Dick Francis - Silks

Francesca Dacey, on my other side, jumped a little in her seat. The chairs were so close together round the table that I felt it clearly.

‘How exciting,’ said Joanna with relish. ‘Is he guilty?’

‘That’s for the jury to decide,’ I said.

‘Don’t be so boring,’ Joanna said, grabbing my knee again beneath the table. ‘Tell me. Did he do it?’

‘What do you think?’ I asked her. Francesca was trying not to show that she was listening.

‘He must have,’ she said. ‘Otherwise why have they kept him in prison for so long?’

‘But he hasn’t been tried yet,’ I said.

‘Yeah, but it stands to reason,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t have arrested him if he didn’t do it. And everyone knows that Barlow and Mitchell hated each other’s guts.’

‘That doesn’t make him a murderer,’ I said. ‘In fact, if everyone knew that he hated Barlow so much then he was the obvious person to frame for his murder.’

‘That’s a bit far-fetched though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Doesn’t everyone who’s guilty say they were framed?’

‘A few must be telling the truth,’ I said.

Our empty starter plates were removed and were replaced with the main course of chicken breast in a mustard sauce. Francesca Dacey had the vegetarian option of penne pasta with pesto.

Joanna Osbourne turned to talk to the man on her left, another Lambourn trainer whose reputation I knew rather better than the man himself. I, meanwhile, turned to Francesca on my right. She was giving a good impression of a health inspector, so keen was she to keep her eyes firmly fixed on her food.

‘So how long have you known Steve Mitchell?’ I asked her quietly.

‘I don’t,’ she said. But both of us knew she was lying.

‘Were you with him the day Scot Barlow died?’ I asked her, so quietly that no one else would have been able to hear.

‘No,’ she replied in the same manner. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But we both did.

‘Were you really gone from Steve’s house by two thirty?’ I said, keeping my eyes firmly on my chicken.

‘Oh God,’ she said under her breath. I thought for a moment that she was going to get up and leave, but she took a couple of deep breaths and went on studying her pasta. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Absolutely. I had to be home by two thirty to meet the plumber. He came to fix the dishwasher.’

So, just as Steve had told me, getting her involved wouldn’t actually give him an alibi for Barlow’s murder.

‘Steve didn’t tell me,’ I said to her, turning towards her ear so that others wouldn’t hear. ‘He refused to say who it was he was with.’

I wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or not.

‘Please.’ She gulped. ‘Please don’t tell my husband,’ she pleaded in a whisper.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No need to.’

She half coughed, half sobbed and then suddenly stood up.

‘Sorry,’ she croaked to our host. ‘Something went down the wrong way.’ She rushed out, holding a white linen napkin to her face. One of the other ladies followed her out. Simon Dacey watched in obvious embarrassment.

Cheltenham during the Festival is like no other day at the races anywhere in the world. After lunch I wandered around absorbing the atmosphere. I walked down to the Guinness Village, now an institution at the track and the transient home to thousands of Irish whose annual pilgrimage to Gloucestershire does much to make this event so unique. Irish folk bands and English rock bands vied for favour in the huge marquee behind a scaffold-built temporary grandstand, entertaining the crowd prior to the main attraction of the afternoon, the racing itself.

I leaned on the white plastic rail next to the horse walk to watch a quartet of happy punters from across the Irish Sea. They all wore outrageous green and black huge leprechaun hats and they had linked arms in a line like a scene from Zorba the Greek. They were trying to perform an Irish jig and I laughed out loud as they came a cropper and sat down heavily on a grassy bank. All were in good humour, aided and abetted by a continuous flow of the black stuff, the Guinness.

‘Hello, stranger,’ said a familiar voice behind me. I smiled broadly and turned round.

‘Hello, Eleanor,’ I said, and I gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘How lovely to see you. Are you here for work or pleasure?

‘Both really,’ she said. ‘Busman’s holiday for me today. I am technically on call but that means I can do pretty much what I want. I just have to carry this bleep.’ She produced a small rectangular black item from her cavernous handbag.

‘Fancy a drink?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but not here,’ she said indicating the Guinness bar.

‘No,’ I agreed.

We went in search of one of the bars under the grandstand but they were all packed with a scrum ten deep to get served.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go up to the boxes.’

I was sure that Edward Cartwright, my host, wouldn’t mind me bringing Eleanor into his box and so it turned out. In fact, he rather monopolized her and left me wishing we had stayed in the crush downstairs.

I had seen Eleanor twice since the previous November. The first time had been in London just a week later, when I had asked her to a black-tie dinner in the Hall at Gray’s Inn. It hadn’t been a particularly successful evening. I should have opted for a table for two in a candle-lit Italian restaurant rather than the long refectory tables and benches in Hall.

The seating plan had us sitting opposite each other rather than side by side as I had hoped and conversation between us had been difficult, not only due to the noise of three hundred people eating and talking at once, but also because the centre of the table was full of flowers, silver candelabras, and a detritus of wine glasses, condiments and place-cards.

We had hardly spoken a word to each other the whole evening and I think she had been bored by the speeches, which had contained too many ‘in’ jokes for the lawyers. At the end of the dinner she had jumped straight back into a cab and rushed off to Paddington for the last train home.

Why I had asked her to that dinner, I could not imagine. If I had wanted a romantic evening à deux, I couldn’t have chosen anything less appropriate. Maybe, that was the trouble. Maybe I hadn’t actually wanted a romantic evening à deux in the first place. It was silly to admit, but perhaps I was scared to embark on a new amorous adventure. It also made me feel guilty. Guilty that I was somehow deserting Angela.

The second time we had met had been even more of a disaster. We had both been guests at a Christmas ball thrown by a big racing sponsor in the grandstand at Newbury racecourse. I had been there in a party put together by Paul and Laura Newington, and Eleanor had been in another group, one of the many from Lambourn. I had been so delighted to see her again and had immediately asked her to dance. But she had been with someone else and he’d been determined that I wouldn’t get a look-in with ‘his’ girl. I had felt wretched all evening. It was not just that I had lost out to another, it was that, maybe, I had suddenly realized that the time was now right and I had missed my chance. The bus had come along willingly and had opened its doors to pick me up, but I had declined the offer and now it had driven off, leaving me standing alone at the bus-stop. I now worried that it might have been the last bus, and that I would remain waiting at the stop for ever.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Eleanor said, coming up behind me again. I had been leaning on the balcony rail aimlessly watching the massed crowds below and I hadn’t noticed her escape the clutches of Edward and come outside to join me.

‘You,’ I said, turning and looking into her blue eyes.