I squatted down beside the poor old horse and patted his neck. He lifted his head again and thrashed to get back on to his feet, then flopped limply back into the straw. His eyes looked glazed, and he was dribbling.

'Nothing to be done, George,' I said. 'I'll go and telephone the vet.' I put only regret into my voice and kept my boiling fury to myself. George nodded resignedly but without much emotion: like every older stableman he had seen a lot of horses die.

The young chubby Dainsee got out of his bath to answer the telephone.

'Not another one!' he exclaimed, when I explained.

'I'm afraid so. And would you bring with you any gear you need for doing a blood test?'

'Whatever for?'

'I'll tell you when you get here-'

'Oh,' he sounded surprised, but willing to go along. 'All right then. Half a jiffy while I swop the bath towel for my natty suiting.'

He came in jeans, his dirty Land-Rover, and twenty minutes. Bounced out on to the gravel, nodded cheerfully, and turned at once towards Indigo's box. George was alone there with the horse, but the rest of the yard stood quiet and empty. Etty, showing distress at the imminent loss of her lead horse, had taken the string down to Southfields on the race-course side, and Alessandro presumably had gone with her, as he was nowhere about, and his chauffeur was waiting as usual in the car.

Indigo was up on his feet. George, holding him by the headcollar, said that the old boy just suddenly seemed to get his strength back and stood up, and he'd been eating some hay since then, and it was a right shame he'd got cast, that it was. I nodded and took the headcollar from him, and told him I'd see to Indigo, and he could go and get on with putting the oats through the crushing machine ready for the morning feeds.

'He makes a good yard man,' Dainsee said. 'Old George, he was deputy head gardener once at the Viceroy's palace in India. It accounts for all those tidy flower beds and tubs of pretty shrubs which charm the owners when they visit the yard.'

I was surprised. 'I didn't know that-'

'Odd world.' He soothed Indigo with a touch, and peered closely at the broken leg. 'What's all this about a blood test?' he asked, straightening up and eyeing me with speculation.

'Do vets have a keep-mum tradition?'

His gaze sharpened into active curiosity. 'Professional secrets, like doctors and lawyers? Yes, sure we do. As long as it's not a matter of keeping quiet about a spot of foot and mouth.'

'Nothing like that.' I hesitated. 'I'd like you to run a private blood test- could that be done?'

'How private? It'll have to go to the Equine Research Labs. I can't do it myself, haven't got the equipment.'

'Just a blood sample with no horse's name attached.'

'Oh sure. That happens all the time. But you can't really think anyone doped the poor old horse!'

'I think he was given an anaesthetic,' I said. 'And that his leg was broken on purpose.'

'Oh glory.' His mouth was rounded into an O of astonishment, but the eyes flickered with the rapidity of his thoughts. 'You seem sane enough,' he said finally, 'So let's have a look see.'

He squatted down beside the affected limb and ran his fingers very lightly down over the skin. Indigo shifted under his touch and ducked and raised his head violently.

'All right, old fellow,' Dainsee said, standing up again and patting his neck. He raised his eyebrows at me, 'Can't say you're wrong, can't say you're right.' He paused, thinking it over. The eyebrows rose and fell several times, like punctuations. 'Tell you what,' he said at length. 'I've got a portable X-ray machine back home. I'll bring it along, and we'll take a picture. How's that?'

'Very good idea,' I said, pleased.

'Right.' He opened his case, which he had parked just inside the door. 'Then I'll just freeze that leg, so he'll be in no discomfort until I come back.' He brought out a hypodermic and held it up against the light, beginning to press the plunger.

'Do the blood test first,' I said.

'Eh?' He blinked at me. 'Oh yes, of course. Golly, yes of course. Silly of me.' He laughed gently, laid down the first syringe and put together a much larger one, empty.

He took the sample from the jugular vein, which he found and pierced efficiently first time of asking. 'Bit of luck,' he murmured in self deprecation, and drew half a tumbler full of blood into the syringe. 'Have to give the Lab people enough to work on, you know,' he said, seeing my surprise. 'You can't get reliable results from a thimbleful.'

'I suppose not-'

He packed the sample into his case, shot the freezing local into Indigo's near fore, nodded and blinked with undiminished cheerfulness, and smartly departed. Indigo, totally unconcerned, went back contentedly to his hay net, and I with bottled anger went into the house.

The label on the little wooden horse had 'Indigo' printed in capitals on one side of it, and on the other, also in capitals, a short sharp message.

'To hurt my son is to invite destruction.'

Neither George nor Etty saw any sense in the vet going away without putting Indigo down.

'Er-' I said. 'He found he didn't have the humane killer with him after all. He thought it was in his bag, but it wasn't.'

'Oh,' they said, satisfied, and Etty told me that everything had gone well on the gallops and that Lucky Lindsay had worked a fast five furlongs and afterwards wouldn't have blown out a candle.

'I put that bloody little Alex on Clip Clop and told him to take him along steadily, and he damn well disobeyed me. He shook him into a full gallop and left Lancat standing, and the touts' binoculars were working overtime.

'Stupid little fool,' I agreed. 'I'll speak to him.'

'He takes every opportunity he can to cross me,' she complained. 'When you aren't there he's absolutely insufferable.' She took a deep, troubled breath, considering. 'In fact, I think you should tell Mr Griffon that we can't keep him.'

'Next time I go to the hospital, I'll see what he says,' I said. 'What are you giving him to ride, second lot?'

Pullitzer,' she replied promptly. 'It doesn't matter so much if he doesn't do as he's told on that one.'

'When you get back, tell him I want to see him before he leaves.'

'Aren't you coming?'

I shook my head. 'I'll stay and see to Indigo.'

'I rather wanted your opinion of Pease Pudding. If he's to run in the Lincoln we ought to give him a trial this week or next. The race is only three weeks on Saturday, don't forget.'

'We could give him a half speed gallop tomorrow and see if he's ready for a full trial,' I suggested, and she grudgingly agreed that one more day would do no harm.

I watched the trim jodhpured figure walk off towards her cottage for breakfast, and would have felt flattered that she wanted my opinion had I not known why. Under an umbrella, she worked marvellously: out in the open, she felt rudderless. Even though in her heart she knew she knew more than I did, her shelter instinct had cast me as decision maker. What I needed now was a crash course in how to tell when a horse was fit- and that old joke about a crash course for pilots edged itself into a corner of my mind, like a thin gleam in the gloom.

Dainsee came back in his Land-Rover when the string had gone out for second lot, and we ran the cable for the X-ray machine through the office window and plugged it into the socket which served the mushroom heater. There seemed to be unending reinforcements of cable: it took four lengths plugged together to reach to Indigo's box, but their owner assured me that he could manage a quarter of a mile, if pushed.

He took three X-rays of the dangling leg, packed everything up again, and almost as a passing thought, put poor old Indigo out of his troubles.

'You'll want evidence for the police,' Dainsee said, shaking hands and blinking rapidly.