- •I waited for four hours, getting to know intimately the pattern of the curtains and the cracks in the brown linoleum. Mostly, I thought about wire.
- •Chapter two
- •It was Sunday. I drove to the racecourse, but the gates were locked. Back in the town the Clerk of the Course's office was shut and empty. I telephoned his home, but there was no answer.
- •I told him about my search at the fence, and what I had found there.
- •I put my head quietly round Scilla's door. Her room was dark, but I could hear her even breathing. She was still sound asleep.
- •I sat up straight, surprised.
- •Chapter three
- •I told her as gradually, as gently as I could, that Bill's fall had not been an ordinary accident. I told her about the wire and about Lodge's investigations.
- •I had just decided to ask him to explain his attitude, and to tell him what had really happened, when he began to speak.
- •I was lost before she spoke a word. The first thing I said was, 'I'll be glad to ride your horse.'
- •Chapter four
- •I unsaddled, went back to the weighing-room, changed into Kate's brand new colours, and went out to see what had become of Miss Ellery-Penn.
- •Chapter five
- •I was just giving Joe up when he came out of the gate and hailed me with no apology for his lateness. But I was not the only person to notice his arrival.
- •I was puzzled. 'Is Sandy the only person who has harmed you?' 'It wasn't Sandy, surely, who was paying you not to win?'
- •Chapter six
- •I had driven the better part of three hundred miles besides riding in two races, and I was tired. We went to our beds early, Scilla promising to take her sleeping pills.
- •I drove up to London to spend some long overdue hours in the office, arranging the details of insurance and customs duty on a series of shipments of copper.
- •I already knew I wanted to marry Kate. The thought that she might not have me was a bitter one.
- •I parked the car in the lay-by behind the horse-box. The door at the back of the horse-box opened and a hand, the stable lad's, I supposed, reached out to help me up. He took me by the wrist.
- •I sat on the ground and looked after the speeding horse-box. The number plate was mostly obscured by thick dust, but I had time to see the registration letters. They were apx.
- •I said, 'Have you got any further with the Major Davidson business since the day before yesterday?'
- •I grinned.
- •I played poker with the children and lost to Henry because half my mind was occupied with his father's affairs.
- •Chapter seven
- •I felt a warm glow inside. The Cheltenham Festival meeting suddenly seemed not a bad place to be, after all.
- •I felt a great impulse to assure him it was none of mine either. But he turned back to me and said, 'What shall I do?' in a voice full of whining self-pity.
- •I pointed out the reasons for supposing that murder had not been intended. Sandy 's brown eyes stared at me unwinkingly until I had finished.
- •I drank a sip of champagne and said, 'Well done yourself, you old son-of-a-gun. And here's to the Gold Cup.'
- •I walked purposefully up to Pete, and he made me his excuse for breaking away. We went towards the gates.
- •Chapter eight
- •Inside, the house was charming, with just a saving touch of shabbiness about the furnishings, as if, though rich, the inhabitants saw no need to be either ostentatious or extravagant.
- •I laughed. 'Then why did you give a racehorse to your niece?'
- •I couldn't help a look of distaste, and she laughed and said, 'That's what I think too, but I'd never let him suspect it. He's so devoted to them all.'
- •It was ten miles to Washington. We went into the village and stopped, and I asked some children on their way home from Sunday school where farmer Lawson lived.
- •I thanked him all the same for his trouble, and he asked me to let him know, if I found out, who had taken his box.
- •I laughed. 'If I'd thought he could have possibly been the leader of the gang I wouldn't have taken you there.'
- •Chapter nine
- •I said, 'I suppose if they can't get money from their old victims, the gang try protecting people who don't know about your systems and your dogs -'
- •I looked at Uncle George to see how he liked being deprived of the end of the story, and saw him push his half-filled plate away with a gesture of revulsion, as if he were suddenly about to vomit.
- •Chapter ten
- •Chapter eleven
- •It was still raining an hour later when I went out to ride Palindrome. Pete was waiting for me in the parade ring, the water dripping off the brim of his hat in a steady stream.
- •I knew him.
- •Chapter twelve
- •Chapter thirteen
- •I scowled at him.
- •I leaned my head back against the window and waited for these details to mean something significant, but all that happened was that my inability to think increased.
- •Chapter fourteen
- •I went outside. I stood near the weighing-room door, waiting for Joe and catching up with the latest gossip.
