Straight (20 page)

I telephoned Elliot Trelawney at his weekend home, told him I’d found the red-hot notes and read them to him, which brought forth a whistle and a groan.

“But Vaccaro didn’t kill Greville,” I said.

“No.” He sighed. “How did the funeral go?”

“Fine. Thank you for your flowers.”

“Just sorry I couldn’t get there, but on a working day, and so far ...”

“It was fine,” I said again, and it had been. I’d been relieved, on the whole, to be alone.

“Would you mind,” he said, diffidently, “if I arranged a memorial service for him? Sometime soon. Within a month?”

“Go right ahead,” I said warmly. “A great idea.”

He hoped I would send the Vaccaro notes by messenger on Monday to the Magistrates Court, and he asked if I played golf.

 

In the morning, after a dream-filled night in Greville’s black and white bed, I took a taxi to the Ostermeyers’ hotel, meeting them in the lobby as arranged on the telephone the evening before.

They were in very good form, Martha resplendent in a red wool tailored dress with a mink jacket, Harley with a new English-looking hat over his easy grin, binoculars and racing paper ready. Both of them seemed determined to enjoy whatever the day brought forth and Harley’s occasional ill-humor was far out of sight.

The driver, a different one from Wednesday, brought a huge super-comfortable Daimler to the front door exactly on time, and with all auspices pointing to felicity, the Ostermeyers arranged themselves on the rear seat, I sitting in front of them beside the chauffeur.

The chauffeur, who announced his name as Simms, kindly stowed my crutches in the trunk and said it was no trouble at all, sir, when I thanked him. The crutches themselves seemed to be the only tiny cloud on Martha’s horizon, bringing a brief frown to the proceedings.

“Is that foot still bothering you? Milo said it was nothing to worry about.”

“No, it isn’t, and it’s much better,” I said truthfully.

“Oh, good. Just as long as it doesn’t stop you riding Datepalm.”

“Of course not,” I assured her.

“We’re so pleased to have him. He’s just darling.”

I made some nice noises about Datepalm, which wasn’t very difficult, as we nosed through the traffic to go north on the M highway.

Harley said, “Milo says Datepalm might go for the Charisma ‘Chase at Kempton next Saturday. What do you think?”

“A good race for him,” I said calmly. I would kill Milo, I thought. A dicey gallop was one thing, but no medic on earth was going to sign my card in one week to say I was fit; and I wouldn’t be, because half a ton of horse over jumps at thirty-plus miles an hour was no puffball matter.

“Milo might prefer to save him for the Mackeson at Cheltenham next month,” I said judiciously, sowing the idea. “Or of course for the Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup two weeks later.” I’d definitely be fit for the Hennessy, six weeks ahead. The Mackeson, at four weeks, was a toss-up.

“Then there’s that big race the day after Christmas.” Martha sighed happily. “It’s all so exciting. Harley promises we can come back to see him run.”

They talked about horses for another half hour and then asked if I knew anything about a Dick Turpin.

“Oh, sure.”

“Some guy said he was riding to York. I didn’t understand any part of it.”

I laughed. “It happened a couple of centuries ago. Dick Turpin was a highwayman, a real villain, who rode his mare Black Bess north to escape the law. They caught him in York and flung him in jail, and for a fortnight he held a sort of riotous court in his cell, making jokes and drinking with all the notables of the city who came to see the famous thief in his chains. Then they took him out and hanged him on a piece of land called the Knavesmire, which is now the racecourse.”

“Oh, my,” Martha said, ghoulishly diverted. “How perfectly grisly.”

In time we left the M1 and traveled northeast to the difficult old A1, and I thought that no one in their senses would drive from London to York when they could go by train. The Ostermeyers, of course, weren’t doing the driving.

Harley said as we neared the city, “You’re expected at lunch with us, Derek.”

Expected, in Ostermeyer speech, meant invited. I protested mildly that it wasn’t so.

“It sure is. I talked with Lord Knightwood yesterday evening, told him we’d have you with us. He said right away to have you join us for lunch. They’re giving their name to one of the races, it’ll be a big party.”

