‘How lovely,’ she sighed. ‘I wish…’
‘You’ll go one day,’ I said firmly. ‘Save up, and go in a year or two. On a bus tour or something. With people anyway. Not alone.’
I looked at my watch, and stood up. ‘I’ve enjoyed this evening a great deal. Thank you so much for coming out with me.’
She stood and formally shook hands, not suggesting another meeting. So much humility, I thought: so little expectation. Poor, poor Miss Martin.
‘Tomorrow morning…’ she said tentatively, at the door.
‘Tomorrow,’ I nodded. ‘Move that desk. And I… I promise I won’t forget.’
I went home cursing that fate had sent me someone like Zanna Martin. I had expected Charing, Street and King’s secretary to be young, perhaps pretty, a girl I could take to a cafe and the pictures and flirt with, with no great involvement on either side. Instead it looked as if I should have to pay more than I’d meant to for my inside information on Ellis Bolt.
NINE
‘Now look,’ said Lord Hagbourne, amidst the bustle of Kempton races, ‘I’ve had a word with Captain Oxon and he’s satisfied with the way things are going. I really can’t interfere any more. Surely you understand that?’
‘No, sir, I don’t. I don’t think Captain Oxon’s feelings are more inportant than Seabury Racecourse. The course should be put right quickly, even if it means overruling him.’
‘Captain Oxon,’ he said with a touch of sarcasm, ‘knows more about his job than you do. I give more weight to his assurance than to your quick look at the track.’
‘Then couldn’t you go and see for yourself? While there is still time.’
He didn’t like being pushed. His expression said so, plainly. There was no more I could say, either, without risking him ringing up Radnor to cancel the whole investigation.
‘I may… er… I may find time on Monday,’ he said at last, grudgingly. ‘I’ll see. Have you found anything concrete to support your idea that Seabury’s troubles were caused maliciously?’
‘Not yet, sir.’
‘A bit far-fetched, if you ask me,’ he said crossly. ‘I said so to begin with, if you remember. If you don’t turn something up pretty soon… it’s all expense, you know.’
He was intercepted by a passing Steward who took him off to another problem, leaving me grimly to reflect that so far there was a horrid lack of evidence of any sort. What there was, was negative.
George had still found no chink in Kraye’s respectability, ex-sergeant Carter had given Bolt clearance, and Chico had come back from Seabury with no results all along the line.
We’d met in the office that morning, before I went to Kempton.
‘Nothing,’ said Chico. ‘I wagged me tongue off, knocking at every front door along that road. Not a soggy flicker. The bit which crosses the racecourse wasn’t closed by diversion notices, that’s for sure. There isn’t much traffic along there, of course. I counted it. Only forty to the hour, average. Still, that’s too much for at least some of the neighbours not to notice if there’d been anything out of the ordinary.’
‘Did anyone see the tanker, before it overturned?’
‘They’re always seeing tankers, nowadays. Several complaints about it, I got. No one noticed that one, especially.’
‘It can’t be coincidence… just at that spot at that time, where it would do most harm. And the driver packing up and moving a day or two afterwards, with no forwarding address.’
‘Well…’ Chico scratched his ear reflectively. ‘I got no dice with the hiring of lifting gear either. There isn’t much to be had, and what there was was accounted for. None of the little bungalows saw anything in that line, except the breakdown cranes coming to lift the tanker up again.’
‘How about the drains?’
‘No drains,’ he said. ‘A blank back to Doomsday.’
‘Good.’
‘Come again?’
‘If you’d found them on a map, the hurdle race accident would have been a genuine accident. This way, they reek of tiger traps.’
‘A spot of spade work after dark? Dodgy stuff.’
I frowned. ‘Yes. And it had to be done long enough before the race meeting for the ground to settle, so that the line of the trench didn’t show…’
‘And strong enough for a tractor to roll over it.’
‘Tractor?’
‘There was one on the course yesterday, pulling a trailer of dug up turf.’
‘Oh yes, of course. Yes, strong enough to hold a tractor… but wheels wouldn’t pierce the ground like a horse’s legs. The weight is more spread.’
‘True enough.’
‘How fast was the turf-digging going?’ I asked.
‘Fast? You’re joking.’
It was depressing. So was Lord Hagbourne’s shilly-shallying. So, acutely, was the whole day, because I kept my promise to Zanna Martin. Pity, curiosity, surprise, embarrassment and revulsion, I encountered the lot. I tried hard to look on some of the things that were said as tactlessness or bad manners, but it didn’t really work. Telling myself it was idiotic to be so sensitive didn’t help either. If Miss Martin hadn’t kept her side of the bargain, I thought miserably, I would throttle her.
Half way through the afternoon I had a drink in the big upstairs bar with Mark Witney.
‘So that’s what you’ve been hiding all this time in pockets and gloves,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Bit of a mess,’ he commented.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Does it hurt still?’
‘No, only if I knock it. And it aches sometimes.’
‘Mm,’ he said sympathetically. ‘My ankle still aches too. Joints are always like that; they mend, but they never forgive you.’ He grinned. ‘The other half? There’s time; I haven’t a runner until the fifth.’
We had another drink, talking about horses, and I reflected that it would be easy if they were all like him.
‘Mark,’ I said as we walked back to the weighing room, ‘do you remember whether Dunstable ran into any sort of trouble before it packed up?’
‘That’s going back a bit.’ He pondered. ‘Well, it certainly wasn’t doing so well during the last year or two, was it? The attendances had fallen off, and they weren’t spending any money on paint.’
‘But no specific disasters?’
‘The Clerk of the Course took an overdose, if you call that a disaster. Yes, I remember now, the collapse of the place’s prosperity was put down to the Clerk’s mental illness. Brinton, I think his name was. He’d been quietly going loco and making hopeless decisions all over the place.’
‘I’d forgotten,’ I said glumly. Mark went into the weighing room and I leant against the rails outside. A suicidal Clerk of the Course could hardly have been the work of Kraye, I thought. It might have given him the idea of accelerating the demise of Seabury, though. He’d had plenty of time over Dunstable, but owing to a recent political threat of nationalisation of building land, he might well be in a hurry to clinch Seabury. I sighed, disregarded as best I could a stare of fascinated horror from the teenage daughter of a man I used to ride for, and drifted over to look at the horses in the parade ring.
At the end of the too-long afternoon I drove back to my flat, mixed a bigger drink than usual, and spent the evening thinking, without any world-shattering results. Late the next morning, when I was similarly engaged, the door bell rang, and I found Charles outside.
