Unquestionably, it was a day to see — and to be seen.
I found Nick Spencer in Row G, or rather, he found me.
I was about to call his mobile when I heard him shouting.
‘Chester, over here!’
I walked over to join him and saw that a few other members of the Potassium syndicate were amongst his guests. I looked at them and wondered if any of them were Squeaky Voice, but I more or less dismissed the thought almost as soon as I’d had it.
Why would any of them want Potassium to lose today?
A Class 6 handicap at Lingfield or a Class 4 Novice Stakes at Newbury were one thing — they were both only worth a few thousand pounds to the winner — but here, today, was quite another.
The prize money awarded to the victor of the St James’s Palace Stakes was over three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, to say nothing of how a triumph today would further enhance his value at auction as a future stallion.
Even with about ten per cent of that prize going to the winning trainer, and seven per cent to the winning jockey, plus the remainder being divided amongst the twelve syndicate members, it would still take a lot of betting on others, or laying of Potassium, to match the personal financial reward we would each acquire from our horse winning the race.
So how could Potassium losing it be a benefit to any of us?
‘Come and meet my American guests,’ Nick Spencer said, breaking my line of thought. He took me by the arm and steered me over to a group of three people I didn’t recognise, one man and two women.
‘Chester Newton,’ Nick said, ‘meet Herb and Harriet Farquhar, and...’
He tailed off.
‘Toni Beckett,’ said the lady on the left, the attractive one with the blonde shoulder-length hair, who I took to be in her early forties. ‘That’s Toni with an i.’ She drawled it out, Southern style. ‘It’s short for Antonia.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Nick said, not seemingly embarrassed in the slightest by his forgetfulness.
I shook their hands.
‘Chester, here, is our syndicate manager,’ Nick said. ‘He keeps us all in order.’ He laughed. ‘Herb owns a beautiful horse farm just outside Lexington, Kentucky.’
I nodded in approval. ‘I’ve been to the yearling sales in Lexington,’ I said.
‘Buy anything?’ Herb asked sharply.
I smiled at him. ‘Not on that occasion, but I might in the future.’
‘Chester has a great eye for a horse,’ Nick said. ‘He bought Potassium at the sales for only a hundred thousand guineas, and look what’s happened to him since. He’s now worth millions.’
Thankfully, he didn’t mention some of the other horses I had bought for roughly the same money, which had then turned out to be fairly useless in comparison.
‘What’s a guinea?’ Toni asked.
‘It’s an old British measure of money,’ I said. ‘A little over a pound. Horses are still sold in guineas at Newmarket. On present exchange rates, a guinea is about one and a third American dollars.’
She raised her eyes to the heavens as if to imply that we were all crazy.
‘Who’d like a drink?’ Nick said, and he turned away to fetch a bottle.
Herb and Harriet drifted off after him, leaving me standing alone with Toni Beckett.
‘Do you work on the horse farm too?’ I asked.
‘Oh no. I run the ticketing division at Keeneland Racetrack in Lexington. Mr and Mrs Spencer came over for our Spring Meet in April, and they stayed with Mr and Mrs Farquhar. I managed to get them all Clubhouse hospitality tickets for the races. This is a sort of thank-you for that.’
‘Have you been to Ascot before?’
‘Never. This is my first trip to England. I caught the red-eye over, Sunday night.’
‘Are you here at the races all week?’ I asked, noting that she had a five-day Royal Enclosure badge pinned to her yellow dress.
‘Just for four days,’ she said. ‘I have to fly home Saturday, to be back at work Monday morning.’ She pulled a face.
‘Will you be with Nick Spencer for all four days?’
‘Oh no. Just today. Mr and Mrs Farquhar have invitations from other friends for the rest of the week, and I will just tag along with them. We’re in someone’s private suite tomorrow, and then guests of something called the Ascot Authority on Thursday. I can’t remember where we are on Friday.’ She smiled. ‘I just know it’s going to be a busy week.’
Nick came back with two glasses of champagne.
‘Here you are,’ he said, handing one to each of us. ‘We will sit down to eat at a quarter to twelve. That will give us plenty of time to finish and get in to watch the Royal Procession at two o’clock.’
‘Royal Procession?’ Toni said.
‘The King and other members of the royal family ride down the racecourse in open carriages, and then under the grandstand to the paddock. It’s very grand and most people go to watch.’
‘Open carriages? Doesn’t anyone take a pot shot at them? If our president did that, he’d be killed inside five minutes.’ She laughed. ‘The last one to ride in an open-topped car was shot dead in it, in Dallas back in the sixties.’
‘But we all love our royal family,’ Nick said.
‘Yeah,’ Toni replied. ‘But it only takes one nutcase with a gun.’
‘I’m sure security is tighter than it looks,’ I said. ‘Let’s have another drink.’
But she was right.
And what lengths would Squeaky Voice go to in order to prevent Potassium from winning?
Surely not that.
He’d probably have more chance if he shot the horse.
Chapter 18
I was placed between Claire Spencer and Toni Beckett for lunch.
‘So do you think we’ll win?’ Claire asked.
‘I hope so,’ I replied. ‘This race is much shorter than the Derby. It’s actually quite unusual for a horse to drop back to a mile having raced previously over a mile and a half, but Potassium has good pace, and I think that the mile will suit him just fine, probably better than the longer distance.’
She smiled at me. ‘We have more champagne on ice in the boot of the car, just in case.’
I was on my third glass already.
No more, I told myself. Not only because I would be driving home later but also because I needed to have all my wits about me in case I was needed to help Owen get Potassium ready for the race.
Toni was deep in conversation with the man on her other side, another member of the Potassium syndicate. Strangely, it made me think of the argument between Amanda and Darren at our party. Then I realised that was because I was also fed up with all the attention she was paying to the other man rather than to me.
I shook my head slightly, as if to tell myself not even to think about going there, but the thought persisted.
Lunch wound up at about a quarter past one after a spectacular feast, finished off with fresh strawberries and lashings of cream.
‘I’m stuffed,’ Toni said next to me. ‘I’m not sure I can even stand up.’
But she managed it.
‘Now for the real reason we’re all here today,’ I said. ‘The racing.’
But I was quite sure that some of the people around me in the car park had no intention of going into the enclosures to watch the horses. For them, the car-park picnic was the point of the day, and nothing else mattered. Indeed, the four hours or so it took to run the seven races was simply a chance for them to have a little snooze before the eating and drinking started again afterwards.