The Phar Lap Mystery

by Sophie Masson

  April 3

  My birthday, and a whole year since I started this diary! It was a very different sort of day today, it didn’t turn sour like last year but was just great the whole time! The Rileys’ cook made me a huge layer cake with pink and white icing and lashings of cream and twelve gold candles on it. I got some great presents—from Dad and Lily some new clothes, and from the Rileys a set of detective novels by different authors, really beautiful, illustrated and bound in leather. They’re just the most beautiful books I’ve ever seen and I can’t stop looking at them!

  There was a report about Phar Lap in the paper today. He’s settled down at Mr Perry’s ranch and is recovering well from his tiredness. They say he should definitely do well later this month at Tanforan racecourse. Dad says we can go and see him race, which will be fun! The report says that so many people want to see the famous horse at Mr Perry’s farm that he’s now got visiting hours—just an hour or two in the afternoons! He’s carefully protected behind barriers, but apparently thousands of people turn up just for a glimpse, there must be a real crush. Dad says we won’t go, not under those circumstances anyway—he reckons it’s becoming ridiculous now, like a circus. And it could get much, much worse soon—the report also says Mr Davis is just about to sign a contract with Metro Goldwyn Meyer, the biggest Hollywood film studio, for Bobby to appear in a series of short films! ‘Was there ever such a horse as this?’ the report says. ‘The whole world has caught Phar Lap fever, and caught it bad.’

  April 6

  I’m sitting here with the tears running down my cheeks. I can’t believe I’m writing this. I can’t believe it’s true … I can’t, but I have to. All the papers are full of it, the radio, and in our house no-one talks of anything else. In America, everyone is stunned. But in Australia, flags are flying at half-mast and the nation is in deep mourning.

  For he’s gone. Our dear, darling, brave, wonderful Phar Lap is dead. It happened yesterday, at Mr Perry’s farm. In the morning he suddenly went off his food and developed a high temperature and terrible pains. Mr Woodcock called the vet at once, but Bobby died within a very short time. Lots of people—including the two vets (Phar Lap’s Australian vet Dr Nielsen and Mr Perry’s regular American vet) say it’s poison, probably arsenic, deliberately given to him by a person or persons unknown. But some say it’s illness, probably colic, which does kill horses quickly. Others say it could be acute indigestion bloat from eating green feed or mouldy hay. Still others say Phar Lap could accidentally have been poisoned by a toxic insecticide used on the trees at Mr Perry’s farm which drifted onto the grass (Mr Perry says that’s absurd, he has lots of other horses grazing there and not another one even got sick).

  Whatever it is, no-one knows for sure yet, and the police are investigating while more scientific tests are being made. They’re having Phar Lap’s oats examined and are making a close check on all visitors to Mr Perry’s farm over the 24 hours before the horse died. It’ll take a while—there were more than 1,500 visitors that day alone and many probably won’t be able to be traced, Dad says. He’s certain this was no accident or illness but definitely foul play, and that someone got to poor Bobby.

  The security was supposed to be really tight at Mr Perry’s, and Phar Lap’s food and water were under lock and key, but you can’t watch 24 hours a day. All it takes is a moment’s inattention, just an instant’s distraction. Or someone could have been bribed to turn a blind eye—not anyone close to Phar Lap, like Mr Woodcock, Dr Nielsen, Mr Elliott or Mr Martin of course, but someone working at Mr Perry’s stables. Dad says in his opinion it’s quite likely the police scientists won’t find anything in the oats. The crooks’ll have done it some other way, because you need to make sure the horse gets the full deadly dose all at once. People had been murdered before with arsenic-laced lumps of sugar in tea, he said. And Phar Lap loved his sugar lumps. They were his treat. All you’d have to do is slip him a poisoned one when no-one was looking. You’d have to wear gloves, he said, because arsenic goes through the skin; and you’d have to choose your moment well. A person would have been wary, suspicious of course. But Phar Lap was innocent. Trusting. You could imagine him snuffling happily at an unexpected night-time visitor who offered him one of those lovely lumps of sugar while poor exhausted Tommy Woodcock slept across the way.

