Reflex (18 page)

I will ring you shortly with a suggestion.

Yours sincerely,
George Millace

 

The last of the five prints was different from the others in that its letter was handwritten, not typed, but as it had apparently been written in pencil, it was still of the same pale gray.

It said:

 

Dear Elgin Yaxley,

I bought the five horses that T. O'Tree shot. You fetched your own horses away in a horsebox, to export them to the East. I am satisfied with what you paid me for this service.

Yours faithfully,
David Parker

 

I thought of Elgin Yaxley as I had seen him the previous day at Ascot, smirking complacently and believing himself safe.

I thought of right and wrong, and justice. Thought of Elgin Yaxley as the victim of George Millace, and of the insurance company as the victim of Elgin Yaxley. Thought of Terence O'Tree who had gone to jail, and David Parker, who hadn't.

I couldn't decide what to do.

 

After a while I got up stiffly and went back to the darkroom. I put all of the magenta-splashed set of negatives into the contact-printing frame and made a nearly white print: and this time there were not five little oblongs with gray blocks, but fifteen.

With a hollow feeling of horror I switched off all the lights, locked the doors, and walked up the road to my briefing with Harold.

“Pay attention,” Harold said sharply.

“Er . . . yes.”

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“I'm talking about Coral Key at Kempton on Wednesday, and you're not listening.”

I dragged my attention back to the matter in hand.

“Coral Key,” I said. “For Victor Briggs.”

“That's right.”

“Has he said anything . . . about yesterday?”

Harold shook his head. “We had a drink after the race, but if Victor doesn't want to talk, you can't get a word out of him, and all he uttered were grunts. But until he tells me you're off his horses, you're still on them.”

He gave me a glass and a can of Coke and poured a large whisky for himself.

“I haven't much for you this week,” he said. “Nothing Monday or Tuesday. Pebble was going to run at Leicester but there's some heat in his leg . . . There's just Coral Key
on Wednesday, Diamond Buyer and the mare Friday, and two on Saturday, as long as it doesn't rain. Have you any outside rides lined up?”

“A novice 'chaser at Kempton on Thursday.”

“I hope it can bloody jump.”

 

I went back to the quiet cottage and made prints from the fifteen magenta-splashed negatives, getting plain white-and-gray results as before, as the blotchy shapes were filtered out along with the blue.

To my relief they were not fifteen threatening letters: only the first two of them finished with the promise of alternative suggestions.

I had expected one on the subject of the lovers, and it was there. It was the second one which left me breathless and weakly laughing in the kitchen: and certainly it put me in a better frame of mind for any revelations to come.

The last thirteen prints, however, turned out to be George's own notes of where and when he had taken his incriminating pictures, and on what film, and at which exposures, and on what dates he had sent the frightening letters. I guessed he had kept his records in this form because it had turned out to be easy for him, and had seemed safer than leaving such damaging material lying legibly around on paper.

As a backup to the photographs and letters they were fascinating, but they all failed to say what the “alternative suggestions” had been. There was no record of what monies George had extorted, nor of any bank, safe deposit, or hiding place where he could have stashed the proceeds. Even to himself, George on this subject had been reticent.

I went late to bed and couldn't sleep, and in the morning made some telephone calls.

One to the editor of the
Horse and Hound
, whom I knew, begging him to include Amanda's picture in that week's issue, emphasizing that time was short. He said dubiously that he would print it if I got it to his office
that morning, but after that it would be too late.

“I'll be there,” I said. “Two columns wide, photograph seven centimeters deep, with some wording top and bottom. Say eleven centimeters altogether. On a nice right-hand page near the front where no one can miss it.”

“Philip!” he protested, but then sighed audibly, and I knew he would do it. “That camera of yours . . . If you've got any racing pics I might use, bring them along. I'll have a look anyway. No promises, mind, but a look. It's people I want, not horses. Portraits. Got any?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“Good. Soon as possible, then. See you.”

I telephoned to Marie Millace for Lord White's home number, and then I telephoned Old Driven Snow at his home in the Cotswolds.

“You want to see me?” he said. “What about?”

“About George Millace, sir.”

“Photographer? Died recently?”

“Yes, sir. His wife is a friend of Lady White.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, impatiently. “I could see you at Kempton, if you like.”

I asked if I could call on him at his home instead, and although he wasn't overpoweringly keen, he agreed to my taking half an hour of his time at five o'clock the next day. With slightly sweating palms I replaced the receiver and said “phew” and thought that all I had to do to back out was to ring him again and cancel.

After that I telephoned to Samantha, which was a great deal easier, and asked if I could take her and Clare out to dinner. Her warm voice sounded pleased.

“Tonight?” she said.

“Yes.”

“I can't go. But I'm sure Clare can. She'd like it.”

“Would she?”

“Yes, you silly man. What time?”

I said I would pick her up at about eight, and Samantha said fine and how was the search for Amanda going, and
I found myself talking to her as if I'd known her all my life. As indeed, in a way, I had.

I drove to London to the
Horse and Hound
offices and fixed with the editor to print Amanda's picture captioned
“Where is this stable? Ten pounds for the first person—and particularly for the first child—who can telephone Philip Nore to tell him.”

“Child?” said the editor, raising his eyebrows and adding my telephone number. “Do they read this paper?”

“Their mothers do.”

“Subtle stuff.”

He said, looking through the folder I'd brought of racing faces, that they were starting a series on racing personalities, and he wanted new pictures that hadn't already appeared all over the place, and he could use some of mine, if I liked.

“Er . . . yes.”

