by Dick Francis
He gave a vague gesture of assent, and I talked to him, also, for quite a long time. He listened with total concentration, mostly watching my face. People who were repudiating in their minds every word one said didn’t look at one’s face but at the floor, or at a table, at anything else. I knew, by the end, that he would do what I was asking, and I was grateful because it wouldn’t be easy for him.
When I’d finished, he said thoughtfully, ‘That mystery was no coincidence, was it? The father blackmailed because of his child’s crime, the groom murdered because he knew too much, the man who would kill himself if he couldn’t keep his racehorses …. Did you write it yourself?’
‘All that part, yes. Not from the beginning.’
He smiled faintly. ‘You showed me what I was doing … was prepared to do. But beyond that … you showed Sheridan.’
‘I wondered,’ I said.
‘Did you? Why?’
‘He looked different afterwards. He had changed.’
Mercer said, ‘How could you see that?’
‘It’s my job.’
He looked startled. ‘There isn’t such a job.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there is.’
‘Explain,’ he said.
‘I watch … for things that aren’t what they were, and try to understand, and find out why.’
‘All the time?’
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
He drank some brandy thoughtfully. ‘What change did you see in Sheridan?’
I hesitated. ‘I just thought that things had shifted in his mind. Like seeing something from a different perspective. A sort of revelation. I didn’t know if it would last.’
‘It might not have done.’
‘No.’
‘He said,’ Mercer said, ‘ “Sorry, Dad.” ’
It was my turn to stare.
‘He said it before he went out onto the platform.’ Mercer swallowed with difficulty and eventually went on. ‘He had been so quiet. I couldn’t sleep. I went out to the saloon about dawn, and he was sitting there. I asked him what was the matter, and he said, “I fucked things up, didn’t I?” We all knew he had. It wasn’t anything new. But it was the first time he’d said so. I tried … I tried to comfort him, to say we would stand by him, no matter what. He knew about Filmer’s threat, you know. Filmer said in front of all of us that he knew about the cats.’ He looked unseeingly over his glass. ‘It wasn’t the only time it had happened. Sheridan killed two cats like that in our garden when he was fourteen. We got therapy for him.… They said it was the upheaval of adolescence.’ He paused. ‘One psychiatrist said Sheridan was psychopathic, he couldn’t help what he did … but he could, really, most of the time. He could help being discourteous, but he thought being rich gave him the right … I told him it didn’t.’
‘Why did you send him to Cambridge?’ I asked.
‘My father was there, and established a scholarship. They gave it to Sheridan as thanks – as a gift. He couldn’t concentrate long enough to get into college otherwise. But then … the Master of the college said they couldn’t keep him, scholarship or not, and I understood … of course they couldn’t. We thought he would be all right there … we so hoped he would.’
They’d spent a lot of hope on Sheridan, I thought.
‘I don’t know if he meant to jump this morning when he went out on the platform,’ Mercer said. ‘I don’t know if it was just an impulse. He gave way to impulses very easily. Unreasonable impulses … almost insane, sometimes.’
‘It was seductive, out there,’ I said. ‘Easy to jump.’
Mercer looked at me gratefully. ‘Did you feel it?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Sheridan’s revelation lasted until this morning,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I saw … when I brought your tea.’
‘The waiter …’ He shook his head, still surprised.
‘I’d be grateful,’ I said, ‘if you don’t tell anyone else about the waiter.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because most of my work depends on anonymity. My bosses don’t want people like Filmer to know I exist.’
He nodded slowly with comprehension. ‘I won’t tell.’
He stood up and shook my hand. ‘What do they pay you?’ he asked.
I smiled. ‘Enough.’
‘I wish Sheridan had been able to have a job. He couldn’t stick at anything.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll believe that what he did this morning was for us. “Sorry, Dad …” ’
Mercer looked me in the eyes and made a simple statement, without defensiveness, without apology.
‘I loved my son,’ he said.
On Monday morning, I went to Vancouver station to back up George Burley in the rail company’s dual enquiry into the hot box and the suicide.
