Derby Day (23 page)

Mr Happerton’s gaze took in the quivering horse, the spilled oil and the raised arm all in a moment. He was horribly afraid – afraid of the blood on the horse’s flank, and the terror in his eyes, but a part of him felt also an inexpressible relief. Whatever might have happened, Tiberius was at any rate not dead. ‘What on earth has been going on? What is the matter with Tiberius?’

Jem had begun gingerly to pat the horse’s flank with the blanket-end, which Tiberius suffered him to do.

‘Someone have broke in through the side door in the night – see there how the bolt is forced and the straw all thrown about. Whoever it was has cut Tiberius on the flank, and – here again – on the foreleg. It’s my belief it were done lately, too, for when I came in here ten minutes since I heered a noise of broke glass very like a lamp being turned over.’

All this time Captain Raff had been edging forward at Mr Happerton’s side, like a terrier anxious to get at a rat. ‘The confounded villain,’ he now yelled. ‘We must search the estate, find him and have him hanged.’

‘You’re the bravest fellow that ever there was, Raff, and I always said so,’ Mr Happerton remarked, almost wearily, and then, addressing himself to Jem Claypole: ‘He seems quieter now. See if you can get that bridle around his neck. There, old fellow’ – this to Tiberius – ‘I shan’t hurt you, even if some other scoundrel has.’

Captain Raff looked as if he would like to make another rush, but Mr Happerton pushed him away, went over to the horse, and, taking great care – for the animal reared up at his approach – made a close inspection of his injuries, which were as Jem had described them. There was a great gash on the horse’s flank, from which blood oozed forth, and another, lesser, mark somewhere above his forehock.

‘Very well,’ Mr Happerton said. ‘Jem Claypole, I am obliged to you. Heaven knows what might have happened had you come a moment later. Now, you should have the property searched and send someone for the constable.’ As Mr Happerton pronounced these instructions, his eye fell on incidentals: a mouse creeping through the dirt a dozen feet away; a line of ancient horse-brasses that hung on the mouldering plaster; a splash of bright blood upon the straw. ‘As for you, Raff, you had better ride into Scroop as fast as you can and bring the vet back with you.’

‘I should like to take a knife to the d——d villain that did it,’ said Captain Raff stoutly. But he consented to saddle up a horse and gallop off into Scroop as he was bidden. Jem Claypole went off to execute his commissions. Mr Happerton, with another glance at Tiberius, whose nervous terror seemed somewhat to have abated, went back into the house to complete his toilet.

*

There is rather a gash in his flank
, Mr Happerton wrote to his wife
, and no one save Curbishley cares to go near him, but I think he will do. Raff is being very martial and belligerent, saying it is all a plot, and ready to fight a duel with anyone who says otherwise. If you have a moment, you might tell Mr Gaffney that all is well – or nearly well – as I know this is an affair in which he takes an interest. My regards to your father, and tell him I hope that he is comfortable, and that I shall see him before very long
.

Your affectionate husband

G. Happerton

*

‘There is some mischief about the horse,’ Mrs Rebecca said to her maid as she looked at the letter next morning in Belgrave Square.

‘You don’t say, ma’am,’ Nokes remarked, continuing to buff away at an area of the mahogany sideboard that did not in the least need polishing.

‘Mr Happerton says that someone has broken into the stables and tried to injure him with a knife!’

‘Indeed, ma’am,’ Nokes went on, demurely polishing, but it is a fact that half an hour later she retrieved the letter from the bureau in which her mistress had placed it. And then a dozen hours later the landlord of a public house on the northernmost side of the park could be heard advising his customers that Tiberius, that everybody thought was such a certainty, had – had his throat cut, been found dead in a ditch, had had all his limbs broke, and whatever he did, alive or dead, would certainly not be competing in the Derby.

