Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

The Nameless Poison by Edward D. Hoch

Would you believe Ed Hoch has never been to most of the places he writes about? It’s true, but the details he provides, whether about the Paris Metro, as in this story, or present-day Cuba, as in a recent Stanton and Ives story, always make us feel we’re there. He does it all from his personal library of reference books — with a little help, these days, from the Internet.

It had been some time since Michael Vlado had raced any of the thoroughbred horses he raised on his farm in the mountains of Romania. In his younger days, before he became a Gypsy king, he once took a horse all the way to Moscow to race at the city’s famed hippodrome. But these days he was more likely to sell his thoroughbreds in Turkey or Italy or any number of other countries where racing was popular.

It was his old friend Colonel Segar who told him about the racing in Paris. “Their track for flat racing is the Hippodrome de Longchamp.”

Michael nodded. “Racetracks are often called hippodromes in Europe. The chariot races in ancient Greece and Rome were held in hippodromes.”

Segar smiled. “You know so much about racing, you should enter your horses more often.”

“I would need a professional trainer for that. My own skills are limited.”

Colonel Segar was seated in his favorite chair on the porch of Michael’s hillside home, indulging in a rare cigar and a glass of red wine provided by Michael’s wife Rosanna. “What would you say if I could provide the trainer, and perhaps a jockey as well? All they’d need would be one of your thoroughbreds. The man I have in mind for trainer is also a Gypsy, from Croatia. His name is Antun Bura.”

“If you’ve had contact with him, he’s probably a criminal.”

“Not really. He’s had a few minor infractions such as any Gypsy living in the city might have, but he seems like a good sort. He has a wonderful Russian wolfhound that follows him everywhere.”

Perhaps it was mention of the dog that interested Michael most. “Bring him up with you next weekend,” he suggested. “I can show him my horses. If I don’t want to race them, he might be interested in buying one.”

So it was that Antun Bura made the journey with Colonel Segar the following Saturday. He was a tall man, much too tall to be a jockey himself, with the weathered, lined face of many Eastern European Roms. He wore a red jacket embroidered with disks and rings, and had a short curved dagger on his belt. His black hair hung in ringlets around his ears, and he spoke with a clear but unfamiliar accent. “The colonel tells me you are Croatian,” Michael said in greeting. “What brings you to Romania?”

“The traditional wanderlust,” Bura replied with a smile. “We are a nation again now, but for many years we were merely a part of Yugoslavia. I chose the Gypsy way, wandering across Europe making my living by training fine horses to race.” He glanced out at the fields. “And I see you have some fine ones here. Do you race them?”

“Not for many years. I raise them for sale now. The colonel says you have a Russian wolfhound.”

He smiled. “Yes, Rasputin. He’s a fine dog. My jockey is looking after him back in Bucharest.” He watched the horses for a time and then said, “The colonel may have told you I am seeking a good horse to race in Paris. Would you wish to join me in this?”

“I don’t know,” Michael admitted. “Paris is far away.”

“Surely not for a Rom! Segar tells me you have even been to England.”

“But not with a horse. Why Paris? Is there no racing in Croatia?”

“There is little of anything there, at least for me. Some villages have no electricity or running water. The only way to survive is to settle in one place and become integrated into the economy of that region. It is a life that is not for me. Horse racing is in my blood. I have worked at some of the best tracks in Europe. But Paris is a new challenge. I have visited the track but never raced there. Also, my jockey Chris has ridden there and knows the track.”

Michael showed off Renegade, a favorite horse of his but one past his prime, with occasional stiffness in his leg joints. “I’ve never been able to sell him,” he told the Croatian, “and now he’s six years old, a bit stiff in the joints at times.”

“Not too old. With proper training he could win a few races.”

“You say you have a jockey?”

Antun Bura nodded. “Chris Daum. Been racing for five years at most of the major tracks in Europe. We could hire a jockey at the track, but it’s better to have someone we know and trust.”

