Nerve

Nine

I had known the psychiatrist all my life as he was a friend of my father, and, I hoped, I knew him well enough to ring him up for help on a morning which he always reserved for golf. At eight o’clock I telephoned to his house in Wimpole Street where he lived in a flat above his consulting rooms.

He asked after my father. He sounded in a hurry.

‘Can I come and see you, sir?’ I said.

‘Now? No. Saturday. Golf,’ he said economically.

‘Please... it won’t take long.’

There was a brief pause.

‘Urgent?’ A professional note to his question.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Come at once, then. I’m due at Wentworth at ten.’

‘I haven’t shaved...’ I said, catching sight of myself in the looking-glass and realising what a wreck I looked.

‘Do you want to shave, or do you want to talk?’ he said, exasperated.

‘Talk,’ I said.

‘Then arrive,’ he said, and put down his receiver.

I took a taxi, and he opened the door to me with a corner of toast and marmalade in his hand. The eminent Mr. Claudius Mellit, whose patients usually saw him in striped trousers and black jacket, was sensibly attired for winter golf in waterproof trousers and a comfortably sloppy Norwegian sweater. He gave me a piercing preliminary glance and gestured, ‘Upstairs.’

I followed him up. He finished his breakfast on the way. We went into his dining-room, where he gave me a seat at the oval mahogany table and some lukewarm coffee in a gold-rimmed cup.

‘Now,’ he said, sitting down opposite me.

‘Suppose...’ I began, and stopped. It didn’t seem so easy, now that I was there. What had seemed obvious and manifest at five in the morning was now tinged with doubt. The dawn hours had shown me a pattern I believed in, but in the full light of day I felt sure it was going to sound preposterous.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you really need help my golf can go hang. When I said on the telephone that I was in a hurry I hadn’t seen the state you are in... and if you will excuse my saying so, your suit looks as if you had slept in it.’

‘Well, yes, I did,’ I said, surprised.

‘Relax then, and tell me all.’ He grinned, a big bear of a man, fifty years old and formidably wise.

‘I’m sorry I look so untidy and unshaven,’ I began.

‘And sunken-eyed and hollow-cheeked,’ he murmured, smiling.

‘But I don’t feel as bad as I suppose I look. Not any more. I won’t keep you away from your golf if you’ll just tell me...’

‘Yes?’ he waited for me calmly.

‘Suppose I had a sister,’ I said, ‘who was as good a musician as Mother and Father, and I was the only one in the entire family to lack their talent — as you know I am — and I felt they despised me for lacking it, how would you expect me to act?’

‘They don’t despise you,’ he protested.

‘No... but if they did, would there be any way in which I could persuade them — and myself — that I had a very good excuse for not being a musician?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said instantly, ‘I’d expect you to do exactly what you have done. Find something you can do, and pursue it fanatically until in your own sphere you reach the standard of your family in theirs.’

I felt as if I’d been hit in the solar plexus. So simple an explanation of my compulsion to race had never occurred to me.

‘That... that isn’t what I meant,’ I said helplessly. ‘But when I come to think of it, I see it is true.’ I paused. ‘What I really meant to ask was, could I, when I was growing up, have developed a physical infirmity to explain away my failure? Paralysis, for instance, so that I simply couldn’t play a violin or a piano or any musical instrument? An apparently honourable way out?’

He looked at me for a few moments, unsmiling and intent.

‘If you were a certain type of person, yes, it’s possible. But not in your case. You had better stop waltzing round it and ask me your question straight out. The real question. I am very well accustomed to hypothetical questions... I meet them every day... but if you want a trustable answer you’ll have to ask the real question.’

‘There are two,’ I said. I still hesitated. So very much, my whole life, depended on his answers. He waited patiently.

I said at last, ‘Could a boy whose family were all terrific cross-country riders develop asthma to hide the fact that he was afraid of horses?’ My mouth was dry.

He didn’t answer at once. He said, ‘What is the other question?’

‘Could that boy, as a man, develop such a loathing for steeplechase jockeys that he would try to smash their careers? Even if, as you said, he had found something else which he could do extremely well?’

