Come to Grief by Dick Francis Page A

for him yet.
    He turned on his heel and went rapidly alone into the house, not wanting to be seen in even semi-reputable company, I assumed. I followed more slowly. Jonathan had not returned to the drawing room, where the tenants still sat stolidly, the difficult old aunt complained about being woken early, the deaf husband said, “Eh?” mechanically at frequent intervals and Betty Bracken sat looking into space. Only the three dogs, now lying down and resting their heads on their front paws, seemed fully sane.
    I said to Mrs. Bracken, “Do you by any chance have a typewriter?”
    She said incuriously, “There’s one in the office.”
    “Er . . .”
    “I’ll show you.” She rose and led me to a small, tidy back room containing the bones of communication but an impression of under-use.
    “I don’t know how anything works,” Betty Bracken said frankly. “We have a part-time secretary, once a week. Help yourself.”
    She left, nodding, and I thanked her, and I found an electric typewriter under a fitted dust cover, plugged ready into the current.
    I wrote:
    Finding it difficult to sleep, I went for a short walk in the grounds of Combe Bassett Manor at about three-thirty in the morning. [I inserted the date.] In the lane near to the gate of the home paddock I passed a Land-Rover that was parked there. The vehicle was blue. I did not look at the number plate. The engine was still hot when I touched the hood in passing. There was a key in the ignition. It was one of a bunch of keys on a key ring which had a silver horseshoe on a chain. There was no one in the vehicle. There was some sort of equipment behind the front seat, but I did not take a close look. On the inside of the windshield I observed a small transfer of a red dragon in a red circle. I went past the vehicle and returned to the house.
    Under another fitted cover I located a copier, so I left the little office with three sheets of paper and went in search of Jonathan, running him to earth eating a haphazard breakfast in the kitchen. He paused over his cereal, spoon in air, while he read what I’d written. Wordlessly, I produced a ball-point pen and held it out to him.
    He hesitated, shrugged and signed the first of the papers with loops and a flourish.
    “Why three?” he asked suspiciously, pushing the copies away.
    “One for you,” I said calmly. “One for my records. One for the on-going file of bits and pieces which may eventually catch our villain.”
    “Oh.” He considered. “All right, then.” He signed the other two sheets and I gave him one to keep. He seemed quite pleased with his civic-mindedness. He was rereading his edited deposition over his flakes as I left.
    Back in the drawing room, looking for her, I asked where Mrs. Bracken had gone. The aunt, the tenants and the deaf husband made no reply.
    Negotiating the hinterland passage and the dustbin yard again, I arrived back at the field to see Mrs. Bracken herself, the fence-leaners, the Scots vet and her brother watching the horse ambulance drive into the field and draw up conveniently close to the colt.
    The horse ambulance consisted of a narrow, low-slung trailer pulled by a Land-Rover. There was a driver and a groom used to handling sick and injured horses and, with crooning noises from the solicitous Eva, the poor young colt made a painful-looking, head-bobbing stagger up a gentle ramp into the waiting stall.
    “Oh dear, oh dear,” Mrs. Bracken whispered beside me. “My dear, dear young fellow ... how could they?”
    I shook my head. Rachel Ferns’s pony and four prized colts ... How could anyone?
    The colt was shut into the trailer, the bucket containing the foot was loaded, and the pathetic twelve-mile journey to Lambourn began.
    The Scots vet patted Betty Bracken sympathetically on the arm, gave her his best wishes for the colt, claimed his car from the line of vehicles in the lane and drove away.
    I unclipped my mobile phone and got through to The Pump, who forwarded my call