Michael had one of the smaller Gypsy youths saddle up Renegade and ride him around the improvised track. “Impressive,” Bura decided, checking the time with his stopwatch. “Will you take him to Paris? I have my horse trailer and jockey waiting in Bucharest.”

“He would need a medical checkup and registration to race there. I doubt if he could even cross the borders without papers.”

Colonel Segar spoke up then. “I could handle any formalities regarding transit papers for the horse. He could be registered and examined when you arrive in Paris.”

Michael was strongly tempted. He left them and went inside to speak with Rosanna about it.

“How long would you be away?” she asked.

“A few weeks. Certainly less than a month.”

She could see that he wanted to go, and she was not one to stop him. “Go, race your horse and bring back the winnings. We will slaughter a lamb and feast when you return.”

Antun Bura arrived at Michael’s farm two days later with a pickup truck hauling a small horse trailer. Seated in the cab with him was his short jockey and a large dog. It wasn’t until they both got out that he realized Chris Daum was a young woman.

“Is this—?” he started to ask.

She gave him a tired smile, as if she’d been through this all before, and reached out a hand to greet him. “Yes, I’m the jockey. Christine Daum. Antun should have told you I’m a woman.” She was slim, probably weighing little more than a hundred pounds, but with a firm handshake that seemed to assure him she’d keep a tight grip on the reins.

Michael was speechless only for a moment. He’d known plenty of Gypsy women who were skilled riders, and his only hesitation was her light complexion. “Are you a Rom?” he asked.

“No, and I’m not Antun’s girlfriend, either, if you were wondering. This is strictly business. I need a job and he needs a horse. I’ve raced at the Paris track before.”

The dog that had followed her out of the truck must have weighed almost as much as she did. He was a fine specimen of Russian wolfhound whom she quickly introduced. “This is Rasputin, a full-blooded borzoi. He’s become a great friend.”

Michael had always gotten on well with dogs, though not often ones this large. Rasputin stood over two feet tall, and had long silky hair. He patted him and spoke soft words of greeting. Then he led Chris over to the paddock, with Bura and the dog following. “This is Renegade. Do you think you can ride him?”

“Right now?”

“I’m not going to travel twelve hundred miles across Europe just to discover in Paris that you can’t ride my horse.”

“All right,” she agreed. “Let’s put a saddle on him.”

Renegade was not an easy horse for a stranger to ride, but she mastered him quickly, taking him around the paddock a few times and then trying him out on the track. “She did as well as your Gypsy lad,” Bura said, stopwatch in hand. “And it was only her first time.”

Rosanna watched it all from the sidelines and agreed with Michael that the young woman was a born jockey. “Go with her. She might win.”

“We’ll have to register the horse, have him examined. That will all take time.”

They loaded Renegade into the horse van and were on the road that afternoon. By midnight they had crossed the border into Hungary. The shortest, most direct route to Paris took them on through Austria and southern Germany into France. They could make no great speed pulling the horse trailer, and Michael estimated the journey might take four days.

Since it was his truck, Bura did most of the driving. At night they slept along the road, pulling off into a field while they ate and tended to Renegade. Chris seemed to have taken charge of the dog, and she walked him every night before they turned in. On the third night, with the Croatian already snoring in his sleeping bag, Michael asked her, “How did you two happen to hook up?”

“He saw me race in Prague last month and asked if I wanted to join him as a partner. I was a bit suspicious because he had no horse, only promises. But he seemed a good sort at the time.”

“You learned differently when he wanted to sleep with you?”

She glanced over at the sleeping man before responding. “No, that problem came and went quickly. He suggested it and I said no. He hasn’t asked since. But I wonder about him. I wonder if he really is what he seems.”

“How do you mean?” Michael asked.

“Well, that dagger, for one thing.”

“It’s not unusual for a Rom to wear a dagger. Our women often do, too.”

“There are other things,” Chris said, hedging a bit.

