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The light, she estimated, had come from the middle cluster of boxes ... from the shining hope’s box. Well,
though
she still intended to be reproving about it, that made sense. Kip was very anxious to assess Into the Light,
and
since he was strictly forbidden to do so openly, he had now come secretly, it was as explainable and as basic
as
that. Kip was planning a kill, he had told her that, and if he was going to wager every cent he had it was only natural, if ill-advised, that he would be worried about the outcome. After all, he was not like Magnus David ... rich.

He would be concerned, yes, but should it be the extent of doing what he now had done, creeping in on the enemy camp to see for himself? Come to think of it... a momentary halt ... how
had
he got this far? Over the paddocks perhaps, you only needed legs to climb fences for that, but
into the box,
as Paddy could see now by the small chink of light in the white hope’s stable? How had Kip got
there
?

She moved forward, moved in, said something, she could not have told what, then heard something drop as Kip wheeled round.

He retrieved what he had held, at the same time gasping: ‘Good lord, Padua, you scared the daylights out of me! What are you doing here?’

'That’s what I came to ask you. Kip, are you mad?’

‘I think I am.’ Kip was being the young, caught-out schoolboy. ‘The dogs could have got at me.’

‘There are none,’ Paddy reminded him. By that she meant there were only a few playful foxies, some sleepy old spaniels, no watchdogs. No guards; Magnus had preferred it like that.

‘I still took a risk, but darling, I had to. I had to look your Son of Darkness over, compare him to our Prince.’

Paddy said crossly, ‘He’s called Into the Light.’

‘Yes, my pet. Into the Light. You might remember the money I intend parting with, I just had to be sure.’ A pause. A reminding pause. ‘For us. And you, Padua, what brought you ? And don’t tell me a flick of light.’ He had come close to her, and he bent over and kissed her meaningfully.

So it was just as she had thought, Paddy told herself, a reckless move but nothing at all in it. Then she remembered the open box door. Magnus always locked the stables—it was something he had impressed on the boys. Had he forgotten this time ?

‘But how did you get in, Kip ? ’ she wanted to know.

If he had told her a lie, Paddy would probably have believed him. Everyone slips up at some time, and Kip had only to shrug that the door was ajar and the matter would have been closed.

But Kip, evidently weary of evasions, did not try lies any more.

‘Are
you
asking me that?’ he smirked back.

In the fitful light it was an unpleasant grin, and instinctively Paddy stepped back. At once he pulled her to where she had stood before, pulled her quite brutally.

‘You gave me the key, remember?’ he said.

‘I did nothing of the sort. How could I? I never had a key.’

‘While the virus was on you had, and you handed it to me to be duly impressed for any future need,’ he said triumphantly.

‘Kip, I didn’t, you know I didn’t! ’

‘You left it in a box with the instruction that when I’d finished with it I was to return it, so I returned it to the box. It doesn’t take long’ ... he shrugged ... ‘to make an impression.’

'You
copied the key for possible future use?’

‘No, dear,’ he corrected,
‘we
copied it.’

‘That’s a lie
!
’

‘Try convincing him,’ Kip advised. ‘Just try, Padua. Well, I’ve seen all I want of this chap now, and I know where my money is going. Come along, girl, don’t stand there like a ghost.’

‘You’ve made an accessory out of me!’ She still stood there.

‘All’s fair in love,’ he tossed, quite reckless now, ‘and it’s only when a man has money in his pocket that he can
really
consider love.’

‘You never needed it with me,’ she cried, ‘I always told you so, Kip.’

‘Who said,’ he came back cuttingly, ‘I was speaking about you?’

‘What do you mean, Kip ?’

‘No, my sweet,
too
sweet innocent, you’d be as much use to me as a bunch of flowers. You’re too soft, too vulnerable, too sentimental over things that don’t matter. In fact you’d suit his Nibs perfectly, poor fool with his blind mare.’ Kip snorted. ‘Oh, no, the man who wants to get on, who
will
get on, wants someone steelier than that.’

‘No doubt you have someone in view,’ she said coldly.

