Bolt

FOUR

Into an electrified atmosphere, I said plainly, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Stop swinging that foot,’ Nanterre said furiously.
I stopped swinging it. There was a time for everything.
‘If you shoot Princess Casilia,’ I said calmly, ‘Monsieur de Brescou will not sign the form.’
The princess had her eyes shut and Roland de Brescou looked frail to fainting. Valery’s wide eyes risked popping out altogether and Gerald Greening, somewhere behind me, was saying ‘Oh my God,’ incredulously under his breath.
I said, my mouth drier than I liked, ‘If you shoot Princess Casilia, we are all witnesses. You would have to kill us all, including Valery.’
Valery moaned.
‘Monsieur de Brescou would not have signed the form,’ I said. ‘You would end up in jail for life. What would be the point?’
He stared at me with hot dark eyes, the princess’s head firm in his grip.
After a pause which lasted a couple of millennia, he gave the princess’s head a shake and let her go.
‘There are no bullets,’ he said. He shoved the gun back into its holster, holding his jacket open for the purpose. He gave me a bitter glance as if he would impress my face on his memory for ever and without another word walked out of the room.
Valery closed his eyes, opened them a slit, ducked his head and scuttled away in his master’s wake, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else.
The princess with a small sound of great distress slid out of her chair onto her knees beside the wheelchair and put her arms round her husband, her face turned to his neck, her shining dark hair against his cheek. He raised a thin hand to stroke her head, and looked at me with sombre eyes.
‘I would have signed,’ he said.
‘Yes, Monsieur.’
I felt sick myself and could hardly imagine their turmoil. The princess was shaking visibly, crying, I thought.
I stood up. ‘I’ll wait downstairs,’ I said.
He gave the briefest of nods, and I followed where Nanterre had gone, looking back for Gerald Greening. Numbly he came after me, closing the door, and we went down to the sitting room where I’d waited before.
‘You didn’t know,’ he said croakily, ‘that the gun was empty, did you?’
‘No.’
‘You took a terrible risk.’ He made straight for the tray of bottles and glasses, pouring brandy with a shaking hand. ‘Do you want some?’
I nodded and sat rather weakly on one of the chintz sofas. He gave me a glass and collapsed in much the same fashion.
‘I’ve never liked guns,’ he said hollowly.
‘I wonder if he meant to produce it?’ I said. ‘He didn’t mean to use it or he’d have brought it loaded.’
‘Then why carry it at all?’
‘A prototype, wouldn’t you say?’ I suggested. ‘His plastic equaliser, demonstration model. I wonder how he got it into England. Through airports undetected, would you say? In pieces?’
Greening made inroads into his brandy and said, ‘When I met him in France, I thought him bombastic but shrewd. But these threats … tonight’s behaviour …’
‘Not shrewd but crude,’ I said.
He gave me a glance. ‘Do you think he’ll give up?’
‘Nanterre? No, I’m afraid he won’t. He must have seen he came near tonight to getting what he wanted. I’d say he’ll try again. Another way, perhaps.’
‘When you aren’t there.’ He said it as a statement, all the former doubts missing. If he wasn’t careful, I thought, he’d persuade himself too far the other way. He looked at his watch, sighing deeply. ‘I told my wife I’d be slightly delayed. Slightly! I’m supposed to be meeting her at a dinner.’ He paused. ‘If I go in a short while, will you make my apologies?’
‘OK,’ I said, a shade surprised. ‘Aren’t you going … er … to reinstate the sandbags?’
It took him a moment to see what I meant, and then he said he would have to ask M. de Brescou what he wanted.
‘It might safeguard him as you intended, don’t you think?’ I said. ‘Especially as Nanterre doesn’t know who else to put pressure on.’ I glanced at the Master Classes leaflet which still lay on the coffee table. ‘Did Danielle and Prince Litsi know their names had been used?’
He shook his head. ‘Princess Casilia couldn’t remember the name of the hotel. It didn’t affect the legality of the document. Their assent at that stage wasn’t necessary.’
A few steps down the road, though, after Nanterre’s show of force, I reckoned it was no longer fair to embroil them without their consent, and I was on the point of saying so when the door quietly opened and Princess Casilia came in.
