by Dick Francis
“What does that mean?” Kris demanded.
I said, “It means they haven’t found a dipstick at their end. It means they think you didn’t screw your dipstick in tight and they are trying to say it was your fault the oil came out.”
Kris scowled, but when I went to Kensington on Tuesday morning to pretend to be engaged on a textbook, John Rupert took the leaking oil to be a bona-fide attempt to put Kris and myself underground.
“I fly my own plane:” John Rupert said. ”I’ve been a weekend pilot for twenty years, and I wouldn’t like to try to land blind. A year ago, oil on the windshield killed four people who crashed into English cliffs on their way back from France. Their dipstick was found on the ground where they’d topped up their oil before setting off for home. It was in all the papers.”
“Poor sods,” I said. “I remember it.”
“No one,” John Rupert observed with conviction, “could have expected you both to be back at work unharmed.”
The door opened quietly for the advent of Ghost. He shook hands with stretched sinews and finished off the single ginger cracker overlooked by John Rupert himself.
“News?” Ghost suggested laconically, quietly crunching. “Thoughts?”
“Apart from attempted murder by oil,” John Rupert said.
“Because you both lived,” Ghost said dryly, “no one will consider it an attempt ...” He broke off and asked me straightly, “Could it have been by any means an accident?”
“Only if it was random mischief by a stranger, which is, I believe, what the local investigators think.”
“But you don’t?”
“No.”
“And is that why you’ve come back to us?”
I blinked. “I expect so,” I said.
Ghost smiled: a fearsome facial expression threatening the wicked with decades in limbo.
I said, “I don’t know exactly who whisked out the dipstick, but I’ve brought you a list of possibles.”
They read them. “All from Newmarket,” Ghost commented. “All except this last one. Robin Darcy.”
“I don’t think it was him,” I said.
“Why not?”
“He shook hands with both of us. Separately, that is.”
“You’re old-fashioned.” Ghost said. “Shakespeare was bang up to date. One can smile and smile and be a villain.”
“I don’t want it to be Darcy,” I said.
“Ah,” Ghost sounded satisfied. “Gut feelings ... those I believe in.”
John Rupert studied the list. “Tell us about these people,” he said. “What about Caspar Harvey? And Belladonna, his daughter?”
I was surprised at how much I’d learned about each of them and it took me a good hour to roam round the perimeter of quivery Oliver Quigley (old and new perceptions) and George Loricroft, a bully who believed himself entitled to dominate his semi-bimbo wife. who was much brighter than her husband realized or allowed for and who half-understood too much but not quite enough, and was therefore a danger to herself. though she didn’t know it.
“I don’t think the dipstick was Glenda’s doing:” I explained, drawing breath. ”I don’t think she wanted Kris and me dead. She wanted us to be alive, to be weathermen. and to check on her suspicions.”
I explained about the snow and ice discrepancies in Loricroft’s actual and professed journeys.
Ghost listened intently. John Rupert said merely. “Expand.”
“Well ...” I collected a few thoughts. “When I came to you ... sought you out ... I knew the names of three of the Traders, and I didn’t tell you them because ...”
“Because,” Ghost said disapprovingly, as I hesitated, “you sentimentally wanted to save them from prosecution, as they hadn’t killed you when they had the opportunity. Correct?”
“I guess so:”
“And?”
“And that was fact, but what I can tell you now is inference and supposition.”
“Glad to have them.” John Rupert said with mock formality. “Fire away.”
“You may ridicule...”
“Leave that to us.”
“The Unified Traders ...” I said slowly. “Well, these Unified Traders, it seems to me, are more amateur than professional. That’s to say, they’re dishonorable enough in intent, but not slick or hard enough in performance. For instance, leaving their folder of essential information lying about for so long was plain stupid, so was engaging Kris to collect it. On the surface it seemed a reasonable quid pro quo, as Kris would have done more or less anything in exchange for a chance to fly through a hurricane.”
John Rupert nodded.
