Dick Francis - Straight

“The crutches?” he inquired. “What are they for?”

“A spot of trouble with an ankle at Cheltenham.”

“When was that?”

“Nearly two weeks ago.”

He merely nodded. The crutch handles were quite heavy enough for clobbering villains, and he sought no other explanation.

It all took a fair while, with the pauses and the writing. I told him about the car crash near Hungerford. I said I thought it possible that it had been Rollway who shot Simms. I said that of course they would compare the bullets the Hungerford police had taken from the Daimler with those just now dug out of Greville’s walls, and those no doubt to be retrieved from Nicholas Loder’s silent form. I wondered innocently what sort of car Rollway drove. The Hungerford police, I told the superintendent, were looking for a gray Volvo.

After a pause a policeman was dispatched to search the street. He came back wide-eyed with his news and was told to put a cordon round the car and keep the public off.

It was by then well past dark. Every time the police or officials came into the house, the mechanical dog started barking and the lights repeatedly blazed on. I thought it amusing which says something for my lightheaded state of mind but it wore the police nerves to irritation.

“The switches are beside the front door,” I said to one of them eventually. “Why don’t you flip them all up?”

They did, and got peace.

“Who threw the flowerpot into the television?” the superintendent wanted to know.

“Burglars. Last Saturday. Two of your men came round.”

“Are you ill?” he said abruptly.

“No. Shaken.”

He nodded. Anyone would be, I thought.

One of the policemen mentioned Rollway’s threat that I wouldn’t live to give evidence. To be taken seriously, perhaps.

Ingold looked at me speculatively. “Does it worry you?”

“I’ll try to be careful.”

He smiled faintly. “Like on those horses?” The smile disappeared. “You could do worse than hire someone to mind your back for a while.”

I nodded my thanks. Brad, I thought dryly, would be ecstatic.

They took poor Nicholas Loder away. I would emphasize his bravery, I thought, and save what could be saved of his reputation. He had given me, after all, a chance of life.

Eventually the police wanted to seal the sitting room, although the superintendent said it was a precaution only: the events of the evening seemed crystal clear.

He handed me the crutches and asked where I would be going.

“Upstairs to bed,” I said.

“Here?” He was surprised. “In this house?”

“This house,” I said, “is a fortress. Until one lowers the drawbridge, that is.”

They sealed the sitting room, let themselves out, and left me alone in the newly quiet hallway.

I sat on the stairs and felt awful. Cold. Shivery. Old and gray. What I needed was a hot drink to get warm from inside, and there was no way I was going down to the kitchen. Hot water from the bathroom tap upstairs would do fine, I thought.

As happened in many sorts of battle, it wasn’t the moment of injury that was worst, but the time a couple of hours later when the body’s immediate natural anesthetic properties subsided and let pain take over: nature’s marvelous system for allowing a wild animal to flee to safety before hiding to lick its wounds with healing saliva. The human animal was no different. One needed the time to escape, and one needed the pain afterward to say something was wrong.

At the moment of maximum adrenaline, fight-or-flight, I’d believed I could run on that ankle. It had been mechanics that had defeated me, not instinct, not willingness. Two hours later, the idea of even standing on it was impossible. Movement alone became breathtaking. I’d sat in Greville’s chair for another two long hours after that, concentrating on policemen, blanking out feeling.

With them gone, there was no more pretending. However much I might protest in my mind, however much rage I might feel, I knew the damage to bones and ligaments was about as bad as before. Rollway had cracked them apart again. Back to square one... and the Hennessy only four and a half weeks away... and I was bloody well going to ride Datepalm in it, and I wasn’t going to tell anyone about tonight’s little stamping-ground, no one knew except Rollway and he wouldn’t boast about that.

If I stayed away from Lambourn for two weeks, Milo wouldn’t find out; not that he would himself care all that much. If he didn’t know, though, he couldn’t mention it to anyone else. No one expected me to be racing again for another four weeks. If I simply stayed in London for two of those and ran Greville’s business, no one would comment. Then once I could walk I’d go down to Lambourn and ride every day, get physiotherapy, borrow the Electrovet... it could be done... piece of cake.

Meanwhile there were the stairs.

Up in Greville’s bathroom, in a zipped bag with my washing things, I would find the envelope the orthopedic surgeon had given me, which I’d tucked into a waterproof pocket and traveled around with ever since. In the envelope, three small white tablets not as big as aspirins, more or less with my initials on: DF 118s. Only as a last resort, the orthopedist had said.

Wednesday evening, I reckoned, qualified.

I went up the stairs slowly, backward, sitting down, hooking the crutches up with me. If I dropped them, I thought, they would slither down to the bottom again. I wouldn’t drop them.

It was pretty fair hell. I reminded myself astringently that people had been known to crawl down mountains with much worse broken bones: they wouldn’t have made a fuss over one little flight upward. Anyway, there had to be an end to everything, and eventually I sat on the top step, with the crutches beside me, and thought that the DF 118s weren’t going to fly along magically to my tongue. I still had to get them.

I shut my eyes and put both hands round my ankle on top of the bandage. I could feel the heat and it was swelling again already, and there was a pulse hammering somewhere.

Damn it, I thought. God bloody damn it. I was used to this sort of pain, but it never made it any better. I hoped Rollway’s head was banging like crazy.

I made it to the bathroom, ran the hot water, opened the door of the medicine cabinet, pulled out and unzipped my bag.

One tablet, no pain, I thought. Two tablets, spaced out. Three tablets, unconscious.

Three tablets had definite attractions but I feared I might wake in the morning needing them again and wishing I’d been wiser. I swallowed one with a glassful of hot water and waited for miracles.

The miracle that actually happened was extraordinary but had nothing to do with the pills.

I started at my gray face in the mirror over the basin. Improvement, I thought after a while, was a long time coming. Perhaps the damned things didn’t work.

Be patient.

Take another...

No. Be patient.

I looked vaguely at the objects in the medicine cupboard. Talc. Deodorant. Shaving cream. Shaving cream. Most of one can of shaving cream had been squirted all over the mirror by Jason. A pale blue and gray can: “Unscented,” it said.

Greville had an electric razor as well, I thought inconsequentially. It was on the dressing chest. I’d borrowed it that morning. Quicker than a wet shave, though not so long lasting.

The damn pill wasn’t working.

I looked at the second one longingly.

Wait a bit.

Think about something else.

I picked up the second can of shaving cream which was scarlet and orange and said “Regular Fragrance.” I shook the can and took off the cover and tried to squirt foam onto the mirror.

Nothing happened. I shook it. Tried again. Nothing at all.