Enquiry - By Dick Francis Page 0,18

blasted race. That Cherry Pie, anyone could see with half an eye he was going to be good some day. I mean, if the Guvnor had done it, like, somehow all this wouldn’t be so bad. I mean, if he deserved it, well serve him right, and I’d try and get a bit of compensation from him because we’re going to have a right job selling the house again, I’ll tell you, because there’s still two of them empty, they weren’t so easy to sell in the first place, being so far out of Lambourn… I’ll tell you straight, I wish to God we’d never moved out of the Guvnor’s cottage, dark and damp though it may be… George,’ he suddenly shouted at a lad swearing and tugging at a reluctant animal, ‘Don’t take it out on the horse, it isn’t his fault…’ He bustled across the yard and took the horse himself, immediately quietening it and leading it without trouble into the horsebox.

He was an excellent head lad, better than most, and a lot of Cranfield’s success was his doing. If he sold his house and got settled in another job, Cranfield wouldn’t get him back. The training licence might not be lost for ever, but the stable’s main prop would be.

I watched another lad lead a horse round to the waiting box. He too looked worried. His wife, I knew, was on the point of producing their first child.

Some of the lads wouldn’t care, of course. There were plenty of jobs going in racing stables, and one lot of digs were much the same as another. But they too would not come back. Nor would most of the horses, nor many of the owners. The stable wasn’t being suspended for a few months. It was being smashed.

Sick and seething with other people’s fury as well as my own, I walked down the short stretch of drive to the house. Roberta’s Alpine was parked outside the front door and she was standing beside it looking cross.

‘So there you are. I thought you’d ratted.’

‘I parked down by the yard.’

‘I can’t bear to go down there. Nor can Father. In fact, he won’t move out of his dressing-room. You’ll have to come upstairs to see him.’

She led the way through the front door and across thirty square yards of Persian rug. When we had reached the foot of the stairs the door of the library was flung open and Mrs Cranfield came through it. Mrs Cranfield always flung doors open, rather as if she suspected something reprehensible was going on behind them and she was intent on catching the sinners in the act. She was a plain woman who wore no makeup and dressed in droopy woollies. To me she had never talked about anything except horses, and I didn’t know whether she could. Her father was an Irish baron, which may have accounted for the marriage.

‘My father-in-law, Lord Coolihan…’ Cranfield was wont to say: and he was wont to say it far too often. I wondered whether, after Gowery, he was the tiniest bit discontented with the aristocracy.

‘Ah, there you are, Hughes,’ Mrs Cranfield said. ‘Roberta told me she was going to fetch you. Though what good you can do I cannot understand. After all, it was you who got us into the mess.’

‘I what?’

‘If you’d ridden a better race on Squelch, none of this would have happened.’

I bit back six answers and said nothing. If you were hurt enough you lashed out at the nearest object. Mrs Cranfield continued to lash.

‘Dexter was thoroughly shocked to hear that you had been in the habit of deliberately losing races.’

‘So was I,’ said dryly.

Roberta moved impatiently. ‘Mother, do stop it. Come along, Hughes. This way.’

I didn’t move. She went up three steps, paused, and looked back. ‘Come on, what are you waiting for?’

I shrugged. Whatever I was waiting for, I wouldn’t get it in that house. I followed her up the stairs, along a wide passage, and into her father’s dressing-room.

There was too much heavy mahogany furniture of a later period than the house, a faded-plum-coloured carpet, faded plum plush curtains, and a bed with an Indian cover.

On one side of the bed sat Dexter Cranfield, his back bent into a bow and his shoulders hunched round his ears. His hands rolled loosely on his knees, fingers curling, and he was staring immovably at the floor.

‘He sits like that for hours,’ Roberta said on a breath beside me. And, looking at him,