‘Fair enough,’ the friend said. ‘You’ll get them this afternoon.’
‘My love to your aunt,’ I said, ‘and thanks.’
‘She’ll swoon.’ He laughed. ‘See you.’
Tremayne began reading the day’s papers, both of which carried the results of the trial. Neither paper took any particular stance either for or against Nolan, though both quoted Olympia’s father at length. He came over as a sad, obsessed man whose natural grief had turned to self-destructive anger and one could feel sorry for him on many counts. Tremayne read and grunted and passed no opinion.
The day slowly drifted into a repetition of the one before. Dee-Dee came into the kitchen for coffee and instructions and when Tremayne had gone out again with his second lot of horses I returned to the boxes of clippings in the dining-room.
I decided to reverse yesterday’s order; to start at the most recent clippings and work backwards.
It was Dee-Dee, I had discovered, who cut the sections out of the newspapers and magazines, and certainly she had been more zealous than whoever had done it before her, as the boxes for the last eight years were much fuller.
I laid aside the current box as it was still almost empty and worked through from January to December of the previous year, which had been a good one for Tremayne, embracing not only his Grand National win with Top Spin Lob but many other successes important enough to get the racing hacks excited. Tremayne’s face smiled steadily from clipping after clipping including, inappropriately, those dealing with the death of the girl, Olympia.
Drawn irresistibly, I read a whole batch of accounts of that death from a good many different papers, the number of them suggesting that someone had gone out and bought an armful of everything available. In total, they told me not much more than I already knew, except that Olympia was twice described as a ‘jockette’, a word I somehow found repulsive. It appeared that she had ridden in several ladies’ races at point-to-point meetings which one paper, to help the ignorant, described as ‘the days the hunting classes stop chasing the fox and chase each other instead’. Olympia the jockette had been twenty-three, had come from a ‘secure suburban background and had worked as an instructor in a riding-school in Surrey. Her parents, not surprisingly, were said to be ‘distraught’.
Dee-Dee came into the dining-room offering more coffee and saw what I was reading.
‘That Olympia was a sex-pot bimbo,’ she remarked flatly. ‘I was there at the party and you could practically smell it. Secure little suburban riding instructor, my foot.’
‘Really?’
‘Her father made her out to be a sweet innocent little saint. Perhaps he even believes it. Nolan never said any different because it wouldn’t have helped him, so no one told the truth.’
‘What was the truth?’
‘She had no underclothes on,’ Dee-Dee said calmly. ‘She wore only a long scarlet strapless dress slit halfway up her thigh. You ask Mackie. She knows, she tried to revive her.’
‘Er... quite a lot of women don’t wear underclothes,’ I said.
‘Is that a fact?’ She gave me an ironic look.
‘My blushing days are over.’
‘Well, do you or don’t you want any coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
She went out to the kitchen and I continued reading clippings, progressing from ‘no action on the death at Shellerton House’ to ‘Olympia’s father brings private prosecution’ and ‘Magistrates refer Nolan Everard case to Crown Court’. A sub judice silence then descended and the clippings stopped.
It was after a bunch of end-of-jumping-season statistics that I came across an oddity from a Reading paper published on a Friday in June.
‘Girl groom missing’, read the headline, and there was an accompanying photo of Tremayne, still looking cheerful.
Angela Brickell, 17, employed as a ‘lad’ by prominent racehorse trainer Tremayne Vickers, failed to turn up for work on Tuesday afternoon and hasn’t been seen in the stables since. Vickers says lads leave without notice all too often, but he is puzzled that she didn’t ask for pay due to her. Anyone knowing Angela Brickell’s whereabouts is asked to get in touch with the police.
Angela Brickell’s parents, like Olympia’s, were reported to be ‘distraught’.
Chapter 6
By the following week, Angela Brickell’s disappearance had been taken up by the national dailies who all mentioned the death of Olympia at Shellerton two months earlier but drew no significant conclusions.
Angela, I learned, lived in a stable hostel with five other girls who described her as ‘moody’. An indistinct photograph of her showed the face of a child, not a young woman, and pleas to ‘Find This Girl’ could realistically never have been successful if they depended on recognising her from her likeness in newsprint.
There was no account, in fact, of her having been found, and after a week or so the clippings about her stopped.
There were no cuttings at all for July, when it seemed the jump racing fraternity took a holiday, but they began again with various accounts of the opening of the new season in Devon in August. ‘Vickers’ Victories Continue!’
Nolan had ridden a winner on one of Fiona’s horses: ‘the well-known amateur now out on bail facing charges of assault resulting in death...’
In early September Nolan had hit the news again, this time in giving evidence at a Jockey Club enquiry in defence of Tremayne, who stood accused of doping one of his horses.
With popping eyes, since Tremayne to me even on such short acquaintance seemed the last person to put his whole way of life in jeopardy for so trivial a reason, I read that one of his horses had tested positive to traces of the stimulants theobromine and caffeine, prohibited substances.
The horse in question had won an amateurs’ race back in May. Belonging to Fiona, it had been ridden by Nolan, who said he had no idea how the drugs had been administered. He had himself been in charge of the horse that day since Tremayne hadn’t attended the meeting. Tremayne had sent the animal in the care of his head travelling lad and a groom, and neither the head lad nor Tremayne knew how the drugs had been administered. Mrs Fiona Goodhaven could offer no explanation either, though she and her husband had attended and watched the race.
The Jockey Club’s verdict at the end of the day had been that there was no way of determining who had given the drugs or how, since they couldn’t any longer question the groom who had been in charge of the horse as she, Angela Brickell, could not be found.
Angela Brickell. Good grief, I thought.
Tremayne had nevertheless been adjudged guilty as charged and had been fined fifteen hundred pounds. A slapped wrist, it seemed.
Upon leaving the enquiry Tremayne had shrugged and said, ‘These things happen.’
The drug theobromine, along with caffeine, commented the reporter, could commonly be found in chocolate. Well, well, I thought. Never a dull moment in the racing industry.
The rest of the year seemed an anti-climax after that, though there had been a whole procession of notable wins. ‘The Stable in Form’ and ‘More Vim to Vickers’ and ‘Loadsa Vicktories’, according to which paper or magazine one read.
I finished the year and was simply sitting and thinking when Tremayne breezed in with downland air still cool on his coat.
‘How are you doing?’ he said.
I pointed to the pile of clippings out of their box. ‘I was reading about last year. All those winners.’
He beamed. ‘Couldn’t put a foot wrong. Amazing. Sometimes things just go right. Other years, you get the virus, horses break down, owners die, you have a ghastly time. All the luck of the game.’