Bolt

TWENTY

We didn’t know how he would come, or when, or even if.
We’d shown him an opportunity and loaded him with a motive. Given him a time and place when he could remove an immovable obstruction: but whether or not he would accept the circuitous invitation, heaven alone knew.
Henri Nanterre … his very name sounded threatening.
I thought about his being at Windsor and making his way through the crowds on the stands, moving upwards and sideways, approaching Danielle. I thought that until that afternoon he might not have reliably known what she looked like. He’d seen her in the dark the previous Monday, when he’d opened her tyre valves and chased her, but it had been her car he had identified her by, not her face.
He’d probably have seen her with Litsi at Bradbury, but maybe not from close to. He’d have known she was the young woman with Litsi because Beatrice had told him they were going together with me.
Nanterre might not have known that Danielle had gone to Windsor at all until he’d seen her with me several times in the paddock and on the stands during the fourth race. He couldn’t have gone to Windsor with any advance plans, but what he’d meant to do if he’d reached Danielle was anyone’s nightmare.
I was sitting with these thoughts not in my own car but on a foam cushion on the floor inside the garage where Danielle was keeping her little Ford. One of the garage doors was open about a hand’s span, enough for me to see the Mercedes and a good deal of the mews, looking up towards the road entrance. A few people were coming home from work, opening their garages, shunting the cars in, closing and locking. A few were reversing the process, going out for the evening. The mechanics had long gone, all their garages silent. Several cars, like the Mercedes, were narked in the open, close to the sides, leaving a scant passage free in the centre.
Dusk had turned to night, and local bustle died into the restless distant roar of London’s traffic. I sat quietly with a few pre-positioned necessities to hand, like Perrier, smoked salmon and an apple, and rehearsed in my mind all sorts of eventualities, none of which happened.
Every half hour or so, I rose to my feet, stretched my spine, paced round Danielle’s car, and sat down again. Nothing of much interest occurred in the mews, and the hands of my watch travelled like slugs; eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten.
I thought of Danielle, and of what she’d said when I left her.
‘For Aunt Casilia’s sake I must hope that the rattlesnake turns up in the mews, but if you get yourself killed, I’ll never forgive you.’
‘A thought for eternity,’ I said.
‘You just make sure eternity is spent right here on earth, with me.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, and kissed her.
The rattlesnake, I thought, yawning as eleven o’clock passed, was taking his time. I normally went round to the mews at one-thirty so as to be at Chiswick before two, and I thought that if Nanterre was planning a direct physical attack of any sort, he would be there well before that time, seeking a shadow to hide in. He hadn’t been there before seven, because I’d searched every cranny before settling in the garage, and there were no entrances other than the way in from the street. If he’d sneaked in somehow since then without my seeing him, we were maybe in trouble.
At eleven-fifteen, I stretched my legs round Danielle’s car and sat down again.
At eleven-seventeen, unaware, he came to the lure.
I’d been hoping against hope, longing for him to come, wanting to expect it … and yet, when he did, my skin crawled with animal fear as if the tiger were indeed stalking the goat.
He walked openly down the centre of the mews as if he owned a car there, moving with his distinctive eel-like lope, fluid and smooth, not a march.
He was turning his head from side to side, looking at the silent parked cars, and even in the dim light filtering down from the high windows of the surrounding buildings, the shape of nose and jaw were unmistakable.
He came closer and closer; and he wasn’t looking for a hiding place, I saw, but for my car.
For one appalling moment he looked straight at the partly opened door of the garage where I sat, but I was immobile in dark clothes in dark shadow, and I started breathing again when he appeared to see nothing to alarm him or frighten him away.
Nanterre was there, I thought exultantly; right there in front of my eyes, and all our planning had come to pass. Whatever should happen, I reckoned that that was a triumph.
Nanterre looked back the way he’d come, but nothing stirred behind him.
He came close to my car. He stopped beside it, about the length of a Rolls Royce away, and he coolly fiddled about and opened the passenger’s seat door with some sort of key as if he’d spent a lifetime thieving.
Well bloody well, I thought, and heard him unlatch the bonnet with the release knob inside the car. He raised the bonnet, propped it open with its strut, and leaned over the engine with a lighted torch as if working on a fault: anyone coming into the mews at that point would have paid no attention.
After a while, he switched off the torch and closed the bonnet gently, latching it by direct downward pressure of both palms, not by a more normal brisk slam. Finally he shut the open passenger door quietly; and as he turned away to leave, I saw he was smiling.
I wondered whether what he’d left by my engine was plastic, like his guns.
He’d walked several paces along the mews before I stood, slid out through the door and started after him, not wanting him to hear me too soon.
