Joe had a knife in his body. Its thick black handle protruded incongruously from his yellow and white checked shirt, slanting downwards from underneath his breastbone. A small patch of blood stained the cloth round it, a mild enough indication of the damage the blade was doing inside.
His eyes were open, but vague and already glazing.
I said, urgently, 'Joe!'
His eyes came round to mine and I saw them sharpen into focus and recognize me. A muscle moved in his cheek and his lips opened. He made a great effort to speak.
The scarlet blood suddenly spilled in a gush from his nostrils and welled up in a sticky, bottomless pool in his open mouth. He gave a single choking sound that was almost indecently faint, and over his immature face spread a look of profound astonishment. Then his flesh blanched and his eyes rolled up, and Joe was gone. For several seconds after he died his expression said clearly, 'It's not fair.' The skin settled in this crisis into the lines most accustomed to it in life.
Fighting nausea at the sweet smell of his blood, I shut the eyes with my fingers, and sat back on my heels, looking at him helplessly.
I knew it was useless, but after a moment or two I opened his coat and felt in his pockets for the brown paper he had wanted to show me. It was not there, and his death would not have made sense if it had been. The brown paper was, I thought, the wrapping from Joe's last payment for stopping a horse. It had to be. With something about it which he thought would disclose who had sent it. A postmark? An address? Something to do with chickens, Clem had said; and Pete said it was Chichester. Neither of these held any significance at all for me. According to Clem it meant nothing to Joe either, and he was simply going to show it to me because he had said he would.
He had always been too talkative for his own good. Not quick or quiet. Prudently and privately he could have telephoned to tell me his discovery as soon as he made it. But instead he had flourished the paper at Liverpool. Someone had taken drastic steps to make sure he did not show it to me.
'Poor, silly blabbermouth,' I said softly, to his still body.
I got to my feet, and went back to the narrow entrance of the little area. There was no one about. The voice of the commentator boomed over the loudspeakers that the horses were approaching the second open ditch, which meant that the race was already half over and that I would have to hurry.
I ran the last fifty yards to the Clerk of the Course's office and thrust open the door. A nondescript, grey-haired man in glasses, sitting at a desk, looked up, startled, his pen in mid-air and the paper he was writing on pressed under the palm of his hand. He was the Clerk of the Course's secretary.
'Mr Rollo isn't here?' I asked unnecessarily, glancing round the otherwise empty office.
'He's watching the race. Can I help you?' A dry voice, a dry manner. Not the sort of man one would choose to announce a murder to. But it had to be done. Suppressing all urgency from my voice I told him plainly and quietly that Joe Nantwich was lying dead between the Tote and the bar with a knife through his lungs. I suggested that he send for a canvas screen to put across the gap between the two buildings, as when the crowds began to stream towards the bar and the paying-out Tote windows after the race, someone would be certain to see him. The ground round his body would be well trodden over. Clues, if there were any, would be lost.
The eyes behind the spectacles grew round and disbelieving.
'It's not a joke,' I said desperately. 'The race is nearly over. Tell the police then. I'll find a screen.' He still did not move. I could have shaken him, but I could not spare the time. 'Hurry,' I urged. But his hand had still not gone out to his telephone when I shut the door.
The ambulance room was attached to the end of the weighing-room building. I went in in a hurry, to find two motherly St John's nurses drinking tea. I spoke to the younger one, a middle-aged soul of ample proportions.
'Put that down and come with me quickly,' I said, hoping she would not argue. I picked up a stretcher which was standing against the wall, and as she put her cup down slowly, I added, 'Bring a blanket. There's a man hurt. Please hurry.'
The call to duty got my nurse moving without demur, and picking up a blanket she followed me across the paddock, though at under half speed.
The commentator's voice rose slightly as he described the race from the last fence, and crisply into the silence when the cheers died away came another voice announcing the winner. I reached the gap by the Tote building as he spoke the names of the second and third horses.
The first stalwart punters began to drift back towards the bar. I looked in at Joe. He had not been disturbed.
I set the stretcher up on end on its handles, to make a sort of screen across the gap. The nurse came up to me, breathing audibly. I took the blanket from her and hung it over the stretcher so that no one could see into the area at all.
'Listen,' I said, trying to speak slowly. 'There is a man between these two buildings. He is dead, not hurt. He has been killed with a knife. I am going to make sure that the police are coming, and I want you to stand here holding the stretcher up like this. Don't let anyone past you until I come back with a policeman. Do you understand?'
She did not answer. She twisted the stretcher a little so that she could peer through the gap. She took a long look. Then, drawing up her considerable bosom and with the light of battle in her eyes, she said firmly, 'No one shall go in, I'll see to that.'
I hurried back to the Clerk of the Course's office. Mr Rollo was there himself this time, and after I had told him what had happened things at last began to move.
It is always difficult to find a place to be alone at the races. After I had taken a policeman along to where Joe lay, and seen the routine bustle begin, I needed a pause to think. I had had an idea while I crouched beside Joe's body, but it was not one to be acted upon headlong.
People thronged everywhere in the paddock and the racecourse buildings, and to get away from them I walked out on to the course and over the rough grass in the centre until the stands were some way behind. Distance, I hoped, would give me a sense of proportion as well as solitude.
I thought about Bill and Scilla, and also about what I owed to my father, now back in Rhodesia. I thought about the terrorized pub-keepers in Brighton and the bloody face of Joe Nantwich.
It was no use pretending that Joe's murder had not made a great deal of difference to the situation, for until now I had blithely pursued Mr Claud Thiveridge in the belief that though he might arrange for people to be beaten up, he did not purposely kill. Now the boundary was crossed. The next killing would come easier, and the next easier still. The plucky, dog-owning rebels against protection were in greater danger than before, and I was probably responsible.
Joe had shown his brown paper to several people, and no one, including apparently himself, had immediately seen the meaning of what was written on it. Yet he had been killed before he could show it to me. To me, then, the words would have told their tale. Perhaps to me alone.
I watched the rising wind blowing the grass in flattening ripples across the course, and heard the distant voices of the bookmakers as they shouted the odds for the next race.
The question to be answered was simple. Was I, or was I not, going on with the chase? I'm no hero. I did not want to end up dead. And there was no doubt that the idea I had had beside Joe's body was as safe as a stick of dynamite in a bonfire.
The horses for the third race came out and cantered down to the start. Idly I watched them. The race was run: the horses returned to the paddock: and still I stood in the centre of the course, dithering on top of my mental fence.
At last I walked back to the paddock. The jockeys were already out in the parade ring for the fourth race, and as I reached the weighing-room one of the racecourse officials grabbed my arm, saying the police had been looking everywhere for me. They wanted me to make a statement, he said, and I would find them in the Clerk of the Course's office.
I went along there, and opened the door.
Mr Rollo, spare and short, leaned against the window wearing a worried frown. His grey-haired bespectacled secretary still sat at his desk, his mouth slightly open as if even yet he had not grasped the reality of what had happened.
The police inspector, who introduced himself as Wakefield, had established himself at Mr Rollo's table, and was attended by three constables, one of them armed with shorthand notebook and pencil. The racecourse doctor was
