My father sat down beside him and watched the telltale list grow. I went back to the window seat and waited.
Presently Lodge said, 'I can see why your father misses you as a fraud spotter.' He put his pen back in his pocket.
I smiled and said, 'If you want to read a really blatant fraud, you should look up the Irish racing in that form book. It's fantastic.'
'Not today. This is quite enough to be going on with,' said Lodge, rubbing his hand over his face and pinching his nose between thumb and forefinger.
'All that remains, as far as I'm concerned, is for you to tell us who is organizing the whole thing,' said my father with a touch of mockery, which from long understanding I interpreted as approval.
'That, dear Pa, I fear I cannot do,' I said.
But Lodge said seriously, 'Could it be anyone you know on the racecourse? It must be someone connected with racing. How about Perth, the bookmaker?'
'It could be. I don't know him. His name won't actually be Perth of course. That name was sold with the business. I'll have a bet on with him next time I go racing and see what happens,' I said.
'You will do no such thing,' said my father emphatically, and I felt too listless to argue.
'How about a jockey, or a trainer, or an owner?' asked Lodge.
'You'd better include the Stewards and the National Hunt Committee,' I said, ironically. 'They were almost the first to know I had discovered the wire and was looking into it. The man we are after knew very early on that I was inquisitive. I didn't tell many people I suspected more than an accident, or ask many pointed questions, before that affair in the horse-box.'
'People you know-' said Lodge, musingly. 'How about Gregory?'
'No,' I said.
'Why not? He lives near Brighton, near enough for the Marconicar morning telephone call.'
'He wouldn't risk hurting Bill or Admiral,' I said.
'How can you be sure?' asked Lodge. 'People aren't always what they seem, and murderers are often fond of animals, until they get in the way. One chap I saw at the assizes lately killed a nightwatchman and showed no remorse at all. But when evidence was given that the nightwatchman's dog had had his head bashed in too, the accused burst into tears and said he was sorry.'
'Pathetic,' I said. 'But no dice. It isn't Pete.'
'Faith or evidence?' persisted Lodge.
'Faith,' I said grudgingly, because I was quite sure.
'Jockeys?' suggested Lodge, leaving it.
'None of them strikes me as being the type we're looking for,' I said, 'and I think you're overlooking the fact that racing came second on the programme and may even have been adopted solely because a shaky bookmaking business existed on the floor above the Marconicars. I mean, that in itself may have turned the boss of Marconicars towards racing.'
'You may be right,' admitted Lodge.
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.