‘I suppose this man has that sister you mentioned?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She is getting to be the best girl point-to-point rider for a generation.’

He slouched back in his chair.

‘It obviously matters so desperately to you, Robert, that I can’t give you an answer without knowing more about it. I’m not giving you a couple of casual yeses and find afterwards I’ve let you stir up disastrous trouble for all sorts of people. You must tell me why you ask these questions.’

‘But your golf,’ I said.

‘I’ll go later,’ he said calmly. ‘Talk.’

So I talked. I told him what had happened to Art, and to Grant, and to Peter Cloony, and Tick-Tock, and myself.

I told him about Maurice Kemp-Lore. ‘He comes from a family who ride as soon as walk, and he’s the right build for steeplechasing. But horses give him asthma, and that, everyone knows, is why he doesn’t race himself. Well... it’s a good reason, isn’t it? Of course there are asthmatics who do ride — asthma doesn’t stop people who think that racing is worth the wheezing — but no one would dream of blaming a man who didn’t.’

I paused, but as he made no comment, I went on, ‘You can’t help being drawn to him. You can’t imagine the spell of his personality unless you’ve felt it. You can see people wake up and sparkle when he speaks to them. He has the ear of everyone from the Stewards down... and I think he uses his influence to sow seeds of doubt about jockeys’ characters.’

‘Go on,’ Claudius said, his face showing nothing.

‘The men who seem to be especially under his spell are Corin Kellar, a trainer, and John Ballerton, a member of the ruling body. Neither of them ever has a good word to say for jockeys. I think Kemp-Lore picked them out as friends solely because they had the right sort of mean-mindedness for broadcasting every damaging opinion he insinuated into their heads. I think all the ruinous rumours start with Kemp-Lore, and that even the substance behind the rumours is mostly his work. Why isn’t he content with having so much? The jockeys he is hurting like him and are pleased when he talks to them. Why does he need to destroy them?’

He said, ‘If this were a hypothetical case I would tell you that such a man could both hate and envy his father and his sister — and have felt both these emotions from early childhood. But because he knows these feelings are wrong he represses them, and the aggression is unfortunately transferred on to people who show the same qualities and abilities that he hates in his father. Such individuals can be helped. They can be understood, and treated, and forgiven.’

‘I can’t forgive him,’ I said. ‘And I’m going to stop him.’

He considered me. ‘You must make sure of your facts,’ he said, stroking his thumbnail down his upper lip. ‘At present you are just guessing. And as I’ve had no opportunity to talk to him you’ll get no more from me than an admission that your suspicions of Kemp-Lore are possibly correct. Not even probably correct. He is a public figure of some standing. You are making a very serious accusation. You need cast-iron facts. Until you have them, there is always the chance that you have interpreted what has happened to you as malice from outside in order to explain away your own inner failure. Asthma of the mind, in fact.’

‘Don’t psychologists ever take a simple view?’ I said, sighing.

He shook his head. ‘Few things are simple.’

‘I’ll get the facts. Starting today,’ I said. I stood up. ‘Thank you for seeing me, and being so patient, and I’m sincerely sorry about your golf.’

‘I won’t be very late,’ he reassured me, ambling down the stairs and opening his front door. On the doorstep, shaking hands, he said as if making up his mind. ‘Be careful, Robert. Go gently. If you are right about Kemp-Lore, and it is just possible that you are, you must deal with him thoughtfully. Persuade him to ask for treatment. Don’t drive him too hard. His sanity may be in your hands.’

I said flatly, ‘I can’t look at it from your point of view. I don’t think of Kemp-Lore as ill, but as wicked.’

‘Where illness ends and crime begins...’ he shrugged. ‘It has been debated for centuries, and no two people agree. But take care, take care.’ He turned to go in. ‘Remember me to your parents.’ He smiled, and shut the door.

