The whole thing was modern and comfortable, a long way from all too many English equivalents. There was a large room furnished with easy-chairs where owners and trainers could sit in comfort to plan their coups and dissect their flops, but Klugvoigt whisked me past it into the inner recesses.
The jockeys themselves shared in the bonanza, being supplied with man-sized wire lockers for their clothes (instead of a peg), a sauna bath (as well as showers) and upholstered day-beds to rest on (instead of a hard narrow wooden bench).
The man I had hoped to see was lying on one of the black leather-covered beds supporting himself on one elbow. He was known to me via the number boards as K. L. Fahrden. He was Greville Arknold’s jockey.
I told Klugvoigt I would be interested to speak to him, and he said sure, go ahead, he would wait for me in the reception room by the door, as there was someone there he too wanted to speak with.
Fahrden had the usual sharp fine bones with the usual lack of fatty tissue between them and the skin. His wary, narrow-eyed manner changed a shade for the better when Klugvoigt told him my name, but underwent a relapse when I said I was a friend of Mrs Cavesey.
‘You can’t blame me for her horses running so stinking,’ he said defensively.
‘I don’t,’ I said patiently. ‘I only wanted to ask you how they felt to you personally, so that I could tell Mrs Cavesey what you said.’
‘Oh. Oh, well, then.’ He considered, and came across. ‘They give you a good feel, see, at the start. Full of running, and revelling in it. Then you go to pick ’em up, see, and there’s bloody nothing there. Put on the pressure, see, and they blow up instant like.’
‘You must have given them a lot of thought,’ I said. ‘What do you think is wrong with them?’
He gave me a sideways look. ‘Search me,’ he said.
‘You must have a theory,’ I urged.
‘Only the same as anyone would,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘And I’m not saying more than that.’
‘Mm... Well, what do you think of Mr Arknold’s head lad?’
‘Barty? That great brute. Can’t say as I’ve ever thought much about him. Wouldn’t want to meet him alone on a dark night, if that’s what you mean.’
It wasn’t entirely what I meant, but I let it go. I asked him instead how he got on with Danilo.
‘A real nice guy, that,’ he said, with the first sign of friendliness. ‘Always takes a great interest in Arknold’s horses, of course, seeing as how so many of them are his aunt’s.’
‘Did you meet him when he was over here before?’ I asked.
‘Oh sure. He stayed in the hotel down in Summerveld, for a couple of weeks. A great guy. Always good for a laugh. He said he’d just been staying with his aunt, and she was a great girl. He was the only cheerful thing around, when the horses started running badly.’
‘When was that?’ I asked with sympathy in my voice.
‘Oh, way back in June, sometime. Since then there’s been every investigation you could think of, into why they flop. Dope tests, vets, the lot.’
‘Is Arknold a good man to ride for?’ I asked.
He closed up at once. ‘More than my job’s worth to say different.’
I fielded Klugvoigt from the reception room, thanked him, and walked back with him towards the parade ring. Someone button-holed him on the way, so I wandered by myself right across the course to the simple stand of plain wooden steps on the far side. From there one had a comprehensive view of the whole lay-out; the long sweep of stands, the small patch of sun umbrellas, the block of private boxes. Behind them all, the parade ring and the weighing room.
And round and about, mingling, chatting, exchanging information and sipping at cooling glasses, went Danilo and Arknold, Conrad and Evan, Roderick and Clifford Wenkins, and Quentin, Vivi, Jonathan and Sally van Huren.
I booked a telephone call to Charlie when I got back to the Iguana Rock that evening, and it came through punctually the next morning, Sunday, at ten o’clock.
We could hear each other as clearly as if we had been six miles apart instead of six thousand. She said she was glad I had called and glad that I wasn’t electrocuted: yes, she said, it had been in all the papers at home yesterday, and one or two disgustedly hinted that it had all been a put-up job.
‘It wasn’t,’ I said. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home. How are the kids?’
‘Oh, fine. Chris says he’s going to be an astronaut, and Libby has managed to say “pool” when she wants to go in the water.’
‘That’s great,’ I said, meaning Libby’s advance, and Charlie said yes, it was great, it really was.
‘I do miss you,’ I said lightly, and she answered with equal lack of intensity, ‘It seems a lot longer than four days since you went away.’
‘I’ll be back straight after the premiere,’ I said. ‘Before that I’m taking a look round a gold mine and then going to the Kruger National Park for a few days.’
‘Lucky sod.’
‘After the kids have gone back to school, we’ll have a holiday somewhere, just by ourselves,’ I said.
‘I’ll hold you to it.’
‘You can choose, so start planning.’
‘O.K.,’ she said it casually, but sounded pleased.
‘Look... I really rang about Nerissa’s horses.’
‘Have you found out what’s wrong with them?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I have had a fairly cataclysmic idea. I can’t be sure I’m right, though, until, or in fact unless, you can do something for me in England.’
‘Shoot,’ she said economically.
‘I want you to take a look at Nerissa’s will.’
‘Wow.’ She drew in a sharp breath. ‘How on earth do I do that?’
‘Ask her. I don’t know how you’ll manage it, but if she’s had fun drawing it up, she might not mind talking about it.’
‘Well... what exactly do you want me to look for if she lets me see it?’
‘I want to know particularly if besides the horses she has left the residue of her estate to Danilo.’
‘All right,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Is it very important?’
‘Yes and no.’ I half laughed. ‘Young Danilo is out here in South Africa at this moment.’
‘Is he?’ she exclaimed. ‘Nerissa didn’t tell us that.’
‘Nerissa doesn’t know,’ I said. I described the golden Danilo to her, and also Arknold, and explained how the horses all lost to the same pattern.
‘Sounds like the trainer nobbling them,’ she commented.
‘Yes. I thought so too, at first. But now... well, I think it’s the Californian kid, our Danilo.’
‘But it can’t be,’ she objected. ‘Whatever could he have to gain?’
‘Death duties,’ I said.
After a pause Charlie said doubtfully, ‘You can’t mean it.’
‘I do mean it. It’s a theory, anyway. But I can’t begin to prove it.’
‘I don’t really see...’
‘Imagine,’ I said, ‘that when Danilo went to see Nerissa in the early summer, their first reunion after all those years, she told him she had Hodgkin’s disease. He had only to look it up in a medical directory... he would find out it is always fatal.’
‘Oh dear,’ she sighed. ‘Go on.’
‘Nerissa liked him very much,’ I said. ‘Well... he’s an attractive boy in many ways. Supposing that, after she’d decided to, she told Danilo she was leaving him her horses, and some money as well.’
‘It’s an awful lot of supposing.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Would you ask Nerissa? Ask her if she told Danilo what illness she had, and also if she told him what she was leaving him.’
‘Darling, she’d be terribly distressed, at this stage, to find she was wrong about him.’ Charlie herself sounded upset. ‘She is so very pleased to have him to leave things to.’