“Then a better reason might be that I have some information regarding the woman about whom you questioned me during our last encounter.”
“Melanie Newton?”
“The very same.”
“I’ll be down there straight away.”
¦
He was sitting in his usual seat, in pin-striped suit and tie, his briefcase at his side and ledger open on the table in front of him. “Ah, Carole,” he said, rising politely to greet her. “I am so glad you could make it.”
The environment still felt alien to her. The walls covered with newspaper spreads, the banks of television screens, the eternal pinging of the games machines, Chinese waiters chattering in one corner. The only other women in the place were the girl behind the counter and the woman Jude had identified as Pauline.
“Well, what is it you have to tell me?” she asked, rather brusquely.
“Before we do that, I would appreciate your input into the knotty problem of the two-ten at Towcester.”
“Toaster?” Carole echoed in bewilderment, thinking of a kitchen appliance.
“Towcester as in the Northamptonshire town, whose racecourse is set in the Easton Neston Estate. Towcester being one of those English place names which so charmingly befuddle foreign visitors. In the same way that Leominster and Bicester can confuse the unwary. And indeed with British surnames there are many whose pronunciation is similarly at odds with their spelling. One need only mention ‘Chumley’ spelt ‘Cholmondley’, “Dee-ell’ spelt ‘Dalziel’ and ‘Fanshaw’ spelt ‘Fetherstonehaugh’…though there is further confusion with the last, because some owners of that surname do insist on pronouncing it ‘Feather-stone-haugh’”
Carole couldn’t help smiling. “Yes, Gerald, I think I’ve got your point.”
“I am delighted to hear it. So, the two-ten at Towcester…a treat for lovers of alliteration everywhere.”
“I’d really rather you’d just told me – ”
He raised a hand that was at once deferential and commanding. “After the two-ten at Towcester.” He held out a copy of
“Gerald, I know nothing about horse racing.”
“Perhaps you don’t have a great deal of education in the matter of horse racing, but you do have an instinct for the sport.”
“I don’t. It doesn’t interest me.”
“Carole, would you do me the kindness of approaching this race as if it were a crossword puzzle?”
“I would, if a horse race had any features in common with a crossword puzzle.”
“It has many. In a horse race there are many variables, but only one answer.”
“Yes, but – ”
“And one reaches that answer by a process of deduction and elimination.”
She couldn’t help being intrigued as well as amused. “Could you spell that out to me a little?”
“Very well.” He pointed down to the list of runners. “Here we have twelve horses, only one of whom is going to win the race.”
“Yes.”
“So, before we commence on the process of deduction, let us deploy our skills of elimination.”
“Remove from consideration the ones that have no chance?”
“Exactly. And to do this we look at the recent form.”
“Where is that?”
“In front of the horse’s name. The position in which they finished in their previous races. You see, that list of numbers.”
“So that one with ‘4-6-5-6-0’…?”
“In its last race it was unplaced – that’s the nought. In the previous one it came sixth, the one before that fifth, the one before that sixth again, the one before that fourth.”
“Not much of a prospect then?”
“No.”
“And what about this one? This has got letters too. Look…” She spelt them out. “‘0-F-F-P-0-P’.”
“That, Carole, is an even worse prospect. The zeros, as you know, mean that the horse was unplaced. And ‘F’ stands for ‘fell’.”
“The horse fell?”
“Yes. And ‘P’ means ‘pulled up’.”
“Sorry, I don’t know what that means.”
“The horse was doing so badly that the jockey pulled it up. In other words, it didn’t complete the course.”
“Ah. So in the form, letters are bad news?”
“Yes. ‘OFFPOP’…” He spoke the word as an acronym “…is not the horse to back. And there’s another letter to watch out for, which is ‘U’.”
“What does that mean?”
“‘Unseated rider’.”
“Again bad news?”
“Very.”
“So this one, Conjuror’s Rabbit, whose form is ‘33211’, is a much better bet.”
“Which is why it’s the odds-on favourite. Look, it’s down to thirteen to eight on.”
“All right, well, looking at the form, I would say there are seven of these horses that can be ruled out completely.”
“Excellent. You’re catching on to the idea.”
“In fact, I’d say that Conjuror’s Rabbit is definitely going to win.”
“Maybe.”
“Why maybe? It’s obvious, Gerald. Look at the form.”
“Ah, but because of that form, because of those two recent wins in particular, the handicapper is making the horse carry more weight.”
“What, a heavier jockey?”
“More likely weights put into the saddle.”
“That seems rather a dirty trick. It’s punishing success, isn’t it? A horse wins and immediately something’s done to make it less likely to win next time.”
“That’s how it works, yes. But if one didn’t have some compensatory system of that kind, the same horses would win all the time.”
“Well, that’d be fairer.”
“It might be fairer, but it would remove the excitement from the racing. The thrill of the unpredictable.”
“Generally speaking, I don’t find unpredictability thrilling.”
“Oh, Carole, I’m sure you do.”
“I don’t. So, anyway, this poor Conjuror’s Rabbit is now carrying too much weight to have a chance of winning?”
“No, no, it has a very good chance of winning. That’s why it’s favourite. And the ground’s in its favour.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Back to what I was saying about the going. The overnight frost has made the ground hard, so it’s easier for a heavy horse to move over it. If it were muddy, the weight would make a bigger difference.”
“Oh. I see what you mean about variables. Having to think not just about the horse’s recent form, but also the weight it’s carrying, not to mention the weather.”
Gerald Hume chuckled. “And that’s just the start of it. There’s also to be considered the horse’s breeding, the length of the race, which jockey’s up on him, the horse’s state of health, how well the trainer’s yard is currently doing…I could go on.”
“I think I get the point. But I’m not sure that your crossword analogy is quite valid. There the only real variables are the number of words in the English language.”