Round a couple of corners, first during a luxurious shave in a fresh-smelling barber’s and second over a triple order of eggs and bacon in the café next door, I bent my mind to the problem of how the cast-iron facts were to be dug up. On reflection, there seemed to be precious few of them to work on, and in the digging, to start with at least, I was going to come up against the barrier of pity and contempt which my recent performances had raised. Nasty medicine; but if I wanted a cure, I’d have to take it.

Using the café’s telephone, I rang up Tick-Tock.

‘Are you riding this afternoon?’ I asked.

He said, ‘Do me a favour, pal. No unkind questions so early in the day. In a word — negative.’ A pause. ‘And you?’ Innocently, too innocently.

‘You’re a bastard,’ I said.

‘So my best friends tell me.’

‘I want the car,’ I said.

‘Not if you’re thinking of driving it over Beachy Head.’

‘I’m not,’ I said.

‘Well, I’m relieved to hear it. But if you change your mind, let me know and I’ll join you.’ His voice was light and mocking; the desperate truth underneath needed no stating.

‘I want to call at some stables,’ I began.

‘Whose?’ he interrupted.

‘Several people’s... about six altogether, I think, apart from Axminster’s. And Kellar’s. I’ll have to go there as well.’

‘You’ve got a nerve,’ said Tick-Tock.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You’re about the only person in the country who thinks so.’

‘Damn it... I didn’t mean...’

I grinned into the telephone. ‘Save it. Where’s the car now?’

‘Outside the window.’

‘I’ll come down to Newbury by train and pick it up, if you’ll meet me at the station,’ I said.

‘It’s no use going to any stables today,’ he said. ‘The trainers will all be at the races.’

‘Yes, I sincerely hope so,’ I agreed.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘Retrieving the fallen fortunes of the House of Finn,’ I said. ‘I’ll catch the 10.10. You meet it. O.K.?’ And I put the receiver down, hearing and ignoring, a protesting ‘Hey’ before I cut him off.

But when I stepped off the train at Newbury he was waiting, dressed in a dandyish waisted riding jacket of almost eighteenth-century length on top of some unbelievably narrow cavalry cord trousers. He enjoyed his moment ironically while I looked him up and down.

‘Where’s the cravat, the ruffles and the sword?’ I asked.

He said ‘You don’t get the message. I’m tomorrow’s man. My sword will be a do-it-yourself instant anti-radiation kit. You must fit your defence to the danger you meet...’ He grinned.

Young Tick-Tock, I reflected, not for the first time, took an uncompromisingly realistic view of the world.

He opened the car door and settled himself behind the wheel.

‘Where to?’ he said.

‘You’re not coming,’ I said.

‘I certainly am. This car is half mine. Where it goes, I go.’ He was clearly determined. ‘Where to?’

‘Well...’ I got in beside him, fished out of my pocket a list I had made on the train, and showed it to him. ‘These are the stables I want to go to. I’ve tried to arrange them in order so that there isn’t too much back-tracking, but even so it means a lot of driving.’

‘Phew,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of them. Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Oxford, Leicester and Yorkshire... how long will you be staying in each place? We’ll never cover this lot in one day. Especially as you look tired already.’

I glanced at him, but he was looking down at the paper. It was true that I felt tired, but disconcerting that it should be so obvious. I had thought that the shave and breakfast and the return of self-confidence would have wiped away the ravages of the previous day and night.

‘You needn’t come,’ I began.

‘We’ve been through all that,’ he interrupted. ‘We’ll start by going to your digs and mine for overnight things, and then make for Kent. And on the way you can tell me why we’re going.’ He calmly let in the clutch and drove off; and truth to tell I was very glad of his company.

We collected our things, and Tick-Tock pointed the Mini-Cooper’s blunt nose towards the first stable on the list, Corin Kellar’s, in Hampshire.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘The works.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to tell you why we’re going. Listen and watch, and then you tell me.’

‘You’re a cagey blighter,’ he said, without arguing. He added, ‘I suppose you’ve taken into account all that about saps rushing in where angels wouldn’t plonk their holy feet? I mean, to put it mildly, we are neither of us in the red carpet bracket just now. Strictly doomsville, us.’

