The Edge

by Dick Francis

  I assured him truthfully that I had been impressed by his skill and speed, and I thought his results marvellous.

  ‘You actors,’ he said more indulgently, ‘will think of any impossible thing for a plot.’

  Everyone got off the train at Winnipeg, one thousand, four hundred and thirteen miles along the rails from Toronto.

  Two large motor horse-boxes were waiting for the horses, which were unloaded down and loaded up ramps. The grooms and Leslie Brown led the horses across from train to van and saw them installed and then, carrying holdalls, themselves trouped onto a bus which followed the horse-boxes away towards the racetrack.

  A row of buses waited outside the station to take the racegoers away to a variety of outlying motels, and a long new coach with darkly tinted windows was set aside for the owners. A few of the owners, like the Lorrimores and Daffodil and Filmer, had arranged their own transport separately in the shape of chauffeur-driven limousines, their chauffeurs coming over to the train to carry their bags.

  The crew, after everyone else had left, tidied away into secure lockers every movable piece of equipment and goods, and then joined the actors in the last waiting bus. The Mountie, I was interested to see, was among us, tall and imposing even with his scarlet and brass buttons tucked away in his bag.

  George came last, carrying an attaché case of papers and looking over his shoulder at the train as if wondering if he’d forgotten anything. He sat in the seat across the aisle from me and said the cars would be backed into a siding for two days, the engine would be removed and used elsewhere, and there would be a security guard on duty. In the siding, the carriages would be unheated and unlit and would come to life again only about an hour before we left on the day after tomorrow. We’d been able to keep the same crew from coast to coast, he said, only because of the two rest breaks along the way.

  The owners and some of the actors were staying in the Westin Hotel which had, Nell had told everyone during dinner, a ballroom and comfort and an indoor pool on the roof. There was a breakfast room set aside for the train party where a piece of the mystery would unravel each morning. Apart from that, everyone was on their own: there were good shops, good restaurants and good racing. Transport had been arranged to and from the racecourse. We would all come back to reboard the train after the Jockey Club Race Train Stakes on Wednesday, and cocktails and dinner would be served as soon as we’d rolled out of the station. The party, in good humour, applauded.

  I had decided not to stay in the same hotel as any of the groups of owners, actors, racegoers or crew, and asked Nell if she knew of anywhere else. A tall order, it seemed.

  ‘We’ve put people almost everywhere,’ she said doubtfully, ‘but only a few actors will be at the Holiday Inn … why don’t you try there? Although actually … there is one place we haven’t booked anyone into, and that’s the Sheraton. But it’s like the Westin – expensive.’

  ‘Never mind, I’ll find somewhere,’ I said, and when the crew bus after a short drive stopped and disgorged its passengers, I took my grip and vanished on foot and, after asking directions, made a homing line to where no one else was staying.

  In my buttoned-up grey VIA raincoat, I was unexceptional to the receptionists of the Sheraton: the only problem, they said, was that they were full. It was late in the evening. The whole city was full.

  ‘An annexe?’ I suggested.

  Two of them shook their heads and consulted with each other in low voices. Although they had no single rooms left, they said finally, they had had a late cancellation of a suite. They looked doubtful. I wouldn’t be interested in that, they supposed.

  ‘Yes, I would,’ I said and gave them my American Express card with alacrity. So Tommy the waiter carefully hung up his yellow waistcoat with its white lining and ordered some wine from room service and in a while after a long easing shower slept for eight solid hours and didn’t dream about Filmer.

  In the morning, I telephoned Mrs Baudelaire and listened again to the almost girlish voice on the wire.

  ‘Messages for the invisible man,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Er … are you still invisible?’

  ‘Mostly, yes, I think.’

  ‘Bill says Val Catto would like to know if you are still invisible to the quarry. Does that make sense to you?’

  ‘It makes sense, and the answer is yes.’

  ‘They’re both anxious.’

