Longshot

‘That’s more or less all,’ he said, ‘except for the office.’

Once back in his own hall he veered through the last of the doorways there and I followed him into yet another big room in which Dee-Dee looked lost behind a vast desk.

‘This used to be the Windberrys’ billiards room,’ Tremayne said. ‘When I was a child, it was our playroom.’

‘You had brothers and sisters?’

‘One sister,’ he said briefly, looking at his watch. ‘I’ll leave you to Dee-Dee. See you later.’

He went away purposefully, and, after the time it would have taken him to replace coat, cap and scarf, the door out to the yard slammed behind him. He was a natural slammer, I thought; there seemed to be no ingredient of ire.

Dee-Dee said, ‘How can I help you?’ without any great enthusiasm.

‘Don’t you approve of the biography project?’ I asked.

She blinked. ‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You looked it.’

She fiddled lengthily with some papers, eyes down.

‘He’s been on about it for months,’ she said finally. ‘It’s important to him. I think... if you must know... that he should have held out for someone better...’ She hesitated. ‘Better known, anyway. He met you one day and the next day you’re here, and I think it’s too fast. I suggested that we should at least run a check on you but he said Ronnie Curzon’s word was good enough. So you’re here.’ She looked up, suddenly fierce. ‘He deserves the best,’ she said.

‘Ah.’

‘What do you mean by Ah?’

I didn’t answer at once but looked round the jumbo office, seeing the remains of the classical decorative style overlaid by a host of modern bookshelves, filing cabinets, cupboards, copier, fax, computer, telephones, floor safe, television, tapes by the dozen, cardboard boxes, knee-high stack of newspapers and another corkboard with red drawing-pinned memos. There was an antique kneehole desk with an outsize leather chair, clearly Tremayne’s own territory, and on the floor a splatter of overlapping Persian rugs in haphazard patterns and colours covering most of an old grey carpet. Pictures of horses passing winning posts inhabited the walls alongside a bright row of racing silks hanging on pegs.

I ended the visual tour where I’d begun, on Dee-Dee’s face.

‘The more you help,’ I said, ‘the more chance he has.’

She compressed her mouth obstinately. ‘That doesn’t follow.’

‘Then the more you obstruct, the less chance he has.’

She stared at me, her antagonism still clear, while logic made hardly a dent in emotion.

She was about forty, I supposed. Thin but not emaciated, from what one could see via the sweater. Good skin, bobbed straight hair, unremarkable features, pink lipstick, no jewellery, small, strong-looking hands. General air of reserve, of holding back. Perhaps that was habitual; perhaps the work of the shit of an amateur jockey who had treated her like muck.

‘How long have you worked here?’ I asked, voice neutral, merely enquiring.

‘Eight years, about.’ Straightforward answer.

‘What I chiefly need,’ I said,’ are cuttings books.’

She almost smiled. ‘There aren’t any.’

With dismay I protested, ‘There must be. He mentioned cuttings.’

‘They’re not in books, they’re in boxes.’ She turned her head, nodding directions. ‘In that cupboard over there. Help yourself.’

I went across and opened a white-painted door and inside found stacked on shelves from floor to head height a whole array of uniform white cardboard boxes, all like shirt-boxes but about eight inches deep, all with dates written on their ends in black marker ink.

‘I re-boxed all the cuttings three or four years ago,’ Dee-Dee said. ‘Some of the old boxes were falling to bits. The newspaper is yellow and brittle. You’ll see.’

‘Can I take them all into the dining-room?’

‘Be my guest.’

I loaded up four of the boxes and set off with them, and in a minute found her following me.

‘Wait,’ she said inside the dining-room door,’ mahogany gets scratched easily.’

She went over to a large sideboard and from a drawer drew out a vast green baize cloth which she draped over the whole expanse of the large oval table.

‘You can work on that,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

I put down the boxes and went to fetch another load, ferrying them until the whole lot was transferred. Dee-Dee meanwhile went back to her desk and her work, which largely consisted of the telephone. I could hear her still talking on and off while I arranged the boxes of cuttings chronologically and took the lid off the first, realising from the date on its end that it had to go back beyond Tremayne; that he hadn’t started training when he was a baby. Tattered yellow pieces of newsprint informed me that Mr Loxley Vickers, of Shellerton House, Berkshire, had bought Triple Subject, a six-year-old gelding, for the record sum for a steeplechaser of twelve hundred guineas. A house, an astonished reporter wrote, could be bought for less.

I looked up, smiling, and found Dee-Dee standing in the doorway, hesitantly hovering.

‘I’ve been talking to Fiona Goodhaven,’ she said abruptly.

‘How is she?’