She would say no more that night, and in the morning they were on the road again with Renegade and Rasputin, only another day’s drive from Paris. The Hippodrome de Longchamp was just west of the city along the winding Seine River. They had no trouble finding the huge track, so large that the backstretch was hidden by trees and could only be seen from the stands on video screens. The day’s racing was over, but they found the office of the race secretary, who seemed willing to register Michael’s horse. His name was Pierre Plante, a dark-haired man with a little moustache and glasses. He spoke French without inquiring whether they knew it or not. The first thing he asked was to see the horse, so Michael unloaded him from the trailer.

“Are you Gypsies?” he asked, eyeing Bura’s colorful jacket and dagger.

“I am Romanian,” Michael answered, avoiding a direct answer. “Renegade is my horse. This is Antun Bura, my trainer, and Christine Daum, my jockey.”

The track steward inspected Renegade’s teeth. “How old is he?”

“Six years. Do you have races for that age group?”

“We have a race for four-year-olds and up. He should do well there. Has he raced professionally?”

“Only at local fairs, never at a track. Our jockey has raced here, though.”

Plante turned to regard Chris Daum. “Are you registered with the jockey club?”

She nodded and showed him her card. “I’ve raced here four times. Had a second-place finish last season.”

He studied the card and passed it back to her. “German nationality?”

“Yes.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He assigned Renegade a stable number and had only a word of caution for them. “That big dog cannot be around the horses. Keep him away.”

“He’s very friendly,” Bura said.

“But some horses are not. Keep the dog away. And you can’t wear that dagger around here.” As he walked away he muttered something about Gypsies.

Michael and Chris bathed Renegade after the long drive, while Bura went out to check on rooms for them. There were dormitories in the backstretch for grooms, exercise riders, and others — mainly immigrants — who worked for meager wages. But Bura came back an hour later to say he’d found a place nearby that rented rooms by the week. He and Michael could share one while Chris took the other. “Better than staying a week in sleeping bags,” he told them.

In the morning there were exercise riders to take the horses around the track, but Chris insisted on exercising Renegade herself, at least for the first day. Michael watched from the sidelines with Bura. “The horses run clockwise here,” the trainer said. “And there is no tote board showing the odds. You must find a TV monitor for that. An infield pixel board shows the finishing positions of the top seven horses but gives no odds. The crowd here is encouraged to dress up, with suits and ties for the men and fashionable hats for the ladies. When I was here a few years back they had a special promotion with free admission to women wearing hats.”

“Do you know any of these people?”

“I ran into an English jockey named Tommy Harris who’s got some mounts here this week. I’ve seen him around at various tracks. A good man, but the pressures of racing every day are wearing him down. He has ulcers now.”

“You told me back in Romania that it was better to have a jockey we knew and trusted. Are some races fixed?”

“No more so here than anywhere. There will always be jockeys who hold back their mounts, or who speed them up with a shock from a tiny battery. The racing stewards know all the tricks, though, and very little gets by them.”

Michael had been watching Renegade through binoculars as the horse rounded the first turn in front of a large windmill, but finally put them down when horse and rider disappeared from view in the backstretch. “Anything could happen back there,” he said.

“The cameras cover it all.”

“I suppose so.” Chris Daum was suddenly visible again, holding her horse to a canter as they came around into the home stretch. He went out on the track to meet her. “Nice job.”

“I love him,” she said, patting Renegade’s withers. “He takes to this track like he’s been racing all his life. Could I try opening him up?”

“Not today,” Bura decided. “Maybe in a day or two.”

She dismounted without argument. One of the other trainers, a Spaniard named José Contraer, had been watching with interest. “That’s a fine-looking mount. Is he new to Longchamp?”

“This is his first look at the track,” Michael replied. “We’ve come from Romania and hope to race him next week.”

“How old is he?”

“Six years.”

He smiled. “My horse Matador is four years old. They may be up against each other. I am both owner and trainer.”

“Do you race here often?”

