understand Ramsey's drawl. Press photographers flashed like popping suns. There were television cameras, enquiring journalists, speeches, presentations. Malcolm looked envious of the Italian owners: third was fine but winning was better.
The four of us went for a celebratory drink; champagne, of course.
'Let's go for it,' Ramsey said. 'The Breeders' Cup. All the way.'
'We'll have to see how he is after today,' the trainer said warningly. 'He had a hard race.'
'He'll be all right,' Ramsey said with hearty confidence. 'Did you see the distance? Two lengths behind the winner. That's world class and no kidding.'
The trainer looked thoughtful but didn't argue. The favourite, undeniably world class, had finished second; victory snatched away no doubt by his earlier exhausting outing. He might not come back at all after his gruelling 'Arc'. The French favourite (and mine), Meilleurs Voeux, had finished fifth which made Blue Clancy better than I'd thought. Maybe he wouldn't be disgraced in the Breeders' Cup, if we went. I hoped we would go, but I was wary of hope.
The afternoon trickled away with the champagne, and Malcolm, almost as tired as his horse, sank euphoric ally into the limousine going back to the airport and closed his eyes in the jet.
'My first ever runner,' he said sleepily. 'Third in the 'Arc'. Not bad, eh?'
'Not bad.'
'I'm going to call the yearling Chrysos.'
'Why Chrysos?' I said.
He smiled without opening his eyes. 'It's Greek for gold.'
Malcolm was feeling caged in the Savoy.
On Sunday night, when we returned from Paris, he'd hardly had the energy to undress. By Monday morning, he was pacing the carpet with revitalised energy and complaining that another week in the suite would drive him bonkers. 'I'm going back to Quantum,' he said. 'I miss the dogs.'
I said with foreboding, 'It would take the family half a day at most to find out you were there.'
'I can't help it. I can't hide for ever. You can come and stay close to me there.'
'Don't go,' I said. 'You're safe here.'
'Keep me safe at Quantum.'
He was adamant and began packing, and short of roping him to the bedstead, I couldn't stop him.
just before we left, I telephoned Norman West and found him at home – which didn't bode well for the investigations. He was happy to tell me, he said, that it was now certain Mrs Deborah Pembroke, Ferdinand's wife, couldn't have been at Newmarket Bloodstock Sales, as on that day she had done a photo-modelling session. He had checked up with the magazine that morning, as Mrs Deborah had told him he could, and they had provided proof.
'Right,' I said. 'What about Ferdinand himself?'
'Mr Ferdinand was away from his office on both those days. Working at home on the Friday. The next week, he attended a course on the statistical possibilities of insurance fraud. He says that after registration on the Monday, they kept no record of attendance. I checked there too, and no one clearly remembers, they're all half strangers to each other.'
I sighed. 'Well… my father and I are going back to Quantum.'
'That's not wise, surely.'
'He's tired of imprisonment. Report to us there, will you?'
He said he would, when he had more news.
Cross off Debs, I thought. Bully for Debs.
I drove us down to Berkshire, stopping at Arthur Bellbrook's house in the village to collect the dogs. The two full-grown Dobermanns greeted Malcolm like puppies, prancing around him and rubbing against his legs as he slapped and fondled them. Real love on both sides, I saw. Uncomplicated by greed, envy or rejection.
Malcolm looked up and saw me watching him.
'You should get a dog,' he said. 'You need something to love.'
He could really hit home, I thought.
He bent back to his friends, playing with their muzzles, letting them try to snap at his fingers, knowing they wouldn't bite. They weren't guard dogs as such: he liked Dobermanns; for their muscular agility, for their exuberance. I'd been brought up with relays of them around me, but it wasn't the affection of dogs I wanted, and I'd never asked for one of my own.
I thought of the afternoon he'd let them out of the kitchen and then been hit on the head. The dogs must have seen or sensed someone there. Though not guard dogs, they should still have warned Malcolm.
'Do those two dogs bark when strangers call?' I asked.
'Yes, of course.' Malcolm straightened, still smiling, letting the lithe bodies press against his knees. 'Why?'
'Did they bark a week last Friday, when you set out to walk them?'
The smile died out of his face. With almost despair he said, 'No. I don't think so. I don't remember. No… not especially. They were pleased to be going out.'
'How many of the family do they know well?' I said.
'Everyone's been to the house several times since Moira died. All except you. I thought at first it was to support me, but…' he shrugged with disillusion, 'they were all busy making sure none of the others ingratiated themselves with me and cut them out.'
Every possibility led back to the certainty we couldn't accept.
Malcolm shuddered and said he would walk through the village with the dogs. He would meet people he knew on the way, and there were people in that village who'd been close friends with Vivien, Alicia and Joyce and had sided with them, and had since fed them inflammatory half-lies about Malcolm's doings.
'You know the village grapevine is faster than telex,' I said. 'Put the dogs in the car.'
He wouldn't listen. It was only six days since the second time someone had tried to kill him, but he was already beginning to believe there would be no more attempts. Well, no more that morning, I supposed. He walked a mile and a half with the dogs, and I drove slowly ahead, looking back, making sure at each turn that he was coming into sight. When he reached the house safely, he said I was being over-protective.
'I thought that was what you wanted,' I said.
'it is and it isn't.'
Surprisingly, I understood him. He was afraid and ashamed of it, and in consequence felt urged to bravado. Plain straightforward fear, I thought, would have been easier to deal with. At least I got him to wait outside with the dogs for company while I went into the house to reconnoitre, but no one had been there laying booby traps, no one was hiding behind doors with raised blunt instruments, no one had sent parcel bombs in the post.
I fetched him, and we unpacked. We both took it for granted I would sleep in my old room, and I made up the bed there. I had bought provisions in London to the extent of bread, milk, lemons, smoked salmon and caviar, a diet both of us now considered normal. There was champagne in the cellar and a freezer full of post-Moira TV dinners in cardboard boxes. We weren't going to starve, I thought, inspecting them, though we might get indigestion.
Malcolm spent the afternoon in his office opening letters and talking to his stockbroker on the telephone, and at the routine time proposed to give the dogs their pre-dinner walk.
'I'll come with you,' I said.
He nodded without comment, and in the crisp early October air we set off down the garden, through the gate into the field, and across to the willow-lined stream he had been aiming for ten days earlier.
We had all sailed toy boats down that stream when we'd been children, and picked watercress there, and got thoroughly wet and muddy as a matter of course. Alicia had made us strip, more than once, before she would let us into her bridal-white kitchen.
'Last Monday,' Malcolm said casually, watching the dogs sniff for water rats round the tree roots, 'I made a new will.'
'Did you?'
'I did. In Cambridge. I thought I might as well. The old one left a lot to Moira. And then, after that Friday… well, I wanted to put things in orderin case… just in case.'
