Enquiry - By Dick Francis Page 0,19

I understood why she had needed help.

‘Father,’ she said, going over and touching his shoulder. ‘Kelly Hughes is here.’

Cranfield said, ‘Tell him to go and shoot himself.’

She saw the twitch in my face, and from her expression thought that I minded, that I believed Cranfield too thought me the cause of all his troubles. On the whole I decided not to crystallise her fears by saying I thought Cranfield had said shoot because shoot was in his mind.

‘Hop it,’ I said, and jerked my head towards the door.

The chin went up like a reflex. Then she looked at the husk of her father, and back to me, whom she’d been to some trouble to bring, and most of the starch dissolved.

‘All right. I’ll be down in the library. Don’t go without… telling me.’

I shook my head, and she went collectedly out of the room, shutting the door behind her.

I walked to the window and looked at the view. Small fields trickling down into the valley. Trees all bent one way by the wind off the Downs. A row of pylons, a cluster of council house roofs. Not a horse in sight. The dressing-room was on the opposite side of the house to the stables.

‘Have you a gun?’ I asked.

No answer from the bed. I went over and sat down beside him. ‘Where is it?’

His eyes slid a fraction in my direction and then back. He had been looking past me. I got up and went to the table beside his bed, but there was nothing lethal on it, and nothing in the drawer.

I found it behind the high mahogany bedhead. A finely wrought Purdey more suitable for pheasants. Both barrels were loaded. I unloaded them.

‘Very messy,’ I remarked. ‘Very inconsiderate. And anyway, you didn’t mean to do it.’

I wasn’t at all sure about that, but there was no harm in trying to convince him.

‘What are you doing here?’ he said indifferently.

‘Telling you to snap out of it. There’s work to be done.’

‘Don’t speak to me like that.’

‘How, then?’

His head came up a little, just like Roberta’s. If I made him angry, he’d be half way back to his normal self. And I could go home.

‘It’s useless sitting up here sulking. It won’t achieve anything at all.’

‘Sulking?’ He was annoyed, but not enough.

‘Someone took our toys away. Very unfair. But nothing to be gained by grizzling in corners.’

‘Toys… You’re talking nonsense.’

‘Toys, licences, what’s the difference. The things we prized most. Someone’s snatched them away. Tricked us out of them. And nobody except us can get them back. Nobody else will bother.’

‘We can apply,’ he said without conviction.

‘Oh, we can apply. In six months time, I suppose. But there’s no guarantee we’d get them. The only sensible thing to do is to start fighting back right now and find out who fixed us. Who, and why. And after that I’ll wring his bloody neck.’

He was still staring at the floor, still hunched. He couldn’t even look me in the face yet, let alone the world. If he hadn’t been such a climbing snob, I thought uncharitably, his present troubles wouldn’t have produced such a complete cave-in. He was on the verge of literally not being able to bear the public disgrace of being warned off.

Well, I wasn’t so sure I much cared for it myself. It was all very well knowing that one was not guilty, and even having one’s closest friends believe it, but one could hardly walk around everywhere wearing a notice proclaiming ‘I am innocent. I never done it. It were all a stinking frame-up.’

‘It’s not so bad for you,’ he said.

‘That’s perfectly true.’ I paused. ‘I came in through the yard.’

He made a low sound of protest.

‘Archie seems to be seeing to everything himself. And he’s worried about his house.’

Cranfield made a waving movement of his hand as much as to ask how did I think he could be bothered with Archie’s problems on top of his own.

‘It wouldn’t hurt you to pay Archie’s mortgage for a bit.’

‘What?’ That finally reached him. His head came up at least six inches.

‘It’s only a few pounds a week. Peanuts to you. Life or death to him. And if you lose him, you’ll never get so many winners again.’

‘You… you…’ He spluttered. But he still didn’t look up.

‘A trainer is as good as his lads.’

‘That’s stupid.’

‘You’ve got good lads just now. You’ve chucked out the duds, the rough and lazy ones. It takes time to weed out and build up a