  Oh. It’s too horrible. It makes me feel so sick. How can people be so wicked and so cruel? How could they have killed the sweetest, gentlest horse that ever lived, who had never ever done anyone any harm but only brought joy to us all?

  April 15

  It’s been ten days now since Phar Lap died, but I still can’t believe it.

  Phar Lap is going home. Not alive of course, but Mr Davis has arranged to have his body stuffed and mounted and he’ll be sent back to Australia, where he will be put on display so that everyone can pay their last respects, and never forget him. Ever.

  There’s no more news about what happened. Nothing has been proven. Nothing has been decided. Dad says it probably never will. He has spoken very briefly to poor Mr Woodcock, who is still crushed with grief over his friend’s death. Dad thought of offering to investigate for free, but in the end he didn’t even mention it, for Mr Woodcock doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything save that Bobby is dead and that nothing, nothing ever will bring him back. Dad says he might well have a suspicion about who might be responsible, but he can’t be sure. Besides, Dad says, it is far too dangerous for him to voice his suspicions, lest he go the way of the horse. And it’s notoriously difficult to get anything to stick to gangsters in America. The police have more or less given up. After all, it wasn’t a person the killers murdered, but a horse. They’re not going to bust a gut over a dead horse, Dad says, no matter how famous he was. So much for Phar Lap being protected by his fame. So much for that.

  People in Australia are really furious with the Yanks. Not only is it likely to have been American gangsters who killed our Bobby, but it was his American owner, Mr Davis, who brought him into such danger. Dad says that’s wrong. He says Mr Davis thought he was doing the right thing, and most Americans loved the horse almost as much as we did. Most of them can’t believe he was poisoned, they think it’s impossible any American would do such a thing, just as Australians hate the idea any Aussie could possibly do it. But as Dad said, he was attacked in Australia too, and just because they didn’t succeed then doesn’t mean they might not have tried again later. In fact, he says that if an Australian gangster was determined to down Phar Lap, then what better place to do it than in America and have it blamed on the Yanks? If Mr Bryant hadn’t died when he did there could be a strong case for suspecting him, for instance. Of course he did die, so that’s that, but there could be others we don’t know about, who saw their chance to deal with Phar Lap once and for all before he returned to Australia and blitzed them on the track again.

  For some reason when he said that I had a sudden picture of Mrs Bryant at the races, her delicate kid-gloved hand flying up to protect her hat from the sudden breeze, her lovely face unreadable. I thought of the Brazilian bumping into her. I thought of the milliner saying she had an apartment in San Francisco. And a mad idea came into my head. If I was like a detective in one of the stories I’ve been reading—like, say, Monsieur Poirot—maybe I would start thinking, what if it was her? What if it had been her all along, even back in Australia?

  But that’s silly. Just imagination. This isn’t like a story, or a film, where the person you least suspect is revealed as the culprit and you might find out the truth in time to save the victim. This is real life. And in real life, it’s just like Mr Woodcock says. Whatever the truth is, and whoever might have done this horrible, wicked thing, Bobby’s gone, and there is nothing any of us can do to bring him back to us alive.

  But Dad says there is one thing we can do: we can keep him alive in our memories. We can talk about him, tell stories about him, write about him, so that we will always remember what he was like and how he touched our hearts. And in y
ears to come Australians will never forget the name of Phar Lap. He will live in our country’s memory as brightly as the days when he graced our racetracks and made us forget hard times for a moment.

  And so while I still have a bit of space in this diary, that’s what I’m going to do. I think of how Mrs Moore at the children’s page of the newspaper back home had asked me if I’d like to write something about Phar Lap. I hadn’t done it back then. The right time had never come, or I had not found the right words. But now I think I am ready. And here is how it will start:

  A Memorial of Phar Lap, the Greatest Horse Who Ever Lived

  By Sally Fielding

  Some Australians say he was an angel sent to us from heaven to comfort us in hard times, and others say he was almost human and could just about talk, and still others say he was a freak of nature who came out of nowhere like a shooting star. But all of us say he is a hero and a legend who brought joy and hope and excitement to so many who are now grief-stricken at his cruel death.

