Break In

by Dick Francis

  ‘Inchcape,’ I said resignedly, ‘is dead.’

  ‘What? Did I say Inchcape? No, not Inchcape. What’s the princess’s horse?’

  Icefall.’

  ‘Icicle’s full brother,’ he said, not quite making it a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Icefall. Naturally. He should win, Kit, seriously.’

  ‘Will you be there?’ I asked. ‘I half expected you today.’

  In that weather?’ He sounded surprised. ‘No, no, Dusty and you and the princess, you’ll do fine.’

  ‘But you’ve had a whole bunch of winners this week and you haven’t seen one of them.’

  I see them here in the yard. I see them on video tapes. You tell Inchcape he’s the greatest, and he’ll jump Ben Nevis.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. Icefall, Inchcape, what did it matter?

  ‘Good. Great. Goodnight, Kit.’

  ‘Goodnight, Wykeham,’ I said.

  I got through to my answering machine and collected the messages, one of which was from Eric Olderjohn, the civil servant owner of the horse I’d won on for the Lambourn trainer at Towcester.

  I called him back without delay at the London number he’d given, and caught him, it seemed, on the point of going out.

  ‘Oh, Kit, yes. Look, I suppose you’re in Lambourn?’

  ‘No, actually. In London.’

  ‘Really? That’s fine. I’ve something you might be interested to see, but I can’t let it out of my hands.’ He paused for thought. ‘Would you be free this evening after nine?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Right. Come round to my house, I’ll be back by then.’ He gave me directions to a street south of Sloane Square, not more than a mile from where I was staying. ‘Coffee and brandy, right? Got to run. Bye.’

  He disconnected abruptly and I put down my own receiver more slowly saying ‘Wow’ to myself silently. I hadn’t expected much action from Eric Olderjohn, civil servant, and certainly none with such speed.

  I sat for a while thinking of the tape of Maynard, and of the list of companies at the end, of those who had suffered from Maynard’s philanthropy. Short of finding somewhere to replay the tape, I would have to rely on memory, and the only name I could remember for certain was Purfleet Electronics; chiefly because I’d spent a summer sailing holiday with a schoolfriend there long ago.

  Purfleet Electronics, directory enquiries told me, was not listed.

  I sucked my teeth a bit and reflected that the only way to find things was to look in the right place. I would go to Purfleet, as to Hitchin, in the morning.

  I filled in the evening with eating and more phone calls, and by nine had walked down Sloane Street and found Eric Olderjohn’s house. It was narrow, two storeys, one of a long terrace built for low-income early Victorians, now inhabited by the affluent as pieds-à-terre: or so Eric Olderjohn affably told me, opening his dark green front door and waving me in.

  From the street one stepped straight into the sitting room, which stretched from side to side of the house; all of four metres. The remarkably small space glowed with pinks and light greens, textured trellised wallpaper, swagged satin curtains, round tables with skirts, china birds, silver photograph frames, fat buttoned armchairs, chinese creamy rugs on the floor. There were softly glowing lamps, and the trellised wallpaper covered the ceiling also, enclosing the crowded contents in an impression of a summer grotto.

  My host watched my smile of appreciation as if the reaction were only what he would have expected.

  ‘It’s great,’ I said.

  ‘My daughter did it.’

  ‘The one you would defend from the Flag?’

  ‘My only daughter. Yes. Sit down. Has it stopped raining? You’d like a brandy, I dare say?’ He moved the one necessary step to a silver tray of bottles on one of the round tables and poured cognac into two modest balloon glasses. ‘I’ve set some coffee ready. I’ll just fetch it. Sit down, do.’ He vanished through a rear door camouflaged by trellis and I looked at the photographs in the frames, seeing a well-groomed young woman who might be his daughter, seeing the horse that he owned, with myself on its back.

  He returned with another small tray, setting it alongside the first.

