Almost everyone else in the court – lawyers, police, the judge himself – knew that the nice young man had been out on bail on the night in question, and that even though the actual murderer was still unknown, Filmer had beyond doubt arranged the stable lad’s killing.
Julius Apollo Filmer smirked with satisfaction at the ‘Not Guilty’ verdict and clasped his lawyer in a bear-hug. Justice had been mocked. The stable lad’s parents wept bitter tears over his grave and the Jockey Club ground its collective teeth. Millington swore to get Filmer somehow, anyhow, in the future, and had made it into a personal vendetta, the pursuit of this one villain filling his mind to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
He had spent a great deal of time in the Newmarket pubs going over the ground the regular police had already covered, trying to find out exactly what Paul Shacklebury, the dead stable lad, had known to the detriment of Filmer. No one knew – or no one was saying. And who could blame anyone for not risking a quick trip to the ditch.
Millington had had more luck with the hysterical witness, now back home but still suffering fits of the shivers. She, the witness, was a chambermaid in the hotel where Filmer had plotted. She had heard, and had originally been prepared to swear she had heard Filmer say to an unidentified man, ‘If he’s dead, he’s worth five grand to you and five to the hatchet, so go and fix it.’
She had been hanging fresh towels in the bathroom when the two men came in from the corridor, talking. Filmer had been abrupt with her and bundled her out and she hadn’t looked at the other man. She remembered the words clearly but hadn’t of course seen their significance until later. It was because of the word ‘hatchet’ that she remembered particularly.
A month after the trial Millington got from her a half-admission that she’d been threatened not to give evidence. Who had threatened her? A man she didn’t know. But she would deny it. She would deny everything, she would have another collapse. The man had threatened to harm her sixteen-year-old daughter. Harm … he’d spelled out all the dreadful programme lying ahead.
Millington, who could lay on the syrup if it pleased him, had persuaded her with many a honeyed promise (that he wouldn’t necessarily keep) to come for several days to the races, and there, from the safety of various strategically placed security offices, he’d invited her to look out of the window. She would be in shadow, seated, comfortable, invisible, and he would point out a few people to her. She was nervous and came in a wig and dark glasses. Millington got her to remove the glasses. She sat in an upright armchair and twisted her head to look over her shoulder at me, where I stood quietly behind her.
‘Never mind about him,’ Millington said. ‘He’s part of the scenery.’
All the world went past those windows on racing afternoons, which was why, of course, the windows were where they were. Over three long sessions during a single week on three different racecourses Millington pointed out to her almost every known associate and friend of Filmer’s, but she shook her head to them all. At the fourth attempt, the following week, Filmer himself strolled past, and I thought we’d have a repeat of the hysterics: but though our chambermaid wobbled and wept and begged for repeated assurances he would never know she had seen him, she stayed at her post. And she astonished us, shortly after, by pointing towards a group of passing people we’d never before linked with Filmer.
‘That’s him,’ she said, gasping. ‘Oh my God … that’s him.… I’d know him anywhere.’
‘Which one?’ Millington said urgently.
‘In the navy … with the grey sort of hair. Oh my God … don’t let him know …’ Her voice rose with panic.
I could hear the beginnings of Millington’s reassurances as I fairly sprinted out of the office and through to the open air, slowing there at once to the much slower speed of the crowd making its way from paddock to stands for the next race. The navy suit with the silvery hair above it was in no hurry, going along with the press. I followed him discreetly for the rest of the afternoon, and only once did he touch base with Filmer, and then as if accidentally,