by Dick Francis
‘Are you really sure it’s Marcus Aurelius?’ she said doubtfully. ‘We only get one shot. If it’s wrong, you don’t get another.’
‘I should check it then. It comes in a section about learning to be content with your lot. I suppose I remember it because it is good advice and I’ve seldom been able to follow it.’ I grinned.
‘You know,’ she said tentatively, ‘It’s none of my business, but I would have thought you could have got on a bit in the world. You seem… you seem decidedly intelligent. Why do you work in a stable?’
‘I work in a stable,’ I told her with perfect, ironic truth, ‘because it’s the only thing I know how to do.’
‘Will you do it for the rest of your life?’
‘I expect so.’
‘And will it content you?’
‘It will have to.’
‘I didn’t expect this afternoon to turn out like this at all,’ she said. ‘To be frank, I was dreading it. And you have made it easy.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ I said cheerfully.
She smiled. I went to the door and opened it, and she said, ‘I’d better see you out. This building must have been the work of a maze-crazy architect. Visitors have been found wandering about the upper reaches dying of thirst days after they were supposed to have left.’
I laughed. She walked beside me back along the twisting corridors, down the stairs, and right back to the outside door, talking easily about her life in college, talking to me freely, as an equal. She told me that Durham was the oldest English University after Oxford and Cambridge, and that it was the only place in Britain which offered a course in Geophysics. She was indeed, a very nice girl.
She shook hands with me on the step.
‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry Patty was so beastly.’
‘I’m not. If she hadn’t been, I wouldn’t have been here this afternoon.’
She laughed. ‘But what a price to pay.’
‘Worth it.’
Her grey eyes had darker grey flecks in them, I noticed. She watched me go over and sit on the motor-cycle and fasten on the helmet. Then she waved her hand briefly, and went back through the door. It closed with finality behind her.
Chapter 14
I stopped in Posset on the return journey to see if there were any comment from October on the theory I had sent him the previous week, but there was no letter for me at all.
Although I was already late for evening stables, I stopped longer to write to him. I couldn’t get Tommy Stapleton out of my head: he had died without passing on what he knew. I didn’t want to make the same mistake. Or to die either, if it came to that. I scribbled fast.
‘I think the trigger is a silent whistle, the sort used for dogs. Humber keeps one in the drinks compartment of his car. Remember Old Etonian? They hold hound-trails at Cartmel, on the morning of the races.’
Having posted that, I bought a large slab of chocolate for food, and also Jerry’s comic, and slid as quietly as I could back into the yard. Cass caught me, however, and said sourly that I’d be lucky to get Saturday off next week as he would be reporting me to Humber. I sighed resignedly, started the load of evening chores, and felt the cold, dingy, sub-violent atmosphere of the place seep back into my bones.
But there was a difference now. The whistle lay like a bomb in my money belt. A death sentence, if they found me with it. Or so I believed. There remained the matter of making sure that I had not leaped to the wrong conclusion.
Tommy Stapleton had probably suspected what was going on and had walked straight into Humber’s yard to tax him with it. He couldn’t have known that the men he was dealing with were prepared to kill. But, because he had died, I did know. I had lived under their noses for seven weeks, and I had been careful: and because I intended to remain undetected to the end I spent a long time on Sunday wondering how I could conduct my experiment and get away with it.
On Sunday evening, at about five o’clock, Adams drove into the yard in his shining grey Jaguar. As usual at the sight of him, my heart sank. He walked round the yard with Humber when he made his normal tour of inspection and stopped for a long time looking over the door at Mickey. Neither he nor Humber came in. Humber had been into Mickey’s box several times since the day he helped me take in the first lot of drugged water, but Adams had not been in at all.
Adams said, ‘What do you think, Hedley?’
Humber shrugged, ‘There’s no change.’
‘Write him off?’
‘I suppose so.’ Humber sounded depressed.