Contraer nodded. “Several times a year. It is a good track, with purses large enough to attract fine horses.”

“Do you have your own jockey?” Antun Bura asked.

“When I’m here at Longchamp, Tommy Harris usually rides for me.”

That perked Bura’s interest. “I know Tommy. I saw him race in Spain. I was talking to him yesterday after we arrived.”

“Tommy is a good jockey. Already he has three wins for me here this season.”

They walked around after breakfast, exploring the track’s backyard with its grassy fields and shade trees for picnicking. There were the usual stands for souvenirs, food, and beverages. Here and there were statues of some of the great horses of the past. One was of Suave Dancer, winner of the track’s major event, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, referred to familiarly as the Arc.

Pierre Plante, the track secretary, held a meeting that morning for newcomers to the Longchamp Hippodrome. He explained the intricacies of wagering: In races of seven horses or less there was only win-and-place betting. He talked about the length of the races, which varied up to a maximum of 2,400 meters — about a mile and a half — for the Arc and other major events. All races were on turf, and the firmness of the turf was indicated by a number announced between races. The number 1 meant a hard turf, while numbers 5 or higher indicated a heavy turf. A firmness of 3 was considered ideal.

There were about a dozen newcomers in the meeting and Plante soon shifted to what was obviously his prime topic. “If this is your first time at Longchamp, I must warn you that any use of drugs or stimulation on a horse is absolutely forbidden. The stewards keep a watchful eye on every mount, every jockey. If you are discovered doping a horse or fixing a race in any manner you will be barred from this track for life and may be subject to criminal charges as well.”

There was more of that, delivered in perfect French that some in the audience couldn’t fully comprehend. But the message was clear enough for Chris. Once outside she let Antun Bura get ahead of them and then paused to speak with Michael. “I hinted before that there were things about Bura that bothered me. I know the Rom lifestyle is worlds away from my own German upbringing, but he—” She paused. “I’d better start at the beginning. After we met, there was a great deal of conversation about horses. He mentioned once that he knew some tricks to help them win. He travels with a small toilet kit and one night I needed an aspirin. I knew he had some so I went in his bag in search of it. He had something else in there, an unlabeled bottle of yellow liquid with a hypodermic needle. Could it be something he’s injecting into the horses?”

“Possibly, although he might be an addict himself.”

“I asked him what it was and he said he had to give shots to Rasputin sometimes. I don’t believe that. The dog seems perfectly healthy to me.”

“I’ll try to get a look at it,” Michael said. “Thanks for telling me.”

“After the secretary’s warning today I don’t want to be involved in anything shady. I’ve only been racing for a couple of years and I can’t afford to have a blemished record.”

The exercise rider took Renegade out each morning, and Chris rode him, too, getting the feel of the horse before their first race. The medical report had been good, with Renegade’s first race scheduled for the following week in the four-year-olds-and-up category. Each day Michael mixed with the crowd in the grandstand, watching their betting habits and the change in odds on the television monitors. It was a well-dressed crowd, as Bura had said, and once Bura remarked, “This is a long way from the country fairs, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Michael agreed. It brought back memories of the time he’d raced a horse in Moscow, when the Communists were still in power there.

On Tuesday, the day before their first race, the track was dark and Chris drove them into the city in a little car she’d rented, showing them some of the sights of Paris. Michael arranged to return early to their rented rooms and sought out the toilet kit Chris had mentioned. Rasputin ran over to him, wanting affection, and Michael played with the borzoi for a few minutes. He found the small bottle of yellow liquid and the hypodermic needle, just as Chris had said. Unscrewing the top of the bottle, he inhaled but could detect no odor. He placed a tiny drop on his finger and transferred it to his tongue. The taste was slightly sweet and not very strong, but almost at once he felt a slight tingling sensation on his tongue. He quickly rinsed out his mouth with water and wiped his tongue with a cloth, returning the bottle to Bura’s kit. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

Later, at the track, Michael noticed that Tommy Harris, the English jockey who rode for Jose Contraer, had returned from his day off in a highly agitated state. Toward evening Michael asked Chris what his problem was. She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. He lost something on the Paris Metro and apparently it was very important. I told him the city has a massive lost-and-found warehouse where they collect all objects found around the city. He’s going there after his race tomorrow.”

