Whip Hand

'The bank clerks can't remember Nicky. They pay out cash in thousands for wages every day, because there's so much industry in Oxford. They were used to Jenny in connection with that account, and it was ten days or more before the police asked questions. No one can remember Nicky there at all.'

'He's professional,' I said flatly.

'Every pointer to it, I'm afraid.' She opened the door while I bent down and awkwardly picked up the brown cardboard box, balancing the small white one on top.

'Thank you,' I said, 'for your help.' 'Let me carry that box downstairs.'

'I can do it,' I said. She looked briefly into my eyes. 'I'm sure you can. You're too damned proud.' She took the box straight out of my arms and walked purposefully away. I followed her, feeling a fool, down the stairs and out onto the tarmac.

'Car?' she said. 'Round the back, but…' As well talk to the tide. I went with her, weakly gestured to the Scimitar, and opened the boot. She dumped the boxes inside, and I shut them in.

'Thank you,' I said again. 'For everything.' The faintest of smiles came back into her eyes. 'If you think of anything that could help Jenny,' I said, 'will you please let me know?'

'If you give me your address.' I forked a card out of an inner pocket and gave it to her. 'It's on there.'

'All right.' She stood still for a moment with an expression I couldn't read. 'I'll tell you one thing,' she said. 'From what Jenny's said… you're not a bit what I expected.'

CHAPTER FIVE

From Oxford I drove west to Gloucestershire and arrived at Garvey's stud farm at the respectable visiting hour of eleven-thirty, Sunday morning.

Tom Garvey, standing in his stable yard talking to his stud groom, came striding across as I braked to a halt.

'Sid Halley!' he said. 'What a surprise. What do you want?'

I grimaced through the open car window. 'Does everyone think I want something, when they see me?'

'Of course, lad. Best snooper in the business now, so they say. We hear things, you know, even us dim country bumpkins, we hear things.'

Smiling, I climbed out of the car and shook hands with a sixty-year-old near-rogue who was about as far from a dim country bumpkin as Cape Horn from Alaska. A big strong bull of a man, with unshakable confidence, a loud domineering voice, and the wily mind of a gypsy. His hand in mine was as hard as his business methods and as dry as his manner. Tough with men, gentle with horses. Year after year he prospered, and if I would have had every foal on the place exhaustively blood-typed before I believed its alleged breeding, I was probably in the minority.

'What are you after, then, Sid?' he said.

'I came to see a mare, Tom, One that you've got here. Just general interest.'

'Oh yes? Which one?'

' Bethesda.'

There was an abrupt change in his expression from half-amusement to no amusement at all. He narrowed his eyes and said brusquely, 'What about her?'

'Well… has she foaled, for instance?'

'She's dead.'

'Dead?'

'You heard, lad. She's dead. You'd better come in the house.'

He turned and scrunched away, and I followed. His house was old and dark and full of stale air. All the life of the place was outside, in fields and foaling boxes and the breeding shed. Inside, a heavy clock ticked loudly into silence, and there was no aroma of Sunday roast.

'In here.'

It was a cross between a dining room and an office: heavy old table and chairs at one end, filing cabinets and sagging armchairs at the other. No attempts at cosmetic decor to please the customers. Sales went on outside, on the hoof.

Tom perched against his desk and I on the arm of one of the chairs: not the sort of conversation for relaxing in comfort.

'Now then,' he said. 'Why are you asking about Bethesda?'

'I just wondered what had become of her.' 'Don't fence with me, lad. You don't drive all the way here out of general interest. What do you want to know for?'

'A client wants to know,' I said.

'What client?'

'If I were working for you,' I said, 'and you'd told me to keep quiet about it, would you expect me to tell?'

He considered me with sour concentration.

'No lad. Guess I wouldn't. And I don't suppose there's much secret about Bethesda. She died foaling. The foal died with her. A colt, it would have been. Small, though.'

'I'm sorry,' I said. He shrugged. 'It happens sometimes. Not often, mind. Her heart packed up.'

'Heart?'

'Aye. The foal was lying wrong, see, and the mare, she'd been straining longer than was good for her. We got the foal turned inside her once we found she was in trouble, but she just packed it in, sudden like. Nothing we could do. Middle of the night, of course, like it nearly always is.'

'Did you have a vet to her?' 'Aye, he was there, right enough. I called him when we found she'd started, because there was a chance it would be dicey. First foal, and the heart murmur, and all.'

I frowned slightly. 'Did she have a heart murmur when she came to you?'

'Of course she did, lad. That's why she stopped racing. You don't know much about her, do you?'

'No,' I said. 'Tell me.'

He shrugged. 'She came from George Caspar's yard, of course. Her owner wanted to breed from her on account of her two-year-old form, so we bred her to Timberley, which should have given us a sprinter, but there you are, best laid plans, and all that.'

'When did she die?'

'Month ago, maybe.'

'Well, thanks, Tom.' I stood up. 'Thanks for your time.'

He shoved himself off his desk. 'Bit of a tame turn-up for you, asking questions, isn't it? I can't square it with the old Sid Halley, all speed and guts over the fences.'

'Times change, Tom.'

'Aye, I suppose so. I'll bet you miss it though, that roar from the stands when you'd come to the last and bloody well lift your horse over it.' His face echoed remembered excitements. 'By God, lad, that was a sight. Not a nerve in your body… don't know how you did it.'

I supposed it was generous of him, but I wished he would stop.

'Bit of bad luck, losing your hand. Still, with steeplechasing it's always something. Broken backs and such.' We began to walk to the door. 'If you go jump-racing you've got to accept the risks.'

'That's right,' I said. We went outside and across to my car.

'You don't do too badly with that contraption, though, do you, lad? Drive a car, and such.'

'It's fine.'

'Aye, lad.' He knew it wasn't. He wanted me to know he was sorry, and he'd done his best. I smiled at him, got into the car, sketched a thank-you salute, and drove away.

At Aynsford they were in the drawing room, drinking sherry before lunch: Charles, Toby and Jenny.

Charles gave me a glass of fino, Toby looked me up and down as if I'd come straight from a pig sty, and Jenny said she had been talking to Louise on the telephone.

'We thought you had run away. You left the flat two hours ago.'

'Sid doesn't run away,' Charles said, as if stating a fact.

'Limps, then,' Jenny said. Toby sneered at me over his glass: the male in possession enjoying his small gloat over the dispossessed. I wondered if he really understood the extent of Jenny's attachment to Nicholas Ashe, or if knowing, he didn't care.

I sipped the sherry: a thin dry taste, suitable to the occasion. Vinegar might have been better.

'Where did you buy all that polish from?' I said. 'I don't remember.' She spoke distinctly, spacing out the syllables, wilfully obstructive.

'Jenny!' Charles protested. I sighed. 'Charles, the police have the invoices, which will have the name and address of the polish firm on them. Can you ask your friend Oliver Quayle to ask the police for the information, and send it to me.'

'Certainly,' he said.

'I cannot see,' Jenny said in the same sort of voice, 'that knowing who supplied the wax will make the slightest difference one way or the other.'