Comeback

by Dick Francis

  I took a slow deep breath. “Thank you,” I said.

  “The insurers,” she said, “might just possibly check that the name on the policy was the name of the registered owner, but even that’s not certain, but they would never phone every owner to make sure the owner knew about and intended the insurance.”

  “Never, anyway,” I said, “unless they’d grown suspicious.”

  “We haven’t had any enquiry from any insurance company ever about proof of ownership.”

  “Well,” I said, stirring, “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Like a drink?”

  I listened carefully for overtones, for undertones, but there weren’t any.

  “That would be great,” I said.

  “Scotch or wine?”

  “Either.”

  She rose fluidly, went over to a tray of bottles on a table and returned with two glasses full of deep, tannin-rich Bordeaux. A wine to match the woman, I thought: good staying quality, earthy, mature, great body.

  “How long have you known Ken?” she asked, sitting down again.

  I thought “four days” might be inappropriate so I said merely, “I’ve known his fiancée’s mother longer,” which was accurate though not honest.

  “Belinda!” my hostess said in wonderment. “That bossy nurse. She’s the last one I’d have picked for him.”

  “She’s not too bad.”

  She shrugged. “As long as they’re happy.”

  I drank some wine. “They mentioned something about a boy who lived here long ago. Jimmy, wasn’t it?”

  Her face softened and she spoke with regret. “My little brother.” She nodded. “A proper little tearaway, he was.”

  I willed her in silence to go on and after a moment she did. “Always larking around with a boy from the village. They got into trouble for throwing stones at trains and a policeman in uniform came to tick Jimmy off, and the next day he was hit by a lorry and died later without regaining consciousness.” She smiled affectionately. “Funny how some things still seem like yesterday.”

  “Mm.”

  “I was ten years older than Jimmy. My father had always wanted a son and he’s never got over it” She shook herself suddenly. “I don’t know why I’m burdening you with this.”

  “I asked.”

  “So you did.”

  I was tempted to tell her I was the boy from the village but I still thought the anonymity of Peter Darwin, diplomat, might give me more chance of unraveling Ken’s troubles, so I let the moment go by. She asked me in time what I did for a living, and I told her, and she asked about Japan and its ways.

  “Everything possible’s made from wood and paper,” I said, “because trees grow and regrow. They are a frugal, orderly nation who continuously repress emotion from lack of space to scream and shout. Their houses are tiny. They work unremittingly hard. It’s a male-dominated society and golf runs Shinto close as the observed religion.”

  “But you speak with respect”

  “Oh yes. And with liking. I’ve left many friends there.”

  “Will you go back there to live?”

  “If I’m sent.”

  She said with adult amusement, “Do you always meekly go where you’re sent?”

  “It’s a condition of the service and to me it’s normal, so yes, I go.”

  “I’d hate it. I grow roots in hotel rooms after one night.”

  She refilled our glasses and went on talking, switching on table lamps and drawing curtains as the light faded. I thought I had better leave and didn’t make any move to, nor did I detect any “that’s enough” maneuvers in her manner.

  It’s a wise man, I thought, who knows when he’s being seduced.

  Towards the end of the bottle came decision time. She’d made no overt suggestion, though by then all sorts of possibilities hung almost visibly in the air. I mentally ran through various forms of verbal invitation and came up with the least maudlin, the least lustful, the most humorous, the easiest to refuse.

  Into a long smiling silence, lolling back in the armchair, I said casually, “How about a bonk, then?”

  She laughed. “Is that Foreign Office standard phraseology?”

  “Heard all the time in embassies.”

  She’d long had the intention and I hadn’t misread her.

  “No strings,” she said. “Passing ships.”

  I nodded.

  “Upstairs,” she said economically, taking my glass.

  So Russet Eaglewood and I enjoyed a lengthy no-strings bonk.

  It was all true, not a panty in sight.

  8

  The next morning, Monday, I went down to the hospital to meet Ken in the office and found he’d been called out to deal with an acute laminitis.

