Vernon Arkwright, hauled before the stewards, would testify that Jasper had bribed him to put Moggie Reilly’s life in danger.
Jasper realised that he might himself be warned-off. Might suffer that ultimate disgrace. He was drowning in unpayable debt, and he had lost his wife’s fortune. But it was his inner awareness of dishonour that had most shattered his self-respect.
Not for the first time, he thought of killing himself.
Wendy Billington Innes had dried her tears and stiffened her backbone at the sight of Lilyglit walking safely back unhurt, and a short time later she listened half in relief and half in horror to a trainer-to-owner telephone call from Percy Driffield.
‘You do understand, don’t you?’ he asked, as she fell silent.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said.
‘Tell Jasper that everything about that race is void. Everything. Including his bet.’
‘All right.’
‘A void race shouldn’t detract very much from Lilyglit’s value... and tell Jasper I’ve a buyer for him in my own yard. I frankly don’t want to lose that horse.’
‘I’ll tell him,’ Wendy said, disconnecting, and started again for the third time trying everywhere she could think of to find her husband.
No one had seen him since breakfast. The fear she’d been smothering all day rose sharply and prodded her towards panic.
She knew that Jasper had unbending pride. Below the sweet-natured exterior lived a man of serious honour, and it was this uprightness that had attracted her years ago.
Stemmer Peabody had smashed Jasper’s pride. He would hate ruin as if it were despicable. He might find it too much to bear.
She had twice phoned Jasper’s car, but he hadn’t answered. The car phone service was rigged to speak messages aloud when the ignition was switched on, but her pleas to Jasper to phone her back had gone unanswered. That didn’t mean he hadn’t heard them. She feared he’d ignored them and wiped them off.
With nowhere else offering the slightest hope she tried his car again.
‘Leave a message...’
She cursed the disembodied voice and spoke from her heart.
‘Jasper, if you can hear me, listen... Listen. Lilyglit is alive, he fell, but he was only winded. He’s unharmed... listen... and Percy Driffield has a buyer. And that whole race was declared void because the judge died before the finish. Nothing that happened in the race counts. Nothing, do you understand? Percy Driffield told me to tell you particularly. All bets are void. So Jasper... my dear, my dear, come home... We’ll get by... I quite like cooking and looking after the children... but we all need you... Come home... please come home...’ She stopped abruptly, feeling that she’d been talking to the empty air, pointlessly.
Jasper, indeed, didn’t hear her. With the car’s ignition still turned off, the message machine remained silent.
Jasper in black humour couldn’t decide how to kill himself. He had no piece of tubing for carbon monoxide. He knew of no cliffs to jump over. He had no knife for his wrists. Dying didn’t seem easy. Never a handyman, he sat uselessly trying to work it out. Meanwhile, he found an old envelope in a door pocket and in total despair but no haste wrote a farewell note.
I am ashamed.
Forgive me.
After that he decided to find a good solid tree somewhere and accelerate head-on into a killing crash.
He slotted the car key into the ignition to start the engine...and the car phone message service spoke Wendy’s words aloud, as if she were there by his side.
Utterly stunned, Jasper Billington Innes played his wife’s message three times.
Gradually he understood that Lilyglit lived, that his bet with Percy Driffield was void, and that neither he nor Vernon Arkwright would be charged with breaking racing law.
He trembled for long unwinding minutes.
He realised he was undeservedly being given a second chance and would never get a third.
He tore up the envelope, and drove slowly home.
Officially, nothing that had happened in the Cloister Handicap Hurdle was deemed to have happened.
Nothing... except the death of Christopher Haig.