Dick Francis - Wild Horses

A landowner, he was elected a member of the Jockey Club following the death of his father, Sir Ralph Visborough, knighted for his patronage of many animal charities.

Highly respected by all who knew him, Rupert Visborough felt obliged to remove his name from a shortlist of those being considered for selection as parliamentary candidate, a consequence of his having inadvertently been involved in an unexplained death closely touching his family.

His wife’s sister, married to Newmarket trainer Jackson Wells, was found hanged in one of the loose boxes in her husband’s stable yard. Exhaustive police enquiries failed to find either a reason for suicide, or any motive or suspect for murder. Jackson Wells maintained his innocence throughout. The Jockey Club, conducting its own private enquiry, concluded there was no justification for withdrawing Wells’s licence to train. Rupert Visborough, present at the enquiry, was justifiably bitter at the negative impact of the death on his own expectations.

Reports that Jackson Wells’s wife was entertaining lovers unknown to her husband could not be substantiated. Her sister — Visborough’s wife — described the dead woman as ‘fey’ and ‘a day-dreamer’. She said that as she and her sister had not been close she could offer no useful suggestions.

Who knows what Rupert Visborough might not have achieved in life had these events not happened? Conjecture that he himself knew more of the facts behind the tragedy than he felt willing to disclose clung to his name despite his strongest denials. The death of his sister-in-law is unresolved to this day.

Visborough died last Wednesday of a cerebral haemorrhage, aged 76, with his great potential sadly unfulfilled.

He is survived by his wife, and by their son and daughter.

O’Hara had handwritten across the bottom, ‘Pious load of shit! No one on the paper knows who wrote it. Their obits often come in from outside.’

The pages of fax continued, however.

O’Hara’s handwriting stated, ‘This paragraph appeared in the Cable ’s irreverent gossip column on the same day as the obituary.’

Secrets going to grave in the Visborough family? It seems Rupert (76), Jockey Club member, dead on Wednesday of a stroke, never discovered how his sister-in-law hanged twenty-three years ago in who-dunnit circs. Bereaved husband, Jackson Wells, now remarried and raising rape near Oxford, had ‘no comment’ re the Visborough demise. Answers to the 23-year-old mystery must exist. Send us info.

O’Hara’s handwriting: ‘The Cable got about 6 replies, all no good. End of story as far as they are concerned. But at great expense they searched their microfilmed records and found these accounts, filed and printed at the time of the hanging.’

The first mention had earned a single minor paragraph: ‘Newmarket trainer’s wife hanged’.

For almost two weeks after that there had been daily revelations, many along the lines of ‘did she jump or was she pushed?’ and equally many about the unfairness — and personal bitterness — of the nipping in the bud effect of Visborough’s ambitions for a political career.

A hanging in the family, it seemed, had discouraged not only racehorse owners; the blight had spread beyond Jackson Wells to canvassers and prospective voters.

The story had extinguished itself from lack of fuel. The last mention of Jackson Wells’s wife announced untruthfully, ‘The police expect to make an arrest within a few days’. And after that, silence.

The basic question remained unanswered — why did she hang?

I had dinner and went to bed and dreamed about them, Visborough as Cibber, his cuckolding wife as the pretty actress Silva, Nash as Jackson Wells and the fey, hanged woman as a wisp of muslin, a blowing curtain by the window.

No insight. No inspiration. No solution.

Delays plagued the going-out-to-exercise scene the next morning. One of the horses, feeling fractious, dumped his lad and kicked one of the camera-operating crew. Light bulbs failed in mid-shot. One of the stable lads loudly asked a silly question while the cameras were rolling, and a sound engineer, who should have known better, strolled, smoking, into the next take.

Nash, emerging from the house, forgot to bring with him the crash helmet he was supposed to put on before he mounted. He flicked his fingers in frustration and retraced his steps.

By the time we finally achieved a printable result it was no longer dawn or anywhere near it. Moncrieff, cursing, juggled relays of coloured filters to damp down the exuberant sun. I looked at my watch and thought about the helicopter.

‘Once more,’ I shouted generally. ‘And for Christ’s sake, get it right. Don’t come back, go on out to exercise. Everyone ready?’

‘Cameras rolling,’ Moncrieff said.

I yelled, ‘Action’, and yet again the lads led their long-suffering charges out of the loose boxes, hauled themselves into the saddle, formed a straggly line and skittered out of the gate. Nash, following them, forgot to look up at the window.

I yelled, ‘Cut’ and said to Moncrieff, ‘Print.’

Nash came back swearing.

‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘We’ll cut it in. Would you ride out again and turn and look up after you’re through the gate, as if the other horses had gone out of shot ahead of you? We’ll also do a close shot of that look.’

‘Right now?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Now, because of having the same light. And how about a touch of exasperation with the wife?’

The close shot of the exasperation proved well worth the extra time taken in raising a camera high. Even Moncrieff smiled.

All Nash said was, ‘I hope the Doncaster stewards wait lunch.’

He whisked off in the Rolls but when I followed a minute or two later I found him still standing in the hotel lobby reading a newspaper, rigidly concentrated.

‘Nash?’ I enquired tentatively.

He lowered the paper, thrust it into my hands and in explosive fury said, ‘ Shit! ’ Then he turned on his heel and stalked off, leaving me to discover what had upset him.

I saw. I read, and felt equally murderous.

First reports of ‘Unstable Times’, now in front of cameras in Newmarket, speak of rows, discord and screeching nerves.

Author Howard Tyler’s vibrant tale, ten weeks on bestseller lists, is mangled beyond recognition, my sources tell me. Nash Rourke, superstar, rues his involvement: says ‘Director Thomas Lyon (30), ineffectual, arrogant, insists on disastrous last-minute script changes.’

Lyon vows to solve a 26-year-old real-life mystery, basis of Tyler’s masterpiece. The police failed at the time. Who is Lyon kidding?

Naturally those closely touched by the tragic unexplained hanging death of a leading Newmarket trainer’s wife are distressed to have cold embers fanned to hurtful inaccurate reheat.

Lyon’s version so far has the hanged wife’s trainer-husband — Rourke — tumbling her sister, prompting apoplectic revenge from consequently cuckolded top Jockey Club steward, later ga-ga. None of this happened.

Why do the giants of Hollywood entrust a prestigious film-of-the-book to the incompetent mercies of an over-hyped bullyboy? Why is this ludicrous buffoon still strutting his stuff on the Heath? Who’s allowing him to waste millions of dollars on this pathetic travesty of a great work?

Isn’t Master Thomas Lyon ripe for the overdue boot?

There was a large photograph of Nash, looking grim.

Blindly angry, I went up to my rooms and found the telephone ringing when I walked in.

Before I could speak into the receiver, Nash’s voice said, ‘I didn’t say that, Thomas.’