I homed in again like an attacking wasp.
‘Oh for God’s sake, leave the bloody subject alone,’ Felicity exploded.
‘What’s the fella talking about?’ Quintus said.
‘A muck heap on his doorstep.’
‘Oh,’ Quintus said. ‘Ah...’
I described it all over again. I was getting quite attached to it, in retrospect.
Quintus was distinctly pleased. Chuckles quivered in his throat and his eyes twinkled with malice.
‘Serves you right, what?’ he said.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Shit to a shit,’ he said, nodding with satisfaction.
‘What did you say?’
‘Er... nothing.’
Realisation dawned on me with a sense of fitness. ‘You did it yourself,’ I said with conviction,
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He was still vastly amused.
‘Lavatory humour would be just your mark.’
‘You are insulting.’ Less amusement, more arrogance.
‘And the police took away the card you left to test it for fingerprints.’
His mouth opened and shut. He looked blank. ‘The police?’
‘Fellows in blue,’ I said.
Felicity said furiously, ‘Trust someone like you not to take a joke.’
‘I’ll take an apology,’ I said mildly. ‘In writing.’
Their objections, their grudging admissions and the eventual drafting of the apology took care of a lot of time. Quintus had hired a tip-up truck for his delivery and had required his gardener to do the actual work. Jody and Felicity had generously contributed the load. Quintus had supervised its disposal and written his message.
He also, in his own hand and with bravado-ish flourishes, wrote the apology. I thanked him courteously and told him I would frame it, which didn’t please him in the least.
By that time the fifth race was over and it was time to saddle the horses for the sixth.
Felicity, as the trainer’s wife, was the natural person to supervise the saddling of their runner, and I knew that if she did she would know she had the wrong horse.
On the other hand if she did the saddling she couldn’t stop me, as a member of the public, taking a very close look, and from her point of view that was a risk she didn’t want to take.
She solved her dilemma by getting Quintus to see to the saddling.
She herself, with a superhuman effort, laid her hand on my arm in a conciliatory gesture and said, ‘All right. Let bygones be bygones. Let’s go and have a drink.’
‘Sure,’ I said, expressing just the right amount of surprise and agreement. ‘Of course, if you’d like.’
So we went off to the bar where I bought her a large gin and tonic and myself a scotch and water, and we stood talking about nothing much while both busy with private thoughts. She was trembling slightly from the force of hers, and I too had trouble preventing mine from showing. There we were, both trying our darnedest to keep the other away from the horse, she because she thought it was Energise and I because I knew it wasn’t. I could feel the irony breaking out in wrinkles round my eyes.
Felicity dawdled so long over her second drink that the horses were already leaving the parade ring and going out to the course when we finally made our way back to the heart of things. Quintus had understudied splendidly and was to be seen giving a parting slap to the horse’s rump. Felicity let her breath out in a sigh and dropped most of the pretence of being nice to me. When she left me abruptly to rejoin Quintus for the race, I made no move to stop her.
The horse put up a good show, considering.
There were twenty-two runners, none of them more than moderate, and they delivered the sort of performance Energise would have left in the next parish. His substitute was running in his own class and finished undisgraced in sixth place, better than I would have expected. The crowd briefly cheered the winning favourite, and I thought it time to melt prudently and inconspicuously away.
I had gone to Stratford with more hope than certainty that the horse would actually run without the exchange being noticed. I had been prepared to do anything I reasonably could to achieve it, in order to give Ganser Mays the nasty shock of losing every penny he’d laid out on his squeezer.
What I hadn’t actually bargained for was the effect the lost race would have on Felicity.
I saw her afterwards, though I hadn’t meant to, when she went to meet her returning horse. The jockey, a well-known rider who had doubtless been told to win, was looking strained enough, but Felicity seemed on the point of collapse.
Her face was a frightening white, her whole body shook and her eyes looked as blank as marbles.
If I had ever wanted any personal revenge, I had it then, but I drove soberly away from the racecourse feeling sorry for her.
14
Rupert Ramsey met me with a stony face, not at all the expression one would normally expect from a successful trainer who had invited one of his owners to dinner.
‘I’m glad you’re early,’ he said forbiddingly. ‘Please come into the office.’
I followed him across the hall into the familiar room which was warm with a living log fire. He made no move to offer me a drink and I thought I might as well save him some trouble.
‘You’re going to tell me,’ I said, ‘that the horse which left here this morning is not the one which returned.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘So you don’t deny it?’
‘Of course not.’ I smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have thought all that much of you if you hadn’t noticed.’
‘The lad noticed. Donny. He told the head lad, and the head lad told me, and I went to see for myself. And what I want is an explanation.’
‘And it had better be good,’ I added, imitating his schoolmasterly tone. He showed no amusement.
‘This is no joke.’
‘Maybe not. But it’s no crime, either. If you’ll calm down a fraction, I’ll explain.’
‘You have brought me a ringer. No trainer of any sense is going to stand for that.’ His anger was cold and deep.
I said, ‘The horse you thought was Energise was the ringer. And I didn’t send him here, Jody did. The horse you have been trying to train for the Champion Hurdle and which left here this morning, is a fairly useless novice called Padellic.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘As Energise,’ I pointed out, ‘you have found him unbelievably disappointing.’
‘Well...’ The first shade of doubt crept into his voice.
‘When I discovered the wrong horse had been sent here, I asked you expressly not to run him in any races, because I certainly did not want you to be involved in running a ringer, nor myself for that matter.’
‘But if you knew... why on earth didn’t you immediately tell Jody he had made a mistake?’
‘He didn’t,’ I said simply. ‘He sent the wrong one on purpose.’
He walked twice around the room in silence and then still without a word poured us each a drink.
‘Right,’ he said, handing me a glass. ‘Pray continue.’
I continued for quite a long while. He gestured to me to sit down and sat opposite me himself, and listened attentively with a serious face.
‘And this security firm...’ he said at the end. ‘Are you expecting Jody to try to get Energise back?’
I nodded. ‘He’s an extremely determined man. I made the mistake once of underestimating his vigour and his speed, and that’s what lost me Energise in the first place. I think when he got home from Chepstow and heard what Felicity and the box driver and the lad had to say, he would have been violently angry and would decide to act at once. He’s not the sort to spend a day or so thinking about it. He’ll come tonight. I think and hope he will come tonight.’