I said, “Caspar Harvey and Robin Darcy are very longtime colleagues, and apart from Harvey’s barley and Darcy’s turf farm, they are both used to handling things in small packets. Harvey sells birdseed and Darcy sells vacuum-packed exotic mushrooms. Darcy set up a small mushroom operation on Trox Island, but I was told, secondhand, by full-scale mushroom growers, that the Trox operation was too small to succeed. In the end it was used, as I told you before, to frighten away the whole population of the island. But it was their ability to think small that started them off, I reckon, on arranging the introduction of buyers to sellers of tiny amounts of radioactive materials.”
John Rupert said, “I suppose if you put enough small packets together you get a haystack.”
“Or a bomb,” said Ghost.
“Or enough of a bomb,” I said mildly. “to raise the bargaining power of that amount. But I don’t think the Traders actually handle the uranium or plutonium themselves. It’s very dangerous stuff. But they do have small-scale know-how.”
I stopped, but both men wanted more.
“I think,” I said, “and frankly I’m guessing, that Darcy recruited Caspar Harvey as a Trader, and Harvey drew in Oliver Quigley and George Loricroft ... and for a while the middlemen operation ran smoothly and immensely profitably with the three Traders across the Atlantic. each of the group of six acting on the old musketeers’ principle of All for one and one for all.’ ”
Ghost, his eyes shrewdly narrowed, asked. “Why did the original Traders need more recruits? Why didn’t Darcy and Harvey keep the proceeds to themselves?”
“I think ...” I found all my thoughts coming out as speculations, “... I think Harvey found Loricroft had a gift for sniffing out the truffles. George Loricroft has traveled all over Europe—and especially throughout Germany—telling his wife lies about the local weather to explain why he hadn’t been where he was supposed to have been. and always treating her as an idiot, and in fact it’s possible that all those places he lied about were trading posts. They were nearly all in Germany, and as Loricroft is internationally known as a racehorse trainer, there is nowhere in the world more suitable or less conspicuous for him to trade and exchange information than on racetracks.”
I looked down at my shoes, dodging their undoubted incredulity, but I’d gone too far to withdraw.
“I told you I could remember only Hippostat as a word in the heading of one of the letters, but I know another—it came to me when I wasn’t concentrating ... it just drifted back from my subconscious memory.”
Ghost said impatiently, “What is it?”
“Well ...” I looked up, “it’s Rennbahn. It’s Baden-Baden Rennbahn.”
John Rupert smiled vividly. “And do you know what Rennbahn means?”
“Racetrack,” I said. “I’ve looked it up. Baden-Baden Racetrack. It was written in German script in a letter in another language that I didn’t know.”
“We have German dictionaries downstairs, and every other sort of dictionary you care to mention,” John Rupert said. “Would you remember any more if you ... er ... browsed?”
I said doubtfully, “I don’t know.”
“We can try.”
“Meanwhile,” Ghost said, “tell us about the other two Traders in Florida; Robin Darcy’s colleagues.”
“They’re in the Cayman Islands, not Florida,” I explained, and de
scribed Michael and Amy Ford. “And they may be in the game because of idealism or political motives ... I simply can’t tell, but they also may be the original Traders. In any case, they are, I’d say, the richest of the whole group.”
“Why do you think so?” Ghost wanted to know.
“I stayed in their house ... and Amy’s airplane, that we ditched in the hurricane, that plane was a perfect beauty. They said Amy had sold it to Darcy.”
“But you doubt it?” John Rupert asked.
“Well ... I do, yes. But that’s only an impression. None of them seemed to be terribly upset by losing it. I don’t know about insurance. None of them mentioned it.”
There was a pause. John Rupert then said, “Is that the lot?” and prepared to rise, and I said with diffidence, “One more thing...”
“Yes?” He relaxed in his chair, attention unending.
I picked at my fingers. “Well ... it’s only that the Unified Trading Company doesn’t have a boss. They don’t have a hierarchy.”
“Are you sure?” John Rupert inquired doubtfully. “Every organization I’ve ever dealt with has had a hierarchy.”
