Longshot. Part 15

I looked speculatively at Mackie, wondering about her sometime engagement to Nolan. She showed nothing for him now but concerned friendship: no lingering love and no hard feelings. Nolan showed nothing but concern for himself.

Fiona said to me, 'Stay to dinner?' and Harry said, 'Do,' but I shook my head.

'I promised to cook for Gareth and Tremayne.'

'Good G.o.d,' Harry said.

Fiona said, 'That'll make a change from pizza! They have pizza nine nights out of ten. Gareth just puts one in the microwave, regular as clockwork.'

Mackie put down her gla.s.s and stood up tiredly. 'I think I'll go too. Perkin will be waiting to hear the news.'

Nolan remarked tartly between 'f's that if Perkin had bothered to put in an appearance at Reading he would know the news already.

'He wasn't needed,' Harry said mildly.

'Olympia died in his half of the house,' Lewis said. 'You'd have thought he'd have taken an interest.'

Nolan remembered with below-the-waist indelicacies that Tremayne hadn't supported him either.

'They were both busy,' Mackie said gamely. 'They both work, you know.'

'Meaning we don't?' Lewis asked waspishly.

Mackie sighed. 'Meaning whatever you like.' To me she said, 'Did you come in Tremayne's car?'

'No, walked.'

'Oh! Then- do you want a lift home?'

I thanked her and accepted and Harry came with us to see us off.

'Here are your clothes in your bag,' he said, handing it to me. 'Can't thank you enough, you know.'

'Any time.'

'G.o.d forbid.'

Harry and I looked at each other briefly in the sort of appreciation that's the beginning of friendship, and I wondered whether he, of all of them, would have been least sorry to see Nolan in the cells.

'He's not always like that,' Mackie said as she steered out of the drive. 'Nolan, I mean. He can be enormously good fun. Or rather, he used to be, before all this.'

'I read in today's paper that you were once engaged to him.'

She half laughed. 'Yes, I was. For about three months, five years ago.'

'What happened?'

'We met in February at a Hunt Ball. I knew who he was. Fiona's cousin, the amateur jockey. I'd been brought up in eventing. Had ponies before I could walk. I told him I sometimes went to stay with Fiona. Small world, he said. We spent the whole evening together and- well- the whole night. It was sudden, like lightning. Don't tell Perkin. Why does one tell total strangers things one never tells anyone else? Sorry, forget it'

'Mm,' I said. 'What happened when you woke up?'

'It was like a roller-coaster. We spent all our time together. After two weeks he asked me to marry him and I said yes. Blissful. My feet never touched the ground. I went to the races to watch him- he was spell-binding. Kept winning, saying I'd brought him luck.' She stopped, but she was smiling.

'Then what?'

'Then the jumping season finished. We began planning the wedding- I don't know. Maybe we just got to know each other. I can't say which day I realised it was a mistake. He was getting irritable. Flashes of rage, really. I just said one day, 'It won't work, will it?' and he said, 'No,' so we fell into each other's arms and had a few tears and I gave him his ring back.'

'You were lucky,' I commented.

'Yes. How do you mean?'

'To come out of it without a fighting marriage and a spiteful divorce.'

'You're so right.' She turned into Tremayne's drive and came to a halt. 'We've been friends ever since, but Perkin has always been uncomfortable with him. See, Nolan is brilliant and brave on horses and Perkin doesn't ride all that well. We don't talk about horses much, when we're alone. It's restful, actually. I tell Perkin he ought to be grateful to Nolan that I was free for him, but I suppose he can't help how he feels.'

She sighed, unbuckled her seat belt and stood up out of the car.

'Look,' she said, 'I like you, but Perkin does tend to be jealous.'

'I'll ignore you,' I promised.

She smiled vividly. 'A touch of old-fashioned formality should do the trick.' She began to turn away, and then stopped. 'I'm going in through our own entrance, Perkin's and mine. I'll see how he's doing. See if he's stopped work. We'll probably be along for a drink. We often do, at this time of day.'

'OK.'.

She nodded and walked off, and I went round and into Tremayne's side of the house as if I'd lived there for ever. Yesterday morning, I thought incredulously, I awoke to Aunty's freeze.

Tremayne in the family room had lit the log fire and poured his gin and tonic and, standing within heating range of the flames, he listened with disillusion to the outcome of Nolan's trial.

'Guilty but unpunished,' he observed. 'New-fangled escape clause.'

'Should the guilty always be punished?'

He looked at me broodingly. 'Is that a character a.s.sessment question?'

'I guess so.'

'It's unanswerable, anyway. The answer is, I don't know.' He turned and with a foot pushed a log further into the fire. 'Help yourself to a drink.'

'Thanks. Mackie said they might be along.'

Tremayne nodded, taking it for granted, and in fact she and Perkin came through from the central hall while I was dithering between the available choices of whisky or gin, neither of which I much liked. Perkin solved the liquid question for himself by detouring into the kitchen and reappearing with a gla.s.s of c.o.ke.

'What do you actually like?' Mackie asked, seeing my hesitation as she poured tonic into gin for herself.

'Wine, I suppose. Red for preference.'

'There will be some in the office. Tremayne keeps it for owners, when they come to see their horses. I'll get it.'