snowing. I was hitting every fence on that deadly bad jumper that old Almond hadn’t bothered to school properly, and half the other runners were just as green, and a whole bunch of us had got left about twenty lengths behind the four who were any use, and sleet was falling, and I didn’t relish ending up with a broken bone at nought degrees centigrade, so as we were handily out of sight of the stands at that point I shouted ‘O.K., brakes on, chaps,’ and a whole lot of us eased up thankfully and finished the race a good deal slower than we could have done. It didn’t affect the result, of course. But there you are. I did say it. What’s more, Charlie West heard me. He just shifted it from one race to another.’

‘The bastard.’

‘I agree.’

‘Maybe no one got at him. Maybe he just thought he’d get a few more rides if you were out of the way.’

I considered it and shook my head. ‘I wouldn’t have thought he was that much of a bastard.’

‘You never know.’ Tony finished his drink and absent-mindly replaced it. ‘What about the bookmaker?’

‘Newtonnards? I don’t know. Same thing, I suppose. Someone has it in for Cranfield too. Both of us, it was. The Stewards couldn’t possibly have warned off one of us without the other. We were knitted together so neatly.’

‘It makes me livid,’ Tony said violently. ‘It’s wicked.’

I nodded. ‘There was something else, too, about that Enquiry. Some undercurrent, running strong. At least, it was strong at the beginning. Something between Lord Gowery and Lord Ferth. And then Andy Tring, he was sitting there looking like a wilted lettuce.’ I shook my head in puzzlement. ‘It was like a couple of heavy animals lurking in the undergrowth, shaping up to fight each other. You couldn’t see them, but there was a sort of quiver in the air. At least, that’s how it seemed at one point…’

‘Stewards are men,’ Tony said with bubble-bursting matter-of-factness. ‘Show me any organisation which doesn’t have some sort of power struggle going on under its gentlemanly surface. All you caught was a whiff of the old brimstone. State of nature. Nothing to do with whether you and Cranfield were guilty or not.’

He half convinced me. He polished off the rest of the whisky and told me not to forget to get some more.

Money. That was another thing. As from yesterday I had no income. The Welfare State didn’t pay unemployment benefits to the self-employed, as all jockeys remembered every snow-bound winter.

‘I’m going to find out,’ I said abruptly.

‘Find out what?’

‘Who framed us.’

‘Up the Marines,’ Tony said unsteadily. ‘Over the top, boys, Up and at ’em.’ He picked up the empty bottle and looked at it regretfully. ‘Time for bed, I guess. If you need any help with the campaign, count on my Welsh blood to the last clot.’

He made an unswerving line to the door, turned, and gave me a grimace of friendship worth having.

‘Don’t fall down the stairs,’ I said.

PART TWO

MARCH

CHAPTER FOUR

Roberta Cranfield looked magnificent in my sitting-room. I came back from buying whisky in the village and found her gracefully draped all over my restored Chippendale. The green velvet supported a lot of leg and a deep purple size ten wool dress, and her thick long hair the colour of dead beech leaves clashed dramatically with the curtains. Under the hair she had white skin, incredible eyebrows, amber eyes, photogenic cheekbones and a petulant mouth.

She was nineteen, and I didn’t like her.

‘Good morning.’ I said.

‘Your door was open.’

‘It’s a habit I’ll have to break.’

I peeled the tissue wrapping off the bottle and put it with the two chunky glasses on the small silver tray I had once won in a race sponsored by some sweet manufacturers. Troy weight, twenty-four ounces: but ruined by the inscription, K. HUGHES, WINNING JOCKEY, STARCHOCS SILVER STEEPLECHASE. Starchocs indeed. And I never ate chocolates. Couldn’t afford to, from the weight point of view.

She flapped her hand