As I was there anyway, I started with the station. Outside, I looked up the times of the stopping trains. There was, I found, a down train at twelve-thirty but no up train until five o’clock. The only other trains ran early in the morning and later in the evening. The booking office was shut. I found the clerk-ticket-collector-porter nodding over a hot stove and a racing paper in the parcels office. A large basket of hens squawked noisily in a corner as I walked in, and he woke with a jerk and told me the next train was due in one hour and ten minutes.
I got him talking via the racing news, but there was nothing to learn. Maurice Kemp-Lore had never (more’s the pity he said) caught a train at Timberley. If it had happened when he was off-duty, he’d have heard about it all right. And yes, he said, he’d been on duty the day they’d fetched the Jaguar down to the garage. Disgusting that. Shouldn’t be allowed, people being rich enough to chuck their old cars in the ditch like cigarette ends.
I asked him if the station had been busy that day: if there had been a lot of passengers catching the midday train.
‘A lot of passengers?’ he repeated scornfully. ‘Never more than three or four, excepting Cheltenham race days...’
‘I was just wondering,’ I said idly, ‘whether the chap who left his Jaguar behind could have caught a train from here that morning?’
‘Not from here, he didn’t,’ the railway man said positively. ‘Because, same as usual, all the people who caught the train were ladies.’
‘Ladies?’
‘Yeh, women. Shopping in Cheltenham. We haven’t had a man catch the midday — excepting race days of course — since young Simpkins from the garage got sent home with chickenpox last summer. Bit of a joke it is round here, see, the midday.’
I gave him a hot tip for Birmingham that afternoon (which won, I was glad to see later) and left him busily putting a call through to his bookmaker on the government’s telephone bill.
Timberley village pub, nearly empty, had never been stirred, they told me regretfully, by the flashing presence of Maurice Kemp-Lore.
The two transport cafés along the main road hadn’t heard of any of their chaps giving him a lift.
None of the garages within ten miles had seen him ever.
The local taxi service had never driven him. He had never caught a bus on the country route.
It wasn’t hard at each place to work conversation round to Kemp-Lore, but it was never quick. By the time a friendly bus conductor had told me, over a cigarette at the Cheltenham terminus, that none of his mates had ever had such a famous man on board because they’d never have kept quiet about it (look how Bill went on for days and days when Dennis Compton took a tenpenny single), it was seven o’clock in the evening.
If I hadn’t been so utterly, unreasonably sure that it was Kemp-Lore who had abandoned the Jaguar, I would have admitted that if no one had seen him, then he hadn’t been there. As it was, I was depressed by the failure of my search, but not convinced that there was nothing to search for.
The army tank carrier that had blocked Peter’s and my way to Cheltenham was there accidentally: that much was clear. But Peter had got into such trouble for being late that a weapon was put straight into the hand of his enemy. He had only had to make Peter late again, and to spread his little rumours, and the deed was done. No confidence, no rides, no career for Cloony.
I found I still hoped by perseverance to dig something up, so I booked a room in a hotel in Cheltenham, and spent the evening in a cinema to take my mind off food. On the telephone Tick-Tock sounded more resigned than angry to hear that he would be car-less yet again. He asked how I was getting on, and when I reported no progress, he said, ‘If you’re right about our friend, he’s as sly and cunning as all get out. You won’t find his tracks too easily.’
Without much hope I went down in the morning to the Cheltenham railway station and sorted out, after a little difficulty with old time-sheets and the passing of a pound note, the man who had collected the tickets from the passengers on the stopping train from Timberley on the day the Jaguar was abandoned.
He was willing enough, but he too had never seen Kemp-Lore, except on television; though he hesitated while he said so.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Well, sir, I’ve never seen him, but I think I’ve seen his sister.’
‘What was she like?’ I asked.
‘Very like him, of course, sir, or I wouldn’t have known who she was. And she had riding clothes on. You know — jodhpurs, I think they’re called. And a scarf over her head. Pretty she looked, very pretty. I couldn’t think who she was for a bit, and then it came to me, afterwards like. I didn’t talk to her, see? I just took her ticket when she went through the barrier, that’s all. I remember taking her ticket.’
‘When was it that you saw her?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I couldn’t say. I don’t rightly know when it was. Before Christmas though, some time before Christmas, I’m certain of that.’
He flipped the pound I gave him expertly into an inner pocket. ‘Thank you, sir, thank you indeed,’ he said.
I dressed and shaved with particular care on the Thursday morning as, I supposed, a sort of barrier against the reception I knew I was going to meet. It was six days since I had been racing, six days in which my shortcomings and the shreds of my riding reputation would have been brought up, pawed over and discarded. Life moved fast in the changing-room: today was important, tomorrow more so; but yesterday was dead. I belonged to yesterday. I was ancient news.
Even my valet was surprised to see me, although I had written to say I was coming.
‘You are riding today then?’ he said. ‘I was wondering if you wanted to sell your saddle... there’s a boy just starting who needs one.’
‘I’ll keep it a bit longer,’ I said. ‘I’m riding Turniptop in the fourth. Mr. Axminster’s colours.’
It was a strange day. As I no longer felt that I deserved the pitying glances to which I was treated, I found that they had, to a great extent, ceased to trouble me, and I even watched with fair equanimity the success of two of my ex-mounts in the first two races. The only thing I worried about was whether or not James would have both sugar lumps in his pocket and willingness in his heart.
He was so busy with his other runners that I did not exchange more than a few words with him during the first part of the afternoon, and when I went out into the parade ring to join him for Turniptop’s race, he was standing alone, thoughtfully gazing into the distance.
‘Maurice Kemp-Lore’s here,’ he said abruptly.
‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘I saw him.’
‘He has given sugar to several horses already.’
‘What?’ I exclaimed.
‘I have asked quite a few people... Maurice has been feeding sugar to any number of horses during the past few weeks, not only to the ones you have ridden.’
‘Oh,’ I said weakly. Cunning as all get out, Tick-Tock had said.
‘None of the horses you rode were picked for the regulation dope test,’ said James, ‘but some of the other horses Maurice gave sugar to were tested. All negative.’
‘He only gave doped sugar to my mounts. The rest were camouflage, and he was damn lucky that the horses I rode weren’t tested,’ I said. It sounded improbable, but I was sure of it.
James shook his head.
‘Did you...?’ I began without much hope, ‘Did he... Kemp-Lore... try to give Turniptop any sugar?’
James compressed his lips and stared into the middle distance. I positively held my breath.
‘He did come into the saddling box,’ he said grudgingly. ‘He admired the horse’s coat.’
Turniptop ambled past glowing with good health, but before James could say any more one of the Stewards came over to talk to him, and I had no chance to find out about the sugar before it was time to mount and go out for the race.