I believe that I was the first jockey in England to ride a doped horse over fences at a race meeting. The animal was Sporran, and he was doped by that well-known veterinary surgeon, Captain J. G. Deans. Captain Deans wrote: “As the first veterinary surgeon in England to attempt the hypodermic injection of a stimulant into a racehorse before running, I confidently assert that it is possible to treat a horse by this method, not once but many times, without any detrimental effect, either immediately or in future.”
Paddock Personalities J. Fairfax-Blakeborough
The village of Exning was about two miles to the north and west of Newmarket. Bradford, glad to have something useful to do while Edith and her mother were negotiating agreements of great significance with the dressmaker, made inquiries at the postal office in the rear of the greengrocer’s shop. The grocer’s daughter, who was also the village postmistress, was a charming young woman with nut-brown hair tied with a pink ribbon. She gave him a flirtatious smile and directions to Dr. Septimus Polter’s animal surgery, at Hill House. She glanced up at the clock.
“If ye want t’find the doctor in this mornin’, sir, best ye ’urry,” she said, with an enchanting flash of dimples. “ ’E’s off t’ Ipswich today on business. ’Is ’ousekeeper, Mrs. Flagg, said ’e was takin’ the noon train from Newmarket.”
“Thank you,” Bradford said. He tipped his tweed cap smartly and turned to go, thinking that if a detective wished to learn something about a villager, the best place to begin was with the village postmistress. And if they were all as pretty as this one, detecting would be a fine business. He had forgotten, for the moment, about Edith.
“Oh, wait, sir,” the woman called, and Bradford turned back. “Since ye’re goin’ to ’Ill ’Ouse, mebbee ye wouldn’t mind-” She took a shoebox-sized package from a shelf and pushed it across the counter. “Would ye be so good as to deliver this to the doctor? The letter carrier was meant t’take it, but she left it be’ind.” The postmistress gave her pretty head an irritated shake, as if to comment on the careless ways of letter carriers, and watched Bradford out the door.
Following directions, Bradford turned his hired hack off the village road at a painted sign bearing the words DOCTOR SEPTIMUS POLTNER, VETERINARY SURGEON. At the end of the shrubbery-lined lane stood Hill House, and behind it the surgery, in a separate frame building with two windows in the front and a Dutch door. Behind this was an ancient timber-and-stone barn, open on one side to a fenced paddock. Within, Bradford could see several horses. A ragged boy was carrying a bucket of oats into the barn, followed by a motley flock of chickens looking for their share.
The top half of the surgery door stood open. Bradford opened the lower door and went inside, carrying both the package from the postmistress and Patrick’s bottle, wrapped in brown paper. There was a waiting room just large enough for two empty chairs, with a door in the opposite wall, standing open. Bradford went to it and put his head through.
“Dr. Polter?” he asked.
A stooped, gray-haired man was sitting at a cluttered table with a soot black cat draped across his shoulders like a fur piece, peering at the pages of a large book through a magnifying glass. The room in which he sat was cluttered as well, heaped around with piles of books, papers, medicine bottles, surgical implements, and baskets of oddments, everything strewn here and there in no apparent order. Several large colored drawings of the anatomy of horses and cows were pinned to the walls, and on a hook by the door hung a lantern, a waterproof cape, a large waterproof hat, and a pair of waterproof fishing trousers. Beneath them stood an umbrella and a pair of Wellingtons.
The man had taken no notice of him. “Dr. Polter?” Bradford said again, raising his voice, and then, when the man still did not respond, shouted “Dr. Polter?”
“Eh?” The man looked up and Bradford saw that he was getting on in years, in his seventies, perhaps. “What d’you say? Are you looking for me?”
“Dr. Polter,” Bradford said, loudly and distinctly, “I’ve brought you this.” He handed over the package the postmistress had entrusted to him. “From the post office in Exning.”
The cat jumped down from the doctor’s shoulders and sat on the book he had been reading, licking a paw. “You’re the new letter carrier, then?” Dr. Polter asked, in the overly loud voice of the hard-of-hearing. He set the package on the table beside him, and squinted at Bradford. “Bit old for the job, aren’t you? Must be new here, too. Don’t remember seeing you around the village.”
“I’m not the mail carrier,” Bradford said loudly.
“Not the mail carrier? Then why are you carrying the mail?” The cat yawned, flicked its tail, and began to sniff delicately at the package.
“I’ve come to ask you some questions, Dr. Polter,” Bradford said, louder still. “About horse doping.” On the way to Exning, he had given careful thought to the approach he would take with the doctor and had decided to be direct and straightforward, thinking that he might thereby catch his informant off guard and startle him into revealing what he knew. But he had not counted on the doctor’s being deaf.
“Questions about what, did you say?” the doctor asked. He reached under his chair and picked up a large green-painted ear trumpet, putting it to his ear. “Speak up, or I won’t hear you, young man.”
“Horse doping,” Bradford said loudly into the bell of the trumpet, then repeated the words, feeling foolish. It was one thing to put questions to a man in a normal tone of voice, quite another to shout them at him in simplified form, as if they were both idiots.
“Ah.” The cat abandoned the package and lay down on the doctor’s book, purring. “Horse doping, eh? What sort of horse is it you want to dope? Where is it running?” The doctor eyed Bradford ’s dark green tweed jacket, green cloth breeches, ivory waistcoat and tie, and added, with raised brows, “Not a trainer, I’ll warrant. Owner, I s’pose.” He held the trumpet in Bradford ’s direction. “What sort of horse, eh? What sort of horse?”
Bradford leaned forward. This was not the tack he had planned to take, but under the circumstances, it would have to do. “I own a three-year-old colt,” he said distinctly. “I want to run him to win in the ten-furlong handicap at Newmarket on Friday.”
“Friday, eh?” Dr. Polter stroked the cat, frowning. “Don’t know why you’ve come to me directly, Mr.-what did you say your name was?”
“ Murray,” Bradford said, deciding of a sudden that he would rather not give his real name. “Jack Murray, sir.”
“Well, Mr. Murphy, weren’t you told that I usually work through trainers? Prefer not to deal with owners-they get in the way.” He scowled. “If you want to race a doped horse, take it to Clark and Wishard, at the Red House stable, in Newmarket. They’re experts in that game.”
“Yes, I know about Wishard and Clark,” Bradford said. “But I…” He smiled rather foolishly, then put his mouth to the trumpet and said, in an approximation of a whisper: “I’m alone in this, don’t you know. Just my own little secret. Not particularly keen on anyone else knowing about it. Particularly the Americans.”
Dr. Polter thought about this for a moment, still stroking the cat. “I see,” he said finally. “Well, I s’pose it can’t hurt. Run your colt to lose, you say?”
“No,” Bradford said emphatically. “I want to run him to win.” He leaned into the trumpet. “To win, sir!”
“Ah. Well, then, you’ll want some speedy balls.” He pushed his chair back.
“Speedy balls?” Bradford put on a confused look. “No, I don’t think so. Actually, a friend gave me this.” He pulled Patrick’s bottle out of its wrapping and put it on the table in front of Dr. Polter. “You used it on his horse recently, and he was quite pleased with the outcome. Wonder if you’d be so good as to sell me a dose, and to give me some idea what’s in it. I’ll pay your price, of course,” he added quickly. “Whatever you ask.”
At the mention of money, a crafty look crossed the doctor’s face, and he picked up the bottle,
