The Silver Falcon (37 page)

Dick Shipley had taken Rocket Man and the others; he stood beside Farrant now, a short, stocky ex-jockey who had made the difficult transition from race riding to training with incredible success. He was a taciturn man, who didn't feel at ease with owners, and he had made it plain to Farrant that so far as the running of his horses was concerned, he wouldn't stand for any interference.

Roy turned to him; Rocket Man had finished his last work and was walking slowly back towards them.

‘Well,' he said. ‘What do you think?'

‘I think he worked very well,' Shipley answered. ‘He's fit and ready to run for his life. I can't say more than that.'

‘You don't think he'll win,' Farrant said flatly. ‘Why the hell don't you say so!'

‘Because I'm not a bloody fortune teller,' Shipley was curt. ‘I'm sending your horse to Epsom to win the race, and further than that I'm not prepared to go. He's second favourite; that ought to satisfy you.'

‘Silver Falcon is five to four,' Farrant said. ‘He's certain to be evens tomorrow. Everyone says he'll beat us.'

‘More people have made mugs of themselves picking the winner at Epsom than any other race in the world,' Shipley said. ‘Falcon can disappoint tomorrow, and your fellow can pull something out of the bag that no one knows he has. A complete outsider could come cruising up and do the lot of them. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and my knickers dry.' He didn't suggest in words that Farrant did the same, but the implication was there.

‘I'll ring you tonight,' Roy said. ‘Just for a last-minute check on him.' He began to walk back towards the place where his car was parked in a rough patch off the main road. There were other cars belonging to owners parked there. Shipley followed him, pausing to watch Rocket Man and the horse he had worked with, safely across the main road. He had never liked Roy Farrant; he'd lost a lot of his arrogance and bluster, but it wouldn't be long in coming back. Also he hated owners ringing up. That was his job. He got into his own small car, and waved briefly to Roy. He saw Patsy sitting in the back seat. Farrant opened the door and got into the driver's seat.

Patsy leaned forward.

‘How did it go, darling? I wished you'd let me get out – I couldn't see anything –'

‘He worked very well,' Farrant said. ‘But not well enough. That little sod knew it, and started flannelling round saying you couldn't predict the outcome.… A lot of bullshit.'

‘He might do it,' Patsy said comfortingly. ‘Even if he came second it would be quite nice –'

He turned and glared at her.

‘For Christ's sake, don't be such a stupid cow. I'm not going to come second. I'm going to win that bloody race. And I don't need Shipley to help me do it.' He started the engine and the big Rolls slid out towards the road. Patsy watched him silently from the back. She could see his face reflected in the mirror. It was flushed with temper, and the mouth was grim. He was more like his old self every day. The respite since Barry's death had been brief. His tout, Downs, had come in useful dealing with that stupid bugger Long. He was going to be useful again. He drove back through the centre of Newmarket, cursing as they hit a traffic jam on the main road to London. He glanced at Patsy in the driving mirror.

‘If he came second it would be quite nice.…' He growled at her under his breath, sitting there so incredibly beautiful, and two planks thick between the ears.

He wasn't going to be second. There were only two horses in the Derby that could beat Rocket Man. One was French bred, owned by a rich South American film star, who felt that it was good for his image to float through the international racing scene. The other was the Silver Falcon. He had squared the French jockey weeks ago. Now it was up to Roy to ‘see to' the Falcon himself. And that was exactly what he intended doing. Breakfast was waiting for them at the rented house; and so was Downs.

Tim and the Fosters were also having breakfast. They had worked the Falcon very early, eluding bookies' touts who spied on the gallops, and Sally had cooked them a hearty meal of eggs and bacon and sausages. She didn't ask questions until they had finished eating and Nigel was mumbling about more coffee. He hadn't slept properly for some time, and he was grumpy in the mornings, inclined to snap if confronted with anything until he'd had his breakfast and relaxed. Tim looked at her and grinned.

‘We're all set for tomorrow,' he said. ‘Marvellous piece of work this morning. Wasn't it?' he turned to Nigel. Nigel nodded.