‘You are so right,’ I said, smiling.

Tick-Tock turned his head and gave me a surprised stare.

‘Keep your eyes on the road,’ I said mildly.

‘I’ll never know you,’ he said. ‘I’d have thought you’d take it very hard... what has happened... but since I picked you up at the station I’ve felt more cheerful than I have for weeks.’ His foot went down on the accelerator and he began to whistle.

We arrived at Corin’s extensive, well-groomed stable while the lads were doing up the horses after the second morning exercise. Arthur, the head lad, was crossing the yard with a bucket of oats when we climbed out of the little car, and the crinkling smile with which he usually greeted me got half-way to his eyes before he remembered. I saw the embarrassment take over and the welcome fade away.

‘The guvnor isn’t here,’ he said awkwardly. ‘He’s gone to the races.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Can I speak to Davey?’

Davey was the lad who looked after Shantytown.

‘I suppose so,’ said Arthur doubtfully, ‘but you won’t make no trouble?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘No trouble. Where is he?’

‘Fourth box from the end over that side,’ he said, pointing. Tick-Tock and I walked over, and found Davey tossing and tidying the straw bed round a big chestnut. Shantytown. We leaned over the bottom half of the door, and watched Davey’s expression too change from warmth to disgust. He was a short, tough, sixteen-year-old boy with flaming red hair and an intolerant mouth. He turned his back on us and ran his hand down the horse’s neck. Then he spat into the straw. Tick-Tock took a sharp breath and his hands clenched into fists.

I said quickly, ‘Davey, there’s a quid for you if you feel like talking a bit.’

‘What about?’ he said, without turning round.

‘About the day I rode Shantytown at Dunstable,’ I said. ‘Three weeks ago. Do you remember?’

‘I’ll say I remember,’ he said offensively.

I ignored his tone. ‘Well, tell me what happened from the moment you arrived on the course until I got up on Shantytown in the parade ring.’

‘What the hell do you mean,’ he said, wheeling round and coming over to the door. ‘Nothing happened. What should happen?’

I took a pound note out of my wallet and gave it to him. He looked at it for a second or two, then shrugged, and thrust it into his pocket.

‘Start when you set off from here. Don’t leave anything out,’ I said.

‘Are you off your nut?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said, ‘and I want my quid’s worth.’

He shrugged again, but said, ‘We went in the horse box from here to Dunstable, and...’

‘Did you stop on the way?’ I asked.

‘Yes, Joe’s Caff, same as always when we go to Dunstable.’

‘Did you see anyone there you knew?’

‘Well... Joe, and the girl who pours out the char.’

‘No one you wouldn’t expect?’ I pressed.

‘No, of course not. Like I said, we got to the course and unloaded the horses, two of them, in the stables there, and went and got another cuppa and a wad in the canteen, and then I went round the bookies, like, and put ten bob on Bloggs in the first, and went up on the stands and watched it get stuffed... sodding animal didn’t try a yard... and then I went back to the stables and got Shantytown and put on his paddock clothing and led him out into the paddock...’ His voice was bored as he recited the everyday racing routine of his job.

‘Could anyone have given Shantytown anything to eat or drink in the stables, say a bucket of water just before the race?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be so ruddy stupid. Of course not. Who ever heard of giving a horse anything to eat or drink before a race? A mouthful of water, I dare say, a couple of hours beforehand, but a bucketful...’ The scorn in his voice suddenly changed to anger. ‘Here, you’re not suggesting I gave him a drink, are you? Oh no, mate, you’re not putting the blame on me for the balls you made of it.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no, Davey. Calm down. How tight is the security on the Dunstable stables? Would anyone but a lad or a trainer get in there?’

‘No,’ he said, more moderately, ‘it’s as tight as a drum. The last gateman got sacked for letting an owner in alone without a trainer, and the new man’s as pernickety as they come.’

‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘We’ve got you as far as the paddock.’

