The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘You didn’t,’ Michael Irwin said. ‘Your secretary did. But whatever, there it is as a precedental claim, and the underwriters are now arguing that having discovered something wrong with the horse’s gut – and remember at the point of the policy renewal they inserted an exclusion clause concerning any further attacks of colic – you had the horse kidnapped and gelded in order to claim the insurance you couldn’t get if the horse died from colic.’

  ‘Which he then damned near did do. Except it wasn’t colic – technically it was a twisted gut. But of course the insurers will claim—’

  ‘That it was colic. Which indeed they are, claiming that this last illness helps to prove their point, the fact that you went to so much expensive trouble to save him, knowing you couldn’t claim on death through colic.’

  ‘This is sheer nonsense, Michael, and you know it!’ Cassie said angrily, getting up from her side of the lawyer’s desk to stare pointlessly at the traffic flowing past the Bank of Ireland and Trinity College. ‘This is a perfectly valid claim and they’re going to have to pay out whether they like it or not.’

  ‘Then be prepared for a long, dirty and expensive fight,’ Michael Irwin warned her. ‘Remember how they opposed Vernon when he lost his Derby winner with cancer.’

  ‘He won in the end.’

  ‘It cost.’

  After her interview with her lawyer Cassie crossed the road and asked to see her manager Dennis Fairchild at the Bank of Ireland.

  ‘I need to know how I stand,’ she said, having explained the impending litigation. ‘How far can I afford to go?’

  ‘How much do your insurers owe you?’ Dennis Fairchild asked.

  ‘One million pounds exactly.’

  ‘Litigation is an expensive affair, as you know – particularly at this level.’

  ‘I’m not going to let them get away with it, Dennis.’

  ‘Of course you’re not. But you need funds, and funds are a little low at present, Cassie. Should you lose—’

  ‘I don’t intend to lose. Now please, you know me and money,’ Cassie said. ‘I never look at my bank statements until it’s too late and I leave all the books to Brian, my accountant. So I need to know, in John and Jane language please, exactly how I stand at the moment.’

  Dennis Fairchild removed one pair of glasses to replace them with a pair of gold half moons before carefully opening the folder containing the Claremore résumé which lay on the polished table in front of him. Excusing himself to Cassie for a moment, he read the first two pages of the document in order to refresh his memory of the facts before removing his half moons to replace them with his tortoiseshell-framed pair.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. Just as I thought. After your horse’s victories in the English and Irish Derbies you embarked on an ambitious plan of modernization for Claremore.’

  ‘A highly necessary one, Dennis,’ Cassie reminded him.

  ‘Indeed, indeed, Cassie,’ her manager agreed, ‘and done with the blessing of the Bank. However, the programme was an expensive one, running to three point five million pounds, two million of which was financed by Claremore Racing and Claremore Foodstuffs, the other one point five being provided by a bank loan, secured against Claremore as collateral. Claremore Racing has paid off five hundred thousand of the outstanding loan through capital, leaving a balance of precisely one million pounds outstanding, earning the Bank interest at two points above current base rate, that is to say approximately one hundred and twenty five thousand pounds per annum. So far with the exception of last year all interest has been paid, leaving a sum of one million one hundred and twenty five thousand pounds in debit to the Bank.’

  ‘So if they continue to refuse to pay me the million pounds they owe—’

  ‘There’s no need for immediate concern, Cassie,’ Dennis Fairchild assured her. ‘You have your usual cash flow problems, but these are symptomatic of businesses such as your own and obviously if your stable runs anywhere near to form once the Flat season starts, provided that your boxes are full, you should be able to process the interest on the loan out of earned capital. However—’

  ‘However,’ Cassie interrupted with a grim smile. ‘In the event of the underwriters’ winning the case, I shall either have to continue paying the interest for much longer than planned, or be left having to find at least another one and a quarter or possibly one and a half million in order to settle the loan.’

  ‘Correct,’ Dennis Fairchild said, taking his glasses off to clean them slowly on a new white handkerchief.

