Lover-boy made a stab at pinching her bottom as she passed behind him, which she seemed not to mind. Well, well, well, I thought, there was a veritable pussycat lurking somewhere inside that self-contained, touch-me-not secretarial exterior. She made her coffee and sat at the table beside the jockey, not overtly flirting but very aware of him.
I made the toast, which had become my accepted job, and put out the juice, butter, marmalade and so on. Sam Yaeger watched with comically raised eyebrows.
‘Didn’t Tremayne say you were a writer?’ he asked.
‘Most of the time. Want some toast?’
‘One piece, light brown. You don’t look like a sodding writer.’
‘So many people aren’t.’
‘Aren’t what?’
‘What they look like,’ I said. ‘Sodding or not.’
‘What do I look like?’ he demanded, but with, I thought, genuine curiosity.
‘Like someone who won the Grand National among eighty-nine other races last year and finished third on the jockeys’ list.’
‘You’ve been peeking,’ he said, surprised.
‘I’ll be interviewing you soon for your views on your boss as a trainer.’
Tremayne said with mock severity, ‘And they’d better be respectful.’
‘They bloody well would be, wouldn’t they?’
‘If you have any sense,’ Tremayne agreed, nodding.
I dealt out the toast and made some more. Sam’s extremely physical presence dominated breakfast throughout and I wondered briefly how he got on with Nolan, the dark side of the same coin.
I asked Dee-Dee that question after Sam and Tremayne had gone out with the second lot; asked her in the office while I checked some facts in old formbooks.
‘Get on?’ she repeated ironically. ‘No, they do not.’ She paused, considered whether to tell me more, shrugged and continued. ‘Sam doesn’t like Nolan riding so many of the stable’s horses. Nolan rides most of Fiona’s runners, he accepts that, but Tremayne runs more horses in amateur races than most trainers do. Wins more, too, of course. The owners who bet, they like it, because whatever else you can say about Nolan, no one denies he’s a brilliant jockey. He’s been top of the amateurs’ list for years.’
‘Why doesn’t he turn professional?’ I asked.
‘The very idea of that scares Sam rigid,’ Dee-Dee said calmly, ‘but I don’t think it will happen. Especially not now, since the conviction. Nolan prefers his amateur status, anyway. He thinks of Sam as blue collar to his white. That’s why...’ she stopped abruptly as if blocking a revelation that was already on its way from brain to mouth, stopped so sharply that I was immediately interested, but without showing it asked, ‘Why what?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not fair to them.’
‘Do go on,’ I said, not pressing too much. ‘I won’t repeat it to anyone.’
‘It wouldn’t help you with the book,’ she said.
‘It might help me to understand the way the stable works and where its success comes from, besides Tremayne’s skill. It might come partly, for instance, from rivalry between two jockeys each of whom wants to prove himself better than the other.’
She gazed at me. ‘You have a twisty mind. I’d never have thought of that.’ She paused for decision and I simply waited. ‘It isn’t just riding,’ she said finally. ‘It’s women.’
‘They’re rivals there, too. The night Nolan — I mean, the night Olympia died...’
They all said, I’d noticed, ‘when Olympia died’, and never ‘when Nolan killed Olympia’, though Dee-Dee had just come close.
‘Sam set out to seduce Olympia,’ Dee-Dee said, as if it were only to be expected. ‘Nolan brought her to the party and of course Sam made a bee-line for her.’ Somewhere in her calm voice was indulgence for Sam Yaeger, censure for Nolan, never mind that Nolan seemed to be the loser.
‘Did Sam... er... know Olympia?’
‘Never set eyes on her before. None of us knew her. Nolan had been keeping her to himself. Anyway, he brought her that night and she took one look at Sam and
‘I can see that,’ I said.
‘Can you? Olympia did. Putty in his hands which of course were all over her the minute Nolan went to fetch her a drink. When he came back, she’d gone off with Sam. Like I told you, she had on a low-cut long scarlet dress slit up the thigh... next best thing to a written invitation. Nolan seemed to think that Sam and Olympia would have headed for the stables and he went looking for them there, but without results.’
She stopped again as if doubting the wisdom of telling me these things, but it seemed harder for her to stop than to start.
‘Nolan came back into the house cursing and swearing and telling me he would strangle the... er... bitch because, you see, I think he blamed
‘Which no one,’ I said slowly, ‘brought up at the trial.’