  ‘And not alone,’ I said. ‘Will you tell them the quarry has an ally on the train, travelling I think with the racegoers. I’ve seen him once and will try to photograph him.’

  ‘Goodness!’

  ‘Also will you ask them whether certain numbers, which I’ll tell you, have any significance in the quarry’s life.’

  ‘Intriguing,’ she said. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Well … three numbers I don’t know. Three question marks, say. Then one-five-one.’

  ‘Three question marks, then one-five-one. Right?’

  ‘Right. I know it’s not his car’s number plate, or not the car he usually travels in, but ask if it fits his birthday in any way, or his phone number, or anything at all they can think of. I want to know what the first three digits are.’

  ‘I’ll ask Bill right away, when I’ve finished talking to you. He gave me some answers to give you about your questions yesterday evening.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘The answers are that Mr and Mrs Young who own Sparrowgrass are frequent and welcome visitors to England and are entertained by the Jockey Club at many race meetings. They were friends of Ezra Gideon. Val Catto doesn’t know if they know that Ezra Gideon sold two horses to Mr J. A. Filmer. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I’m glad you understand what I’m talking about. How about this one, then?’ She paused for breath. ‘Sheridan Lorrimore was sent down – expelled – from Cambridge University last May, amid some sort of hushed-up scandal. Mercer Lorrimore was over in England at that time, and stayed and went racing at Newmarket in July, but the Jockey Club found him grimmer than his usual self and understood it was something to do with his son, although he didn’t say what. Val Catto is seeing what he can find out from Cambridge.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘Sheridan Lorrimore!’ she said, sounding shocked. ‘I hope it’s not true.’

  ‘Brace yourself,’ I said dryly.

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘How well do you know him?’ I asked.

  ‘Hardly at all. But it does no good, does it, for one of our golden families to hit the tabloids.’

  I loved the expression, and remembered she’d owned a magazine.

  ‘It demeans the whole country,’ she went on. ‘I just hope whatever it was will stay hushed up.’

  ‘Whatever it was?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘For his family’s sake. For his mother’s sake. I know Bambi Lorrimore. She’s a proud woman. She doesn’t deserve to be disgraced by her son.’

  I wasn’t so sure about that: didn’t know to what extent she was responsible for his behaviour. But perhaps not much. Perhaps no one deserved a son like Sheridan. Perhaps people like Sheridan were born that way, as if without arms.

  ‘Are you still there?’ Mrs Baudelaire asked.

  ‘I sure am.’

  ‘Bill says the Lorrimores’ private car got detached from the train on Sunday evening. Is that really true? There’s a great fuss going on, isn’t there? It’s been on the television news and it’s all over the papers this morning. Bill says it was apparently done by some lunatic for reasons unknown, but he wants to know if you have any information about it that he doesn’t have.’

  I told her what had happened: how Xanthe had casually nearly walked off into space.

  ‘Tell Bill the quarry sat relaxed and unconcerned throughout both the incident and the enquiry held at Thunder Bay yesterday morning, and I’m certain he didn’t plan the uncoupling. I think he did plan something though, with his ally on the train, and I think Bill should see th
at they guard the train’s horses very carefully out at the track.’

  ‘I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Tell him there’s a slight possibility that the horses’ drinking water was tampered with on the train, before it got to Thunder Bay. But I think that if it had been, the horses should have been showing distress by last night, which they weren’t. I can’t check them this morning. I suppose if there’s anything wrong with them, Bill will know pretty soon. Anyway, I took four samples of the drinking water which I will take to the races this evening.’

  ‘Good heavens.’

  ‘Tell Bill I’ll get them to him somehow. They’ll be in a package with his name on it.’

  ‘Let me write some of this down. Don’t go away.’

  There was a quiet period while she put down the receiver and wrote her notes. Then she came back on the line and faithfully repeated everything I’d told her, and everything I’d asked.

  ‘Is that right?’ she demanded, at the end.

  ‘Perfect,’ I said fervently. ‘When in general is it a good time for me to phone you? I don’t like to disturb you at bad moments.’

