‘Do you think she hates him enough to shop him?’
‘Possibly. I think she’s pathological where he and Tab are concerned, particularly now she knows Rannaldini raped Tab. I certainly wouldn’t rule her out as the killer. Let’s go and talk to another side of the triangle, Isaac Lovell, who hates Rupert even more than she does.’
‘I’m expecting Isa within the hour,’ Janice, the head groom, told Karen and Gablecross when they walked into Rannaldini’s yard.
Slim, foxy, knowing, a goer in the sack, Janice was soon confiding that she would happily have murdered her late boss for the way he treated his horses.
‘That was his torture chamber,’ she added, pointing the yard brush at the indoor school. ‘He used to lock himself in with a green young horse, and do terrible things to make them go the way he wanted.’
She had stayed with Rannaldini, she said, because she was so sorry for the horses, and as Gablecross stretched out a hand towards the heads hanging out of the boxes, they all flinched away — except for The Prince of Darkness who, safely muzzled, scraped angrily at his half-door.
‘He’ll get you with his feet, or crush you against a wall, if he can’t use his teeth,’ said Janice.
For Sunday night, she had the perfect alibi: a skittle contest, between nine thirty and midnight at the Pearly Gates.
‘I was choked when Isa turned up at the yard at eight thirty — I wasn’t expecting him. He always slides in, well, like a cobra, never giving you any time to tart up. He’s gorgeous, the bastard,’ she added to Karen.
‘I was dying to get away, but he insisted on looking at every horse, in case they’d lost condition in the drought. We’re turning them out just at night because of the flies.’
‘How did Isa get on with Rannaldini?’
‘Worse and worse. No-one pushes horses harder than Isa. It’s an insult to his genius to expect him to flog them home, but Rannaldini wanted more winners. He went berserk when Peppy won the Derby. Last week.’ Janice glanced round the yard in terror. ‘I can’t believe he’s not here any more, he threatened to jock Isa off and drop Jake as trainer. That’s like an ad agency losing the Coca-Cola account. It would ruin Jake.’
‘Was Isa upset?’
‘Not outwardly — that’s what makes him so attractive, never shows what he’s thinking.’
‘Not a lot probably — except about horses,’ said Gablecross, noticing an empty box with stickers on the green half-doors, saying, ‘Champion’ and ‘World Beater’ and ‘The Engineer’ painted in blue letters above them. The damsel in distress, and now her charger, had fled.
‘Rupert Campbell-Black’s groom, Dizzy, collected Engie this morning,’ explained Janice. ‘Good thing Rupert didn’t come. There’d have been bloodshed if he’d seen Isa.’
In the tack room, she handed out chipped mugs of orange squash, and settled down to clean a bridle.
‘Isa was paranoid about his private life staying private,’ she went on, ‘I’m sure Rannaldini hoped to share groupies and experience but Isa wouldn’t play ball. He’s a terrific stud, but he likes to poach under cover of dark, like a gypsy. He was well pissed off on Sunday night. His mobile rang — it must have been around nine thirty because the stable clock was striking — and he couldn’t walk out of earshot because he and I were both in The Prince’s box. So he pressed the receiver to his mouth, and muttered that he wasn’t going to be able to make it, then he switched off his mobile and said he was off to Magpie Cottage. “You’d better keep it switched off, Casanova,” I said to him, “in case any of your ladies ring when Tab’s there.” He threw me such a filthy look I went cold. He can put the evil eye on you. By the time I’d turned out The Prince, he was gone.’
‘What d’you reckon to his marriage?’ asked Karen, who was busy taking goosegrass out of the stable cat’s tail.
‘Pretends he doesn’t give a stuff. She’s a madam but you can’t help loving her and she doesn’t deserve a pig like Isa — any more than her stupid, neurotic mother deserved Rannaldini. I heard Rannaldini and Isa rowing again last week, just before he left for Australia. “I’m taking my horses away because you haven’t made my poor stepdaughter very happy,” Rannaldini was saying, in his oiliest voice, and Isa hissed back, “That’s because you want her yourself, you fucker. Well, stay away from her.”’
‘Perhaps he loves her,’ sighed Karen romantically.
‘It sounds really weird,’ Janice dug her sponge into the saddle soap, ‘but because of the blood feud between the Campbell-Blacks and the Lovells, I think Isa feels bitterly ashamed about wanting Tab so much, almost like a paedophile fighting to stop himself jumping on a little kid. So he rejects her. Does that make sense?’
‘Utterly.’ Karen nodded wisely as the stable cat settled, purring happily, between her luscious thighs. ‘A Puritan conscience coupled with an over-aberrant libido seldom leads to an easy love life.’
Gablecross gave her an old-fashioned look.
‘Did you see anything unusual on your way to the Pearly Gates?’ he asked Janice.
