The Edge

by Dick Francis

  ‘Strong supposition of cause and effect, but unprovable, I should think.’

  ‘Yes. They had an autopsy and couldn’t find what caused the colic. It was the third of her dead horses. The insurers were very suspicious, but they had to pay.’

  ‘Lenny says she told him she would never do any harm to her darling horses, but she gave him a hundred dollars to keep quiet.’

  Bill groaned.

  ‘But,’ I said, ‘it might have been because she’d had two dead horses already and she was afraid everyone would think exactly what they did think anyway.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘So where are we now?’

  ‘Going on past experience,’ I said, ‘I would think – and this is just guessing – that after midnight last night, our quarry told Daffodil that her groom had spilled the beans, and would spill them again to order in public, and that he would see she was warned off at the very least if she didn’t sell him … or give him … her remaining share in Laurentide Ice.’

  He said gloomily, ‘You all know him better than I do, but on form I’d think you may be right. We’ll know for sure, won’t we, if he applies to change the partnership registration before the Vancouver race.’

  ‘Mm,’ I agreed. ‘Well, if you – the Ontario Racing Commission – feel like giving Daffodil the benefit of the doubt over her horses … and of course you know her better than I do, but it seems to me she may not be intentionally wicked, but more silly … I mean there’s something immature about her, for all her fifty years or so … and some people don’t think it’s all that wicked to defraud insurance companies, perfectly respectable people sometimes do it … and I believe all three horses would have been put down sooner than later, wouldn’t they? Anyway, I’m not excusing her if she’s guilty, but explaining how she might feel about it …’

  ‘You’ve got to know her remarkably well.’

  ‘Er … I’ve just … noticed …’

  ‘Mm,’ he said dryly. ‘Val Catto said you notice things.’

  ‘Well … I, er, don’t know how you feel about this, but I thought that if we spirited Lenny Higgs away, sort of, he wouldn’t be around to be threatened, or to be a threat to Daffodil, and if you could tell her somehow that Lenny Higgs had vanished and will not be spilling any beans whatsoever … if you could square it with your conscience to do that … then she doesn’t need to part with her half-share and we will have foiled at least one of our quarry’s rotten schemes. And that’s my brief, isn’t it?’

  He breathed out lengthily, as a whistle.

  I held the line and waited.

  ‘Is Lenny Higgs still on the train?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Unless he panics, he’s going with the other grooms and horses to their stabling here. I told him someone would come to fetch him and look after him and give him a free ticket to wherever he wants to go.’

  ‘Now, hold on …’

  ‘It’s the least we can do. But I think we should follow it up, and positively know his exact ultimate destination, even fix him up with a job, because we in our turn may want him to give evidence against the man who frightened him. If we do, we don’t want to have to find him world-wide. And if you can send someone to help him, get them to take along a copy of the photo you’ve had printed for me, because I’m pretty certain that’s the man who frightened him. Lenny should turn to jelly, if it is.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  There was unfortunately a fair amount of dishwashing still to do when I returned to the kitchen so I lent a slightly guilty hand but kept walking out with glasses and cloths into the dining car so that I could see what was going on outside the windows.

  Daffodil, attended by Nell and Rose and Cumber Young (he carrying her two suitcases), was helped down from the dome car by station staff and went off slowly into the main part of the station. Daffodil’s curls were piled as perkily high as usual but her shoulders drooped inside the chinchillas, and the glimpse I had of her face showed a forlorn lost-child expression rather than a virago bent on revenge. Nell was being helpful. Rose Young exuded comfort: Cumber Young looked grim.

  ‘Are you drying glasses or are you not?’ Cathy demanded. She was pretty, bright-eyed and quick, and also, at that moment, tired.

  ‘Intermittently,’ I said.

  Her momentary ill-temper dissolved. ‘Then get an intermittent move on or I won’t be able to go over to the station before we leave.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, and dried and polished several glasses devotedly.

  Cathy giggled. ‘How long are you going to keep this up?’

  ‘To the end, I guess.’

  ‘But when is your scene?’