“I’m sure,” I nodded. “In an ordinary company, the lower members report upwards, and then receive their instructions from above. But in the Unified Trading Company they each act on their own ideas and report afterwards what they’ve done. They act first and tell the others after. As a result they duplicate some things and omit others entirely, and they get in a muddle.”
Both John Rupert and Ghost were showing more and more doubt.
“If both of you had been for a long time accustomed to rule.” I said, “which of you would make the decisions?”
They answered quickly and in unison, “I would.” “Who would?” I asked. “Which of you would give commands?”
“I would.” They answered as one again, but more slowly. and then both of them looked thoughtful.
“The Traders so far identifiable,” I remarked. “have each run their own business, and are accustomed to command. Michael Ford owned and ran a chain of profitable gymnasiums. His wife, Amy, made a fortune from video rental stores. Robin Darcy farms turf. which in Florida is like growing gold. Caspar Harvey too is a farmer, but also makes trillions out of birdseed. Both George Loricroft and Oliver Quigley are racehorse trainers and both succeed only by controlling their workforce. All of those six people arc accustomed to making the decisions. They’re not used to being told what to do. Also they don’t like being told what to do, so they do what they think is best, independently. And because of that, things, overall, go wrong.”
“It’s an interesting theory,” Ghost said.
“For instance,” I said, “Robin Darcy expected Kris to be able to pick up the folder without difficulty because he’d left it in a desk, but someone else, unknown to him. had removed the desk and installed a safe, using Darcy’s own password. Like I said, they get things wrong, and Kris didn’t find the folder at all.”
I was fast running out of energy and felt sore along the protesting ribs. More than ready to leave, I asked, “Is there anything else I can do? If not...”
They indecisively shook their heads. “Only the dictionaries ...” So I went downstairs with them into a busy world of books. There were indeed dictionaries by the hundred, but after a survey of incomprehensible scripts, with no reliable recognitions, I finally scraped together enough impetus to leave and meet Jett in her scarlet coat for lunch.
“You’re ill,” she said over curried egg salads, and I hadn’t the vigor to deny it.
“Tell the BBC you need sick leave.”
“It’s only ribs. They’ll be better tomorrow.”
“Let me drive you to Newmarket, then, in the morning.”
I’d told her I was going to Newmarket to see George Loricroft’s horses school over fences. She’d wanted to come anyway, and although I thought it incautious, I gratefully accepted her offer.
I got through the working day somehow, but when Jett arrived at my front door at six-thirty the next morning she said I wasn’t fit to travel anywhere and should see a doctor.
We had agreed we would go in her own Honda as she felt happier driving it than sitting behind the wheel of my compact runabout. She said she knew a good doctor and I said we were going to Newmarket, and maybe for the last time with Miss van Els, I got my way.
At George Loricroft’s house Bell greeted me with a kiss, switching her gaze past me to see how Jett reacted to that embrace. Waste of time. Jett was cool.
Glenda wrapped her arms lavishly around me so that her mouth ended up by my ear.
“Don’t tell George ...” It was scarcely more than a whisper. Then more loudly she said, “How divine of you to come, luv.” And George himself, unenthusiastic about me at all times, cheered up considerably when introduced to Jett. A thoroughly sex-conscious bunch of hellos, I thought, and couldn’t eat any breakfast from nausea.
Glenda and Bell rejoiced again about the landing Kris had achieved on Saturday, and George, looking at his watch impatiently, crossly said that in his opinion Kris had been in too much of a hurry to set off from Doncaster before dark and that he’d left the dipstick on the ground and clipped the engine cowling shut without it in place.
“Easy done,” he said. “Get ready, girls. It’s time to go.” And he strode out to his horses without looking back.
George, with well-developed brusqueness, had seemed considerably out of tune with his wife. and she from time to time had shot him searing glances of anxiety mixed with ill will. Neither was any longer bothering to pretend devotion to the other, an awkwardness for everyone else.
