Dick Francis - Under Orders

She hung her head again.

‘And when horses ran at the northern tracks, you didn’t go with them, did you, so you paid Huw Walker to make sure they didn’t win. But they still ran slightly better in the north because Huw was only trying to stop them winning, second was fine, but your little water trick slowed them right down. Some of them in the south finished last.’

Chris was now the one with an open mouth. He was almost rubbing his hands with glee at the scoop he would have.

‘But why,’ I asked, ‘did you only stop Lord Enstone’s horses? And then not every time they ran? Did you really do it for a few dresses?’

‘I don’t even like the dresses. I never wear them. I should have got rid of them. They only clutter the place up. They were George’s idea. He loves designer wear and thinks everyone else does too. He bought me something whenever he made a good profit from a race where one was stopped. He could make an absolute fortune out of some races, sometimes more than a hundred thousand, especially if we stopped the favourite.’

‘We?’ I asked. ‘Who are we?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Juliet,’ I said, ‘I need to know his name or I will call the police and I won’t tell them that you’ve helped me. Quite the reverse, in fact. And, be sure, they will find out who it is anyway. We have his DNA, and his fingerprints must be all over your cottage. It will only be a matter of time before he’s caught, and it will be your fault if he does any harm to anyone else in the meantime.’

‘Will… will I go to prison?’ she asked in a faltering voice.

I don’t think she had been listening to me. ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘You certainly will if you don’t cooperate. I’ll do a deal with you. I’ll do my best to keep you out of prison if you tell us everything, but I can’t promise. At the very least, I will try to ensure you don’t get charged with murder.’

Her head came up fast. ‘But I didn’t kill anyone.’

‘So who did?’ I asked.

‘Peter did.’ She said it so softly I hardly heard her.

‘Peter?’ I said. ‘Peter Enstone?’

‘Yes.’

Suddenly everything came out. Juliet unburdened the great secret that had been eating away at her. Chris still sat silently in the corner, listening intently. He had by now produced a notebook and was scribbling furiously as Juliet spoke.

She told us the lot.

She started at the beginning with her first meeting with Peter Enstone when she had been working at Bill’s for only a few weeks. It was very clear that she had fallen head over heels for Peter and soon they were lovers.

‘He said that no one must know, especially his father,’ she said. ‘It was all very exciting.’ She smiled.

Peter’s father, Lord Enstone, was a social climber par excellence. I expect that the daughter of a blacksmith with no family means was not what he would have had in mind as a suitable match for his son. No wonder Peter had wanted the affair kept quiet.

‘Peter said wouldn’t it be funny if we were able to influence the running of his father’s horses just by wanting to. We used to sit in bed some afternoons watching the racing, holding the television remote and pretending that we were using it to control the horses like robots. Turn up the volume to make it go faster, turn it down to go slower. Push the off button to make it fall. Silly, really.’

She stopped.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘can I have a drink of something?’

‘Water OK?’ I asked.

‘Fine.’

I gave the key to Chris who unlocked the door and went out to the kitchen to fetch some. Juliet sat silently waiting for his return while I stood guard at the door, but I think her desire to run had gone. Chris came back and I relocked the door and put the key back in my pocket in case I was wrong. Juliet drank half the glass then sat holding it in both hands on her lap.

‘Go on,’ I said, sitting down again on the stool in front of her.

‘I remember saying to Peter that there was a way to control the horses for real,’ she continued. ‘But I only said it as a joke. I remembered my father telling me of a betting coup at the local point-to-point where a horse was stopped by giving it a big drink just before the start. He always said that water didn’t show up on any dope test.’

She took another drink of the evil stuff.

‘Peter became very excited by the idea. He doesn’t like his father. He hates the way he still tells him what to do even though Peter is over thirty. And he didn’t have a happy childhood. Lord Enstone tells people that Peter’s mother died but that isn’t true — well, it is now, but it wasn’t the reason for her leaving his father. She died a long time after that. By then, she had divorced Peter’s father and had claimed mental and physical cruelty to do so. I hate him.’

‘So when did you start to fix the races?’ I asked.

‘A few months after I first met Peter,’ she said. ‘God, I was nervous the first time. I was sure everyone would know what I was doing but it was really very easy. The lads would always do what I said, so I’d send them off to do something while I poured the water away. I would then feed the horses. As you know, oats and the horse nuts make the horses thirsty so they drink during and after eating. I simply took away their water. It was dead easy.’ She smiled again.

It was not a new trick but she was undoubtedly pleased with herself for having managed to do it without being detected — at least, until now.

It seemed like more unnecessary mental and physical cruelty to me. She was no better than Peter’s father. Worse even, as a horse has no means of escape. I could feel the anger rising in me again. Anger at the callous nature of this person who had been trusted to look after the horses, but had been the cause of great distress for them instead.

‘But soon it stopped being a game,’ she said. ‘Peter became obsessed with being in control of his father’s horses. It gave him such power to know when they would do well and when they would not.’

Huw had told Kate it was more about power than money.

Juliet was almost gabbling now. Now she had started there was no stopping her. ‘Lord Enstone liked his horses to run up at Newcastle or Kelso and at the other northern tracks when he was up there at home for the weekends. I couldn’t go up there with them, but Peter was specially keen that the horses should be stopped when he knew his father was going to be at the races with all his mates — so he would be shown up when the horse lost. So he paid Huw Walker to stop some. I told him it was stupid to get someone else involved, but he was absolutely determined. He said he needed Huw to get at the horses in the north.

I wondered how long it would take Juliet to work out that Peter had probably only bedded her to get at the horses in the south.

‘Then it all started to go wrong,’ she said. ‘Huw Walker said he was afraid that people would say that he was fixing races. He wanted out, but Peter told him that if he didn’t do as he was told then he would fix him good and proper, so much so he would get warned off by the Jockey Club.’

‘But surely that would have been the same for Peter?’ I said.

‘As you know, professional jockeys are not allowed to bet but Peter placed bets on the other horses in the races that Huw was going to fix and used an account that could be traced back to Huw. Peter had it as a hold over him. Unless Huw did as he was told, Peter said he would anonymously tell the Jockey Club where to look to see Huw’s name on the account.’

‘Why didn’t Huw report Peter to the Jockey Club himself?’ I asked.

‘When Huw threatened just that, Peter said that no one would believe him, that they would just see it as an attempt to shift the blame, and they would be more likely to warn him off for life. I don’t know whether they would have, but it frightened Huw enough.’