  ‘As you know, the plan was to stand The Nightingale at the end of his four-year-old season,’ Cassie said. ‘One year’s quota of mares would have seen to what Claremore owes the Bank. But since his kidnapping and castration, obviously this is no longer possible.’

  ‘As impossible I take it as for the horse to return triumphantly to racing and win sufficient in prize money.’

  ‘Exactly so, Dennis. So what’s the clock on this? How long have I got?’

  ‘That I cannot say without reference to my colleagues. It very much depends on the anticipated income from Claremore Racing and the company’s ability to meet its liabilities. As far as Claremore Foodstuffs is concerned, the well is pretty dry there at the moment due to your subsidiary’s helping with the initial financing of the modernization scheme. None the less, provided Claremore Racing profits more or less to the degree it has been profiting in the last three years, and provided your under-writers cease their foolish resistance and pay you what you are owed, underinsured though you might have been, I can see no reason for the Bank to worry at present.’

  ‘But should none of these things pertain, Dennis,’ Cassie enquired, clenching her two hands into tight fists out of sight beneath the table.

  ‘In that very unlikely eventuality, Cassie, the Bank might well call in its debt. Were Claremore Racing unable to repay the loan, we would be forced to foreclose.’

  In this particular hour of need, it seemed there was no-one to whom Cassie could turn. She could not confide in Erin because, however dear and fiercely loyal her housekeeper was, like most of her fellow countrymen she always had the greatest difficulty in keeping anything to herself for long. Even when Erin was doing her best to keep a secret she wore such a hangdog expression that every acquaintance knew at once something was wrong and finally, either by sheer pressure or more often aided by a couple of glasses of the creature, the secret would be revealed. Cassie had to keep this secret from her housekeeper since she could not possibly risk the chance of any rumour that Claremore was in trouble, which it most surely was.

  The profits over the last three years to which Dennis Fairchild had alluded had indeed been healthy enough, but the vast percentage of the monies earned had been won of course by The Nightingale with his hugely rewarded victories in his Derbies, his King George VI Gold Cups and his victories in the Eclipse Stakes and the Arc de Triomphe. It had made sense for Cassie to invest Claremore Racing’s profits straight back into Claremore Racing, building new stable blocks, putting in a new equine swimming pool, redraining the gallops, and building a veterinary operating theatre and horse hospital. A massively expensive undertaking but one which had been carefully costed and approved both by her financial advisers and by her bank. The only assumption she had made was that The Nightingale would survive the rigours of the few races she had planned for him as a four-year-old and would then retire to stud, where unless he proved to be either impotent or infertile he would secure Claremore Racing’s future. Indeed, in order to assess both the potency and the fertility of the horse Niall Brogan had run a series of tests, the results of which confirmed The Nightingale’s future as a successful stallion.

  The only possibility Cassie had not taken into account was that the horse might be stolen and castrated.

  But then no-one could possibly have imagined such an eventuality, so no-one blamed Cassie for that tragic event. They did blame her just as she now blamed herself for underinsuring the animal, although the more und
erstanding of them appeared to appreciate why she had done so, given the prohibitive cost. As for the others, however hurtful their censure it was really purely academic, since a team of underwriters who were trying to get out of paying one million pounds in compensation would most certainly baulk even more at a ten million pound indemnity.

  As a result, however, whichever way she looked at it Cassie seemed to face ruin. Unless the underwriters paid up almost immediately, with her greatest money winner sidelined as a racehorse and out of contention entirely as a stallion, thanks to the escalating interest on the finance from the Bank she was going to find herself further and further in debt. That the yard would produce winners she had little doubt. Already Claremore had enjoyed the best start it had ever had to the National Hunt season, but the prize money for races won over timber and birch was absurdly small compared with the riches to be won on the Flat. Besides, none of the horses which ran from Claremore over the jumps was owned by Claremore Racing, with the exception of a novice steeplechaser and a couple of novice hurdlers which Cassie was bringing on slowly to sell at the end of the season. All Cassie could rely on winning was her percentage of the purse, which as she said would scarcely keep the horses in stable rugs. It would certainly go no way towards helping to pay off a one and a half million pound debt, and at this stage of the season all the training fees did was cover the cost of training.

