understood by the newspaper ears all around.
I stopped her by wishing her firmly the best of luck in the big race, and by saying my farewells to the whole party. Alessia came with me out of the dining room and we walked slowly across the bright club lounge to look out across the racecourse.
'Tomorrow,' I said, 'they'll be cheering you.'
She looked apprehensive more than gratified. 'It depends how Brunelleschi's travelled.'
'Isn't he here?' I asked, surprised.
'Oh yes, but no one knows how he feels. He might be homesick… and don't laugh, the tap water here tastes vile to me, God knows what the horse thinks of it. Horses have their own likes and dislikes, don't forget, and all sorts of unimaginable factors can put them off.'
I put my arm round her tentatively.
'Not here,' she said.
I let the arm fall away, 'Anywhere?' I asked.
'Are you sure…?'
'Don't be silly. Why else would I ask?'
The curve of her lips was echoed in her cheekbones and in her eyes, but she was looking at the track, not at me.
'I'm staying at the Sherryatt,' I said. 'Where are you?'
'The Regency. We're all there: the Goldonis, Silvio Lucchese, Papa and I. All guests of the racecourse. They're so generous, it's amazing.'
'How about dinner?' I said.
'I can't. We've been invited by the Italian ambassador… Papa knows him… I have to be there.'
I nodded.
'Still,' she said. 'We might go for a drive or something this afternoon. I don't truthfully want to spend all day here on the racecourse. We were here yesterday… all the foreign riders were shown what we'll be doing. Today is free.'
'I'll wait for you here, then, on this spot.'
She went to explain to her father but returned immediately saying that everyone was about to go round to the barns and she couldn't get out of that either, but they'd all said I was very welcome to go with them, if I'd like.
'Barns?' I said.
She looked at me with amusement. 'Where they stable the horses on American racecourses.'
In consequence I shortly found myself, along with half the attendance from the breakfast, watching the morning routines on the private side of the tracks; the feeding, the mucking-out, the grooming, the saddling-up and mounting, the breezes (short sharp canters), the hot-walking (for cooling off from exercise), the sand-pit rolling, and all around, but constantly shifting, the tiny individual press conferences where trainers spoke prophesies like Moses.
I heard the trainer of the home-based horse that was' favourite saying confidently 'We'll have the speed all the way to the wire.'
'What about the foreign horses?' one of the reporters asked. 'Is there one to beat you?'
The trainer's eye wandered and lit on Alessia, by my side. He knew her. He smiled. He said gallantly, 'Brunelleschi is the danger.
Brunelleschi himself, in his stall, seemed unimpressed. Silvio Lucchese, it appeared, had brought the champion's own food from Italy so that the choosy appetite should be unimpaired. And Brunelleschi had, it seemed, 'eaten up' the evening before (a good sign), and hadn't kicked his stable-lad, as he did occasionally from displeasure. Everyone patted his head with circumspection, keeping their fingers away from his strong white teeth. He looked imperious to me, like a bad-tempered despot. No one asked what he thought of the water.
'He's nobody's darling,' Alessia said out of the owners earshot. 'The Goldonis are afraid of him, I often think.
'So am I,' I said,
'He puts all his meanness into winning. She looked across with rueful affection at the dark tossing head. 'I tell him he's a bastard, and we get on fine.'
Paolo Cenci seemed pleased that Alessia would be spending most of the day with me. He, Lucchese and Bruno Goidoni intended to stay for the races. Beatrice, with a secret, sinful smile of pleasure, said she was going to the hotel's hairdresser, and, after that, shopping. Slightly to my dismay Paolo Cenci suggested Alessia and I should give her a lift back to Washington to save the limousine service doubling the journey, and accordingly we passed the first hour of our day with the voluble lady saying nothing much at great length. I had an overall impression that separation, even temporary, from her husband, had caused an excited rise in her spirits, and when we dropped her at the Regency she had twin spots of bright red on her sallow middle-aged cheeks and guilt in every line of her heavy face.
'Poor Beatrice, you'd almost think she was meeting a lover,' Alessia said smiling, as we drove away, 'not just going shopping.'
'You, on the other hand,' I observed, 'are not blushing a bit.'
'Ah,' she said. 'I haven't promised a thing.'
'True.' I stopped the car presently in a side street and unfolded a detailed map of the city. 'Anything you'd like to see?' I asked. ' Lincoln Monument, White House, all that?'
'I was here three years ago, visiting. Did all the tours.'
'Good… Do you mind then, if we just drive around a bit? I want to put… faces… onto some of these street names.'
She agreed, looking slightly puzzled, but after a while said, 'You're looking for Morgan Freemantle.'
'For possible districts, yes.'
'What are possible?'
'Well… not industrial areas. Not decayed housing. Not all-black neighbourhoods. Not parks, museums or government offices. Not diplomatic residental areas-,.. embassies and their offices. Not blocks of flats with janitors. Not central shopping areas, nor banking areas, nor schools or colleges, nowhere with students.'