Chris had her own troubles. There was another woman jockey at the track, a nineteen-year-old girl from Lyon named China Tapson. She seemed to think that Chris was invading her territory, attracting owners who might want to try a woman jockey. Even after Chris explained she would only be riding Renegade there was friction between them. That evening, at a canteen behind the grandstand where the track personnel often went for a light meal, China made some remark while Chris was passing her table. Chris turned and grabbed her shirt and the next thing Michael knew they were tussling on the floor. He dashed over to separate them, but not before Chris landed a stinging slap across the younger woman’s face.

“What was that all about?” Michael asked, leading her away.

“Nothing.”

“Chris—”

“She called me a Gypsy lover, in so many words.”

“Then she deserved the slap.”

He glanced across the canteen to where the Spaniard and his English rider were sharing a beer and crêpes at one table and Pierre Plante was carrying a tray of food past them. Most of the diners hadn’t even noticed the scrap between Chris and China. Chris and Michael were just settling down again when someone yelled from across the canteen and Michael turned to see a man on the floor. He hurried over to find Tommy Harris writhing in agony. “This man needs a doctor!” he yelled.

Harris died at the hospital within an hour while doctors stood by helplessly. “He was almost certainly poisoned,” the attending physician told Michael, who had ridden along in the ambulance. “But without knowing the type of poison there was no time to save his life.”

Michael returned to the track and reported to Pierre Plante. “They’ll have to do an autopsy. Apparently he was poisoned.”

The track secretary paled at the word. “What was he eating at the time?”

“Some sort of crêpe, I think. And he and José Contraer were sharing a bottle of beer.”

“The police should have been called,” Plante said.

Michael shook his head. “No one thought about poisoning until he died. We all just wanted to get him to the hospital. I understand that the police have now come and inspected the canteen, but everything had been cleaned up before they arrived.”

“At least no one else was sickened,” Plante said.

“No,” Michael agreed, “apparently just Harris.”

The following morning Longchamp’s backyard was abuzz with talk of the English jockey’s death. The police had returned, questioning anyone who had sat near the dead man. Contraer was busy trying to find a replacement jockey for his four-year-old, and he even came to Michael to see if he could hire Chris Daum for that day’s race.

“Sorry,” Michael reminded him, “but she’s riding Renegade in the same race.”

“Of course. I’ll find someone else.”

As he turned away, Michael thought of something. “José, your jockey seemed upset yesterday because he’d lost something of value on the Paris subway. Do you know what that was about?”

“No. He said nothing to me.”

“You were eating together when he was stricken.”

The Spaniard nodded. “We each got a crêpe and I took a bottle of beer. I drank as much as I wanted and then gave the rest to Tommy.”

“Did he have a glass?”

“No, we both drank from the bottle. So the poison couldn’t have been in there.”

“Did anyone approach your table while the two of you were eating?”

He shook his head. “Your trainer Bura said hello but only stopped for a moment.”

Their race was the second that afternoon, and Michael felt the old thrill he remembered from years ago when the horses were brought outside to be saddled and paraded around the ring once by the grooms. Then Chris climbed aboard and the horses were walked around one more time before heading out to the track. The jockeys took over, heading the horses at a brisk trot toward the starting gate. Michael was surprised to see that the Spaniard had recruited China Tapson to fill in for Harris.

Being new to the track, Renegade was a long shot at thirty-to-one. The bell rang as the gate opened and the horses broke. None of the ten horses, all four years and older, was out to set any track records, and at the first turn eight of them were still bunched together. Michael and Antun watched through binoculars, but once the horses went into the backstretch they were hidden by the trees.