I was written down as T. Titmuss, Acting Crew, which amused me and seemed to cover several interpretations. George was stalwart and forthright, with the ironic chuckles subdued to merely a gleam. He was a railwayman of some prestige, I was glad to see, who was treated with respect if not quite deference, and his were the views they listened to.
He gave the railway investigators a photograph of Johnson and said that while he hadn’t actually seen him pour liquid into the radio, he could say that it was in this man’s roomette that he had awakened bound and gagged, and he could say that it was this man who had attacked Titmuss, when he, Titmuss, went back to plant the flares.
‘Was that so?’ they asked me. Could I identify him positively?
‘Positively,’ I said.
They moved on to Sheridan’s death. A sad business, they said. Apart from making a record of the time of the occurrence and the various radio messages, there was little to be done. The family had made no complaint to or about the railway company. Any other conclusions would have to be reached at the official inquest.
‘That wasn’t too bad, eh?’ George said afterwards.
‘Would you come in uniform to the races?’ I asked.
‘If that’s what you want.’
‘Yes, please.’ I gave him a card with directions and instructions and a pass cajoled from Nell to get him in through the gates.
‘See you tomorrow, eh?’
I nodded. ‘At eleven o’clock.’
We went our different ways, and with some reluctance but definite purpose I sought out a doctor recommended by the hotel and presented myself for inspection.
The doctor was thin, growing old and inclined to make jokes over his half-moon glasses.
‘Ah,’ he said, when I’d removed my shirt. ‘Does it hurt when you cough?’
‘It hurts when I do practically anything, as a matter of fact.’
‘We’d better have a wee X-ray then, don’t you think?’
I agreed to the X-ray and waited around for ages until he reappeared with a large sheet of celluloid which he clipped in front of a light.
‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘the good news is that we don’t have any broken ribs or chipped vertebrae.’
‘Fine.’ I was relieved and perhaps a bit surprised.
‘What we do have is a fractured shoulder blade.’
I stared at him. ‘I didn’t think that was possible.’
‘Anything’s possible,’ he said. ‘See that,’ he pointed, ‘that’s a real grand-daddy of a break. Goes right across, goes right through. The bottom part of your left scapula,’ he announced cheerfully, ‘is to all intents and purposes detached from the top.’
‘Um,’ I said blankly. ‘What do we do about it?’
He looked at me over the half-moons. ‘Rivets,’ he said, ‘might be extreme, don’t you think? Heavy strapping, immobility for two weeks, that’ll do the trick.’
‘What about,’ I said, ‘if we do nothing at all? Will it mend?’
‘Probably. Bones are remarkable. Young bones especially. You could try a sling. You’d be more comfortable though, if you let me strap your arm firmly skin to skin to your side and chest, under your shirt.’
I shook my head
and said I wanted to go on a sort of honeymoon to Hawaii.
‘People who go on honeymoons with broken bones,’ he said with a straight face, ‘must be ready to giggle.’
I giggled there and then. I asked him for a written medical report and the X-ray, and paid him for them, and bore away my evidence.
Stopping at a pharmacy on my way back to the hotel, I bought an elbow-supporting sling made of wide black ribbon, which I tried on for effect in the shop, and which made things a good deal better. I was wearing it when I opened my door in the evening, first to the Brigadier on his arrival from Heathrow, and then to Bill Baudelaire, from Toronto.
Bill Baudelaire looked around the sitting room and commented to the Brigadier about the lavishness of my expense account.
‘Expense account, my foot!’ the Brigadier said, drinking my scotch. ‘He’s paying for it himself.’
Bill Baudelaire looked shocked. ‘You can’t let him,’ he said.
‘Didn’t he tell you?’ the Brigadier laughed. ‘He’s as rich as Croesus.’
‘No … he didn’t tell me.’
‘He never tells anybody. He’s afraid of it.’
Bill Baudelaire, with his carroty hair and pitted skin, looked at me with acute curiosity.
