Even Money - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,30

bits back into the bag and placed it on the table.

And then, of course, there was the money.

What should I do with it all?

Well, I told myself, I should go and give it to Detective Chief Inspector Llewellyn. But how could I? He certainly wouldn’t take it very kindly that I hadn’t told him about my father’s luggage earlier. He might accuse me again of being somehow involved in his murder.

I began to wish I had told him straightaway about the seedy hotel in Sussex Gardens. It would have made things much easier, and also I wouldn’t have suffered the fright of my life. I still came out in a cold sweat just thinking about what would have happened if the man had recognized me.

What should I do?

I decided to sleep on it, and went to bed.

Friday at Ascot was wet, with an Atlantic weather front sweeping in from the west and bringing a ten-degree drop in temperature. Trust me, I thought, to choose this day to switch from my thick and usually overwarm morning coat to a lining-free lightweight blazer. I took shelter under our large, yellow TRUST TEDDY TALBOT-emblazoned umbrella, and shivered in the strengthening breeze.

“Good party?” I asked Luca and Betsy.

They had been uncharacteristically quiet as we had set up our pitch.

“Great,” said Betsy without much conviction.

“Late night?” I asked, enjoying myself.

“Very,” she said.

“Excellent,” I said. “A good party has to end in a late night.”

“Yes. But we could have done without the gate-crashers,” she said, “and the police.”

“The police?”

“My aunt called the police,” she said, clearly not pleased.

“But why?” I asked.

“About a hundred uninvited guests turned up at her house,” she said. “That’s where the party was.”

“Yobs, you mean,” said Luca with a degree of bitterness I hadn’t witnessed in him before. “Your stupid sister. Ruined her own party.”

“She didn’t ruin it,” Betsy retorted in a pained tone.

I was beginning to wish I’d never asked.

“What do you call inviting people to a party on Facebook,” he said.“Not bloody surprising so many weirdos turned up and trashed the place.”

“And you weren’t much help,” Betsy said icily.

“And what exactly do you mean by that?” Luca demanded.

“Look,” I said, interrupting them, “I’m sorry now I asked. Calm down, both of you. We have work to do.”

They both fell silent, but their body language continued to speak louder than words, and the unspoken conversation was far removed from the loving episode I had witnessed on Tuesday as they had walked, hand in hand, on their way to a drink at the bandstand bar.

Oh dear, I thought. It wasn’t just the weather that had turned cool.

The afternoon progressed without any of the excitement of the previous day. The incessant rain understandably kept many punters away from the betting ring. They preferred the dry, warm surroundings of the grandstand bars and restaurants, placing bets with the staff from the tote who would come to them rather than vice versa.

I was allowed by the racetrack to ply my trade as a bookmaker, for a sizable fee of course, but only at my chosen pitch. I couldn’t wander the bars and restaurants, relieving punters of their cash as they sat at table eating their lunch or drinking their champagne.

There were no outages of the Internet service, no disruptions of the mobile phones, no last-minute wild swings in the prices. Everything was as predictable as it was boring. Favorites won three of the six races, while a couple of rank outsiders gave us bookies some respite in the others.

All in all, it was a remarkably unremarkable day. Other than the ongoing frosty relations between my staff, the only memorable feature was the number of technical staff from both the Internet provider and the mobile phone networks who stood around waiting in vain for their systems to crash. Clearly, somebody’s tail had been seriously pulled by the events of yesterday.

“Do you two combatants need a lift home?” I asked as we packed up in deathly silence. Neither of them said a word.“For God’s sake,” I went on, “do either of you want on go on living or what?”

It raised a smile on Luca’s face. A slight smile that evaporated almost as quickly as it appeared.

“The Teddy Talbot bus leaves for High Wycombe and beyond in five minutes whether you’re on it or not,” I said with a degree of exasperation in my tone.

Still nothing.

“Do I assume, then, that we won’t be back here tomorrow?” I asked as we made it to the parking lot unrobbed. Even