Derby Day Page 28

  All this might have been tolerable if Mr Happerton had explained it to her. She sometimes thought that if he had engaged an elephant for the Derby, along with a mahout to ride it, she would have been satisfied had she only been told how he proposed to decorate the beast’s howdah. And so Mrs Rebecca chafed, and fretted, and returned sharp words in answer to her father’s questions, and, able to bear it no longer, appeared in Mr Gresham’s study about ten minutes after Mr Pardew had left the house with Mr Happerton’s bill for three hundred pounds at three months in his pocketbook. Installed in the study, from which Mr Happerton could not very well evict her, where she sat, uninvited, in a chair and looked around her with the keenest interest, Mrs Rebecca began:

  ‘Who is that man whom John footman has just let out into the street?’

  ‘He is Mr Pardew,’ Mr Happerton said, not thinking there would be any harm in letting the name be known.

  ‘And what does he do?’

  ‘I believe he runs errands for Captain Raff. Certainly that is why he came to see me.’

  Mr Happerton looked hard at his wife. Her green eyes were blazing under her sandy hair. He suspected that she was angry, but he could not imagine the source of her anger. Mrs Rebecca, meanwhile, was staring critically at the wall behind his desk.

  ‘Why has the picture of Trinity Great Court where Papa went as a young man been taken down and that other thing put up in its place?’

  Since colonising his father-in-law’s study, Mr Happerton had made one or two little adjustments to its decor. He had substituted a picture of Eclipse in his glory for the print of Trinity College, and there was a dog-whip or two lying on the mantelpiece among the legal invitations.

  ‘I didn’t know you cared about it,’ he said, rather meekly.

  ‘Well I do. And Papa would be cross if he knew.’

  Mr Happerton was tired of this. There were a dozen things needing his attention. Major Hubbins was in Lincolnshire and complaining piteously about its privations; the livery stables he had engaged to transport Tiberius south wanted ten guineas in advance; he was anxious on account of Captain Raff, who had not been seen for several days. And now his wife was annoyed because a print had been taken off the wall of her father’s study. Raising his voice slightly – but only slightly – he said:

  ‘Papa does not need to know anything about it.’

  ‘And I am to be like Papa, I suppose, to be kept in ignorance and made a fool of, and to be put in the dark without candles and told things only when the people think it is safe for me to be told them.’

  Mr Happerton thought he would have preferred Mr Pardew back in his study. Mr Pardew had only wanted money.

  ‘What is all this about?’ he asked weakly.

  ‘It is about me.’ The fingers of the hands that Mrs Rebecca clasped in front of her were white to the knuckle. ‘How I am never to know. You do not tell me things. But people say that you do not want Tiberius to win the race. That it is all a sham, and Major Hubbins could ride him into a ditch and you would be delighted.’

  ‘Major Hubbins will do no such thing.’

  ‘He is nearly sixty, Mr Gaffney says, and not to be trusted with an old mare in the park. You had better tell me what you propose to do, or – or I shall go to Papa and tell him what became of his two thousand pounds.’

  ‘Papa’s two thousand pounds is perfectly safe. You may be assured of that.’

  ‘But it has not been spent on Tiberius.’

  ‘It was as good as spent on him!’ Mr Happerton was recovering his good humour. He thought he had never seen anything as spirited as his wife in her fury. ‘As I recollect, it was spent in buying up Davenant’s bills.’

  ‘And now you wish him to lose, so you can win money on Baldino, or Septuagint, or – some other horse.’

  ‘Is it Gaffney you have been talking to? Or Raff? What have they said?’

  ‘Mr Gaffney says you are playing a dangerous game.’