  But I really met Phar Lap, and I know that he was the greatest horse who ever lived, a champion who was never proud but always modest, a hero who was strong but always gentle, and a friend named Bobby to those who loved him and who he loved in return.

  I first saw him at Randwick nearly two years ago …

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  The extraordinary story of Phar Lap, the disregarded ugly duckling who grew into a magnificent swan, the wonder horse with the big heart who met such a tragic and mysterious end far from home, is one that’s entranced generations of Australians. In his short lifetime, Phar Lap was so famous that his amazing exploits on the racetrack were headline news and big crowds gathered to watch him race in Sydney and Melbourne. At a time of terrible financial crisis, mass unemployment, hardship and poverty (known as the Great Depression of 1929 to 1933), Phar Lap gave many Australians a sense of joy and hope. His game, gentle, bright and playful character won him legions of fans. People talked of someone having a ‘heart as big as Phar Lap’, much as the phrase ‘game as Ned Kelly’ had passed into the language. He was given affectionate nicknames: ‘Big Red’, ‘The Red Terror’, the ‘Wonder Horse’ and, in America, ‘the Australian Antelope’, the ‘Mighty Train from the Antipodes’ and the ‘Mammoth Kangaroo’ (!). Countless articles were written about him and short films, such as The Mighty Conqueror were made.

  The attempts on him before the Melbourne Cup of 1930, which form the core of this book, evoked widespread outrage and indignation throughout the country. When he won at Agua Caliente in Mexico in 1932, it was said he’d done more for the international profile of Australia and New Zealand than a million dollars! His owners, David Davis and Harry Telford, received a cable of congratulations from King George V (Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather) and the famous singer and film star Al Jolson wrote a song about him. When Phar Lap died two weeks later, the whole of Australia went into mourning. Flags were flown at half-mast, the Prime Minister Joseph Lyons sent condolences on behalf of the nation, and lots of people wrote to Harry Telford to express their personal shock and grief. Some of these letters referred to Phar Lap as ‘an angel come down from the sky’, or ‘almost human’. The horror felt by many people at the horrible way in which poor Phar Lap died spilled over into resentment of ‘the Yanks’, who were blamed for his death. So deep was this feeling that when American servicemen were stationed in Australia during World War II they were sometimes abused as ‘murderers of Phar Lap’! Americans were very upset by this—they had admired and loved Phar Lap too, and could not believe anyone from their country could have killed him. In a letter to a serviceman, Damon Runyon, a famous American writer, spoke for many when he said, ‘Phar Lap was something out of the equine world. No, sonny, no-one in this country would dream of murdering a horse like that.’

  Today Phar Lap is still one of Australia’s greatest legends, and our only non-human national hero. Many books have been written about him, and a popular film, Phar Lap—Hero to a Nation about him. In the late 1970s Australia Post issued special commemorative stamps in his honour. He still occasionally makes headline news—as in 2006 and 2008, when new scientific tests showed conclusively that he died of arsenic poisoning. And crowds of people come every year to see his stuffed hide on display at the Melbourne Museum, and his big heart (at 6.2 kg, it weighs nearly twice as much as a normal horse’s heart at 3.2 kgs) on display at the National Museum in Canberra. As he was born in New Zealand, and has a big following there too, his skeleton was donated to that country. It is on display at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington. He is the first horse to have been inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame (at the Australian Racing Museum in Melbourne), and the only one to have been given the status of Legend there. He has also been inducted into the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame, and there is a bronze statue of him in Timaru, New Zealand, where he was born.

  Why was Phar Lap so popular, and why does his legend still endure? Well, Australians love battlers, and Phar Lap was a battler who rose from humiliation and obscurity to massive achievement. Australians love champions, and Phar Lap was a 24-carat champion, an equine genius. Australians love winners who are modest and don’t skite—and of course he never did! Australians love horseracing (the Melbourne Cup stops the nation), and Phar Lap was the greatest racehorse of them all. Australians are drawn to dramatic and tragic ends—think of our other legends, like the Anzacs or Ned Kelly—and Phar Lap’s story fits that pattern, with the cheerful fairytale of his rise giving way to the exciting suspense of his career and finishing in his tragic and mysterious death. All those things, and more, make up the core of his enduring legend.