Mrs Rebecca, as anyone who has so far considered her character will admit, was a shrewd woman. If the importance of Tiberius to her husband and to the world in general had not previously been apparent to her, then in the next few days it became abundantly clear. A report of the incident appeared in the
Morning Chronicle
. Sporting gentlemen talked about it at their clubs. The Blue Riband was wild with excitement, and half a dozen of its members seriously proposed to hire a chaise and drive instantly to Scroop to hear the story from the horse’s – or rather Mr Happerton’s – mouth. Mr Gaffney, having heard the news, came straightaway to tea, was shown the letter, patted Mrs Rebecca’s hand and went away reassured. Neither was Tiberius the sole topic by which the sporting world now declared itself to be animated. It was one of those times – nobody quite knows how they come about, and can only register the fact of their coming – when the public decides to take a more than usual interest in the Turf. A sporting baronet had been found dead in his dressing room with his brains blown out and a piteous note at his side, and it had been suggested that this tragedy was the result of his owing ever so many thousands of pounds to Mr Macready, the society bookmaker. The police had raided several public houses in the Fitzrovia district and confiscated betting slips sufficient, as one newspaper put it, to paper a drawing room.

All this, unhappily, had led to an outpouring of moral sentiment. A slum missioner, whose duty directed him each day to the rookeries of Whitechapel and Jago Court, maintained that half the population of the East End spent the greater part of their wages on gambling. A bishop inveighed against it in the House, a dozen provincial pulpits allowed his case, and
Punch
was very satirical, both about the proscribing clergymen and the recreation they presumed to condemn. All this Mrs Rebecca saw and wondered how she could make redound to her advantage. Meanwhile, she wrote the most dutiful letters back to Mr Happerton in Lincolnshire, said that she was very sorry to hear about the poor horse, hoped that Captain Raff was not continuing to make a fool of himself, and remained his affectionate wife, R. Happerton. All of which Mr Happerton looked at very keenly and by which he was briefly consoled.

*

The course at Louth is not particularly extensive. If truth be known it is not much more than a large field to which the addition of various posts and barriers has contrived a circuit perhaps half a mile in length, for the sporting gentlemen of Lincoln generally take their horses to Leicestershire or even further afield. There is a little grandstand and a couple of rails for the communality, and a paddock, and it was here that Mr Happerton and Captain Raff stood watching Mr Curbishley exercising Tiberius on the greensward.

‘Looks a trifle stiff,’ said Captain Raff gloomily. The spring sun was making his eyes water. ‘See how he is putting his right foreleg down. Just where that d——d villain stabbed him. The police have no idea who it was, I suppose?’

‘None at all.’

‘That fellow Abernethy who owns Pendragon is as great a scoundrel as I ever met. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he sent a man up here to do it.’

‘What nonsense you talk, Raff,’ said Mr Happerton, not quite as good-humouredly as he sounded, who knew Mr Abernethy to be the meekest little man in Christendom, bullied by his children and seen in the West End running errands for his wife’s mama. ‘Abernethy would have to be mad to do such a thing.’

‘Mad or not, he should be hanged for it,’ said Captain Raff fervently.

The horse having now described a circle and returned to the place from which it had originally set off, Mr Happerton called up: ‘Well, Curbishley, how do you find him?’

‘Well enough, I think,’ Mr Curbishley said. He was a lean, strong man with the additional advantage of riding under ten stone. ‘There is no one to touch him here, I should say. Have you seen the card?’

‘Nothing I ever heard of in my life before. Mr Jenks’s “Calliope” is a nice little mare, I heard a fellow say. Who is he?’

‘Oh he has good horses enough,’ Mr Curbishley said. He sat up in the saddle, feet balanced on his stirrups, staring out across the paddock and the pale horizon beyond it. ‘But he don’t race ’em so much, you know.’

‘Well then, I should go at it gentle-like,’ Mr Happerton advised. ‘Don’t be afraid to pull up if, if – well, you know what I mean.’

Mr Curbishley said he knew what he meant, brought the point of his whip up to his chin, gave a little smile – as a sporting man, his attitude to Mr Happerton was one of complete neutrality, and if Beelzebub had bought Tiberius he would have taken orders from him quite as happily – and began to trot once more towards the paddock’s edge.

Mr Happerton, meanwhile, had his eye on the racecard, a little slip of paper, villainously printed. ‘“The Tin Man: Mr Flaherty. Servitor: O. Jermy Esq.” Heavens, Raff. What is the matter now?’

‘It is that Curbishley,’ Captain Raff complained. ‘He will pull so, you know. The beasts can’t stand it.’