  ‘Phone any time. I’ll be here. Have a good day. Stay invisible.’

  I laughed, and she’d gone off the line before I could ask her about her health.

  A complimentary copy of a Winnipeg newspaper had been slipped under my sitting room door. I picked it up and checked on what news it gave of the train. The story wasn’t exactly all over the front page, but it started there with photographs of Mercer and Bambi and continued inside, with a glamorous back-lit formal shot of Xanthe, which made her look a lot older than her published age, fifteen.

  I suspected ironically that the extra publicity given to the Great Transcontinental Mystery Race Train hadn’t hurt the enterprise in the least. Blame hadn’t been fastened on anyone except some unknown nutter back in the wilds of Ontario. Winnipeg was full of racegoing visitors who were contributing handsomely to the local economy. Winnipeg was pleased to welcome them. Don’t forget, the paper prominently said, that the first of the two Celebration of Canadian Racing meetings would be held this evening with the regular post time of 7 pm, while the second meeting, including the running of the Jockey Club Race Train Stakes would be tomorrow afternoon, post time 1.30. The afternoon had been declared a local holiday, as everyone knew, and it would be a fitting finale to the year’s thoroughbred racing programme at Assiniboia Downs. (Harness racing, it said in brackets, would hold the first meeting of its winter season the following Sunday.)

  I spent most of the day mooching around Winnipeg, seeing a couple of owners once in a shop selling eskimo sculptures, but never coming face to face with anyone who might know me. I didn’t waste much time trying to see what Filmer did or where he went, because I’d quickly discovered that the Westin Hotel was sitting over an entrance to a subterranean shopping mall that stretched like a rabbit warren in all directions. Shopping, in Canada, had largely gone underground to defeat the climate. Filmer could go in and out of the Westin without a sniff of fresh air, and probably had.

  There were racetrack express buses, I found, going from the city to the Downs, so I went on one at about six o’clock and strolled around at ground level looking for some way of conveying to Bill Baudelaire the water samples which were now individually wrapped inside the nondescript plastic carrier.

  It was made easy for me. A girl of about Xanthe’s age bounced up to my side as I walked slowly along in front of the grandstand, and said, ‘Hi! I’m Nancy. If that’s for Clarrie Baudelaire, I’ll take it up if you like.’

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Dining with her dad up there by a window in the Clubhouse.’ She pointed to a part of the grandstand. ‘He said you were bringing her some thirst quenchers, and he asked me to run down and collect them. Is that right?’

  ‘Spot on,’ I said appreciatively.

  She was pretty, with freckles, wearing a bright blue tracksuit with a white and gold studded belt. I gave her the carrier and watched her jaunty backview disappear with it into the crowds, and I was more and more sure that what she was carrying was harmless. Bill Baudelaire wouldn’t be calmly eating dinner with his daughter if there were a multi-horse crisis going on over in the racecourse stables.

  The Clubhouse, from where diners could watch the sport, took up one whole floor of the grandstand, glassed in along its whole length to preserve summer indoors. I decided not to go in there on the grounds that Tommy would not, and Tommy off duty in Tommy’s off-duty clothes was what I most definitely wanted to be at that moment. I made some Tommy-sized bets and ate very well in the (literally) below-stairs bar, and in general walked around, race-card in hand, binoculars around neck, exactly as usual.

  The daylight faded almost imperceptibly into night, electricity taking over the sun’s job smoothly. By seven, when the first race was run, it was under floodlighting, the jockeys’ colours brilliant against the backdrop of night.

  There were a lot of half-familiar faces in the crowds; the enthusiastic racegoers from the train. The only one of them that I was interested in, though, was either extremely elusive, or not there. All the techniques I knew of finding people were to no avail: the man with his gaunt face, grey hair and fur-collared parka was more invisible than myself.

  I did see Nell.