  ‘My daughter,’ he said, nodding, as he saw I’d been looking. ‘She lives here part of the time, part with her mother.’ He shrugged. ‘One of those things.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes. Well, it happens. Coffee?’ He poured into two small cups and handed me one. ‘Sugar? No, I suppose not. Sit down. Here’s the brandy.’

  He was neat in movement as in dress, and I found myself thinking ‘dapper’; but there was purposefulness there under the surface, the developed faculty of getting things done. I sat in one of the armchairs with coffee and brandy beside me, and he sat also, and sipped, and looked at me over his cup.

  ‘You were in luck,’ he said finally. ‘I put out a few feelers this morning and was told a certain person might be lunching at his club.’ He paused. ‘I was sufficiently interested in your problem to arrange for a friend of mine to meet and sound out that person, whom he knows well, and their conversation was, one might say, fruitful. As a result I myself went to a certain person’s office this afternoon, and the upshot of that meeting was some information which I’ll presently show you.’

  His care over the choice of words was typical, I supposed, of the stratosphere of the civil service: the wheeler-dealers in subtlety, obliqueness and not saying quite what one meant. I never discovered the exact identity of the certain person, on the basis no doubt that it wasn’t something I needed to know, and in view of what he’d allowed me a sight of, I could scarcely complain.

  ‘I have some letters,’ Eric Olderjohn said. ‘More precisely, photocopies of letters. You can read them, but I am directly commanded not to let you take them away. I have to return them on Monday. Is all that… er… quite dear?’

  ‘Yes.’ I said.

  ‘Good.’

  Without haste he finished his coffee and put down the cup. Then, raising the skirt of the table which bore the trays, he bent and brought out a brown leather attache casé, which he rested on his knees. He snapped open the locks, raised the lid and paused again.

  ‘They’re interesting,’ he said, frowning.

  I waited.

  As if coming to a decision which until that moment he had left open, he drew a single sheet of paper out of the case and passed it across.

  The letter had been addressed to the Prime Minister and had been sent in September from a company which made fine china for export. The chairman, who had written the letter, explained that he and the other directors were unanimous in suggesting some signal honour for Mr Maynard Allardeck, in recognition of his great and patriotic services to industry.

  Mr Allardeck had come generously to the aid of the historic company, and thanks entirely to his efforts the jobs of two hundred and fifty people had been saved. The skills of many of these people were priceless and included the ability to paint and gild porcelain to the world’s highest standards. The company was now exporting more than before and was looking forward to the brightest of futures.

  The board would like to propose a knighthood for Mr Allardeck.

  I finished reading and looked over at Eric Olderjohn.

  ‘Is this sort of letter normal?’ I asked.

  ‘Entirely.’ He nodded. ‘Most awards are the result of recommendations to the Prime Minister’s office. Anyone can suggest anyone for anything. If the cause seems just, an award is given. The patronage people draw up a list of awards they deem suitable, and the list is passed to the Prime Minister for approval.’

  I said, ‘So all these people in the honours lists who get medals… firefighters, music teachers, postmen, people like that, it’s because their mates have written in to suggest it?’

  ‘Er, yes. More often their employers, but sometimes their mates.’

  He produced a second letter fro
m his briefcase and handed it over. This one also was from an exporting company and stressed Maynard’s invaluable contributions to worthwhile industry, chief among them the saving of very many jobs in an area of great local unemployment.

  It was impossible to overestimate Mr Allardeck’s services to his country in industry, and the firm unreservedly recommended that he should be offered a knighthood.

  ‘Naturally,’ I said, ‘the patronage people checked that all this was true?’

  ‘Naturally,’ Eric Olderjohn said.

  ‘And of course it was?’

  ‘I am assured so. The certain person with whom I talked this afternoon told me that occasionally, if they receive six or seven similar letters all proposing someone unknown to the general public, they may begin to suspect that the person is busily proposing himself by persuading his friends to write in. The writers of the two letters I’ve shown you were specifically asked, as their recommendations were so similar, if Maynard himself had suggested they write. Each of them emphatically denied any such thing.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said. ‘Well they would, wouldn’t they, if they stood to gain from Maynard for his knighthood.’

