Walking quietly I went along the side of the cottage and round to the back.
Kemp-Lore’s hands stuck out through the glassless window frames, gripping the water pipe bars and shaking them vigorously. They had not budged in their cement.
He stopped abruptly when he saw me and I watched the anger in his face change to blank surprise.
‘Who did you expect?’ I said.
‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he said. ‘Some damn fool of a woman locked me in here nearly an hour ago and went away and left me. You can let me out. Quickly.’ His breath wheezed sharply in his throat. ‘There’s a horse in here,’ he said looking over his shoulder, ‘and they give me asthma.’
‘Yes,’ I said steadily, without moving. ‘Yes. I know.’
It hit him then. His eyes widened.
‘It was you... who pushed me...’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He stood staring at me through the criss-cross of window frames and bars.
‘You did it on purpose? You put me in here with a horse on purpose?’ His voice rose.
‘Yes,’ I agreed.
‘Why?’ he cried. He must have known the answer already, but when I didn’t reply he said again, almost in a whisper, ‘Why?’
‘I’ll give you half an hour to think about it,’ I said, turning to walk away.
‘No,’ he exclaimed. ‘My asthma’s bad. Let me out at once.’ I turned back and stood close to the window. His breath whistled fiercely, but he had not even loosened his collar and tie. He was in no danger.
‘Don’t you have some pills?’ I said.
‘Of course. I’ve taken them. But they won’t work with a horse so close. Let me out.’
‘Stand by the window,’ I said, ‘and breathe the fresh air.’
‘It’s cold,’ he objected. ‘This place is like an ice house.’
I smiled. ‘Maybe it is,’ I said. ‘But then you are fortunate... you can move about to keep warm, and you have your jacket on... and I have not poured three bucketfuls of cold water over your head.’
He gasped sharply, and it was then, I think, that he began to realise that he was not going to escape lightly or easily from his prison.
Certainly, when I returned to him after sitting on the hay bale for half an hour listening to him alternately kicking the door and yelling for help out of the window, he was no longer assuming that I had lured him all the way from London and gone to the trouble of converting a cottage room into a loose box merely to set him free again at his first squawk.
When I walked round to the window I found him fending off Buttonhook, who was putting her muzzle affectionately over his shoulder. I laughed callously, and he nearly choked with rage.
‘Get her away from me,’ he screamed. ‘She won’t leave me alone. I can’t breathe.’
He clung on to a bar with one hand, and chopped at Buttonhook with the other.
‘If you don’t make so much noise she’ll go back to her hay.’
He glared at me through the bars, his face distorted with rage and hate and fright. His asthma was much worse. He had unbuttoned the neck of his shirt and pulled down his tie and I could see his throat heaving.
I put the box of sugar cubes I was carrying on the inner window-sill, withdrawing my hand quickly as he made a grab at it.
‘Put some sugar on her hay,’ I said. ‘Go on.’ I added, as he hesitated, ‘this lot isn’t doped.’
His head jerked up. I looked bitterly into his staring eyes.
‘Twenty-eight horses,’ I said, ‘starting with Shantytown. Twenty-eight sleepy horses who all ate some sugar from your hand before they raced.’
Savagely he picked up the box of sugar, tore it open, and sprinkled the cubes on the pile of hay at the other end of the room. Buttonhook, following him, put her head down and began to crunch. He came back to the window, wheezing laboriously.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ he said. ‘You’ll go to jail for this. I’ll see you’re pilloried for this.’
‘Save your breath,’ I said brusquely. ‘I’ve a good deal to say to you. After that, if you want to complain to the police about the way I’ve treated you, you’re welcome.’
‘You’ll be in jail so quick you won’t know what hit you,’ he said, the breath hissing through his teeth. ‘Now, hurry up and say whatever it is you want to say.’
‘Hurry?’ I said slowly. ‘Well now, it’s going to take some time.’
‘You’ll have to let me out by two-thirty at the latest,’ he said unguardedly. ‘I’ve got rehearsals today at five.’
I smiled at him. I could feel it wasn’t a pleasant smile.
I said, ‘It isn’t an accident that you are here on Friday.’
His jaw literally dropped. ‘The programme...’ he said.
‘Will have to go on without you,’ I agreed.
‘But you can’t,’ he shouted, gasping for enough breath, ‘you can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’ I said mildly.
‘It’s... it’s television,’ he shouted, as if I didn’t know. ‘Millions of people are expecting to see the programme.’
‘Then millions of people are going to be disappointed,’ I said.
He stopped shouting and took three gulping, wheezing breaths.
‘I know,’ he said, with a visible effort at moderation and at getting back to normal, ‘that you don’t really mean to keep me here so long that I can’t get to the studio in time for the programme. All right then,’ he paused for a couple of wheezes, ‘if you let me go in good time for the rehearsals, I won’t report you to the police as I threatened. I’ll overlook all this.’
‘I think you had better keep quiet and listen,’ I said. ‘I suppose you find it hard to realise that I don’t give a damn for your influence or the pinnacle the British public have seen fit to put you on, or your dazzling, synthetic personality. They are a fraud. Underneath there is only a sick mess of envy and frustration and spite. But I wouldn’t have found you out if you hadn’t doped twenty-eight horses I rode and told everyone I had lost my nerve. And you can spend this afternoon reflecting that you wouldn’t be missing your programme tonight if you hadn’t tried to stop me riding Template.’
He stood stock still, his face pallid and suddenly sweating.
‘You mean it,’ he whispered.
‘Indeed I do,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. A muscle in his cheek started twitching. ‘No. You can’t. You did ride Template... you must let me do the programme.’
‘You won’t be doing any more programmes,’ I said. ‘Not tonight or any night. I didn’t bring you here just for a personal revenge, though I don’t deny I felt like killing you last Friday night. I brought you here on behalf of Art Mathews and Peter Cloony and Grant Oldfield. I brought you because of Danny Higgs, and Ingersoll, and every other jockey you have hit where it hurts. In various ways you saw to it that they lost their jobs; so now you are going to lose yours.’
For the first time, he was speechless. His lips moved but no sound came out except the high, asthmatic whine of his breathing. His eyes seemed to fall back in their sockets and his lower jaw hung slack, making hollows of his cheeks. He looked like a death’s-head caricature of the handsome charmer he had been.
I took the long envelope addressed to him out of my pocket and held it to him through the bars. He took it mechanically, with black fingers.
‘Open it,’ I said.
He pulled out the sheets of paper and read them. He read them through twice, though his face showed from the first that he understood the extent of the disaster. The haggard hollows deepened.