Ian Young carried on a short conversation with Boris Dmitrevich in impenetrable Russian, and then did a spot of translation, looking more worried than I liked.
‘Boris wants to warn us,’ he said, ‘that what you are dealing with is not some tomfool scandal but something to do with killing people.’
‘With what?’
He nodded. ‘That’s what he said.’ He turned his head back to Boris, and they talked some more. It appeared, from the expressions all around me, that what Boris was saying was no news to anyone except Ian Young and myself.
Boris was built like a true horseman, of middle height, with strong shoulders and well-coordinated movements. He was good-looking, with straight black hair and ears very flat to his head. He spoke earnestly to Ian Young, his dark eyes flicking my way every few seconds as if to check that he could still risk my hearing what he had to tell.
‘Boris says,’ Ian Young said, the shock showing, ‘that the German, Hans Kramer, was murdered.’
‘No,’ I said confidently. ‘There was an autopsy. Natural causes.’
Ian shook his head. ‘Boris says that someone has found a way of causing people to drop down dead from heart attacks. He says that the death of Hans Kramer was...’ He turned back briefly to Boris to consult, and then back to me, ‘...the death of Hans Kramer was a sort of demonstration.’
It seemed ridiculous. ‘A demonstration of what?’
A longer chat ensued. Ian Young shook his head and argued. Boris began to make fierce chopping motions with his hands, and spots of colour appeared on his cheeks. I gathered that his information had at this point entered the realms of guesswork, and that Ian Young didn’t believe what was being said. Time to take a pull back to the facts.
‘Look,’ I said, interrupting the agitated flow. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. I’ll ask some questions, and you get me the answers. OK?’
‘Yes,’ Ian Young said, subsiding. ‘Carry on.’
‘Ask him how he travelled to England, and where he went, and where he stayed, and how his team fared in the finals.’
‘But,’ he said, puzzled, ‘what has that to do with Hans Kramer?’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘But I know how the Russians travelled and where they stayed and how they fared, and I just want to do my own private bit of checking that Boris is who he says he is; and also if he talks about unloaded things like that he will calm down again and we can then get the beliefs without the passion.’
He blinked. ‘My God,’ he said.
‘Ask him.’
‘Yes.’ He turned to Boris and delivered the question.
Boris answered impatiently that they travelled by motor horse box across Europe to The Hague, and from there by sea to England, still with the horse boxes, and drove on to Burghley, where they stayed in quarters especially reserved for them.
‘How many horses, and how many men?’ I said.
Boris said six horses, and stumbled over the number of people. I suggested that this was because the Russians had paid for only seven ‘human’ tickets but had actually taken ten or more men... Make it a joke, I said to Ian Young: not an insult.
He made it enough of a joke for Boris and everyone else almost to laugh, which handily released much tension all round and steadied the temperature.
‘They want to know how you know,’ Ian said.
‘The shipping agent told me. Tickets were bought for six riders and a chef d’équipe, but three or four grooms travelled among the legs of the horses. The shipping agents were amused, not angry.’
Ian relayed the answer and got another round of appreciative noises in the throat. Boris gave a more detailed account of the Russian team’s performance in the trials than I had memorised, and by the end I had no doubt that he was genuine. He had also recovered his temper and lost his rigidity, and I reckoned we might go carefully back to the minefield.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Now ask him if he knew Hans Kramer personally. If he ever spoke to him face to face, and if so in what language.’
The question at once stiffened up the sinews, but the reply looked only moderately nervous.
Ian Young translated. ‘Yes, he did talk to Hans Kramer. They spoke German, though Boris says he knows only a little German. He had met Hans Kramer before, when they both rode in the same trials, and they were friendly together.’
‘Ask him what they talked about,’ I said.
The answer came easily, predictably, with shrugs. ‘Horses. The trials. The Olympics. The weather.’
‘Anything else?’
‘No.’
‘Anything to do with backgammon, gambling clubs, homosexuals or transvestites?’
I saw by the collective indrawn breaths of disapproval round about that if Boris had been discussing such things he had better not say so. His own positive negative, however, looked real enough.
‘Does he know Johnny Farringford?’ I said.
It appeared that Boris knew who Johnny was, and had seen him ride, but had not spoken to him.
‘Did he see Hans Kramer and Johnny Farringford together?’
Boris had not noticed one way or the other.
‘Was he there on the spot when Hans Kramer died?’
Boris’s unemotional response told me the answer before Ian translated.
‘No, he wasn’t. He had finished his cross-country section before Hans Kramer set out. He saw Hans Kramer being weighed... is that right?’ Ian Young looked doubtful.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The horses have to carry minimum weights, to make it a fairer test. There is a weighing machine on the course, to weigh the riders with their saddles just before they set off, and also as soon as they come back. The same as in racing.’
Boris, it appeared, had had to wait while Hans Kramer was weighed out, before himself weighing in. He had wished Hans Kramer good luck. ‘Alles Gute.’ The irony of it lugubriously pleased the listening friends.
‘Please ask Boris why he thinks Hans Kramer was murdered.’ I said the words deliberately flatly, and Ian Young relayed them the same way, but they reproduced in Boris the old high alarm.
‘Did he hear anyone say so?’ I asked decisively, to cut off the emotion.
‘Yes.’
‘Who said so?’.
Boris did not know the man who said so.
‘Did he say it to Boris face to face?’
No. Boris had overheard it.
I could see why Ian Young had doubted the whole story.
‘Ask in what language this man spoke.’
In Russian, Boris said, but he was not a Russian.
‘Does he mean that the man spoke Russian with a foreign accent?’
That was right.
‘What accent?’ I said patiently. ‘From what country?’
Boris didn’t know.
‘Where was Boris when he overheard this man?’
It seemed a pretty harmless question to me, but it brought an abrupt intense stillness into the room.
Evgeny Sergeevich Titov finally stirred and said something lengthily to Ian.
‘They want you to understand that Boris should not have been where he was. That if he tells you, you will hold his future in your power.’
‘I see,’ I said.
There was a pause.
Ian said, ‘I think they’re waiting for you to swear you will never reveal where he was.’