Wild Horses - By Dick Francis Page 0,57

O’Hara had called while he, Ed, was driving round the course, and had wanted to know where I was.

‘What did you tell him?’ I asked.

‘I said you were riding. He wants you to call him back.’

‘Right.’

I set off towards my car and its driver and called O’Hara as I went. He had spent time with Howard, it seemed, who was now enthusiastic over the witchcraft angle and wanted it emphasised. Scenes were positively dripping off his pen.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but restrain him. Witches do not hang themselves, and we still need our designated murderer.’

‘You have,’ O’Hara said dryly, ‘a habit of putting your finger on the button.’ He paused briefly. ‘Howard told me where Alison Visborough lives.’

‘Did you bargain with him? A deal?’

‘It’s possible,’ O’Hara said stiffly, ‘that we may not wring the last cent out of him.’

I smiled.

‘Anyhow, go see her, will you? Some place in Leicestershire.’

‘When? We’re shooting all day tomorrow.’

‘Uh, now. Howard phoned her. She’s expecting you.’

‘Now? Can’t someone else do it?’

I’d been up since four that morning and it was by now five-forty in the afternoon and I needed a shower and I felt knackered, to put it politely. Leicestershire began a lot of miles in the wrong direction.

O’Hara said, ‘I thought you’d be interested to meet her, and she has her mother living with her.’

‘The Audrey?’

O’Hara confirmed it. ‘Silva’s character in the movie.’

‘Well… yes, I’m interested. OK, I’ll go. What’s the address?’

He told it to me in detail, phone number included. ‘Howard’s busting a gut trying to be helpful.’

‘I’ll bet.’

O’Hara said, changing the subject, ‘Ed said you were riding?’

Amused by his oblique question, I answered, ‘I rode round the course with a couple of the jockeys for them to see what we’ll be needing tomorrow.’

‘You take care.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Always.’

We said goodbye and I walked onwards to the car, making another phone call, this time to Robbie Gill.

‘Thomas Lyon,’ I said, when I reached him. ‘How’s my girl?’

‘Still in intensive care. I’ve liaised with her surgeon. He’s slapped a “Do not move” notice on her, which should hold while she needs drip feeds. Two or three days, anyway. I can’t stand that son of hers. What a bully!’

‘What’s he been doing?’

‘The nurses threaten a mutiny. He’s so bloody lordly.’

‘Is Dorothea awake yet?’

‘Yes, she’s talked briefly to the police. Apparently the last thing she remembers is setting off to walk home from supper with a widowed friend who lives only a quarter of a mile away. They watch TV together sometimes and she felt like company with Valentine gone. Lucky she wasn’t at home earlier.’

‘I guess so. Perhaps.’

‘Perhaps,’ he agreed.

‘Anything else?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. I asked the police. They gave me the sort of guff which means they haven’t a clue.’

‘I’d like to see her.’

‘I told her that you’d been asking. She was obviously pleased. Perhaps tomorrow evening, or the next day.’

‘I’ll phone you,’ I said.

I reached the car, delivered the change of plans to the driver and consulted the road map. A matter of turn right onto the A14, go north-west, skirt Kettering, press onwards. Forty miles perhaps to Market Harborough. Wake me when we reach that point, I said, and went to sleep on the back seat.

Alison Visborough’s hideaway proclaimed her personality from the gateposts onwards. A crumbling tarmac drive led to an old two-storey house, brick-built, possibly eighteenth century, but without distinction. Fields near the house were divided into many paddocks, all fenced with weathered wooden rails, some occupied by well-muscled but plain horses. A larger paddock to one side held a variety of flakily-painted gates, poles and fake walls, the paraphernalia of show jumping. At the far end, a man in a tweed jacket and high-domed black riding hat cantered a horse slowly round in a circle, looking down and concentrating on the leading foreleg, practising dressage. A child, watching him, held a workaday pony by the reins. Lesson, it appeared, being given and received.

Everything about the place looked tidy and efficient and spoke of a possible shortage of funds.

My driver drew up outside the undemonstrative front door. He had said he would check that we had arrived at the right place, but he had no need to. The door opened before he could reach it, to reveal a full-bosomed middle-aged woman dressed in jodhpurs, shirt and dull green sweater, accompanied by two half-grown labrador dogs.

‘Mr Lyon?’ Her voice reached me, loud, imperious, displeased.

My driver gestured to the car, out of which I unenthusiastically climbed.

‘I’m Thomas Lyon,’ I said, approaching her.

She shook my