Knock Down - By Dick Francis Page 0,6

she said. ‘I won’t eat you.’

I smiled. ‘All right.’

Her suite looked out over Hyde Park with groups of riding school ponies trotting in the Row and knots of household cavalry practising for state occasions. Late afternoon sunshine slanted into the lilac and blue sitting-room and made prisms of the ice-cubes in our glasses.

She protested over my choice.

‘Are you sure you want Perrier?’ she said.

‘I like it.’

‘When I said come up for a drink, I meant… a drink.’

‘I’m thirsty,’ I said reasonably. ‘And a touch concussed. And I’m driving.’

‘Oh.’ Her manner changed subtly. ‘I understand,’ she said.

I sat down without being asked. It was all very well having had extensive experience of bangs on the head, but this had been the first for three years and the interval had not improved my speed of recovery.

She gave me a disillusioned glance and took off her beautiful muddied coat. Underneath she wore the sort of simplicity only the rich could afford on the sort of shape that was beyond price. She enjoyed quietly my silent appreciation and took it naturally as the most commonplace courtesy.

‘Now look,’ she said. ‘You haven’t said a goddam thing about what happened this afternoon. Now what I’d like is for you to tell me just what you think those men were up to, back there.’

I drank the fizzy water and fractionally shook my head.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you must have ideas,’ she protested.

‘No…’ I paused. ‘Did you tell anyone you were going to Ascot Sales? Did you mention me? Did you mention Hearse Puller?’

‘Hey, now,’ she said, ‘It was you they were after, not me.’

‘How do we know?’

‘Well… your shoulder.’

‘Your horse.’

She moved restlessly across the room, threw the coat over a chair and came back. The slim boots had dirty water marks round the edges of the uppers which looked incongruous against the pale mauve carpet.

‘I told maybe three people,’ she said. ‘Pauli Teksa was the first.’

I nodded. Pauli Teksa was the American who had given Kerry Sanders my name.

‘Pauli said you were an honest bloodstock agent and therefore as rare as fine Sundays.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Then,’ she said pensively, ‘I told the guy who fixes my hair.’

‘Who what?’

‘Hairdresser,’ she said. ‘Right downstairs here in the hotel.’

‘Oh.’

‘And I had lunch with Madge yesterday… Lady Ros-common. Just a friend.’

She sat down suddenly opposite in an armchair with a blue and white chintz cover. A large gin and french had brought sharp colour to her cheeks and a lessening in her slightly dictatorial manner. I had the impression that for the first time she was considering me as a man instead of as an employee who had fallen down (more or less literally) on the job.

‘Do you want to take your coat off?’ she asked.

‘I can’t stay,’ I said.

‘Well then… Do you want more of that goddam water?’

‘Please.’

She refilled my glass, brought it back, sat down.

‘Don’t you ever drink?’ she said.

‘Not often.’

‘Alcoholic?’ she said sympathetically.

I thought it odd of her to ask such a personal question, but I smiled, and said, ‘No.’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘Nearly all the non-drinkers I know are reformed alcoholics.’

‘I admire them,’ I said. ‘But no. I was hooked on coke at six. Never graduated.’

‘Oh.’ She seemed to lose interest in me. She said, ‘I am on the committee of a private hospital back home.’

‘Which dries out drunks?’

She didn’t care for the bluntness. ‘We treat people with a problem. Yes.’

‘Successfully?’

She sighed. ‘Some.’

I stood up. ‘You can’t win them all.’ I put the empty glass on a side-table and went ahead of her to the door.

‘You’ll let me know if you find another horse?’ she said.

I nodded.

‘And if you have any thoughts about those two men?’

‘Yes.’

I drove slowly home and put the car in the garage in the stable yard. The three racehorses there moved around restlessly in their boxes, mutely complaining because I was two hours late with their evening feed. They were horses in transit, waiting to be shipped by air to foreign buyers; not my horses but very much my responsibility.

I talked to them and fondled their muzzles, and straigh tened their boxes and gave them food and water and rugs against the October night, and finally, tiredly, took my own throbbing head into the house.

There was no wife there waiting with a smiling face and a hot tempting dinner. There was, however, my brother.

His car was in the garage next to mine, and there were no lights anywhere in the house. I walked into the kitchen, flicked the switch, washed my hands under the hot tap in