Longshot by Dick Francis Page B

getting on for a dozen drinks during the evening.”
    “Bob Watson acted as barman,” Tremayne told me. “He always does, at our parties.”
    “We’ll never have another,” Mackie said.
    “Is Nolan being tried for murder?” I asked, into a pause.
    “For assault resulting in death,” Tremayne said. “The prosecution are trying to prove intent, which would make it murder. Nolan’s lawyers say the charge means manslaughter but they are pressing hard for involuntary manslaughter, which could be called negligence or plain accident. The case has been dragging on for months. At least tomorrow it will end.”
    “He’ll appeal,” Perkin said.
    “They haven’t found him guilty yet,” Mackie protested.
    Tremayne told me, “Mackie and Harry walked together into Mackie and Perkin’s sitting room and found Nolan standing over the girl, who was lying on the floor. Lewis was sitting in an armchair. Nolan said he’d put his hands round the girl’s neck to give her a shaking, and she just went limp and fell down, and when Mackie and Harry tried to revive her, they found she was dead.”
    “The pathologist said in court today that she died from strangulation,” Mackie said, “but that sometimes it takes very little pressure to kill someone. He said she died of vagal inhibition, which means the vagus nerve stops working, which it apparently can do fairly easily. The vagus nerve keeps the heart beating. The pathologist said it’s always dangerous to clasp people suddenly round the neck, even in fun. But there’s no doubt Nolan was furious with Olympia—that’s the girl—and he had been furious all the evening, and the prosecution produced someone who’d heard him say, ‘I’ll strangle the bitch,’ so that he had it in his mind to put his hands round her neck...” She broke off and sighed again. “There wouldn’t have been a trial at all except for Olympia’s father. The pathologist’s original report said it could so easily have been an accident that there wasn’t going to be a prosecution, but Olympia’s father insisted on bringing a private case against Nolan. He won’t let up. He’s obsessed. He was sitting there in court glaring at us.”
    “If he’d had his way,” Tremayne confirmed, “Nolan would have been behind bars all this time, not out on bail.”
    Mackie nodded. “The prosecution—and that’s Olympia’s father talking through his lawyers—wanted Nolan to be remanded in jail tonight, but the judge said no. So Nolan and Lewis have gone back to Lewis’s house, and God knows what state they’re in after the mauling they got in court. It’s Olympia’s father who deserves to be strangled for all the trouble he’s caused.”
    It seemed to me that on the whole it was Nolan who had caused the trouble, but I didn’t say so.
    “Well,” Tremayne said, shrugging, “it happened in this house but it doesn’t directly concern my family, thank God.”
    Mackie looked as if she weren’t so sure. “They are our friends,” she said.
    “Hardly even that,” Perkin said, looking my way. “Fiona and Mackie are friends. That’s where it starts. Mackie came to stay with Fiona, and I met her in Fiona’s house”—he smiled briefly—“and so, as they say, we were married.”
    “And lived happily ever after,” Mackie finished loyally, though I reckoned if she were happy she worked at it. “We’ve been married two years now. Two and a half, almost.”
    “You won’t put all this Nolan business in my book, will you?” Tremayne asked.
    “I shouldn’t think so,” I said, “not if you don’t want me to.”
    “No, I don’t. I was saying good-bye to some guests when that girl died. Perkin came to tell me, and I had to deal with it, but I didn’t know her, she’d come with Nolan and I’d never met her before. She isn’t part of my life.”
    “All right,” I said.
    Tremayne showed no particular relief, but just nodded. Seen in his own home, standing by his own fire, he was a