I waited until he was nearing a particular small white car parked on one side, and then I ran swiftly up behind him, quiet in rubber soles on the cobbles, and shone a torch of my own on the back of his neck.
‘Henri Nanterre,’ I said.
He was struck for a long moment into slow motion, unable to move from shock. Then he was fumbling, tearing at the front of a bloused gaberdine jacket, trying to free the pistol bolstered beneath.
‘Sammy,’ I yelled, and Sammy shot like a screaming cannon-ball out of the small white car, my voice and his whooping cries filling the quiet place with nerve-breaking noise.
Nanterre, his face rigid, pulled the pistol free. He swung it towards me, taking aim … And Sammy, true to his boast, kicked it straight out of his hand.
Nanterre ran, leaving the gun clattering to the ground.
Sammy and I ran after him, and from another, larger, parked car, both Thomas and Litsi, shouting manfully and shining bright torches, emerged to stand in his way.
Thomas and Litsi stopped him and Sammy and I caught hold of him, Sammy tying Nanterre’s left wrist to Thomas’s right with nylon cord and an intriguingly nice line in knots.
Not the most elegant of captures, I thought, but effective all the same; and for all the noise we’d made, no one came with curious questions to the fracas, no one in London would be so foolish. Dark alleys were dark alleys, and with noise, even worse.
We made Nanterre walk back towards the Mercedes. Thomas half dragging him, Sammy stepping behind him and kicking him encouragingly on the calves of the legs.
When we reached the pistol, Sammy picked it up, weighed it with surprise in his hand, and briefly whistled.
‘Bullets?’ I asked.
He slid out the clip and nodded. ‘Seven,’ he said. ‘Bright little darlin’s.’
He slapped the gun together again, looked around him, and dodged off sideways to hide it under a nearby car, knowing I didn’t want to use it myself.
Nanterre was beginning to recover his usual browbeating manner and to bluster that what we were doing was against the law. He didn’t specify which law, and nor was he right. Citizens’ arrests were perfectly legal.
Not knowing what to expect, we’d had to make the best plans we could to meet anything that might happen. I’d hired the small white car and the larger dark one, both with tinted windows, and Thomas and I had parked them that morning in spaces which we knew from mews-observation weren’t going to obstruct anyone else: the larger car in the space nearest to the way in from the road, the white car half way between there and the Mercedes.
Litsi, Thomas and Sammy had entered the cars after I’d searched the whole place and telephoned reassuringly again to Litsi, and they’d been prepared to wait until one-thirty and hope.
No one had known what Nanterre would do if he came to the mews. We’d decided that if he came in past Litsi and Thomas and hid himself before he reached the white car, Litsi and Thomas would set up a racket and shine torches to summon Sammy and me to their aid, and we’d reckoned that if he came in past Sammy, I would see him, and everyone would wait for my cue, which they had.
We’d all acknowledged that Nanterre, if he came to the area, might decide to sit in his car out in the street, waiting for me to walk round from the square, and that if he did that, or if he didn’t come at all, we’d spent a long while preparing for a big anti-climax.
There had been the danger that even if he came, we could lose him, that he’d slip through our grasp and escape: and there had been the worse danger that we would panic him into shooting, and that one or more of us could be hurt. Yet when that moment had come, when he’d freed his gun and pointed it my way, the peril, long faced, had gone by so fast that it seemed suddenly nothing, not worth the consideration.
We had meant, if we captured Nanterre, to take him into the garage where I’d waited for him to come, but I did a fast rethink on the way down the alley, and stopped by my car.
The others paused enquiringly.
‘Thomas,’ I said, ‘untie your wrist and attach Mr Nanterre to the rear-view mirror beside the front passenger door.’
Thomas, unquestioning, took a loop of cord off one of his fingers and pulled it, and all the knots round his wrist fell apart: Sammy’s talents seemed endless. Thomas tied much more secure knots round the sturdy mirror assembly, and Nanterre told us very loudly and continuously that we were making punishable mistakes.
‘Shut up,’ I said equally loudly, without much effect.
‘Let’s gag him,’ Thomas said cheerfully. He produced a used handkerchief from his trousers pocket, at the sight of which Nanterre blessedly stopped talking.
‘Gag him if someone comes into the mews,’ I said, and Thomas nodded.
‘Was there enough light,’ I asked Litsi, Sammy and Thomas, ‘for you to see Mr Nanterre lift up the bonnet of my car?’
They all said that they’d seen.’
Nanterre’s mouth fell soundlessly open, and for the first time seemed to realise he was in serious trouble.
‘Mr Nanterre,’ I said conversationally to the others, ‘is an amateur who has left his fingerprints all over my paintwork. It might be a good idea at this point to bring in the police.’
The others looked impassive because they knew I didn’t want to, but Nanterre suddenly tugged frantically at Sammy’s securely tied knots.
