‘In this very room. And you were here at the time.’
‘No,’ she said, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘That’s not true. I wasn’t here.’
‘But you didn’t find Bill in the morning like you said, did you?’
‘No.’
She began to cry and buried her head in her hands.
‘There have been lots of tears,’ I said. ‘The time has come, Juliet, to stop the crying and tell the truth. The time to put an end to this madness. To do no more damage.’
She rocked back and forth. ‘I never thought he would kill Huw Walker, or Bill,’ she said.
‘Who was it?’ I asked.
Still she didn’t reply.
‘Look, Juliet, I know you’ve been sleeping with someone. I found some of his clothes in a drawer beside your bed and his hair was also in the hairbrush. So I have his DNA and it matches that of the man who attacked Marina the first time, in Ebury Street. You won’t be able to protect George Lochs even if you won’t tell us he’s the murderer.’
She sat up and looked at me again. ‘George?’ she said. ‘You think it’s George Lochs?’
‘He bought you the clothes,’ I said.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ she said, almost sneering.
‘Know what?’
‘George is gay. He’d never sleep with me. I’ve got the wrong bits.’
It was my turn to stand with my mouth open. ‘Why, then, did he buy you the clothes?’ I asked.
‘As thank-you presents.’
‘For what?’
She didn’t answer. I stood up and walked round behind her.
‘Did George give you something every time you told him a horse wasn’t going to win?’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘I mean that it was you that was fixing the races, wasn’t it? It never was Bill. And George Lochs would have loved to have had the information so that he could adjust the odds on his website.’
‘Why would I fix races?’ she asked.
‘That I don’t know yet,’ I said, ‘but it has to be you that was doing it.’
‘But how could I?’ she said.
‘Because it was you that was responsible for helping the lads prepare the horses ready for running. Fred Manley told me that you had wanted that particular job and had badgered Bill until he gave you the task. Fred said that you also insisted on “putting them to bed” the night before they ran.’
I went back round in front of her.
‘And it was you that insisted on helping to groom each runner early in the morning of the race. You plaited their manes and polished their hooves. You took a pride in their presentation.’
She nodded. ‘We won lots of “best turned out” awards.’
‘But it also gave you the opportunity to keep the horses thirsty. You threw away their water the night before a race and again in the morning. You only then had to ensure that the horses had a good drink just before the race. If the water in their bellies didn’t slow them down, then the lack of water for nearly twenty-four hours beforehand would have done so.’
She hung her head again.
‘And when horses ran at the northern tracks, you didn’t go with them, did you, so you paid Huw Walker to make sure they didn’t win. But they still ran slightly better in the north because Huw was only trying to stop them winning, second was fine, but your little water trick slowed them right down. Some of them in the south finished last.’
Chris was now the one with an open mouth. He was almost rubbing his hands with glee at the scoop he would have.
‘But why,’ I asked, ‘did you only stop Lord Enstone’s horses? And then not every time they ran? Did you really do it for a few dresses?’
‘I don’t even like the dresses. I never wear them. I should have got rid of them. They only clutter the place up. They were George’s idea. He loves designer wear and thinks everyone else does too. He bought me something whenever he made a good profit from a race where one was stopped. He could make an absolute fortune out of some races, sometimes more than a hundred thousand, especially if we stopped the favourite.’
‘We?’ I asked. ‘Who are we?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Juliet,’ I said, ‘I need to know his name or I will call the police and I won’t tell them that you’ve helped me. Quite the reverse, in fact. And, be sure, they will find out who it is anyway. We have his DNA, and his fingerprints must be all over your cottage. It will only be a matter of time before he’s caught, and it will be your fault if he does any harm to anyone else in the meantime.’
‘Will… will I go to prison?’ she asked in a faltering voice.
I don’t think she had been listening to me. ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘You certainly will if you don’t cooperate. I’ll do a deal with you. I’ll do my best to keep you out of prison if you tell us everything, but I can’t promise. At the very least, I will try to ensure you don’t get charged with murder.’
Her head came up fast. ‘But I didn’t kill anyone.’
‘So who did?’ I asked.
‘Peter did.’ She said it so softly I hardly heard her.
‘Peter?’ I said. ‘Peter Enstone?’
‘Yes.’
Suddenly everything came out. Juliet unburdened the great secret that had been eating away at her. Chris still sat silently in the corner, listening intently. He had by now produced a notebook and was scribbling furiously as Juliet spoke.
She told us the lot.
She started at the beginning with her first meeting with Peter Enstone when she had been working at Bill’s for only a few weeks. It was very clear that she had fallen head over heels for Peter and soon they were lovers.
‘He said that no one must know, especially his father,’ she said. ‘It was all very exciting.’ She smiled.
Peter’s father, Lord Enstone, was a social climber par excellence. I expect that the daughter of a blacksmith with no family means was not what he would have had in mind as a suitable match for his son. No wonder Peter had wanted the affair kept quiet.
‘Peter said wouldn’t it be funny if we were able to influence the running of his father’s horses just by wanting to. We used to sit in bed some afternoons watching the racing, holding the television remote and pretending that we were using it to control the horses like robots. Turn up the volume to make it go faster, turn it down to go slower. Push the off button to make it fall. Silly, really.’
She stopped.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘can I have a drink of something?’
‘Water OK?’ I asked.
‘Fine.’
I gave the key to Chris who unlocked the door and went out to the kitchen to fetch some. Juliet sat silently waiting for his return while I stood guard at the door, but I think her desire to run had gone. Chris came back and I relocked the door and put the key back in my pocket in case I was wrong. Juliet drank half the glass then sat holding it in both hands on her lap.
‘Go on,’ I said, sitting down again on the stool in front of her.
‘I remember saying to Peter that there was a way to control the horses for real,’ she continued. ‘But I only said it as a joke. I remembered my father telling me of a betting coup at the local point-to-point where a horse was stopped by giving it a big drink just before the start. He always said that water didn’t show up on any dope test.’
She took another drink of the evil stuff.
