by Dick Francis
The rich young owner’s expensive brown shoes went away. Tommy, following instructions from the uniform department, had shiny new black ones, with black socks.
Into Tommy’s holdall went the binoculars-camera and the hair curler (one never knew), and I had the cigarette lighter camera as always in my pocket. Tommy also had the rich young owner’s razor and toothbrush, along with his underclothes, pyjamas and stock of fresh films. The suitcase, which held my passport, had a Merry & Co label on it addressed to the Vancouver Four Seasons Hotel; the holdall had no identification at all.
With everything ready, I telephoned Brigadier Catto in England and told him about Daffodil Quentin and the touching little scene in the winners’ circle.
‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Why does that sort of thing always happen? Absolutely the wrong person winning.’
‘The general public didn’t seem to mind. The horse was third favourite, quite well backed. Daffodil Quentin seems to be acceptable to the other owners, who of course probably don’t know about her three dead horses. They’re bound to take to Filmer too, you know how civilised he can seem, and I don’t suppose news of the trial got much attention here since it collapsed almost before it began. Anyway, Filmer and Daffodil left the races together in what looked like her own car, with a chauffeur.’
‘Pity you couldn’t follow them.’
‘Well, I did actually, in a hired car. They went to the hotel, where Filmer and the other owners from the train are staying, and they went into the bar for a drink. After that, Daffodil left in her Rolls and Filmer went upstairs. Nothing of note. He looked relaxed.’
The Brigadier said, ‘You’re sure they didn’t spot you at the hotel?’
‘Quite sure. The entrance hall of the hotel was as big as a railway station itself. There were dozens of people sitting around waiting for other people. It was easy.’
It had even been easy following them from the racecourse, as when I went out to where my driver had parked his car I had a clear view from a distance of Daffodil at the exit gate being spooned into a royal blue Rolls-Royce by Filmer and her chauffeur. My driver, with raised eyebrows but without spoken question, agreed to keep the Rolls in sight for as long as possible, which he did without trouble all the way back to the city. At the hotel I paid him in cash with a bonus and sent him on his way, and was in time to see Filmer’s backview receding into a dark-looking bar as I walked into the big central hall lobby.
It had been an exercise without much in the way of results, but then many of my days were like that, and it was only by knowing the normal that the abnormal, when it happened, could be spotted.
‘Would you mind telling me,’ I said diffidently to the Brigadier, ‘whether Filmer has made a positive threat to disrupt this train?’
There was a silence, then, ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Something Bill Baudelaire said.’
After a pause he answered, ‘Filmer was seething with anger. He said the world’s racing authorities could persecute him all they liked but he would find a spanner to throw in their works, and they’d regret it.’
‘When did he say that?’ I asked. ‘And why … and who to?’
‘Well … er …’ He hesitated and sighed. ‘Things go wrong, you know. After the acquittal, the Disciplinary Committee of the Jockey Club called Filmer to Portman Square to warn him as to his future behaviour, and Filmer said they couldn’t touch him, and was generally unbearably arrogant. As a result, one of the committee lost his temper and told Filmer he was the scum of the earth and no one in racing would sleep well until he was warned off, which was the number one priority of the world’s racing authorities.’
‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration,’ I commented, sighing in my turn. ‘I suppose you were there?’
‘Yes. You could have cut the fury on both sides with a knife. Very vicious, all of it.’
‘So,’ I said regretfully, ‘Filmer might indeed see the train as a target.’
‘He might.’
The trouble and expense he had gone to to get himself on board looked increasingly ominous, I thought.
‘There’s one other thing you might care to know,’ the Brigadier said. ‘John saw Ivor Horfitz’s son Jason hanging around outside the weighing-room at Newmarket yesterday and had a word with him.’
When Millington had a word with people they could take days to recover. In his own way, he could be as frightening as Derry Welfram or Filmer himself.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘John spoke to him about the inadvisability of running errands on racecourses for his warned-off father, and said that if Jason had any information, he should pass it on to him, John Millington. And apparently Jason Horfitz then said he wouldn’t be passing on the information he had to anybody else as he didn’t want to end up in a ditch.’