‘There’s an alternative,’ I said.
Nanterre, still struggling under Sammy’s interested gaze, said, ‘What alternative?’ furiously.
‘Tell us why you came here tonight, and what you put in my car.’
‘Tell you …’
‘Yes. Tell us.’
He was a stupid man, essentially. He said violently, ‘Beatrice must have warned you. That cow. She got frightened and told you …’ He glared at me with concentration. ‘All that stood between me and my millions was de Brescou’s signature and you … you … everywhere, in my way.’
‘So you decided on a little bomb, and pouf, no obstructions?’
‘You made me,’ he shouted. ‘You drove me … If you were dead, he would sign.’
I let a moment go by, then I said, ‘We talked to the man who gave your message to Prince Litsi at Bradbury. He picked you out from a photograph. We have his signed statement.’
Nanterre said viciously, ‘I saw your advertisement. If Prince Litsi had died, no one would have known of the message.’
‘Did you mean him to die?’
‘Live, die, I didn’t care. To frighten him, yes. To get de Brescou to sign.’ He tried ineffectually still to unravel his bonds. ‘Let me go.’
I went instead into the garage where I’d waited and came out again with the big envelope of signed documents.
‘Stop struggling,’ I said to Nanterre, ‘and listen carefully.’
He paid little attention.
‘Listen,’ I said, ‘or I fetch the police.’
He said sullenly then that he was listening.
‘The price of your freedom,’ I said, ‘is that you put your signature to these contracts.’
‘What are they?’ he said furiously, looking at their impressive appearance. ‘What contracts?’
‘They change the name of the de Brescou et Nanterre construction company to the Gascony construction company, and they constitute an agreement between the two equal owners to turn the private company into a public company, and for each owner to put his entire holding up for public sale.’
He was angrily and bitterly astounded.
‘The company is mine … I manage it … I will never agree!’
‘You’ll have to,’ I said prosaically.
I produced the small tape recorder from the pocket of my jacket, pressed the rewind button slightly, and started it playing.
Nanterre’s voice came out clearly ‘Live, die, I didn’t care. To frighten him, yes. To get de Brescou to sign.’
I switched off. Nanterre, incredibly, was silent, remembering, perhaps, the other incriminating things he had said.
‘We have the evidence of the messenger at Bradbury,’ I said. ‘We have your voice on this tape. We have your bomb, I suspect, in my car. You’ll sign the contract, you know.’
‘There’s no bomb in your car,’ he said furiously.
‘Perhaps a firework?’ I said.
He looked at me blankly.
‘Someone’s coming into the mews,’ Thomas said urgently, producing the handkerchief. ‘What do we do?’ A car had driven in, coming home to its garage.
‘If you yell,’ I said to Nanterre with menace, ‘the police will be here in five minutes and you’ll regret it … They’re not kind to people who plant bombs in cars.’
The incoming car drove towards us and stopped just before reaching Sammy’s white hiding place. The people got out, opened their garage, drove in, closed the doors, and looked our way dubiously.
‘Goodnight,’ I called out, full of cheer.
‘Goodnight,’ they replied, reassured, and walked away to the street.
‘Right,’ I said, relaxing, ‘time to sign.’
‘I will not sell the company. I will not.’
I said patiently, ‘You have no alternative except going to prison for attempting to murder both Prince Litsi and myself.’
He still refused to face facts: and perhaps he felt as outraged at being coerced to sign against his will as Roland had done.
I brought the car-starting gadget out of my pocket and explained what it was.
Nanterre at last began to shake, and Litsi, Sammy and Thomas backed away from the car in freshly awakened genuine alarm, as if really realising for the first time what was in there, under the bonnet.
‘It’ll be lonely for you,’ I said to Nanterre. ‘We’ll walk to the end of the mews, leaving you here. Prince Litsi and the other two will go away. When they’re safely back in the house in Eaton Square, I’ll press the switch that starts my engine.’
Litsi, Sammy and Thomas had already retreated a good way along the mews.
‘You’ll die by your own bomb,’ I said, and put into my voice and manner every shred of force and conviction I could summon. ‘Goodbye,’ I said.
I turned away. Walked several steps. Wondered if he would be too scared to call my bluff; wondered if anyone would have the nerve to risk it.
‘Come back,’ he yelled. There was real fear in the rising voice. Real deadly fear.
Without any pity, I stopped and turned.
‘Come back …’
I went back. There was sweat in great drops on his forehead, running down. He was struggling frantically still with the knots, but also trembling too much to succeed.
‘I want to make guns,’ he said feverishly. ‘I’d make millions … I’d have power … The de Brescous are rich, the Nanterres never were … I want to be rich by world standards … to have power … I’ll give you a million pounds … more … if … you get Roland to sign … to make guns.’
