as I can.'
'As long as you're sure, otherwise I'll lend you the rest. Let's just hope it's going to be money well spent.'
By Friday I had two thousand pounds in my hands – a fat wad of fifty and twenty pound notes – and I felt an irresistible urge to keep on counting it. I had spent the morning schooling two novice chasers for Ralph and my back had come through without any twinges of pain. During the week I had made no attempt to pursue any of my other leads, having reached a temporary impasse as far as Musgrave was concerned and being too afraid to risk any further contact with Brennan. I had a sneaking suspicion that it had been the jockey who had run me off the road – I had no proof, just an instinct – and I had no desire to give him a second chance to hasten my departure from this world. To my surprise, I hadn't heard from Sir Arthur Drewe. I had somehow expected that he would contact me immediately on receiving my letter to find out what I was after, but it now appeared that he was prepared to play a waiting game and possibly even to call my bluff. What could I do then? To be honest, I didn't have the faintest idea. The last person I expected to see that afternoon appeared just after five o'clock. Eleanor Pryde swept into Ralph's house as if she owned the place and asked if she could have five minutes alone with me in private. I was having a cup of tea with Ralph at the time, discussing future race plans, and I have never seen him so lost for words. Tall and refined, with a generous application of rouge on both cheeks, Eleanor conveyed an unmistakable air of authority: here was a woman who was used to giving orders and expected them to be obeyed. I agreed to her request, remarking, to Ralph's horror, that it was the first time in five years as my mother-in-law that she had ever voluntarily sought out my company for such a long period. Having been ushered unctuously by Ralph into his study – he even apologised for the mess it was in – Lady Pryde went straight into the attack. I had expected to be harangued about Freddie and asked how I could be so selfish as to want to bring him up. Not a bit of it. Her first act was to thrust out her right hand in front of me and demand: 'Where is it then?'
'Where is what?' I replied, trying to play the innocent.
'Don't be so stupid, you silly girl. Gerald has told me everything. He has been very foolish, very foolish indeed, but I have no intention of seeing everything he has achieved thrown away now.'
'There's no need for that to happen.'
'It's money you want, is it? Or are you trying to blackmail us into letting go of our little Freddie?'
I liked that! Suddenly my own son had become their property.
'I'm not looking for your money and you can leave Freddie out of this. He's staying with me. What I want is that old-fashioned thing called justice.'
'What a noble sentiment! What you really mean is that you want your lover to escape spending the rest of his life behind bars, where he belongs. How could you behave like this, after what has happened to my poor son? Edward never hurt a soul in his life.' She gave out a strangled, and in my view theatrical, sob and started searching her handbag for a handkerchief.
'Your poor son?' I exclaimed in disbelief. I was beginning to wonder just what Gerald Pryde had told his wife. I went on the attack.
'Lady Pryde, your poor son, as you call him, was a blackmailer who regularly beat me up into the bargain.'
'How can you talk like that, after everything we and Edward did for you? I told him never to marry you, I warned him that you were a scheming little social climber who would drag him down, and how right I was. Give me the original of that letter, please.'
'I can't.'
'What do you mean, you can't? Where is it?'
I lied. 'In a safe place with instructions that if anything happens to me the letter is to be sent to the national press.'
'So
'No, Lady Pryde, just think of me as an instrument of justice. If your husband admits to the police that he was being blackmailed by his own son I undertake to destroy that letter.'
She stared at me with an expression of complete and utter contempt.
'My dear, you are quite mad. My Edward would never have done such a thing. I warn you, you are playing a very dangerous game and if you persist with it someone is going to get hurt.' With that less than noble parting sentiment she turned and strode majestically out of the room and from the house into her waiting car.
Chapter 10
We were like a couple of giggly teenage girls playing truant from school. We checked in one after the other at Heathrow, without giving away we were travelling together and then sat in different sections of the departure lounge. Once on board the plane, having been allocated seats right next door to each other, we dropped the subterfuge and talked away nineteen to the dozen. I suspected that Amy was as nervous as I was, but we were both making a real effort to appear calm and even jolly. She had remembered my ammonia and I slipped it in my bag.
We had agreed that when we arrived at Shannon we would act as complete strangers just in case Corcoran had taken the precaution of coming to the airport to ensure I was keeping to my side of the bargain. We had rented separate cars and Amy was going to make her own way to the racecourse and then leave before I did to go to Mrs Moloney's tea rooms. That way, if Corcoran was waiting there himself or watching my every movement, no one would connect us. He had never met Amy and until the publication of the notice in the
I arrived at Limerick just after twelve-thirty and as far as I was aware, Amy was about ten minutes behind me on the road. From now on, as far as the world was concerned, I was on my own. Willie O'Keefe, his curly grey hair protruding beneath his tweed cap, was already in the weighing room, engrossed in conversation with an extremely rough-looking individual, who had the furtive air of a man who expected to be summoned before the stewards at any moment. Both his front teeth were missing and his right eye was the colour of a bloody mary. He did not look at all happy at whatever Willie was saying to him. To either side of them were groups of owners, trainers and jockeys swapping jokes and lyricising about their chances that afternoon. I waited for Willie to finish his conversation and then went up and patted him on the shoulder.
'Your jockey reporting for duty,' I said brightly.
He grinned with pleasure and doffed his cap. 'Now there's a real treat, and me a married man with eight children! You're looking mighty well under the circumstances and to think that in less than an hour you'll be booting home a winner.'
'Are you really that confident, Willie?' I asked, hoping that he was just hooking me up. On the way over I had studied Jimmy the One's form and it struck me that even carrying ten stone two on his back, he had at least six pounds to make up on the favourite.
'Confident? The money's already in the bank. Did you see that chap I was talking to just now?'
I nodded, wondering what the particularly villainous individual and Willie had in common.
'That's my nephew, Shaun. Ugly looking fellow isn't he? My sister's eldest boy. He's a bit disappointed that he's not got the ride today after his efforts last time out on the horse.'
'Why, what happened then?'
Willie dropped his voice to a confidential whisper and turned me away from the nearby group of trainers. 'Shaun rode a waiting race.'
'There's nothing wrong in that, is there?'
'Only that he was waiting for today's race. That's why Jimmy the One's half a stone better than his handicap rating, and is going to start at 6-1. With you on his back, my little darling, and no offence meant, the odds might well be longer.'
'And Shaun is very upset?'
'Don't worry about him. I just told him he can count himself in for a monkey at the starting price.'
