Enquiry - By Dick Francis Page 0,75

Stewards’ dining-room. They both went through the door taking off their hats and hanging them on the pegs inside.

The long tables in the Stewards’ dining-room had been cleared from lunch and laid for tea, but there was no one in there except Lord Ferth. He shook hands with Tony and Jack and invited them to sit down around one end of a table.

‘Kelly…?’ he suggested.

‘I’ll stand,’ I said. ‘Easier.’

‘Well now,’ Ferth said, glancing curiously at Tony and Jack, ‘You told me, Kelly, that you knew who had framed you and Dexter Cranfield.’

I nodded.

Tony said regretfully, ‘Grace Roxford. Jack’s wife.’

Jack looked vaguely down at the table cloth and said nothing at all.

Tony explained to Lord Ferth just what had happened at Cranfield’s and he looked more and more upset.

‘My dear Roxford,’ he said uncomfortably, ‘I’m so sorry. So very sorry.’ He looked up at me. ‘One could never have imagined that she… that Grace Roxford of all people… could have framed you.’

‘That’s right,’ I said mildly. ‘She didn’t’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Both Tony and Jack sat up as if electrified.

Lord Ferth said, ‘But you said…’ And Tony answered, ‘I thought there was no doubt… She tried to kill Kelly… she was going to kill Cranfield too.’

‘She tried to kill me this time,’ I agreed. ‘But not the time before. It wasn’t she who fiddled with my car.’

‘Then who?’ Lord Ferth demanded.

‘Her husband.’

Jack stood up. He looked a lot less lost.

I poked Tony on the shoulder with my crutch, and he took the hint and stood up too. He was sitting between Jack and the door.

‘Sit down, Mr Roxford,’ Ferth said authoritatively, and after a pause, slowly, he obeyed.

‘That’s nonsense,’ he said protestingly. ‘I didn’t touch Kelly’s car. No one could have arranged that accident.’

‘You couldn’t have imagined I would be hit by a train,’ I agreed. ‘But some sort of smash, yes, definitely.’

‘But Grace…’ began Tony, still bewildered.

‘Grace,’ I said prosaically, ‘Has in most respects displayed exactly opposite qualities to the person who engineered Cranfield’s and my suspension. Grace has been wild, accusing, uncontrolled and emotional. The planning which went into getting us warned off was cool, careful, efficient and brutal.’

‘Mad people are very cunning,’ Tony said doubtfully.

‘It wasn’t Grace,’ I said positively. ‘It was Jack.’

There was a pause. Then Jack said in a rising wail, ‘Why ever did she have to go to Cranfield’s this morning? Why ever couldn’t she leave things alone?’

‘It wouldn’t have done any good,’ I said. ‘I already knew it was you.’

‘That’s impossible.’

Ferth cleared his throat. ‘I think… er… you’d better tell us, Kelly, what your grounds are for making this very serious accusation.’

‘It began,’ I said, ‘When Dexter Cranfield persuaded Edwin Byler to take his horses away from Roxford and send them to him. Cranfield did no doubt persuade Byler, as Grace maintained, that he was a more highly regarded trainer socially than Roxford. Social standing means a great deal to Mr Cranfield, and he is apt to expect that it does to everyone else. And in Edwin Byler’s case, he was very likely right. But Jack had trained Byler’s horses from the day he bought his first, and as Byler’s fortune and string grew, so did Jack’s prosperity and prestige. To lose Byler was to him a total disaster. A return to obscurity. The end of everything. Jack isn’t a bad trainer, but he hasn’t the personality to make the top ranks. Not without an accident… a gift from Heaven… like Byler. And you don’t find two Bylers in your yard in one lifetime. So almost from the start I wondered about Jack; from as soon as Cranfield told me, two days after the Enquiry, that Byler had been going to transfer his horses. Because I felt such a wrench of regret, you see, that I was not going to ride them… and I realised that that was nothing compared to what Jack would have felt if he’d lost them.’

‘I didn’t feel so bad as that,’ said Jack dully.

‘I had an open mind,’ I said, ‘Because Pat Nikita had much the same motive, only the other way round. He and Cranfield detest each other. He had been trying to coax Kessel away from Cranfield for years, and getting Cranfield warned off was one way of clinching things. Then there were various people with smaller motives, like Charlie West, who might have hoped to ride Squelch for Nikita if I were out of the way. And there was a big possibility that it was someone else altogether, someone