‘No,’ I said flatly, and turned away again, showing him the starter.
‘All right, all right …’ He gave in completely, finally almost sobbing. ‘Put that thing down … put it down …’
I called up the mews, ‘Litsi.’
The other three stopped and came slowly back.
‘Mr Nanterre will sign,’ I said.
‘Put that thing down,’ Nanterre said again faintly, all the bullying megatones gone. ‘Put it down.’
I put the starter back in my pocket, which still frightened him.
‘It can’t go off by itself, can it?’ Litsi asked, not with nervousness, but out of caution.
I shook my head. ‘The switch needs firm pressure.’
I showed Nanterre the contracts more closely and saw the flicker of fury in his eyes when he saw the first page of each was the same sort of form he’d demanded that Roland should sign.
‘We need your signature four times,’ I said. ‘On each front page, and on each attached document. When you sign the attached documents, put your forefinger on the red seal beside your name. The three of us who are not in any way involved in the de Brescou et Nanterre business will sign under your name as witnesses.’
I put my pen into his shaking right hand and rested the first of the documents on top of my car.
Nanterre signed the French form. I turned to the last page of the longer contract and pointed to the space allotted to him. He signed again, and he put his finger on the seal.
With enormous internal relief, I produced the second set for a repeat performance. In silence, with sweat dripping off his cheeks, he signed appropriately again.
I put my name under his in all four places, followed each time by Thomas and Sammy.
‘That’s fine,’ I said, when all were completed. ‘Monsieur de Brescou’s lawyers will put the contracts into operation at once. One of these two contracts will be sent to you or your lawyers in France.’
I put the documents back into their envelope and handed it to Litsi, who put it inside his coat, hugging it to his chest.
‘Let me go,’ Nanterre said, almost whispering.
‘We’ll untie you from the mirror so that you can remove what you put in my car,’ I said. ‘After that, you can go.’
He shuddered, but it seemed not very difficult for him, in the end, to unfix the tampered-with wiring and remove what looked like, in size and shape, a bag of sugar. It was the detonator sticking out of it that he treated with delicate respect, unclipping and separating, and stowing the pieces away in several pockets. ‘Now let me go,’ he said, wiping sweat away from his face with the backs of his hands.
I said, ‘Remember we’ll always have the Bradbury messenger’s affidavit and the tape recording of your voice … and we all heard what you said. Stay away from the de Brescous, cause no more trouble.’
He gave me a sick, furious and defeated glare. Sammy didn’t try to undo his handywork but cut the nylon cord off Nanterre’s wrist with a pair of scissors.
‘Start the car,’ Litsi said, ‘to show him you weren’t fooling.’
‘Come away from it,’ I said.
We walked twenty paces up the mews, Nanterre among us, and I took out the starter and pressed the switch.
The engine fired safely, strong, smooth and powerful.
I looked directly at Nanterre, at the convinced droop of his mouth, at the unwilling acceptance that his campaign was lost. He gave us all a last comprehensive, unashamed, unrepentant stare, and with Thomas and Sammy stepping aside to let him pass, he walked away along the mews, that nose, that jaw, still strong, but the shoulders sagging.
We watched him in silence until he reached the end of the mews and turned into the street, not looking back.
Then Sammy let out a poltergeist ‘Youweee’ yell of uncomplicated victory, and went with jumping feet to fetch the pistol from where he’d hidden it.
He presented it to me with flourish, laying it flat onto my hands.
‘Spoils of war,’ he said, grinning.



TWENTY ONE

Litsi and I drank brandy in the sitting room to celebrate, having thanked Thomas and Sammy copiously for their support; and we telephoned to Danielle to tell her we weren’t lying in puddles of blood.
‘Thank goodness,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been able to think what I’m doing.’
‘I suppose what we did was thoroughly immoral,’ Litsi commented, after I’d put down the receiver.
‘Absolutely,’ I agreed equably. ‘We did exactly what Nanterre intended to do; extorted a signature under threat.’
‘We took the law into our own hands, I suppose.’
‘Justice,’ I said, ‘in our own hands.’
‘And like you said,’ he said, smiling, ‘there’s a difference.’
‘He’s free, unpunished and rich,’ I said, ‘and in a way that’s not justice. But he didn’t, and can’t, destroy Roland. It was a fair enough bargain.’
I waited up for Danielle after Litsi had gone yawning downstairs, and went to meet her when I heard her come in. She walked straight into my arms, smiling.
‘I didn’t think you’d go to bed without me,’ she said.
‘As seldom as possible for the rest of my life.’