‘It’s a bloody nuisance,’ said Adams violently. He looked at me. ‘Still bolstering yourself up with tranquillizers?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He laughed rudely. He thought it very funny. Then his face changed to a scowl, and he said savagely to Humber, ‘It’s useless, I can see that. Give him the chop, then.’
Humber turned away, and said, ‘Right, I’ll get it done tomorrow.’
Their footsteps moved off to the next box. I looked at Mickey. I had done my best for him, but he was too far gone, and had been from the beginning. After a fortnight, what with his mental chaos, his continual state of drugged-ness, and his persistent refusal to eat, Mickey’s condition was pitiable, and any one less stony than Humber would have had him put down long ago.
I made him comfortable for his last night and evaded yet another slash from his teeth. I couldn’t say I was sorry not to have to deal with him any more, as a fortnight of looking after an unhinged horse would be enough for anyone; but the fact that he was to be put down the next day meant that I would have to perform my experiment without delay.
I didn’t feel ready to do it. Thinking about it, as I put away my brushes for the night and walked across the yard towards the kitchen, I tried to find one good reason for putting it off.
The alacrity with which a good excuse for not doing it presented itself led me to the unwelcome, swingeing realization that for the first time since my childhood, I was thoroughly afraid.
I could get October to make the experiment, I thought, on Six-Ply. Or on any of the other horses. I hadn’t got to do it myself. It would definitely be more prudent not to do it myself. October could do it with absolute safety, but if Humber found me out I was as good as dead: therefore I should leave it to October.
That was when I knew I was afraid, and I didn’t like it. It took me most of the evening to decide to do the experiment myself. On Mickey. The next morning. Shuffling it off on to October doubtless would have been more prudent, but I had myself to live with afterwards. What had I really wanted to leave home for, if not to find out what I could or couldn’t do?
When I took the bucket to the office door in the morning for Mickey’s last dose of phenobarbitone, there was only a little left in the jar. Cass tipped the glass container upside down and tapped it on the bucket so that the last grains of white powder should not be wasted.
‘That’s his lot, poor bastard,’ he observed, putting the stopper back in the empty jar. ‘Pity there isn’t a bit more left, we could have given him a double dose, just this once. Well, get on with it,’ he added sharply. ‘Don’t hang about looking mournful. It’s not you that’s going to be shot this afternoon.’
Well, I hoped not.
I turned away, went along to the tap, splashed in a little water, swilled round in it the instantly dissolved phenobarbitone, and poured it away down the drain. Then I filled the bucket with clean water and took it along for Mickey to drink.
He was dying on his feet. The bones stuck out more sharply under his skin and his head hung down below his shoulders. There was still a disorientated wildness in his eye, but he was going downhill so fast that he had little strength left for attacking anyone. For once he made no attempt to bite me when I put the bucket down at his head, but lowered his mouth into it and took a few half-hearted swallows.
Leaving him, I went along to the tack room and took a new head collar out of the basket of stores. This was strictly against the rul
es: only Cass was supposed to issue new tack. I took the head collar along to Mickey’s box and fitted it on to him, removing the one he had weakened by constant fretting during his fortnight’s illness and hiding it under a pile of straw. I unclipped the tethering chain from the old collar and clipped it on to the ring of the new one. I patted Mickey’s neck, which he didn’t like, walked out of his box, and shut and bolted only the bottom half of the door.
We rode out the first lot, and the second lot; and by then, I judged, Mickey’s brain, without its morning does, would be coming out of its sedation.
Leading Dobbin, the horse I had just returned on, I went to look at Mickey over the stable door. His head was weaving weakly from side to side, and he seemed very restless. Poor creature, I thought. Poor creature. And for a few seconds I was going to make him suffer more.
Humber stood at his office door, talking to Cass. The lads were bustling in and out looking after their horses, buckets were clattering, voices calling to each other: routine stable noise. I was never going to have a better opportunity.