‘Well, I walked the horse round the assembly ring for a bit, waiting for the guvnor to bring the saddle up from the weighing-room...’ He smiled suddenly, as at some pleasant memory ‘... and then when he came I took Shanty into one of the saddling boxes and the Guvnor saddled up, and then I took Shanty down into the parade ring and walked him round until they called me over and you got up on him.’ He stopped. ‘I can’t see what you wanted to hear all that for.’

‘What happened while you were walking round the assembly ring?’ I asked. ‘Something you enjoyed? Something you smile about when you remember it?’

He sniffed. ‘It’s nothing you’d want to know.’

I said, ‘The quid was for telling everything.’

‘Oh very well then, but it’s nothing to do with racing. It was that chap on the telly, Maurice Kemp-Lore, he came over and spoke to me and admired the horse. He said he was a friend of the owner, old man Ballerton. He patted Shanty and gave him a couple of sugar knobs, which I wasn’t too keen on, mind, but you can’t be narky with a chap like him, somehow, and he asked me what his chances were, and I said pretty good... more fool me... and then he went away again. That’s all. I told you it wasn’t anything to do with racing.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, never mind. Thanks for trying.’

I straightened up and turned away from the door, and Tick-Tock had taken a step or two towards the car when Davey said under his breath behind me, ‘Trying... you two could both do a bit more of that yourselves, if you ask me.’ But Tick-Tock fortunately didn’t hear, and we folded ourselves back into the Mini-Cooper and drove un-mourned out of the yard.

Tick-Tock exploded. ‘Anyone would think you’d killed your mother and robbed your grandmother, the way they look at you. Losing your nerve isn’t a crime.’

‘Unless you can put up with a few harmless sneers you’d better get out at the next railway station,’ I said cheerfully, having blessedly discovered in the last half-hour that they no longer hurt. ‘And I haven’t lost my nerve. Not yet, anyway.’

He opened his mouth and shut it again and flicked a glance at me, and drove another twenty miles without speaking.

We reached the next yard on my list shortly before one o’clock, and disturbed the well-to-do farmer, who trained his own horses, just as he was about to sit down to his lunch. When he opened the door to us a warm smell of stew and cabbage edged past him, and we could hear a clatter of saucepans in the kitchen. I had ridden several winners for him in the past two years before disgracing his best horse the previous week, and after he had got over the unpleasant shock of finding me on his doorstep, he asked us, in a friendly enough fashion, to go in for a drink. But I thanked him and refused, and asked where I could find the lad who looked after the horse in question. He came out to the gate with us and pointed to a house down the road.

We winkled the lad out of his digs and into the car, where I gave him a pound and invited him to describe in detail what had happened on the day I had ridden his horse. He was older, less intelligent and less truculent than Davey, but not much more willing. He didn’t see no sense in it, he didn’t. He said so, several times. Eventually I got him started, and then there was no stopping him. Detail I had asked for, and detail I got, solidly, for close on half an hour.

Sandwiched between stripping off the paddock clothing and buckling up the saddle came the news that Maurice Kemp-Lore had lounged into the saddling box, said some complimentary things to the farmer-owner about his horse, meanwhile feeding the animal some lumps of sugar, and had drifted away again leaving behind him the usual feeling of friendliness and pleasure.

‘A proper corker, ain’t he?’ was how the lad put it.

I waited until he had reached the point when the farmer had given me a leg up on the horse, and then stopped him and thanked him for his efforts. We left him muttering that we were welcome, but he still didn’t see the point.

‘How odd,’ said Tick-Tock pensively as we sped along the road to the next stable, eighty miles away. ‘How odd that Maurice Kemp-Lore...’ but he didn’t finish the sentence; and nor did I.

Two hours later, in Kent, we listened, for another pound, to a gaunt boy of twenty telling us what a smashing fellow that Maurice Kemp-Lore was, how interested he’d been in the horse, how kind to give him some sugar, though it wasn’t really allowed in his stables, but how could you tell a man like that not to, when he was being so friendly? The lad also treated us with a rather offensive superiority, but even Tick-Tock by now had become too interested to care.

