'But just a little devastating to live with.' She had a trick of lifting the last two or three words in a sentence so that they sounded like a question. As if she had added, 'Don't you agree?' to her remark.
'Do you in fact live with him?' I asked.
'Oh, yes. Parents divorced in the murky past. Scattered to the four winds, and all that.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Waste no sympathy. I can't remember either of them. They abandoned me on Uncle George's doorstep, figuratively speaking, at the tender age of two.'
'Uncle George has done a good job,' I said, looking at her with the frankest admiration.
She accepted this without gaucherie, almost as a matter of course.
'Aunt Deb, actually. She is faintly more on the ball than Uncle George. Absolute pets, the pair of them.'
'Are they here today?' I asked.
'No, they aren't,' said Miss Ellery-Penn. 'Uncle George remarked that having given me a passport into a new world peopled entirely by brave and charming young men, it would defeat the object if my path were cluttered up with elderly relatives.'
'I am getting fonder of Uncle George every minute,' I said.
Miss Ellery-Penn gave me a heavenly smile which held no promises of any sort.
'Have you seen my horse? Isn't he a duck?' she said.
'I haven't seen him. I'm afraid I didn't know he existed until five minutes ago. How did Uncle George happen to send him to Pete Gregory? Did he pick the stable with a pin?'
She laughed. 'No, I don't think so. He had the stable all planned. He said I could get a Major Davidson to ride for me if the horse went to Mr Gregory's.' She reflected, wrinkling her brow. 'He was quite upset on Monday when he read in the paper that Major Davidson had been killed.'
'Did he know him?' I asked idly, watching the delicious curves at the corners of her red mouth.
'No, I'm sure he didn't know him personally. Probably he knew his father. He seems to know most people's fathers. He just said Good God, Davidson's dead in a shocked sort of way and went on eating his toast. But he didn't hear me or Aunt Deb until we had asked him four times for the marmalade!'
'And that was all?'
'Yes. Why do you ask?' said Miss Ellery-Penn, curiously.
'Oh, nothing special,' I said. 'Bill Davidson and I were good friends.'
She nodded. 'I see.' She dismissed the subject. 'Now what do I have to do in my new role as racehorse owner? I don't particularly want to make a frightful boob on my first day. Any comments and instructions from you will be welcome, Mr York.'
'My name is Alan,' I said.
She gave me an appraising look. It told me plainer than words that although she was young she was already experienced at fending off unwelcome attentions and not being rushed into relationships she was not prepared for.
But she finally smiled, and said, 'Mine is Kate.' She bestowed her name like a gift; I was pleased to receive it.
'How much do you know about racing?' I asked.
'Not a thing. Never set foot on the Turf before today.' She gave the capital letter its full value, ironically.
'Do you ride, yourself?'
'Positively not.'
'Perhaps your Uncle George is fond of horses? Perhaps he hunts?' I suggested.
'Uncle George is the most un-addicted man to horses I have ever met. He says one end kicks and the other bites, and as for hunting, he says that he has cosier things to do than chase bushy tailed vermin in the gravest discomfort over waterlogged countryside in the depths of winter.'
I laughed. 'Perhaps he bets. Off the course?' I asked.
'Uncle George has been known to ask, on Cup Final day, what has won the Derby.'
'Then why Heavens Above?'
'Wider horizons for me, Uncle George says. My education has been along the well-tramped lines of boarding school, finishing school, and an over-chaperoned tour of Europe. I needed to get the smell of museums out of my nose, Uncle George said.'
'So he gave you a racehorse for your twenty-first birthday,' I stated matter-of-factly.
'Yes,' she said: then she looked at me sharply. I grinned. I had jumped her defences, that time.
'There's nothing special for you to do as an owner,' I said, 'except to go along to those stalls over there,' I pointed, 'before the fourth race, to see your horse being saddled up. Then you'll go into the parade ring with Pete, and stand around making intelligent remarks about the weather until I arrive and mount and go out for the race.'
'What do I do if he wins?'
'Do you expect him to win?' I asked. I was not sure how much she really knew about her horse.
'Mr Gregory says he won't.'
I was relieved. I did not want her to be disappointed.
'We'll all know much more about him after the race. But if he should come in the first three, he will be unsaddled down there opposite the weighing room. Otherwise, you'll find us up here on the grass.'
It was nearly time for the first race. I took the delectable Miss Ellery-Penn on to the stands and fulfilled Uncle George's design by introducing her to several brave and charming young men. I unfortunately realized that by the time I came back from riding in the novice hurdle, I should probably be an 'also ran' in the race for Miss Ellery-Penn's attentions.
I watched her captivating a group of my friends. She was a vivid, vital person. It seemed to me that she had an inexhaustible inner fire battened down tight under hatches, and only the warmth from it was allowed to escape into the amused, slow voice. Kate was going to be potently attractive even in middle age, I thought inconsequently, and it crossed my mind that had Scilla possessed this springing vitality instead of her retiring, serene passiveness, Inspector Lodge's implications might not have been very far off the mark.
After we had watched the first race I left Kate deciding which of her new acquaintances should have the honour of taking her to coffee, and went off to weigh out for the novice hurdle. Looking back, I saw her setting off to the refreshment room with a trail of admirers, rather like a comet with a tail. A flashing, bewitching comet.
For the first time in my life I regretted that I was going to ride in a race.
CHAPTER FOUR
In the changing room Sandy Mason stood with his hands on his hips and laid about him with his tongue. His red hair curled strongly, his legs, firmly planted with the feet apart, were as rigid as posts. From top to toe he vibrated life. He was a stocky man in his thirties, on the short side, very strong, with dark brown eyes fringed disconcertingly by pale, reddish lashes.
As a jockey, a professional, he was not among the top dozen, but he had had a good deal of success, mainly owing to his fighting spirit. Nothing ever frightened him. He would thrust his sometimes unwilling mounts into the smallest openings, even occasionally into openings which did not exist until he made them by sheer force. His aggressiveness in races had got him into hot water more than once with the Stewards, but he was not particularly unpopular with the other jockeys, owing to his irrepressible, infectious cheerfulness.
His sense of humour was as vigorous as the rest of him, and if I thought privately that some of his jokes were too unkindly practical or too revoltingly obscene, I appeared to be in a minority.
'Which of you sods has half-inched my balancing pole?' he roared in a voice which carried splendidly above the busy chatter to every corner of the room. To this enquiry into the whereabouts of his whip, he received no reply.
'Why don't you lot get up off your fannies and see if you're hatching it,' he said to three or four jockeys who were sitting on a bench pulling on their boots. They looked up appreciatively and waited for the rest of the tirade. Sandy kept up a flow of invective without repeating himself until one of the valets produced the missing whip.
'Where did you find it?' demanded Sandy. 'Who had it? I'll twist his bloody arm.'
'It was on the floor under the bench, in your own place.'
Sandy was never embarrassed by his mistakes. He roared with laughter and took his whip. 'I'll forgive you all this time, then.' He went out into the weighing room carrying his saddle and whacking the air with his whip as if to make sure it was as pliable as usual. He always used it a good deal in the course of a race.