- •Chapter fifteen
- •I pulled Admiral up. Looking carefully I could see the posts and the high wire fence which formed the boundary between the little trees and the road beyond.
- •I began to get the glimmerings of an idea of how to use the manhunt I had caused.
- •I came back to the present with a jerk. I picked up the microphone, clicked over the switch, and said 'No' in as bored and nasal a tone as I could muster.
- •Chapter sixteen
- •Chapter seventeen
- •I stared at the page until the words faded into a blur.
- •Chapter eighteen
- •I swallowed and said, 'Do you remember the children who had to be driven to school by a judo expert to keep them safe?'
- •It drove off. I stared after it, numbly.
- •Chapter nineteen
- •I was watching Sandy instead of concentrating wholly on Forlorn Hope, so that what happened was entirely my own fault.
- •I mentally reviewed the rest of the gang.
- •Illogically, this made me very angry.
- •Chapter nine
- •Chapter fourteen
- •Chapter fifteen
I laughed. 'Then why did you give a racehorse to your niece?'
Uncle George opened his mouth and shut it again. He blinked. Then he said, 'I thought she should meet more people. She has no young company here with us, and I believe we may have given her too sheltered an upbringing.'
Aunt Deb, who had been bored into silence by the subject of horses, returned to the conversation at this point.
'Nonsense,' she said briskly. 'She has been brought up as I was, which is the right way. Girls are given too much freedom nowadays, with the result that they lose their heads and elope with fortune hunters or men-about-town of unsavoury background. Girls need strictness and guidance if they are to behave as ladies, and make suitable, well-connected marriages.'
She at least had the grace to avoid looking directly at me while she spoke. She leaned over and patted the sleeping dachshund instead.
Uncle George changed the subject with an almost audible jolt, and asked me where I lived.
'Southern Rhodesia,' I said.
'Indeed?' said Aunt Deb. 'How interesting. Do your parents plan to settle there permanently?' It was a delicate, practised, social probe.
'They were both born there,' I answered.
'And will they be coming to visit you in England?' asked Uncle George.
'My mother died when I was ten. My father might come some time if he is not too busy.'
'Too busy doing what?' asked Uncle George interestedly.
'He's a trader,' I said, giving my usual usefully noncommittal answer to his question. 'Trader' could cover anything from a rag-and-bone man to what he actually was, the head of the biggest general trading concern in the Federation. Both Uncle George and Aunt Deb looked unsatisfied by this reply, but I did not add to it. It would have embarrassed and angered Aunt Deb to have had my pedigree and prospects laid out before her after her little lecture on jockeys, and in any case for Dane's sake I could not do it. He had faced Aunt Deb's social snobbery without any of the defences I could muster if I wanted to, and I certainly felt myself no better man than he.
I made instead a remark admiring an arrangement of rose prints on the white panelled walls, which pleased Aunt Deb but brought forth a sardonic glance from Uncle George.
'We keep our ancestors in the dining-room,' he said.
Kate stood up. 'I'll show Alan where he's sleeping, and so on,' she said.
'Did you come by car?' Uncle George asked. I nodded. He said to Kate, 'Then ask Culbertson to put Mr York's car in the garage, will you, my dear?'
'Yes, Uncle George,' said Kate, smiling at him.
We crossed the hall again for me to fetch my suitcase from the car.
I lifted my suitcase out of the car, and we turned back.
Kate said, 'Why didn't you tell Aunt Deb you were an amateur rider and rich, and so on?'
'Why didn't you?' I asked. 'Before I came.'
She was taken aback. 'I- I- er- because-' She could not bring out the truthful answer, so I said it for her.
'Because of Dane?'
'Yes, because of Dane.' She looked uncomfortable.
'That's quite all right by me,' I said lightly. 'And I like you for it.' I kissed her cheek, and she laughed and turned away from me, and ran up the stairs in relief.
After luncheon on Sunday I was given permission to take Kate out for a drive.
In the morning Aunt Deb had been to church with Kate and me in attendance.
While we stood in the drive waiting for Aunt Deb to come out of the house, Kate explained that Uncle George never went to church.
'He spends most of his time in his study. That's the little room next to the breakfast room,' she said. 'He talks to all his friends on the telephone for hours, and he's writing a treatise or a monograph or something about Red Indians, I think, and he only comes out for meals and things like that.'
'Rather dull for your aunt,' I said, admiring the way the March sunlight lay along the perfect line of her jaw and lit red glints in her dark eyelashes.
