My father said, 'It's just possible that the man who originally owned Marconicars decided to launch out into crime, and faked a sale to cover his tracks.'
'Clifford Tudor, nee Thasos, do you mean?' asked Lodge with interest. My father nodded, and Lodge said to me, 'How about it?'
'Tudor pops up all over the place,' I said. 'He knew Bill, and Bill had his address noted down on a scrap of paper.' I put my hand into my jacket pocket. The old envelope was still there. I drew it out and looked at it again. 'Tudor told me he had asked Bill to ride a horse for him.'
'When did he tell you that?' asked Lodge.
'I gave him a lift from Plumpton races into Brighton, four days after Bill died. We talked about him on the way.'
'Anything else?' asked Lodge.
'Well- Tudor's horses have been ridden – up until lately – by our corrupted friend Joe Nantwich. It was on Tudor's horse Bolingbroke that Joe won once when he had been instructed to lose- but at Cheltenham he threw away a race on a horse of Tudor's, and Tudor was very angry about it.'
'Camouflage,' suggested my father.
But I rested my aching head against the window, and said, 'I don't think Tudor can possibly be the crook we're looking for.'
'Why not?' asked Lodge. 'He has the organizing ability, he lives in Brighton, he owned the taxis, he employs Joe Nantwich, and he knew Major Davidson. He seems the best proposition so far.'
'No,' I said tiredly. 'The best lead we've had is the taxis. If I hadn't recognized that the men who stopped me in the horse-box were also taxi-drivers, I'd never have found out anything at all. Whoever put them on to me can't possibly have imagined I would know them, or he wouldn't have done it. But if there's one person who knew I would recognize them, it's Clifford Tudor. He was standing near me while the taxi-drivers fought, and he knew I'd had time to look at them after the police had herded them into two groups.'
'I don't rule him out altogether, even so,' said Lodge, gathering his papers together, and putting them back into his briefcase. 'Criminals often make the stupidest mistakes.'
I said, 'If we ever do find your Claud Thiveridge, I think he will turn out to be someone I've never met and never heard of. A complete stranger. It's far more likely.'
I wanted to believe it.
I did not want to have to face another possibility, one that I shied away from so uncomfortably that I could not bring myself even to lay it open for Lodge's inspection.
Who, besides Tudor, knew before the horse-box incident that I wanted Bill's death avenged? Kate. And to whom had she passed this on? To Uncle George. Uncle George, who, I suspected, housed a lean and hungry soul in his fat body, behind his fatuous expression.
Uncle George, out of the blue, had bought a horse for his niece. Why? To widen her interests, he had said. But through her, I thought, he would learn much of what went on at the races.
And Uncle George had sent Heavens Above to be trained in the stable which housed Bill's horse. Was it a coincidence- or the beginning of a scheme which Bill's unexpected death had cut short?
It was nebulous, unconvincing. It was based only on supposition, not on facts, and bolstered only by memory of the shock on Uncle George's face when Kate told him we had been to The Blue Duck – shock which he had called indigestion. And perhaps it had been indigestion, after all.
And all those primitive weapons in his study, the ritual objects and the scalp- were they the playthings of a man who relished violence? Or who loathed it? Or did both at the same time?
Scilla came into the drawing-room, carrying a copper bowl filled with forsythia and daffodils. She put it on the low table near me, and the spring sun suddenly shone on the golden flowers, so that they seemed like a burst of light, reflecting their colour upwards on to her face as she bent over them, tweaking them into order.
She gave me a sharp glance, and turned round to the others.
'Alan looks very tired,' she said. 'What have you been doing?'
'Talking,' I said, smiling at her.
'You'll find yourself back in hospital if you're not careful,' she scolded mildly, and without pausing offered mid-morning coffee to Lodge and my father.
I was glad of the interruption, because I had not wished to discuss with them what was to be done next in pursuit of Mr Claud Thiveridge. Every small advance I had made in his direction had brought its retribution, it was true; yet in each of his parries I had found a clue. My faulty memory was still cheating me of the information I had paid for with the drubbing at Bristol, but it did not deter me from wanting to see the business through.
I would get closer to Thiveridge. He would hit out again, and in doing it show me the next step towards him, like the flash of a gunshot in the dark revealing the hiding-place of a sniper.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joe Nantwich found the sniper first.
Eight days after Lodge's visit I drove down to West Sussex races, having put in a short morning at the office. My bruises had faded and gone; the ribs and collarbone were mended and in perfect working order, and even my stubborn headache was losing its grip. I whistled my way into the changing-room and presented to Clem my brand new crash-helmet, bought that morning from Bates of Jermyn Street for three guineas.
The weighing room was empty, and distant oohs and ahs proclaimed that the first race was in progress. Clem, who was tidying up the changing-room after the tornado of getting a large number of jockeys out of their ordinary clothes, into racing colours, past the scales, and out to the parade ring, greeted me warmly and shook hands.
'Glad to see you back, sir,' he said, taking the helmet. With a ball-point pen he wrote my name on a piece of adhesive tape and stuck it on to the shiny shell. 'Let's hope you won't be needing another new one of these in a hurry.' He pressed his thumb firmly on to the adhesive tape.
'I'm starting again tomorrow, Clem,' I said. 'Can you bring my gear? Big saddle. There's no weight problem, I'm riding Admiral.'
'Top flipping weight,' said Clem, resignedly. 'And a lot of lead, which Admiral isn't used to. Major Davidson hardly ever needed any.' Clem gave me an assessing sideways look and added, 'You've lost three or four pounds, I shouldn't wonder.'
'All the better,' I said cheerfully, turning to the door.
'Oh, just a minute, sir,' said Clem. 'Joe Nantwich asked me to let you know, if you came, that he has something to tell you.'
'Oh, yes?' I said.
'He was asking for you on Saturday at Liverpool, but I told him you'd probably be coming here, as Mr Gregory mentioned last week that you'd be riding Admiral tomorrow,' said Clem, absent-mindedly picking up a saddle and smoothing his hand over the leather.
'Did Joe say what it was he wanted to tell me?' I asked.
'Yes, he wants to show you a bit of brown wrapping paper with something written on it. He said you'd be interested to see it, though I can't think why – the word I saw looked like something to do with chickens. He had the paper out in the changing-room at Liverpool, and folded it up flat on the bench into a neat shape, and tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Giggling over it, he was. He'd had a drink or two I reckon, but then most people had, it was after the National. He said what was written on the paper was double Dutch to him, but it might be a clue, you never knew. I asked him a clue to what? But he wouldn't say, and anyway, I was too busy to bother with him much.'
'I'll see him, and find out what it's all about,' I said. 'Has he still got the paper with him, do you know?'
'Yes, he has. He patted his pocket just now when he asked me if you were here, and I heard the paper crackle.'
'Thanks, Clem,' I said.
I went outside. The race was over, the winner was being led towards the unsaddling enclosure in front of the weighing-room, and down from the stands streamed the hundreds of chattering racegoers. I stood near the weighing-room door, waiting for Joe and catching up with the latest gossip. Liverpool, I learned, had been disappointing, fabulous, bloody, a dead loss, and the tops, according to who told it. I had not been there. I had been too busy getting intensive treatment on my shoulder muscles to help my strength back.