“They’re still bunched,” Michael said, glancing at the TV monitors. After a moment they came into view again, with four horses pulling away from the rest. One of them was Renegade.

“He’s doing it!” Bura shouted. “Chris knows how to handle him.”

“That’s Contraer’s horse trying to pass her. That Tapson woman would love to beat Chris if she could.”

They made the far turn on the track, which was wide and sweeping, then came thundering down the home stretch. Chris and China Tapson were battling every inch of the way, but one of the other horses pulled ahead of them both. Chris managed a final burst of speed from Renegade, enough to beat Contraer’s Matador to the finish line by a head and capture second place.

Michael let out his breath. “Not bad for a first try,” he said, hurrying out to meet his horse and jockey.

China Tapson slid down from her saddle and glared at Chris. “Next time will be different,” she promised.

Michael decided not to let that pass. He hurried after her and grabbed the young girl’s arm. “What’s the matter with you? Are you looking for trouble?”

She glared at him. “We don’t want Gypsies here,” she told him, her face only inches from his. “And I don’t want to be poisoned like Tommy Harris.”

“We had nothing to do with that.”

“No? Everyone knows Gypsies are experts at poisoning their enemies. You assumed it would be Tommy riding Matador and that he’d beat you easily, so you got rid of him!”

“Don’t make accusations that you can’t prove,” he said, releasing her arm. Crazy as it was, he had a sinking feeling. He was remembering that bottle of yellow liquid among Bura’s possessions.

Later, while Chris and Bura were celebrating her second-place finish, Michael returned to the apartment and checked the bottle in Bura’s case while Rasputin sniffed at his feet. It was no longer full. The level of the yellow liquid was down an inch or more.

Michael knew he had to confront the Croatian about it. If a crime had been committed and Bura was involved, he had to know what was going on.

When they returned from their celebration, he called the trainer aside and showed him the bottle of yellow liquid. “What is it, Antun?” he asked. “Is it poison?”

“It’s nothing. Medicine for Rasputin. I give him a shot sometimes.”

“Let’s see you give him one now.”

“I — He doesn’t need it now.”

“Antun, did you poison Tommy Harris?”

“I swear I didn’t! I barely knew him. Why should I kill him?”

“Then tell me what’s in this bottle.”

“It’s nothing. An elixir for the dog.”

“If you won’t give it to him, drink some yourself.”

“Michael, be reasonable. I had nothing to do with Harris’s death.”

“It’s poison, isn’t it? That girl China was right when she said Gypsies know about poisons. I didn’t learn much myself, up in the hills, but with all your travels you probably picked up a few things.”

The trainer’s expression was bleak. “I can explain it if you’ll only give me a chance. Wait a day or so, that’s all I ask.”

“All right,” Michael finally agreed. That night in bed he reflected on how little he knew about this man Colonel Segar had recommended, this man who might be carrying a nameless poison in his bag.

At breakfast Chris Daum came to him with some information. “When Harris came back the other evening, upset because he’d lost something on the subway, he told one of the other jockeys it was a little leather-bound diary he kept of all his races. He was really frantic to get it back.”

“Maybe he was going to write a book,” Michael speculated. “Wasn’t there a British jockey who wrote about his racing career?”

“There’ve been several. One of them, Dick Francis, became a famous mystery writer.” She thought about it for a moment. “I wonder if the loss of that diary might be connected to his death.”

“Didn’t you say that Paris maintains a warehouse for items lost around the city?”

Chris nodded. “I told Tommy about it, but he was dead before he could go looking for it.”

“Suppose we went there. Do you know where it is?”

“I was there once. It’s a huge place in the southern Fifteenth Arrondissement. They claim a truckload of objects arrives daily just from the metro.”

“Let’s go take a look,” he suggested. “We’re not racing today.”

They drove into Paris in Chris’s car, negotiating the curving roads of the Bois de Boulogne until they reached the Avenue Victor Hugo. Then, after numerous turns too complicated for Michael to follow, Chris pulled into the parking lot of an immense, nondescript warehouse in an industrial part of the city. The reception room, up a short flight of stairs, was a large space hung with photos illustrating the office’s history.