‘What?’ I said.
‘John Millington pounced on that but he couldn’t get another word out of the wretched Jason. He turned to jelly and literally ran away, John says.’
‘Does Jason really know,’ I said slowly, ‘what Paul Shacklebury knew? Did he tell Paul Shacklebury whatever it was he knew? Or was it just a figure of speech?’
‘God knows. John’s working on it.’
‘Did he ask Jason what was in the briefcase?’
‘Yes, he did, but Jason either didn’t know or was too frightened to speak. John says he was terrified that we even knew about the briefcase. He couldn’t believe we knew.’
‘I wonder if he’ll tell his father.’
‘Not if he has any sense.’
He hadn’t any sense, I thought, but he did have fear, which was almost as good a life preserver.
‘If I hear anything more,’ the Brigadier said, ‘I’ll leave a message with …’ his voice still disapproved ‘… with Mrs Baudelaire senior. Apart from that … good luck.’
I thanked him and hung up, and with considerable contentment took my two bags in a taxi to Union Station.
The train crew were already collecting in the locker room when I made my way there and introduced myself as Tommy, the actor.
They smiled and were generous. They always enjoyed the mysteries, they said, and had worked with an actor among them before. It would all go well, I would see.
The head waiter, head steward, chief service attendant, whatever one called him, was a neat small Frenchman named Emil. Late thirties, perhaps, I thought, with dark bright eyes.
‘Do you speak French?’ he asked first, shaking my hand. ‘All VIA employees have to be able to speak French. It is a rule.’
‘I do a bit,’ I said.
‘That is good. The last actor, he couldn’t. This time the chef is from Montreal, and in the kitchen we may speak French.’
I nodded and didn’t tell him that, apart from my school days, my working French had been learned in stables, not kitchens, and was likely to be rusty in any case. But I’d half-learned several languages on my travels, and somehow they each floated familiarly back at the first step onto the matching soil. Everything in bilingual Canada was written in both English and French and I realised that since my arrival I’d been reading the French quite easily.
‘Have you ever worked in a restaurant?’ Emil asked.
‘No, I haven’t.’
He shrugged good humouredly. ‘I will show you how to set the places, and to begin with, this morning, perhaps you will serve only water. When you pour anything, when the train is moving, you pour in small amounts at a time, and you keep the cup or glass close to you. Do you understand? It is always necessary to control, to use small movements.’
‘I understand,’ I said, and indeed I did.
He put a copy of the timetable into my hands and said, ‘You will need to know where we stop. The passengers always ask.’
‘OK. Thanks.’
He nodded with good humour.
I changed into Tommy’s uniform and met some others of the crew; Oliver, who was a waiter in the special dining car, like myself, and several of the sleeping ca
r attendants, one to each car the whole length of the train. There was a smiling Chinese gentleman who cooked in the small forward dining car where the grooms, among others, would be eating, and an unsmiling Canadian who would be cooking in the main central dining car for the bulk of the racegoers and the crew themselves. The French chef from Montreal was not there, I soon discovered, because he was a she, and could only be found in the women’s changing room.
Everyone put on the whole uniform including the grey raincoat on top, and I put on my raincoat also; I packed Tommy’s spare garments and my own clothes into the holdall, and was ready.
Nell had said she would meet me this Sunday morning in the coffee shop in the Great Hall, and had told me that the crews often went there to wait for train time. Accordingly, accompanied by Emil and a few of the others, I carried my bags to the coffee shop where everyone immediately ordered huge carrot cakes, the speciality of the house, as if they were in fear of famine.
Nell wasn’t there, but Zak and some of the other actors were, sitting four to a table, drinking pale-looking orange juice and not eating carrot cake because of the calories.
Zak said Nell was along with the passengers in the reception area, and that he wanted to go and see how things were shaping.
