I indicated that I would fix things as Jenny wanted, because it didn’t affect my future like it did hers. She would be grateful, Charles said. I thought she would very likely take it for granted, knowing her.
When there was little else to say on that subject, we switched to Kraye. I asked Charles if he had seen him again during the week.
‘Yes, I was going to tell you. I had lunch with him in the Club on Thursday. Quite accidentally. We both just happened to be there alone.’
‘That’s where you met him first, in your club?’
‘That’s right. Of course he thanked me for the week-end, and so on. Talked about the quartz. Very interesting collection, he said. But not a murmur about the St Luke’s Stone. I would have liked to have asked him straight out, just to see his reaction.’ He tapped off the ash, smiling. ‘I did mention you, though, in passing, and he switched on all the charm and said you had been extremely insulting to him and his wife, but that of course you hadn’t spoiled his enjoyment. Very nasty, I thought it. He was causing bad trouble for you. Or at least, he intended to.’
‘Yes,’ I said cheerfully. ‘But I did insult him, and I also spied on him. Anything he says of me is fully merited.’ I told Charles how I had taken the photographs, and all that I had discovered or guessed during the past week. His cigar went out. He looked stunned.
‘Well, you wanted me to, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You started it. What did you expect?’
‘It’s only that I had almost forgotten… this is what you used to be like, always. Determined. Ruthless, even.’ He smiled. ‘My game for convalescence has turned out better than I expected.’
‘God help your other patients,’ I said, ‘if Kraye is standard medicine.’
We walked along the road towards where Charles had left his car. He was going straight home again.
I said, ‘I hope that in spite of the divorce I shall see something of you? I should be sorry not to. As your ex-son-in-law, I can hardly come to Aynsford any more.’
He looked startled. ‘I’ll be annoyed if you don’t, Sid. Jenny will be living all round the world, like Jill. Come to Aynsford whenever you want.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. I meant it, and it sounded like it.
He stood beside his car, looking down at me from his straight six feet.
‘Jenny,’ he said casually, ‘is a fool.’
I shook my head. Jenny was no fool. Jenny knew what she needed, and it wasn’t me.
When I went into the office (on time) the following morning, the girl on the switchboard caught me and said Radnor wanted me straight away.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had Lord Hagbourne on the telephone telling me it’s time we got results and that he can’t go to Seabury today because his car is being serviced. Before you explode, Sid… I told him that you would take him down there now, at once, in your own car. So get a move on.’
I grinned. ‘I bet he didn’t like that.’
‘He couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough. Get round and collect him before he comes up with one.’
‘Right.’
I made a quick detour up to the Racing Section where Dolly was adjusting her lipstick. No cross-over blouse today. A disappointment.
I told her where I was going, and asked if I could use Chico.
‘Help yourself,’ she said resignedly. ‘If you can get a word in edgeways. He’s along in Accounts arguing with Jones-boy.’
Chico, however, listened attentively and repeated what I had asked him. ‘I’m to find out exactly what mistakes the Clerk of the Course at Dunstable made, and make sure that they and nothing else were the cause of the course losing money.’
‘That’s right. And dig out the file on Andrews and the case you were working on when I got shot.’
‘But that’s all dead,’ he protested, ‘the file’s down in records in the basement.’
‘Send Jones-boy down for it,’ I suggested, grinning. ‘It’s probably only a coincidence, but there is something I want to check. I’ll do it tomorrow morning. O.K.?’
‘If you say so, chum.’
Back at my flat, I filled up with Extra and made all speed round to Beauchamp Place. Lord Hagbourne, with a civil but cool good morning, lowered himself into the passenger seat, and we set off for Seabury. It took him about a quarter of an hour to get over having been manoeuvred into something he didn’t want to do, but at the end of that time he sighed and moved in his seat, and offered me a cigarette.
‘No, thank you, sir. I don’t smoke.’
‘You don’t mind if I do?’ He took one out.
‘Of course not.’
‘This is a nice car,’ he remarked, looking round.
‘It’s nearly three years old now. I bought it the last season I was riding. It’s the best I’ve ever had, I think.’
‘I must say,’ he said inoffensively, ‘that you manage extremely well. I wouldn’t have thought that you could drive a car like this with only one effective hand.’
‘Its power makes it easier, actually. I took it across Europe last Spring… good roads, there.’
We talked on about cars and holidays, then about theatres and books, and he seemed for once quite human. The subject of Seabury we carefully by-passed. I wanted to get him down there in a good mood; the arguments, if any, could take place on the way back; and it seemed as if he was of the same mind.
The state of Seabury’s track reduced him to silent gloom. We walked down to the burnt piece with Captain Oxon, who was bearing himself stiffly and being pointedly polite. I thought he was a fooclass="underline" he should have fallen on the Senior Steward and begged for instant help.
Captain Oxon, whom I had not met before, though he said he knew me by sight, was a slender pleasant looking man of about fifty, with a long pointed chin and a slight tendency to watery eyes. The present offended obstinacy of his expression looked more like childishness than real strength. A colonel manqué, I thought uncharitably, and no wonder.
‘I know it’s not really my business,’ I said, ‘but surely a bulldozer would shift what’s left of the burnt bit in a couple of hours? There isn’t time to settle new turf, but you could cover the whole area with some tons of tan and race over it quite easily, like that. You must be getting tan anyway, to cover the road surface. Surely you could just increase the order?’
Oxon looked at me with irritation. ‘We can’t afford it.’
‘You can’t afford another cancellation at the last minute,’ I corrected.
‘We are insured against cancellations.’
‘I doubt whether an insurance company would stand this one,’ I said. ‘They’d say you could have raced if you’d tried hard enough.’
‘It’s Monday now,’ remarked Lord Hagbourne thoughtfully. ‘Racing’s due on Friday. Suppose we call in a bulldozer tomorrow; the tan can be unloaded and spread on Wednesday and Thursday. Yes, that seems sound enough.’
‘But the cost…’ began Oxon.
‘I think the money must be found,’ said Lord Hagbourne. ‘Tell Mr Fotherton when he comes over that I have authorised the expenditure. The bills will be met, in one way or another. But I do think there is no case for not making an effort.’
It was on the tip of my tongue to point out that if Oxon had arranged for the bulldozer on the first day he could have saved the price of casual labour for six hand-diggers for a week, but as the battle was already won, I nobly refrained. I continued to think, however, that Oxon was a fool. Usually the odd custom of giving the managerships of racecourses to ex-army and navy officers worked out well, but conspicuously not in this case.
The three of us walked back up to the stands, Lord Hagbourne pausing and pursing his lips at their dingy appearance. I reflected that it was a pity that Seabury had a Clerk of the Course whose heart and home were far away on the thriving course at Bristol. If I’d been arranging things, I’d have seen to it a year ago, when the profits turned to loss, that Seabury had a new Clerk entirely devoted to its own interests, someone moreover whose livelihood depended on it staying open. The bungle, delay, muddle, too much politeness and failure to take action showed by the Seabury executive had been of inestimable value to the quietly burrowing Kraye.