Dick Francis: Dead Cert

'You have come about a death?' My own words, repeated, sounded foolish, but his tone was matter-of-fact.

'It's about a Major Davidson-' I began.

'Oh yes. We had a report. He died in the hospital last night after a fall at the races.' He waited politely for me to go on.

'That fall was engineered,' I said bluntly.

Inspector Lodge looked at me steadily, then drew a sheet of paper out of a drawer, unscrewed his fountain pen, and wrote, I could see, the date and the time. A methodical man.

'I think we had better start at the beginning,' he said. 'What is your name?'

'Alan York.'

Age?'

'Twenty-four.'

Address?'

I gave Davidson's address, explaining whose it was, and that I lived there a good deal.

'Where is your own home?'

'In Southern Rhodesia,' I said. 'On a cattle station near a village called Induna, about fifteen miles from Bulawayo.'

'Occupation?'

'I represent my father in his London office.'

'And your father's business?'

'The Bailey York Trading Company.'

'What do you trade in?' asked Lodge.

'Copper, lead, cattle. Anything and everything. We're transporters mainly,' I said.

He wrote it all down, in quick distinctive script.

'Now then,' he put down the pen, 'what is all this about?'

'I don't know what it's about,' I said, 'but this is what happened.' I told him the whole thing. He listened without interrupting, then he said, 'What made you even begin to suspect that this was not a normal fall?'

'Admiral is the safest jumper there is. He's surefooted, like a cat. He doesn't make mistakes.'

But I could see from his politely surprised expression that he knew little, if anything, about steeplechasing, and thought that one horse was as likely to fall as another.

I tried again. 'Admiral is brilliant over fences. He would never fall like that, going into an easy fence in his own time, not being pressed. He took off perfectly. I saw him. That fall was unnatural. It looked to me as though something had been used to bring him down. I thought it might be wire, and I went back to look and it was. That's all.'

'Hm. Was the horse likely to win?' asked Lodge.

'Certain,' I said.

'And who did win?'

'I did,' I said.

Lodge paused, and bit the end of his pen.

'How do the racecourse attendants get their jobs?' he asked.

'I don't really know. They are casual staff, taken on for the meeting, I think,' I said.

'Why would a racecourse attendant wish to harm Major Davidson?' He said this naively, and I looked at him sharply.

'Do you think I have made it all up?' I asked.

'No.' He sighed. 'I suppose I don't. Perhaps I should have said, how difficult would it be for someone who wished to harm Major Davidson to get taken on as a racecourse attendant?'

'Easy,' I said.

'We'll have to find out.' He reflected. 'It's a very chancy way to murder a man.'

'Whoever planned it can't have meant to kill him,' I said flatly.

'Why not?'

'Because it was so unlikely that he would die. I should think it was simply meant to stop him winning.'

'Why was such a fall unlikely to result in death?' said Lodge. 'It sounds highly dangerous to me.'

I said: 'It could have been meant to injure him, I suppose. Usually when a horse is going fast and hits a fence hard when you're not expecting it, you get catapulted out of the saddle. You fly through the air and hit the ground way out in front of where your horse falls. That may do a lot of damage, but it doesn't often kill. But Bill Davidson wasn't flung off forwards. His toe may have stuck in his stirrup, though that's not very likely. Perhaps the wire caught round his leg and pulled him back. Anyway, he fell straight down and his horse crashed on top of him. Even then it was sheer bad luck that the saddle tree hit him in the stomach. You couldn't even hope to kill a man like that on purpose.'

'I see. You seem to have given it some thought.'

'Yes.' The pattern of the hospital waiting room curtains, the brown linoleum, came back into my mind in association.

'Can you think of anyone who might wish to hurt Major Davidson?' asked Lodge.

'No,' I said. 'He was very well liked.'

Lodge got up and stretched. 'We'll go and have a look at your wire,' he said. He put his head out into the big office. 'Wright, go and see if Hawkins is there, and tell him I want a car if there's one available.'

There was a car. Hawkins (I presumed) drove; I sat in the back with Lodge. The main gates of the racecourse were still locked, but there were ways and means, I found. A police key opened another, inconspicuous gate in the wooden fence.

'In case of fire,' said Lodge, seeing my sideways look.

There was no one about in the racecourse buildings: the manager was out. Hawkins drove over the course into the centre and headed down towards the farthest fence. We bumped a good deal on the uneven ground. The car drew up just short of the inside wing, and Lodge and I climbed out.

I led the way past the fence to the outer wing.

'The wire is over here,' I said.

But I was wrong.

There was the post, the wing, the long grass, the birch fence. And no coil of wire.

'Are you sure this is the right fence?' said Lodge.

'Yes,' I said. We stood looking at the course set out in front of us. We were at the very far end, the stands a blurred massive block in the distance. The fence by which we stood was alone on a short straight between two curves, and the nearest fence to us was three hundred yards to the left, round a shallow bend.

'You jump that fence,' I said, pointing away to it. Then there's quite a long run, as you can see, to this one.' I patted the fence beside us. Then twenty yards after we land over this one there is that sharpish left turn into the straight. The next fence is some way up the straight, to allow the horses to balance themselves properly after coming round the bend, before they have to jump. It's a good course.'

'You couldn't have made a mistake in the mist?'

'No. This is the fence,' I said.

Lodge sighed. 'Well, we'll take a closer look.'

But all there was to be seen was a shallow groove on the once white inner post, and a deeper groove on the outer post, where the wire had bitten into the wood. Both grooves needed looking for and would ordinarily have been unnoticed. Both were at the same level, six feet six inches, from the ground.

'Very inconclusive indeed,' said Lodge.

We went back to Maidenhead in silence. Glum and feeling foolish, I knew now that even though I could reach no one in authority, I should have found someone, anyone, even the caretaker, the day before, to go back to the fence with me, after I had found the wire, to see it in its place. A witness who had seen wire fastened to a fence, even though it would have been dark and foggy, even though perhaps he could not swear at which fence he had seen it, would definitely have been better than no witness at all. I tried to console myself with the possibility that the attendant had been returning to the fence with his wire clippers at the same time that I was walking back to the stands, and that even if I had returned at once with a witness, if would already have been too late.

From Maidenhead police station I called Sir Creswell Stampe. I had parted him this time, he said, from his toasted muffins. The news that the wire had disappeared didn't please him either.

'You should have got someone else to see it at once. Photographed it. Removed it. We can't proceed without evidence. I can't think why you didn't have sense enough to act more quickly, either. You have been very irresponsible, Mr York.' And with these few kind words he put down the receiver.

Depressed, I drove home.

I put my head quietly round Scilla's door. Her room was dark, but I could hear her even breathing. She was still sound asleep.