  ‘That’s a thoroughly scurrilous remark.’

  ‘So it is,’ I said cheerfully. ‘And your certain person, did he put Maynard down for his Sir?’

  He nodded. ‘Provisionally. To be considered. Then they received a third letter, emphasising substantial philanthropy that they already knew about, and the question mark was erased. Maynard Allardeck was definitely in line for his K. The letter inviting him to accept the honour was drafted, and would have been sent out in about ten days from now, at the normal time for the New Year’s list.’

  ‘Would have been?’ I said.

  ‘Would have been.’ He smiled twistedly. ‘It is not now considered appropriate, as a result of the stories in the Daily Flag and the opinion page in the Towncrier.’

  ‘Rose Quince,’ I said.

  He looked uncomprehending.

  ‘She wrote the piece in the Towncrier,’ I said.

  ‘Oh… yes.’

  ‘Would your, er, certain person,’ I asked, ‘really take notice of those bits in the newspapers?’

  ‘Oh, definitely. Particularly as in each case the paragraphs were delivered by hand to his office, outlined in red.’

  ‘They weren’t!’

  Eric Olderjohn raised an eyebrow. ‘That means something to you?’ he asked.

  I explained about the tradespeople and the owners all receiving similarly marked copies.

  ‘There you are, then. A thorough job of demolition. Nothing left to chance.’

  ‘You mentioned a third letter,’ I said. ‘The clincher.’

  He peered carefully into his case and produced it. ‘This one may surprise you,’ he said.

  The third letter was not from a commercial firm but from a charitable organisation with a list of patrons that stretched half the way down the left side of the page. The recipients of the charity appeared to be the needy dependants of dead or disabled public servants. Widows, children, the old and the sick.

  ‘How do you define a public servant?’ I asked.

  ‘The Civil Service, from the top down.’

  Maynard Allardeck, the letter reported, had worked tirelessly over several years to improve the individual lives of those left in dire straits through no fault of their own. He unstintingly poured out his own fortune in aid, besides giving his time and extending a high level of compassionate ongoing care to families in need. The charitable organisation said it would itself feel honoured if the reward of a knighthood should be given to one of its most stalwart pillars: to the man they had unanimously chosen to be their next chairman, the appointment to be effective from 1 December of that year.

  The letter had been signed by no fewer than four of the charity’s officers: the retiring chairman, the head of the board of management, and two of the senior patrons. It was the fourth of these signatures which had me lifting my head in astonishment.

  ‘Well?’ Eric Olderjohn asked, watching.

  ‘That’s odd,’ I said blankly.

  ‘Yes, curious, I agree.’

  He held out his hand for the letters, took them from me, snapped them safely back into his case. I sat with thoughts tumbling over themselves and unquestioned assumptions melting like wax.

  Was it true, I had wanted to know, if Maynard Allardeck was being considered for a knighthood, and if so, who knew?

  The people who had proposed him; they knew.

  The letter from the charity, dated 1 October, had been signed by Lord Vaughnley.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Why,’ I said, ‘did your certain person allow you to show these letters to me?’

  ‘Ah.’ Eric Olderjohn joined his fingers together in a steeple and studied them for a while. ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘I would suppose,’ I said, ‘he might think it possible I would stir up a few ponds, get a few muddy answers, without him having to do it himself.’

  Eric Olderjohn switched his attention from his hands to my face. ‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘He would like to know for sure Maynard Allardeck isn’t just the victim of a hate campaign, for instance. He wants to do him justice. To put him back on the list, perhaps, for a knighthood next time around, in the summer.’

  ‘He wants proof?’ I asked.

  ‘Can you supply it?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘What are you planning to do,’ he asked with dry humour, ‘when you have to give up race-riding?’

  ‘Jump off a cliff, I dare say.’