We went quietly up to the bamboo room and, mindful of Beatrice next door, quietly to bed and quietly to love. Intensity, I thought, drowning in sensations, hadn’t any direct link to noise and could be exquisite in whispers; and if we were more inhibited than earlier in what we said, the silent rediscovery of each other grew into an increased dimension of passion.
We slept, embracing, and woke again before morning, hungry again after deep satisfaction.
‘You love me more,’ she said, murmuring in my ear.
‘I loved you always.’
‘Not like this.’
We slept again, languorously, and before seven she showered in my bathroom, put on yesterday’s clothes and went decorously down to her own room. Aunt Casilia, she said with composure, would expect her niece to make a pretence at least of having slept in her own bed.
‘Would she mind that you didn’t?’
‘Pretty much the reverse, I would think.’
Litsi and I were already drinking coffee in the morning room when Danielle reappeared, dressed by then in fresh blues and greens. She fetched juice and cereal and made me some toast, and Litsi watched us both with speculation and finally enlightenment.
‘Congratulations,’ he said to me dryly.
‘The wedding,’ Danielle said collectedly, ‘will take place.’
‘So I gathered,’ he said.
He and I, a while later, went up to see Roland de Brescou, to give him and the princess the completed contracts.
‘I was sure,’ Roland said weakly, ‘that Nanterre wouldn’t agree to dissolve the company. Without it, he can’t possibly make guns … can he?’
‘If ever he does,’ I said, ‘your name won’t be linked with it.’
Gascony, the name we’d given to the new public company, was the ancient name of the province in France where the Chateau de Brescou stood. Roland had been both pleased and saddened by the choice.
‘How did you persuade him, Kit?’ the princess asked, looking disbelievingly at the Nanterre signatures.
‘Um … tied him in knots.’
She gave me a brief glance. ‘Then I’d better not ask.’
‘He’s unhurt and unmarked.’
‘And the police?’ Roland asked.
‘No police,’ I said. ‘We had to promise no police to get him to sign.’
‘A bargain’s a bargain,’ Litsi nodded. ‘We have to let him go free.’
The princess and her husband understood all about keeping one’s word, and when I left Roland’s room she followed me down to the sitting room, leaving Litsi behind.
‘No thanks are enough … How can we thank you?’ she asked with frustration.
‘You don’t need to. And … urn … Danielle and I will marry in June.’
‘I’m very pleased indeed,’ she said with evident pleasure, and kissed me warmly on one cheek and then the other. I thought of the times I’d wanted to hug her; and one day perhaps I would do it, though not on a racecourse.
‘I’m so sorry about your horses,’ I said.
‘Yes … When you next talk to Wykeham, ask him to start looking about for replacements. We can’t expect another Cotopaxi, but next year, perhaps, a runner anyway in the Grand National … And don’t forget, next week at Cheltenham, we still have Kinley.’
‘The Triumph Hurdle,’ I said.
I went to Folkestone races by train later that morning with a light heart but without Danielle, who had an appointment with the dentist.
I rode four races and won two, and felt fit, well, bursting with health and for the first time in weeks, carefree. It was a tremendous feeling, while it lasted.
Bunty Ireland, the Towncrier’s racing correspondent, gave me a large envelope from Lord Vaughnley: ‘Hot off the computers,’ Bunty said. The envelope again felt as if it contained very little, but I thanked him for it, and reflecting that I thankfully didn’t need the contents any more, I took it unopened with me back to London.
Dinner that evening was practically festive, although Danielle wasn’t there, having driven herself to work in her Ford.
‘I thought yesterday was her last night for working,’ Beatrice said, unsuspiciously.
‘They changed the schedules again,’ I explained.
‘Oh, how irritating.’
Beatrice had decided to return to Palm Beach the next day. Her darling dogs would be missing her, she said. The princess had apparently told her that Nanterre’s case was lost, which had subdued her querulousness amazingly.
I’d grown used to her ways: to her pale orange hair and round eyes, her knuckleduster rings and her Florida clothes. Life would be quite dull without the old bag; and moreover, once she had gone, I would soon have to leave also. How long, I wondered, would Litsi be staying …
Roland came down to dinner and offered champagne, raising his half-full glass to Litsi and to me in a toast. Beatrice scowled a little but blossomed like a sunflower when Roland said that perhaps, with all the extra capital generated by the sale of the business, he might consider increasing her trust fund. Too forgiving, I thought, yet without her we would very likely not have prevailed.
Roland, the princess and Beatrice retired fairly early, leaving Litsi and me passing the time in the sitting room. Quite late, I remembered Lord Vaughnley’s envelope which I’d put down on a side table on my return.
Litsi incuriously watched me open it and draw out the contents: one glossy black and white photograph, as before, and one short clipping from a newspaper column. Also a brief compliments slip from the Towncrier: ‘Regret nothing more re Nanterre.’
