The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  Cassie looked at him but his eyes were fast closed to try to prevent the tears which were still managing to trickle out between the lids. Then with a squeeze of his hand she left him and walked on up the hill to where her jockey was waiting, bent over double now as if caught again with a sudden pain.

  The vet stepped out from behind the screen. ‘Are you the owner?’ he asked quietly, but then seeing who was confronting him he corrected himself. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Rosse,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see who it was.’

  ‘Obviously you had no option?’ she asked in an empty voice.

  ‘Broke his back, I’m afraid,’ the vet replied, fetching a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Poor old chap.’

  ‘And the other horse?’ Cassie asked.

  The vet looked up at her and smiled briefly as he lit his cigarette. ‘Your horse?’ he said. ‘He was just very badly winded, thank God.’

  Why she had not seen him Cassie failed to realize, for when she looked the other side of the screen there large as life and looking doubly sorry for himself was Well Loved with a great slide of mud down the side of his face, another along his flanks and blood trickling from a cut somewhere above his nearside hock. Lying on the ground between Cassie and her horse was the corpse of poor Bishop’s Mitre covered with a heavy green tarpaulin with his heartbroken lad sitting on the grass still holding the dead horse by its reins, weeping his heart out.

  ‘Come on, guv’nor.’ Terry McGuire had come back to fetch her, putting a muddy-mittened hand on her sleeve to ease her away from the tragic sight. ‘Come on, there’s no point in you standing there now. What’s done is done.’

  ‘And you’re coming back in the ambulance with us, McGuire!’ one of the ambulance men called. ‘You jocks – you think you’re made of cast iron! Come on, Terry!’

  ‘It’s OK, guv’nor,’ her jockey said, squeezing her arm. ‘These things happen. The other side of coin, you know?’

  Cassie nodded. She did know.

  Later, after the Claremore horse had been led back, washed down and put away in his box, Cassie finally learned the result of the race. It had been won by Good On You, trained by Tom McMahon, assisted by Mattie Rosse.

  At once she went in search of her son to congratulate him on his mentor’s success, finding him after a brief search in the crowded Arkle Bar where he was still drinking with the horse’s connections which naturally included Tom McMahon.

  ‘Ah, so there you are, Cassie!’ the trainer called from his wheelchair in the corner of the bar. ‘Come on and let me buy you a consolation jar!’

  Mattie glanced round from where he was leaning on the bar when he heard his mother’s name called and nodded back in acknowledgment of her wave.

  ‘Well done, Tom,’ Cassie said after she had fought her way across to the party. ‘I didn’t see the actual finish, I’m afraid, because I was haring off to see how our horse was. So did he win nicely?’

  ‘An ever-diminishing neck,’ Tom McMahon replied, ‘but he’s a battler if nothing else, and once he has his old head in front, he likes to try to keep it there. But we’d never have won it if your chap hadn’t been brought down. Here – have some champagne.’

  Cassie accepted the glass on offer and turned to congratulate her son.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said without much grace. ‘But thanks for nothing really.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Cassie said, as Mattie looked over her shoulder to raise his glass to someone behind her. ‘Everyone says he’s your horse in all but name. That Tom gave him to you to train on as soon as he’d set you up, because the horse was a rogue. So you must take a lot of credit.’

  ‘Oh sure,’ Mattie said, still without any semblance of enthusiasm. ‘I straightened out his jumping all right, but we should never have beaten your horse. Our horse isn’t within a stone of yours.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Cassie agreed. ‘But that’s racing, particularly racing over the fences. Maybe if Terry hadn’t taken him on into the fence—’

  ‘Too right,’ Mattie interrupted, knocking back his whisky and calling for another. ‘Was that his idea or yours?’

  ‘I don’t see that matters,’ Cassie said with a frown. ‘I’d have thought you’d have been delighted to beat our fellow.’

  ‘I would have been. I would have been thrilled sick if I hadn’t backed him.’

  ‘You backed Well Loved?’

  ‘Come on,’ Mattie replied, taking his fresh drink and handing over the money for it. ‘You knew as well as I did he couldn’t get beat.’

  ‘But he did get beat.’

