Dick Francis - Wild Horses

‘He’ll tell you.’

‘I wish you’d never come,’ he said bitterly, and strode off towards his house, his safe haven, his two normal nice women.

I spent the journey back to Newmarket knowing I’d been rash, but not really regretting it. I might think I knew who’d killed Paul, but proving it was different. The police would have to prove it, but I could at least direct their gaze.

I thought of one particular newspaper clipping that I’d found in the file now resting in O’Hara’s safe.

Valentine had written it for his occasional gossip column. The paper was dated six weeks after Sonia’s death, and didn’t mention her.

It said:

Newmarket sources tell me that the jockey P.G. Falmouth (19), familiarly known as ‘Pig’, has gone to Australia, and is seeking a work-permit to ride there, hoping to settle. Born and raised near the town of his name in Cornwall, Pig Falmouth moved to Newmarket two years ago, where his attractive personality and dedication to winning soon earned him many friends. Undoubtedly he would have prospered in England as his experience increased, but we wish him great success in his new venture overseas.

This item was accompanied by a smiling picture of a fresh-faced, good-looking young man in jockey’s helmet and colours; but it was the headline of the section that had been for me the drench of ice-cold understanding.

‘Exit,’ it said, ‘of the Cornish boy.’

We filmed the hanging scene the following morning, Monday, in the cut-and-separated loose box upstairs in the house.

Moncrieff flung a rope over the rafters and swung on it himself to test the set’s robustness, but owing to the solid breeze blocks and huge metal angle-iron braces anchoring the new walls to the old floor, there wasn’t the slightest quiver in the scenery, to the audible relief of the production department. The straw-covered concrete in the set sections deadened all hollow give-away underfoot echoing noises, those reality-destroying clatterings across the floors of many a supposedly well-built Hollywood ‘mansion’.

‘Where did you get to after our very brief meeting last night?’ Moncrieff enquired. ‘Howard was looking all over the hotel for you.’

‘Was he?’

‘Your car brought you back, you ate a room-service sandwich while we discussed today’s work, and then you vanished.’

‘Did I? Well, I’m here now.’

‘I told Howard you would be sure to be here this morning.’

‘Thanks so much.’

Moncrieff grinned. ‘Howard was anxious.’

‘Mm. Did the Yvonne girl get here?’

‘Down in make-up,’ Moncrieff nodded lasciviously. ‘And is she a dish.’

‘Long blonde hair?’

He nodded. ‘The wig you ordered. Where did you get to, in fact?’

‘Around,’ I said vaguely. I’d slipped my minder and walked a roundabout way, via the Heath, to the stables, booking in with the guard on the house door and telling him I wanted to work undisturbed and, if anyone asked, to say I wasn’t there.

‘Sure thing, Mr Lyon,’ he promised, used to my vagaries, so I’d gone privately into the downstairs office and phoned Robbie Gill.

‘Sorry to bother you on Sunday evening,’ I apologised.

‘I was only watching the telly. How can I help?’

I said, ‘Is Dorothea well enough to be moved tomorrow instead of Tuesday?’

‘Did you see her today? What did you think?’

‘She’s longing to go to the nursing home, she said, and a lot of her toughness of spirit is back. But medically... could she go?’

‘Hm... ’

‘She’s remembered a good deal more about being stabbed,’ I said. ‘She saw the attacker’s face, but she doesn’t know him. She also saw the knife that cut her.’

‘God ,’ Robbie exclaimed, ‘that knuckleduster thing?’

‘No. It was the one that ended in me.’

‘ Christ .’

‘So, move her tomorrow if you can. Give her a false name in the nursing home. She’s at risk.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘She remembers that Paul interrupted the attack on her and effectively saved her life. It’s comforting her. She’s amazing. She’s had three terrible things happen, but she’ll be all right, I think.’

‘Spunky old woman. Don’t worry, I’ll shift her.’

‘Great.’ I paused. ‘You remember the police took our fingerprints to match them with the prints in Dorothea’s house?’

‘Of course I do. They took Dorothea’s and her friend Betty’s and her husband’s and worked out Valentine’s from his razor.’

‘And,’ I said, ‘there were others they couldn’t match.’

‘Sure. Several, I believe. I asked my police friend how their enquiries were progressing. Dead stop, I would guess.’

‘Mm.’ I said, ‘Some of the prints they couldn’t match would have been O’Hara’s, and some would have been Bill Robinson’s.’ I explained Bill Robinson. ‘And there has to be another — Dorothea’s attacker didn’t wear gloves.’

Robbie said breathlessly, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. She said she saw his hand through the knife and he had dirty fingernails.’

‘ Jeeze .’

‘When he went to her house he didn’t expect her to be there. He didn’t plan in advance to attack her. He went to search with Paul for something Valentine might have had and I guess they ripped the place to bits from fury and frustration that they couldn’t find anything. Anyway, his prints must be all over the place.’

Robbie, perplexed, asked, ‘Whose?’

‘I’ll tell you when I’m sure.’

‘Don’t get yourself killed.’

‘Of course not,’ I said.

Yvonne came upstairs at the required time, and proved to be the regulation issue semi-anorexic Californian waif beloved of moguls, a culture concept a cosmos away from the real laughing reckless Sonia.

Sonia, at her death, had worn, according to the more conservative newspapers, ‘a rose-red satin slip’, and, according to the titillators, in blackest type, ‘A shiny scarlet mini with shoe-string shoulder straps, and black finely-strapped sandals with high rhinestone heels’.

No wonder, I’d thought, that suicide had been in doubt.

Yvonne of the dream lovers was wearing a loose white day-dress described in American fashion circles as a ‘float’: that is to say, it softly outlined only what it touched. She also wore, at my request, chandelier pearl and gold earrings and a long pearl necklace nearly to her waist.

She looked beautifully ethereal and spoke like Texas.

‘This morning.’ I said, ‘we’re shooting the scenes in the right sequence. That’s to say, first you enter through that split door.’ I pointed. ‘There will be back-lighting. When Moncrieff is ready, I’d like you to stand in the doorway and turn your head slowly until we say stop, then if you’ll remember that position and stop your head right there for the take, we will get a dramatic effect. You will be entering but looking back. OK? I expect you know your lines.’

She gave me a limpid unintelligent wide-eyed look: great for the film, not so good for technical speed while we made it.

‘They say,’ she said, ‘you get mad if you have to shoot a scene more then three times. That so?’

‘Absolutely so.’

‘Guess I’d better concentrate then.’

‘Honey child,’ I said in her accent, ‘you do just that and I’ll earn you talk-show spots.’

‘The Today Show?’

‘Nothing’s impossible.’

Calculation clouded the peerless violet eyes and she went quietly off to one side and studied her script.

Battle lines drawn, we proceeded. When Moncrieff was satisfied with his light placement we stood Yvonne in the doorway and moved her inch by inch until the light outside the door shone through her flimsy float to reveal her body to the camera inside: too flat-chested for my interest, but of the dreamy other-world unreality I’d hoped for.