‘Neat,’ I said.
Flora nodded. ‘Larry Trent always liked it because it meant he could run five horses instead of owning only one outright. He was a great gambler, that man.’
‘Gambler?’
‘A thousand on this, a thousand on that... I used to get tired of hearing about it.’
I gave her an amused glance. ‘Didn’t you like him?’
‘I suppose he was all right,’ she said dubiously. ‘He was always friendly. A good owner, Jack always said. Paid regularly and understood that horses aren’t machines. Hardly ever blamed the jockey if he lost. But secretive, somehow. I don’t really know why I think that, but that’s how he seemed to me. Generous, though. He took us to dinner only last week at that place of his, the Silver Moondance. There was a band playing... so noisy.’ She sighed. ‘But of course you know about us going there... Jimmy said he told you about that whisky. I told him to forget it... Jack didn’t want Jimmy stirring up trouble.’
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘The trouble got stirred, all the same, not that it matters.’
‘What do you mean?’
I told her of Jimmy’s semi-conscious wanderings and my visit with Detective Sergeant Ridger to the Silver Moondance Saloon, and she said ‘Good heavens’ faintly, with round eyes.
‘Someone in that place had a great fiddle going,’ I said. ‘Whether Larry Trent knew or not.’
She didn’t answer directly, but after a long pause said, ‘You know, he did something once that I didn’t understand. I happened to be at Doncaster sales last year with some friends I was staying with. Jack wasn’t there, he was too busy at home. Larry Trent was there... He didn’t see me, but I saw him across the sale ring, and he was bidding for a horse... it was called Ramekin.’ She paused, then went on. ‘The horse was knocked down to him and I thought good, Jack will be getting it to train. But it never came. Larry Trent never said a word. I told Jack of course, but he said I must have been mistaken, Larry Trent never bought horses, and he wouldn’t even ask him about it.’
‘So who did train Ramekin afterwards?’ I asked.
‘No one.’ She looked at me anxiously. ‘I’m not crazy, you know. I looked it up in the sale prices in the Sporting Life and it was sold for more than thirty thousand pounds. They didn’t say who had bought it, but I’m absolutely certain it was Larry Trent because the auctioneer’s man went right up to him to ask him his name when it had been knocked down to him, but after that... nothing happened.’
‘Well... someone must have him,’ I said reasonably.
I suppose so. But he’s not down in any trainer’s list of horses-in-training. I checked, you know, because it would have been so annoying if Larry had sent the horse to someone else after all the races Jack’s won for him, but Ramekin wasn’t down anywhere, and he hasn’t raced the whole season, I’ve been looking for him. Ramekin just... really... vanished.’
Six
Flora took me into the kitchen to collect the glasses which were left whole: precisely nineteen.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
I shrugged. ‘It’s a wonder there are as many as that, considering. And don’t worry, I’m insured.’
She helped me slot the survivors into the box I’d brought, her kind round face looking worried.
‘Insurance!’ she said. ‘I’ve been hearing that word all morning. But who, I ask you, insures against such a tragedy? Of course we didn’t have any insurance, not special insurance for the party. And those poor young things who own the horsebox... I had Sally... that’s the wife... on the telephone at lunch time telling me over and over hysterically that Peter never never never left the hand-brake off and always always always left the horsebox in gear, and that they’re going to be ruined if the insurance companies can prove negligence. Poor things. Poor things.’ She glanced at me. ‘He didn’t lock the doors, you know. I asked her. I’m afraid I made her angry. She said you don’t lock the doors when you’re at a friend’s house.’
I thought sourly of my stolen champagne and kept quiet.
‘She said they came in the horsebox only because they’d been to fetch a new hunter they’d just bought and were on their way home. The hunter’s still here, you know, in one of our spare boxes round the back. Sally says she never wants to see it again. She was totally, absolutely, distraught. It’s all so awful.’
Flora came with me as I carried the box of empty glasses out to the van, reluctant to let me go. ‘We didn’t make that list for Jack,’ she said; so we returned to the kitchen and made it.
‘If you still feel shaky tomorrow I’ll come again for evening stables,’ I said. ‘I enjoyed it, to be honest.’
‘You’re a dear, Tony,’ she said. ‘I’d love you to,’ and again she came out to the van to say goodbye.
‘The police were here all morning swarming around the horsebox,’ she said, looking over to the silent green monster. ‘Blowing dust all over it and shaking their heads.’
‘Looking for fingerprints, I suppose.’
‘I suppose so. Whatever it was they found, they didn’t like it. But you know how they are, they didn’t tell me a thing.’
‘Did you take a look, when they’d gone?’ I asked.
She shook her head as if it hadn’t occurred to her, but immediately set of towards the horsebox across the grass. I followed, and together we made a rectangular tour, looking at a great deal of pinkish-greyish dust with smudges all over it.
‘Hundreds of people must have touched it,’ Flora said resignedly.
Including the people with the crane, I thought, and the people who’d released the horse, and any number of people before that.
On impulse I opened the passenger door, which was still not locked, and climbed into the cab.
‘Do you think you ought to, dear?’ Flora asked anxiously.
‘They didn’t tell you to stay away, did they?’
‘No... not today.’
‘Don’t worry, then.’
I looked around. There was a great deal more of the dust inside the cab, and also a great many fingerprints, but those inside were less smudged. I looked at them curiously but without expectation: it was just that I’d never actually seen the real thing, only dozens of representations in films.
Something about many of the prints struck me suddenly with a distinct mental jolt.
They were tiny.
Tiny fingerprints all over the vinyl surfaces of both front seats. Tiny fingerprints all over the steering-wheel and on the gear lever and on the brake. Tiny...
I climbed down from the cab and told Flora, and I told her also about the investigator Wilson’s interest when I’d mentioned a little boy and a dog.
‘Do you mean,’ she said, very distressed, ‘... it was a child who caused such horror?’
‘Yes, I’d think so. You know how they play. They love cars. They’re always climbing into my van when I deliver things. Little wretches, if you don’t watch them. I’d guess that that child released the brake and gear. Then when he’d run off with the dog the weight of the van would eventually make it roll if it was on even the slightest incline.’
‘Oh, dear.’ She looked increasingly upset. ‘Whose child?’
I described the boy as best I could but she said she didn’t know everyone’s children by sight, they changed so fast as they grew.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Wilson has addresses for all your guests. He’ll find out. And dearest Flora, be grateful. If it was someone else’s child who let off the brakes, your friends Peter and Sally won’t be ruined.’
‘It wasn’t their child... they haven’t any. But that poor little boy!’