'Now,' he said, picking up his pen and biting the end of it. 'What questions have you been asking about Major Davidson, and of whom have you asked them?'
'That is really what is most surprising about the whole affair,' I said. 'I've hardly asked anything of anybody. And I certainly haven't had any useful answers.'
'But you must have touched a nerve somewhere,' said Lodge. He took a sheet of paper out of the drawer. 'Tell me the names of everyone with whom you have discussed the wire.'
'With you,' I said promptly. 'And with Mrs Davidson. And everyone at the inquest heard me say I'd found it.'
'But I noticed that the inquest wasn't properly reported in the papers. There was no mention of wire in the press,' he said. 'And anyone seeing you at the inquest wouldn't have got the impression that you were hell-bent on unravelling the mystery. You took the verdict very calmly and not at all as if you disagreed with it.'
'Thanks to your warning me in advance what to expect,' I said.
Lodge's list looked short and unsatisfactory on the large sheet of paper.
'Anyone else?' he said.
'Oh- a friend- a Miss Ellery-Penn. I told her last night.'
'Girl friend?' he asked bluntly. He wrote her down.
'Yes,' I said.
'Anyone else?'
'No.'
'Why not?' he asked, pushing the paper away.
'I reckoned you and Sir Creswell needed a clear field. I thought I might mess things up for you if I asked too many questions. Put people on their guard, ready with their answers – that sort of thing. But it seems, from what you've said about dropping your enquiries, that I might as well have gone ahead.' I spoke a little bitterly.
Lodge looked at me carefully. 'You resent being considered youthful and hot-headed,' he said.
'Twenty-four isn't young,' I said. 'I seem to remember England once had a Prime Minister of that age. He didn't do so badly.'
'That's irrelevant, and you know it,' he said.
I grinned.
Lodge said, 'What do you propose to do now?'
'Go home,' I said, looking at my watch.
'No, I meant about Major Davidson.'
'I'll Ask as many questions as I can think of,' I said promptly.
'In spite of the warning?'
'Because of it,' I said. 'The very fact that five men were sent to warn me off means that there is a good deal to find out. Bill Davidson was a good friend, you know. I can't tamely let whoever caused his death get away with it.' I thought a moment. 'First, I'll find out who owns the taxis which Peaky and Co. drive.'
'Well, unofficially, I wish you luck,' said Lodge. 'But be careful.'
'Sure,' I said standing up.
Lodge came to the street door of the police station and shook hands. 'Let me know how you get on,' he said.
'Yes, I will.'
He raised his hand in a friendly gesture, and went in. I resumed my interrupted journey to the Cotswolds. My wrenched shoulders were aching abominably, but as long as I concentrated on Bill's accident I could forget them.
It struck me that both the accident and the affair of the horse-box should give some clue to the mind which had hatched them. It was reasonable to assume it was the same mind. Both events were elaborate, where some simpler plan would have been effective, and the word 'devious' drifted into my thoughts and I dredged around in my memory chasing its echo. Finally I traced it to Joe Nantwich and the threatening letter which had reached him ten days late, but decided that Joe's troubles had nothing to do with Bill's.
Both the attack on Bill and the warning to me had been, I was certain, more violent in the event than in the plan. Bill had died partly by bad luck, and I would have been less roughly handled had I not tried to escape. I came to the conclusion that I was looking for someone with a fanciful imagination, someone prepared to be brutal up to a point, and whose little squibs, because of their complicated nature, were apt to go off with bigger bangs than were intended.
And it was comforting to realize that my adversary was not a man of superhuman intelligence. He could make mistakes. His biggest so far, I thought, was to go to great lengths to deliver an unnecessary warning whose sole effect was to stir me to greater action.
For two days I did nothing. There was no harm in giving the impression that the warning was being taken to heart.
I played poker with the children and lost to Henry because half my mind was occupied with his father's affairs.
Henry said, 'You aren't thinking what you're doing, Alan,' in a mock sorrowful tone as he rooked me of ten chips with two pairs.
'I expect he's in love,' said Polly, turning on me an assessing female eye. There was that, too.
'Pooh,' said Henry. He dealt the cards.
'What's in love?' said William, who was playing tiddly-winks with his chips, to Henry's annoyance.
'Soppy stuff,' said Henry. 'Kissing, and all that slush.'
'Mummy's in love with me,' said William, a cuddly child.
'Don't be silly,' said Polly loftily, from her eleven years. 'In love means weddings and brides and confetti and things.'
'Well, Alan,' said Henry, in a scornful voice, 'you'd better get out of love quick or you won't have any chips left.'
William picked up his hand. His eyes and mouth opened wide. This meant he had at least two aces. They were the only cards he ever raised on. I saw Henry give him a flick of a glance, then look back at his own hand. He discarded three and took three more, and at his turn, he pushed away his cards. I turned them over. Two queens and two tens. Henry was a realist. He knew when to give in. And William, bouncing up and down with excitement, won only four chips with three aces and a pair of fives.
Not for the first time I wondered at the quirks of heredity. Bill had been a friendly, genuine man of many solid virtues. Scilla, matching him, was compassionate and loving. Neither was at all intellectually gifted; yet they had endowed their elder son with a piercing, exceptional intelligence.
And how could I guess, as I cut the cards for Polly and helped William straighten up his leaning tower of chips, that Henry already held in his sharp eight-year-old brain the key to the puzzle of his father's death.
He didn't know it himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Cheltenham National Hunt Festival meeting started on Tuesday, 2 March.
Three days of superlative racing lay ahead, and the finest 'chasers in the world crowded into the racecourse stables. Ferries from Ireland brought them across by boat and plane load; dark horses from the bogs whose supernatural turn of foot was foretold in thick mysterious brogue, and golden geldings who had already taken prizes and cups galore across the Irish Sea.
Horse-boxes from Scotland, from Kent, from Devon, from everywhere, converged on Gloucestershire. Inside, they carried Grand National winners, champion hurdlers, all-conquering handicappers, splendid hunters: the aristocrats among jumpers.
With four big races in the three days reserved for them alone, every amateur jockey in the country who could beg, borrow, or buy a mount hurried to the course. A ride at Cheltenham was an honour: a win at Cheltenham an experience never to be forgotten. The amateur jockeys embraced the Festival with passionate fervour.
But one amateur jockey, Alan York, felt none of this passionate fervour as he drove into the car park. I could not explain it to myself, but for once the hum of the gathering crowd, the expectant faces, the sunshine of the cold invigorating March morning, even the prospect of riding three good horses at the meeting, stirred me not at all.
Outside the main gate I sought out the newspaper seller I had spoken to at Plumpton. He was a short, tubby little Cockney with a large moustache and a cheerful temperament. He saw me coming, and held out a paper.
'Morning, Mr York,' he said. 'Do you fancy your horse today?'
'You might have a bit on,' I said, 'but not your shirt. There's the Irishman to be reckoned with.'
'You'll do him, all right.'