Dead Ringer Read Free Page A

… I’m afraid it will take me a little time, Wood.’
    The owner of the Derby winner was grandiosely unconcerned. After all, he was dealing with the Prime Minister’s brother, and they were all gentlemen together here. There was no cause for anxiety. He smiled, waved his hand in a gesture of generous acceptance. ‘Of course, Colonel. Take your time. It’s of no consequence . I’ll call in a few days and we can discuss matters.’
    There was a great deal of money at stake but for the moment Ernest Wood was in no hurry: he was enjoying his triumph. But the cold feeling in my stomach grew as I watched the figure of Colonel Peel cross the room, rejoining the sour-featured Bentinck, the Chief Steward and the committee members of the Jockey Club. Bentinck looked back from the tight little group, glared at the exultant Ernest Wood and said something to Colonel Peel. The owner of
Orlando
smiled grimly. Then they were gone.
    A half-inebriated young buck at the edge of the crowd called out a toast.
    ‘To
Running Rein
!’
    Champagne glasses were raised, renewed cheering broke out, but as I watched the Jockey Club committee members leave in a surly group I had an icy foreboding of disaster. I hesitated, then gave way to my anxieties. I stepped forward, reached the corn merchant, touched his elbow. He turned, grinned at me. He did not know me: in those days I was merely a struggling, impecunious almost unknown barrister in his late twenties. Well, early thirties, anyway. And if I then went and broke the rules that day, well, you must understand it was because of the coldness in my gut. And the money I still hoped to collect.
    You see, the rules of the Temple were clear: barristers should not directly approach members of the public, touting for business . But, well, there you are….
    ‘Mr Wood … may I present my card, sir?’
2
    In parts of the city on a Sunday, London could be likened to a sponge; it sucked in straggling droves of sheep, oxen and pigs, cackling geese and hens, while wagons crammed with calves and lambs were followed into the Uxbridge Road by cattle-jobbers , graziers and pig-fatteners, a swelling of life animal and human all heading for the holding pound at Paddington. Knackers’ drags and insistent beggars mingled with a tide of Bible-thumpers distributing unwanted religious tracts, ragged sellers of journals, purveyors of scandal sheets, and producers of hastily printed pamphlets containing explicit bloody accounts of the latest scaffold confession, while rabble-rousers surged about, noisily yelling among the boisterous, thrusting crowd of low humanity.
    But elsewhere in the city it was different. In social terms, I tell you, my boy, a wet Sunday in London has nothing less than theaspect of a vast, ordered graveyard; in Mayfair and Belgravia nothing seemed to move in those days in the damp, drizzling streets. That particular Sunday in 1844, I kept close in my chambers most of the day and surveyed my prospects, suddenly gloomy again. The fact is, it’s well said that there is not a harder life than that of a barrister in large practice – except, I emphasize, that of a barrister in small practice.
    Particularly if he’s been living well beyond his means by frequenting the clubs and night houses. And that was my situation at that time. Moreover, the bad news I’d been half expecting had just broken and was the talk of the Town: Colonel Peel was refusing to honour his wagers and, with the backing of influential members of the Jockey Committee, was claiming that
Running Rein
was a ringer. That meant all bets were off, and the money I’d borrowed to lay on
Running Rein
would have to be repaid along with everything else I owed.
    I was distraught. You see, expecting the windfall from the Derby win, well, what I’d borrowed, I’d already spent on the tables at Almack’s.
    So there it was. I sat in my dreary chambers in front of a meagre coal fire and considered my situation. It was not a promising one. In