“Dozen Roses, of course. What else?”
“Oh.”
“What do you mean, oh? You knew damn well I was fetching it today. The damn thing’s half asleep. I’m getting the vet round at once and I’ll want urine and blood tests. The damn thing looks doped.”
“Maybe they gave him a tranquilizer for the journey.”
“They’ve no right to, you know that. If they have, I’ll have Nicholas Loder’s head on a platter, like you should, if you had any sense. The man does what he damn well likes. Anyway, if the horse doesn’t pass my vet he’s going straight back, Ostermeyers, or no Ostermeyers. It’s not fair on them if I accept shoddy goods.”
“Um,” I said calmingly, “perhaps Nicholas Loder wants you to do just that.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Wants you to send him straight back.”
“Oh.”
“And,” I said, “Dozen Roses was the property of Saxony Franklin Limited, not Nicholas Loder, and if you think it’s fair to the Ostermeyers to void the sale, so be it, but my brother’s executor will direct you to send the horse anywhere else but back to Loder.”
There was a silence. Then he said with a smothered laugh, “You always were a bright tricky bastard.”
“Thanks.”
“But get down here, will you? Take a look at him. Talk to the vet. How soon can you get here?”
“Couple of hours. Maybe more.”
“No, come on, Derek.”
“It’s a long way to Tipperary,” I said. “It never gets any nearer.”
“You’re delirious.”
“I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Soon as you can, then,” he said. “See you.”
I put down the receiver with an inward groan. I did not want to go belting down to Lambourn to a crisis, however easily resolved. I wanted to let my aches unwind.
I telephoned the car and heard the ringing tone, but Brad, wherever he was, didn’t answer. Then, as the first step toward leaving, I went along and locked the vault. Alfie in the packing room was stretching his back, his day’s load finished. Lily, standing idle, gave me a repressed look from under her lashes. Jason goosed Tina in the doorway to the stockrooms, which she didn’t seem to mind. There was a feeling of afternoon ending, of abeyance in the offing, of corporate activity drifting to suspense. Like the last race on an October card.
Saying goodnights and collecting the plastic bag, I went down to the yard and found Brad there waiting.
“Did you find those papers OK?” I asked him, climbing in beside him after storing the crutches on the back seat.
“Yerss,” he said.
“And delivered them?”
“Yerss.”
“Thanks. Great. How long have you been back?”
He shrugged. I left it. It wasn’t important.
“Lambourn,” I said, as we turned out of the yard. “But on the way, back to my brother’s house to collect something else. OK?”
He nodded and drove to Greville’s house skillfully, but slowed just before we reached it and pointed to Greville’s car, still standing by the curb.
“See?” he said. “It’s been broken into.”
He found a parking place and we went back to look. The heavily locked trunk had been jimmied open and now wouldn’t close again.
“Good job we took the things out,” I said. “I suppose they are still in my car.”
He shook his head. “In our house, under the stairs. Our mum said to do it with your car outside our door all night. Dodgy neighborhood round our part.”
“Very thoughtful,” I said.
He nodded. “Smart, our mum.”
He came with me into Greville’s garden, holding the gate open.
“They done this place over proper,” he said, producing the three keys from his pocket. “Want me to?”
He didn’t wait for particular assent but went up the steps and undid the locks. Daylight: no floods, no dog.
He waited in the hall while I went along to the little sitting room to collect the tapes. It all looked forlorn in there, a terrible mess made no better by time. I put the featherweight cassettes into my pocket and left again, thinking that tidying up was a long way down my urgency list. When the ankle had altogether stopped hurting; maybe then. When the insurance people had seen it, if they wanted to.
I had brought with me a note which I left prominently on the lowest step of the staircase, where anyone coming into the house would see it.
“Dear Mrs. P. I’m afraid there is bad news for you. Don’t clean the house. Telephone Saxony Franklin Ltd. instead.”
I’d added the number in case she didn’t know it by heart, and I’d warned Annette to go gently with anyone calling. Nothing else I could do to cushion the shock.
Brad locked the front door and we set off again to Lambourn. He had done enough talking for the whole journey and we traveled in customary silence, easy if not comrades.
Milo was striding about in the yard, expending energy to no purpose. He yanked the passenger-side door of my car open and scowled in at Brad, more as a reflection of his general state of mind, I gathered, than from any particular animosity.
I retrieved the crutches and stood up, and he told me it was high time I threw them away.
“Calm down,” I said.
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Is Phil here?”
Phil was Phil Urquhart, veterinary surgeon, pill pusher to the stable.
“No, he isn’t,” Milo said crossly, “but he’s coming back. The damned horse won’t give a sample. And for a start, you can tell me whether it is or isn’t Dozen Roses. His passport matches, but I’d like to be sure.”
He strode away toward a box in one corner of the yard and I followed and looked where he looked, over the bottom half of the door.
Inside the box were an obstinate-looking horse and a furious red-faced lad. The lad held a pole which had on one end of it an open plastic bag on a ring, like a shrimping net. The plastic bag was clean and empty.
I chuckled.
“It’s all right for you,” Milo said sharply. “You haven’t been waiting for more than two hours for the damned animal to stale.”
“On Singapore racecourse, one time,” I said, “they got a sample with nicotine in it. The horse didn’t smoke, but the lad did. He got tired of waiting for the horse and just supplied the sample himself.”
“Very funny,” Milo said repressively.
“This often takes hours, though, so why the rage?”
It sounded always so simple, of course, to take a regulation urine sample from two horses after every race, one nearly always from the winner. In practice it meant waiting around for the horses to oblige. After two hours of nonperformance, blood samples were taken instead, but blood wasn’t as easy to come by. Many tempers were regularly lost while the horses made up their minds.
“Come away,” I said, “he’ll do it in the end. And he’s definitely the horse that ran at York. Dozen Roses without a doubt.”
He followed me away reluctantly and we went into the kitchen where Milo switched lights on and asked me if I’d like a drink.
“Wouldn’t mind some tea,” I said.
“Tea? At this hour? Well, help yourself.” He watched me fill the kettle and set it to boil. “Are you off booze forever?”
“No.”
“Thank God.”
Phil Urquhart’s car scrunched into the yard and pulled up outside the window, and he came breezing into the kitchen asking if there were any results. He read Milo’s scowl aright and laughed.
“Do you think the horse is doped?” I asked him.
“Me? No, not really. Hard to tell. Milo thinks so.”
He was small and sandy-haired, and about thirty, the grandson of a three-generation family practice, and to my mind the best of them. I caught myself thinking that when I in the future trained here in Lambourn, I would want him for my horses. An odd thought. The future planning itself behind my back.