'Oh, he takes her up to Town once a week. She has her hair done, and he looks things up in the library of the British Museum. Then they have a jolly lunch at the Ritz or somewhere stuffy like that, and go to a matinée or an exhibition in the afternoon. A thoroughly debauched programme,' said Kate, with a dazzling smile.
After lunch, Uncle George invited me into his study to see what he called his 'trophies'. These were a collection of objects belonging to various primitive or barbaric peoples, and, as far as I could judge, would have done credit to any small museum.
Ranks of weapons, together with some jewellery, pots, and ritual objects were labelled and mounted on shelves inside glass cases which lined three walls of the room. Among others, there were pieces from Central Africa and the Polynesian Islands, from the Viking age of Norway, and from the Maoris of New Zealand. Uncle George's interest covered the globe.
'I study one people at a time,' he explained. 'It gives me something to do since I retired, and I find it enthralling. Did you know that in the Fiji Islands the men used to fatten women like cattle and eat them.'
His eyes gleamed, and I had a suspicion that part of the pleasure he derived from primitive peoples lay in contemplation of their primitive violences. Perhaps he needed a mental antidote to those lunches at the Ritz, and the matinées.
I said, 'Which people are you studying now? Kate said something about Red Indians-?'
He seemed pleased that I was taking an interest in his hobby.
'Yes. I am doing a survey of all the ancient peoples of the Americas, and the North American Indians were my last subject. Their case is over here.'
He showed me over to one corner. The collection of feathers, beads, knives, and arrows looked almost ridiculously like those in Western films, but I had no doubt that these were genuine. And in the centre hung a hank of black hair with a withered lump of matter dangling from it, and underneath was gummed the laconic label, 'Scalp'.
I turned round, and surprised Uncle George watching me with a look of secret enjoyment. He let his gaze slide past me to the case.
'Oh, yes,' he said. 'The scalp's a real one. It's only about a hundred years old.'
'Interesting,' I said non-committally.
'I spent a year on the North American Indians because there are so many different tribes,' he went on. 'But I've moved on to Central America now. Next I'll do the South Americans, the Incas and the Fuegians and so on. I'm not a scholar, of course, and I don't do any field work, but I do write articles sometimes for various publications. Then he began to drift back towards the door.
I followed him, and paused by his big, carved, black oak desk which stood squarely in front of the window. On it, besides two telephones and a silver pen tray, lay several cardboard folders with pale blue stick-on labels marked Arapaho, Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo, and Mohawk.
Separated from these was another folder marked Mayas, and I idly stretched out my hand to open it, because I had never heard of such a tribe. Uncle George's plump fingers came down firmly on the folder, holding it shut.
'I have only just started on this nation,' he said apologetically. 'And there's nothing worth looking at yet.'
'I've never heard of that tribe,' I said.
'They were Central American Indians, not North,' he said pleasantly. 'They were astronomers and mathematicians, you know. Very civilized. I am finding them fascinating. They discovered that rubber bounced, and they made balls of it long before it was known in Europe. At the moment I am looking into their wars. I am trying to find out what they did with their prisoners of war. Several of their frescos show prisoners begging for mercy.' He paused, his eyes fixed on me, assessing me. 'Would you like to help me correlate the references I have so far collected?' he said.
'Well- er- er-' I began.
'I didn't suppose you would,' he said. 'You'd rather take Kate for a drive, no doubt.'
So three o'clock found Kate and me walking round to the big garage behind the house.
'You remember me telling you, a week ago, while we were dancing, about the way Bill Davidson died?' I said casually, while I helped Kate open the garage doors.
'How could I forget?'
'Did you by any chance mention it to anyone the next morning? There wasn't any reason why you shouldn't - but I'd like very much to know if you did.'
She wrinkled her nose. 'I can't really remember, but I don't think so. Only Aunt Deb and Uncle George, of course, at breakfast. I can't think of anyone else. I didn't think there was any secret about it, though.' Her voice rose at the end into a question.
'There wasn't,' I said, reassuringly, fastening back the door. 'What did Uncle George do before he retired and took up anthropology?'
'Retired?' she said. 'Oh, that's only one of his jokes. He retired when he was about thirty, I think, as soon as he inherited a whacking great private income from his father. For decades he and Aunt Deb used to set off round the world every three years or so, collecting all those gruesome relics he was showing you in the study. What did you think of them?'