We stood up. If she had been crying, there was no sign of it, although she did have the empty-eyed look and the pallor of people stretched into unreality.
‘Gerald, we both want to thank you for coming,’ she said, her voice higher in pitch than usual. ‘We are so sorry about your dinner.’
‘Princess,’ he protested, ‘my time is yours.’
‘My husband asks if you could return tomorrow morning.’
Greening gave a small squirm as if jettisoning his Saturday golf and asked if ten o’clock would suit, and with evident relief took his departure.
‘Kit …’ The princess turned to me. ‘Will you stay here in the house, tonight? In case … just in case …’
‘Yes,’ I said.
She closed her eyes and opened them again. ‘It has been such a dreadful day.’ She paused. ‘Nothing seems real.’
‘Can I pour you a drink?’
‘No. Ask Dawson to bring you some food. Tell him you’ll sleep in the bamboo room.’ She looked at me without intensity, too tired for emotion. ‘My husband wants to see you in the morning.’
‘Fairly early,’ I suggested. ‘I have to be at Newbury for the first race.’
‘Goodness! I’d forgotten.’ Some of the faraway look left her eyes. ‘I didn’t even ask how Cotopaxi ran.’
‘He was third. Ran well.’ It seemed a long time ago. ‘You’ll see it on the video.’
Like many owners, she bought video tapes of most of her horses’ races, to watch and re-enjoy their performances over and over.
‘Yes, that’ll be nice.’
She said goodnight much as if she hadn’t had a gun aimed closely against her head half an hour earlier, and with upright carriage went gently away upstairs.
A remarkable woman, I thought, not for the first time, and descended to the basement in search of Dawson who was sitting, jacket off, in front of the television drinking beer. The butler, slightly abashed by having let the uninvited guests outrush him, made no demur at checking with me through the house’s defences. Window locks, front door, rear door, basement door, all secure.
John Grundy, the male nurse, he said, would arrive at ten, assist Monsieur to bed, sleep in the room next to him, and in the morning help him bathe, shave and dress. He would do Monsieur’s laundry and be gone by eleven.
Only Dawson and his wife (the princess’s personal maid) slept in the basement, he said: all the rest of the staff came in by day. Prince Litsi, who was occupying the guest suite on the ground floor, and Miss de Brescou, whose room was beyond the princess’s suite, were away, as I knew.
His eyebrows shot up at the mention of the bamboo room, and when he took me by lift to the floor above the princess and her husband, I could see why. Palatial, pale blue, gold and cream, it looked fit for the noblest of visitors, the bamboo of its name found in the pattern of the curtains and the pale Chinese-Chippendale furniture. There was a vast double bed, a dressing room, a bathroom, and an array of various drinks and a good television set hidden behind discreet louvred doors.
Dawson left me there, and I took the opportunity to make my regular evening telephone call to Wykeham, to tell him how his horses had run. He was pleased, he said, about Cotopaxi, but did I realise what I’d done to Cascade? Dusty, he said, had told him angrily all about the race, including Maynard Allardeck’s inspection afterwards.
‘How is Cascade?’ I asked.
‘We weighed him. He’s lost thirty pounds. He can hardly hold his head up. You don’t often send horses back in that state.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘There’s winning and winning,’ he said testily. ‘You’ve ruined him for Cheltenham.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, contritely. Cheltenham, two and a half weeks ahead, was of course the top meeting of the jumping year, its races loaded with prestige and prizes. Wyke-ham liked above all to have successes there, as indeed did I and every jump jockey riding. Missing a winner there would serve me right, I supposed, for letting unhappiness get the better of me, but I was genuinely sorry for Wykeham’s sake.
‘Don’t do anything like that tomorrow with Kalgoorlie,’ he said severely.
I sighed. Kalgoorlie had been dead for years. Wykeham’s memory was apt to slip cogs to the point that sometimes I couldn’t work out what horse he was referring to.
‘Do you mean Kinley?’ I suggested.
‘What? Yes, of course, that’s what I said. You give him a nice ride, now, Kit.’
At least, I thought, he knew who he was talking to: he still on the telephone called me often by the name of the jockey who’d had my job ten years earlier.
I assured him I would give Kinley a nice ride.
‘And win, of course,’ he said.
