The total effect was colourful indeed, but hardly what the Regency architect had had in mind. I had a mental picture of him turning in his grave so often that he made knots in his winding sheet, and I suppose I smiled, for a voice suddenly said, 'Vandalism, isn't it?'
A middle-aged woman had sat down at my table, unnoticed by me as I gazed out of the window. She had a mournful horsey face with no make-up, a hideous brown hat which added years to her age, and an earnest look in her eyes. The caf‚ was filling up, and I could no longer have a table to myself.
'It's startling, certainly,' I agreed.
'It ought not to be allowed. All these old houses in this district have been carved up and turned into offices, and it's really disgraceful how they look now. I belong to the Architectural Preservation Group,' she confided solemnly, 'and we're getting out a petition to stop people descrating beautiful buildings with horrible advertisements.'
'Are you having success?' I asked.
She looked depressed. 'Not very much, I'm afraid. People just don't seem to care as they should. Would you believe it, half the people in Brighton don't know what a Regency house looks like, when they're surrounded by them all the time? Look at that row over there, with all those boards and signs. And that neon,' her voice quivered with emotion, 'is the last straw. It's only been there a few months. We've petitioned to make them take it down, but they won't.'
'That's very discouraging,' I said, watching the Marconicar door. The two typists came out and went chattering up the road, followed by two more girls whom I supposed to have come down from the upper floors.
My table companion chatted on between spoonfuls of tomato soup. 'We can't get any satisfaction from Perth's at all because no one in authority there will meet us, and the men in the office say they can't take the sign down because it doesn't belong to them, but they won't tell us who it does belong to so that we can petition him in person.' I found I sympathized with Perth 's invisible ruler in his disinclination to meet the Architectural Preservation Group on the warpath. 'It was bad enough before, when they had their name just painted on the windows, but neon-' Words failed her, at last.
Marigold left for lunch. Four men followed her. No one arrived.
I drank my coffee, parted from the middle-aged lady without regret, and gave it up for the day. I took the train back to my car and drove up to London. After a long afternoon in the office, I started for home at the tail end of the rush-hour traffic. In the hold-ups at crossings and roundabouts I began, as a change from Bill's mystery, to tackle Joe Nantwich's.
I pondered his 'stopping' activities, his feud with Sandy Mason, his disgrace with Tudor, his obscure threatening notes. I thought about the internal workings of the weighing-room, where only valets, jockeys, and officials are allowed in the changing rooms, and trainers and owners are confined to the weighing room itself: while the press and the public may not enter at all.
If the 'Bolingbroke, this week' note was to be believed, Joe would already have received his punishment, because 'this, week' was already last week. Yet I came to the conclusion that I would see him alive and well at Bristol on the following day, even if not in the best of spirits. For, by the time I reached home, I knew I could tell him who had written the notes, though I wasn't sure I was going to.
Sleep produces the answers to puzzles in the most amazing way. I went to bed on Wednesday night thinking I had spent a more or less fruitless morning in Brighton. But I woke on Thursday morning with a name in my mind and the knowledge that I had seen it before, and where. I went downstairs in my dressing-gown to Bill's desk, and took out the betting tickets he had saved for Henry. I shuffled through them, and found what I wanted. Three of them bore the name L. C. PERTH.
I turned them over. On their backs Bill had pencilled the name of a horse, the amount of his bet, and the date. He was always methodical. I took all the tickets up to my room, and looked up the races in the form book. I remembered many casual snatches of conversation. And a lot of things became clear to me.
But not enough, not enough.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It poured with rain at Bristol, a cold, steady unrelenting wetness which took most of the pleasure out of racing.
Kate sent a message that she was not coming because of the weather, which sounded unlike her, and I wondered what sort of pressure Aunt Deb had used to keep her at home.
The main gossip in the weighing-room concerned Joe Nantwich. The Stewards had held an inquiry into his behaviour during the last race on Champion Hurdle day, and had, in the official phrase, 'severely cautioned him as to his future riding'. It was generally considered that he was very lucky indeed to have got off so lightly, in view of his past record.
Joe himself was almost as cocky as ever. From a distance his round pink face showed no traces of the fear or drunkenness which had made a sodden mess of him at Cheltenham. Yet I was told that he had spent the preceding Friday and Saturday and most of Sunday in the Turkish baths, scared out of his wits. He had drunk himself silly and sweated it off alternately during the whole of that time, confiding to the attendants in tears that he was safe with them, and refusing to get dressed and go home.
The authority for this story, and one who gave it its full flavour, was Sandy, who had happened, he said, to go into the Turkish baths on Sunday morning to lose a few pounds for Monday's racing.
I found Joe reading the notices. He was whistling through his teeth.
'Well, Joe,' I said, 'what makes you so cheerful?'
'Everything.' He smirked. At close quarters I could see the fine lines round his mouth and the slightly bloodshot eyes, but his experiences had left no other signs of strain. 'I didn't get suspended by the Stewards. And I got paid for losing that race.'
'You what?' I exclaimed.
'I got paid. You know, I told you. The packet of money. It came this morning. A hundred quid.' I stared at him. 'Well, I did what I was told, didn't I?' he said aggrievedly.
'I suppose you did,' I agreed, weakly.
'And another thing, those threatening notes. I fooled them you know. I stayed in the Turkish baths all over the week-end, and they couldn't harm me there. I got off scot free,' said Joe triumphantly, as if 'this week' could not be altered to 'next week'. He did not realize either that he had already taken his punishment, that there are other agonies than physical ones. He had suffered a week of acute anxiety, followed by three days of paralysing fear, and he thought he had got off scot free.
'I'm glad you think so,' I said, mildly. 'Joe, answer me a question. The man who rings you up to tell you what horse not to win on, what does his voice sound like?'
'You couldn't tell who it is, not by listening to him. It might be anybody. It's a soft voice, and sort of fuzzy. Almost a whisper, sometimes, as if he were afraid of being overheard. But what does it matter?' said Joe. 'As long as he delivers the lolly he can croak like a frog for all I care.'
'Do you mean you'll stop another horse, if he asks you to?' I said.
'I might do. Or I might not,' said Joe, belatedly deciding that he had been speaking much too freely. With a sly, sidelong look at me he edged away into the changing room. His resilience was fantastic.
Pete and Dane were discussing the day's plans not far away, and I went over to them. Pete was cursing the weather and saying it would play merry hell with the going, but that Palindrome, all the same, should be able to act on it.
'Go to the front at half way, and nothing else will be able to come to you. They're a poor lot. As far as I can see, you're a dead cert.'