  In her plain blue suit she came down from the Clubhouse with two of the owners who seemed to want to be near the horses at ground level. I drifted after the three of them to watch the runners come out for the third race and wasn’t far behind them when they walked right down to the rails to see the contest from the closest possible quarters. When it was over, the owners turned towards the stands talking animatedly about the result, and I contrived to be where Nell would see me, with any luck, making a small waving motion with my race-card.

  She noticed the card, noticed me with widening eyes, and in a short while detached herself from the owners and stood and waited. When without haste I reached her side, she gave me a sideways grin.

  ‘Aren’t you one of the waiters from the train?’ she said.

  ‘I sure am.’

  ‘Did you find somewhere to sleep?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. How’s the Westin?’

  She was staying with the owners; their shepherd, their smoother-of-the-way, their information booth.

  ‘The hotel’s all right – but someone should strangle that rich … that arrogant … that insufferable Sheridan.’ Disgust vibrated in her voice as she suddenly let go of some clearly banked up and held back emotion. ‘He’s unbearable. He’s spoiling it for others. They all paid a fortune to come on this trip and they’re entitled not to be upset.’

  ‘Did something happen?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, at breakfast.’ The memory displeased her. ‘Zak put on the next scene of the mystery and Sheridan shouted him down three times. I went over to Sheridan to ask him to be quiet and he grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me onto his lap, and I overbalanced and fell and hit the table hard where he was sitting, and I caught the cloth somehow and pulled it with me and everything on it landed on the floor. So you can imagine the fuss. I was on my knees, there was orange juice and broken plates and food and coffee everywhere and Sheridan was saying loudly it was my fault for being clumsy.’

  ‘And I can imagine,’ I said, seeing resignation more than indignation now in her face, ‘that Bambi Lorrimore took no notice, that Mercer hurried to help you up and apologise, and Mrs Young enquired if you were hurt.’

  She looked at me in amazement. ‘You were there!’

  ‘No. It just figures.’

  ‘Well … that’s exactly what happened. A waiter came to deal with the mess, and while he was kneeling there Sheridan said loudly that the waiter was sneering at him and he would get him fired.’ She paused. ‘And I suppose you can tell me again what happened next?’

  She was teasing, but I answered, ‘I’d guess Mercer assured the waiter he wouldn’t be fired and took him aside and gave him twenty dollars.’
>
  Her mouth opened. ‘You were there.’

  I shook my head. ‘He gave me twenty dollars when Sheridan shoved me the other evening.’

  ‘But that’s awful.’

  ‘Mercer’s a nice man caught in an endless dilemma. Bambi’s closed her mind to it. Xanthe seeks comfort somewhere else.’

  Nell thought it over and delivered her judgment, which was much like my own.

  ‘One day, beastly Sheridan will do something his father can’t pay for.’

  ‘He’s a very rich man,’ I said.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘It’s nothing to do with his birthday, nor with his telephone numbers, nor addresses, past or present, nor his bank accounts, nor his national insurance.’

  Mrs Baudelaire’s light voice in my ear, passing on the bad news on Wednesday morning.

  ‘Val Catto is working on your quarry’s credit card numbers now,’ she said. ‘And he wants to know why he’s doing all this research. He says he’s looked up your quarry’s divorced wife’s personal numbers also and he cannot see one-five-one anywhere, with or without three unknown digits in front.’

  I sighed audibly, disappointed.

  ‘How important is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s impossible to tell. It could be pointless, it could solve all our problems. Empty box or jackpot, or anywhere in between. Please would you tell the Brigadier that one-five-one is the combination that unlocks the right-hand latch of a black crocodile briefcase. We have three unknowns on the left.’

  ‘Good gracious,’ she said.

  ‘Could you say I would appreciate his instructions?’

  ‘I could, young man. Why don’t you just steal the briefcase and take your time?’

  I laughed. ‘I’ve thought of that, but I’d better not. Or not yet, anyway. If the numbers have any logic, this way is safest.’

  ‘Val would presumably prefer you didn’t get arrested.’

  Or murdered, perhaps, I thought.