  ‘Only because McGuire took him on at the wrong time! If you’d told him to wait until the last, your horse would have won doing cartwheels up the hill! He had gallons left in the tank!’

  ‘You’re talking through your pocket, Mattie.’

  ‘Of course I’m talking through my pocket. I’ve just got very badly burnt. Roasted, in fact.’

  Cassie stared at her son. She had never seen him so furious, nor quite so obviously determined to become belligerently drunk. ‘Come here,’ she said, taking his arm and pulling him away from his party so that she could talk to him in confidence over by the doorway. ‘How much did you have on?’

  ‘More than I could afford,’ Mattie replied. ‘I backed him before he even ran, after we’d finished schooling him. Liam said he was the best young jumper of fences he’d ever seen with the toe of a Flat horse. If ever there’s a Sun Alliance horse that’s him, he said, so we both went and got a price for a run at Cheltenham and waded in. We got thirty-three to one and I don’t know about Liam but I backed him all the way down to starting price.’

  ‘So how much did you have on?’ Cassie persisted grimly. ‘You know what I told you about betting, Mattie. Whatever your father might have done or not done.’

  ‘Like father like son, eh?’ Mattie said with what Cassie thought was more than a trace of irony.

  ‘How much did you have on?’ she repeated, ignoring her son’s tone.

  ‘If you really want to know,’ Mattie sighed, looking down at her over his glass, ‘I lost the lot. I have just lost two thousand quid.’

  For a moment, a long moment, Cassie was unable to believe what she had just heard. Sensing this, Mattie nodded at her and widened his eyes. ‘No,’ he said, in a tone of mock reassurance, ‘it’s true. You are looking at someone who has lost every last penny of his savings.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ she said quietly. ‘Stark staring mad. You know far too much about racing and horses and what can go wrong to have gambled like that. You’re mad.’

  ‘Like father,’ Mattie repeated with that same look in his eye. ‘Anyway, it’s all gone. Thanks to you and your jockey.’

  Cassie was just about to tell Mattie that Tyrone had been the modicum of sobriety when she suddenly remembered how wild and reckless Mattie’s real father had been.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked instead. ‘I can’t bail you out.’

  ‘I don’t want you to bail me out, Ma,’ Mattie returned sarcastically.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to have to stay in nights, aren’t I? Until I can afford to play around again. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mother, I have a party to attend to.’

  Mattie tried to push past her, but Cassie grabbed him by the arm and held him tight. ‘You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what all this is about,’ she said angrily. ‘I will not be treated like this. I mean it.’

  ‘Like what, Mother?’

  ‘Like this, Mattie. Like the way you have been treating me recently. I won’t have it, do you hear? What have I done to deserve it, you just tell me that?’

  ‘I’m not really too well placed to answer that, I’d say,’ Mattie replied, trying to shake himself free of her hold.

  ‘I can’t think of anyone better,’ Cassie said, holding on to him fast. ‘And what for instance is all this mother bit for? I know you’ve lost a lot of money, Mattie, but at the same time I’m quite sure you h
aven’t taken leave of your senses.’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ Mattie replied coldly. ‘But in the circumstances it wouldn’t have been any surprise if I had.’

  ‘In what circumstances? I don’t understand what you mean,’ Cassie said.

  ‘In that case, Mother, why don’t you ask your good old friend Leonora? Now if you’ll excuse me?’

  This time Mattie managed to wrench his arm free from Cassie’s grip and, with a last look at her through narrowed eyes, he fought his way back through the crowded bar to rejoin his party.

  Hurt and bewildered, Cassie stood for a moment watching as the boy she had loved and nursed since he was six weeks old hurried to get away from her. Realizing this was neither the time nor the place for anything further she turned to go, only to come face to face and almost collide with a large red-faced woman who was standing right behind her.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Cassie said, standing to one side.

  ‘And so you ought,’ the woman replied belligerently. ‘Mrs Win At Any Price Rosse.’

  ‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’ Cassie asked, looking carefully at the quite obviously drunk woman. ‘I don’t think I do, do I?’

  ‘I know you all right,’ the woman assured her. ‘Mrs Win At Any Price Rosse.’