‘She said something about you checking a suitcase through to Vancouver in the baggage car,’ he added, standing up.
‘Yes, this one.’
‘Right. She said to tell you to bring it along to where the passengers are. I’ll show you.’
I nodded, told Emil I’d be back, and followed Zak down the Great Hall and round a corner or two and came to a buzzing gathering of people in an area like an airport departure lounge.
An enormous banner across a latticed screen left no one in any doubt. Stretching for a good twelve feet it read in red on white THE GREAT TRANSCONTINENTAL MYSTERY RACE TRAIN, and in blue letters a good deal smaller underneath, THE ONTARIO JOCKEY CLUB, MERRY & CO AND VIA RAIL PRESENT A CELEBRATION OF CANADIAN RACING.
The forty or so passengers already gathered in happy anticipation wore name badges and carnations and held glasses of orange juice convivially.
‘There was supposed to be champagne in the orange juice,’ Zak said dryly. ‘There isn’t. Something to do with the Sunday drink law.’ He searched the throng with his eyes from where we stood a good twenty paces away out in the station. ‘There’s Ben doing his stuff, see? Asking Raoul to lend him money?’
I could indeed see. It looked incredibly real. People standing around them were looking shocked and embarrassed.
Zak was nodding his mop of curls beside me and had begun snapping his fingers rather fast. I could sense the energy starting to flow in him now that his fiction was coming alive, and I could see that he had used make-up on himself; not greasepaint or anything heavy, more a matter of darkening and thickening his eyebrows and darkening his mouth, emphasising rather than disguising. An actor in the wings, I thought, gathering up his power.
I spotted Mavis and Walter Bricknell being fussy and anxious as intended, and saw and heard Angelica asking if anyone had seen Steve.
‘Who’s Steve?’ I asked Zak. ‘I forget.’
‘Her lover. He misses the train.’
Pierre and Donna began to have their row which made a different bunch of passengers uncomfortable. Zak laughed. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘that’s great.’
Giles-the-murderer, who had been in the coffee shop, strolled along into the mêlée and started being frightfully nice to old ladies. Zak snapped his fingers even faster and started humming.
The crowd parted and shifted a little and through the gap I saw Julius Apollo Filmer, another murderer, being frightfully nice to a not-so-old lady, Daffodil Quentin.
I took a deep breath, almost of awe, almost on a tremble. Now that it was really beginning, now that I was going to be near him, I felt as strung up and as energised as Zak, and no doubt suffered the same compelling anxiety that things shouldn’t go wrong.
Daffodil was playfully patting Filmer’s hand.
Yuk, I thought.
Ben the actor appeared beside them and started his piece, and I saw Filmer turn a bland face towards him and watched his mouth shape the unmistakable words, ‘Go away.’
Ben backed off. Very wise, I thought. The crowd came together again and hid Filmer and his flower and I felt the tension in my muscles subside, and realised I hadn’t known I had tensed them. Have to watch that, I thought.
The Lorrimores had arrived, each wearing yesterday’s expression: pleasant, aloof, supercilious, sulky. Mercer was entering into the spirit of things, Bambi also but more coolly. Sheridan looked as if he thought he was slumming. The young daughter, Xanthe, could have been quite pretty if she’d smiled.
James Winterbourne, actor, had discarded his red felt trilby and had shaved off the stubble and was drifting around being welcoming in his role as a member of the Jockey Club. And the real Jockey Club was there, I saw, in the person of Bill Baudelaire, who was known to one or two of the owners with whom he was chatting. I wondered how much he would fret if he didn’t see me among the passengers, and I hoped not much.
Nell emerged from the noise of the crowd and came across towards us, a clipboard clasped to her chest, her eyes shining. She wore another severe suit, grey this time over a white blouse, but perhaps in honour of the occasion had added a long twisted rope of coral, pearls and crystal.
