Tick-tock’s angular young face registered delight. Peter Cloony bent on me a look of sorrowful reproof. But from the others came nods of agreement.
Grant Oldfield said violently, ‘He probably shot himself because that whey-faced bitch short-changed him in bed.’
There was a curious little silence. A year ago, I reflected, a year ago we might have laughed. But a year ago Grant Oldfield would have said the same thing amusingly and perhaps vulgarly, but not with this ugly unsmiling venom.
I was aware, we all were, that he didn’t know or care a jot about the private practices of Art’s marriage; but in the past months Grant had seemed more and more to be consumed by some inner rage, and lately he could scarcely make the most commonplace remark without in some way giving vent to it. It was caused, we thought, by the fact that he was going down the ladder again without ever having got to the top. He had always been ambitious and ruthless in character, and had developed a riding style to match. But at the vital point when he had attracted public attention with a string of successes and had begun to ride regularly for James Axminster, one of the very top trainers, something had happened to spoil it. He had lost the Axminster job, and other trainers booked him less and less. The race we had not run was his only engagement that day.
Grant was a dark, hairy, thick-set man of thirty, with high cheek-bones and a wide-nostrilled nose bent permanently out of shape. I endured a great deal more of his company than I would have liked because my peg in the changing-room at nearly all racecourses was next to his, since both our kit was looked after by the same racecourse valet. He borrowed my things freely without asking first or thanking afterwards, and if he had broken something, denied he had used it. When I first met him I had been amused by his pawky humour but two years later, by the day Art died, I was heartily sick of his thunderous moods, his roughness and his vile temper.
Once or twice in the six weeks since the new season had begun I had found him standing with his head thrust forward looking round him in bewilderment, like a bull played out by a matador. A bull exhausted by fighting a piece of cloth, a bull baffled and broken, all his magnificent strength wasted on something he could not pin down with his horns. At such times I could pity Grant all right, but at all others I kept out of his way as much as I could.
Peter Cloony, paying him no attention as usual, indicated the peg on which Art’s everyday clothes hung, and said, ‘What do you think we had better do with these?’
We all looked at them, the well-cut tweed suit neatly arranged on a hanger, with the small grip which contained his folded shirt and underclothes standing on the bench beneath. His almost obsessive tidiness was so familiar to us that it aroused no comment, but now that he was dead I was struck afresh by it. Everyone else hung up their jackets by the loop at the back of the neck, hooked their braces on to the pegs, and piled their other clothes into the tops of their trousers. Only Art had insisted on a hanger, and had provided his valet with one to bring for him.
Before we had got any further than an obscene suggestion from Grant, a racecourse official threaded his way down the changing-room, spotted me, and shouted, ‘Finn, the stewards want you.’
‘Now?’ I said, standing in shirt and underpants.
‘At once.’ He grinned.
‘All right.’ I finished dressing quickly, brushed my hair, walked through the weighing-room, and knocked on the stewards’ door. They said to come in, and in I went.
All three stewards were there, also the clerk of the course and Corin Kellar. They were sitting in uncomfortable-looking, straight-backed chairs around a large, oblong table.
Lord Tirrold said, ‘Come along in and close the door.’
I did as he said.
He went on, ‘I know you were near Mathews when he... er... shot himself. Did you actually see him do it? I mean, did you see him take the pistol out and aim it, or did you look at him when you heard the shot?’
‘I saw him take out the pistol and aim it, sir,’ I said.
‘Very well. In that case the police may wish to take a statement from you; please do not leave the weighing-room building until they have seen you. We are waiting now for the inspector to come back from the first-aid room.’
He nodded to dismiss me, but when I had my hand on the door-knob he said, ‘Finn... do you know of any reason why Mathews should have wished to end his life?’
I hesitated a fraction too long before I turned round, so that a plain ‘No’ would have been unconvincing. I looked at Corin Kellar, who was busy studying his fingernails.
‘Mr. Kellar might know,’ I said, noncommittally.
The stewards exchanged glances. Mr. Ballerton, still pallid from his bout of sickness by Art’s body, made a pushing away gesture with his hand, and said, ‘You’re not asking us to believe that Mathews killed himself merely because Kellar was dissatisfied with his riding?’ He turned to the other stewards. ‘Really,’ he added forcefully, ‘if these jockeys get so big for their boots that they can’t take a little well-earned criticism, it is time they looked about for other employment. But to suggest that Mathews killed himself because of a few hard words is irresponsible mischief.’
At that point I remembered that Ballerton himself owned a horse which Corin Kellar trained. ‘Dissatisfied with his riding,’ the colourless phrase he had used to describe the recent series of acrimonious post-race arguments between Art and the trainer suddenly seemed to me a deliberate attempt at oiling troubled waters. You know why Art killed himself, I thought; you helped to cause it, and you won’t admit it.
I shifted my gaze back to Lord Tirrold and found him regarding me with speculation.
‘That will be all, Finn,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
I went out and this time they did not call me back, but before I had crossed the weighing-room the door opened again and shut and I heard Corin’s voice behind me.
‘Rob.’
I turned round and waited for him.
‘Thanks very much,’ he said sarcastically, ‘for tossing that little bomb into my lap.’
‘You had told them already,’ I said.
‘Yes, and just as well.’
He still looked shocked, his thin face deeply lined with worry. He was an exceptionally clever trainer but a nervous, undependable man who offered you life-long friendship one day and cut you dead the next. Just then, it appeared, he needed reassurance.
He said, ‘Surely you and the other jockeys don’t believe Art killed himself because... er... I had decided to employ him less? He must have had another reason.’
‘Today was supposed to be his last as your jockey in any case, wasn’t it?’ I said.
He hesitated and then nodded, surprised at my knowing what had not been published. I didn’t tell him that I had bumped into Art in the car park the evening before, and that Art, bitterly despairing and smarting from a corroding sense of injustice, had lowered the customary guard on his tongue enough to tell me that his job with Kellar was finished.
I said only, ‘He killed himself because you gave him the sack, and he did it in front of you to cause you the maximum amount of remorse. And that, if you want my opinion, is that.’
‘But people don’t kill themselves because they’ve lost their jobs,’ he said, with a tinge of exasperation.
‘Not if they’re normal, no,’ I agreed.
‘Every jockey knows he’ll have to retire some time. And Art was getting too old... he must have been mad.’