  Cassie looked round behind her, longing for some protection but too proud to enlist it from a stranger. ‘Excuse me,’ Cassie said, trying to get past the woman. ‘Will you please get out of my way?’

  ‘Like you wanted our horse to? At the second last?’ the woman wondered. ‘What are you going to do? Same sort of thing, eh? Barge us out of the way? Because I’d like to see you try it.’

  ‘Will you just tell me what all this is about?’ Cassie asked, looking from her reddened face to that of her equally drunk companion with a sickening feeling that she knew already.

  ‘Your bloody jockey half-lengthed our horse, that’s what it’s about, you stupid bitch,’ the woman seethed. ‘Riding to orders, no doubt, because that’s the way you like to run your horses, Mrs Win At Any Price Rosse, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you’re talking about the fall at the second last—’ Cassie began.

  ‘Too damn right she is,’ the man said, pushing his way alongside the woman. By now their altercation was attracting considerable attention in the blocked doorway of the bar. ‘Like my wife just said, your bloody jockey half-lengthed us. If he hadn’t – and sod the result, I’m not talking about the bloody result—’

  ‘Quite right, Bri,’ the woman agreed. ‘Sod the bloody result.’

  ‘Like I was saying,’ the man continued. ‘If your bloody horse and smart-arse jockey hadn’t forced that mistake out of us by half-lengthing us at that fence, our old chap’d still be alive now.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your horse,’ Cassie said, knowing for sure she was being taken on by the owners of the late Bishop’s Mitre.

  ‘You’re sorry,’ the woman snorted. ‘Sorry, indeed. The only thing you’re ever sorry about is when you get beat, like all Americans.’

  ‘I am genuinely sorry about your horse,’ Cassie continued. ‘But I assure you Terry McGuire was not riding to instructions, and of all the jockeys riding over fences right now Terry McGuire’s the last man who’d half-length anyone.’

  ‘You know, if I was a man and you were a man I’d bust your bloody nose.’

  Her companion put a restraining hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I’m really sorry about your horse,’ Cassie said once more. ‘But that’s steeplechasing, I guess. It could just as easily have been my horse, you know. And if you really think I’d risk a horse as good as Well Loved by asking him to be ridden like a point to pointer, I have to say you have it all wrong.’

  ‘No, lady,’ the man said, looking at Cassie with hard cold grey eyes. ‘No, you’re the one who’s got it all wrong. This is a man’s game. Women should stay behind in the kitchen with their pots and pans. Come on, Dor.’ He put his arm round his wife’s waist to lead her away, but the woman wasn’t quite finished.

  ‘Mrs Win At Any Price Rosse,’ she repeated once more. ‘God knows what you stuffed into that famous horse of yours to get him to win all those races, but you know what I think? I think whoever stole him off you was doing the horse a favour.’

  They were gone now, pushing their way through a crowd of people who had turned to watch the confrontation. Cassie looked at the ocean of faces and all she could see was backs. As she herself turned now to go she wondered who, if anyone, would have come to her aid had she been attacked.

  I guess no-one, she said to herself as she walked out of the famous bar. Perhaps not even her son.

  The day wasn’t quite done with her yet, however. When she got back to the Mandersons’ it began to pour with rain, a fall which continued all night and into the morning, changing the going on the racecourse from good to soft to heavy. Knowing how much Don’t Say That hated the mud, as soon as she woke and saw how the rain had got into the ground Cassie rang the horse’s owner and reluctantly they both agreed to withdraw the 3/1 favourite for the Triumph Hurdle.

  Twenty-Five

  With no runners on Gold Cup day, and because the memory of her altercation the previous afternoon had somehow managed to sour the whole meeting for her, Cassie decided to give the last day of the Festival a miss and go to London instead. When he heard her reason for going, Willoughby Manderson offered to accompany her. Since neither the Mandersons nor Cassie had a runner that day and because the weather had turned so particularly foul her host was glad to forgo the doubtful pleasures of being soaked to the skin and Cassie was only too happy to accept his offer.

  ‘I’ve always hated courts at the best of times,’ Cassie admitted as they began the drive to London. ‘Even just as a spectator I always feel as if in some way I’m on trial as well. You know, one false move and you’re in contempt.’

