It wasn’t until after ten, saying goodnight, that she spoke about Nanterre.
‘He said, didn’t he, that jockeys have accidents.’
‘That’s what he said. And so they do, pretty often.’
‘That wasn’t what he meant.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘I couldn’t forgive myself if because of us you came to harm.’
‘That’s what he’s counting on. But I’ll take my chance, and so will Thomas.’ And privately I thought that if her husband hadn’t cracked instantly with a gun to his wife’s head, he was unlikely to bend because of a whole barrage pointed at ours.
She said, remembering with a shiver, ‘Accidents would happen to those I liked... and employed.’
‘It’s only noise. He won’t do anything,’ I said encouragingly, and she said quietly that she hoped not, and went to bed.
I wandered again round the big house, checking its defences, and wondered again what I’d overlooked.
In the morning, I found out.
I was already awake at seven when the intercom buzzed, and when I answered, a sleepy-voiced Dawson asked me to pick up the ordinary telephone as there was an in-coming call for me. I picked up the receiver and found it was Wykeham on the line.
Racing stables wake early on Sundays, as on other days, and I was used to Wykeham’s dawn thoughts, as he woke always by five. His voice that day, however, was as incoherently agitated as I’d ever heard it, and at first I wondered wildly what sins I might have committed in my sleep.
‘D... did you hear what what I s... said?’ he stuttered. ‘Two of them! T... two of the p... princess’s horses are d... dead.’
‘Two?’ I said, sitting bolt upright in bed and feeling cold. ‘How? I mean... which two?’
‘They’re dead in their boxes. Stiff. They’ve been dead for hours...’
‘Which two?’ I said again, fearfully.
There was a silence at the other end. He had difficulty remembering their names at the best of times, and I could imagine that at that moment a whole roll-call of long-gone heroes was fumbling on his tongue.
‘The two,’ he said in the end, ‘that ran on Friday.’
I felt numb.
‘Are you there?’ he demanded.
‘Yes... Do you mean... Cascade... and Cotopaxi?’
He couldn’t mean it, I thought. It couldn’t be true. Not Cotopaxi... not before the Grand National.
‘Cascade,’ he said. ‘Cotopaxi.’
Oh no... ‘How?’ I said.
‘I’ve got the vet coming,’ he said. ‘Got him out of bed. I don’t know how. That’s his job. But two! One might die, I’ve known it happen, but not two... Tell the princess, Kit.’
‘That’s your job,’ I protested.
‘No, no, you’re there... Break it to her. Better than on the phone. They’re like children to her.’
People she liked... Jesus Christ.
‘What about Kinley?’ I asked urgently.
‘What?’
‘Kinley... yesterday’s hurdle winner.’
‘Oh, yes, him. He’s all right. We checked all the others when we found these two. Their boxes were next to each other, I expect you remember... Tell the princess soon, Kit, won’t you? We’ll have to move these horses out. She’ll have to say what she wants done with the carcasses. Though if they’re poisoned...’
‘Do you think they’re poisoned?’ I said.
‘Don’t know. Tell her now, Kit.’ He put his receiver down with a crash, and I replaced mine feeling I would burst with ineffectual anger.
To kill her horses! If Henri Nanterre had been there at that moment, I would have stuffed his plastic gun down his loud-voiced throat. Cascade and Cotopaxi... people I knew, had known for years. I grieved for them as for friends.
Dawson agreed that his wife would wake the princess and tell her I had some sad news of one of her horses, and would wait for her in the sitting room. I dressed and went down there, and presently she came, without make-up and with anxious eyes.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Which one?’
When I told her it was two, and which two, I watched her horror turn to horrified speculation.
‘Oh no, he couldn’t,’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t think, do you...’
‘If he has,’ I said, ‘he’ll wish he hadn’t.’
She decided that we should go down to Wykeham’s stable immediately, and wouldn’t be deterred when I tried to persuade her not to.
‘Of course, I must go. Poor Wykeham, he’ll need comforting. I should feel wrong if I didn’t go.’
Wykeham needed comforting less than she did, but by eight-thirty we were on the road, the princess in lipstick and Thomas placidly uncomplaining about the loss of his free day. My offer of driving the Rolls instead of him had been turned down like an improper suggestion.
Wykeham’s establishment, an hour’s drive south of London, was outside a small village on a slope of the Sussex Downs. Sprawling and complex, it had been enlarged haphazardly at intervals over a century, and was attractive to owners because of its maze of unexpected little courtyards, with eight or ten boxes in each, and holly bushes in red-painted tubs. To the stable staff, the picturesque convolution meant a lot of fetching and carrying, a lot of time wasted.
The princess’s horses were spread through five of the courtyards, not filling any of them. Wykeham, like many trainers, preferred to scatter an owner’s horses about rather than to clump them all together, and Cascade and Cotopaxi, as it happened, had been the only two belonging to the princess to be housed in the courtyard nearest the entrance drive.
One had to park in a central area and walk through archways into the courtyards, and when he heard us arrive, Wykeham came out of the first courtyard to meet us.
He looked older by the week, I thought uneasily, watching him roguishly kiss the princess’s hand. He always half-flirted with her, with twinkling eyes and the remnants of a powerful old charm, but that morning he simply looked distracted, his white hair blowing when he removed his hat, his thin old hands shaking.
‘My dear Wykeham,’ the princess said, alarmed. ‘You look so cold.’
‘Come into the house,’ he said, moving that way. ‘That’s best.’
The princess hesitated. ‘Are my poor horses still here?’
He nodded miserably. ‘The vet’s with them.’
‘Then I think I’ll see them,’ she said simply, and walked firmly into the courtyard, Wykeham and I following, not trying to dissuade her.
The doors of two of the boxes stood open, the interiors beyond lit palely with electric light, although there was full daylight outside. All the other boxes were firmly closed, and Wykeham was saying, ‘We’ve just left the other horses here in their boxes. They don’t seem to be disturbed, because there’s no blood... that’s what would upset them, you know...’
The princess, only half listening, walked more slowly across to where her horses lay on the dark brown peat on the floor of their boxes, their bodies silent humps, all flashing speed gone.
They had died with their night rugs on, but either the vet or Wykeham or the lads had unbuckled those and rolled them back against the walls. We looked in silence at the dark revealed sheen of Cascade, and the snow-splashed chestnut of Cotopaxi.
Robin Curtiss, the tall and gangling boyish vet, had met the princess occasionally on other mornings, and me more often. Dressed in green protective overalls, he nodded to us both and excused himself from shaking hands, saying he would need to wash first.
The princess, acknowledging his greeting, asked at once and with composure, ‘Please tell me... how did they die?’
Robin Curtiss glanced at Wykeham and me, but neither of us would have tried to stop him answering, so he looked back to the princess and told her straight.