I began to lead Dobbin across the yard to his box. Half way there I took the whistle out of my belt and pulled off its cap: then, looking round to make sure that no one was watching, I turned my head over my shoulder, put the tiny mouthpiece to my lips, and blew hard. Only a thread of sound came out, so high that I could hardly hear it above the clatter of Dobbin’s feet on the ground.
The result was instantaneous and hideous.
Mickey screamed with terror.
His hooves threshed wildly against the floor and walls, and the chain which held him rattled as he jerked against it.
I walked Dobbin quickly the few remaining yards into his stall, clipped his chain on, zipped the whistle back into my belt, and ran across towards Mickey’s box. Everyone else was doing the same. Humber was limping swiftly down the yard.
Mickey was still screaming and crashing his hooves against the wall as I looked into his box over the shoulders of Cecil and Lenny. The poor animal was on his hind legs, seemingly trying to beat his way through the bricks in front of him. Then suddenly, with all his ebbing strength, he dropped his forelegs to the ground and charged backwards.
‘Look out,’ shouted Cecil, instinctively retreating from the frantically bunching hind-quarters, although he was safely outside a solid door.
Mickey’s tethering chain was not very long. There was a sickening snap as he reached the end of it and his backwards momentum was jokingly, appallingly stopped. His hind legs slid forward under his belly and he fell with a crash on to his side. His legs jerked stiffly. His head, still secured in the strong new head collar, was held awkwardly off the ground by the taut chain, and by its unnatural angle told its own tale. He had broken his neck. As indeed, to put him quickly out of his frenzy, I had hoped he might.
Everyone in the yard had gathered outside Mickey’s box. Humber, having glanced perfunctorily over the door at the dead horse, turned and looked broodingly at his six ragged stable lads. The narrow eyed harshness of his expression stopped anyone asking him questions. There was a short silence.
‘Stand in a line,’ he said suddenly.
The lads looked surprised, but did as he said.
‘Turn out your pockets,’ said Humber.
Mystified, the lads obeyed. Cass went down the line, looking at what was produced and pulling the pockets out like wings to make sure they were empty. When he came to me I showed him a dirty handkerchief, a penknife, a few coins, and pulled my pockets inside out. He took the handkerchief from my hand, shook it out, and gave it back. The whistle at my waist was only an inch from his fingers.
I felt Humber’s searching gaze on me from six feet away, but as I studied to keep my face vacantly relaxed and vaguely puzzled I was astonished to find that I was neither sweating nor tensing my muscles to make a run for it. In an odd way the nearness of the danger made me cool and clear headed. I didn’t understand it, but it certainly helped.
‘Back pocket?’ asked Cass.
‘Nothing in it,’ I said casually, turning half round to show him.
‘All right. Now you, Kenneth.’
I pushed my pockets in again, and replaced their contents. My hands were steady. Extraordinary, I thought.
Humber watched and waited until Kenneth’s pockets had been innocently emptied: then he looked at Cass and jerked his head towards the loose boxes. Cass rooted around in the boxes of the horses we had just exercised. He finished the last, came back, and shook his head. Humber pointed silently towards the garage which sheltered his Bentley. Cass disappeared, reappeared, and again unexcitedly shook his head. In silence Humber limped away to his office, leaning on his heavy stick.
He couldn’t have heard the whistle, and he didn’t suspect that any of us had blown one for the sole purpose of watching its effect on Mickey, because if he had he would have had us stripped and searched from head to foot. He was still thinking along the lines of Mickey’s death being an accident: and having found no whistle in any of the lad’s pockets or in their horses’ boxes he would conclude, I hoped, that it was none of that down-trodden bunch who had caused Mickey’s brain-storm. If only Adams would agree with him, I was clear.
It was my afternoon for washing the car. Humber’s own whistle was still there, tucked neatly into a leather retaining strap between a cork-screw and a pair of ice tongs. I looked, and left it where it was.
Adams came the next day.