“Which race?” I asked with curiosity. Knightwood wasn’t a name I knew.

“Here it is.” Harley rustled the racing newspaper. “The University of York Trophy. Lord Knightwood is the University’s top man, president or governor, some kind of figurehead. A Yorkshire VIP. Anyway, you’re expected.”

I thanked him. There wasn’t much else to do, though a sponsor’s lunch on top of no exercise could give me weight problems if I wasn’t careful. However, I could almost hear Milo’s agitated voice in my ear: “Whatever the Ostermeyers want, for Christ’s sake give it to them.”

“There’s also the York Minster Cup,” Harley said, reading his paper, “and the Civic Pride Challenge. Your horse Dozen Roses is in the York Castle Champions.”

“My brother’s horse,” I said.

Harley chuckled. “We won’t forget.”

Simms dropped us neatly at the Club entrance. One could get addicted to chauffeurs, I thought, accepting the crutches gravely offered. No parking problems. Someone to drive one home on crunch days. But no spontaneity, no real privacy ... No thanks, not even long-term Brad.

Back the first horse you see, they say. Or the first jockey. Or the first trainer.

The first trainer we saw was Nicholas Loder. He looked truly furious and, I thought in surprise, alarmed when I came face to face with him after he’d watched our emergence from the Daimler.

“What are
you
doing here?” he demanded brusquely. “You’ve no business here.”

“Do you know Mr. and Mrs. Ostermeyer?” I asked politely, introducing them. “They’ve just bought Datepalm. I’m their guest today.”

He glared; there wasn’t any other word for it. He had been waiting for a man, perhaps one of his owners, to collect a Club badge from the allotted window and, the transaction achieved, the two of them marched off into the racecourse without another word.

“Well!” Martha said, outraged. “If Milo ever behaved like that we’d whisk our horses out of his yard before he could say goodbye.”

“It isn’t my horse,” I pointed out. “Not yet.”

“When it is, what will you do?”

“The same as you, I think, though I didn’t mean to.”

“Good,” Martha said emphatically.

I didn’t really understand Loder’s attitude or reaction. If he wanted a favor from me, which was that I’d let him sell Dozen Roses and Gemstones to others of his owners either for the commission or to keep them in his yard, he should at least have shown an echo of Milo’s feelings for the Ostermeyers.

If Dozen Roses had been cleared by the authorities to run, why was Loder scared that I was there to watch it?

Crazy, I thought. The only thing I’d wholly learned was that Loder’s ability to dissimulate was underdeveloped for a leading trainer.

Harley Ostermeyer said the York University’s lunch was to be held at one end of the Club members’ dining room in the grandstand, so I showed the way there, reflecting that it was lucky I’d decided on a decent suit for that day, not just a sweater. I might have been a last-minute addition to the party but I was happy not to look it.

There was already a small crowd of people, glasses in hand, chatting away inside a temporary white-lattice-fenced area, a long buffet set out behind them with tables and chairs to sit at for eating.

“There are the Knightwoods,” said the Ostermeyers, clucking contentedly, and I found myself being introduced presently to a tall white-haired kindly looking man who had benevolence shining from every perhaps seventy-year-old wrinkle. He shook my hand amicably as a friend of the Ostermeyers with whom, it seemed, he had dined on a reciprocal visit to Harley’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. Harley was endowing a Chair there. Harley was a VIP in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

I made the right faces and listened to the way the world went round, and said I thought it was great of the city of York to support its industry on the turf.

“Have you met my wife?” Lord Knightwood said vaguely. “My dear,” he touched the arm of a woman with her back to us, “you remember Harley and Martha Ostermeyer ? And this is their friend Derek Franklin that I told you about.”

She turned to the Ostermeyers, smiling and greeting them readily, and she held out a hand for me to shake, saying, “How do you do. So glad you could come.”

“How do you do, Lady Knightwood,” I said politely.

She gave me a very small smile, in command of herself.

Clarissa Williams was Lord Knightwood’s wife.

S
he had known I would be there, it was clear, and if she hadn’t wanted me to find out who she was she could have developed a strategic illness in plenty of time.

She was saying graciously, “Didn’t I see you on television winning the Gold Cup?” and I thought of her speed with that frightful kiyoga and the tumult of her feelings on Tuesday, four days ago. She seemed to have no fear that I would give her away, and indeed, what could I say? Lord Knightwood, my brother was your wife’s lover? Just the right sort of thing to get the happy party off to a good start.

The said Lord was introducing the Ostermeyers to a professor of physics who with twinkles said that as he was the only true aficionado of horse racing among the teaching academics, he had been pressed into service to carry the flag, although there were about fifty undergraduates out on the course ready to bet their socks off in the cause.

“Derek has a degree,” Martha said brightly, making conversation.

The professorial eyeballs swiveled my way speculatively. “What university?”

“Lancaster,” I said dryly, which raised a laugh. Lancaster and York had fought battles of the red and white roses for many a long year.

“And subject?”

“Independent Studies.”

His desultory attention sharpened abruptly.

“What are Independent Studies?” Harley asked, seeing his interest.

“The student designs his own course and invents his own final subject,” the professor said. “Lancaster is the only university offering such a course and they let only about eight students a year do it. It’s not for the weakwilled or the feeble-minded.”

The Knightwoods and the Ostermeyers listened in silence and I felt embarrassed. I had been young then, I thought.

“What did you choose as your subject?” asked the professor, intent now on an answer. “Horses, in some way?”

I shook my head. “No ... er ... ‘Roots and Results of War.’ ”

“My dear chap,” Lord Knightwood said heartily, “sit next to the professor at lunch.” He moved away benignly, taking his wife and the Ostermeyers with him, and the professor, left behind, asked what I fancied for the races.

Clarissa, by accident or design, remained out of talking distance throughout the meal and I didn’t try to approach her. The party broke up during and after the first race, although everyone was invited to return for tea, and I spent most of the afternoon, as I’d spent so many others, watching horses stretch and surge and run as their individual natures dictated. The will to win was born and bred in them all, but some cared more than others: it was those with the implacable impulse to lead a wild herd who fought hardest and won most often. Sportswriters tended to call it courage but it went deeper than that, right down into the gene pool, into instinct, into the primordial soup, on the same evolutionary level as the belligerence so easily aroused in
Homo sapiens
that was the taproot of war.

I was no stranger to the thought that I sought battle on the turf because though the instinct to fight and conquer ran strong I was averse to guns. Sublimation, the pundits would no doubt call it. Datepalm and I both, on the same primitive plane, wanted to win.

“What are you thinking?” someone asked at my shoulder.

I would have known her voice anywhere, I thought. I turned to see her half-calm, half-anxious expression, the Lady Knightwood social poise explicit in the smooth hair, the patrician bones and the tailoring of her clothes, the passionate woman merely a hint in the eyes.

“Thinking about horses,” I said.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I came today, after I learned last night that you’d not only be at the races, which I expected you might be anyway because of Dozen Roses, but actually be coming to our lunch ...” She stopped sounding uncertain.

“I’m not Greville,” I said. “Don’t think of me as Greville.”

Her eyelids flickered. “You’re too damned perceptive.” She did a bit of introspection. “Yes, all right, I wanted to be near you. It’s a sort of comfort.”

We were standing by the rails of the parade ring watching the runners for the next race walk round, led by their lads. It was the race before the University Trophy, two races before that of Dozen Roses, a period without urgency for either of us. There were crowd noises all around and the clip-clop of horses walking by, and we could speak quietly as in an oasis of private space without being overheard.

“Are you still angry with me for hitting you?” she said a shade bitterly, as I’d made no comment after her last remark.

I half-smiled. “No.”

“I did think you were a burglar.”

“And what would you have explained to the police, if they’d come?”

She said ruefully, “I hope I would have come to my senses and done a bunk before they got there.” She sighed. “Greville said if I ever had to use the kiyoga in earnest to escape at once and not worry what I’d done to my attacker, but he never thought of a burglar in his own house.”