  ‘Mr Gaffney knows nothing about it. Listen to me, Rebecca.’ He saw that she was looking at him intently. ‘Certainly I put myself in the way of Tiberius thinking that he might win. But I don’t think that now. I think one of the two horses you have mentioned will win. There’s no room for sentiment, you know, in these affairs. It’s a question of establishing how much money can be made and the right way to go about making it. Do you understand? I am not trying to vex you. I am trying to make our fortunes. But there is an art to this. All through the spring people said that Tiberius was bound to win, and a great deal of money was staked on him, and so the odds shortened. Now people are saying Baldino or Septuagint will win, and their odds are shortening. But my money was laid out earlier, at seven or eight to one. There’s no going back from it.’

  ‘And what if some other horse should win?’

  ‘That’s something that doesn’t bear thinking about. But don’t fear. Baldino is a certainty. Tiberius is a nice little horse – you can see the arab in him, rather than being told it’s there – but he ain’t got the stamina, that’s what I think, and there’s more to be gained by letting him lose. I’m sorry he won’t wear your colours, but it’s the difference between five thousand pounds and twenty. Now, do you understand?’

  He thought to himself as he said this that he did not have the least idea how his wife might react. She might throw herself upon his shoulders or hurl the fire-irons at him for all he knew.

  ‘What are Baldino’s odds now?’

  ‘Five. Five-and-a-half. There was a heap of money followed ours. I dare say one could get six if the funds were in dribs and drabs.’

  ‘If I could get another two thousand pounds from Papa, it would help?’

  ‘Certainly it would.’

  ‘Then you shall have it,’ Mrs Rebecca said. Mr Happerton looked at her wonderingly. He thought that he had made a mistake about her, that the boldness he brought to his business dealings was something that excited her. The light had come into her eyes, he noticed. Trying to placate her further, he said:

  ‘There’s another thing. I’ve decided to take that place in Lincolnshire. Davenant is nearly bankrupt and it can be bought for a song. Should you like to go there?’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘About a hundred miles. The train reaches Lincoln.’

  ‘Certainly I should like to go,’ Mrs Rebecca said. And Mr Happerton, elate with the promise of his two thousand pounds, thought that, finally, he had begun to understand his wife.

  *

  ‘Well, here is news,’ Mr Masterson said, walking into Captain McTurk’s room at the back of Whitehall Court. ‘That man Pardew has been seen in London.’

  ‘Seen in London, was he?’ Captain McTurk stood up from his desk. Outside in the courtyard the same melancholy ostler was shovelling up the same pile of dung. ‘Who has seen him?’

  ‘His wife, by all accounts. Came across him on Richmond Hill, and went straight to the station to report the fact.’

  ‘A very public-spirited lady. There was some mystery about her, was there not?’ Captain McTurk wondered. ‘Knew nothing about bullion robberies. Thought her husband was a bill-broker. Lived respectably in Kensington and was never so surprised in her life when it all came out … Might she have been mistaken, do you suppose?’

  ‘I think not. He is supposed to be of very distinctive appearance.’ Mr Masterson had a portrait of Mr Pardew in his hand, an artist’s rendering that had appeared in the illustrated papers two years previously, and the two men stared at it.

  ‘No,’ Captain McTurk said after a while, ‘there would be no mistaking him, I think. Did she have any idea where he went?’

  ‘Only that he turned and fled down into the town. It was all over in an instant, I believe. One could not very well expect her to give chase.’

  ‘I suppose not. Of course, it may only be the merest coincidence. I mean, he may only have been visiting the place. Where does his wife live?’

  ‘At Teddington, I believe … I have told the people at Richmond to keep their eyes open.
’

  ‘And I don’t suppose they will see anything,’ Captain McTurk said. ‘He is probably twenty miles away by now. Certainly nowhere we shall find him.’ Mr Masterson thought Captain McTurk was unusually pessimistic about the case. ‘Have any of the pieces been found? That is, the things from Gallentin’s safe?’

  ‘There was a necklace recovered in Paris the other day. How it got there, no one knows.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it changed hands half a dozen times, and was bought by the Prince along the way.’ Captain McTurk was really very gloomy. ‘What about the notepaper?’

  ‘There are a dozen shops over the West End that sell it, I’m afraid. You would have to bring in half the householders in Chelsea and ask them one by one.’

