Part 12 (1/2)

All through my first month there the freezing weather was not only a discomfort but also a tiresome delay. While racing was suspended Humber could dope no horses, and there was no opportunity for me to see what difference it made to his routine when the racing was scheduled for any of the five courses with long run-ins.

On top of that, he and Jud Wilson and Ca.s.s were always about in the stables. I wanted to have a look round inside Humber's office, a brick hut standing across the top end of the yard, but I could not risk a search when any one of them might come in and find me at it. With Humber and Jud Wilson away at the races, though, and with Ca.s.s gone home to his midday meal, I reckoned I could go into the office to search while the rest of the lads were eating.

Ca.s.s had a key to the office, and it was he who unlocked the door in the morning and locked it again at night. As far as I could see he did not bother to lock up when he went home for lunch, and the office was normally left open all day, except on Sunday. This might mean, I thought, that Humber kept nothing there which could possibly be incriminating: but on the other hand he could perhaps keep something there which was apparently innocent but would be incriminating if one understood its significance.

However, the likelihood of solving the whole mystery by a quick look round an unlocked stable office was so doubtful that it was not worth risking discovery, and I judged it better to wait with what patience I could until the odds were in my favour.

There was also Humber's house, a whitewashed converted farm house adjoining the yard. A couple of stealthy surveys, made on afternoons when I was bidden to sweep snow from his garden path, showed that this was an ultra-neat soulless establishment like a series of rooms in shop windows, impersonal and unlived-in. Humber was not married, and downstairs at least there seemed to be nowhere at all snug for him to spend his evenings.

Through the windows I saw no desk to investigate and no safe in which to lock away secrets: all the same I decided it would be less than fair to ignore his home, and if I both drew a blank and got away with an entry into the office, I would pay the house a visit at the first opportunity.

At last it began to thaw on a Wednesday night and continued fast all day Thursday and Friday, so that by Sat.u.r.day morning the thin slush was disintegrating into puddles, and the stables stirred with the re-awakening of hunting and racing.

Ca.s.s told me on Friday night that the man who owned the hunters I looked after required them both to be ready for him on Sat.u.r.day, and after second exercise I led them out and loaded them into the horse box which had come for them.

Their owner stood leaning against the front wing of a well polished Jaguar. His hunting boots shone like gla.s.s, his cream breeches were perfection, his pink coat fitted without a wrinkle, his stock was smooth and snowy. He held a sensible leather-covered riding stick in his hand and slapped it against his boot. He was tall, broad and bare-headed, about forty years old, and, from across the yard, handsome. It was only when one was close to him that one could see the dissatisfied look on his face and the evidence of dissipation in his skin.

'You,' he said, pointing at me with his stick. 'Come here.'

I went. He had heavy lidded eyes and a few purple thread veins on his nose and cheeks. He looked at me with superior bored disdain. I am five feet nine inches tall; he was four inches taller, and he made the most of it.

'You'll pay for it if those horses of mine don't last the day. I ride them hard. They need to be fit.'

His voice had the same expensive timbre as October's.

'They're as fit as the snow would allow,' I said calmly.

He raised his eyebrows.

'Sir,' I added.

'Insolence,' he said, 'will get you nowhere.'

'I am sorry, sir, I didn't mean to be insolent.'

He laughed unpleasantly. 'I'll bet you didn't. It's not so easy to get another job, is it? You'll watch your tongue when you speak to me in future, if you know what's good for you.'

'Yes sir.'

'And if those horses of mine aren't fit, you'll wish you'd never been born.'

Ca.s.s appeared at my left elbow, looking anxious.

'Is everything all right, sir?' he asked. 'Has Roke done anything wrong, Mr Adams?'

How I managed not to jump out of my skin I am not quite sure. Mr Adams. Paul James Adams, sometime owner of seven subsequently doped horses?

'Is this b.l.o.o.d.y gipsy doing my horses any good?' said Adams offensively.

'He's no worse than any of the other lads,' said Ca.s.s soothingly.

'And that's saying precious little.' He gave me a mean stare. 'You've had it easy during the freeze. Too d.a.m.ned easy. You'll have to wake your ideas up now hunting has started again. You won't find me as soft as your master, I can tell you that.'

I said nothing. He slapped his stick sharply against his boot.

'Do you hear what I say? You'll find me harder to please.'

'Yes, sir,' I muttered.

He opened his fingers and let his stick fall at his feet.

'Pick it up,' he said.

As I bent to pick it up, he put his booted foot on my shoulder and gave me a heavy, over-balancing shove, so that I fell sprawling on to the soaking, muddy ground.

He smiled with malicious enjoyment.

'Get up, you clumsy lout, and do as you are told. Pick up my stick.'

I got to my feet, picked up his stick and held it out to him. He twitched it out of my hand, and looking at Ca.s.s said, 'You've got to show them you won't stand any nonsense. Stamp on them whenever you can. This one,' he looked me coldly up and down, 'needs to be taught a lesson. What do you suggest?'

Ca.s.s looked at me doubtfully. I glanced at Adams. This, I thought, was not funny. His greyish blue eyes were curiously opaque, as if he were drunk: but he was plainly sober. I had seen that look before, in the eyes of a stable hand I had once for a short time employed, and I knew what it could mean. I had got to guess at once, and guess right, whether he preferred bullying the weak or the strong. From instinct, perhaps because of his size and evident worldliness, I guessed that crus.h.i.+ng the weak would be too tame for him. In which case it was definitely not the moment for any show of strength. I drooped in as cowed and unresisting a manner as I could devise.

'G.o.d,' said Adams in disgust. 'Just look at him. Scared out of his b.l.o.o.d.y wits.' He shrugged impatiently. 'Well Ca.s.s, just find him some stinking useless occupation like scrubbing the paths and put him to work. There's no sport for me here. No backbone for me to break. Give me a fox any day, at least they've got some cunning and some guts.'

His gaze strayed sideways to where Humber was crossing the far end of the yard. He said to Ca.s.s, 'Tell Mr Humber I'd like to have a word with him,' and when Ca.s.s had gone he turned back to me.

'Where did you work before this?'

'At Mr Inskip's, sir.'

'And he kicked you out?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Why?'

'I... er...' I stuck. It was incredibly galling to have to lay oneself open to such a man; but if I gave him answers he could check in small things he might believe the whopping lies without question.

'When I ask a question, you will answer it,' said Adams coldly. 'Why did Mr Inskip get rid of you?'

I swallowed. 'I got the sack for er... for messing about with the boss's daughter.'

'For messing about...' he repeated. 'Good G.o.d.' With lewd pleasure he said something which was utterly obscene, and which struck clear home. He saw me wince and laughed at my discomfiture. Ca.s.s and Humber returned. Adams turned to Humber, still laughing, and said, 'Do you know why this c.o.c.kerel got chucked out of Inskip's?'

'Yes,' said Humber flatly. 'He seduced October's daughter.' He wasn't interested. 'And there was also the matter of a favourite that came in last. He looked after it.'

'October's daughter!' said Adams, surprised, his eyes narrowing. 'I thought he meant Inskip's daughter.' He casually dealt me a sharp clip on the ear. 'Don't try lying to me.'

'Mr Inskip hasn't got a daughter,' I protested.