Mr Happerton found increasingly that there were certain things he could not stand, and that Captain Raff was one of them. For all the mildness of his temper – he had been mild all morning, mild in the carriage that had taken them from Scroop, very mild in the tavern where they had taken luncheon, milder still in his negotiations with the clerk of the course – he was deeply uneasy. Should the race not go according to plan, he knew that a scheme in which he had invested a great deal of time, money and ingenuity would be damaged beyond repair. It might even be doubted how he could refashion his career, should Tiberius fail him. These anxieties burned in his head quite as much as the cries of the old women selling sherbet outside the beer tent and the shouts of the Lincolnshire bookmakers.

‘They’re uncommon down on racing here, I believe,’ Captain Raff said sadly. There was a kind of dull astonishment in his eye, as if he could not imagine how anyone could have a down on the sport of kings. ‘Why, the magistrates tried to close the course down last Michaelmas, a fellow told me, on account of drunkenness.’

‘Look, there is Curbishley waving,’ Mr Happerton said. ‘What does he want, I wonder?’

But it turned out that Mr Curbishley wanted only some minor readjustment of his bridle, and Mr Happerton sighed with relief. Another five minutes and the race had begun.

It was Captain Raff’s immemorial habit, when attending race-meetings, to station himself at the rail with a pair of field glasses, and then, oblivious of the crowds who swarmed around him, relay the finer points of the competition back to the friends he had brought with him. Shoulder to shoulder with the rustic audience, this service he now delighted to perform for Mr Happerton.

‘… Well now, off they go. Frightfully bad piece of starting, too. Why, the horse was a yard behind the line, at least … Now, sir, there is plenty of room for both of us … I see Curbishley is taking him away from the rail. Well, I daresay that is the thing to do … Indeed, sir, you
shan’t
stand there’ (it was a marvel how Captain Raff’s natural timidity deserted him at race-meetings and he became quite bellicose). ‘Now, where has that brown horse come from? Calliope, I suppose. Tremendous little fellow riding her, too. Wonder how he stays on? Ugh! There’s a fellow down there – never saw such a lot of potholes in my life. Stuck, is he? No, he is getting to his feet. Come now, Curbishley. Why does he stay with the pack, I wonder …? I shall thank you to keep your elbows to yourself, my man … Now, where are they? If I were Mr Jenks I should not put any wagers on Calliope, indeed I shouldn’t. Dear me, but that’s a sharp turn – I wonder it’s allowed. Why’s Curbishley standing up? I declare, he’ll fall over. A little grey’s making a run – quite a stylish horse. No stamina though – see the foam coming out of her mouth! Looks half done. Here comes Curbishley. That’s it, sir! Always very sparing with the whip, Curbishley, but never mind. Three lengths clear, I should say. Is he quickening, do you think, or is it the others fading away …? My good man, I shall certainly thrash you if you come a step nearer … Five lengths! That Calliope you see is nowhere – a lot of carthorses. Ten lengths, Happerton, and could have had more …’

*

In Belgrave Square Mrs Rebecca stood at her dressing table, hairbrush in hand, and thought about Mr Gaffney who, coming to tea again, had disclosed, amid much handpatting and many confidential remarks, that Tiberius was now regarded as a certainty for the Derby and that the price put upon him had fallen to 5–1.

What
Bell’s Life
thought about it

IT BEHOVES US to state our opinion of the great Derby race. While we are happy to vouchsafe this information, we observe that we are not a prophet. If prophecy is required, then recourse should be made to that modern seer, Captain Crewe of the
Star
. We insist, moreover, that though we may note the fact of a horse’s entry into a race, we cannot guarantee its appearance on the Epsom course. Only Mr Dorling’s cards can do that, and even they, it seems, are not infallible. Of the smaller fry – and we mean by this term no disparagement – Mr Abernethy’s PENDRAGON is a smart horse (though whence came his Cornish name, when he was bred up in Barnstaple, we cannot guess), a trifle finicky and uncertain on his feet – he threw Joe Darby at Croxton Park and broke that gentleman’s thigh at the hip – but sweet-tempered and generally biddable. Of Lord Martindale’s SEVERUS there is not much to say. Our correspondent, who saw him at Wincanton early in the season, declared him lively, but with a propensity to hug the rail. He was got by NECROMANCER of WESTERN STAR and may be thought not yet to have honoured this noble parentage …