‘It’s all happening,’ she said. ‘I can hardly believe it, after all these months. I won’t kiss you both, I’m not supposed to know you yet, but consider yourselves kissed. It’s all going very well. Pierre and Donna are having a humdinger of a row. How does she manage to cry whenever she wants to? Is that the suitcase for Vancouver? Put it over there with those others which are being checked right through. Mercer Lorrimore is sweet, I’m so relieved. We haven’t had any disasters yet, but there must be one on the way. I’m as high as a kite and there’s no champagne in the orange juice.’
She stopped for breath and a laugh and I said, ‘Nell, if Bill Baudelaire asks you if I’m here, just say yes, don’t say where.’
She was puzzled but too short of time to argue. ‘Well … OK.’
‘Thanks.’
She nodded and turned to go and take care of the passengers, and the James Winterbourne character came out to meet her and also to talk to Zak.
‘It’s too much,’ he complained, ‘the real goddam Chairman of the Ontario Jockey Club has turned up to do the “bon voyage” bit himself. I’m out of a job.’
‘We did ask him first,’ Nell said. ‘We suggested it right at the beginning, before it all grew so big. He’s obviously decided he should be here after all.’
‘Yes, but … what about my fee?’
‘You’ll get it,’ Zak said resignedly. ‘Just go back and jolly things along and tell everyone what a great trip they’re going to have.’
‘I’ve been doing that,’ he grumbled, but returned obediently to his task.
‘As a matter of fact,’ Nell said, her brow wrinkling, ‘I suppose I did get a message days ago to say the Chairman was coming, but I didn’t know it meant him. I didn’t know who it meant. It was a message left for me while I was out. “The Colonel is coming.” I didn’t know any colonels. Is the Chairman a colonel?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Oh well, no harm done. I’d better go and see if he needs anything.’ She hurried off, unperturbed.
Zak sighed. ‘I could have saved myself that fee.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh, Merry & Co pay me a lump sum to stage the mystery. I engage the actors and pay them, and whatever is left at the end is mine. Not much, sometimes.’
Voices were suddenly raised over in the crowd and people began scattering to the edges of the area, clearing the centre and falling silent. Zak and I instinctively went nearer, he in front, I in his shadow.
On the floor, sprawling, lay the actor Raoul, with Donna and Pierre bending down to help him up. Raoul dabbed at his nose
with the back of his hand, and everyone could see the resulting scarlet streak.
Mavis Bricknell began saying loudly and indignantly, ‘He hit him. He hit him. That young man hit our trainer in the face. He had no right to knock him down.’
She was pointing at Sheridan Lorrimore, who had turned his back on the scene.
I glanced at Zak for enlightenment.
‘That,’ he said blankly, ‘wasn’t in the script.’
Nell smoothed it over.
Sheridan Lorrimore could be heard saying furiously and fortissimo to his father, ‘How the hell could I know they were acting? The fellow was being a bore. I just bopped him one. He deserved it. The girl was crying. And he was crowding me, pushing against me. I didn’t like it.’
His father murmured something.
‘Apologise?’ Sheridan said in a high voice. ‘Apol—oh, all right. I apologise. Will that do?’
Mercer drew him away to a corner, and slowly, haltingly, the general good humour resurfaced. Ironic compliments were paid to Pierre, Donna and Raoul for the potency and effect of their acting and Raoul played for sympathy and looked nobly forgiving, holding a handkerchief to his nose and peering at it for blood, of which there seemed to be not much.
Zak cursed and said that Pierre had in fact been going to knock Raoul to the ground at a slightly later time, and now that would have to be changed. I left him to his problems because it was coming up to the time when Emil had said the crew should board the train, and I was due back in the coffee shop.
The carrot cakes had been reduced to crumbs and the coffee cups were empty. The bussed consignment of grooms had arrived and were sitting in a group wearing Race Train T-shirts above their jeans. Emil looked at his watch and another crew member arrived and said the computer in the crews’ room downstairs was showing that the special train had just pulled into the station, Gate 6, Track 7, as expected.