‘Why do you do this job?’ he said.
The Brigadier gave me no time to answer. ‘What else would he do to pass the time? Play backgammon? This game is better. Isn’t that it, Tor?’
‘This game is better,’ I agreed.
The Brigadier smiled. Although shorter than Bill Baudelaire, and older and leaner, and with fairer, thinning hair, he seemed to fill more of the room. I might be three inches taller than he, but I had the impression always of looking up to him, not down.
‘To work, then,’ he suggested. ‘Strategy, tactics, plan of attack.’
He had brought some papers from England, though some were still to come, and he spread them out on the coffee table so that all of us, leaning forward, could see them.
‘It was a good guess of yours, Tor, that the report on the cats was a computer print-out, because of its lack of headings. The Master of the college had a call from Mercer Lorrimore at eight this morning … must have been midnight here … empowering him to tell us everything, as you’d asked. The Master gave us the name of the veterinary pathology lab he’d employed and sent us a Fax of the letter he’d received from them. Is that the same as the one in Filmer’s briefcase, Tor?’
He pushed a paper across and I glanced at it. ‘Identical, except for the headings.’
‘Good. The path lab confirmed they kept the letter stored in their computer but they don’t know yet how anyone outside could get a print-out. We’re still trying. So are they. They don’t like it happening.’
‘How about a list of their employees,’ I said, ‘including temporary secretaries or wizard hacker office boys?’
‘Where do you get such language?’ the Brigadier protested. He produced a sheet of names. ‘This was the best they could do.’
I read the list. None of the names was familiar.
‘Do you really need to know the connection?’ Bill Baudelaire asked.
‘It would be neater,’ I said.
The Brigadier nodded. ‘John Millington is working on it. We’re talking to him by telephone before tomorrow’s meeting. Now, the next thing,’ he turned to me. ‘That conveyance you saw in the briefcase. As you suggested, we checked the number SF 90155 with the Land Registry.’ He chuckled with all George Burley’s enjoyment. ‘That alone would have been worth your trip.’
He explained why. Bill Baudelaire said, ‘We’ve got him, then,’ with great satisfaction: and the joint Commanders in Chief began deciding in which order they would fire off their accumulated salvos.
Julius Apollo walked into a high-up private room in Exhibition Park racecourse on Tuesday morning to sign and receive, as he thought, certification that he was the sole owner of Laurentide Ice, which would run in his name that afternoon.
The room was the President of the racecourse’s conference room, having a desk attended by three comfortable armchairs at one end, with a table surrounded by eight similar chairs at the other. The doorway from the passage was at mid-point between the groupings, so that one turned right to the desk, left to the conference table. A fawn carpet covered the floor, horse pictures covered the walls, soft yellow leather covered the armchairs: a cross between comfort and practicality, without windows but with interesting spot-lighting from recesses in the ceiling.
When Filmer entered, both of the Directors of Security were sitting behind the desk, with three senior members of the Vancouver Jockey Club and the British Columbia Racing Commission seated at the conference table. They were there to give weight to the proceedings and to bear witness afterwards, but they had chosen to be there simply as observers, and they had agreed not to interrupt with questions. They would take notes, they said, and ask questions afterwards, if necessary.
Three more people and I waited on the other side of a closed door which led from the conference table end of the room into a serving pantry, and from there out again into the passage.
When Filmer arrived I went along the passage and locked the door he had come in by, and put the key in the pocket of my grey raincoat, which I wore buttoned to the neck. Then I walked back along the passage and into the serving pantry where I stood quietly behind the others waiting there.
A microphone stood on the desk in front of the Directors, with another on the conference table, both of them leading to a tape recorder. Out in the serving pantry, an amplifier quietly relayed everything that was said inside.
Bill Baudelaire’s deep voice greeted Filmer, invited him to sit in the chair in front of the desk, and said, ‘You know Brigadier Catto, of course?’
As the two men had glared at each other times without number, yes, he knew him.
‘And these other gentlemen are from the Jockey Club and Racing Commission here in Vancouver.’