  Captain McTurk looked as if he would be quite delighted to summon half the householders in Chelsea to his office and ask them questions. Then his eye fell on the litter of papers on his desk – letters from honourable members, complaints about tide-waiterships and toll-bridges, all the things, he thought, which conspired to oppress him. Down in the courtyard the melancholy ostler had disappeared, but the dung still lay in a heap.

  ‘Tell me’ – it was Captain McTurk’s habit to ask unexpected questions – ‘did you ever hear of a horse called Tiberius?’

  ‘Certainly I did. If he doesn’t win the Derby in three weeks’ time there will be a great many people regretting that they ever backed him. Why do you ask?’

  ‘It is just that wherever I go his name seems to jump up at me. There were a couple of men taken in the Tottenham Court Road the other day – tipsters, you know, brawling in the street, one of them had his brains nearly knocked out – and his was the name you got in exchange for your half-crown. And now there is a man in Lincolnshire writing to say that the horse was unfairly come by.’

  ‘I believe a man called Happerton owns him now,’ Mr Masterson said, who took an interest in the turf.

  ‘The fellow who married Gresham’s daughter?’

  ‘That is him, I think.’

  ‘Odd kind of man to marry an Equity Court lawyer’s daughter,’ Captain McTurk said. ‘But then somebody told me the other day that the Dean of Christchurch was set on marrying his cook, and the Fellows were up in arms. But was there ever a horse changed hands that did so fairly? There is always some debt or obligation hanging over it. You had better take the letter and see what can be done. As for that other business, you ought to go down to Richmond and see if they have missed anything. It is quite possible that Pardew is living in a cottage at the end of the superintendent’s garden. At any rate stranger things have happened.’

  Not at all averse to a pleasant afternoon in the countryside, Mr Masterson spent the remainder of the day in Richmond. Here, as an emissary of Captain McTurk’s, he was made much of. A constable was sent to show him the exact spot where Mr Pardew had been seen. Mrs Pardew’s deposition was produced for his inspection, and it was proposed that a cab should be sent instantly to Teddington to fetch her back. This offer Mr Masterson declined. He did not think there would be the slightest benefit in having Mrs Pardew brought over from Teddington, he explained, at which the Richmond constables looked sulky. They had expected a greater fixity of resolve from Captain McTurk’s lieutenant. Instead, Mr Masterson walked about Richmond on his own. He went back to the spot on Richmond Hill which the constable had shown him and traced the path for a good half-mile or so, casting little glances into the nearby lanes and once or twice picking up a fragment of discarded paper from the ground. He walked into the town and put his head in at the door of the institute, which was empty except for an old gentleman reading the Academy. There was a butcher’s shop further down the hill, and Mr Masterson strode into it, examined the pile of saveloys and the trays of kidneys on display and engaged the proprietor in conversation. At the end of this excursion, which lasted almost until the early evening, Mr Masterson felt that he had learned a great deal about Richmond but almost nothing about Mr Pardew. The twilight began to descend over the trees up on the hill and the fading sun burned off the surface of the water, where there were skiffs and rowing boats out in the gloaming, and Mr Masterson thought that he had spent a very pleasant afternoon.

  At the station he stopped and bought a copy of the Star, which had a great article by Captain Crewe about the Derby and told him that while the odds on Tiberius had lengthened those on Baldino and Septuagint had shortened to five and six to one. Mr Masterson put the newspaper in his pocket, and in the same preoccupied manner that he had brought to his tour of Richmond, went off to his train.

