CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The morning’s drizzling rain had given way to a gray mist by the time Charles drove back to Newmarket and found Jack Murray waiting beneath the tower clock, a brown-paper package under his arm. Charles pulled on the reins, stopping the hired gig, and Murray climbed up onto the seat.

“ ’Afternoon, sir,” he said. The mist was beaded on his wool cap and the shoulders of his tweed coat. “Lovely weather, eh? Trust you had good hunting.”

“Better than I expected,” Charles said, lifting the reins and chirruping to the horse. “Which way are we headed?”

“North, toward Snailwell. But let’s stop under those trees up ahead, sir.” Murray put the package on the seat and took two bottles of beer out of his coat pockets. “In case you missed lunch, sir. Hot fish and chips.”

“Good man, Jack.” Charles grinned and pulled the horse under a large beech tree. While they ate, he sketched his conversations with Dr. Stubbings and Mrs. Langtry.

Murray wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Stubbings, he’s a deep one. Doesn’t like the Club and abhors racing. And Mrs. Langtry?” Both gray eyebrows went up. “Now, there’s a shocker for you. Cert’nly sounds as if she had a motive. D’you think she shot Badger?”

Before he answered, Charles thought back to what Kate had said. His wife had an intuitive understanding of what motivated people to act and what actions they might be capable of, and he had always before trusted her judgment. But Lillie Langtry was skilled at impersonations. She had carved out a place for herself in the world because she knew how to deceive-and not just on the stage, either. Thinking back on what he knew of her relationship with the Prince and others, it was clear that deception must be habitual for her. Recognizing this, did he dare to rely on Kate’s belief that Lillie Langtry was innocent of the murder? He wished that he could, but feared he could not.

“I think Mrs. Langtry is capable of killing Day,” Charles said cautiously. “But unless we recover the gun-”

He shook his head. Even if Mrs. Langtry’s derringer were found and proved to have fired the fatal bullet, it could not be conclusively proved that she had fired it. Dr. Stubbings was right. The circumstantial evidence offered by a ballistics expert would not sway an English jury, nor would fingerprint evidence, even if they were fortunate enough to secure it. In a case like this, a jury would convict only upon the testimony of an eyewitness, or a confession. And at this point, neither seemed likely.

He sighed. “What did you learn, Jack?”

Murray delivered his report succinctly, between swigs of beer and mouthfuls of fish and greasy chips. When he and Charles parted company that morning, he had gone to the Great Horse, where the owner, a burly fellow named Harold, had just flung open the doors and was airing out the place. Murray had purchased a glass of ale and led Harold into a narration of the events of the previous night. Harold had plenty to tell, and a decided opinion as to the identity of Badger’s killer.

Badger had come into the pub at his usual time, around eight-thirty, an hour prior to the evening’s scheduled entertainment-a rat-killing dog and a boxing match-which Harold described at some length. The dog was Billy Sturgeon’s celebrated terrier bitch Queenie, who set a local record by dispatching seventy rats in five minutes. Following Queenie’s triumph, the rat-pit had been quickly converted to a boxing ring and Red Roy and the Manchester Strong Man had gone twenty-two rounds. The Strong Man prevailed. Harold said that both Queenie and the Strong Man-“fair champions in a fair fight”-were toasted long and loud before the evening came to an end, while Queenie herself, regally enthroned on the bar, lapped up her customary dish of ale.

Prior to these festivities, Badger had seated himself at his usual table in the far corner and conducted a little business. All was calm until a quarter to nine, when Eddie Baggs, Badger’s partner, had entered, in the company of Mr. Pinkie Duncan, the assistant trainer at the Grange House Stable, and Jesse Clark, one of the American trainers at the Red House Stable. Clark, Harold said contemptuously, was a filthy horse-doper, and Pinkie bid fair to follow in his footsteps. Harold himself did not like Clark, he confided, because the man, as he put it, was in the “pockets of them American rogues and scoundrels ’oo’ve come over ’ere with no other purpose than to steal honest folks’ money.”

The sight of Baggs in the company of this entreprenurial pair had angered Badger. (“Couldn’t blame ’im, meself,” Harold confided. “ ’Twas like ’is bloody partner ’ad gone over to the enemy.”) The four of them fell into a loud argument about the merits of horse-doping, Badger asserting that it ruined the horse and altered the odds in unpredictable ways, and the other two retorting that all was fair in love and horse-racing.

This disagreement had gone on for some time, getting louder and angrier, when Badger suddenly pounded on the table for silence. When he had the crowd’s attention, he stood and announced a radical plan to organize the Newmarket and London bookmakers into a coalition against Jesse and his cronies. Since the Jockey Club’s stewards refused to outlaw the disgraceful and unsportsmanlike practice of horse-doping, the coalition would take the matter into its own hands. Members would refuse to accept wagers on horses that had run doped in the past or were owned by individuals or a stable that had run doped horses. Badger intended to see that every reputable bookmaker became a member. At this, most of the crowd gave a loud cheer, for they were sick to death of watching their money end up in the Americans’ pockets. Not all, though. The dopers had their backers too, and there was a sharp division among the onlookers.

Charles whistled under his breath. “Would such a coalition have any effect?”

“Cert’nly,” Murray replied. “There’s plenty of sharp feeling among bookmakers on the subject, and Badger could prob’ly recruit enough to make their influence felt. But whether it worked or not, the newspapers would grab the story and use it to raise a public hue and cry, which the stewards do not want. They might find it politic to take some sort of action that would shut Badger up and halt the scandal.”

Or find a surer and more direct way to shut Badger up, Charles thought to himself, remembering the odd look on Owen North’s face that morning. But he didn’t voice the thought, for Jack Murray, likable though he might be, was the Club’s man. He would have his own talk with Harold, and ask him whether any members of the Jockey Club had been in the pub the night before.

Charles brought his attention back to Murray ’s last remark. “So one way or the other,” he said, “Badger would win. I suppose,” he added, “this likelihood was not lost on Pinkie and Clark. And Baggs too, I’ll warrant. Strange that he was with them,” he added. “Do you suppose he was planning to leave the partnership?”

“I wondered that too, sir,” Murray said, taking another pull on his beer. “According to Harold, Pinkie was furious at Badger, as was Clark, and Baggs too. Harold thought Badger seemed pleased with himself, gloating, actually. Maybe he thought that the more trouble he caused, the quicker the stewards would hear of it. He might have been planning to go around to some of the other pubs and make the same announcement.”