Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,20

Dogs greeted me in the hall, a whippet, a labrador, two bassets and a dachshund, all displaying curiosity tempered by good manners. I let them sniff and lick, and they’d know me next time, I thought.

‘Come in, come in,’ called the voice.

I went further, to the door of a long sitting-room where much-used antique furniture stood on elderly Persian rugs. Padded and pclmeted curtains and silk lampshades and Staffordshire china dogs all spoke of enough money somewhere in the past, but the holes in the flowery chintz sofa covers were truer of the present.

Antonia Huntercombe sat in an armchair fondling yet another dog. A Yorkshire terrier, a walking heathrug. She was a woman of about sixty with strong facial bones and an air of first-class stoicism in the face of titanic submersion.

‘Are you Jonah Dereham?’

‘Mrs Huntercombe?’

She nodded. ‘Come in and sit down.’

At closer quarters the voice was fruity in the lower notes and punctiliously articulated. She did not seem over friendly considering that I was supposed to be there to offer help.

‘Excuse me not getting up,’ she said. ‘Little Dougal here is not very well, and I don’t want to disturb him.’

She stroked the hearthrug soothingly. One couldn’t see which end of it was which.

‘Sophie asked me to call,’ I said.

‘Can’t see what good you can do,’ she said forbiddingly. ‘And besides, you’re one of them.’

‘One of who?’

‘Bloodstock agents.’

‘Oh,’ I said. Several shades of light began to dawn.

She nodded grimly. ‘I told Sophie it was no good asking you for help, but she insisted that I should at least tell you my complaints. She’s a very forceful girl, Sophie.’

‘She is indeed.’

Antonia Huntercombe looked at me sharply. ‘She seems to think well of you. She telephoned to find out how I was, but she talked mostly of you.’

‘Did she?’

She nodded. ‘Sophie needs a man. But not a crook.’

I thought privately that few young women needed a man less than Sophie but quarrelled only with the second half of the pronouncement.

‘I’m not a crook.’

‘Hmph.’

I said, ‘I looked you up in the books, before I came. You’ve got one good stallion, Barroboy, but he’s getting old now, and one young one, Bunjie, who might be better if he were keener on his job. You have eight brood mares, the best being Winedark who came third in the Oaks. She was bred last year to a top sire, Winterfriend, and you sent the resulting filly as a yearling to Newmarket Sales last week. She fetched only eighteen hundred guineas because of a heart murmur, which means that you lost a lot of money on her, as the stud fee was five thousand in the first place and then there is all her keep and care and overheads…’

‘It was a lie,’ she said fiercely.

‘What was?’

‘That the filly had a heart murmur. She didn’t. Her heart is as sound as a bell.’

‘But I was there at the sales,’ I said. ‘I remember hearing that the Winterfriend filly would never race and might be doubtful even as a brood mare. That’s why no one bid for her.’

‘That’s why, right enough.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘But it wasn’t true.’

‘You’d better tell me who spread such a rumour,’ I said. ‘Who and why.’

‘Who is easy. All you crooked sharks calling yourself bloodstock agents. Bloodsucking agents more like. As for why… need you ask? Because I won’t give you kick backs.’

She was referring to the practice which had grown up among some agents of going to a breeder before a sale and saying in effect ‘I’ll bid your horse up to a good price if you give me a share of what you get.’ Far more intimidating was the follow up: ‘And if you don’t agree to what I suggest I’ll make sure no one bids for your horse and if you sell it at all it will be at a loss.’ Dozens of small breeders were coughing up the kick backs just to keep themselves in business and Mrs Antonia Huntercombe’s difficulties were what happened if they didn’t.

I knew all about it. I knew that the big reputable firms never asked for kick backs at all, and that individual agents varied from nil to nearly extortionate.

‘I was offered eight thousand for the filly,’ Mrs Hunter-combe said bitterly. ‘I was to give back half of anything she made over that price.’ She glared at me. ‘I refused to agree. Why should I? She cost eight thousand to produce. They wanted half of any profit I made. And for doing what?