The picture showed Nanterre in evening dress surrounded by other people similarly clad, on the deck of a yacht. I handed it to Litsi and read the accompanying clipping.
‘Arms dealer Ahmed Fuad’s fiftieth birthday bash, held on his yacht Felissima in Monte Carlo harbour on Friday evening drew guests from as far as California, Peru and Darwin, Australia. With no expense spared, Fuad fed caviar and foie gras to jet-setting friends from his hobby worlds of backgammon, night clubs and horseracing.’
Litsi passed back the photograph and I gave him the clipping.
‘That’s what Nanterre wanted,’ I said. ‘To be the host on a yacht in the Mediterranean, dressed in a white dinner jacket, dispensing rich goodies, enjoying the adulation and the flattery. That’s what he wanted … those multi-millions, and that power.’
I turned the photograph over, reading the flimsy information strip stuck to the back: a list of names, and the date.
That’s odd,’ I said blankly.
‘What is?’
‘That party was held last Friday night.’
‘What of it? Nanterre must have jetted out there and back, like the others.’
‘On Friday night, Col was shot.’
Litsi stared at me.
‘Nanterre couldn’t have done it,’ I said. ‘He was in Monte Carlo.’
‘But he said he did. He boasted of it to Beatrice.’
I frowned. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘He must have got someone else to do it,’ Litsi said.
I shook my head. ‘He did everything himself. Threatened the princess, chased Danielle, set the trap for you, came to put the bomb in my car. He didn’t trust any of that to anyone else. He knows about horses, he wanted to see his own filly shot … he would have shot Col … but he didn’t.’
‘He confessed to all the horses,’ Litsi insisted.
‘Yes, but suppose … he read about them in the papers … read that their deaths were mysterious and no one knew who had killed them … He wanted ways to frighten Roland and the princess. Suppose he said he’d killed them, when he hadn’t?’
‘But in that case,’ Litsi said blankly, ‘who did? Who would want to kill her best horses, if not Nanterre?’
I rose slowly to my feet, feeling almost faint.
‘What’s the matter?’ Litsi said, alarmed. ‘You’ve gone as white as snow.’
‘He killed,’ I said with a mouth stickily dry, ‘the horse I might have won the Grand National on. The horse on which I might have won the Gold Cup.’
‘Kit …’ Litsi said.
‘There’s only one person,’ I said with difficulty, ‘who hates me enough to do that. Who couldn’t bear to see me win those races … who would take away the prizes I hold dearest, because I took away his prize …’
I felt breathless and dizzy.
‘Sit down,’ Litsi said, alarmed.
‘Kinley,’ I said.
I went jerkily to the telephone and got through to Wyke-ham.
‘I was just going to bed,’ he complained.
‘Did you stop the dog-patrols?’ I demanded.
‘Yes, of course. You told me this morning there was no more need for them.’
‘I think I was wrong. I can’t risk that I was wrong. I’m coming down to your stables now, tonight, and we’ll get the dog-patrols back again, stronger than ever, for tomorrow and every day until Cheltenham, and probably beyond.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Have you taken your sleeping pill?’ I asked.
‘No, not yet.’
‘Don’t do it until I get down to you, will you? And where’s Kinley tonight?’
‘Back in his own box, of course. You said the danger was past.’
‘We’ll move him back into the corner box when I get down to you.’
‘Kit, no, not in the middle of the night.’
‘You want to keep him safe,’ I said; and there was no arguing with that.
We disconnected and Litsi said slowly, ‘Do you mean Maynard Allardeck?’
‘Yes, I do. He found out, about two weeks ago, that he’ll never get a knighthood because I sent the film I made of him to the Honours department. He’s wanted that knighthood since he was a child, when he told my grandfather that one day the Fieldings would have to bow down to him, because he’d be a lord. He knows horses better than Nanterre … he was brought up in his father’s racing stable and was his assistant trainer for years. He saw Cascade and Cotopaxi at Newbury, and they were distinctive horses … and Col at Ascot … unmistakable.’
I went to the door.
‘I’ll telephone in the morning,’ I said.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘You’d be up all night.’
‘Get going,’ he said. ‘You saved my family’s honour … let me pay some of their debt.’
I was grateful, indeed, for the company. We went round again to the dark mews where Litsi said, if I had the car-starter in my pocket, we might as well be sure: but Nanterre and his bombs hadn’t returned, and the Mercedes fired obligingly from a fifty-yard distance.
I drove towards Sussex, telephoning to Danielle on the way to tell her where and why we were going. She had no trouble believing anything bad of Maynard Allardeck, saying he’d looked perfectly crazy at Ascot and Sandown, glaring at me continuously in the way he had.