At a moment well out of her husband’s sight. I gave Glenda her list of the icy venues George had sworn to that were contradictory to the freezing truth. and I watched her cheeks flush with justification and—I thought—with a sort of disappointment and disillusion that she’d been right.
Bell put an arm round Glenda’s drooping shoulders and walked with her into the depths of the house, returning alone to mount a horse out in the stableyard and to lead Jett and me (driving George’s Jeep) to the schooling grounds for the promised jumping practice. I was glad Jett seemed genuinely interested and that Bell, though herself due to ride one hustling breath-stopper over three rattling flights of hurdles, spent time explaining schooling routine in advance to me and to the next-best-thing to Florence Nightingale, the Miss van Els, who was that day wearing olive-drab trousers and jacket over the thick white sweater. She and I walked from the Jeep to a vantage point nearer the hurdles, to hear and be a part of the noise and commitment.
After the jumping and out of breath from the speed, Bell trotted her mount over to where we stood and dropped down from his back, surprisingly saying to us both with a smile, “I’ve not known you long. brother Perry, but I know a good brain when it flashes under my nose. and you and your Jett van Els, you’re both loaded.”
Bell started walking her horse round in a small circle nearby, to cool him, while I tried to keep up with her and talk as well.
“Like Robin Darcy?” I suggested.
She took ten seconds of silence to surf her memory, and came up with a straightforward account of bits of her father’s lunch party. “I told you not to be fooled by his cuddly shell:”
“Yes, you did.”
“And I tried to warn Kris that Darcy was way outside his league, but that day Kris wouldn’t have listened to me if I’d been the angel Gabriel.”
Kris had listened to Robin that day and ever since.
“Kris and Robin talked for ages at Doncaster,” I said.
Bell nodded. “They talked when I went to the loo. Darcy asked Kris to spend another holiday with Evelyn and him. and to take me with him!”
“A marriage trip?”
“Sometimes I think we’ll never get to the wedding.” She looked undecided herself, and then unexpectedly said, “Stay here with Jett and hold my horse by his bridle and I’ll go and fetch George’s Jeep. Honestly, you look pretty gray.”
I couldn’t understand it. because the cracked ribs in Wales hadn’t caused sickness but only discomfort, but I did accept her offer and stood beside her steaming mount, pleased to be near the great primeval creature under the wide, cold. cloudless skies of Newmarket Heath.
Bell brought the Jeep and we exchanged conveyances; she rode the horse and I drove myself and Jett back to George’s yard and felt awful.
In the warm kitchen George and Glenda were standing rigidly opposite each other, glaring as if ready to kill, and the reappearance of others hardly began to melt the cutting edges of hate.
George, in his mid-forties, always emanated heavy force-fulness, but at that moment the handsome set of his shoulders, thick smoothly brushed dark hair. the thin fingers clenching and stretching with tensile grace, all the stylishness served only to intensify the positive malevolence of his intention.
George’s anger would, I thought, have erupted already into a physical attack on his wife if it weren’t that she herself seemed to wear an impermeable and invisible armor.
Jett and I silently retreated. with Bell on our heels looking worried and trying to say. “I’m sorry ... I’m so sorry ...”
“Don’t be,” I said, but I couldn’t reassure her. not with only two brief words.
We walked across George’s parking area and stopped by Jett’s Honda. I looked back at the big Loricroft house and saw only prosperity and peace. Tissue paper over an abyss. I thought.
“Bell ...” I begged her uneasily, “leave Newmarket and move in with Kris in London.”
She was shaking her head before I’d finished speaking.
“I can’t leave. And what for? Kris doesn’t need me, he said so:”
Neither Bell nor Jett felt any of the urgency making my intestines cramp and my scalp itch. My grandmother. I realized. would have recognized this deep unease as heebie-jeebies, but I didn’t know whether the feelings I was having derived from reason or instinct or simply queasiness.
I said only, but with as much persuasion as I could manage, “Bell, I mean it. Leave Newmarket. I have an intuition ... you could call it premonition ... call it anything, but leave here ...”