‘I didn’t send any such message,’ Danielle said blankly. ‘I was waiting where we’d watched the race before, where we’d said we’d meet.’
‘Who gave you the message?’ I asked Litsi.
‘Just a man.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Well... an ordinary man. Not very young. He had a Sporting Life in his hands, and a sort of form book, with his finger keeping the place... and binoculars.’
‘What sort of voice?’
‘Just... ordinary.’
I let the brakes off with a sigh and started off towards Chiswick. Litsi had walked straight into a booby trap which had been meant either to frighten him or to kill him, and no one would have set it but Henri Nanterre. I hadn’t seen Nanterre at the races, and neither Litsi nor Danielle knew him by sight.
If Nanterre had set the trap, he’d known where Litsi would be that day, and the only way he could have known was via Beatrice. I couldn’t believe that she would have known what use would be made of her little tit-bit, and it occurred to me that I didn’t want her to know, either. It was important that Beatrice should keep right on telling.
Litsi and Danielle were quiet in the back of the car, no doubt travelling along much the same mental track. They protested, though, when I asked them not to tell Beatrice about the fake message.
‘But she’s got to know,’ Danielle said vehemently. Then she’ll see she must stop it. She’ll see how murderous that man is...’
‘I don’t want her to stop it just yet,’ I said. ‘Not until Tuesday.’
‘Why ever not? Why Tuesday?’
‘We’ll do what Kit wants,’ Litsi said, I’ll tell Beatrice just what I told the racecourse people, that I went up to look at the view.’
‘She’s dangerous,’ Danielle said.
‘I don’t see how we can catch Nanterre without her,’ I said. ‘So be a darling.’
I wasn’t sure whether or not it was the actual word which silenced her, but she made no more objections, and we travelled for a while without saying anything significant. Litsi’s arms and shoulders were aching from the strain of having hung onto the wall so long, and he shifted uncomfortably from time to time, making small grunts.
I went back to thinking about the man who had delivered the misleading message, and asked Litsi if he was absolutely positive the man had used the word ‘Danielle’.
‘Positive,’ Litsi said without hesitation. ‘What he said to me first was, “Do you know someone called Danielle?” When I said I did, he said she wanted me to go up the stairs to the balcony to look at the view. He pointed up there. So I went.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Then we’ll take a spot of positive action.’
Like almost everyone in the racing world, I had a telephone in my car, and I put a call through to the Towncrier and asked for the Sports Desk. I wasn’t sure whether their racing correspondent, Bunty Ireland, would be in the office at that time, but it seemed he was. He hadn’t been at Bradbury: he went mostly to major meetings and on other days wrote his column in the office.
‘I want to pay for an advertisement,’ I told him, ‘but it has to be on the racing page and in a conspicuous place.’
‘Are you touting for rides?’ he asked sardonically. ‘A Grand National mount? Have saddle, will travel, that sort of thing?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Very funny.’ Bunty had an elephantine sense of humour but he was kind at heart. ‘Write this down word for word, and persuade the racing page editor to print it in nice big noticeable letters.’
‘Fire away, then.’
‘Large reward offered to anyone who passed on a message from Danielle at Bradbury races on Thursday afternoon.’ I dictated it slowly and added the telephone number of the house in Eaton Square.
Bunty’s mystification came clearly across the air waves. ‘You want the personal column for that,’ he said.
‘No. The racing page. Did you get it straight?’
He read it over, word for word.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘if you were riding at Bradbury, perhaps you can confirm this very odd story we’ve got about a guy falling from a balcony onto a pile of coats. Is someone having us on, or should we print it?’
‘It happened,’ I said.
‘Did you see it?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Was the guy hurt?’
‘No, not at all. Look, Bunty, get the story from someone else, will you? I’m in my car, and I want to get that ad in the Sporting Life and the Racing Post, before they go to press. And could you give me their numbers?’
‘Sure, hold on.’
I put the receiver down temporarily and passed my pen and notebook back to Danielle, and when Bunty returned with the numbers, repeated them aloud for her to write down.
‘Hey, Kit,’ Bunty said, ‘give me a quote I can use about your chances on Abseil tomorrow.’
‘You know I can’t, Bunty, Wykeham Harlow doesn’t like it.’
‘Yeah, yeah. He’s an uncooperative old bugger.’
‘Don’t forget the ad,’ I said.
He promised to see to it, and I made the calls with the same request to the two sporting papers.
‘Tomorrow and Saturday,’ I said to them. ‘In big black type on the front page.’
‘It’ll cost you,’ they said.
‘Send me the bill.’
Danielle and Litsi listened to these conversations in silence, and when I’d finished, Litsi said doubtfully, ‘Do you expect any results?’
‘You never know. You can’t get results if you don’t try.’
Danielle said, ‘Your motto for life.’
‘Not a bad one,’ Litsi said.
We dropped Danielle at the studio just on time and returned to Eaton Square. Litsi decided to say nothing at all about his narrow escape, and asked for my advice in the matter of strained muscles.
‘A sauna and a massage,’ I said. ‘Failing that, a long hot soak and some aspirins. And John Grundy might give you a massage tomorrow morning.’
He decided on the home cures and, reaching the house, disappeared into his rooms to deal with his woes in private. I continued up to the bamboo room, still uninvaded territory, where, in the evening routine, I telephoned to Wykeham and picked up my messages.
Wykeham said the owners of Pinkeye were irritated that the race had been delayed, and had complained to him that I’d been off-hand with them afterwards.
‘But Pinkeye won,’ I said. I’d ridden the whole race automatically, like driving a well-known journey with a preoccupied mind and not remembering a yard of it on arrival. When I’d gone past the winning post, I hadn’t been able to remember much about the jumps.
‘You know what they’re like,’ Wykeham said. ‘Never satisfied, even when they win.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Is the horse all right?’
All the horses were fine, Wykeham said, and Abseil (pronounced Abseil) was jumping out of his skin and should trot up on the morrow.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Well, goodnight Wykeham.’
‘Goodnight, Paul.’
Normality, I thought with a smile, disconnecting, was definitely on its way back.
Dinner was a stilted affair of manufactured conversations, with Roland de Brescou sitting at the head of the table in his wheelchair, looking abstracted.
Beatrice spent some time complaining that Harrods was now impossible (busloads of tourists, Casilia) and that Fortnums was too crowded, and that her favourite fur shop had closed and vanished. Beatrice’s day of shopping had included a visit to the hairdresser, with a consequent intensification of peach tint. Beatrice’s pleasures, I saw, were a way of passing time which had no other purpose: a vista of smothering pointlessness, infinitely depressing. No wonder, I thought, that she complained, with all that void pursuing her.