‘Oh, I have,’ he grinned.

‘But when we went to the gem valley and I found the grass stone ’

‘I sold it. Not much, but I needed all help for my kill at the Plate.’

‘Well, at least you didn't have it set instead for her,’ said Paddy hollowly, not believing any of this. ‘I suppose it’s her.’

‘Anthea?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then yes. No, I didn’t, the lady likes diamonds, and will have diamonds, but don’t tell David that. Not yet.’

‘I will. I’ll tell him that you ’

‘I don’t think so. Because, my dear, when it comes to basics, you’re much more involved yourself. I only came here out of natural curiosity. David, as a horse bloke, will understand that. But my God, he won’t understand you making it easy for me by passing over a key. He’ll think:
“He
went because he’s vitally concerned, but why did
she
make it possible for him?” He won’t like the answer he arrives at ... and neither will you.’

‘You’re loathsome, Kip!’ she ground out.

‘Yet I’ve done nothing ... except lead you on, and actually you asked quite urgently for it, you know. No’ ... catching at Paddy’s raised hand ... ‘none of that, please. Leave me untouched as I’ve left your nag untouched.’ He nodded back to the horse. ‘Be thankful at least for that. Down in the city now ...’ His voice trailed away.

Into the Light certainly looked untouched, looked as glossy and beautiful as ever, and the next morning at the trial the horse galloped perfectly, and Paddy, though still smarting, though still hurt and ashamed and belittled, was encouraged enough to try to put the whole wretched thing, and Kip, and Anthea, right out of her mind.

Then the third morning, exactly four days before the Plateau Plate, the lovely animal was reported seedy.

‘Nerves?’ Magnus asked his vet, for it was well established that highly-bred horses did develop such things.

‘No,' frowned
Bill Lenehan, ‘it’s something physical. Yet I’ve been all over him. Could it be a stomach disagreement?’ An estimating pause. ‘Any chance of an unwelcome intruder, Magnus?’

Paddy, standing by, heard Magnus reply: ‘Every chance, but that simply doesn’t happen up here. Anyway, if he had been tampered with you would have seen the evidence earlier, and he would have been far more seedy by now.'

‘There are new fiendish tricks,' the vet shrugged. ‘The big city studs are beginning to experience them. No immediate sign and slower progression. Not always does the strapper open up in the morning to the shock of finding a prone horse, nowadays it’s often more insidious than that.’

‘You mean our boy could still be for it?’

‘No, I don’t, Magnus, I still believe it’s only some disagreement.’

But the next day Into the Light was worse, and on the day before the Plateau Plate the lovely acorn creature lay down, sighed, then died.

Why
was it that something that never had been able to speak to you, convey thoughts to you, except for a soft nuzzling nose touch you, hurt you so much when it wasn’t there any more?
Ever
any more? That was the ache of it all for Paddy and the boys. Into the Light had gone into the dark, he would never be there any more.

They all knew as large a pain as though he had been
human, a kind of amputation of love itself, the futility, the utter uselessness of it left them hollow and burningly dry-eyed. They were too distressed for words. With people, Paddy thought for her stricken four, you could look up at a star and feel a comfort, a sort of comprehension, but with an animal, an animal simply was gone.

She wished desperately for tears for them all.

No one told her anything, and by no one she meant Magnus. She had felt sure Magnus would seek her out at once to question her, and she had braced herself. But he never came near. The only fragments she learned were from Richard and Paul, who relayed stable talk every night.

The vet had had a post-mortem on the horse and it was
not
one of those vicious dopes being currently adopted in the city after all,
not
one of the new slow, deadly things they had previously thought.

‘And yet he died,’ Paddy sighed.

‘Yes,’ they said.

The next piece of news was that Standen’s entry Peerless Prince was scratched.

‘But why?’ Paddy asked in amazement. ‘He would have been a probable winner.’ She added: ‘Now.’

‘Norris scratched him before he left,’ said Richard.

‘Left
?’ she gasped.