  ‘Ah …’ I said, ‘that’s the trouble. Right at the end. So I’ll be drying dishes to Vancouver.’

  ‘Are you the murderer?’ she asked teasingly.

  ‘Most definitely not.’

  ‘The last time we had an actor pretending to be a waiter, he was the murderer.’

  ‘The murderer,’ I said, ‘is that passenger you give the best portions to. That good-looking single man who’s nice to everyone.’

  Her eyes stretched wide. ‘He’s an owner,’ she said.

  ‘He’s an actor. And don’t give him away.’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’ She looked slightly dreamy-eyed, though, as if I’d passed on good news. I didn’t like to disillusion her about her or any girl’s prospects with the gorgeous Giles; she would find out soon enough.

  The chores finally done, Cathy skipped away to the delights of the station and in her place I helped Emil and Oliver stow and lock up all the equipment, as when everyone disembarked at Lake Louise the train was again going to be standing cold and silent in sidings for two days before the last stretch westwards to the Pacific.

  Some but not all of the passengers had gone ashore, so to speak, at Calgary, and those who had been in the station came wandering back in good time, including the Youngs. Of Filmer there was no sign, nor of the gaunt-faced man. The dining car half filled again with people who simply preferred sitting there, and from those I heard that the horse car had been safely detached from the train and had been towed away by the engine, leaving the rest of us temporarily stranded.

  The regular Canadian, they told each other, which had arrived on time thirty-five minutes after us, was the train standing three tracks away, its passengers stretching their legs like our own. The Canadian, it seemed, had changed from threat to friend in the general perception; our Doppelgänger and companion on the journey. The passengers from both had mingled and compared notes. The Conductors had met for a talk.

  There was a jerk and a shudder through the train as the engine returned and reattached, and soon afterwards we were on our way again, with passengers crowding now towards the dome car’s observation deck to enjoy the ascent into the mountains.

  Filmer, slightly to my surprise, was among those going through the dining car, and right behind him came Nell who looked over Filmer’s shoulder at me and said, ‘I’ve got a message for you from George Burley.’

  ‘Excuse me, miss,’ I said abruptly, standing well back between two tables to let Filmer go by, ‘I’ll be right with you.’

  ‘What?’ She was puzzled, but paused and stepped sideways also to let others behind her walk on through the car. Filmer himself had gone on without stopping, without paying Nell or me the least attention, and when his back was way down the car and well out of earshot of a quiet conversation, I turned back to Nell with enquiry.

  ‘It’s a bit of a mix-up,’ she said. She was standing on the far side of the table from me, and speaking across it. ‘Apparently the telephone in George Burley’s office was ringing when he got back on board, and it was a woman wanting to speak to a Mr Kelsey. George Burley consulted his lists and said there was no Mr Kelsey on board. So whoever it was asked him to give a message to me, which he did.’

  It must have been Mrs Baudelaire phoning, I thought: no one else knew the number. Bill himself could never be mistaken for a woman. Not his
secretary …? heaven forbid.

  ‘What’s the message?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know if between us George Burley and I have got it right.’ She was frowning. ‘It’s meaningless, but … zero forty-nine. That’s the whole message, zero forty-nine.’ She looked at my face. ‘You look happy enough about it, anyway.’

  I was also appalled, as a matter of fact, at how close Filmer had come to hearing it.

  I said, ‘Yes, well … please don’t tell anyone else about the message, and please forget it if you can.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I was afraid not.’ I hunted around if not for explanations at least for a reasonable meaning. ‘It’s to do,’ I said, ‘with the border between Canada and America, with the forty-ninth parallel.’

  ‘Oh, sure.’ She was unsure by the look of things, but willing to let it go.

  I said, ‘Someone will bring a letter to the Chateau some time this evening addressed to you. It will have a photo in it. It’s for me, from Bill Baudelaire. Will you see that I get it?’

  ‘Yes, OK.’ She briefly glanced at her clipboard. ‘I wanted to talk to you anyway about rooms.’ A passenger or two walked past, and she waited until they had gone. ‘The train crew are staying in the staff annexe at Chateau Lake Louise and the actors will be in the hotel itself. Which do you want? I have to write the list.’