‘All right.’ A nice ride and a win couldn’t always be achieved together, as Cascade very well knew. Kinley however was a white hot hope for Cheltenham, and if he didn’t win comfortably at Newbury, the expectations could cool to pink.
‘Dusty says the princess didn’t come into the ring before Cotopaxi’s race, or see him afterwards. He says it was because she was angry about Cascade.’ Wykeham’s old voice was full of displeasure. ‘We can’t afford to anger the princess.’
‘Dusty’s wrong,’ I said. ‘She wasn’t angry. She had some trouble with … er … a visitor in her box. She explained to me after … and invited me to Eaton Square, which is where I am now.’
‘Oh,’ he said, mollified. ‘All right, then. Kinley’s race is televised tomorrow,’ he said, ‘so I’ll be watching.’
‘Great.’
‘Well then … Goodnight, Paul.’
‘Goodnight, Wykeham,’ I said.
Wryly I telephoned to the answering machine in my own house, but there was nothing much in the way of messages, and presently Dawson returned with a supper of chicken soup, cold ham and a banana (my choice).
Later together, we made another tour of the house, meeting John Grundy, a sixty-year-old widower, on his way to his own room. Both men said they would be undisturbed to see me wandering around now and then in the small hours, but although I did prowl up and down once or twice, the big house was silent all night, its clocks ticking in whispers. I slept on and off between linen sheets under a silk coverlet in pyjamas thoughtfully supplied by Dawson, and in the morning was ushered in to see Roland de Brescou.
He was alone in his sitting room, freshly dressed in a city suit with a white shirt and foulard tie. Black shoes, brilliantly polished. White hair, neatly brushed. No concessions to his condition, no concession to weekends.
His wheelchair was unusual in having a high back – and I’d often wondered why more weren’t designed that way – so that he could rest his head if he felt like dozing. That morning, although he was awake, he was resting his head anyway.
‘Please sit down,’ he said civilly, and watched me take the same place as the evening before, in the dark red leather armchair. He looked if possible even frailer, with grey shadows in his skin, and the long hands which lay quiet on the padded armrests had a quality of transparency, the flesh thin as paper over the bones.
I felt almost indecently strong and healthy in contrast, and asked if there were anything I could fetch and carry for him.
He said no with a twitch of eye muscle that might have been interpreted as an understanding smile, as if he were accustomed to such guilt reactions in visitors.
‘I wish to thank you,’ he said, ‘for coming to our defence. For helping Princess Casilia.’
He had never in my presence called her ‘my wife’, nor would I ever have referred to her in that way to him. His formal patterns of speech were curiously catching.
‘Also,’ he said, as I opened my mouth to demur, ‘for giving me time to consider what to do about Henri Nanterre.’ He moistened his dry lips with the tip of an apparently desiccated tongue. ‘I have been unable to sleep … I cannot risk harm to Princess Casilia or anyone around us. It is time for me to relinquish control. To find a successor … but I have no children, and there are few de Brescous left. It isn’t going to be easy to find any family member to take my place.’
Even the thought of the discussions and decisions such a course would lead to seemed to exhaust him.
‘I miss Louis,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘I cannot continue without him. It is time for me to retire. I should have seen … when Louis died … it was time.’ He seemed to be talking to himself as much as me, clarifying his thoughts, his eyes wandering.
I made a nondescript noise of nothing much more than interest. I would have agreed that the time to retire was long past, though, and it almost seemed he caught something of that thought, because he said calmly, ‘My grandfather was in total command at ninety. I expected to die also at the head of the company, as I am the Chairman.’
‘Yes, I see.’
His gaze steadied on my face. ‘Princess Casilia will go to the races today. She hopes you will go with her in her car.’ He paused. ‘May I ask you … to defend her from harm?’
‘Yes,’ I said matter-of-factly, ‘with my life.’
It didn’t even sound melodramatic after the past evening’s events, and he seemed to take it as a normal remark. He merely nodded a fraction and I thought that, in retrospect, I would be hotly embarrassed at myself. But then, I probably meant it, and the truth pops out.
It seemed anyway what he wanted to hear. He nodded again a couple of times slowly as if to seal the pact, and I stood up to take my leave. There was a briefcase, I saw, lying half under one of the chairs between me and the door, and I picked it up to ask him where he would like it put.