‘He went super,' he said. There was no greater praise in racing parlance. ‘He's like a tiger, so Phil says, just waiting to go. It's almost as if he knows that tomorrow is the big day.' He looked at his wife and grinned at her affectionately. ‘If we win tomorrow, Sal, I'm going to take you up to London and you can have the shopping spree of your life!'

‘I'd settle for a good night's sleep,' she laughed.

‘And you'll be a rich man,' he said to Tim. ‘Don't tell me you're able to put your head down and drop off tonight, I won't believe you –'

‘I'm not a temperamental Englishman like you,' Tim said. He had grown very fond of the Fosters; they were nicer as one got to know them, and he had never felt more at home than he did in their house. The relationship between them was ideal; their interests were identical, and their characters complementary.

Most of all, they truly loved each other, and this was what gave their house its warmth for outsiders. He didn't want to think about people being in love; he had submerged his own feelings about Isabel in the preparations for the race, but pain was near the surface, and jealousy tortured him when he saw her with Richard. He couldn't deny that Richard had changed. He was tender, protective, aggressively in love with her. Nigel and Sally talked about the marriage with enthusiasm.

‘Charles was too old for her,' he remembered Sally saying. ‘Much too dominating. I think they're just right for each other.' He hadn't said anything, because he couldn't. He had to pretend to accept it too. Tim's thoughts were far from his surroundings. Andrew Graham had met him for lunch in the Chequers Hotel at Newbury. He had looked thin and oddly pathetic; he seemed to have aged very quickly since Tim had seen him last. Andrew had talked to him. Talked quietly and at length, about things which Tim could hardly believe were the truth. And yet as he listened, they explained so much. Richard was not his father's son. Andrew had kept that secret to the last, hoping not to humiliate Charles; a foolish reason, founded in sentimentality, he admitted that, but he had no other excuse. This was what Isabel intended telling Tim, when she spoke of the whole story. But there was more to it than she knew. Much more.

He had tried to convince her that Richard was both unstable and unsuitable, without exposing the final fact that he was the bastard son of another man. A man who had died in a mental hospital just five years previously. From hopeless schizophrenia. Tim had been too shocked to speak for some moments. He would never forget the way Andrew Graham had slightly hung his head after he told him that. Or his words, spoken in a mumble. ‘I blame myself for all of it. If I'd been honest with her in the beginning – this engagement wouldn't have happened. I'm not saying he murdered the housekeeper at Coolbridge – I'm not saying anything except she mustn't marry him.… You're the only one who can help me, Tim.…'

And Tim had known he was right. Right to try and protect Isabel in spite of herself. Admirable even more, because a less dedicated man and a less scrupulous doctor would have let her go her own way. She had rejected his advice, refused to speak to him, even refused Tim's suggestion that as her dead husband's closest friend, Andrew should be invited to the Derby. And so, in the dining room of the hotel, with a sullen waitress hovering close by, hoping to drive them out, Tim and Andrew Graham had sat on, working out a plan. It was Andrew's idea, and as he explained, his last hope of stopping the marriage. He had to return to the States immediately after the Derby; Joan wasn't well and insisting on his coming home. If he didn't see Isabel before he left, she would be Richard's wife by the end of that week.

‘You're a long way away,' Nigel's voice sounded suddenly loud. Tim started; the trainer had folded up his
Sporting Life
, showing the big black headlines. ‘Silver Falcon Set to Take the Prize Tomorrow.' ‘Thinking about the quarter of a million you'll have in your pocket by tomorrow?'

‘Yes,' Tim lied. ‘But it's dollars, not pounds –'

‘Don't be bloody greedy,' Nigel shouted cheerfully, as he went through the door. ‘All I get is ten per cent of the stake!'