  ‘Our passengers will be in the hotel?’

  ‘Ours, yes, but not the racegoers. They’re all getting off in Banff. That’s the town before Lake Louise. The owners are all staying in the Chateau. So am I. Which do you want?’

  ‘To be with you,’ I said.

  ‘Seriously.’

  I thought briefly. ‘Is there anywhere else?’

  ‘There’s a sort of village near the station about a mile from the Chateau itself, but it’s just a few shops, and they’re closing now at this time of the year, ready for winter. A lot of places are closed by this time, in the mountains.’ She paused. ‘The Chateau stands by itself on the lake shore. It’s beautiful there.’

  ‘Is it big?’ I asked.

  ‘Huge.’

  ‘OK. I’ll stay there and risk it.’

  ‘Risk what?’

  ‘Being stripped of my waistcoat.’

  ‘But you won’t wear it there,’ she assured me.

  ‘No … metaphorically.’

  She lowered the clipboard and clicked her pen for writing.

  ‘Tommy Titmouse,’ I said.

  Her lips curved. ‘T. Titmuss.’ She spelled it out. ‘That do?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘What are you really?’

  ‘Wait and see,’ I said.

  She gave me a dry look but no answer because some passengers came by with questions, and I went forward into the dome car to see how firmly Julius Apollo would appear to be seated, wondering whether it would be safe to try to look inside his briefcase or whether I should most stringently obey the command not to risk being arrested. If he hadn’t hoped I would look, the Brigadier wouldn’t have relayed the number. But if I looked and got caught looking, it would blow the whole operation.

  Filmer was nowhere to be seen.

  From the top of the staircase, I searched again through the rows of backs of heads under the dome. No thick black well-brushed thatch with a scattering of grey hairs. Bald, blond, tangled and trimmed, but no Filmer.

  He wasn’t in the downstairs lounge, and he wasn’t in the bar where the poker school was as usual in progress, oblivious to the scenery. That left only the Lorrimores’ car …. He had to be with Mercer, Bambi and Sheridan. Xanthe was with Rose and Cumber Young, watching the approach of the distant white peaks under a cloudless sky.

  I walked irresolutely back towards Filmer’s bedroom, wondering whether the disinclination I felt to enter it was merely prudence or otherwise plain fear, and being afraid it was the latter.

  I would have to do it, I thought, because if I didn’t I’d spend too much of my life regretting it. A permanent D minus in the balance sheet. By the time I left the dining room and started along the corridor past the kitchen, I was already feeling breathless, already conscious of my heart, and it was not in any way good for self-confidence. With a dry mouth I crossed the chilly shifting join between cars, opening and closing the doors, every step bringing me nearer to the risky commitment.

  Filmer’s was the first room in the sleeping car beyond the kitchen. I rounded the corner into the corridor with the utmost reluctance and was just about to put my hand to the door handle when the sleeping car attendant, dressed exactly as I was, came out of his roomette at the other end of the car, saw me, waved and started walking towards me.

  With craven relief I went slowly towards him, and he said, ‘Hi,’ and how was I doing.

  He was the familiar one who’d told me about Filmer’s private breakfast, who’d shown me how to fold and unfold the armchairs and bunks, the one who looked after both the car we were in and the three bedrooms, Daffodil’s among them, in the dome car. He had all afternoon and nothing to do and was friendly and wanted to talk, and he made it impossible for me to shed him and get back to my nefarious business.

  He talked about Daffodil and the mess she had made of her bedroom.

  Mess?

  ‘If you ask me,’ he said, nodding, ‘she’d had a bottle of vodka in her suitcase.… There was broken glass all over the place. Broken vodka bottle. And the mirror over the washbasin. In splinters. All over the place. I’d guess she threw the vodka bottle at the mirror and they both broke.’

  ‘A bore for you to have to clear that up,’ I said.