‘He drugged them,’ he said flatly, after a long silence, turning on to the Maidstone by-pass. ‘He drugged them to make it look as if you couldn’t ride them... to make everyone believe you’d lost your nerve.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

‘But it’s impossible,’ he protested vehemently. ‘Why on earth should he? It can’t be right. It must be a coincidence that he gave sugar to three horses you rode.’

‘Maybe. We’ll see,’ I said.

And we did see. We went to the stables of every horse (other than James’s) that I had ridden since Shantytown, talking to every lad concerned. And in every single case we heard that Maurice Kemp-Lore had made the lad’s afternoon memorable (before I had blighted it) by admiring the way the lad had looked after his horse, and by offering those tempting lumps of sugar. It took us the whole of Saturday, and all Sunday morning, and we finished the last stable on my list on the edge of the Yorkshire moors at two o’clock in the afternoon. Only because I wanted my facts to be as cast-iron as possible had we gone so far north. Tick-Tock had become convinced in Northamptonshire.

I drove us back to our respective digs in Berkshire, and the following morning, Monday, I walked up to the Axminster stables to see James.

He had just come in from supervising the morning exercise, and the cold downland air had numbed his toes and fingers.

‘Come into the office,’ he said when he saw me waiting. His tone was neutral, but his protruding lower jaw was unrelenting. I followed him in, and he turned on an electric heater to warm his hands.

‘I can’t give you much to ride,’ he said, with his back to me. ‘All the owners have cried off, except one. You’d better look at this; it came this morning.’ He stretched out his hand, picked up a paper from his desk, and held it out to me.

I took it. It was a letter from Lord Tirrold. It said, ‘Dear James, Since our telephone conversation I have been thinking over our decision to replace Finn on Template next Saturday, and I now consider that we should reverse this and allow him to ride as originally planned. It is, I confess, at least as much for our sake as for his, since I do not want it said that I hurried to throw him out at the first possible moment, showing heartless ingratitude after his many wins on my horses. I am prepared for the disappointment of not winning the Midwinter and I apologise to you for robbing you of the chance of adding this prize to your total, but I would rather lose the race than the respect of the racing fraternity. Yours ever, George.’

I put the letter back on the desk.

‘He doesn’t need to worry,’ I said thickly. ‘Template will win.’

‘Do you mean you aren’t going to ride it?’ said James, turning round quickly. There was a damaging note of eagerness in his voice, and he saw that I had heard it. ‘I... I mean...’ he tailed off.

‘James,’ I said, sitting down unasked in one of the battered armchairs. ‘There are a few things I’d like you to know. First, however bad it looks, and whatever you believe, I have not lost my nerve. Second, every single horse I have ridden since that fall three weeks ago has been doped. Not enough to be very noticeable, just enough to make it run like a slug. Third, the dope has been given to all the horses by the same man. Fourth, the dope has been given to the horses on sugar lumps. I should think it was some form of sleeping draught, but I’ve no way of knowing for sure.’ I stopped abruptly.

James stood looking at me with his mouth open, the prominent lower teeth bared to the gums as his lip dropped in shocked disbelief.

I said, ‘Before you conclude that I am out of my mind, do me the one favour of calling in one of the lads, and listening to what he has to say.’

James shut his mouth with a snap. ‘Which lad?’

‘It doesn’t really matter. Any of them whose horse I have ridden in the last three weeks.’

He paused dubiously, but finally went to the door and shouted for someone to find Eddie, the lad who looked after Hugo’s big chestnut. In less than a minute the boy arrived, out of breath, and with his curly fair hair sticking up in an uncombed halo.

James gave me no chance to do the questioning. He said brusquely to Eddie, ‘When did you last talk to Rob?’

The boy looked scared and began to stutter, ‘N-not since l-l-last week.’

‘Since last Friday?’ That was the day James himself had last seen me.

‘No sir.’

‘Very well, then. You remember the big chestnut running badly last Wednesday week?’

‘Yes sir.’ Eddie treated me to a scornful glance.

‘Did anyone give the chestnut a lump of sugar before the race?’ There was now only interest to be heard in James’s voice: the severity was masked.

