Wild Horses - By Dick Francis Page 0,90

it.’

CHAPTER 14

Early Friday morning I worked in peace from four o’clock to six-thirty in the projection room, cutting scenes into rough order, a process that apart from anything else always told me what necessary establishing shots hadn’t been provided for in the screenplay. A five-second shot here and there could replace, also, patches of dialogue that hadn’t gone well. I made notes, fiddled about, hummed with contentment, clarified the vision.

By six-thirty Moncrieff was setting up the cameras in the stable yard, by seven the horses (back from Huntingdon) were out at exercise on the Heath, by seven-thirty the wardrobe and make-up departments were at work in the house, and at eight-thirty O’Hara’s car swept into the yard with the horn blowing.

The lads, back from the Heath to groom and feed their charges, came out of the open-doored boxes at the summons. Wardrobe and make-up appeared. The camera crews paused to listen. Actors and extras stood around.

Satisfied, O’Hara borrowed Ed’s megaphone and announced that the Hollywood company was pleased with the way things were going, and that as he himself was now leaving for Los Angeles, Thomas Lyon would be in sole charge of the production.

He handed the megaphone back to Ed, waved everyone away to resume work, and gave me a challenging stare.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘I’d rather you stayed.’

‘It’s your film,’ he insisted. ‘But you will please not go anywhere without your driver and your bodyguard.’ He looked around. ‘Where are they, anyway?’

‘I’m safe here,’ I said.

‘You are not to think you’re safe anywhere, Thomas.’ He handed me a key, explaining it was his hotel key. ‘Use my rooms if you need them. The two knives are in the safe in there. The combination is four five, four five. Got it?’

‘Yes… but how will I reach you?’

‘Phone my secretary in LA. She’ll know.’

‘Don’t go.’

He smiled. ‘My airplane leaves at noon. See you, guy.’

He climbed into his car with finality and was driven away, and I felt like a junior general left in charge of a major battlefield, apprehensive, half confident, emotionally naked.

The schedule that morning was for some of the earliest scenes of the film, the arrival of the police to investigate the hanging. Moncrieff set about lighting the actors – some in and some out of police uniform – explaining exactly where he wanted them to stop and turn towards the camera. He and they would be working from the plans and diagrams we’d drawn the evening before on my return from Cambridge.

Leaving Ed to supervise, I drove back to Bedford Lodge for a quiet breakfast in my rooms and found my driver and black-belt distractedly pacing the lobby and fearing the sack.

‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘Your day starts in an hour.’

‘Mr O’Hara said…’

‘One hour,’ I reiterated, and went upstairs thinking that as they hadn’t saved me from the Armadillo I might do equally well on my own.

Room service brought my breakfast and a visitor, Robbie Gill.

‘I should be listening to chests and prescribing cough mixture,’ he said. ‘My receptionist is dealing with a seething line of disgruntled patients. Take your clothes off.’

‘Do what?’

‘Sweater and shirt off,’ he repeated. ‘Undo your trousers. I’ve come to save your unworthy life.’

Busily he unpacked things from his case, moving my croissant and coffee aside and eating my ham with his fingers.

‘Hope you’re not hungry,’ he said, munching.

‘Starving.’

‘Too bad. Get undressed.’

‘Er… what for?’

‘Number one, fresh dressing. Number two, knife-proof vest. I tried to get a proper bullet-and-knife proof vest but neither the police nor the army would let me have one without bureaucracy, so we’ll have to trust to home made,’

I took off my sweater and shirt and he removed the dressing, raising his eyebrows at the revealed scenery but appearing not displeased.

‘You’re healing. Is it sore?’

‘The broken rib is.’

‘Only to be expected,’ he added, and stuck on a new dressing. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what do you know about Delta-cast?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s used instead of the old plaster of Paris for fractured arms and legs. It’s rigid. It’s a polymer, actually, and porous, so you won’t itch. A knife won’t go through it.’

‘A bullet?’

‘That’s another matter.’

He worked for half an hour, during which time we discussed Dorothea and Paul, and came to no useful conclusions, though I explained how, via Bill Robinson, I was now surrounded by the army of boxes containing Valentine’s books.

At the end of Robbie’s work I was encased from chin to waist in a hard sleeveless jacket that I could take off and put on in two halves and fasten with strips