‘He’s gone from Standen, gone from the plateau. The talk’ ... Richard put on a confidential face ... ‘is that ’

‘I don’t want to hear any talk,’ Paddy reproved.

But with boys who lived every minute in the excitement of horses, she found she had to. She learned that in the case of country races and in this instance the
Plateau Plate,
if a particular stud entrant through unforeseen circumstances became a non-starter, a stable mate could take its place.

That set the boys arguing whether Current Issue was as good as Bonny Heather and for that matter were either of them as good as Ponderous Pete. The king is dead, long live the king, Paddy secretly grieved, and yet life had to be lived like this.

She longed to live her own life again, live it normally, serenely, not jerkily, nervously as she was living it now. But she knew she never would until she spoke with Magnus, told him everything. Why didn’t he send for her and
ask?

It was several days before she noticed Anthea had gone.

‘Oh, yes,’ shrugged Paul, ‘the bird flew.’

Instead of reproving him, Paddy asked: ‘When?’

‘Soon after Kip Norris. Do you reckon they went together?’

‘I reckon they didn’t,’ came in Richard. ‘She was after money, and with Peerless Prince scratched she’d never get it out of him.’

‘Stop gossiping, stop conjecturing.’ But Paddy would have liked to have known herself.

One thing she had decided on, even if she broke a contract, even if Closer Families refused to place her any more—she was leaving here.

There was, after all, nothing to keep her. The boys were comfortably settled, happily settled, and she knew, however else she disliked him, that Magnus David would keep things comfortable and happy for them.

She also believed that Magnus would make no effort to compel her to honour her agreement. After all, he stood to gain by her going away. Paddy had never believed she had any chance of making a claim on poor Jeremy’s will, but it would be easier for Magnus if she quietly withdrew. Probably he was intending to discharge her, anyway, tell her she had been tried and found wanting, and it was only the chaotic events of the last few days that had prevented him from doing this. She would have left at once on her own accord, only that the boys, caught up in the fever, were not looking after themselves as they should, so she would see them through the meeting, and then

Plateau Plate Day dawned as importantly as a day could, almost as though it knew what was to take place ... anyway, it put on all its silks and satins and all its blues and golds.

Paddy, watching through binoculars from her window, fairly goggled at the elegance of the female attire'. She had thought of wearing jodphurs herself, but now she mentally took out a new blue crepe.

Also something had happened to the surrounds of the bush course; instead of trees and grass and little else there were tents set with bunting, stalls set with flags, and actually a band.

She watched the jockeys with disbelief. They had simply donned anything. There were crash helmets, dungarees and actually some shorts. But the Plate event, said Richard breathlessly behind her, would be strictly silk-and-satin formal as befitted an important race.

‘Who are we putting in?’ Paddy remembered her decision and changed ‘we’ to ‘you’.

‘Current Issue,’ said Richard evasively, ‘or it could be Ponderous Pete or ’

‘Or Lightning’s Child.’ It was John, the impetuous youngest.

‘Shut up, junior,’ warned Richard. ‘Don’t talk like that, Richard, and I don’t know any Lightning’s Child.’

Because of the big event there was no school that day down in the valley. Paddy helped Mrs Dermott pack four cut lunches that they both knew would not be eaten, not with hamburgers and fairy floss there for the buying, then gave the boys final instructions on how to behave. ‘No betting,’ she said sternly.

‘As though we could, with only fifty cents each! ’

But four times fifty made two dollars and Paddy knew that they had other ideas. She wondered with their shining boy gone which of the stable contemporaries ... Current Issue, Bonny Heather, Ponderous Pete and that other one she had never heard of ... they would choose to lose their money on. She smiled, shrugged and changed into her blue crepe.

It was fun down at the course. A little wind was whirling tossed-down pieces of paper and stirring up dust that the lush fields never knew they had.

Paddy saw Magnus, not dressed up at all, just a checked shirt with sleeves rolled up and his usual wide hat pushed to the back of his head. If he saw her, he made no sign.

The races came and went, first silence, then a low buzz of interest, then a scream as the winner flew by.