‘Thanks, then.’
‘Be my guest.’
Jamie Fingall’s guvnor, Basil Clutter, trained in Lambourn about a mile down the road from my house, but there wasn’t time to seek him out before the next race, the three mile ’chase, and after that I had to change again and go out to meet the princess in the parade ring, where Kinley was already stalking round.
As before, she was well guarded and seemed almost to be enjoying it, and I didn’t know whether or not to alarm her with news of Nanterre. In the end, I said only to Thomas, ‘The frog is here. Stay close to her,’ and he gave a sketchy thumbs-up, and looked determined. Thomas looking determined, I thought, would deter Attila the Hun.
Kinley made up for an otherwise disgusting afternoon, sending my spirits soaring from depths to dizzy heights.
The rapport between us, established almost instantly during his first hurdle race the previous November, had deepened in three succeeding outings so that by February he seemed to know in advance what I wanted him to do, as I knew what he wanted to do before he did it. The result was racing at its sublime best, an unexplainable synthesis at a primitive level and undoubtedly a shared joy.
Kinley jumped hurdles with a surge that had almost left me behind the first time I felt it, and even though every time since I’d know what was going to happen, I hadn’t outgrown the surprise. The first hurdle left me gasping as usual, and by the end I reckoned we’d stolen twenty clean lengths in the air. He won jauntily and at a canter and I hoped Wykeham, watching on the box, would think it ‘a nice ride’ and forgive me Cascade. Maynard Allardeck, I grimly thought, walking Kinley back along the path to the unsaddling enclosure, could find no vestige of an excuse that time to carp or cavil, and I realised that he and Kinley and Nanterre between them had at least stopped me brooding over Botticelli, Giorgione, Titian and Raphael.
The princess had her best stars to her blue eyes, looking as if guns weren’t invented. I slid to the ground and we smiled in shared triumph, and I refrained with an effort from hugging her.
‘He’s ready for Cheltenham,’ she said, sticking out a glove to pat lightly the dark hide. ‘He’s as good as Sir Ken.’
Sir Ken had been an all-time star in the nineteen fifties, winning three Champion Hurdles and numerous other top hurdling events. Owning a horse like Sir Ken was the ultimate for many who’d seen him, and the princess, who had, had referred to him often.
‘He has a long way to go,’ I said, unbuckling the girths. ‘He’s still so young.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said happily. ‘But...’ She stopped abruptly, with a gasp. I looked at her and saw her eyes widen as she looked with horror above my right shoulder, and I whipped round fast to see what was there.
Henri Nanterre was there, staring at her.
I stood between them. Thomas and the friends were behind her, more occupied with avoiding Kinley’s lighthearted hooves than guarding their charge in the safest and most public of places.
Henri Nanterre momentarily transferred his gaze to my face and then, with shock, stared at me with his mouth opening.
I’d thought in the parade ring that since he’d been watching me, he’d found out who I was, but realised in that second that he’d thought of me then simply as the princess’s jockey. He was confounded, it seemed, to identify me from the evening before.
‘You’re...’ he said, for once at a loss for loud words. ‘You...’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’
He recovered with a snap from his surprise, narrowed his eyes at the princess, and said distinctly, ‘Jockeys can have accidents.’
‘So can people who carry guns,’ I said. ‘Is that what you came to say?’
It appeared, actually, that it more or less was.
‘Go away,’ I said, much as he’d said it to me a day earlier up in the box, and to my complete astonishment, he went.
‘Hey,’ Thomas said agitatedly, ‘that was... that was... wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was,’ I said, looping the girths round my saddle. ‘Now you know what he looks like.’
‘Madam!’ Thomas said penitently. ‘Where did he come from?’
‘I didn’t see,’ she said, slightly breathless. ‘He was just in there.’
‘Fella moves like an eel,’ one of her friends said; and certainly there had been a sort of gliding speed to his departure.
‘Well, my dears,’ the princess said to her friends, laughing a trifle shakily, ‘let’s go up and celebrate this lovely win. And Kit, come up soon.’
‘Yes, Princess.’
I weighed in and, as it was my last ride of the day, changed into street clothes. After that, I made a detour over to the saddling boxes because Basil Clutter, as Jamie had told me, would be there, saddling up his runner for the last race.
Trainers in those places never had time to talk, but he did manage an answer or two, grudgingly, while he settled weight cloth, number cloth and saddle onto his restless charge’s back.
‘Frenchman? Nanterre, yes. Owns horses in France, trained by Villon. Industrialist of some sort. Where’s he staying? How should I know? Ask the Roquevilles, he was with them. Roquevilles? Look, stop asking questions, ring me tonight, right?’
‘Right,’ I said, sighing, and left him sponging out his horse’s mouth so he should look clean and well-groomed before the public. Basil Clutter was hard-working and always bustling, saving money by doing Dusty’s job, being his own travelling head lad.
I went up to the princess’s box, drank tea with lemon, and re-lived for her and the friends the glories of Kinley’s jumping. When it was time to go she said, ‘You will come back with me, won’t you?’ as if it were natural for me to do so, and I said, ‘Yes, certainly,’ as if I thought so too.
I picked up from my still parked car the overnight bag I habitually carried with me for contingencies, and we travelled without much trouble back to Eaton Square where I telephoned to Wykeham from the bamboo room. He was pleased, he said, about Kinley, but annoyed about Hillsborough. Dusty had told him I’d made no show and been hauled in by the Stewards for it, and what did I think I was doing, getting into trouble two days in a row?
I could strangle Dusty, I thought, and told Wykeham what I’d told the Stewards. ‘They accepted the explanation,’ I said. ‘Maynard Allardeck was one of them, and he’s after me whatever I do.’
‘Yes, I suppose he is.’ He cheered up a good deal and even chuckled, ‘Bookmakers are taking bets on when — not whether — he’ll get you suspended.’
‘Very funny,’ I said, not amused. ‘I’m still at Eaton Square, if you want me.’
‘Are you?’ he said. ‘All right then. Goodnight, Kit.’
‘Goodnight, Wykeham.’
I got through next to Basil Clutter, who told me the Roquevilles’ number, and I caught the Roquevilles on their return from Newbury.
No, Bernard Roqueville said, he didn’t know where Henri Nanterre was staying. Yes, he knew him, but not well. He’d met him in Paris at the races, at Longchamp, and Nanterre had renewed the acquaintanceship by inviting him and his wife for a drink at Newbury. Why was I interested, he asked.
I said I was hoping to locate Nanterre while he was in England. Bernard Roqueville regretted he couldn’t help, and that was that.
A short lead going nowhere, I thought resignedly, putting down the receiver. Maybe the police would have better luck, although I feared that finding someone to give him a finger-wagging for waving an empty gun at a foreign princess wouldn’t exactly bring them out steaming in a full-scale manhunt.
I went downstairs to the sitting room and discussed Hillsborough’s fall from grace over a drink with the princess, and later in the evening she, Roland de Brescou and I ate dinner together in the dining room, served by Dawson; and I thought only about twenty times of the Florentine Banquet up north.