I put down the receiver and told Harve he’d be needed briefly on Wednesday. Harve made a face of disinclination and shrugged. The phone rang again at once as if in continuation of the same conversation, but in fact there was a strange nasal voice in my ear, full of self-importance and busy-busy.
‘John Tigwood here,’ he said.
‘Oh. Yes?’
‘Maudie Watermead told me to get in touch.’
‘John Tigwood. Friend of Maudie’s sister, Lorna?’
He corrected me briskly. ‘Director of Centaur Care.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘John Tigwood,’ Harve muttered disapprovingly. ‘Potty little pipsqueak. Always on the cadge.’
‘What can I do for you?’ I asked the phone temperately.
‘Collect some horses for me,’ Tigwood said.
‘Certainly,’ I agreed with warmth. ‘Any time.’ Business was business after all. Whatever I thought of John Tigwood personally, I was all for taking his money.
‘A retirement farm is closing in Yorkshire,’ he told me gravely, making it sound portentous. ‘We’ve agreed to take the horses and find new homes for them. The Watermeads have agreed to put two in their bottom paddock. Benjy Usher’s taking two others. I’m on to Marigold English, even though she’s new here. How about you, yourself? Can I rope you in?’
‘Sorry, no,’ I said firmly. ‘When do you want them transported?’
‘Tomorrow do you?’
‘Certainly,’ I said.
‘Good. Lorna herself wants to go with your box, acting as groom.’
‘All right, fine.’
He gave me directions and I told him the fee.
‘Oh, look here, I was hoping you’d do it for charity.’
‘Sorry, no.’ I was friendly and apologetic as far as it went.
‘But it’s for Lorna!’ he insisted.
‘I don’t expect Maudie said I would do the job for nothing.’
After a pause he said grudgingly, ‘She did warn me.’
‘Mm. So do you want me to fetch them, or not?’
A shade huffily he said, ‘You’ll get paid. Though I do think you might be more generous. After all, it’s a good cause.’
‘You could ask someone else to fetch them,’ I suggested. ‘You might get someone else to do it for nothing.’
His silence suggested that he’d already tried someone else. Several someones, perhaps. It was a long way from Pixhill to the place in Yorkshire from where he wanted me to collect seven geriatric cases, shaky on their old legs, to deliver them to their new homes.
When Tigwood had gone off the line I handed the directions to Harve. Nina, having listened to my side of the exchange, asked what it had been about.
Harve told her disgustedly, ‘There’s this wacky home for very old horses. This John Tigwood, he boards them out all over the place. He charges the owners of the old horses for looking after them, but he doesn’t pay the people who give the horses homes. It’s a racket! And then he has the cheek to ask Freddie for free transport, in the name of charity.’
I smiled. ‘It’s one of the local good causes. People organise fund raisers. They twist a lot of arms. I daresay I ought to have offered the transport for nothing but to be honest I don’t like being pressured or conned, and as I’ll bet the owners of the horses will have to pay Tigwood to get their old pensioners brought down here, I don’t see why he shouldn’t pay me.’
‘The point is,’ Harve said, ‘who’s doing the job?’
‘Whoever goes, takes Lorna Lipton, Mrs Watermead’s sister, as groom,’ I told him, looking over the chart. ‘We’ll have to send a nine-box. The new driver, Aziz what’s his name, will be driving Brett’s nine-box from now on. He may as well start with the geriatrics.’
‘What new driver?’ Harve said.
‘I engaged him this morning, after you’d gone. Best of five who came for interviews.’
I wrote Centaur Care in the chart square for the nine-box, and put ‘Aziz’ at the head of the column.
Centaur Care, the name of Tigwood’s outfit, sounded so like Centre Care that for years I’d thought that was how it was spelled. A tiny institution of its kind, the Centaur Care office occupied a small one-storey economically built hut, for want of a grander word, on the edge of a two-acre paddock on the outskirts of Pixhill. Adjoining ramshackle wooden stables, capable of holding six pathetic customers with low expectations, just about passed county regulation inspections, the charitable status of the enterprise shielding it from blasts of ill authoritarian will. John Tigwood’s public manner elevated this set-up in Pixhill’s collective consciousness to major good works: I was sure that many who gave to the noble cause hadn’t set eyes on its headquarters.
There were ‘Centaur Care’ collecting boxes scattered throughout Pixhill, round tins with slots into which one was exhorted to pour ‘long life for old friends.’ John Tigwood came round regularly to empty the containers and write fulsome receipts. He’d left one tin in our canteen but had fumed to find gifts in it of buttons, biscuits and an out-of-date condom. ‘Be glad it hasn’t been used,’ I’d said, which he hadn’t seen as funny.
Harve was looking over the whole chart, and shrugging philosophically at the news that the computer wasn’t working. Like me, he still preferred a written chart, though he inclined to the blackboard on a wall we’d had until I got rid of it. Too much chalk dust in the air, once we’d installed the computer.
I told Harve that all the tools had been stolen from Jogger’s van. He swore briefly but saw no great significance in it. We would need, I said, another slider for inspecting the undersides of the boxes and Harve, nodding, suggested I ask Nigel to make one.
‘All he needs is a bit of plasterboard and some casters,’ Harve said. ‘He’s good with his hands, I’ll say that for him.’
I smothered a smile. ‘He can do it tomorrow, then,’ I said. I pondered briefly and came to a decision. ‘On Wednesday Nigel can go to France to collect the showjumper for Jericho Rich’s daughter. Nina, here, will go with him as a second driver.’
Harve gave her a startled sideways glance and raised his eyebrows to me comically.
‘I did warn her,’ I said. ‘She says she’s Nigel-proof.’
‘She doesn’t know him!’
‘She’s experienced with horses,’ I explained. ‘Jericho’s daughter wants us to send an attendant to travel back with the horse. Nina can double that with driving.’
‘But you said Dave was to go, with Phil driving his six-box,’ Harve protested.
‘I’ve changed my mind. Nina’s going with Nigel. They can take the four-box Nina was driving today. It will be better, more economical.’ To her I said, ‘You’ll need overnight things. OK?’
She nodded and, when Harve had gone out to meet the other incoming box, said, ‘You’ll want one of us to sleep in the box, won’t you?’
‘It has that tube on its underside,’ I said, agreeing.
‘Yes. Well, hang out the bait. Let everyone know that that particular box is going to France. Someone might bite.’
‘Um,’ I said hesitantly. ‘No one expects you to do anything dangerous.’
She smiled slightly. ‘Don’t be too sure. Patrick can be bloody demanding.’ She seemed unconcerned. ‘And I won’t exactly be parachuting into occupied France behind German lines.’
She was, I saw, exactly the type of woman who had done just that in World War II and, as if reading my thoughts, she nodded and said, ‘My mother did it, and survived to have me afterwards.’
‘That takes a bit of living up to.’
‘It’s in the blood.’
‘Do you have any children?’ I asked.
She wiggled long fingers in the dismissive gesture of unsentimental nanny-assisted mothers. ‘Three. All grown out of Pony Club age, all flown the nest. Husband long dead. Life suddenly empty, boring, no further point in showing or eventing. So... Patrick to the rescue. Need any more?’