Simon Brett - The Stabbing in the Stables

“Hardly call them friends. Just people I’ve met before. Over there.”

Carole followed her friend’s gesture with hardly disguised contempt. At the same table sat four short men, looking very similar to the four short men Jude had seen on her previous visit. All wore dirty weatherproof jackets, breeches and boots; one had a flat discoloured tweed cap. Clearly they weren’t the all same, because Donal wasn’t there for one, and she couldn’t be sure that she recognised the others.

One of them recognised her, however. “Ah, look, it’s Donal’s bit of stuff, come to find him again. Did he not come home last night, dear?” he asked in a voice of mock concern.

“You don’t think he could have been out drinking, do you?” asked another, ready to join in the game.

Jude smiled easily. “I am actually looking for Donal. Do any of you know where he is?”

But none of the old stable lads was going to give a direct answer. There was a lot of heavily mimed head-shaking and oohing and aahing at her request, then the one who’d spoken first said, “Now, if we did know where he was, should we tell you? We don’t know what you’re after him for, do we?”

“Might be maintenance, you see,” suggested one of them.

“Or a restraining order,” another proposed.

“Or,” offered the fourth, “he might have got you into trouble.”

“Well, it would be a genuine miracle if he’d done that,” said Jude with a grin.

Carole recoiled inwardly. It was bad enough that Jude knew people like this; there was no need for her to sink to their conversational level.

“Come on, I need to find him.” Jude went on. “Any suggestions?”

“Plenty of suggestions,” one of the wags replied, “but not many of them printable.”

“Anyway,” said the first speaker, “there’s other reasons Donal might not want to see you. He’s spent a fairly unpleasant few days with the police recently. How do we know it wasn’t you who put them onto him?”

“I can assure you it wasn’t. My only interest in him is because of his skills as a healer.”

“And of course his other skills,” roared one of the men. “The old sexual healing, eh?”

They all found this extremely funny. Jude, smiling along and biding her time, was surprised to see Carole stepping past her and saying in a frosty voice, “Please! There is no need for this kind of smutty sexist vulgarity.”

Four male jaws dropped as one. Then the quickest of them to recover shouted, “Bloody hell, Donal’s got two of them after him now.”

“Always did fancy a threesome, old Donal.”

“Yes, he’s a kinky old-”

“Will you please be quiet. It’s extremely important that we contact Donal Geraghty as soon as possible. If you have any idea where he is or how we can get in touch with him, will you please tell us.”

The men were totally confused by Carole’s schoolmarm approach and fell silent. Then the leader said grudgingly, “We don’t know where he is. Gather he’s had a bit of trouble recently, so don’t know what gaff he’s kipping down in. Somebody’s stable or outhouse I expect, but I can’t tell you whose. Mind you, if you really want to find him, I could tell you somewhere he’s bound to be.”

“Then I think you’d better tell me.” Behind the rimless glasses Carole’s grey eyes were steely.

“It’s Fontwell races day after tomorrow. No way Donal won’t be at Fontwell. If you want to find him, that’s going to be your best bet.”

“Thank you very much,” said Carole Seddon. Then she put down her hardly touched glass of wine on a nearby table and stalked, with considerable dignity, out of the Cheshire Cheese.

Jude, not wishing to spoil her friend’s exit, put down her completely untouched glass, and hurried after her.

“What’s that in the back?” asked Jude, as Carole sedately drove the Renault the eleven miles from Fethering to Fontwell Park racecourse.

“Erm…well…”

Jude looked round at the purple straw creation she had last seen at Stephen and Gaby’s wedding.

“It’s a hat, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Carole conceded.

“Did you bring that for today?”

“Well, quite honestly, I wasn’t sure what the form was. I’ve never been racing before.”

“And the only racing you’ve seen has been when it’s made it onto the national news?”

“Maybe.”

“In other words, Royal Ascot.” It was only then Jude noticed that, under her doughty Burberry, her neighbour was dressed in the full purple wedding outfit.

“Um, Carole, a Thursday Fontwell meeting in early March isn’t quite like Ascot. It’s quite low-key in terms of dress.”

“So I won’t look under dressed?”

“Good heavens, no. Rather the reverse. I suggest you keep your raincoat firmly belted up.”

“And don’t wear the hat?” asked Carole a little wistfully.

“ Definitely don’t wear the hat.”

“Oh.”

“I promise you, you’ll be the only person there dressed anything like that. There’ll be plenty of Burberrys, and Barbours, and Drizabones, and quite a few sheepskins, but no wedding outfits. We’re not going to the royal enclosure. And it is only national hunt.”

“Sorry? I thought it was racing, not hunting. And isn’t hunting illegal these days?”

“Carole, you don’t know anything about racing, you do?”

“Why should I? I spent my career in the Civil Service, not hanging round racecourses.”

“Well, listen, there are two sorts of racing in this country: national hunt and the flat.”

“The flat?”

“Yes. And the flat, as the name might suggest, is run on the flat.”

“Not uphill, you mean?”

“No, there are hills on flat courses. Some are very hilly, like Epsom, for instance. But it’s called ‘flat racing’ because there are no jumps or hurdles.”

The tone of Carole’s “Ah” suggested Jude wasn’t getting her message across. “National Hunt races are run over jumps or hurdles. The horses not only have to run fast, but they also have to negotiate a series of obstacles. These might be fences in a steeplechase, or in a hurdle race, as the name suggests, they’d be hurdles. Then there are different sorts of races within those categories and…”

The expression on her neighbour’s face for a moment dried up Jude’s supply of words.

“Never mind.” She picked up again. “The details aren’t important. The main thing is that it’s fun. The element of chance, having a flutter. You know, there are very few things to beat that moment when your fancy is nearly winning and on the next few seconds depend your chances of making some huge multiple of your stake and…”

Carole’s expression had the same dehydrating effect once again.

“Have you ever actually gambled, Carole?”

“Good heavens, no.”

Carole thought they were rather expensive, but Jude insisted they buy tickets for the premier enclosure. They didn’t know whereabouts on the course Donal was going to be, and that way they’d have access to the whole area.

Walking across the mud from where they’d parked to the enclosures, Carole stepped fastidiously, wishing she hadn’t put on the least sensible shoes she possessed, but looked around at the crowd with diminishing anxiety. She had been expecting to spend the afternoon surrounded by clones of the men in the Cheshire Cheese; to her relief, however, the crowds ambling cheerfully in the same direction seemed, well, middle class. And from the occasional Sloaney squawk she heard, some of them were very definitely upper class. Camilla Parker-Bowles seemed to have been cloned many times over.

For all the crowd members, what they were doing seemed completely natural. For them, going to the races was clearly a regular occurrence. They had the accoutrements-old-fashioned trench coats and Barbours against the weather, green Wellingtons, soft dark olive trilbies (for women as well as men). Many carried battered binoculars on whose straps hung the coloured strings of former day badges. From the lapels of the hardened race-goers dangled the metal badges of life members. Though Carole could not suppress the thought that not many of these people had any work to go to, she could not deny that they comprised one of the least threatening crowds she had ever encountered.