‘James,’ I said, sitting down unasked in one of the battered armchairs. ‘There are a few things I’d like you to know. First, however bad it looks, and whatever you believe, I have not lost my nerve. Second, every single horse I have ridden since that fall three weeks ago has been doped. Not enough to be very noticeable, just enough to make it run like a slug. Third, the dope has been given to all the horses by the same man. Fourth, the dope has been given to the horses on sugar lumps. I should think it was some form of sleeping draught, but I’ve no way of knowing for sure.’ I stopped abruptly.
James stood looking at me with his mouth open, the prominent lower teeth bared to the gums as his lip dropped in shocked disbelief.
I said, ‘Before you conclude that I am out of my mind, do me the one favour of calling in one of the lads, and listening to what he has to say.’
James shut his mouth with a snap. ‘Which lad?’
‘It doesn’t really matter. Any of them whose horse I have ridden in the last three weeks.’
He paused dubiously, but finally went to the door and shouted for someone to find Eddie, the lad who looked after Hugo’s big chestnut. In less than a minute the boy arrived, out of breath, and with his curly fair hair sticking up in an uncombed halo.
James gave me no chance to do the questioning. He said brusquely to Eddie, ‘When did you last talk to Rob?’
The boy looked scared and began to stutter, ‘N-not since l-l-last week.’
‘Since last Friday?’ That was the day James himself had last seen me.
‘No sir.’
‘Very well, then. You remember the big chestnut running badly last Wednesday week?’
‘Yes sir.’ Eddie treated me to a scornful glance.
‘Did anyone give the chestnut a lump of sugar before the race?’ There was now only interest to be heard in James’s voice: the severity was masked.
‘Yes sir,’ said Eddie eagerly. The familiar remembering smile appeared on his grubby face, and I breathed an inward sigh of bottomless relief.
‘Who was it?’
‘Maurice Kemp-Lore, sir. He said how splendidly I looked after my horses, sir. He was leaning over the rails of the assembly ring and he spoke to me as I was going past. So I stopped, and he was ever so nice. He gave the chestnut some sugar, sir, but I didn’t think it would matter as Mr. Hugo is always sending sugar for him anyway.’
‘Thank you, Eddie,’ said James, rather faintly. ‘No matter about the sugar... run along, now.’
Eddie went. James looked at me blankly. The loud clock ticked.
Presently I said, ‘I’ve spent the last two days talking to the lads of all the horses I’ve ridden for other stables since I had that fall. Every one of them told me that Maurice Kemp-Lore gave the horse some lumps of sugar before I rode it. Ingersoll came with me. He heard them too. You’ve only to ask him if you can’t believe it from me.’
‘Maurice never goes near horses at the races,’ James protested, ‘or anywhere else for that matter.’
‘That’s precisely what helped me to understand what was happening,’ I said. ‘I talked to Kemp-Lore on the stands at Dunstable just after Shantytown and two other horses had run hopelessly for me, and he was wheezing quite audibly. He had asthma. Which meant that he had recently been very close to horses. I didn’t give it a thought at the time, but it means a packet to me now.’
‘But Maurice...’ he repeated, unbelievingly. ‘It’s just not possible.’
‘It is, however, possible,’ I said, more coldly than I had any right to, having believed it myself for twelve awful hours, ‘for me to fall apart from a small spot of concussion?’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said uncomfortably. There was a pause. There were two things I wanted James to do to help me: but in view of his ingrained disinclination to do favours for anyone, I did not think my requests would be very enthusiastically received. However, if I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t get.
I said slowly, persuasively, as if the thought had just occurred to me, ‘Let me ride a horse for you... one of your own, if the owners won’t have me... and see for yourself if Kemp-Lore tries to give it sugar. Perhaps you could stick with the horse yourself, all the time? And if he comes up with his sugar lumps, maybe you could manage to knock them out of his hand before the horse eats them. Perhaps you could pick them up yourself and put them in your pocket, and give the horse some sugar lumps of your own instead? Then we would see how the horse runs.’
It was too much trouble; his face showed it. He said, ‘That’s too fantastic. I can’t do things like that.’
‘It’s simple,’ I said mildly, ‘you’ve only to bump his arm.’
‘No,’ he said, but not obstinately. A hopeful no, to my ears. I didn’t press him, knowing from experience that he would irrevocably stick in his toes if urged too vehemently to do anything he did not want to.
I said instead, ‘Aren’t you friendly with that man who arranges the regular dope tests at the races?’ One or two spot checks were taken at every meeting, mainly to deter trainers of doubtful reputation from pepping-up or slowing-down their horses with drugs. At the beginning of each afternoon the Stewards decided which horses to test — for example, the winner of the second race, and the favourite in the fourth race (especially if he was beaten). No one, not even the Stewards, always knew in advance exactly which horses would have their saliva taken, and the value of the whole system lay in this uncertainty.
James followed my thoughts. ‘You mean, will I ask him if any of the horses you have ridden since your fall have been tested for dope in the normal course of events?’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Could you possibly do that?’
‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ he said. ‘I will ring him up. But if any of them have been tested and proved negative, you do realise that it will dispose of your wild accusations absolutely?’
‘I do,’ I agreed. ‘Actually, I’ve ridden so many beaten favourites that I can’t think why such systematic doping has not already been discovered.’
‘You really do believe it, don’t you?’ said James, wonderingly.
‘Yes,’ I said, getting up and going to the door. ‘Yes, I believe it. And so will you, James.’
But he shook his head, and I left him staring frozen-faced out of the window, the incredible nature of what I had said to him still losing the battle against his own personal knowledge of Kemp-Lore. James liked the man.
Ten
Late that Monday evening James rang me up at my digs and told me that I could ride his own horse, Turniptop, which was due to run in the novice ’chase at Stratford-on-Avon on the following Thursday. I began to thank him, but he interrupted, ‘I’m doing you no favour. You know it won’t win. He’s never been over fences, only hurdles, and all I want is for you to give him an easy race round, getting used to the bigger obstacles. All right?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All right.’ And he rang off. There was no mention of whether he would or would not contemplate juggling with sugar knobs.
I was tired. I had spent the whole day driving to Devon and back to visit Art Mathews’s beautiful widow, the ice maiden. A fruitless journey. She had been as chilly as ever. Widowhood had warmed her no more than wifehood had done. Blonde, well-bred and cold, she had answered my questions calmly and incuriously and with a complete lack of interest. Art had been dead four months. She spoke of him as though she could barely remember what he had looked like. No, she did not know exactly why Art had quarrelled so continuously with Corin. No, she did not know why Art had thought fit to shoot himself. No, Art had not got on well with Mr. John Ballerton, but she did not know why. Yes, Art had once appeared on television on Turf Talk. It had not been a success, she said, the shadow of an old grievance sharpening her voice. Art had been made to look a fool. Art, whose meticulous sense of honour and order had earned him only respect on the racecourse, had been made to look a cantankerous, mean-minded fool. No, she could not remember exactly how it had been done, but she did remember, only too well, the effect it had had on her own family and friends. They had, it appeared, loudly pitied her on her choice of husband.