Dick Francis - Straight

There was not going to be a trot-up, whatever Nicholas Loder might have thought. Dozen Roses was visibly struggling as he took second place at a searing speed a furlong from home and he wouldn’t have got the race at all if the horse half a length in front, equally extended and equally exhausted, hadn’t veered from a straight line at the last moment and bumped into him.

“Oh dear,” Martha exclaimed sadly, as the two horses passed the winning post. “Second. Oh well, never mind.”

“He’ll get the race on an objection,” I said. “Which I suppose is better than nothing. Your winnings are safe.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain,” I said, and almost immediately the loudspeakers were announcing “Stewards’ inquiry.”

More slowly than I would have liked to be able to manage, the three of us descended to the area outside the weighing room where the horse that was not my horse stood in the place for the unsaddling of the second, a net rug over his back and steam flowing from his sweating skin. He was moving about restlessly, as horses often do after an all-out effort, and his lad was holding tight to the reins, trying to calm him.

“He ran a great race,” I said to Martha, and she said, “Did he, dear?”

“He didn’t give up. That’s really what matters.”

Of Nicholas Loder there was no sign: probably inside the Stewards’ room putting forward his complaint. The Stewards would show themselves the views from the side camera and the head-on camera, and at any moment now...

“Result of the Stewards’ inquiry,” said the loudspeakers. “Placing of first and second reversed.” Hardly justice, but inevitable: the faster horse had lost. Nicholas Loder came out of the weighing room and saw me standing with the Ostermeyers, but before I could utter even the first conciliatory words like, “Well done,” he’d given me a sick look and hurried off in the opposite direction. No Rollo in his shadow, I noticed.

Martha, Harley and I returned to the luncheon room for the University’s tea where the Knightwoods were being gracious hosts and Clarissa, at the sight of me, developed renewed trouble with the tear glands. I left the Ostermeyers taking cups and saucers from a waitress and drifted across to her side.

“So silly,” she said crossly, blinking hard as she offered me a sandwich. “But wasn’t he great?”

“He was.”

“I wish...” She stopped. I wished it too. No need at all to put it into words. But Greville never went to the races.

“I go to London fairly often,” she said. “May I phone you when I’m there?”

“Yes, if you like.” I wrote my home number on my race-card and handed it to her. “I live in Berkshire,” I said, “not in Greville’s house.”

She met my eyes, hers full of confusion.

“I’m not Greville,” I said.

“My dear chap,” said her husband boomingly, coming to a halt beside us, “delighted your horse finally won. Though, of course, not technically your horse, what?”

“No, sir.”

He was shrewd enough, I thought, looking at the intelligent eyes amid the bonhomie. Not easy to fool. I wondered fleetingly if he’d ever suspected his wife had a lover, even if he hadn’t known who. I thought that if he had known who, he wouldn’t have asked me to lunch.

He chuckled. “The professor says you tipped him three winners.”

“A miracle.”

“He’s very impressed.” He looked at me benignly. “Join us at any time, my dear chap.” It was the sort of vague invitation, not meant to be accepted, that was a mild seal of approval, in its way.

“Thank you,” I said, and he nodded, knowing he’d been understood.

Martha Ostermeyer gushed up to say how marvelous the whole day had been, and gradually from then on, as such things always do, the University party evaporated.

I shook Clarissa’s outstretched hand in farewell, and also her husband’s, who stood beside her.

They looked good together, and settled, a fine couple on the surface.

“We’ll see you again,” she said to me, and I wondered if it were only I who could hear her smothered desperation.

“Yes,” I said positively. “Of course.”

“My dear chap,” her husband said. “Any time.”

Harley, Martha and I left the racecourse and climbed into the Daimler, Simms following Brad’s routine of stowing the crutches.

Martha said reproachfully, “Your ankle’s broken, not twisted. One of the guests told us. I said you’d ridden a gallop for us on Wednesday and they couldn’t believe it.”

“It’s practically mended,” I said weakly.

“But you won’t be able to ride Datepalm in that race next Saturday, will you?”

“Not really. No.”

She sighed. “You’re very naughty. We’ll simply have to wait until you’re ready.”

I gave her a fast smile of intense gratitude. There weren’t many owners who would have dreamed of waiting. No trainer would; they couldn’t afford to. Milo was currently putting up one of my arch-rivals on the horses I usually rode, and I just hoped I would get all of them back once I was fit. That was the main trouble with injuries, not the injury itself but losing one’s mounts to other jockeys. Permanently, sometimes, if they won.

“And now,” Martha said as we set off south toward London, “I have had another simply marvelous idea, and Harley agrees with me.”

I glanced back to Harley who was sitting behind Simms. He was nodding indulgently. No anxiety this time.

“We think,” she said happily, “that we’ll buy Dozen Roses and send him to Milo to train for jumping. That is,” she laughed, “if your brother’s executor will sell him to us.”

“Martha!” I was dumbstruck and used her Christian name without thinking, though I’d called her Mrs. Ostermeyer before, when I’d called her anything.

“There,” she said, gratified at my reaction, “I told you it was a marvelous idea. What do you say?”

“My brother’s executor is speechless.”

“But you will sell him?”

“I certainly will.”

“Then let’s use the car phone to call Milo and tell him.” She was full of high good spirits and in no mood for waiting, but when she reached Milo he apparently didn’t immediately catch fire. She handed the phone to me with a frown, saying, “He wants to talk to you.”

“Milo,” I said, “what’s the trouble?”

“That horse is an entire. They don’t jump well.”

“He’s a gelding,” I assured him.

“You told me your brother wouldn’t ever have it done.”

“Nicholas Loder did it without permission.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No,” I said. “Anyway the horse got the race today on a Stewards’ inquiry but he ran gamely, and he’s fit.”

“Has he ever jumped?”

“I shouldn’t think so. But I’ll teach him.”

“All right then. Put me back to Martha.”

“Don’t go away when she’s finished. I want another word.”

I handed the phone to Martha who listened and spoke with a return to enthusiasm, and eventually I talked to Milo again.

“Why,” I asked, “would one of Nicholas Loder’s owners carry a baster about at the races?”

“A what?”

“Baster. Thing that’s really for cooking. You’ve got one. You use it as an inhaler for the horses.”

“Simple and effective.”

He used it, I reflected, on the rare occasions when it was the best way to give some sort of medication to a horse. One dissolved or diluted the medicine in water and filled the rubber bulb of the baster with it. Then one fitted the tube onto that, slid the tube up the horse’s nostril, and squeezed the bulb sharply. The liquid came out in a vigorous spray straight onto the mucous membranes and from there passed immediately into the bloodstream. One could puff out dry powder with the same result. It was the fastest way of getting some drugs to act.