‘Old Strepson promised Breadwinner would come back at once... and Pound Postage of his... that’s entered in the National, don’t forget.’
‘I haven’t,’ I assured him, ‘forgotten.’
He ran down eventually and disconnected, and I could imagine him sitting at the other end still wondering whether to trust me.
Roberta stood up with a spring, as if the news had filled her with energy.
‘Shall I tidy up for you?’
‘I’d love some help.’
She bent down and picked up Rosalind’s torn picture.
‘They didn’t have to do that,’ she said in disgust.
‘I’ll get the bits stuck together and rephotographed.’
‘You’d hate to lose her...’
I didn’t answer at once. She looked at me curiously, her eyes dark with some unreadable expression.
‘I lost her,’ I said slowly. ‘Rosalind... Roberta... you are so unalike.’
She turned away abruptly and put the pieces on the chest of drawers where they had always stood.
‘Who wants to be a carbon copy?’ she said, and her voice was high and cracking. ‘Get dressed... while I start on the sitting-room.’ She disappeared fast and shut the door behind her.
I lay there looking at it.
Roberta Cranfield. I’d never liked her.
Roberta Cranfield. I couldn’t bear it... I was beginning to love her.
She stayed most of the day, helping me clear up the mess.
Oakley had left little to chance: the bathroom and kitchen both looked as if they’d been gutted by a whirlwind. He’d searched everywhere a good enquiry agent could think of, including in the lavatory cistern and the refrigerator; and everywhere he’d searched he’d left his trail of damage.
After midday, which was punctuated by some scrambled eggs, the telephone started ringing. Was it true, asked the Daily Witness in the shape of Daddy Leeman, that Cranfield and I...? ‘Check with the Jockey Club,’ I said.
The other papers had checked first. ‘May we have your comments?’ they asked.
‘Thrilled to bits,’ I said gravely. ‘You can quote me.’
A lot of real chums rang to congratulate, and a lot of pseudo chums rang to say they’d never believed me guilty anyway.
For most of the afternoon I lay flat on the sitting-room floor with my head on a cushion talking down the telephone while Roberta stepped around and over me nonchalantly, putting everything back into place.
Finally she dusted her hands off on the seat of her black pants, and said she thought that that would do. The flat looked almost as good as ever. I agreed gratefully that it would do very well.
‘Would you consider coming down to my level?’ I asked.
She said calmly, ‘Are you speaking literally, metaphorically, intellectually, financial or socially?’
‘I was suggesting you might sit on the floor.’
‘In that case,’ she said collectedly, ‘Yes.’ And she sank gracefully into a cross legged sprawl.
I couldn’t help grinning. She grinned companionably back.
‘I was scared stiff of you when I came here last week,’ she said.
‘You were what?’
‘You always seemed so aloof. Unapproachable.’
‘Are we talking about me... or you?’
‘You, of course,’ she said in surprise. ‘You always made me nervous. I always get sort of... strung up... when I’m nervous. Put on a bit of an act, to hide it, I suppose.’
‘I see,’ I said slowly.
‘You’re still a pretty good cactus, if you want to know... but... well, you see people differently when they’ve been bleeding all over your best dress and looking pretty vulnerable...’
I began to say that in that case I would be prepared to bleed on her any time she liked, but the telephone interrupted me at half way. And it was old Strepson, settling down for a long cosy chat about Breadwinner and Pound Postage.
Roberta wrinkled her nose and got to her feet.
‘Don’t go,’ I said, with my hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Must. I’m late already.’
‘Wait,’ I said. But she shook her head, fetched the yellow raincoat from the bath, where she’d put it, and edged herself into it.
‘ ’Bye,’ she said.
‘Wait...’
She waved briefly and let herself out of the door. I struggled up on to my feet, and said, ‘Sir... could you hold on a minute...’ into the telephone, and hopped without the crutches over to the window. She looked up when I opened it. She was standing in the yard, tying on a headscarf. The rain had eased to drizzle.
‘Will you come tomorrow?’ I shouted down.
‘Can’t tomorrow. Got to go to London.’
‘Saturday?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll try, then.’
‘Please come.’
‘Oh...’ She suddenly smiled in a way I’d never seen before. ‘All right’
Careless I might be about locking my front door, but in truth I left little about worth stealing. Five hundred pounds would never have been lying around on my chest of drawers for enquiry agents to photograph.
When I’d converted the flat from an old hay loft I’d built in more than mod cons. Behind the cabinet in the kitchen which housed things like fly killer and soap powder, and tucked into a crafty piece of brickwork, lay a maximum security safe. It was operated not by keys or combinations, but by electronics. The manufacturers had handed over the safe itself and also the tiny ultrasonic transmitter which sent out the special series of radio waves which alone would release the lock mechanism, and I’d installed them myself: the safe in the wall and the transmitter in a false bottom to the cabinet. Even if anyone found the transmitter, they had still to find the safe and to know the sequence of frequencies which unlocked it.
A right touch of the Open Sesame. I’d always liked gadgets.
Inside the safe there were, besides money and some racing trophies, several pieces of antique silver, three paintings by Houthuesen, two Chelsea figures, a Meissen cup and saucer, a Louis XIV snuff box, and four uncut diamonds totalling twenty-eight carats. My retirement pension, all wrapped in green baize and appreciating nicely. Retirement for a steeplechase jockey could lurk in the very next falclass="underline" and the ripe age of forty, if one lasted that long, was about the limit.
There was also a valueless lump of cast iron, with a semicircular dent in it. To these various treasures I added the envelope which Ferth had given me, because it wouldn’t help if I lost that either.
Bolting my front door meant a hazardous trip down the stairs, and another in the morning to open it. I decided it could stay unlocked as usual. Wedged a chair under the door into my sitting-room instead.
During the evening I telephoned to Newtonnards in his pink washed house in Mill Hill.
‘Hallo,’ he said. ‘You’ve got your licence back then. Talk of the meeting it was at Wincanton today, soon as the Press Association chaps heard about it.’
‘Yes, it’s great news.’
‘What made their Lordships change their minds?’
‘I’ve no idea... Look, I wondered if you’d seen that man again yet, the one who backed Cherry Pie with you.’
‘Funny thing,’ he said, ‘But I saw him today. Just after I’d heard you were back in favour, though, so I didn’t think you’d be interested any more.’
‘Did you by any chance find out who he is?’
‘I did, as a matter of fact. More to satisfy my own curiosity, really. He’s the Honourable Peter Foxcroft. Mean anything to you?’