(1990) Longshot by Francis Dick

Author:Francis, Dick [Dick, Francis,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-06-30T14:53:41.578000+00:00

'He thinks I killed her,' Harry said. 'It's obvious he does.'

'It's ridiculous,' Mackie repeated. 'He doesn't know you.'

'Where were you on that day?' I asked. 'I mean, you might have a perfect alibi.'

'I might have,' he said, 'but I don't know where I was. Could you say for certain what you were doing on the Tuesday afternoon of the second week of June last year?'

'Not for sure,' I said.

'If it had been the third week,' Harry said, 'we'd have been at Ascot races. Royal Ascot. Tarted up in top hats and things.'

'We keep a big appointments diary,' Fiona said fiercely. 'I dug up last year's. There's nothing listed at all on that second Tuesday. Neither of us can remember what we were doing.'

'No work?' I suggested. 'No meetings?'

Harry and Fiona simultaneously said no. Fiona was on a couple of committees for good causes, but there'd been no meetings that day. Harry, whose personal fortune seemed to equal Fiona's in robust good health, had in the past negotiated the brilliant sale of an inherited tyre-making company (so Tremayne had told me) and now passed his time lucratively as occasional consultant to other private firms looking for a golden corporate whale to swallow them. He couldn't remember any consultations for most of June.

'We went to see Nolan ride Chickweed at Uttoxeter near the end of May,' Fiona said worriedly. 'Angela was there looking after the horse. That was the day someone fed him theobromine and caffeine, and if she didn't give Chickweed chocolate herself then she must have let someone else do it. Sheer negligence, probably. Anyway, Chickweed won and Angela went back to Shellerton with him and we saw her a few days later and gave her an extra present, as we were so pleased with the way she looked after the horse. I mean, a horse's success is always partly due to whoever cares for it and grooms it. And I can't remember seeing the wretched girl again after that.'

'Nor can I,' Harry said.

They went over and over the same old ground all the way to Sandown and it was clear they had spoken of little else since Doone's devastating identification of Harry's belongings.

'Someone must have put those things there to incriminate Harry,' Mackie said unhappily.

Fiona agreed with her, but it appeared that Doone didn't.

Harry said, 'Doone believes it was an unpremeditated murder. I asked him why and he just said that most murders were unpremeditated. Useless. He said people who commit unpremeditated murder often drop things from extreme agitation and don't know they've dropped them. I said I couldn't even remember ever talking to the girl except in the company of my wife and he simply stared at me, not believing me. I'll tell you, pals, it was unnerving.'

'Awful,' Mackie said vehemently. 'Wicked.'

Harry, trying to sound balanced, was clearly horribly disconcerted and was driving without concentration, braking and accelerating jerkily. Fiona said they had thought of not going to Sandown as they weren't in a fun-day mood, but they had agreed not to let Doone's suspicions ruin everything.

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