Dick Francis - Crossfire

She sat back in the chair and almost smiled. "I gave him a tummy ache."

"But how?" I asked.

"I fed him some rotten food."

"Moldy oats?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Green sprouting potatoes."

"Green potatoes! How on earth did you think of green potatoes?"

"It had worked before," she said. "When he called the first time and said that Scientific had to lose, I was at my wit's end of what to do. If I'd over-galloped him everyone in the stable would know." She gulped. "I had to do something. I was desperate. But what could I give him? I had some old potatoes that had gone green, and they were moldy and sprouting. I remembered one of my dogs being ill after eating a green-skinned potato, so I peeled them all and then liquidized the peel. I simply poured it down Scientific's throat and hoped it would make him ill."

"How on earth did you get him to swallow it? It must be so bitter."

"I simply tied his head up high using the hay-net hook and used a tube to pour it down into his stomach."

"And it worked?" I asked.

"Seemed to, although the poor old boy was really very ill afterwards. Horses can't vomit, so the stuff had to go right through him. I was really scared that he'd die. So I reduced the amount the next time."

"And it still worked?"

"Yes. But I was so frightened about Pharmacist that I used more again that time. I was worried the potatoes weren't green and rotten enough. I'd had to buy some more."

"Do you have any of them left?" I asked her.

"They're in the boiler room, with the light on," she said. "I read somewhere that high temperatures and bright light make potatoes go green quicker."

"And how many times have you done this altogether?" I asked her.

"Only six times," she said, almost apologetically. "But Perfidio won even though I'd given him the potato peel. It didn't seem to affect him one bit."

"Did you give it to Oregon at Newbury last week?" Oregon had been one of the horses that Gordon Rambler had written about in the Racing Post.

She nodded.

I walked through and opened the boiler room by the back door. The light was indeed on, and there were six neat rows of potatoes sitting on top of the boiler, all of them turning nicely green, some with sprouting eyes.

Would the British Horseracing Authority ever have thought of dope-testing for liquidized green, sprouting, rotten potato peel?

I somehow doubted it.

Isabella took me first to the Newbury Public Library. I wanted to look at past editions of the local newspapers to see what they had to say about the supposed death of one Roderick Ward.

My mother was right. The story of his car crash had been prominently covered on page three of the Newbury Weekly News for Thursday, July 16. Another Fatal Accident at Local Black Spot Police are investigating after yet another death at one of the most dangerous spots on Oxfordshire's roads. Roderick Ward, 33, of Oxford, was discovered dead in his car around eight a.m. on Monday morning. It is assumed by police that Mr. Ward's dark blue Renault Megane left the road in the early hours of Monday after failing to negotiate the S-bends on the A415 near Standlake. The vehicle is thought to have collided with a bridge wall before toppling into the River Windrush near where it joins the Thames at Newbridge. Mr. Ward's car was found almost totally immersed in the water, and he is thought to have died of drowning rather than as a result of any trauma caused by the accident. An inquest was opened and adjourned on Tuesday at Oxford Coroner's Court.

The piece discussed at length the relative merits of placing a safety barrier and/or altering the speed limits at that point in the road. It then went on to report on two other fatal accidents in the same week elsewhere within the newspaper's region. I searched the following Thursday's paper for any follow-up report on Roderick Ward but with no success.

I used the library's computerized index to check for any other references to Roderick Ward in the Newbury Weekly News. There was nothing else about his accident or death, but there was a brief mention from three months before it. The paper reported that a Mr. Roderick Ward of Oxford had pleaded guilty in Newbury Magistrates' Court to a charge of causing criminal damage to a private home in Hungerford. It stated that he had been observed by a police officer throwing a brick through a window of a house in Willow Close. He was bound over to keep the peace by the magistrates and warned as to his future conduct. In addition, he was ordered to pay two hundred and fifty pounds to the home owner in compensation for the broken glass and for the distress caused.

Unfortunately, the report gave no further details, for example, the name of the house owner or the identity of the policeman who witnessed the event.

I searched through the index again, but there was no report of any inquest into Roderick Ward's untimely death. For that, I suspected, I would have to go to Oxford, to the archive of the Oxford Mail or The Oxford Times.

Isabella had been waiting patiently, exploring the fiction shelves of the library as I had been scanning the newspapers using the microfiche machines.

"Finished?" she asked, as I reappeared from the darkened room where the machines were kept.

"Yes," I said. "For the time being."

"Where to now?" she said, as we climbed back into her Golf.

"Oxford," I said. I thought for a moment. "Or Hungerford."

"Which?"

"Hungerford. I think I can probably find what I want from Oxford on the Internet." If I could get onto it, I thought. My mother had to have broadband. Surely it was needed for her to do the race entries.

"So where in Hungerford?"

"Willow Close."

"Where's that?"

"I've no idea," I said. "But it's in Hungerford somewhere."

Isabella looked at me quizzically but resisted the temptation to actually ask why I wanted to go to Willow Close in Hungerford. Instead, she started the car and turned out of the library parking lot.

In truth, I could have easily parked my Jaguar at the library, and I was pretty sure from its name that parking in Willow Close wouldn't be a problem, either. I probably hadn't needed to ask Isabella to drive me, but it felt more like an adventure with someone else to share it.

Willow Close, when we finally found it, was deep in a housing estate off the Salisbury Road in the southwestern corner of the town. There were twenty or so houses in the close, all little detached boxes with neat open-plan front gardens, each one indistinguishable from those recently built in Lambourn. I feared for the individual character of villages and towns with so many identical little homes springing up all over the countryside.

"Which number?" Isabella said.

"I've no idea," I said again.

"What are we looking for?" she asked patiently.

"I've no idea of that either."

"Useful." She was smiling. "Then you start at one end and I'll start at the other."

"Doing what?" I asked.

"Asking if anyone has any idea why we're here."

"Someone threw a brick through the window of one of these houses, and I would like to know why."

"Any particular brick?" she asked sarcastically.

"OK, OK," I said. "I know it sounds odd, but that's why we're here. I'd like to talk to the person whose window was smashed."

"Why?" she asked, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. "What is this all about?"

It was a good question. Coming to Hungerford had probably been a wild-goose chase anyway. I didn't particularly want to tell Isabella about Roderick Ward, mostly because I had absolutely no intention of explaining anything to her about my mother's tax situation.

"The young man who's been accused of throwing the brick is a soldier in my platoon," I lied. "It's an officer's job to look after his troops, and I promised him I would investigate. That's all."