‘It isn’t mine,’ he said, without much interest. ‘It must be Gerald Greening’s. He’s returning this morning.’
I had a sudden picture, however, of the pathetic Valery producing the handgun application form from that case, and of scuttling away empty-handed at the end. When I explained to Roland de Brescou, he suggested I took the case downstairs to the hall, so that when its owner called back to collect it, he wouldn’t need to come up.
I took the case away with me but, lacking de Brescou’s incurious honesty, went up to the bamboo room, not down.
The case, black leather, serviceable, unostentatious, proved to be unlocked and unexciting, containing merely what looked like a duplicate of the form which Roland de Brescou hadn’t signed.
On undistinguished buff paper, mostly in small badly printed italics, and of course in French, it hardly looked worth the upheaval it was causing. As far as I could make out, it wasn’t specifically to do with armaments, but had many dotted-line spaces needing to be filled in. No one had filled in anything on the duplicate, although presumably the one Valery had taken away with him had been ready for signing.
I put the form in a drawer of a bedside table and took the briefcase downstairs, meeting Gerald Greening as he arrived. We said good mornings with the memory of last night’s violence hovering, and he said he had not only rewritten the sandbags but had had the document properly typed and provided with seals. Would I be so good as to repeat my services as witness?
We returned to Roland de Brescou and wrote our names, and I mentioned again about telling Danielle and Prince Litsi. I couldn’t help thinking of them. They would be starting about now on ‘The Masterworks of Leonardo …’ dammit, dammit.
‘Yes, yes,’ Greening was saying, ‘I understand they return tomorrow evening. Perhaps you could inform them yourself.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And now,’ Greening said, ‘to update the police.’
He busied himself on the telephone, reaching yesterday’s man and higher, obtaining the promise of a CID officer’s attentions, admitting he didn’t know where Nanterre could be found. ‘Immediately he surfaces again, we will inform you,’ he was saying, and I wondered how immediately would be immediately, should Nanterre turn up with bullets.
Roland de Brescou however showed approval, not dismay, and I left them beginning to discuss how best to find a de Brescou successor. I made various preparations for the day, and I was waiting in the hall when the princess came down to go to the races, with Dawson hovering and Thomas, alerted by telephone, drawing smoothly to a halt outside. She was wearing a cream-coloured coat, not the sables, with heavy gold earrings and no hat, and although she seemed perfectly calm she couldn’t disguise apprehensive glances up and down the street as she was seen across the pavement by her three assorted minders.
‘It is important,’ she said conversationally as soon as she was settled and Thomas had centrally locked all the doors, ‘not to let peril deter one from one’s pleasures.’
‘Mm,’ I said noncommittally.
She smiled sweetly. ‘You, Kit, do not.’
‘Those pleasures earn me my living.’
‘Peril should not, then, deter one from one’s duty.’ She sighed. ‘So stuffy, don’t you think, put that way? Duty and pleasure so often coincide, deep down, don’t you think?’
I did think, and I thought she was probably right. She was no mean psychologist, in her way.
‘Tell me about Cotopaxi,’ she commanded, and listened contentedly, asking questions when I paused. After that, we discussed Kinley, her brilliant young hurdler, and after that her other runner for the day, Hillsborough, and it wasn’t until we were nearing Newbury that I asked if she would mind if Thomas accompanied her into the meeting and stayed at her side all afternoon.
‘Thomas?’ she said, surprised. ‘But he doesn’t like racing. It bores him, doesn’t it, Thomas?’
‘Ordinarily, madam,’ he said.
‘Thomas is large and capable,’ I said, pointing out facts, ‘and Monsieur de Brescou asked that you should enjoy the races unmolested.’
‘Oh,’ she said, disconcerted. ‘How much … did you tell Thomas?’
‘To look out for a frog with a hawk’s nose and keep him from annoying you, madam,’ Thomas said.
She was relieved, amused and, it seemed to me, grateful.
Back at the ranch, whether she knew it or not, John Grundy was sacrificing his Saturday afternoon to remain close to Roland de Brescou, with the number of the local police station imprinted on his mind.
‘They already know there might be trouble,’ I’d told him. ‘If you call them, they’ll come at once.’