Mickey had gone to the dog-meat man, who had grumbled about his thinness, and I had unobtrusively returned the new head collar to the store basket, leaving the old one dangling as usual from the tethering chain. Even Cass had not noticed the substitution.
Adams and Humber strolled along to Mickey’s empty box and leaned on the half door, talking. Jerry poked his head out of the box next door, saw them standing there, and hurriedly disappeared again. I went normally about my business, fetching hay and water for Dobbin and carting away the muck sack.
‘Roke,’ shouted Humber, ‘come here. At the double.’
I hurried over. ‘Sir?’
‘You haven’t cleaned out this box.’
‘I’m sorry sir. I’ll do it this afternoon.’
‘You will do it,’ he said deliberately, ‘before you have your dinner.’
He knew very well that this meant having no dinner at all. I glanced at his face. He was looking at me with calculation, his eyes narrowed and his lips pursed.
I looked down. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said meekly. Damn it, I thought furiously; this was too soon. I had been there not quite eight weeks, and I ought to have been able to count on at least three more. If he were already intent on making me leave, I was not going to be able to finish the job.
‘For a start,’ said Adams, ‘you can fetch out that bucket and put it away.’
I looked into the box. Mickey’s bucket still stood by the manger. I opened the door, walked over, picked it up, turned round to go back, and stopped dead.
Adams had come into the box after me. He held Humber’s walking stick in his hand, and he was smiling.
I dropped the bucket and backed into a corner. He laughed.
‘No tranquillizers today, eh, Roke?’
I didn’t answer.
He swung his arm and the knobbed end of the stick landed on my ribs. It was hard enough, in all conscience. When he lifted his arm again I ducked under it and bolted out through the door. His roar of laughter floated after me.
I went on running until I was out of sight, and then walked and rubbed my chest. It was going to be a fair sized bruise, and I wasn’t too keen on collecting many more. I supposed I should be thankful at least that they proposed to rid themselves of me in the ordinary way, and not over a hillside in a burning car.
All through that long, hungry afternoon I tried to decide what was best to do. To go at once, resigned to the fact that I couldn’t finish the job, or to stay the few days I safely could without arousing Adams’ suspicions. But what, I depressedly wondered, could I disc
over in three or four days that I had been unable to discover in eight weeks.
It was Jerry, of all people, who decided for me.
After supper (baked beans on bread, but not enough of it) we sat at the table with Jerry’s comic spread open. Since Charlie had left no one had a radio, and the evenings were more boring than ever. Lenny and Kenneth were playing dice on the floor. Cecil was out getting drunk. Bert sat in his silent world on the bench on the other side of Jerry, watching the dice roll across the concrete.
The oven door was open, and all the switches on the electric stove were turned on as high as they would go. This was Lenny’s bright idea for supplementing the small heat thrown out by the paraffin stove Humber had grudgingly provided. It wouldn’t last longer than the arrival of the electricity bill, it was warm meanwhile.
The dirty dishes were stacked in the sink. Cobwebs hung like a cornice where the walls met the ceiling. A naked light bulb lit the brick-walled room. Someone had spilled tea on the table, and the corner of Jerry’s comic had soaked it up.
I sighed. To think that I wasn’t happy to be about to leave this squalid existence, now that I was being given no choice!
Jerry looked up from his comic, keeping his place with his finger.
‘Dan?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Did Mr Adams bash you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought he did.’ He nodded several times, and went back to his comic.
I suddenly remembered his having looked out of the box next to Mickey’s before Adams and Humber had called me over.
‘Jerry,’ I said slowly, ‘did you hear Mr Adams and Mr Humber talking, while you were in the box with Mr Adams’ black hunter?’
‘Yes,’ he said, without looking up.
‘What did they say?’
‘When you ran away Mr Adams laughed and told the boss you wouldn’t stand it long. Stand it long,’ he repeated vaguely, like a refrain, ‘stand it long.’
