It sounded crazy to me, but it was his money. We went into the sale-ring itself where the auction was already in progress, and Malcolm asked me where the richest bidders could be found, the ones that really meant business.

"in those banks of seats on the left of the auctioneers, or here, in the entrance, or just round there to the left…"

He looked and listened and then led the way up to a section of seats from where we could watch the places I'd pointed out. The amphitheatre was already more than three-quarters full, and would later at times be crammed, especially whenever a tip-top lot came next.

"The very highest prices will probably be bid this evening," I said, half teasing him, but all he said was, "Perhaps we should wait, then."

"If you buy ten yearlings," I said, "six might get to a racecourse, three might win a race and one might be pretty good. if you're lucky."

"Cautious Ian."

"You," I said, "are cautious with gold."

He looked at me with half-shut eyes.

"Not many people say that."

"You're fast and flamboyant," I said, "but you sit and wait for the moment."

He merely grunted and began paying attention to the matter in hand, intently focusing not on the merchandise but on the bidders on the far side of the ring. The auctioneers in the box to our left were relaxed and polished, the one currently at the microphone elaborately unimpressed by the fortunes passing.

"Fifty thousand, thank you, sir; sixty thousand, seventy… eighty? Shall I say eighty? Eighty, thank you, sir. Against you, sir. Ninety? Ninety. One hundred thousand. Selling now. I'm selling now. Against you, sir? No? All done? All done?" A pause for a sweep round to make sure no new bidder was frantically waving. "Done, then. Sold to Mr Siddons. One hundred thousand guineas. The next lot…"

"Selling now," Malcolm said. "I suppose that means there was a reserve on it?"

I nodded.

"So until the fellow says selling now', it's safe to bid, knowing you won't have to buy?"

"Yours might be the bid that reaches the reserve."

He nodded. "Russian roulette."

We watched the sales for the rest of the afternoon, but he aimed no bullets at his own head. He asked who people were.

"Who is that Mr Siddons) That's the fourth horse he's bought."

"He works for a blood stock agency. He's buying for other people."

"And that man in navy, scowling. Who's he?"

"Max Jones. He owns a lot of horses."

"Every time that old woman bids, he bids against her."

"It's a well-known feud."

He sniffed. "It must cost them fortunes." He looked around the amphitheatre at the constantly changing audience of breeders, trainers, owners and the simply interested. "Whose judgement would you trust most?"

I mentioned several trainers and the agents who might be acting on their behalf, and he told me to tell him when someone with good judgement was bidding, and to point them out. I did so many times, and he listened and passed no comment.

After a while, we went out for a break, an Ebury scotch, a sandwich and fresh air.

"I suppose you know," Malcolm said casually, watching yearlings skittering past in the grasp of their handlers, "that Moira and I were divorcing?"

"Yes, I heard."

"And that she was demanding the house and half my possessions?"

"Mm."

"And half my future earnings?"

"Could she?"

"She was going to fight for it."

I refrained from saying that whoever had murdered Moira had done Malcolm a big favour, but I'd thought it several times. I said instead, "Still no clues?"

"No, nothing new."

He spoke without regret. His disenchantment with Moira, according to his acid second wife, my own mother Joyce, had begun as soon as he'd stopped missing Coochie; and as Joyce was as percipient as she was catty, I believed it.

"The police tried damned hard to prove I did it," Malcolm said.

"Yes, so I heard."

"Who from? Who's your grapevine?"

"All of them," I said.

"The three witches?"

I couldn't help smiling. He meant his three living ex-wives, Vivien, Joyce and Alicia.

"Yes, them. And all of the family."

He shrugged.

"They were all worried that you might have," I said.

"And were you worried?" he asked.

"I was glad you weren't arrested."

He grunted noncommittally. "I suppose you do know that most of your brothers and sisters, not to mention the witches, told the police you hated Moira?"

"They told me they'd told," I agreed. "But then, I did." " Lot of stinkers I've fathered," he said gloomily.

Malcolm's personal alibi for Moira's death had been as unassailable as my own, as he'd been in Paris for the day when someone had pushed Moira's retrousse little nose into a bag of potting compost and held it there until it was certain she would take no more geranium cuttings. I could have wished her a better death, but it had been quick, everyone said. The police still clung to the belief that Malcolm had arranged for an assassin, but even Joyce knew that that was nonsense. Malcolm was a creature of tempest and volatility, but he'd never been calculatingly cruel.

His lack of interest in the horses themselves didn't extend to anything else at the sales: inside the sale-ring he had been particularly attentive to the flickering electronic board which lit up with the amount as each bid was made, and lit up not only in English currency but in dollars, yen, francs, lire and Irish punts at the current exchange rates. He'd always been fascinated by the workings of money, and had once far more than doubled a million pounds simply by banking it in the United States at two dollars forty cents to the pound, waiting five years, and bringing it back when the rate stood at one dollar twenty cents, which neatly gave him twice the capital he'd started with and the interest besides. He thought of the money market, after gold, as a sort of help- yourself cornucopia.

None of his children had inherited his instinct for timing and trends, a lack he couldn't understand. He'd told me directly once or twice to buy this or sell that, and he'd been right, but I couldn't make money the way he did without his guidance.

He considered that the best years of his talent had been wasted: all the years when, for political reasons, the free movement of capital had been restricted and when gold bullion couldn't be bought by private Britons. Always large, Malcolm's income, once the controls were lifted, went up like a hot air balloon, and it was at the beginning of that period, when he'd woken to the possibilities and bought his first crock of gold for sixty pounds an ounce to sell it presently for over a hundred, that he'd first been called Midas.

Since then, he'd ridden the yellow roller-coaster several times, unerringly buying when the price sank ever lower, selling as it soared, but before the bubble burst, always seeming to spot the wobbling moment when the market approached trough or peak.

Coochie had appeared wearing ever larger diamonds. The three witches, Vivien, Joyce and Alicia, each with a nice divorce settlement agreed in less sparkling days, unavailingly consulted their lawyers.

There was a second electronic board outside the sale-ring showing the state of the sale inside. Malcolm concentrated on the flickering figures until they began to shine more brightly in the fading daylight, but he still paid no close attention to the merchandise itself.

"They all look very small," he said reprovingly, watching a narrow colt pass on its way from stable to sale-ring.

"Well, they're yearlings."

"One year old, literally?"

"Eighteen months, twenty months: about that. They race next year, when they're two."

He nodded and decided to return to the scene of the action, and again found us seats opposite the big-money crowd. The amphitheatre had filled almost to capacity while we'd been outside, and soon, with every seat taken, people shoved close-packed into the entrance and the standing-room sections: the blood of Northern Dancer and Nijinsky and of Secretariat and Lyphard was on its regal way to the ring.