‘And a thumping great present –' Tim called back. He got up from the table, and paused to read the
Sporting Life
again. He and Nigel and Sally had already read every word written about the race and the Falcon. He was tipped by five out of the six newspapers quoted as a certainty to win the Derby. He was also quoted as evens in the betting. Rocket Man was second favourite at nine to four and the French colt Mexican Star was three to one. Only twenty-four hours to go. There was a security guard on duty outside the Falcon's box from that morning until he was loaded up to go to Epsom tomorrow morning; as he travelled well, Nigel decided not to make him stay a night away from home. The whole stable was keyed up to a frenzy of excitement; wages had been placed in advance with the bookmakers, and one of Nigel's lads was sporting a black eye after a fight in a Lambourn pub with a lad from a rival stable who had the temerity to suggest that the Silver Falcon had three back legs and was a useless bugger.…

Tim went into Nigel's office and settled down at his desk to go through the long cabled reports from Beaumont, giving details on the engagements and progress of the rest of Charles's horses, and the news that four of his mares had just foaled and a further two were expected to at any moment. It all seemed a very long way away.

Isabel gave a dinner party in the Star Hotel at Epsom that night. There were thirty people in a private room, including Tim, the Fosters, friends of Charles who had flown in from the States to see his horse run, and, incongruously, because they had accepted in order to meet Richard, Isabel's parents. Richard sat at the opposite end of the table; he thought she had never looked more beautiful. She seemed to burn from within, a mixture of excitement and personal happiness that gave her a magical quality. She was wearing a dark red dress, with Charles's lovely matched pearls, her hair very simply brushed back from her forehead, showing an unusual peak. A widow's peak, it used to be called.

She had an old friend of Charles on her right, a distinguished breeder and owner, whose wife glittering with diamonds, was seated next to Isabel's father. Isabel had been careful not to put any of the old Freemont coterie beside Richard. Her mother, an intense and determinedly dowdy intellectual, sat on his right and didn't attempt to make conversation. It was a noisy, lively group, absorbing the alien elements without difficulty by its own exuberance. The talk was limited to horses and racing, and returned inevitably, and with boisterous forecasts, to the great race the next day. Isabel glanced down at Richard and smiled, raising her glass. He lifted his, and they toasted each other. Nigel was getting a little drunk, and Tim Ryan, who should have been riding as high as any of them with his prospects if the Falcon won, was sober and restrained. Not long ago, Richard would have jeered at him. Now he was sorry for him. He must love Isabel very much to be so cast down. It was a pity; someone had to lose. And looking down towards her, Richard suddenly banged on the table. He stood up, and the faces turned towards him. He didn't see any of them. He was gazing at Isabel, and she was looking up at him and smiling.

‘Let's drink a toast,' he said. ‘To the Silver Falcon. And to Isabel.' He felt a tightness in the throat as everyone stood with him, leaving her sitting alone, suddenly isolated. ‘The Silver Falcon! Isabel!' And then it had to happen; the silver-haired Kentuckian who had been on her right, remained on his feet and raised his glass in turn. ‘And I give you a great sportsman, and a good friend. Charles Schriber. Tomorrow is as much his day!'

It was Isabel who hesitated, Richard who saved the situation from becoming noticeable. He spoke out clearly and firmly.

‘To Charles,' he said. He went up to Isabel and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I'm keeping her in the family,' he said. ‘We're getting married on Saturday.'

There was another party in progress in a big mock-Tudor house two miles away from Epsom. The Farrants were staying there with friends; Patsy was astonishingly beautiful in emerald green, with an emerald and diamond necklace to match. Roy had suddenly produced it that morning. He didn't explain that it was because he had been particularly nasty to her during the last few days, but it seemed some kind of omen. He felt that spending 25 000 pounds on Patsy would bring him luck.

The dinner was a large buffet; there was a lot of champagne and a number of guests were getting drunk. Roy himself had never felt more sober. It was all set for tomorrow. His horse was going to win. His host, a furniture manufacturer who had made a fortune out of marketing a cheap line in ready-to-assemble units for the home, flung an arm round Roy's shoulders.

‘Going to clean up tomorrow, eh? I've had a tidy little packet on your horse – got him ante-post at four to one.'

‘I got him at sixes,' Roy said. He hated being pawed, and he shifted a little, hoping his friend would notice. The encircling arm slipped away. ‘What'll he be worth, if he wins – a million?' The words were a little slurred, but the eyes searching his face were bright with greed.

‘Two million, more like it,' Roy said. He knew how much his friend worshipped money. ‘I've got three parts of a syndicate together. I'm keeping twenty per cent myself.'