  Then there were the legal fees waiting to be incurred once litigation against her recalcitrant underwriters was duly authorized. If the case dragged on anywhere near as long as the notorious Vernon case quoted to her by Michael Irwin then more tens of thousands were going to have to be found in order to retain silk. Should she lose her case, then she would not only be in for her own costs, but most likely the costs of the opposition as well.

  So now it was small wonder that more than ever she needed someone by her side to help her. Joel would have been perfect. Yet because of her fierce pride she still refused to get back in touch with him. She had spoken to him once since her return and only then because he had managed to trick her into answering her private line directly rather than through the shield of her answering machine by pretending to be Mattie.

  ‘That was a dirty trick,’ she had told him, about to hang up.

  ‘No, wait—’ Joel cut in, sensing she was about to replace the phone. ‘Just hear me out, will you?’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ she had replied, but having heard his voice for real and not on the answerphone tape she had hesitated, waited just long enough to allow Joel in. But she had given him no prompt for his explanation, preferring instead to see what conclusions he himself had reached concerning her sudden departure from his life.

  ‘Phil – my manager at the club – said you were trying to find me after we’d played that set,’ he had begun. ‘That you were heading for my studio.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cassie had agreed. ‘But in the end I didn’t need to go all the way.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I heard you coming out of your studio. I heard you both – you and your friend.’

  ‘I thought as much. Look – I can explain.’

  ‘Not again. Spare me yet another of your you-have-to-believe-this explanations, please.’

  ‘Why are you so suspicious of everyone and everything?’

  ‘I wonder.’

  ‘Some things have a perfectly innocent explanation.’

  ‘Nothing concerning Leonora comes with that tag, I assure you.’

  ‘Obviously you’ve convinced yourself that your old sparring partner and I were up to no good.’

  ‘Obviously. Not that I took a great deal of convincing. I heard what you had to say to each other as well. Lover boy. She won’t have seen me. I made sure to come through the back way.’

  ‘There’s a perfectly logical explanation,’ Joel had said wearily.

  ‘There always is with you,’ Cassie had replied, equally wearily. ‘You know what I think about Leonora. You know perfectly well how things stand between the two of us—’

  ‘Which was why I was anxious you didn’t bump into her that night.’

  ‘So why had she come to see you? You’re meant to hardly know each other, lover boy!’ Cassie had demanded, a little bit of her hoping that the explanation would be short, simple and easily acceptable. It wasn’t.

  ‘That’s my business, Mrs Rosse,’ Joel had returned. ‘I don’t see why I should account to you for every move I make. You don’t own me.’

  ‘You bet I don’t!’ Cassie had replied, stung. ‘You double bet I don’t, Joel Benson! And as God is my witness I have no intention of filing for adoption! I have quite enough children of my own, thanks!’

  She had slammed down the phone then, so hard it had bounced out of the cradle and hung humming on its wire at the side of her desk. She had let it hang there for the rest of the evening, only replacing it an hour later when she had gone to bed, switching it straight onto the answering machine as she did.

  The following day she had instructed the telephone exchange to put her private line on a new ex-directory number and issued orders to the rest of her personal staff that if a Mr Benson rang on any of the other lines she was never to be available.

  * * *

  How she wished she had countermanded that direction, and never more so than now as she lay awake alone in the middle of yet another rain-lashed January night with what seemed like all the worries of the world sitting on her. Never for one moment had she believed that when faced with a claim for the wilful castration of The Nightingale the underwriters would actually stand their ground. Knowing insurers of old, and particularly livestock insurers, Cassie had thought the move they were making was simply the usual one to delay payment and that once they realized the depth of her resistance they would pay out the amount due as had always previously been the case. Not unnaturally she had banked on them paying out, particularly since the income upon which she had been relying to keep herself solvent in the near future had disappeared with the mutilation of her stallion. Now everything teetered on the verge of collapse, with her bank debts mounting, and the only creature who would have been capable of making good her losses standing all but valueless rugged up against the winter in his stable.