  He seemed surprised. ‘I didn’t clear it. It’s still like that. George can take a look at it.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t know if the company will charge her for it. Shouldn’t be surprised.’

  He looked over my shoulder at someone coming into the car from the dining car.

  ‘Afternoon, sir,’ he said.

  There was no reply from behind me. I turned my head and saw Filmer’s backview going into his bedroom.

  Dear God, I thought in horror: I would have been in there with his briefcase open, reading his papers. I felt almost sick.

  I sensed more than saw Filmer come out of his bedroom again and walk towards us.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ the sleeping car attendant said, going past me, towards him.

  ‘Yes. What do we do about our bags at Lake Louise?’

  ‘Leave it to me, sir. We’re collecting everyone’s cases and transporting them to the Chateau. They’ll be delivered to your room in the Chateau, sir.’

  ‘Good,’ Filmer said, and went back into his lair, closing the door. Beyond the merest flicker of a glance at about waist level, he hadn’t looked at me at all.

  ‘We did the same with the bags at Winnipeg,’ the sleeping car attendant said to me resignedly. ‘You’d think they’d learn.’

  ‘Perhaps they will by Vancouver.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I left him after a while and went and sat in my own roomette and did some deep breathing and thanked every guardian angel in the firmament for my deliverance, and in particular the angel in the sleeping car attendant’s yellow waistcoat.

  Outside the window, the promise of the mountains became an embrace, rocky hillsides covered with tall narrow pines crowding down to the railway line winding through the valley of the Bow River. There were thick untidy collections of twigs sitting like Ascot hats on the top of a good many telegraph poles, which looked quite extraordinary; one of the passengers had said the hats were osprey nests, and that the poles were made with platforms on especially to accommodate them. Brave birds, I thought, laying their eggs near to the roaring trains. Hair-raising entertainment for the hatchlings.

  Our speed had slowed from the brisk prairie rattle to a grunting uphill slither, the train taking two hours to cover the seventy miles from Calgary to Banff. When it stopped there, in the broad part of the valley, the snow-topped peaks were suddenly revealed as standing around in a towering, gliste
ning, uneven ring, the quintessential mountains rising in bare majestic rocky grandeur from the thronging forested courtier foothills. I felt then, as most people do, the strong lure of high mysterious frozen places and, Filmer or not, I found myself smiling with pleasure, lighthearted to the bone.

  It had been noticeably warm in Calgary, owing, it was said, to the föhn winds blowing down from the mountains, but in Banff it was suitably cold. The engine huffed and puffed about and split the train in two, taking the racegoers and all the front part off to a siding and coming back to pick up just the owners’ quarters; the three sleeping cars, the dining car, the dome car and the Lorrimores. Abbreviated and much lighter, these remains of the train climbed at good speed for another three-quarters of an hour and triumphantly drew up beside the log cabin station of Lake Louise.

  With great cheerfulness the passengers disembarked, shivering even in their coats after the warmth of the cars, but full of expectation, Daffodil forgotten. They filed onto a waiting bus, while their suitcases were loaded into a separate truck. I clung to a fraction of hope that Filmer would leave his briefcase to be ferried in that fashion, but when he emerged from the train the case went with him, clutched firmly in his fist.

  I told Nell I would walk up the mile or so from the station so as not to arrive until everyone had booked in and cleared the lobby. She said I could travel up anyway with the crew in their own bus, but I entrusted my bag to her keeping and in my grey regulation raincoat, buttoned to the neck, I enjoyed the fresh cold air and the deepening harvest gold of the late afternoon sunlight. When I reached the lobby of the grand Chateau, it was awash with polite young Japanese couples on honeymoon, not the Unwins, the Youngs and the Flokatis.

  Nell was sprawled in a lobby armchair as if she would never be able to summon the energy to rise again, and I went and sat beside her before she’d realised I was there.

  ‘Is everyone settled?’ I asked.

  She sighed deeply and made no attempt at moving. ‘The suite I had reserved for the Lorrimores had been given to someone else half an hour before we got here. The people are not budging, the management are not apologising, and Bambi is not pleased.’