  The details of the life-story of Phar Lap are pretty much as Sally notes them down in her ‘ready reckoner file’. The ‘mighty conqueror’ was born on 4 October, 1926, at ‘Seadown’, the stud farm of Alick Roberts, near Timaru, New Zealand. Though his ‘sire’ (father in racing-talk) and ‘dam’ (mother) had not done very much, he came from a famous bloodline—on both sides, he was a descendant of Carbine (1885–1914), another great New Zealand-bred horse who found fame in Australia and later overseas. Carbine’s racing achievements, like his legendary descendant’s, were extraordinary, and he blitzed the racetracks to win 33 of his 43 races,. Over half of the 65 Melbourne Cup winners from 1914–2008 are descended from him, including Phar Lap, Makybe Diva and Kingstown Town (as well as many famous overseas horses, like Nijinsky and Northern Dancer). It was Phar Lap’s descent from Carbine that most attracted Sydney-based trainer Harry Telford, who in 1928 persuaded wealthy American businessman David J. Davis to buy the colt at auction in New Zealand, sight unseen. But when he turned up in Sydney, Davis was horrified—the colt was gangly, with warts on his face and an awkward gait. Davis refused to pay for his training. In fact he wanted Telford to sell the horse. But Telford, who believed absolutely in Phar Lap’s potential, persuaded the businessman to lease the horse to him for three years. Telford would train him for free in return for two-thirds of the horse’s winnings.

  It was at this time that Tommy Woodcock, Phar Lap’s legendary strapper and later his trainer in Mexico, came into the horse’s life. The two were soon great friends—at one point Bobby (as he was known to Tommy and to stable staff) would not even touch his food if Tommy wasn’t around. It was Tommy Woodcock’s understanding and love of his equine friend, as much as Harry Telford’s know-how and grim determination, that won through in the end and transformed the disregarded laughing-stock into the most astonishing champion Australia has ever seen.

  A young student of Zhuang ancestry (a part of China adjoining Thailand) called Aubrey Ping, told Harry Telford that the word ‘farlap’ meant ‘sky blink’ or ‘lightning’ in both Zhuang and Siamese (as Thai was then known). Harry Telford liked the name, but split it in two and used ‘ph’ instead of ‘f’, in keeping with racing traditions. But having a flash new name didn’t seem to help Phar Lap at first—he came last in his first race and in the next three he wasn’t placed. But on 27 April, 1929 came
the race that changed everything. With seventeen-year-old apprentice jockey Jack Baker on his back, he won the Maiden Juvenile Handicap at Rosehill Racecourse in Sydney. In his next race, in September 1929, he came second. From then on, he went from strength to strength, storming through to place in and then win so many races that people were soon sitting up and taking notice. His record, like his ancestor Carbine’s, is simply amazing: out of 51 ‘starts’ he came first 37 times, many times in a row, and he also got three seconds and two thirds.

  In 1930 Telford moved to Victoria with Phar Lap, as the Victorian racing calendar offered lots of chances for the horse and his trainer and owner (Davis by now had changed his mind about Phar Lap, of course!). But in the lead-up to the Melbourne Cup threats were made against the horse and two attempts made on him, as described in this book. Though the police made a basic investigation, the mystery of who was behind the attempts was never solved. No-one was ever identified as the culprit, and the case was dropped. Phar Lap went on to win first the Melbourne Stakes and then the Melbourne Cup.

  Though my solution to the mystery is entirely fictional and the culprits Charlie Fielding identifies are as fictional as he is, I did follow the leads—such as the numberplates and the car—which were seemingly not followed up by the police at the time, in order to construct a plausible and entertaining scenario. Where possible, I have used contemporary accounts and newspaper articles, as well as interviews done with Tommy Woodcock in later years, as sources. Another useful source was Geoff Armstrong and Peter Thompson’s entertaining book Melbourne Cup 1930, though I found their solution of a ‘newspaper prank’ to be less than convincing. Another interesting—and very unusual because it’s told ‘from the horse’s mouth’!—book is The Diary of Phar Lap, by Robert Baker, whose father Jack was the first person to ride the great horse to victory.