Up in the rolling, grassy hills a mile or so away from his stable, James owned an old deserted keeper’s cottage. In the past it had been the home allotted to the man who looked after the gallops, James had told me once on a journey to the races, but as it had no electricity, no piped water and no sanitation, the new groundsman preferred, not unnaturally, to live in comfort in the village below and go up the hill to work on a motor-bike.
The old cottage lay down an overgrown lane leading off a public but little used secondary road which led nowhere except up and along the side of the hill and down again to join the main road four miles further on. It served only two farms and one private house, and because of its quietness it was a regular route for the Axminster horses on roadwork days.
After leaving James I drove up to the cottage. I had not seen it at close quarters before, only a glimpse of its blank end wall from the end of the lane as I rode by. I now found it was a four-roomed bungalow, set in a small fenced garden with a narrow path leading from the gate to the front door. The neglected grass had been cropped short by sheep. There was one window to each room, two facing the front and two the back.
Getting in without a key presented no difficulty as most of the glass in the windows was broken; and opening one, I climbed in. The whole place smelt of fungus and rot, though faintly, as if the decay were only warming up for future onslaught. The walls and floorboards were still in good condition, and only one of the rooms was damp. I found that all four rooms opened on to a small central hall inside the front entrance; and as I made my tour I reflected that it could not have been more convenient if I had designed it myself.
I let myself out of the front door, and walking round to the back I took out Joanna’s inch tape and measured the window frame; three feet high, four feet wide. Then I returned to the front, counted the number of broken panes of glass, and measured one of them. That done, I returned to James and asked him to lend me the cottage for a few days to store some things in for which there was no room at my digs.
‘As long as you like,’ he agreed absently, busy with paper work.
‘May I mend some of the windows, and put on a new lock, to make it more secure?’ I asked.
‘Help yourself,’ he said. ‘Do what you like.’
I thanked him, and drove into Newbury, and at a builders’ merchants waited while they made me up an order of ten panes of glass, enough putty to put them in with, several pieces of water pipe cut to a specified length, a bucket, some screws, a stout padlock, a bag of cement, a pot of green paint, a putty knife, a screw driver, a cement trowel and a paint brush. Loaded to the axles with that lot I returned to the cottage.
I painted the weather-beaten front door and left it open to dry, reflecting that no one could blame a keeper, or his wife for that matter, for not wanting to live in that lonely, inconvenient cul-de-sac.
I went into one of the back rooms and knocked out all the panes of glass which still remained in their little oblong frames. Then, outside in the garden, I mixed a good quantity of cement, using water from the rain butt, and fixed six three-foot lengths of water pipe upright in a row across the window. That done, I went round into the hall, and on the doorpost and door of the same room screwed firmly home the fittings for the padlock. On the inside of the door I unscrewed the handle and removed it.
The final job was replacing the glass in the front windows, and it took me longest to do, chipping out all the old putty and squeezing on the new; but at last it was done, and with its whole windows and fresh green door the cottage already looked more cheerful and welcoming.
I smiled to myself. I retrieved the car from where I had parked it inconspicuously behind some bushes, and drove back to London.
The Scots doctor was drinking gin with Joanna when I let myself in.
‘Oh no,’ I said unceremoniously.
‘Oh yes, laddie,’ he said. ‘You were supposed to come and see me yesterday, remember.’
‘I was busy,’ I said.
‘I’ll just take a look at those wrists, if you don’t mind,’ he said, putting down the gin and standing up purposefully.
I sighed and sat down at the table, and he unwrapped the bandages. There was blood on them again.
‘I thought I told you to take it easy,’ he said sternly. ‘How do you expect them to heal? What have you been doing?’
I could have said ‘Screwing in screws, chipping out putty and mixing cement,’ but instead I rather unco-operatively muttered, ‘Nothing.’
Irritated, he slapped a new dressing on with unnecessary force and I winced. He snorted; but he was gentler with the second one.
‘All right,’ he said, finishing them off. ‘Now, rest them a bit this time. And come and see me on Friday.’
‘Saturday,’ I said. ‘I won’t be in London on Friday.’
‘Saturday morning, then. And mind you come.’ He picked up his glass, tossed off the gin, and said a friendly good night exclusively to Joanna.
She came back laughing from seeing him out. ‘He isn’t usually so unsympathetic,’ she said. ‘But I think he suspects you were engaged in some sort of sadistic, disgusting orgy last week, as you wouldn’t tell him how you got like that.’
‘And he’s dead right,’ I said morosely. He had stirred up my wrists properly, and they hadn’t been too good to start with, after my labours at the cottage.
For the third night I went to bed on the sofa and lay awake in the darkness, listening to Joanna’s soft sleeping breath. Every day she hesitantly asked me if I would like to stay another night in her flat, and as I had no intention of leaving while there was any chance of thawing her resistance, I accepted promptly each time, even though I was progressively finding that no bread would have been more restful. Half a loaf, in the shape of Joanna padding familiarly in and out of the bathroom in a pretty dressing-gown and going to bed five yards away, was decidedly unsatisfying. But I could easily have escaped and gone to a non-tantalising sleep in my own bed in my family’s flat half a mile away; if I didn’t, it was my own fault, and I pointed this out to her when every morning she remorsefully apologised for being unfair.
On Wednesday morning I went to a large photographic agency and asked to see a picture of Maurice Kemp-Lore’s sister Alice. I was given a bundle of photographs to choose from, varying from Alice front-view in spotted organza at a Hunt Ball to Alice back-view winning over the last fence in a point to point. Alice was a striking girl, with dark hair, high cheek-bones, small fierce eyes, and a tight aggressive mouth. A girl to avoid, as far as I was concerned. I bought a copy of a waist-length photograph which showed her watching some hunter trials, dressed in a hacking jacket and head-scarf.
Leaving the agency, I went to the city offices of my parents’ accountants, and talked ‘our Mr. Stuart’ in the records department into letting me use first a typewriter and then his photocopying machine.
On plain typing paper I wrote a bald account of Kemp-Lore’s actions against Grant Oldfield, remarking that as a result of Axminster’s relying on the apparent disinterestedness of Kemp-Lore’s accusation, Oldfield had lost his job, had subsequently suffered great distress of mind, and had undergone three months’ treatment in a mental hospital.
I made ten copies of this statement and then on the photocopier printed ten copies each of the statements from Lubbock and James. I thanked ‘our Mr. Stuart’ profusely and returned to Joanna’s mews.
When I got back I showed her the photograph of Alice Kemp-Lore, and explained who she was.
‘But,’ said Joanna, ‘she isn’t a bit like her brother. It can’t have been her that the ticket-collector saw at Cheltenham.’