  I stood up, and he also. I thanked him sincerely for the trouble he’d taken. He said he would expect me to win again on his horse next time out. Do my best, I said, and took a last appreciative glance round his bower of a sitting room before making my way back to the hotel.

  Lord Vaughnley, I thought.

  On 1 October he had recommended Maynard for a knighthood. By the end of that month or the beginning of November there had been a tap on Bobby’s telephone.

  The tap had been installed by Jay Erskine, who had listened for two weeks and then written the articles in the Flag.

  Jay Erskine had once worked for Lord Vaughnley, as crime reporter on the Toumcrier.

  But if Lord Vaughnley had got Jay Erskine to attack Maynard Allardeck, why was Nestor Pollgate so aggressive?

  Because he didn’t want to have to pay compensation, or to admit his paper had done wrong.

  Well… perhaps.

  I went round in circles and came back always to the central and unexpected question: Was it really Lord Vaughnley who had prompted the attacks, and if so, why?

  From my hotel room I telephoned Rose Quince’s home, catching her again soon after she had come in.

  ‘Bill?’ she said. ‘Civil Service charity? Oh, sure, he’s a patron of dozens of things. All sorts. Keeps him in touch, he says.’

  ‘Mm,’ I said. ‘When you wrote that piece about Maynard Allardeck, did he suggest it?’

  ‘Who? Bill? Yes, sure he did. He put the clippings from the Flag on my desk and said it looked my sort of thing. I may know him from way back, but he’s still the ultimate boss. When he wants something written, it gets written. Martin, our big white chief, always agrees to that.’

  ‘And, er, how did you get on to the How’s Trade interview? I mean, did you see the programme when it was broadcast?’

  ‘Do me a favour. Of course not.’ She paused. ‘Bill suggested I try the television company, to ask for a private re-run.’

  ‘Which you did.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Look,’ she demanded, ‘what’s all this about? Bill often suggests subjects to me. There’s nothing strange in it.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Sleep well, Rose.’

  ‘And goodnight to you, too.’

  I slept soundly and long, and early in the morning took the video camera and drove to Purfleet along the flat lands just north of the Thames estuary. The rains of the day before ha
d drawn away, leaving the sky washed and pale, and there were seagulls wheeling high over the low-tide mud.

  I asked in about twenty places, post office and shops, before I found anyone who had heard of Purfleet Electronics, but was finally pointed towards someone who had worked there. ‘You want George Tarker… he owned it,’ he said.

  Following a few further instructions from helpful locals, I eventually pulled up beside a shabby old wooden boatshed optimistically emblazoned with a sign-board saying ‘George Tarker Repairs All’.

  Out of the car and walking across the pot-holed entrance yard to the door one could see that the sign had once had a bottom half, which had split off and was lying propped against the wall, and which read ‘Boats and Marine Equipment’.

  With a sinking feeling of having come entirely to the wrong place I pushed open the rickety door and stepped straight into the untidiest office in the world, a place where every surface and every shelf was covered with unidentifiable lumps of ships’ hardware in advanced age, and where every patch of wall was occupied by ancient calendars, posters, bills and instructions, all attached not by drawing pins but by nails.

  In a sagging old chair, oblivious to the mess, sat an elderly grey-bearded man with his feet up on a desk, reading a newspaper and drinking from a cup.

  ‘Mr Tarker?’ I said.

  ‘That’s me.’ He lowered the paper, looking at me critically from over the soles of his shoes. ‘What do you want repaired?’ He looked towards the bag I was carrying, which contained the camera. ‘A bit off a boat?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve come to the wrong place,’ I said. ‘I was looking for Mr George Tarker who used to own Purfleet Electronics.’

  He put his cup down carefully on the desk, and his feet on the floor. He was old, I saw, from an inner weariness as much as from age: it lay in the sag of his shoulders and the droop of his eyes and shouted from the disarray of everything around him.

  ‘That George Tarker was my son,’ he said.

  Was.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.