‘What is this?’ Filmer asked truculently. ‘All I want is some paperwork. A formality.’
The Brigadier said, ‘We are taking this opportunity to make some preliminary enquiries into some racing matters, and it seemed best to do it now, as so many of the people involved are in Vancouver at this time.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Filmer said.
‘We should explain,’ the Brigadier said smoothly, ‘that we are recording what is said in this room this morning. This is not a formal trial or an official enquiry, but what is said here may be repeated at any trial or enquiry in the future. We would ask you to bear this in mind.’
Filmer said strongly, ‘I object to this.’
‘At any future trial or Jockey Club enquiry,’ Bill Baudelaire said, ‘you may of course be accompanied by a legal representative. We will furnish you with a copy of the tape of this morning’s preliminary proceedings which you may care to give to your lawyer.’
‘You can’t do this,’ Filmer said. ‘I’m not staying.’
When he went to the door he had entered by, he found it locked.
‘Let me out,’ Filmer said furiously. ‘You can’t do this.’
In the serving pantry Mercer Lorrimore took a deep breath, opened the door to the conference room, went through and closed it behind him.
‘Good morning, Julius,’ he said.
‘What are you doing here?’ Filmer’s voice was surprised but not overwhelmingly dismayed. ‘Tell them to give me my paper and be done with it.’
‘Sit down, Julius,’ Mercer said. He was speaking into the conference table microphone, his voice sounding much louder than Filmer’s. ‘Sit down by the desk.’
‘The preliminary enquiry, Mr Filmer,’ the Brigadier’s voice said, ‘is principally into your actions before and during, and in conjunction with, the journey of the race train.’ There was a pause, presumably a wait for Filmer to settle. Then the Brigadier’s voice again, ‘Mr Lorrimore … may I ask you …?’
Mercer cleared his throat. ‘M
y son Sheridan,’ he said evenly, ‘who died two days ago, suffered intermittently from a mental instability which led him sometimes to do bizarre … and unpleasant … things.’
There was a pause. No words from Filmer.
Mercer said, ‘To his great regret, there was an incident of that sort, back in May. Sheridan killed … some animals. The bodies were taken from where they were found by a veterinary pathologist who then performed private autopsies on them.’ He paused again. The strain was clear in his voice, but he didn’t falter. ‘You, Julius, indicated to my family on the train that you knew about this incident, and three of us … my wife Bambi, my son Sheridan and myself … all understood during that evening that you would use Sheridan’s regrettable act as leverage to get hold of my horse, Voting Right.’
Filmer said furiously, ‘That damned play!’
‘Yes,’ Mercer said. ‘It put things very clearly. After Sheridan died, I gave permission to the Master of my son’s college, to the British Jockey Club Security Service, and to the veterinary pathologist himself, to find out how that piece of information came into your possession.’
‘We did find out,’ the Brigadier said, and repeated what a triumphant John Millington had relayed to us less than an hour ago. ‘It happened by chance … by accident. You, Mr Filmer, owned a horse, trained in England at Newmarket, which died. You suspected poison of some sort and insisted on a post-mortem, making your trainer arrange to have some organs sent to the path lab. The lab wrote a letter to your trainer saying there was no foreign substance in the organs, and at your request they later sent a copy of the letter to you. One of their less bright computer operators had meanwhile loaded your letter onto a very private disc which she shouldn’t have used, and in some way chain-loaded it, so that you received not only a copy of your letter but copies of three other letters besides, letters which were private and confidential.’ The Brigadier paused. ‘We know this is so,’ he said, ‘because when one of our operators asked the lab to print out a copy for us, your own letter and the others came out attached to it, chain-loaded into the same secret document name.’
The pathologist, Millington had said, was in total disarray and thinking of scrapping the lab’s computer for a new one. ‘But it wasn’t the computer,’ he said. ‘It was a nitwit girl, who apparently thought the poison enquiry on the horse was top secret also, and put it on the top secret disc. They can’t sack her, she left weeks ago.’