“Quite a place, isn’t it?” the clerk behind the desk said as they looked over the historic documents. “It was established two hundred years ago by Napoleon the Third to collect all objects found in the streets of Paris. We have hundreds of visitors a day, searching for lost treasures, or at least a misplaced cell phone.”

“We’re looking for a small leather-bound diary,” Michael told him. “It was left on the metro day before yesterday.” He guessed at the rest of the description. “It’s written in English, and the owner’s name in the front is Tommy Harris.”

The clerk nodded. “I believe we had a call about that Tuesday evening, just before we closed. Someone from the Longchamp racetrack, a trainer named José something.”

“José Contraer?” Chris asked.

“I believe that was the name. He said his jockey had lost a diary in the metro, but I told him the items collected that day wouldn’t arrive here until yesterday.”

“Did he come for it?”

“Not while I was on duty.”

“How are things arranged, by date or by type of item?” Michael wondered.

“By item. We have about thirty-five hundred cell phones down there at the moment,” he answered, gesturing toward the floor.

“Could we go down and take a look?”

“I’m afraid the public’s not allowed into the warehouse. Some of the items there are quite valuable. We once found a pouch of diamonds, lost by a woman from New York. We have human skulls, perhaps left by medical students, some pistols, a wooden leg, almost anything you could imagine. But if you will write out your description of the item I will see if I can locate it.”

He took the description and disappeared into the back room. Another clerk came out to tend to some new arrivals. One was a girl who had lost her motorcycle helmet at an outdoor café on the Left Bank. “This is quite a place,” Michael marveled. “Every city should have one.”

Presently their clerk returned, carrying a small leather-bound volume wrapped in a sheet of paper and a rubber band. “This might be what you’re looking for,” he told them. “I’ll need to see some identification before I can release it.”

“I’m not Tommy Harris,” Michael admitted. “He was killed at the track Tuesday night. But he desperately wanted to recover this diary of his racing career. We want to give it to his family.”

“Well,” the clerk said a bit uncertainly, “I don’t know.”

“I was a fellow jockey of his at Longchamp,” Chris said, showing her identification card. “And this man is a horse owner.”

He studied their cards and wrote down their names. “All right,” he said finally, sliding the diary across the counter to Michael, who quickly opened it and saw Tommy Harris’s name on page one.

“Let’s go look at this in the car,” he told Chris.

The diary went back only three years, and started when Harris was still racing in England. The name and age of the horse, trainer, and owner were given, along with the date and place of the race, the time, and the finishing position. The first several entries were out of the money, but gradually there were second- and third-place winners, along with an occasional first. In the margin after some races, three-letter abbreviations began to appear. EPO was one of them.

Chris pointed to it. “That could refer to the hormone EPO, administered to increase red blood cells. It’s called blood doping and is illegal at most tracks.”

“Perhaps that’s why he left England,” Michael said, pointing out that after a gap of a few months Tommy Harris was racing in Spain and France. “Antun said he saw him race in Spain.”

Chris turned a page of the diary. “Here’s the first listing of José Contraer’s name as owner and trainer. Here’s another EPO, and a new set of initials — COB. What could that mean?”

“It seems to appear mostly with older horses.” He flipped to the last page but there was no entry for the previous day’s race. Tommy Harris hadn’t lived to ride Matador at Longchamp that day.

“We’d better get back and show these entries to Antun,” she said. “He might know what COB stands for.”

“I’m afraid he might,” Michael said. “Remember that bottle of yellow liquid.”

Antun was not at the track and when they checked their rooms neither he nor his borzoi was anywhere in sight. “He must be walking the dog,” Chris said. “I’m going to the Spaniard’s place to ask him about this diary. He might be familiar with some of those abbreviations.”

