Enquiry - By Dick Francis Page 0,65

about me… or you?’

‘You, of course,’ she said in surprise. ‘You always made me nervous. I always get sort of… strung up… when I’m nervous. Put on a bit of an act, to hide it, I suppose.’

‘I see,’ I said slowly.

‘You’re still a pretty good cactus, if you want to know… but… well, you see people differently when they’ve been bleeding all over your best dress and looking pretty vulnerable…’

I began to say that in that case I would be prepared to bleed on her any time she liked, but the telephone interrupted me at half way. And it was old Strepson, settling down for a long cosy chat about Breadwinner and Pound Postage.

Roberta wrinkled her nose and got to her feet.

‘Don’t go,’ I said, with my hand over the mouthpiece.

‘Must. I’m late already.’

‘Wait,’ I said. But she shook her head, fetched the yellow raincoat from the bath, where she’d put it, and edged herself into it.

‘ ’Bye,’ she said.

‘Wait…’

She waved briefly and let herself out of the door. I struggled up on to my feet, and said, ‘Sir… could you hold on a minute…’ into the telephone, and hopped without the crutches over to the window. She looked up when I opened it. She was standing in the yard, tying on a headscarf. The rain had eased to drizzle.

‘Will you come tomorrow?’ I shouted down.

‘Can’t tomorrow. Got to go to London.’

‘Saturday?’

‘Do you want me to?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll try, then.’

‘Please come.’

‘Oh…’ She suddenly smiled in a way I’d never seen before. ‘All right’

Careless I might be about locking my front door, but in truth I left little about worth stealing. Five hundred pounds would never have been lying around on my chest of drawers for enquiry agents to photograph.

When I’d converted the flat from an old hay loft I’d built in more than mod cons. Behind the cabinet in the kitchen which housed things like fly killer and soap powder, and tucked into a crafty piece of brickwork, lay a maximum security safe. It was operated not by keys or combinations, but by electronics. The manufacturers had handed over the safe itself and also the tiny ultrasonic transmitter which sent out the special series of radio waves which alone would release the lock mechanism, and I’d installed them myself: the safe in the wall and the transmitter in a false bottom to the cabinet. Even if anyone found the transmitter, they had still to find the safe and to know the sequence of frequencies which unlocked it.

A right touch of the Open Sesame. I’d always liked gadgets.

Inside the safe there were, besides money and some racing trophies, several pieces of antique silver, three paintings by Houthuesen, two Chelsea figures, a Meissen cup and saucer, a Louis XIV snuff box, and four uncut diamonds totalling twenty-eight carats. My retirement pension, all wrapped in green baize and appreciating nicely. Retirement for a steeplechase jockey could lurk in the very next fall: and the ripe age of forty, if one lasted that long, was about the limit.

There was also a valueless lump of cast iron, with a semicircular dent in it. To these various treasures I added the envelope which Ferth had given me, because it wouldn’t help if I lost that either.

Bolting my front door meant a hazardous trip down the stairs, and another in the morning to open it. I decided it could stay unlocked as usual. Wedged a chair under the door into my sitting-room instead.

During the evening I telephoned to Newtonnards in his pink washed house in Mill Hill.

‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘You’ve got your licence back then. Talk of the meeting it was at Wincanton today, soon as the Press Association chaps heard about it.’

‘Yes, it’s great news.’

‘What made their Lordships change their minds?’

‘I’ve no idea… Look, I wondered if you’d seen that man again yet, the one who backed Cherry Pie with you.’

‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘But I saw him today. Just after I’d heard you were back in favour, though, so I didn’t think you’d be interested any more.’

‘Did you by any chance find out who he is?’

‘I did, as a matter of fact. More to satisfy my own curiosity, really. He’s the Honourable Peter Foxcroft. Mean anything to you?’

‘He’s a brother of Lord Middleburg.’

‘Yeah. So I’m told.’

I laughed inwardly. Nothing sinister about Cranfield refusing to name his mysterious pal. Just another bit of ladder climbing. He might be one rung up being in a position to use the Hon. P. Foxcroft as a runner: but he would certainly