  This information came from Oliver Quincy, who had taken up the position he most coveted, the padded chair behind the desk.

  “After that,” Quincy said, “there’s a wind op on Ken’s schedule and this afternoon a referral from another practice, as long as they don’t back out, so whatever you want will have to wait until after the next disaster.”

  He wasn’t especially friendly: the comforting bedside manner wasn’t to be switched on and wasted on the declared ally of the man he intended to oust.

  “What’s your gripe against Ken, actually?” I asked.

  “You know perfectly well. He fucks it up.”

  “He’s a good surgeon.”

  “Was.” He stared at me judiciously. “You’ve seen him operate just once. You know nothing. You’re no judge. He shouldn’t have let the cannon bone die last Thursday.”

  “You were there. Could you have prevented it?”

  “Of course not. Not my case. I wouldn’t interfere in anyone else’s case.”

  “Why do you think the horse died?”

  He went on staring and didn’t answer. If he knew, he wasn’t telling. If he’d known how to stop it, he hadn’t told Ken. I didn’t much like his company so wandered back into the car park and stood for a while watching the comings and goings of a full-blown small-animals’ session in the Portakabin.

  Belinda was working there: I caught sight of her in her white lab coat as she came occasionally to the doorway, helping people with armfuls of cat or dog to maneuver up and down the steps.

  The police had put a barrier across the back of the burned building, warning off foolhardy sightseers. Far away down the side drive I could see the unceasing activity of serious officialdom, still pecking away in search of guilt.

  Over by the stable boxes, Scott was seeing to the unloading from a horse trailer of a skittish horse with flaring nostrils and tossing head, a horse full of vim and vigor looking not in the least ill. A groom with him led him into one of the empty boxes, bolting him in but leaving the top half of the door open. The horse’s head appeared there immediately to watch the activity outside.

  I strolled over as the trailer plus groom drove out of the car park and asked Scott if the broodmare was still progressing.

  “Doing well,” he said. “Her owner’s with her at this moment.”

  “He’s not?” I said, alarmed.

  Scott said, shrugging, seeing no danger, “He has every right. She’s his property.”

  The top half of the mare’s box was also bolted back, and I went to it without delay and looked in.

  Wynn Lees was standing there looking critically at the mare’s big belly, his own pelvis thrust forward in such a way as to give him a big belly of his own. He saw the light change with my arrival in the doorway and turned inquiringly my way, his fleshy face already set in a scowl.

  He barely remembered me from Friday morning except as some sort of assistant. He raised in me the same hackles as always.

  “Get Carey to come here,” he said truculently. “I’m not satisfied with this.”

  I turned away and asked Scott for Carey’s whereabouts. Over in the Portakabin for the clinic, Scott said, so I went over there and delivered the message.

  “What does he
want?” Carey asked, walking back with me.

  “He said he wasn’t satisfied.”

  “He’s a confounded nuisance, coming here like this.”

  He went into the mare’s box but all I could hear of the conversation were remarks concerning the continuation of antibiotics, the removal of the staples and the approaching birth of the foal. After a short while both men came out not looking overly fond of each other, the one to leave in his Rolls, the other to go back to his invalids.

  Scott and I looked over the door at the mare, who seemed quiet and unconcerned, and Scott decided to move her along the row to the far-end box, to leave the intensive-care box free for the new patients. I walked along with him as he led the great pregnant creature and asked another question.

  “Last Thursday,” I said, “when the cannon-bone horse died, did you notice anything you wouldn’t expect in the trace on the screen? The electrocardiograph trace, I mean.”

  “Nothing I hadn’t seen before. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Um ... would you have seen it often before?”

  “Often enough. Look”—he sounded aggrieved—“is Ken trying to say it was my fault the horse died? Because I’ll tell you straight, it wasn’t.”

  I said soothingly, “Ken says you’re a very good anesthetist.”