  Tyrone, she groaned, turning her face down into her pillow, Tyrone, you would have throttled me and quite right, too. I counted the chickens before they were hatched, and now even if they do hatch there’s every chance they’ll all be boobies.

  ‘Mr Irwin is trying to persuade your underwriters that to proceed would be folly, Mrs Rosse,’ said the young dark-eyed man sent by Cassie’s lawyer the following week to run over the full details of her claim. ‘However, they appear to be determined to stand by their guns, indicating that they have evidence which will substantiate their argument that the horse was not truly kidnapped.’

  ‘They’re talking through the back of their corporate head,’ Cassie said, with no little irritation. ‘What sort of evidence could they possibly have, unless someone’s willing to perjure themselves?’

  ‘It’s been known,’ Gareth Plunkett replied. ‘When there’s this sort of money at stake it’s amazing the games people play. A lot of their argument seems to hinge on the fact that the horse had suffered from colic previously.’

  ‘The Nightingale is different, I would have thought that was obvious,’ Cassie replied. ‘If it had been any other horse in the stable I wouldn’t have bothered calling in my vet, that’s how unserious the so-called attack was. But since it was The Nightingale, well – you can understand. I wasn’t prepared to take any chances.’

  ‘And your vet will testify to that.’

  ‘Of course. In fact by the time Niall Brogan got to the horse he was up and shaking himself. He hardly had to attend to him at all.’

  ‘Good-good,’ Gareth Plunkett said, all as one word. ‘Like Mr Irwin, I feel they will settle long before we get to court—’

  ‘But if they don’t?’

  ‘Then we go to court.’

 
‘Which takes a long time.’

  ‘Invariably.’

  ‘I don’t think I can wait that long,’ Cassie said, half to herself. ‘I’m not sure I can afford to.’

  ‘That, Mrs Rosse, is precisely what your opponents will be hoping,’ Gareth Plunkett replied. ‘On the bright side, having reviewed the file thoroughly, my impressions are that Claremore Racing are far and away your insurance company’s biggest client. Bar two, they insure every horse standing in your yard, with of course your most famous horse as far and away their biggest liability.’

  ‘Thay have other valuable stallions insured, I would imagine,’ Cassie remarked.

  ‘Apparently not, Mrs Rosse, strange to relate. Horses in training certainly, as well as mares and foals at stud, but no other stallions, certainly not of significant value, a fact Mr Irwin and myself find more than a little surprising. In the instance of an eventuality, in order to meet any liability on your horse, you would imagine a brokerage like this would have shored up enough reserves from other sizeable premiums. Such was not the case. It seemed that Claremore Racing was their milch cow and they will continue to delay at any cost. At least that is our impression, I have to say.’

  Cassie stroked Wilkie’s head as he sat devotedly beside her and then smiled at the handsome young man who was busily collecting up his papers. ‘There’s no point in worrying, is there, Mr Plunkett? No point at all. So instead of worrying I shall have to do something else altogether,’ she said.

  ‘Which is?’ Gareth Plunkett politely enquired.

  ‘Why, do what I’m good at doing. Lead up some winners.’

  Since he found he was unable to reach her by telephone, Joel wrote to Cassie. Landlocked in England because of his bail, that was the only way left open to him to keep in contact, and sure enough a letter soon arrived at Claremore addressed to her personally in his scrawling, stylish hand. At first Cassie wasn’t going to open it, afraid either that the letter would contain yet more excuses which she would refuse to believe or that it would contain yet more excuses which she would find herself unable not to believe. For the more she thought about it the more Cassie realized that she was afraid of Joel, not of him as a person but of what he had come to mean to her, and she was no longer sure she could handle such a highly volatile relationship without some hurts being inflicted on one or the other of them. So for three whole days the letter remained in the top drawer of her desk unopened. Finally she summoned up the courage and cut it open with an old ivory paper knife. The letter read: