Four days before the Enquiry, that package had come. He must have been sweating for a whole week, taking a long bleak look at the wilderness. Send a St Bernard to a dying mountaineer and he’s unlikely to ask for the dog licence.
‘When did you begin to doubt?’ Ferth said calmly.
‘Not until afterwards. Not for days. It was Hughes... at the dance. You told me he was insisting he’d been framed and was going to find out who... and then he asked me directly who had sent Oakley to his flat... and it... Wykeham it was terrible. I realised... what I’d done. Inside, I did know... but I couldn’t admit to it myself... I shut it away... they had to be guilty...’
There was another long silence. Then Gowery said, “You’ll see to it... that they get their licences back?’
‘Yes,’ Ferth said.
‘I’ll resign...’ He sounded desolate.
‘From the Disciplinary Committee, I agree,’ Ferth said reasonably. ‘As to the rest... we will see.’
‘Do you think the... the blackmailer... will tell... everyone... anyway, when Cranfield has his licence back?’
‘He would have nothing to gain.’
‘No, but...’
‘There are laws to protect you.’
‘They couldn’t.’
‘What does he in fact have over you?’
‘I... I... oh God.’ The tape stopped abruptly, cutting off words that were disintegrating into gulps.
Ferth said, ‘I switched it off. He was breaking down. One couldn’t record that.’
‘No.’
‘He told me what it was he was being blackmailed about. I think I am prepared to tell you also, although he would hate it if he knew. But you only.’
‘Only,’ I said. ‘I won’t repeat it.’
‘He told me...’ His nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘He told me that he has... he suffers from... unacceptable sexual appetites. Not homosexual. Perhaps that would have been better... simpler... he wouldn’t nowadays have been much reviled for that. No. He says he belongs to a sort of club where people like him can gratify themselves fairly harmlessly, as they are all there because they enjoy... in varying forms... the same thing.’ He stopped. He was embarrassed.
‘Which is what?’ I said matter-of-factly.
He said, as if putting a good yard of clean air between himself and the world, ‘Flagellation.’
‘That old thing!’ I said.
‘What?’
‘The English disease. Shades of Fanny Hill. Sex tangled up with self-inflicted pain, like nuns with their little disciplines and sober citizens paying a pound a lash to be whipped.’
‘Kelly!’
‘You must have read their coy little advertisements? “Correction given.” That’s what it’s all about. More widespread than most people imagine. Starts with husbands spanking their wives regularly before they bed them, and carries right on up to the parties where they all dress up in leather and have a right old orgy. I don’t actually understand why anyone should get fixated on leather or rubber or hair, or on those instead of anything else. Why not coal, for instance... or silk? But they do, apparently.’
‘In this case... leather.’
‘Boots and whips and naked bosoms?’
Ferth shook his head in disbelief. ‘You take it so coolly.’
‘Live and let live,’ I said. ‘If that’s what they feel compelled to do... why stop them? As he said, they’re not harming anyone, if they’re in a club where everyone else is the same.’
‘But for a Steward,’ he protested. ‘A member of the Disciplinary Committee!’
‘Gives you pause,’ I agreed.
He looked horrified. ‘But there would be nothing sexual in his judgement on racing matters.’
‘Of course not. Nothing on earth as unsexual as racing.’
‘But one can see... he would be finished in the racing world, if this got out. Even I... I cannot think of him now without this... this perversion... coming into my mind. It would be the same with everyone. One can’t respect him any more. One can’t like him.’
‘Difficult,’ I agreed.
‘It’s... horrible.’ In his voice, all the revulsion of the normal for the deviation. Most racing men were normal. The deviation would be cast out. Ferth felt it. Gowery knew it. And so did someone else...
‘Don’t they wear masks, at this club?’ I asked.
Ferth looked surprised. ‘Why, yes, they do. I asked him who could know about him... in order to blackmail him... and he said he didn’t know, they all wore masks. Hoods, actually, was the word he used. Hoods... and aprons...’ He was revolted.
‘All leather?’
He nodded. ‘How can they?’
‘They do less harm than the ones who go out and rape small children.’
‘I’m glad I...’ he said passionately.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘But it’s just luck.’ Gowery had been unlucky, in more ways than one. ‘Someone may have seen him going in, or leaving afterwards.’
‘That’s what he thinks. But he says he doesn’t know the real names of any of his fellow members. They all call each other by fanciful made up names, apparently.’
‘There must be a secretary... with a list of members?’
Ferth shook his head. ‘I asked him that. He said he’d never given his own name to anyone there. It wasn’t expected. There’s no annual subscription, just ten pounds in cash every time he attends. He says he goes about once a month, on average.’
‘How many other members are there?’
‘He didn’t know the total number. He says there are never fewer than ten, and sometimes thirty or thirty-five. More men than women, usually. The club isn’t open every day; only Mondays and Thursdays.’
‘Where is it?’
‘In London. He wouldn’t tell me exactly where.’
‘He wants... needs... to keep on going,’ I said.
‘You don’t think he will!’
‘After a while. Yes.’
‘Oh no...’
‘Who introduced him to the club, do you know?’
‘He said it couldn’t be the person who introduced him to the club. She was a prostitute... he’d never told her his real name.’
‘But she understood his needs.’
He sighed. ‘It would seem so.’
‘Some of those girls make more money out of whipping men than sleeping with them.’
‘How on earth do you know?’
‘I had digs once in the next room to one. She told me.’
‘Good Lord.’ He looked as if he’d turned over a stone and found creepy-crawlies underneath. He had plainly no inkling of what it was like to be a creepy-crawly. His loss.
‘Anyway,’ he said slowly, ‘You will understand why he accepted that package at its face value.’
‘And why he chose Lord Plimborne and Andy Tring.’
Lord Ferth nodded. ‘At the end, when he’d recovered a little, he understood that he’d chosen them for the reasons you said, but he believed at the time that they were impulsive choices. And he is now, as you would expect, a very worried and troubled man.’
‘Was he,’ I asked, ‘Responsible for this?’
I held out to him the letter Tony had received from the Stewards’ Secretaries. He stood up, came to take it, and read its brief contents with exasperation.
‘I don’t know,’ he said explosively. ‘I really don’t know. When did this arrive?’
‘Tuesday. Post-marked noon on Monday.’
‘Before I saw him... He didn’t mention it.’
‘Could you find out if it was his doing?’
‘Do you mean... it will be all the more impossible to forgive him?’
‘No. Nothing like that. I was just wondering if it was our little framer-blackmailer at work again. See those words “It has been brought to our attention”...? What I’d like to know is who brought it.’