  “And anyway, Oliver was watching the screen as well as me, you know.”

  “Mm.”

  I thought back to my own stint in front of the screen. I’d been concerned only about the regularity and power of the heartbeats, not about the exact shape of the trace. Unless it had changed to a row of Donald Ducks I wouldn’t have noticed, and by the sound of things, if there had been any change at all, it had been subtle enough not to have registered even with Ken until I’d jogged his memory long afterwards.

  Scott led the mare into the box and bolted the bottom half of her door and before I could think of anything else to ask him a small plain white van swirled into the car park and pulled up with a jerk. Scott gave it a disparaging look and strode muscularly over to greet the driver.

  “Took your time, didn’t you?” he said.

  “Now you look, mate. . . .” The driver hopped out belligerently. “My life’s one long emergency call and I like a bit of appreciation.”

  Carey in his white lab coat hurried out of the Portakabin again as if he’d been waiting for this minute and gave the van driver all the appreciation he felt was his due.

  “Good. Good. Well done,” Carey was saying, going round to the van’s rear doors. “Take it all into the office in the hospital. We’ll unpack and distribute from there.”

  The van, it appeared, contained replacements for essentials destroyed in the burned pharmacy. It reminded me of the previous morning in the Portakabin, and I went a few paces and offered Carey my suggestion for making the “lost” list that the policeman had wanted.

  “I just thought,” I said diffidently, “that if you asked all your suppliers to send duplicate invoices going back over, say, six months or whatever time you thought sensible, you’d have a pretty accurate inventory, allowing for daily or weekly usage.”

  He looked at me vaguely for long enough for me to begin to wonder if the marbles were indeed leaking away, but then his gaze sharpened and came alive with understanding.

  “Good idea. Yes. A comprehensive list from the wholesalers and no need for us to rack our brains. I wasn’t sure what you meant, at first. Well done. Get Ken to see to it, will you?”

  He bustled off after the driver, who was carrying armfuls of boxes into the hospital, and I thought ruefully that Ken wouldn’t thank me for the extra work. I followed him into the office and found Scott there, inspecting and carefully checking off each arriving box against a delivery note running to several pages.

  Oliver Quincy’s contribution to the activity was practically nil. He was waiting, he grumbled, for the appearance of worm powders as he couldn’t go on his morning’s first errand without them. Once they’d been identified and marked present, he took what he needed and departed, and Carey gave his back view a look of puzzled disappointment.

  Ken himself returned at that point, blowing in with a gale of enthusiasm for the renewed supplies.

  “Did the wind-op horse come?” he asked.

  “Out in a box,” Scott nodded.

  “I thought they might cry off.”

  Carey cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I told him ... I mean, I had to promise the owner I would . . . er ... attend the procedure.”

  Ken demanded, “Do you mean, do the op yourself?”

  “No. No. Just assist.” From his voice, though, it had been a close-run thing.

  Ken swallowed the insult to his ability as just another bitter pill in his mounting troubles and asked me to be there as well to take notes.

  Scott looked surprised, Carey said it wasn’t necessary, Ken stuck his toes in. “Will you?” he said to me, and I said, “Yes,” and it was fixed.

  Lucy Amhurst came in on a search for the new drugs and gave me a nod of friendly acceptance.

  “How’s the sleuthing?” she asked.

  “Brick on brick,” I said. “Slowly.”

  “What sleuthing?” Carey asked.

  “Surely you remember?” Lucy said. “We gave him the go-ahead yesterday morning to see what he could do for Ken. Oh no,” she exclaimed, “you weren’t there, of course.” I guessed she was herself remembering the anti-Carey conversation, as her cheeks went slowly red. “We didn’t see any harm in letting Peter find out whatever he could if it would help Ken.”

  “No, that’s fine.” Carey nodded. “I agree.” To me he said, “Go ahead. Do what you can. An amateur detective!”

  “He’s a civil servant,” Lucy said.

