After a while I said, ‘What can you remember about ante-post favourites which didn’t run?’
He gave me a quick glance which would have been better focussed three drinks earlier. ‘Is this for Tally, still?’
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘Didn’t think so. Question like that’s got the Blaze written all over it.’
‘I won’t quote you.’
‘Too right you won’t.’ He drank deeply, but seemed no nearer oblivion. ‘Put yourself some blinkers on and point in another direction.’
‘Read what I say on Sunday,’ I said mildly.
‘Ty,’ he said explosively. ‘Best to keep out.’
‘Why?’
‘Leave it to the authorities.’
‘What are they doing about it? What do they know?’
‘You know I can’t tell you,’ he protested. ‘Talk to the Blaze! I’d lose my job.’
‘Mulholland went to jail rather than reveal his sources.’
‘All journalists are not Mulholland.’
‘Same secretive tendencies.’
‘Would you,’ he said seriously, ‘go to jail?’
‘It’s never cropped up. But if my sources want to stay unrevealed, they stay unrevealed. If they didn’t, who would tell me anything?’
He thought it over. ‘Something’s going on,’ he said at last.
‘Quite,’ I said. ‘And what are the authorities doing about it?’
‘There’s no evidence... look, Ty, there’s nothing you can put your finger on. Just a string of coincidences.’
‘Like Bert Checkov’s articles?’ I suggested.
He was startled. ‘All right, then. Yes. I heard it on good authority that he was going to be asked to explain them. But then he fell out of the window...’
‘Tell me about the non-runners,’ I said.
He looked gloomily at the note from his wife, which he still clutched in his hand. He took a deep swallow and shrugged heavily. The caution barriers were right down.
‘There was this French horse, Polyxenes, which they made favourite for the Derby. Remember? All last winter and spring there was a stream of information about it, coming out of France... how well he was developing, how nothing could stay with him on the gallops, how he made all the three year olds look like knock-kneed yearlings? Every week, something about Polyxenes.’
‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Derry Clark wrote him up for the Blaze.’
Colly Gibbons nodded. ‘So there we are. By Easter, six to one favourite for the Derby. Right? They leave him in through all the forfeit stages. Right? They declare him at the four day declarations. Right? Two days later he’s taken out of the race. Why? He knocked himself out at exercise and his leg’s blown up like a football. Can’t run a lame horse. Too bad, everybody who’d backed him. Too bad. All their money down the drain. All right. Now I’ll tell you something, Ty. That Polyxenes, I’ll never believe he was all that good. What had he ever done? Won two moderate races as a two year old at St. Cloud. He didn’t run this year before the Derby. He didn’t run the whole season in the end. They said his leg was still bad. I’ll tell you what I think. He never was good enough to win the Derby, and from the start they never meant him to run.’
‘If he were as bad as that they could have run him anyway. He wouldn’t have won.’
‘Would you risk it, if you were them? The most fantastic outsiders have won the Derby. Much more certain not to run at all.’
‘Someone must have made thousands,’ I said slowly.
‘More like hundreds of thousands.’
‘If they know it’s going on, why don’t the racing authorities do something about it?’
‘What can they do? I told you, no evidence. Polyxenes was lame, and he stayed lame. He was seen by dozens of vets. He had a slightly shady owner, but no shadier than some of ours. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could be proved.’
After a pause I said, ‘Do you know of any others?’
‘God, Ty, you’re a glutton. Well... yes...’
Once started, he left little out. In the next half hour I listened to the detailed case histories of four more ante-post favourites who hadn’t turned up on the day. All could have been bona fide hard luck stories. But all, I knew well, had been over-praised by Bert Checkov.
He ran down, in the end, with a faint look of dismay.
‘I shouldn’t have told you all this.’
‘No one will know.’
‘You’d get information out of a deaf mute.’
I nodded. ‘They can usually read and write.’
‘Go to hell,’ he said. ‘Or rather, don’t. You’re four behind me, you aren’t trying.’ He waved the bottle in my general direction and I went over and took it from him. It was empty.
‘Got to go home,’ I said apologetically.
‘What’s the hurry?’ He stared at the letter in his hand. ‘Will your wife give you gip if you’re late? Or will she be running off with some bloody Yankee colonel?’
‘No,’ I said unemotionally. ‘She won’t.’
He was suddenly very sober. ‘Christ, Ty... I forgot.’
He stood up, as steady as a rock. Looked forlornly round his comfortable wifeless sitting room. Held out his hand.
‘She’ll come back,’ I said uselessly.
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Anyway, I’m glad you came. Needed someone to talk to, you know. Even if I’ve talked too much... better than getting drunk alone. And I’ll think of you, this evening. You... and your wife.’
I got hung up in a jam at Swiss Cottage and arrived home at eight minutes past seven. An hour and a half’s overtime. Mrs Woodward was delighted.
‘Isn’t she sweet?’ Elizabeth said when she had gone. ‘She never minds when you are late. She never complains about having to stay. She’s so nice and kind.’
‘Very,’ I said.
As usual I spent most of Thursday at home, writing Sunday’s article. Mrs Woodward went out to do the week’s shopping and to take and collect the laundry. Sue Davis came in and made coffee for herself and Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s mother telephoned to say she might not come on Sunday, she thought she could be getting a cold.
No one came near Elizabeth with a cold. With people on artificial respiration, colds too often meant pneumonia, and pneumonia too often meant death.
If Elizabeth’s mother didn’t come on Sunday, I couldn’t go to Virginia Water. I spent too much of the morning unproductively trying to persuade myself it would be better if the cold developed, and knowing I’d be wretched if it did.
Luke-John galloped through the article on non-starting favourites, screwed his eyes up tight and leaned back in his chair with his face to the ceiling. Symptoms of extreme emotion. Derry reached over, twitched up the typewritten sheets and read them in his slower intense short-sighted looking way. When he’d finished he took a deep breath.
‘Wowee,’ he said. ‘Someone’s going to love this.’
‘Who?’ said Luke-John, opening his eyes.
‘The chap who’s doing it.’
Luke-John looked at him broodingly. ‘As long as he can’t sue, that’s all that matters. Take this down to the lawyers and make sure they don’t let it out of their sight.’
Derry departed with a folded carbon copy of the article and Luke-John permitted himself a smile.
‘Up to standard, if I may say so.’
‘Thanks,’ I said.
‘Who told you all this?’
‘Couple of little birds.’