'What's left?'
'Private housing. Suburbs. Anywhere without prying neighbours. And at a guess, somewhere north or west of the centre, because the Ritz Carlton is there.'
We drove for a good long while, methodically sectioning the sprawling city according to the map, but concentrating most and finally on the north and west. There were beauties to the place one couldn't guess from the tourist round, and miles and hosts of residential streets where Morgan Freemantle could be swallowed without trace.
'I wonder if we've actually been past him,' Alessia said at one point. 'Gives me the shivers, not knowing. I can't bear to think of him. Alone… dreadfully alone… somewhere close.'
'He might be further out,' I said. 'But kidnappers don't usually go for deserted farmhouses or places like that. They choose more populated places, where their comings and goings aren't noticeable.'
The scale of it all, however, was daunting, even within the radius I thought most likely. Analysis of recent rentals wouldn't come up this time with just eleven probables: there would be hundreds, maybe one or two thousand. Kent Wagner's task was impossible, and we would have to rely on negotiation, not a second miracle, to get Morgan Freemantle safe home.
We were driving up and down some streets near Washington Cathedral, simply admiring the houses for their architecture: large old sprawling houses with frosting of white railings, lived-in houses with signs of young families. On every porch, clusters of Halloween pumpkins.
'What are those?' Alessia said, pointing at the grinning orange faces of the huge round fruits on the steps outside every front door.
'It was Halloween four days ago,' I said.
'Oh yes, so it was. You don't see those at home.'
We passed the Ritz Carlton on Massachusetts Avenue and paused there, looking at the peaceful human-scaled hotel with its blue awnings from where Morgan had been so unceremoniously snatched, and then coasted round Dupont Circle and made our way back to the more central part. Much of the city was built in radii from circles, like Paris, which may have made for elegance but was a great recipe for getting lost: we'd chased our tails several times in the course of the day.
'It's so vast,' Alessia said, sighing. 'So confusing. I'd no idea.'
'We've done enough,' I agreed. 'Hungry?'
It was three-thirty by then, but time meant nothing to the Sherryatt Hotel. We went up to my room on the twelfth floor of the anonymous, enormous, bustling pile and we ordered wine and avocado shrimp salad from room service. Alessia stretched lazily on one of the armchairs and listened while I telephoned Kent Wagner.
Did I realise, he asked trenchantly, that the whole goddam population of North America was on the move through Washington, D.C., and that a list of rentals would bridge the Potomac.
'Look for a house without pumpkins,' I said.
'What?'
'Well, if you were a kidnapper, would you solemnly carve Halloween faces on pumpkins and put them on the front steps?'
'No, I guess not.' He breathed out in the ghost of a chuckle. 'Takes a limey to come up with a suggestion as dumb as that.'
'Yeah,' I said. 'I'll be at the Sherryatt this evening and at the races tomorrow, if you should want me.'
'Got it.'
I telephoned next to Liberty Market, but nothing much had developed in London. The collective fury of the members of the Jockey Club was hanging over Portman Square in a blue haze and Sir Owen Higgs had retreated for the weekend to Gloucestershire. Hoppy at Lloyds was reported to be smiling cheerfully as in spite of advising everyone else to insure against extortion the Jockey Club hadn't done so itself. Apart from that, nix.
The food arrived and we ate roughly jockey-sized amounts. Then Alessia pushed her plate away and, looking at her wine glass, said, 'Decision time, I suppose.'
'Only for you,' I said mildly. 'Yes or no.'
Still looking down she said, 'Would no… be acceptable?'
'Yes, it would,' I said seriously.
'I…' She took a deep breath. 'I want to say yes, but I feel…' She broke off, then started again. 'I don't seem to want… since the kidnap… I've thought of kissing, of love, and I'm dead… I went out with Lorenzo once or twice and he wanted to kiss me… his mouth felt like rubber to me.' She looked at me anxiously, willing me to understand. 'I did love someone passionately once, years ago, when I was eighteen. It didn't last beyond summer… We both simply grew up… but I know what it's likes what I should feel, what I should want… and I don't.'
'Darling Alessia.' I stood up and walked to the window, thinking that for this battle I wasn't strong enough, that there was a limit to controlled behaviour, that what I myself longed for now was warmth, 'I do truly love you in many ways,' I said, and found the words coming out an octave lower than in my normal voice.
'Andrew!' She came to her feet and walked towards me, searching my face and no doubt seeing there the vulnerability she wasn't accustomed to.
'Well…' I said, struggling for lightness; for a smile; for Andrew the unfailing prop. 'There's always time. You ride races now. Go shopping. Drive your car?'
She nodded.
'It all took time,' I said. I wrapped my arms around her lightly and kissed her forehead. 'When rubber begins feeling like lips, let me know.'
She put her head against my shoulder and clung to me for help as she had often clung before; and it was I, really, who wanted to be enfolded and cherished and loved.