“Usual rates,” he said casually, and I said fine; and only after a pause did I ask him what the usual rates were. Even to ask, it seemed to me, was a step nearer to caring as much for the income as for the photographs themselves. Usual rates were a commitment. Usual rates meant joining the club. I found it disturbing. I accepted them, all the same.

 

Samantha was out when I went to fetch Clare.

“Come in for a drink first,” Clare said, opening the door wide. “It's such a lousy evening.”

I stepped in out of the wind and cold rain of late November and we went not downstairs to the kitchen but into the long gently lit ground floor sitting room, which stretched from the front to the back of the house. I looked around, seeing its comfort, but feeling no familiarity.

“Do you remember this room?” Clare said.

I shook my head.

“Where's the bathroom?” she said.

I answered immediately, “Up the stairs, turn right, blue ba . . .”

She laughed. “Straight from the subconscious.”

“It's so odd.”

There was a television set in one corner with a program of talking heads, and Clare walked over and switched it off.

“Don't, if you're in the middle of watching,” I said.

“It was just another antidrug lecture. All these pontificating so-called experts. How about that drink? What would you like? There is some wine . . .” She held up a bottle of white Burgundy, opened, so we settled on that.

“Some smug little presenter was saying,” she said, pouring into the glasses, “that one in five women take tranquilizers, but only one in ten men. Implying that poor little women are so much less able to deal with life, the feeble little dears.” She handed me a glass. “Makes you laugh.”

“Does it?”

She grinned. “I suppose it never occurs to the doctors who write out the prescriptions that the poor feeble little women sprinkle those tranquilizers all over their husbands' dinner when he comes home from work.”

I laughed.

“They do,” she said. “The ones with great hulking bastards who knock them about, and the ones who don't like too much sex . . . they mix the nice tasteless powder into the brute's meat and potatoes, and lead a quiet life.”

“It's a great theory.”

“Fact,” she said.

We sat in a couple of pale velvet armchairs sipping the cool wine, she, in a scarlet silk shirt and black trousers, making a bright statement against the soft coloring of the room. A girl given to positive statements. A girl of decision and certainty and mental energy. Not at all like the gentle undemanding girls I occasionally took home.

“I saw you racing on Saturday,” she said. “On television.”

“I didn't think you were interested.”

“Of course I am, since I saw your photos.” She drank a mouthful. “You do take some frightful risks.”

“Not always like Saturday.” She asked why not, and rather to my surprise, I told her.

“But my goodness,” she said indignantly, “that's not fair.”

“Life's not fair. Too bad.”

“What a gloomy philosophy.”

“Not really. Take what comes, but hope for the best.”

She shook her head. “Go out looking for the best.” She drank and said, “What happens if you're really smashed up by one of those falls?”

“You curse.”

“No, you fool. To your life, I mean.”

“Mend as fast as possible and get back in the saddle. While you're out of it, some other jockey is pinching your rides.”

“Charming,” she said. “And what if it's too bad to mend?”

“You've got a problem. No rides, no income. You start looking at want ads.”

“And what happens if you're killed?”

“Nothing much,” I said.

“You don't take it seriously,” she complained.

“Of course not.”

She studied my face. “I'm not used to people who casually risk their lives most days of the week.”

I smiled at her. “The risk is less than you'd think. But if you're really unlucky, there's always the Injured Jockeys' Fund.”

“What's that?”

“The racing industry's private charity. It looks after the widows and orphans of dead jockeys and gives succor to
badly damaged live ones, and makes sure no one pops off in old age for want of a lump of coal.”

“Can't be bad.”

We went out a little later and ate in a small restaurant determinedly decorated as a French peasant kitchen with scrubbed board tables, rushes on the floor, and dripping candles stuck in wine bottles. The food turned out to be as bogus as the surroundings, never having seen the light of anyone's pot au feu. Clare, however, seemed not to mind and we ate microwaved veal in a blanket white sauce, trying not to remember the blanquettes in France, where she too had been frequently, though for holidays, not racing.

“You race in France?”

“After Christmas, if it freezes here, there's always the chance of some rides at Cagnes sur Mer . . . down on the south coast.”

“It sounds marvelous.”

“It's still winter. And still work. But yes, not bad.”

She returned to the subject of photographs, and said she would like to come down to Lambourn again to go through the Jockey's Life file.

“Don't worry if you want to change your mind,” I said.

“Of course I don't.” She looked at me in seeming alarm. “You haven't sold any to anyone else, have you? You did say you wouldn't.”

“Not those.”

“What, then?”

I told her about the
Horse and Hound
, and about Lance Kinship, and how odd I found it that all of a sudden people seemed to be wanting to buy my work.

“I would think,” she said judiciously, “that the word has gone around.” She finished her veal and sat back, her face serious with thought. “What you need is an agent.”

I explained about having to find one for Marie Millace anyway, but she brushed that aside.

“Not
any
agent,” she said. “I mean me.”

She looked at my stunned expression and smiled. “Well?” she said. “What does any agent do? He knows the markets and sells the goods. Your goods will sell . . . obviously. So I'll learn pretty damn quick what the markets are, that I don't know already. The sports side of it, I mean. And what if I got you commissions for illustrations for other books . . . on any subject . . . would you do them?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“No buts,” she said. “There's no point in taking super photos if no one sees them.”

“But there are thousands of photographers.”

“Why are you so defeatist?” she said. “There's always room for one more.”

The candlelight shone on the intent expression and lay in apricot shadows under cheekbone and chin. Her gray eyes looked steadily at a future I still shied away from. I wondered what she'd say if I said I wanted to kiss her, when her thoughts were clearly more practical.

“I could try,” she said persuasively. “I'd like to try. Will you let me? If I'm no good, I'll admit it.”