Michael went over to the canteen, thinking he might find some jockeys relaxing after the day’s races. Instead he ran into Pierre Plante. The secretary was clearly agitated. “The detectives were here a short time ago. They have a preliminary autopsy report on Harris.”

“Was it poison?”

He nodded. “But not what anyone expected. They wanted to know if we’d seen any snakes around the track.”

“Snakes?”

“Apparently he was killed by a poisonous snake, though they can’t find any puncture wounds on the body.”

“What kind of snake?” Michael asked, though even as he asked the question he already knew what the answer would be.

“That’s the really odd part. They need more tests to be certain, but they think it was a cobra.”

Michael remembered the abbreviation COB in the diary and something else clicked in his memory. He stopped a startled China Tapson as she was leaving the canteen and blurted, “When did José hire you? Yesterday you said we assumed it would be Tommy riding Matador. But you knew he wouldn’t be even before he died, didn’t you?”

“José hired me Tuesday night, before dinner. He paid me well, too,” the girl admitted.

Michael was running now, headed for José Contraer’s apartment. He was halfway across the stable area when he realized he wasn’t alone. Rasputin had appeared from somewhere to join him, unmindful of someone’s shout to “Get that dog out of here.”

Then he saw Contraer, wrestling the diary from Chris’s hand as he shoved her aside. “Let her go, José,” he called out.

“This is none of your affair,” the Spaniard replied. “The diary belonged to my jockey.”

“And when he lost it you killed him,” Michael said. “He’d used abbreviations to record any time drugs were used on the horses he rode.”

Chris had moved away from him and Michael realized that Antun had come running up after his borzoi. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Contraer’s hand came out of his belt holding a knife. He swung it at Michael, but Antun jumped between them, holding the blade he wasn’t supposed to carry. “Do you want a knife fight with a Rom, scum?”

The Spaniard thought better of it and lowered his weapon. “I had nothing to do with his death.”

But Michael knew differently. “The autopsy shows he died of snake poison, most likely cobra venom. When I heard that, I remembered something I’d been told a long time ago, that horses with pain and stiffness in their joints can be helped by a numbing injection of cobra venom. Of course it’s illegal at most tracks, just as EPO and electric shock devices are illegal. It’s not the sort of thing a jockey would carry with him, but an unscrupulous trainer might.” He avoided glancing in Bura’s direction as he said those words. “Snake venom is usually yellow in color. It could be mixed with beer without being noticed.”

José Contraer smiled. “Then you must know that snake venom is usually harmless when swallowed. People often suck it out of snakebites to save someone’s life.”

“Cobra venom may be injurious if swallowed. You were safe enough drinking only a little from that beer bottle, but you must have known your jockey Harris suffered from ulcers. When that venom hit the open sores in his stomach, death was a certainty.”

“Maybe someone else poisoned him that way, but not me.”

“No? You said you knew nothing about Harris losing his diary on the metro, but you phoned the Paris lost-and-found department on Tuesday looking for it. You couldn’t get there to claim it yesterday because you were needed at the track, and we must have beaten you to it this morning. You also pretended to search for a replacement jockey, but you’d already asked China Tapson about riding Matador before Harris was poisoned. When Harris told you he’d lost that diary listing the drugged horses he’d ridden, you decided you had to kill him before he told anyone else about it.”

The fight had gone out of Contraer. He stared at their three faces and knew it was over. “Harris was afraid that diary would fall into the track secretary’s hands and he’d be barred from racing. He was going to confess everything to save himself. Blame everything on me.”

Michael summoned Pierre Plante, who listened to their story and promptly phoned the police. Later in their apartment Michael played with Rasputin while Chris prepared some food. “Get rid of the rest of your cobra venom,” he told Bura. “I don’t want that or anything else injected into Renegade. He’s going to win or lose on his own.”

The trainer nodded reluctantly. “Will you be going back home now?”

“Not until we have another try at winning at Longchamp.”

Copyright © 2006 Edward D. Hoch