Decider. Part 27

'Er... lucky,' I murmured.

Perdita Faulds laughed. 'Do I embarra.s.s you? Pen says I'm embarra.s.sing. She says I tell total strangers things I should never tell anyone. I do like to shock people a bit, to be honest. There are so many tight-lipped fuddy-duddies about. But secrets, they're different.'

'What secrets?'

'What secret do you want to know?' she bantered.

'How you came by seven shares,' I said.

She put down her gla.s.s and regarded me with eyes that were suddenly shrewd, besides being benign.

'Now, there's a question!' She didn't answer it at once. She said, 'A couple of weeks ago the papers were saying the Strattons were rowing over the future of this racecourse.'

'Yes, I read that too.'

'Is that why you're here?'

'Basically, I guess so, yes.'

She said, 'I was brought up here, you know. Not here on the racecourse, but on the estate.'

I said, puzzled, 'But the Strattons except Marjorie say they don't know you.'

'No, silly, they don't. Years ago, my father was Lord Stratton's barber.'

She smiled at the surprise I hadn't hidden.

'You don't think I look like a barber's daughter?'

'Well, no, but then I don't know any barbers' daughters.'

'My father rented a cottage on the estate,' she explained, 'and he had shops in Swindon, and Oxford and Newbury, but he used to go to Stratton Hays himself to cut Lord Stratton's hair. We moved before I was fifteen and lived near the Oxford shop, but my father still went to Stratton Hays once a month.'

'Do go on,' I said. 'Did Lord Stratton give your father the shares?'

She finished the pale liquid in her gla.s.s. I poured some more.

'No, it wasn't like that.' She considered a little, but continued. 'My father died and left me the barber business. You see, by that time I'd learned the whole beauty trade, got diplomas, everything. Lord Stratton just strolled into the Oxford shop one day when he was pa.s.sing, to see how I was getting on without my father, and he stayed to have a manicure.'

She smiled. She drank. I asked no more.

'Your mother used to come into the Swindon shop to have her hair done,' she said. 'I could have told her not to marry that vicious swine, Keith, but she'd done it by then. She used to come into the shop with bruises on her face and ask me personally to style her hair to hide them. I used to take her into a private cubicle, and she'd cling to me sometimes, and just cry. We were about the same age, you see, and we liked each other.'

'I'm glad she had someone,' I said.

'Funny, isn't it, what happens? I never thought I'd be sitting here talking to you you.'

'You know about me?'

'Lord Stratton told me. During manicures.'

'How long did you... look after his hands?'

'Until he died,' she said simply. 'But things changed, of course. I met my husband and had Penelope, and William I mean, Lord Stratton, of course he got older older and couldn't... well... but he still liked to have his nails done, and we would and couldn't... well... but he still liked to have his nails done, and we would talk talk. Like old, old friends, you see?'

I saw.

'He gave me the shares at the same time he gave them to your mother. He gave them to his solicitors to look after for me. He said they might be worth something one day. It wasn't a great big deal. Just a present. A loving present. Better than money. I didn't ever want money from him. He knew that.'

'He was a lucky man,' I said.

'Oh, you dear dear. You're as nice as Madeline was.'

I rubbed a hand over my face, finding no answer.

'Does Penelope know,' I asked, 'about you and Lord Stratton?'

'Pen's a child child!' she replied. 'She's eighteen. Of course she doesn't know. Nor does her father. I never told anyone. Nor did William... Lord Stratton. He wouldn't hurt his wife, and I didn't want him to.'

'But Marjorie guesses.'

She nodded. 'She's known all these years. She came to see me in the Oxford shop. She made a special appointment. I think it was just to see what I was like. We just talked a bit, not about anything much. She never said anything afterwards. She loved William, as I did. She wouldn't have given him away. She didn't, anyway. She still hasn't, has she?'

'No, she hasn't.'

After a pause, Perdita changed gears with her voice, shedding nostalgia, taking on business, saying crisply, 'So what are we going to do now, about William's racecourse?'

'If the course is sold for development,' I said, 'you'll make a nice little capital gain.'

'How much?'

'You can do sums as well as anyone. Seventy thousand pounds for every million the land raises, give or take a little capital gain.'

'And you?' she asked frankly. 'Would you sell?'

'You can't say it's not tempting. Keith's pushing for it. He's actually trying to put people off coming here, so that there's no profit in the course staying open.'

'That puts me off selling, for a start.'

I smiled. 'Me, too.'

'So?'

'So if we get a brilliant new stand built and by brilliant, I don't mean huge, but clever, so that the crowds like to come here our shares should pay us more regular dividends than they have in the past.'

'You think, then, that horse racing as such will go on?'

'It's lasted in England so far for more than three hundred years. It's survived scandals and frauds and all sorts of accidental disasters. Horses are beautiful and betting's an addiction. I'd build a new stand.'

'You're romantic!' she teased.

'I'm not deeply in debt,' I said, 'and Keith may be.'