‘Yes sir,’ said Eddie eagerly. The familiar remembering smile appeared on his grubby face, and I breathed an inward sigh of bottomless relief.

‘Who was it?’

‘Maurice Kemp-Lore, sir. He said how splendidly I looked after my horses, sir. He was leaning over the rails of the assembly ring and he spoke to me as I was going past. So I stopped, and he was ever so nice. He gave the chestnut some sugar, sir, but I didn’t think it would matter as Mr. Hugo is always sending sugar for him anyway.’

‘Thank you, Eddie,’ said James, rather faintly. ‘No matter about the sugar... run along, now.’

Eddie went. James looked at me blankly. The loud clock ticked.

Presently I said, ‘I’ve spent the last two days talking to the lads of all the horses I’ve ridden for other stables since I had that fall. Every one of them told me that Maurice Kemp-Lore gave the horse some lumps of sugar before I rode it. Ingersoll came with me. He heard them too. You’ve only to ask him if you can’t believe it from me.’

‘Maurice never goes near horses at the races,’ James protested, ‘or anywhere else for that matter.’

‘That’s precisely what helped me to understand what was happening,’ I said. ‘I talked to Kemp-Lore on the stands at Dunstable just after Shantytown and two other horses had run hopelessly for me, and he was wheezing quite audibly. He had asthma. Which meant that he had recently been very close to horses. I didn’t give it a thought at the time, but it means a packet to me now.’

‘But Maurice...’ he repeated, unbelievingly. ‘It’s just not possible.’

‘It is, however, possible,’ I said, more coldly than I had any right to, having believed it myself for twelve awful hours, ‘for me to fall apart from a small spot of concussion?’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said uncomfortably. There was a pause. There were two things I wanted James to do to help me: but in view of his ingrained disinclination to do favours for anyone, I did not think my requests would be very enthusiastically received. However, if I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t get.

I said slowly, persuasively, as if the thought had just occurred to me, ‘Let me ride a horse for you... one of your own, if the owners won’t have me... and see for yourself if Kemp-Lore tries to give it sugar. Perhaps you could stick with the horse yourself, all the time? And if he comes up with his sugar lumps, maybe you could manage to knock them out of his hand before the horse eats them. Perhaps you could pick them up yourself and put them in your pocket, and give the horse some sugar lumps of your own instead? Then we would see how the horse runs.’

It was too much trouble; his face showed it. He said, ‘That’s too fantastic. I can’t do things like that.’

‘It’s simple,’ I said mildly, ‘you’ve only to bump his arm.’

‘No,’ he said, but not obstinately. A hopeful no, to my ears. I didn’t press him, knowing from experience that he would irrevocably stick in his toes if urged too vehemently to do anything he did not want to.

I said instead, ‘Aren’t you friendly with that man who arranges the regular dope tests at the races?’ One or two spot checks were taken at every meeting, mainly to deter trainers of doubtful reputation from pepping-up or slowing-down their horses with drugs. At the beginning of each afternoon the Stewards decided which horses to test — for example, the winner of the second race, and the favourite in the fourth race (especially if he was beaten). No one, not even the Stewards, always knew in advance exactly which horses would have their saliva taken, and the value of the whole system lay in this uncertainty.

James followed my thoughts. ‘You mean, will I ask him if any of the horses you have ridden since your fall have been tested for dope in the normal course of events?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Could you possibly do that?’

‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ he said. ‘I will ring him up. But if any of them have been tested and proved negative, you do realise that it will dispose of your wild accusations absolutely?’

‘I do,’ I agreed. ‘Actually, I’ve ridden so many beaten favourites that I can’t think why such systematic doping has not already been discovered.’

‘You really do believe it, don’t you?’ said James, wonderingly.

‘Yes,’ I said, getting up and going to the door. ‘Yes, I believe it. And so will you, James.’

But he shook his head, and I left him staring frozen-faced out of the window, the incredible nature of what I had said to him still losing the battle against his own personal knowledge of Kemp-Lore. James liked the man.