‘Curdling with hate,’ she said. ‘You could feel it like shock waves.’
‘We’ll be back for breakfast,’ I said, smiling. ‘Sleep well.’ And I could hear her laughing as she disconnected.
I told Litsi on the way about the firework bombs that had been used to decoy the dog-handler away from Col’s courtyard, and said, ‘You know, in the alley, when Nanterre said he hadn’t put a bomb in my car, I asked him if it was a firework. He looked totally blank … I didn’t think much of it then, but now I realise he simply didn’t know what I was talking about. He didn’t know about the fireworks at Wykeham’s because they didn’t get into the papers.’
Litsi made a ‘Huh’ sort of noise of appreciation and assent, and we came companionably in time into Wykeham’s village.
‘What are you going to do here?’ Litsi said.
I shrugged. ‘Walk round the stables.’ I explained about the many little courtyards. ‘It’s not an easy place to patrol.’
‘You do seriously think Allardeck will risk trying to kill another of Aunt Casilia’s horses?’
‘Yes. Kinley, particularly, her brilliant hurdler. I don’t seriously suppose he’ll try tonight rather than tomorrow or thereafter, but I’m not taking chances.’ I paused. ‘However am I going to apologise to Princess Casilia … to repay …’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Cascade and Cotopaxi and Col died because of the Fielding and Allardeck feud. Because of me.’
‘She won’t think of it that way.’
‘It’s the truth.’ I turned into Wykeham’s driveway. ‘I won’t let Kinley die.’
I stopped the car in the parking space, and we stepped out into the silence of midnight under a clear sky sparkling with diamond-like stars. The heights and depths of the universe: enough to humble the sweaty strivings of earth.
I took a deep breath of its peace … and heard, in the quiet distance, the dull unmistakable thudding explosion of a bolt.
Dear God, I thought. We’re too late.
I ran. I knew where. To the last courtyard, the one nearest to Wykeham’s house. Ran with the furies at my heels, my heart sick, my mind a jumble of rage and fear and dreadful regrets.
I could have driven faster … I could have started sooner … I could have opened Lord Vaughnley’s envelope hours before … Kinley was dead, and I’d killed him.
I ran into the courtyard, and for all my speed, events on the other side of it moved faster.
As I watched, as I ran, I saw Wykeham struggle to his feet from where he’d been lying on the path outside the doors of the boxes.
Two of the box doors were open, the boxes in shadow, lit only by the light outside in the courtyard. In one box, I could see a horse lying on its side, its legs still jerking in convulsive death throes. Into the other went Wykeham.
While I was still yards away, I saw him pick up something which had been lying inside the box on the brick windowsill. I saw his back going deeper into the box, his feet silent on the peat.
I ran.
I saw another man in the box, taller, grabbing a horse by its head-collar.
I saw Wykeham put the thing he held against the second man’s head. I saw the tiny flash, heard the awful bang …
When I reached the door there was a dead man on the peat, a live horse tossing his head and snorting in fright, a smell of burning powder and Wykeham standing, looking down, with the humane killer in his hands.
The live horse was Kinley … and I felt no relief.
‘Wykeham!’ I said.
He turned his head, looked at me vaguely.
‘He shot my horses,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘I killed him. I said I would … and I have.’
I looked down at the dead man, at the beautiful suit and the hand-sewn shoes.
He was lying half on his face, and he had a nylon stocking pulled over his head as a mask, with a hole in it behind his right ear.
Litsi ran into the courtyard calling breathlessly to know what had happened. I turned towards him in the box doorway, obstructing his view of what was inside.
‘Litsi,’ I said, ‘go and telephone the police. Use the telephone in the car. Press O and you’ll get the operator … ask for the police. Tell them a man has been killed here in an accident.’
‘A man!’ he exclaimed. ‘Not a horse?’
‘Both … but tell them a man.’
‘Yes,’ he said unhappily. ‘Right.’
He went back the way he’d come and I turned towards Wykeham, who was wide-eyed now, and beginning to tremble.
‘It wasn’t an accident,’ he said, with pride somewhere in the carriage of his head, in the tone of his voice. ‘I killed him.’
‘Wykeham,’ I said urgently. ‘Listen. Are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where do you want to spend your last years, in prison or out on the Downs with your horses?’
He stared.
‘Are you listening?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’ll be an inquest,’ I said. ‘And this was an accident. Are you listening?’
He nodded.
‘You came out to see if all was well in the yard before you went to bed.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You’d had three horses killed in the last ten days … the police haven’t been able to discover who did it … You knew I was coming down to help patrol the yards tonight, but you were naturally worried.’
‘Yes.’
‘You came into this courtyard, and you saw and heard someone shoot one of your horses.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Is it Abseil?’ I longed for him to say no, but he said, ‘Yes.’