'William told me Keith was the biggest disappointment of his life.'

I looked at her in sudden speculation, fifty questions rising like sharp rays of light; but before I could do anything constructive, a racecourse official came to my side and said Colonel Gardner would like me to go urgently to the office.

'Don't go away without telling me how to find you,' I begged Perdita Faulds.

'I'll be here all afternoon,' she rea.s.sured me. 'If I miss you, this is the phone number of my Oxford shop. That'll reach me.' She gave me a business card. 'And how do I find you you?'

I wrote my mobile phone number and the Suss.e.x house number on the back of another of her cards, and left her contentedly continuing with her champagne while I went to find out what crisis had overcome us.

The trouble, essentially, was the state of Rebecca's nerves. She was pacing up and down outside the office and gave me an angry stare as I went past her and through the door, and I'd never seen her look more unstable.

Roger and Oliver were inside, steaming and grinding their teeth.

'You are not going to believe this,' Roger said tautly, when he saw me. 'We have all the normal sort of troubles we've caught a would-be n.o.bbler in the stables, the lights on the Tote board have fused and there's a man down in Tattersalls having a heart attack and we also have Rebecca creating the father and mother of a stink because there are no hangers in the women jockeys' changing tent.'

'Hangers?' I said blankly.

'Hangers. She says they can't be expected to hang their clothes and colours up on the floor. We gave her a table, a bench, a mirror, a basin, running water and a drain. And she's creating about hangers hangers.'

'Er...' I said helplessly. 'How about a rope, for their clothes?'

Roger handed me a bunch of keys. 'I wondered if you'd take the jeep down to my house it's locked, my wife's somewhere here but I can't find her and bring back some hangers. Take the clothes off them. It's madness, but do you mind? Can you do it? Will your legs be up to it?'

'Sure,' I said, relieved. 'I thought it was serious, when you sent for me.'

'She's riding Conrad's horse in the first race. It would be serious enough for him and for all of us if she went completely off her rocker.'

'OK.'

Outside, I found Dart trying without success to pacify his sister. He gave it up when he saw me and walked with me to the jeep, asking where I was going. When I said to fetch some hangers he was at first incredulous and then offered to help, so I drove both of us on the errand.

'She gets into states,' Dart said, excusing her.

'Yes.'

'I suppose it's a strain, risking your life every day.'

'Perhaps she should stop.'

'She's just blowing off steam.'

We disunited Roger's clothes from a whole lot of hangers and on the way back called at the bus, where I opened the door and stuck my head into a football roar, maximum decibels.

'Toby,' I yelled, 'are you all right?'

'Yes, Dad.' He turned the volume down slightly. 'Dad, they had Stratton Park on the telly! They showed all the flags and the bouncing castle and everything. They said people should come here, the racing was going ahead and it was a real Bank Holiday day out.'

'Great!' I said. 'Do you want to come up to the paddock?'

'No, thanks.'

'OK, see you later.'

I told Dart about the television coverage. 'That was Oliver's doing,' he said. 'I heard him s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the arms off those camera guys to get them rolling. I must say, he and Roger and you, you've done a fantastic job here.'

'And Henry.'

'Father says the family got you wrong. He says they shouldn't have listened to Keith.'

'Good.'

'He's worried about Rebecca, though.'

So would I be, I thought, if she were my daughter.

Dart gave the hangers to his sister who stalked off with them, tight mouthed. He also, to save my legs, he said, took the jeep's keys back into the office and told Roger and Oliver the big top had been news. Finally he suggested a beer and a sandwich in the bar so that he could skip the Stratton lunch. 'Keith, Hannah, Jack and Imogen,' he said. 'Yuk.' Then, 'Did you know the police took my old wheels away for testing?'

'No,' I said, looking for signs of worry on Dart's face, and finding none, I didn't know.'

'It's a b.l.o.o.d.y nuisance,' he said. 'I've had to rent a car. I told the police I would send them the bill and they just sneered. I'm fed up with this bomb thing.' He grinned at my walking stick. 'You must be, too.'

Perdita Faulds had left the bar and was nowhere in sight when we reached it. Dart and I drank and munched and I told him I'd read a recipe once for curing falling hair.

He looked at me suspiciously. 'You're taking the mickey.'

'Well,' I said judiciously, 'it might be on a par with tearing off tree barks to cure malaria, or using mould growing on jelly to cure blood poisoning.'

'Quinine,' he said, nodding, 'and penicillin.'

'Right. So this cure for baldness came from a Mexican medicine-man's handbook written in 1552.'

'I'll try anything anything,' he said.

'You grind up some soap plant,' I said, 'and you boil it in dog's urine, and you throw in a tree frog or two and some caterpillars...'

'You're a s.h.i.t s.h.i.t,' he said bitterly.

'That's what the book says.'

'You're a b.l.o.o.d.y liar.'

'The Aztecs swore by it.'

'I'll throw you to Keith,' he said. 'I'll stamp on you myself.'