John Grundy, tough for his years, had commented merely that he’d dealt with fighting drunks often enough, and to leave it to him. Dawson, whose wife was going out with her sister, swore he would let no strangers in. It seemed unlikely, to my mind, that Nanterre would actually attempt another head-on attack, but it would be foolish to risk being proved wrong with everything wide open.
Thomas, looking all six foot three a bodyguard, walked a pace behind the princess all afternoon, the princess behaving most of the time as if unaware of her shadow. She hadn’t wanted to cancel her afternoon party because of the five friends she’d invited to lunch, and she requested them, at my suggestion, to stay with her whatever happened and not to leave her alone unless she herself asked it.
Two of them came into the parade ring before the first of her two races, Thomas looming behind, all of them forming a shield when she walked back towards the stands. She was a far more likely target than de Brescou himself, I thought uneasily, watching her go as I rode Hillsborough out onto the course: her husband would never sign away his honour to save his own life, but to free an abducted wife … very likely.
He could repudiate a signature obtained under threat. He could retract, kick up a fuss, could say, ‘I couldn’t help it.’ The guns might not then be made, but his health would deteriorate and his name could be rubble. Better to prevent than to rescue, I thought, and wondered what I’d overlooked.
Hillsborough felt dull in my hands and I knew going down to the start that he wouldn’t do much good. There were none of the signals that horses feeling well and ready to race give, and although I tried to jolly him along once we’d started, he was as sluggish as a cold engine.
He met most of the fences right but lost ground on landing through not setting off again fast, and when I tried to make him quicken after the last he either couldn’t or wouldn’t, and lost two places to faster finishers, trailing in eighth of the twelve runners.
It couldn’t be helped: one can’t win them all. I was irritated, though, when an official came to the changing room afterwards and said the Stewards wanted to see me immediately, and I followed him to the Stewards’ Room with more seethe than resignation, and there, as expected, was Maynard Allardeck, sitting at a table with two others, looking as impartial and reasonable as a saint. The Stewards said they wanted to know why my well-backed mount had run so badly. They said they were of the opinion that I hadn’t ridden the horse out fully or attempted to win, and would I please give them an explanation.
Maynard was almost certainly the instigator, but not the spokesman. One of the others, a man I respected, had said for openers, ‘Mr Fielding, explain the poor showing of Hillsborough.’
He had himself ridden as an amateur in days gone by, and I told him straightforwardly that my horse had seemed not to be feeling well and hadn’t been enjoying himself. He had been flat-footed even going down to the start and during the race I’d thought once or twice of pulling him up altogether.
The Steward glanced at Allardeck, and said to me, ‘Why didn’t you use your whip after the last fence?’
The phrase ‘flogging a dead horse’ drifted almost irresistibly into my mind but I said only, ‘I gave him a lot of signals to quicken, but he couldn’t. Beating him wouldn’t have made any difference.’
‘You appeared to be giving him an easy ride,’ he said, but without the aggression of conviction. ‘What’s your explanation?’
Giving a horse an easy ride was an euphemism for ‘not trying to win’, or, even worse, for ‘trying not to win’, a loss-of-licence matter. I said with some force, ‘Princess Casilia’s horses, Mr Harlow’s horses, are always doing their best. Hillsborough was doing his best, but he was having an off day.’
There was a shade of amusement in the Steward’s eyes. He knew, as everyone in racing knew, how things stood between Allardecks and Fieldings; Stewards’ enquiries had for half a century sorted out the fiery accusations flung at Maynard’s father by my grandfather, and at my grandfather by Maynard’s father, both of them training Flat racers in Newmarket. The only new twist to the old battle was the recent Allardeck presence on the power side of the table, no doubt highly funny to all but myself.
‘We note your explanation,’ the Steward said dryly, and told me I could go.
I went without looking directly at Maynard. Twice in two days I’d wriggled off his hooks, and I didn’t want him to think I was gloating. I went back fast to the changing room to exchange the princess’s colours for those of another owner and to weigh out, but even so I was late into the parade ring for the next race (and one could be fined for that also).
I walked in hurriedly to join the one hopeful little group without a jockey, and saw, thirty feet away, Henri Nanterre.