“I saw as much as I needed to know,” Jessica said evenly. “When the field takes the canal jump on the second lap of the course, Sterling Choice will be leading by three lengths under a hand ride. Overlord’s rider has gone to the bat but isn’t gaining. Primrose, the only mare who’ll finish the race, is the show horse. She’ll be trailing Overlord by seven lengths.”
Eric sat down slowly on the edge of the bed, feeling suddenly drained of strength. Yet he thought, with a touch of wonder, it was an exhilarating feeling, the sweet exhaustion of victory.
“There can’t be any mistake, Jessica,” he said softly. “This means so much to your Uncle Eric.”
“I saw them finish. There’s no mistake.”
And Eric Griffith believed her. But that very confidence and faith in the girl — in some sad fashion — curdled and dissolved his optimism, his anticipation of winning, replacing them with the familiar bewildering and angering self-pity. It didn’t have to be just one good afternoon at a track, he thought. It could be hundreds. And to think beyond tracks and horses, toward other contests even more profitable and fateful. It could be the start of something so heady he could feel it spurring the exultant stroke of his heart. If all of life, of knowledge, was so easy for her, why not ever for Boniface?
But again came the defeating realization that there were only starts for him, never finishes. College had been a time of mystery and initiation but where had it led? What had Ira Washburn’s false promises amounted to? The times of challenge always withered and dried away for him...
Eric felt a painful dryness in his throat. He needed a whiskey to exorcise this draining self-pity, this invasion of weakening memories that stemmed in equal parts from the fat man’s contempt and the conviction of being homeless and unwanted in a home that should have been his...
Stirred by resentment, he reminded himself that self-pity was the crutch, anger the club.
“By God, Jessica, you’ll regret it if you’ve lied to me!” he said, and walked from her room, closing the door and locking it with a click of finality.
When the sound of his footsteps faded, Jessica snapped out the overhead lights, switched on her torch and swung its beams in four quick slashes across the gleaming night-dark window panes.
Eric worked for twenty minutes in Dalworth’s study, the Tiffany desk lamp highlighting the figures scribbled rapidly on a paper. The same light found motes in the heavy air and shone in splintered patterns from the gun cabinet. A wind was rising and a rustling sound could be heard through the house, as stiff salt breezes came down the Connemara coast.
Calculations completed, Eric walked into the library where Tony Saxe and Benny Stiff were playing gin rummy at a chess table.
Eric placed sheets of paper in front of each man, then opened the envelope he had received from Ethelroyd and counted out three stacks of British currency, each totaling twelve thousand pounds.
“We will each wager ten thousand pounds in England this weekend,” Eric said, “with Betting Commissioners in three separate cities. Benny, you’ll take Liverpool, Tony, you’ll cover Manchester, Maud and I will be at the Cumberland in London.
“Should the worst occur, if little Miss Crystal’s predictions aren’t accurate, we’ll at least have two thousand pounds each to take us back to the States in luxury.”
“But there’s no parimutual betting in England,” Benny said.
“I’m aware of that. What’s your point?”
“An obvious one. They don’t cut up the pie according to the handle that’s bet. The odds you get from a Commissioner don’t change no matter how much action there is. So why go running around England like jack rabbits?”
“Simply this. The long shots we’re betting on aren’t touted by any of the top handicappers. And the amounts we’re betting could cause gossip.”
“Good thinking,” Tony Saxe said. “So that leaves just one other thing.”
Benny Stiff shook his head slowly. “No — two things.”
“Very well,” Eric said. “Let’s take them in order. Tony?”
Saxe glanced at the sheet of paper Eric had given him, checking the three names — Sterling Choice, Overlord, and Primrose. At last he said, “Supposing there’s a violation, a flag up after the first results? She only saw the finish, you say. We don’t know about a jock caught with phony weights, saliva tests, or some owner screaming foul to a judge.”
“I was coming to that. We’ll split our bets between the number one and number two horse, Sterling Choice and Overlord. If they foul each other, their position at the finish will simply be reversed. We’ll collect either way.” Eric looked appraisingly at Benny Stiff. “What’s on your mind?”
Benny stared at the backs of his hands. “I said it before, it’s like back in Camden. You’re thinking about the pay-off, not what you got to do to earn it.”
“I’m way ahead of you, Benny.”
“You better be, because it’s as plain as a fly in an ice-cube that just winning that loot doesn’t solve our problems. There’s still one left and you better know what one I’m talking about.”
“I told you, I’m ahead of you.” Eric paced the floor, hands clasped behind his back, his eyes gazing at the dark, inlaid ceiling. “In another context, I told you that we were fortunate to be operating in such a simple and credulous country.”
Turning, he smiled at them. “It seems there has been a recent curse on Easter Hill. The good people around here believe that in the depths of their souls. The death of the master, Andrew Dalworth, followed into that silent world by his faithful retainer, Mr. Brown. A distraught girl wandering the beaches like a demented thing. And when that same poor child goes riding at dawn, along the treacherous crags of that big cliff up there — well, if anything happens to her—” Eric shrugged and sat down at the chess table. “Well, her death will be laid to the damnable curse that’s settled on this house.”
He picked up a deck of cards, shuffled them, and dealt out three hands of gin rummy.
“Any other problems, Benny?”
“Not a one,” Benny Stiff said, taking up his cards.
A light thump sounded on the roof directly above Jessica’s head. As she unlatched the bay windows, thunder swelling around her, another thump sounded on her terrace. Hoisting himself over the sill into her room, Kevin O’Dell’s face was hard with anxiety.
Jessica pulled the draperies behind him and snapped on her bedside lamp. Kevin took her shoulders and stared into her face. “Jessica, what in the name of God’s going on here?”
“Kevin, keep your voice down. Please. There’s no time to explain.” She spoke in an urgent whisper. “Just listen to me. They murdered Mr. Brown. I saw it happen. You must go to Constable Riley and—”
“I could call him from the stables.”
“No, Kevin, no! Get away from Easter Hill. Go quickly, for God’s sake.”
Kevin gripped her hands. “I can’t leave you like this, Jessica. Come with me!”
“Go, I tell you! Please! I can’t reach the big oak from the roof. If you stay, we’re both lost.”
Kevin hesitated for an instant, a last tense appeal into her eyes, but seeing the unwavering determination in her expression, he nodded abruptly and touched his hand to her cheek before turning swiftly to the windows.
Jessica closed them behind him, hearing his boots in the heavy ivy, and then his footsteps running lightly above her on the mansard roof.
She murmured a prayer for him as a bolt of lightning struck the horizons beyond Skyhead, garish yellow flares illuminating the black clouds, heavy and roiling with the winds coming in from the sea.