‘Rather like me,’ sighed Etta. ‘Wouldn’t Lester Bolton or Valent just love to gut it.’
The garden was also desperately neglected. Etta longed to pull up the weeds and water the wilting plants. No one answered the front-door bell, so they went round the back, past a huge horse chestnut, through an arch topped by a weathercock of a golden bird. Here loose boxes and a tack room and office formed three sides of a square joined up by the back of the house.
Etta wondered if they’d see Josh, the handsome red-headed stable lad who still kept up an on-off relationship with Trixie, encouraged by Alan because Josh had given him some excellent tips.
The place, however, was deserted, except for a few horses brought in to escape the flies, who were half asleep in their boxes. Only one horse, lurking at the back of its box, kept up a shrill, desperate whinnying.
Etta could smell burning and found the remnants of a bonfire beside the nearly dried-up fountain in the middle of the yard.
‘That’s odd,’ murmured Alan, extracting a sapphire and crimson fragment from the ashes and putting it in his pocket. ‘Someone’s been burning a flag which once was flown almost continually at Throstledown to indicate a winner.’ He looked at his watch. ‘The stable lads must be still on their break. Anyone around?’ he shouted.
Instantly a man appeared at an upstairs window of the house.
‘I don’t care what paper you come from,’ he yelled, ‘get the fuck out of here!’
Next moment a bullet whistled over their heads, through the arch, and lodged in the vast horse chestnut.
‘We’re not press,’ shouted back Alan, leaping behind Etta. ‘It’s Alan Macbeth, Marius. We’ve got an appointment with you, but not yet with the Grim Reaper. It’s about putting a horse in training.’
Marius stared down at them in bewilderment, then shook his head. ‘I’ll come down.’
He emerged not unlike the Grim Reaper, his eyes bloodshot, his face deathly white above the stubble, except for a faint tracery of crimson veins, caused by drink. His dark hair was tousled and drenched with sweat, yet despite the heat he wore a thick navy-blue Guernsey inside out. A belt on the last notch barely held up his jeans. Thin as a pencil, he could have ridden his horses himself. He reeked of whisky, yet such was his bone structure, he still looked beautiful.
A grey and black lurcher ran out expectantly, looked hopefully around, gave a whimper and slunk back into the house.
‘We wanted to talk to you about training our horse, Mrs Wilkinson,’ repeated Alan.
Marius led them back into the kitchen, where the lurcher shuddered in its basket. On the table was a pile of unopened post. The telephone was off the hook. At the Races was on the television with the sound turned down, a three-quarters empty bottle of whisky on the draining board. On the kitchen table, an untouched bowl of dog food was gathering flies, as was a tin of Butcher’s Tripe with a spoon in it.
Propped against a vase of wilting flowers, drawing the eye, was a cream envelope with ‘Marius’ scrawled on it and a letter sticking vertically out of it. Alan sidled over, dying to read it. Etta longed to fill up the vase and cuddle the trembling lurcher.
‘Is it a bad time?’ she stammered, as Marius glowered at them. ‘We made the appointment with Olivia earlier in the week.’
‘Didn’t put it in the diary,’ said Marius flatly. ‘Mind obviously on other things. Nor did she put in the diary that she was leaving me. She’s gone,’ he added, gritting a jaw already trembling worse than the lurcher.
‘I’m so sorry,’ whispered Etta.
‘She’s gone off with Shade Murchieson, taking my child and most of my dogs, and Shade’s taken his twenty horses away as well.’
‘Christ,’ said Alan, appalled. ‘Where’s he taken them?’
‘Not far.’ Marius gave a horrible, unamused laugh. ‘To Ralph Harvey-Holden. The press have got on to it already. Shade must have tipped them off, he gets off on publicity.’
Alan shook his head. ‘This is awful. When did she go?’
‘Friday afternoon. Shade moved his horses on the same day, while I was rather appropriately at Bangor, or bang-her.’
Marius reached for the whisky bottle, taking a swig. Then, catching sight of horses circling at the start, he turned up the sound. ‘One of my remaining horses is running in the four fifteen at Market Rasen.’ Going to the door, he bellowed, ‘Tommy! Can you show these people round