Sophie telephoned at nine o’clock that evening. Her voice sounded so immediately familiar that it was incredible to think I had known her for less than twenty-four hours.
‘... Just to thank you for everything...’
‘For crashing your car?’
‘You know what I mean,’ she said.
‘How’s the arm?’
‘Oh, much better. Look... I don’t have a lot of time. I have to go to work after all... rather a nuisance but it can’t be helped.’
‘Say you don’t feel up to it.’
She paused. ‘No. It wouldn’t really be true. I slept for hours when I got home and honestly I feel fine now.’
I didn’t argue. I already knew it was impossible to persuade her against her will.
She said, ‘How are your knight-in-shining-armour instincts?’
‘Rusty.’
‘I could provide brasso.’
I smiled. ‘What do you want done?’
‘Yes. Mm. Well, when it comes to the point, I don’t know that I’ve got any right to ask.’
‘Will you marry me?’ I said.
‘What did you say?’
‘Er...’ I said. ‘Never mind. What was it you wanted done?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, I will. Marry you.’
I stared across the office, seeing nothing. I hadn’t meant to ask her. Or had I? Anyway, not so soon. I swallowed. Cleared my throat.
‘Then... you’ve a right to ask anything.’
‘Good,’ she said crisply. ‘Button your ears back.’
‘They’re buttoned.’
‘My aunt... the one who has the stud farm...’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I’ve been talking to her on the telephone. She’s in a grade one tizzy.’
‘What about?’
‘To be honest, I don’t exactly understand. But she lives near Cirencester and I know you are going over that way tomorrow with Mrs Sanders’ horse... and... well... suppose I sort of vaguely offered your help. Anyway, if you’ve got time to call on her, she’d be grateful.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Mrs Antonia Huntercombe. Paley Stud. Her village is Paley, too. Near Cirencester.’
‘Right.’ I wrote it down. ‘Are you working tomorrow evening?’
‘No. Saturday morning.’
‘Then... I could come to your place... on my way home... to tell you how I got on with her.’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was tentative, almost embarrassed. ‘I live...’
‘I know where you live,’ I said. ‘Somewhere at the end of the five furlong straight of Sandown Racecourse.’
She laughed. ‘If I lean out, I can see the stands from the bathroom window.’
‘I’ll be there.’
‘I’ve got to go now, or I’ll be late.’ She paused, then she said doubtfully, ‘Did you mean it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so. Did you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s silly.’
Friday morning saw the long delayed departure of the seventy thousand pound two-year-old, who seemed to have suffered no harm from his nocturnal junket. I knew, as I thankfully dispatched him with his two slightly less valuable fellows, that I had been luckier than I deserved, and I still sweated at the thought of that headlong gallop down the main road.
Crispin, that Friday morning, lay in the customary coma on his bed. I rang the doctor, who said he would look in on his rounds.
‘How’s the girl I stitched?’ he asked.
‘Gone home. Gone to work.’
‘A lot of starch in that one.’
‘Yes.’
I thought about her every ten minutes or so. A cool girl I had kissed once, on the cheek in the afternoon, standing beside a hired car in Gatwick Airport. She had done nothing in return but smile. One couldn’t call it love. Recognition, perhaps.
Mid-morning I set off for Gloucestershire and without much trouble found the aunt’s stud farm at Paley. As a business breeding venture it had all the first sight marks of imminent skids: weeds in the gravel, an unmended fence, tiles off the stable roof and paint too old to keep out the rain.
The house itself was a pleasant Cotswold stone affair with too much creeper on the walls. I knocked on the front door, which was open, and was told by a rich voice to come in. Dogs greeted me in the hall, a whippet, a labrador, two bassets and a dachshund, all displaying curiosity tempered by good manners. I let them sniff and lick, and they’d know me next time, I thought.
‘Come in, come in,’ called the voice.
I went further, to the door of a long sitting-room where much-used antique furniture stood on elderly Persian rugs. Padded and pelmeted curtains and silk lampshades and Staffordshire china dogs all spoke of enough money somewhere in the past, but the holes in the flowery chintz sofa covers were truer of the present.
Antonia Huntercombe sat in an armchair fondling yet another dog. A Yorkshire terrier, a walking heathrug. She was a woman of about sixty with strong facial bones and an air of first-class stoicism in the face of titanic submersion.
‘Are you Jonah Dereham?’
‘Mrs Huntercombe?’
She nodded. ‘Come in and sit down.’
At closer quarters the voice was fruity in the lower notes and punctiliously articulated. She did not seem over friendly considering that I was supposed to be there to offer help.
‘Excuse me not getting up,’ she said. ‘Little Dougal here is not very well, and I don’t want to disturb him.’
She stroked the hearthrug soothingly. One couldn’t see which end of it was which.
‘Sophie asked me to call,’ I said.
‘Can’t see what good you can do,’ she said forbiddingly. ‘And besides, you’re one of them.’
‘One of who?’
‘Bloodstock agents.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Several shades of light began to dawn.
She nodded grimly. ‘I told Sophie it was no good asking you for help, but she insisted that I should at least tell you my complaints. She’s a very forceful girl, Sophie.’
‘She is indeed.’
Antonia Huntercombe looked at me sharply. ‘She seems to think well of you. She telephoned to find out how I was, but she talked mostly of you.’
‘Did she?’
She nodded. ‘Sophie needs a man. But not a crook.’
I thought privately that few young women needed a man less than Sophie but quarrelled only with the second half of the pronouncement.
‘I’m not a crook.’
‘Hmph.’
I said, ‘I looked you up in the books, before I came. You’ve got one good stallion, Barroboy, but he’s getting old now, and one young one, Bunjie, who might be better if he were keener on his job. You have eight brood mares, the best being Winedark who came third in the Oaks. She was bred last year to a top sire, Winterfriend, and you sent the resulting filly as a yearling to Newmarket Sales last week. She fetched only eighteen hundred guineas because of a heart murmur, which means that you lost a lot of money on her, as the stud fee was five thousand in the first place and then there is all her keep and care and overheads...’
‘It was a lie,’ she said fiercely.
‘What was?’
‘That the filly had a heart murmur. She didn’t. Her heart is as sound as a bell.’
‘But I was there at the sales,’ I said. ‘I remember hearing that the Winterfriend filly would never race and might be doubtful even as a brood mare. That’s why no one bid for her.’
‘That’s why, right enough.’ Her voice was bitter. ‘But it wasn’t true.’
‘You’d better tell me who spread such a rumour,’ I said. ‘Who and why.’