The gawky Raven girl who had danced an eightsome reel with Ellis turned out to be the third daughter of an earl. She herself had gone off to Greece to join someone’s yacht, but her sister (the second daughter) insisted that Ellis had danced with dozens of people after that, and wasn’t I, Sid Halley, being a teeny-weeny twit?
I went to see Miss Richardson and Mrs Bethany, joint owners of the Windward Stud Farm, home of the latest colt victim: and to my dismay found Ginnie Quint there as well.
All three women were in the stud farm’s office, a building separate from the rambling one-story dwelling house. A groom long-reining a yearling had directed me incuriously and I drew up outside the pinkish brick new-looking structure without relish for my mission, but not expecting a tornado.
I knocked and entered, as one does with such offices, and found myself in the normal clutter of desks, computers, copiers, wall charts and endless piles of paper.
I’d done a certain amount of homework before I went there, so it was easy to identify Miss Richardson as the tall, bulky, dominant figure in tweed jacket, worn cord trousers and wiry gray short-cropped curls. Fifty, I thought; despises men. Mrs Bethany, a smaller, less powerful version of Miss Richardson, was reputedly the one who stayed up at night when the mares were foaling, the one on whose empathy with horses the whole enterprise floated.
The women didn’t own the farm’s two stallions (they belonged to syndicates) nor any of the mares: Windward Stud was a cross between a livery stable and a maternity ward. They couldn’t afford the bad publicity of the victimized yearling.
Ginnie Quint, sitting behind one of the desks, leaped furiously to her feet the instant I appeared in the doorway and poured over me an accumulated concentration of verbal volcanic lava, scalding, shriveling, sticking my feet to the ground and my tongue in dryness to the roof of my mouth.
‘He trusted you. He would have died for you.’
I sensed Miss Richardson and Mrs Bethany listening in astonishment, not knowing who I was nor what I’d done to deserve such an onslaught; but I had eyes only for Ginnie, whose long fondness for me had fermented to hate.
‘You’re going to go into court and try to send your best friend to prison… to destroy him… pull him down… ruin him. You’re going to betray him. You’re not fit to live.’
Emotion twisted her gentle features into ugliness. Her words came out spitting.
It was her own son who had done this. Her golden, idolized son. He had made of me finally the traitor that would deliver the kiss.
I said absolutely nothing.
I felt, more intensely than ever, the by now accustomed and bitter awareness of the futility of rebellion. Gagged by sub judice, I’d been unable all along to put up any defense, especially because the press had tended to pounce on my indignant protests and label them as ‘whining’ and ‘diddums,’ and ‘please, Teacher, he hit me…’ and ‘it’s not fair, I hit him first.’
A quick check with a lawyer had confirmed that though trying to sue one paper for libel might have been possible, suing the whole lot was not practical. Ellis’s jokes were not actionable and, unfortunately, the fact that I was still profitably employed in my chosen occupation meant that I couldn’t prove the criticism had damaged me financially.
‘Grit your teeth and take it,’ he’d advised cheerfully, and I’d paid him for an opinion I gave myself free every day.
As there was no hope of Ginnie’s listening to anything I might say, I unhappily but pragmatically turned to retreat, intending to return another day to talk to Miss Richardson and Mrs Bethany, and found my way barred by two new burly arrivals, known already to the stud owners as policemen.
‘Sergeant Smith reporting, madam,’ one said to Miss Richardson.
She nodded. ‘Yes, Sergeant?’
‘We’ve found an object hidden in one of the hedges round the field where your horse was done in.’
No one objected to my presence, so I remained in the office, quiet and riveted.
Sergeant Smith carried a long, narrow bundle which he laid on one of the desks. ‘Could you tell us, madam, if this belongs to you?’
His manner was almost hostile, accusatory. He seemed to expect the answer to be yes.
‘What is it?’ Miss Richardson asked, very far from guilty perturbation.
‘This, madam,’ the sergeant said with a note of triumph, and lifted back folds of filthy cloth to reveal their contents, which were two long wooden handles topped by heavy metal clippers.
A pair of lopping shears.
Miss Richardson and Mrs Bethany stared at them unmoved. It was Ginnie Quint who turned slowly white and fainted.
Chapter 8
So here we were in October, with the leaves weeping yellowly from the trees.
Here I was, perching on the end of Rachel Ferns’ bed, wearing a huge, fluffy orange clown wig and a red bulbous nose, making sick children laugh while feeling far from merry inside.
‘Have you hurt your arm?’ Rachel asked conversationally.
‘Banged it,’ I said.
She nodded. Linda looked surprised. Rachel said, ‘When things hurt it shows in people’s eyes.’
She knew too much about pain for a nine-year-old. I said, ‘I’d better go before I tire you.’
She smiled, not demurring. She, like the children wearing the other wigs I’d brought, all had very short bursts of stamina. Visiting was down to ten minutes maximum.
I took off the clown wig and kissed Rachel’s forehead. ‘Bye.’ I said.
‘You’ll come back?’
‘Of course.’
She sighed contentedly, knowing I would. Linda walked with me from the ward to the hospital door.
‘It’s… awful,’ she said, forlorn, on the exit steps. Cold air. The chill to come.
I put my arms around her. Both arms. Hugged her.
‘Rachel asks for you all the time,’ she said. ‘Joe cuddles her and cries. She cuddles him, trying to comfort him. She’s her daddy’s little girl. She loves him. But you… you’re her friend. You make her laugh, not cry. It’s you she asks for all the time — not Joe.’
‘I’ll always come if I can.’
She sobbed quietly on my shoulder and gulped, ‘Poor Mrs Quint.’
‘Mm,’ I said.
‘I haven’t told Rachel about Ellis…’
‘No. Don’t,’ I said.
‘I’ve been beastly to you.’
‘No, far from it.’
‘The papers have said such dreadful things about you.’ Linda shook in my arms. ‘I knew you weren’t like that… I told Joe I have to believe you about Ellis Quint and he thinks I’m stupid.’
‘Look after Rachel, nothing else matters.’
She went back into the hospital and I rode dispiritedly back to London in the TeleDrive car.
Even though I’d returned with more than an hour to spare, I decided against Pont Square and took the sharp memory of Gordon Quint’s attack straight to the restaurant in Piccadilly, where I’d agreed to meet the lawyer Davis Tatum.
With a smile worth millions, the French lady in charge of the restaurant arranged for me to have coffee and a sandwich in the tiny bar while I waited for my friend. The bar, in fact, looked as if it had been wholly designed as a meeting place for those about to lunch. There were no more than six tables, a bartender who brought drinks to one’s elbow, and a calm atmosphere. The restaurant itself was full of daylight, with huge windows and green plants, and was sufficiently hidden from the busy artery of Mayfair downstairs as to give peace and privacy and no noisy passing trade.