  “A snoop,” Scott added, using Jay Jardine’s word.

  Carey raised an eyebrow at me in amusement, said he hoped the drains were up to snuff and went back to his dogs and cats, telling Ken to let him know when he was ready to operate.

  “Drains?” Scott asked, mystified, after he’d gone.

  “Red tape,” I said.

  “Oh.”

  Lucy, the wise woman, suggested Ken and Scott store the drugs somewhere safe, then took what she herself needed and followed Carey.

  “Do you keep a list of who takes what?” I asked.

  “We do normally,” Ken said. “We have a book. Had.” He sighed. “We all keep a stack of things in our cars, as you know. I’d never be sure at any given moment what I had.”

  He decided to put everything on the shelves in one of the storerooms as the drugs cupboard wouldn’t hold everything, and I helped him and Scott carry the boxes across and arrange them in logical order.

  I wanted Ken’s undivided attention for an hour, but didn’t get it. He sat in the padded chair and insisted on writing his notes on the steeplechaser with laminitis that he’d just visited.

  “Funny thing,” he said, pausing and looking up at me, “they say the horse was quite all right yesterday.”

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “It reminded me . . .” He stopped, frowning, and went on slowly. “You’re making me see things different.”

  Do get on with it, I thought, but prodded him more gently. “What have you thought of?”

  “Another of Nagrebb’s show-jumpers.”

  “Ken.” Some of my impatience must have shown because he gave his shoulders a shake and said what was in his mind.

  “One of Nagrebb’s show-jumpers had laminitis . . . that’s an inflammation of the lamina, which is a layer of tissue between the hoof wall and the bone of the foot. Sometimes it flares up and the sufferers hobble around, other times they seem perfectly all right. The condition makes them stiff. If you get the animal moving, exercising, the stiffness wears off, but it always comes back. So, anyway, one of Nagrebb’s horses developed it and Nagrebb was annoyed I couldn’t cure it. Then one day last autumn he called me out, and there was this same jumper in the field literally unable to move. Nagrebb said he’d lef
t the horse out all night as it was warm enough, and in the morning he’d found him in this extreme stage of laminitis. It wasn’t just in his two forefeet, as it had been, but in all four. Like I said, the poor animal simply couldn’t move. I’d told Nagrebb not to give him too much grass as that always makes it worse, but he’d put him in the field anyway. I said we could try to save the horse, though frankly his feet were literally falling apart and it was a very poor prognosis. Nagrebb decided to put him out of his misery and called the knackers at once. But now, thanks to you, I wonder ... but even Nagrebb wouldn’t do that . . . but then there’s that tendon . . .”

  “Ken!” I said.

  “Oh, yes. Well, you see, you could give a horse laminitis pretty easily.”

  “How?”

  “All you’d need to do is put a tube down into its esophagus and pour a gallon or so of sugar solution into its stomach.”

  “What?”

  He anticipated the question. “Several pounds of sugar dissolved in water to make a syrup. A huge amount of sugar or any carbohydrate all at once would result in very severe laminitis not many hours later.”

  God, I thought. No end to the villainous possibilities.

  “The opposite of insulin,” I said.

  “What? Yes, I suppose so. But the insulin colt was Wynn Lees’s at Eaglewood’s.”

  “You said it would be pretty easy to put a tube down into a horse’s esophagus,” I remarked. “Not for me, it wouldn’t.”

  “Child’s play for Nagrebb. He could do it with a twitch. A twitch is . . .”

  Yes, I nodded, I knew. A twitch was a tight short loop of rope attached to a short length of pole and twisted round the soft end of a horse’s nose and upper lip. Held by that, any horse would stand still because it was painful to move.

  “If he did it,” I said, “there’s no way of finding out.”

  Ken nodded gloomily. “And what would be the point?”

  “Insurance,” I said.

  “You keep on about insurance.”

  I brought a couple of folded sheets of paper out of my pocket and said I wanted to show him some lists.