  *

  It was not so very long after this that the scales fell – or were induced to fall – from Captain Raff’s eyes. He was recruiting himself of an evening at a club in Dover Street when he chanced upon a friend – not one of the intimates with whom he dealt in the management of horses and the laying-off of bets, but a man who had known him twenty years ago and who perhaps remembered something of his inglorious military career. The club was not very select, and neither perhaps was the friend, whose name was Mr Howarth, but even the Captain Raffs of this world are allowed their innocent recreations – and their friends. Anyway Captain Raff, who had drunk a great deal, was pleased to see Mr Howarth, all the more pleased, perhaps, in that he did not hail from that part of the world through which the captain customarily strode. There was a certain amount of reminiscent talk about what the regiment had done at Belfast and a bygone steeplechase in which both men had performed to great advantage that was very agreeable to Captain Raff. But then, at a very late hour, just as the club was closing for the night – if such establishments can ever be really said to close – Mr Howarth fixed his friend with a look and said:

  ‘Now, what is the mystery about this horse, Raff?’

  ‘What horse would that be?’ Captain Raff wondered jocularly. He had drunk seven glasses of curaçao and was off his guard.

  ‘That Tiberius that you and that man Happerton are up to your necks in. I’ve ten guineas on him myself or I shouldn’t be so interested. Only the fellows are saying that Happerton has bred him up for the market, that – in point of fact – he don’t mean him to win.’

  ‘Oh, there is nothing in that,’ Captain Raff said. ‘Fellows always say that kind of thing before the Derby you know.’

  ‘And then there is that Major Hubbins who is to ride him. A man who last won a race when they were bringing the bodies back from Scutari.’

  ‘It was not so long ago as that, surely?’

  ‘Never mind that, Raff. The point is that Happerton don’t mean him to win. He has put four thousand on – what is that other horse’s name? – Baldino. I had it from a groom. And I don’t say that Hubbins ain’t thoroughly above-board, and as white as Miss Coutts’s underskirts, but he’s no Derby winner, not at his age, or I’m the Prince’s valet.’

  ‘You’re quite wrong, you know,’ Captain Raff said feebly.

  ‘Am I? Well, let us hope so. Gracious heavens, man, you’ll break the tumblers if you spill them on the floor like that. Let us see if they can get you a cab back home to Ryder Street.’

  When Captain Raff got home to Ryder Street it was two o’clock in the morning, but he knew that there was no prospect of sleep. His laundress had left her bill twisted under the door-knocker, and he clutched it absently in his hand as he fumbled for a match to light the candle. In the half-darkness the room loomed up eerily at him and he sat down grimly in the armchair and stared out into the shadow. Still Captain Raff was trying to soothe his anxieties. He did not want to believe that Mr Happerton had thrown him over and so he sought for evidence that would disprove what Mr Howarth had said. But as he did so he remembered half a dozen little hints and insinuations – moments when Mr Happerton had lowered his eye or averted his gaze when some question about Tiberius had been put to him. The more Captain Raff thought about it the more he recalled the peculiar circumstances in which Mr Happerton had not allowed him to lay out the money realised by the burglary at Mr Gallentin’s shop, and the st
ronger was his suspicion that Mr Howarth had been correct.

  ‘Five years, by God!’ he said once or twice. Five years had been the period of time he had known Mr Happerton, an acquaintance begun when Mr Happerton was a great deal less prosperous than he had since become. ‘Five years!’ he said again. They seemed very long years. He tried to remember them, but he could recall only days spent looking at horses, desultory afternoons at the Blue Riband and elsewhere, and a part of Captain Raff regretted these bleak profitless hours and wished they had been put to better use. He had a vision of himself sitting in a little cottage in Herefordshire, fishing for trout in the Wye, and going to evening service like a respectable man, but it was a dreadful vision, for he knew it would never be realised. What should he do? Where should he take his grievance? ‘I shall have it out with him by God!’ Captain Raff said out loud, but another part of him shrank from confronting Mr Happerton with his treachery. He fancied that if he went to Belgrave Square, Mr Happerton would very probably have him thrown out into the street, and Captain Raff did not want to give Mr Happerton this pleasure. What then? There were things he knew about Mr Happerton, compromising things, some of them, which, properly explained, would probably bring him to a police court, but Captain Raff had an idea that the explaining might very well incriminate other people, not least himself. He fancied that he could not soil Mr Happerton’s reputation without defiling his own.