Дик Фрэнсис - Break In

The princess had had a designer decorate her boxes at the racecourses and they were all the same: pale peach hessian on the walls, coffee-coloured carpet and a glass-topped dining table surrounded by comfortable chairs. By late afternoon, my habitual visiting time, the table had been pushed to one side and bore not lunch but plates of sandwiches, creamy pastries, assorted alcohol, a box of cigars. The princess’s friends tended to linger long after the last races had been run.

One of the women guests picked up a plate of small delicious-looking cakes and offered it to me.

‘No, thank you,’ I said mildly. ‘Not this minute.’

‘Not ever,’ the princess told her friend. ‘He can’t eat those. And don’t tempt him. He’s hungry.’

The friend looked startled and confused. ‘My dear! I never thought. And he’s so tall.’

‘I eat a lot,’ I said. ‘But just not those.’

The princess, who had some idea at least of the constant struggle I had to stay down at a body weight of ten stone, gave me a glimmering look through her eyelashes, expressing disbelief.

The friend was straightforwardly curious. ‘What do you eat most of,’ she asked, ‘if not cake?’

‘Lobster, probably,’ I said.

‘Good heavens.’

Her male companion gave me a critical glance from above a large moustache and long front teeth.

‘Left it a bit late in the big race, didn’t you, what?’ he said.

‘I’m afraid so, yes.’

‘Couldn’t think what you were doing out there, fiddling about at the back. You nearly bungled it entirely, what? The princess was most uncomfortable, I can tell you, as we all had our money on you, of course.’

The princess said, ‘North Face can behave very badly, Jack. I told you. He has such a mind of his own. Sometimes it’s hard to get him to race.’

‘It’s the jockey’s job to get him to race,’ Jack said to me with a touch of belligerence. ‘Don’t you agree, what?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do agree.’

Jack looked fractionally disconcerted and the princess’s lips twitched.

‘And then you set him alight,’ said Lord Vaughnley, overhearing. ‘Gave us a rousing finish. The sort of thing a sponsor prays for, my dear fellow. Memorable. Something to talk about, to refer to. North Face’s finish in the Towncrier Trophy. Splendid, do you see?’

Jack saw, chose not to like it, drifted away. Lord Vaughn-ley’s grey eyes looked with bonhomie from his large bland face and he patted me with kindly meant approval on the shoulder.

‘Third time in a row,’ he said. ‘You’ve done us proud. Would you care, one Saturday night, to see the paper put to bed?’

‘Yes,’ I said, surprised. ‘Very much.’

‘We might print a picture of you watching a picture of yourself go through the presses.’

More than bonhomie, I thought, behind the grey eyes: a total newspaperman’s mentality.

He was the proprietor of the Towncrier by inheritance, the fiftyish son of one of the old-style newspaper barons who had muscled on to the scene in the nineteen thirties and brought new screaming life to millions of breakfasts. Vaughnley Senior had bought a dying provincial weekly and turned it into a lusty voice read nationwide. He’d taken it to Fleet Street, seen the circulation explode, and in due course had launched a daily version which still prospered despite sarcastic onslaughts from newer rivals.

The old man had been a colourful buccaneering entrepreneur. The son was quieter, a manager, an advertising man at heart. The Towncrier, once a raucous newsheet, had over the last ten years developed Establishment leanings, a remarkable testimony of the hand-over from the elder personality to the younger.

I thought of Hugh Vaughnley, the son, next in the line: the sweet-tempered young man without strength, at present at odds, it appeared, with his parents. In his hands, if it survived at all, the Towncrier would soften to platitude, waffle and syrup.

The Daily Flag, still at the brassiest stage, and among the Towncrier’ s most strident opposition, had been recently bought, after bitter financial intrigues, by a thrusting financier in the ascendant, a man hungry, it was said, for power and a peerage, and taking a well-tried path towards both. The Flag was bustling, go-getting, stamping on sacrosanct toes and boasting of new readers daily.

Since I’d met Lord Vaughnley several times at various racing presentation dinners where annual honours were dished out to the fortunate (like champion jockeys, leading trainers, owners-of-the-year, and so on) and with Holly’s distress sharp in my mind, I asked him if he knew who was responsible for ‘Intimate Details’ in the Flag.

‘Responsible?’ he repeated with a hint of holier-than-thou distaste. ‘Irresponsible, more like.’

‘Irresponsible, then.’

‘Why, precisely?’ he asked.

‘They’ve made an unprovoked and apparently pointless attack on my brother-in-law.’

‘Hm,’ Lord Vaughnley said. ‘Too bad. But, my dear fellow, pointless attacks are what the public likes to read. Destructive criticism sells papers, back-patting doesn’t. My father used to say that, and he was seldom wrong.’

‘And to hell with justice,’ I said.

‘We live in an unkind world. Always have, always will. Christians to the lions, roll up, buy the best seats in the shade, gory spectacle guaranteed. People buy newspapers, my dear fellow, to see victims torn limb from limb. Be thankful it’s physically bloodless, we’ve advanced at least that far.’ He smiled as if talking to a child. ‘Intimate Details, as you must know, is a composite affair, with a whole bunch of journalists digging out nuggets and also a network of informants in hospitals, mortuaries, night clubs, police stations and all sorts of less savoury places, telephoning in with the dirt and collecting their dues. We at the Towncrier do the same sort of thing. Every paper does. Gossip columns would be non-starters, my dear fellow, if one didn’t.’

‘I’d like to know where the piece about my brother-in-law came from. Who told who, if you see what I mean. And why.’

‘Hm.’ The grey eyes considered. ‘The editor of the Flag is Sam Leggatt. You could ask him of course, but even if he finds out from his staff, he won’t tell you. Head against brick wall, I’m afraid, my dear fellow.’

‘And you approve,’ I said, reading his tone. ‘Closing ranks, never revealing sources, and all that.’

‘If your brother-in-law has suffered real positive harm,’ he nodded blandly, ‘he should get his solicitor to send Sam Leggatt a letter announcing imminent prosecution for libel unless a retraction and an apology are published immediately. It sometimes works. Failing that, your brother-in-law might get a small cash settlement out of court. But do advise him, my dear fellow, against pressing for a fully-fledged libel action with a jury. The Flag retains heavyweight lawyers and they play very rough. They would turn your brother-in-law’s most innocent secrets inside out and paint them dirty. He’d wish he’d never started. Friendly advice, my dear fellow, I do assure you.’

I told him about the paragraph being outlined in red and delivered by hand to the houses of tradespeople.

Lord Vaughnley frowned. ‘Tell him to look for the informant on his own doorstep,’ he said. ‘Gossip column items often spring from local spite. So do stories about vicars and their mistresses.’ He smiled briefly. ‘Good old spite. Whatever would the newspaper industry do without it!’

‘Such a confession!’ I said with mockery.

‘We clamour for peace, honesty, harmony, common sense and equal justice for all,’ he said. ‘I assure you we do, my dear fellow.’