Abseil … racing at breakneck speed over the last three fences at Sandown, clinging to victory right to the post.
I said, ‘You ran across to try to stop the intruder doing any more damage … you tried to pull the humane killer out of his hands.’
‘Yes.’
‘He was younger and stronger and taller than you … he knocked you down with the humane killer … you fell on the path, momentarily stunned.’
‘How do you know?’ Wykeham asked, bewildered.
‘The marks of the end of the barrel are all down your cheek. It’s been bleeding. Don’t touch it,’ I said, as he began to raise a hand to feel. ‘He knocked you down and went into the second box to kill a second horse.’
‘Yes, to kill Kinley.’
‘Listen … He had the humane killer in his hand.’
Wykeham began to shake his head, and then stopped.
I said, ‘The man was going to shoot your horse. You grabbed at the gun to stop him. You were trying to take it away from him … he was trying to pull it back from your grasp. He was succeeding with a jerk, but you still had your hands on the gun, and in the struggle, when he jerked the gun towards him, the thick end of the barrel hit his head, and the jerk also caused your grasp somehow to pull the trigger.’
He stared.
‘You did not mean to kill him; are you listening, Wykeham? You meant to stop him shooting your horse.’
‘K .. Kit …’ he said, finally stuttering.
‘What are you going to tell the police?’
‘I … t .. tried to s .. stop him shooting …’ He swallowed. ‘He j … jerked the gun … against his head … It w .. went off.’
He was still holding the gun by its rough wooden butt.
‘Throw it down on the peat,’ I said.
He did so, and we both looked at it: a heavy, ugly, clumsy instrument of death.
On the windowsill there were several small bright golden caps full of gunpowder. One cocked the gun, fed in the cap, pulled the trigger … the gunpowder exploded and shot out the bolt.
Litsi came back, saying the police would be coming, and it was he who switched the light on, revealing every detail of the scene.
I bent down and took a closer look at Maynard’s head. There was oil on the nylon stocking where the bolt had gone through, and I remembered Robin Curtiss saying the bolt had been oiled before Col … Robin would remember … there would be no doubt that Maynard had killed all four horses.
‘Do you know who it is?’ I said to Wykeham, straightening up.
He half-knew, half couldn’t believe it.
‘Allardeck?’ he said, unconvinced.
‘Allardeck.’
Wykeham bent down to pull off the stocking-mask.
‘Don’t do that,’ I said sharply. ‘Don’t touch it. Anyone can see he came here trying not to be recognised … to kill horses … no one out for an evening stroll goes around in a nylon mask carrying a humane killer.’
‘Did he kill Kinley?’ Litsi asked anxiously.
‘No, this is Kinley. He killed Abseil.’
Litsi looked stricken. ‘Poor Aunt Casilia … She said how brilliantly you’d won on Abseil. Why kill that one, who couldn’t possibly win the Grand National?’ He looked down at Maynard, understanding. ‘Allardeck couldn’t bear you being brilliant, not on anything.’
The feud was dead, I thought. Finally over. The long obsession had died with Maynard, and he had been dead before he hit the peat, like Cascade and Cotopaxi, Abseil and Col.
A fitting end, I thought.
Litsi said he had told the police he would meet them in the parking place to show them where to come, and presently he went off there.
Wykeham spent a long while looking at Kinley, who was now standing quietly, no longer disturbed, and then less time looking at Maynard.
‘I’m glad I killed him,’ he said fiercely.
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Mind you win the Triumph Hurdle.’
I thought of the schooling sessions I’d done with that horse, teaching him distances up on the Downs with Wykeham watching, shaping the glorious natural talent into accomplished experience.
I would do my best, I said.
He smiled. Thank you, Kit,’ he said. ‘Thank you for everything.’
The police came with Litsi: two of them, highly official, taking notes, talking of summoning medical officers and photographers.
They took Wykeham through what had happened.
‘I came out … found the intruder … he shot my horse.’ Wykeham’s voice shook. ‘I fought him … he knocked me down … he was going to shoot this horse also … I got to my feet …’
He paused.
‘Yes, sir?’ the policeman said, not unsympathetically.
They saw, standing before them on the peat inside the box, standing beside a dead intruder with the intruder’s deadly weapon shining with menace in the light, they saw an old thin man with dishevelled white hair, with the dark freckles of age on his ancient forehead, with the pistol marks of dried blood on his cheek.
They saw, as the coroner would see, and the lawyers, and the press, the shaking deteriorating exterior, not the titan who still lived inside.
Wykeham looked at Kinley; at the future, at the horse that could fly on the Downs, tail streaming, jumping like an angel to his destiny.
He looked at the policemen, and his eyes seemed full of sky.
‘It was an accident,’ he said.