  ‘Good,’ Willoughby agreed, trying it seemed to remember how to work his car’s demister. ‘Anyway I’ll be able to open a few doors, get us the best seats, all that sort of thing. As well as help you understand the old fool’s summing up. Because today’s the day. All things being equal Lord Chief Justice Bower should get to his summation after lunch.’

  ‘What’s the betting?’

  ‘On the outcome? Mmmm. As I was saying last night at dinner, the defence kicked the killing for profit theory well and truly into touch for sure.’

  ‘By showing that the debts on the club had all been settled before the defendant’s father died,’ Cassie recalled.

  ‘Certainly caught the prosecution on the hop,’ Willoughby agreed, giving a happy sigh as he found the correct way to work the demister, much to Cassie’s relief since for the last half a mile or so the car had been veering all over the road. ‘Sloppy homework by Slimy Simon’s team maybe,’ the former judge continued. ‘Either that or the defence simply had it up their sleeve all the time. Anyway, certainly doesn’t look like a hanging job.’

  ‘That isn’t funny, Willy,’ Cassie said, ‘and you know it.’

  ‘Certainly wouldn’t have been in the old days,’ Willoughby agreed. ‘Best thing that happened, abolishing the death penalty. Like I said, Bower’s the sort of chap who if he had his way would hang shoplifters.’

  For some reason Cassie’s heart sank. Having listened carefully to everything her host had said over dinner the previous night she thought the prosecution had little or no case left in their pursuit for a conviction either for manslaughter or murder in any degree, so watertight had been the case for the defence so far, yet still she felt less than optimistic about the possible verdict. She knew enough about the law to realize that even if Judge Bower was finally convinced that this had not been in any way a murder for gain, profit or revenge he might still decide to instruct the jury to regard the case as one of suicide by arrangement, and if he did so Joel would not leave the court a free man.

  ‘I wonder who the anonymous donor was who bailed the club out of trouble,’ Cassie thought out loud as Willoughby looked for a wa
y to join the motorway traffic.

  ‘Doesn’t really matter, you know,’ Willoughby replied, finally entering the motorway via the hard shoulder, a move which earned him a cacophony of screaming car horns and a light show of flashing headlights. ‘Academic, really. All that was necessary was to prove by way of bank statements and the club’s books that the money had gone through prior to Benson’s demise and Bob was the famous uncle.’

  ‘Even so,’ Cassie muttered, ‘I have a pretty shrewd idea of who it could have been.’

  Mrs Charles C. Lovett Andrew, however, was not called as a character witness. There was no need for her testimony. Joel’s defence had already organized some influential and highly respectable names to come forward and testify as to the character of the accused, depositions to which Cassie sat and listened with a well-concealed but ever-growing interest.

  ‘Chap’s a saint from the sound of it,’ Willoughby muttered beside her. ‘Shows how deceptive appearances can be. Looks more like an ageing new age traveller.’

  Cassie smiled and leaned forward in her seat, hoping once again that Joel would finally sense her presence and turn to look her way. But he was sitting absolutely still beside his counsel with his arms folded, staring up at the ceiling high above him as if trying to detach himself from the events going on around him. From somewhere he had managed to conjure up a dark suit but judging from the fact that it was far too large for him and seemed to fit him nowhere at all it appeared not to be one of his own. On the other hand the old crumpled dark rust-coloured shirt was very much his own as Cassie well knew, having wondered out loud often enough whether Joel had anything else to wear except the same old pair of chinos, same old dark blue sweater and same old rust-coloured shirt. But the tie, dark blue with slender sky blue stripes, she had never seen before, at least not on him. She had seen it many times on genuine Old Etonians, but not on Joel who she seemed to remember had been to a considerably more liberal school.

  He had also made an effort to control his famously unruly mop of hair, brushing it back away from his forehead and watering it into place. Unfortunately despite his obviously good intentions the end result was more or less as Willoughby Manderson had described a moment before. Far from looking a respectable pillar of the Establishment, Joel had somehow succeeded in making himself look the very opposite, which was obviously the conclusion Justice Bower had also reached, to judge from his summation.