Wild Horses

by Dick Francis

  “You are as obsessed as anybody,” Derry judged.

  “Very likely.”

  He wanted to know where and how I had - er, acquired - my first-hand knowledge of the knife in question, and I told him. I told him about the body protectors, and all about Robbie Gill's ministrations; all except the doctor's name.

  When I stopped, I waited another long minute for his reaction. The old eyes watched me steadily.

  He stood up. “Come with me,” he said, and led the way through a brown door to an inner room, which proved to be his bedroom, a monastic-looking cell with a polished wood floor and a high old-fashioned iron bed with a white counterpane. There was a brown wooden wardrobe, a heavy chest of drawers and a single upright chair against plain white walls. The right ambience, I thought, for a mediaevalist.

  He creaked down onto his knees by the bed as if about to say his prayers, but instead reached under the bedspread at floor level, and tugged.

  A large wooden box on casters slowly rolled out, its dusty lid padlocked to the base. Roughly four feet long by three wide, it was at least a foot deep, and it looked formidably heavy.

  The professor fumbled for a key ring which bore four keys only, and removed the padlock, opening the lid until it leaned back against the bed. Inside there was an expanse of green baize, and below that, when he removed it, row upon row of thin brown cardboard boxes, each bearing a neat white label with typewritten words identifying the contents. He looked them over, muttering that he hadn't inspected them for months, and picked out one of them, very much not at random.

  “This,” he said, opening the narrow brown box, “is a genuine commando knife, not a replica.”

  The professor's commando knife was kept safe in bubble packing but, unwrapped, looked identical to the one sent to me as a warning, except that this one did have its sheath.

  “I no longer,” he said unnecessarily, “keep my knives on display. I packed them all away when my wife died, before I came here. She shared my interest, you see. She grew to be interested. I miss her.”

  “I'm sure you do.”

  He closed the commando knife away and opened other treasures.

  “These two knives from Persia, they have a curved blade, and handles and sheaths of engraved silver with lapis lazuli inserts. These are from Japan ... these from America, with carved bone handles in the shape of animal heads. All hand-made, of course. All magnificent specimens.”

  All lethal, I thought.

  “This beautiful knife is Russian, nineteenth century,” he said at one point. “Closed, like this, it resembles, as you see, a Faberge egg, but in fact five separate blades open from it.” He pulled out the blades until they resembled a rosette of sharp leaves spreading out from the base of the egg-shaped grip, itself enamelled in blue and banded in fine gold.

  “Er ...” I said, “your collection must be valuable. Why don't you sell it?”

  “Young man, read the paper I gave you. It can be illegal to sell these things. One may now only give them to museums, not even to other individuals, and then only to museums that don't make a profit from exhibiting them.”

  “It's amazing!”

  “It stops law-abiding people in their tracks, but criminals take no notice. The world is as mediaeval as ever. Didn't you know?”

  “I suspected it.”

  His laugh cackled. “Help me lift the top tray onto the bed. I'll show you some curiosities.”

  The top tray had a rope handle at each end. He grasped one end, I the other and, at his say-so, we lifted together. The tray was heavy. Not good, from my point of view.

  “What's the matter?” he demanded. “Did that hurt you?”

  “Just the Armadillo,” I apologised.

  “Do you want to sit down?”

  “No, I want to see your knives.”

  He knelt on the floor again and opened more boxes, removing the bubble wrapping and putting each trophy into my hand for me to 'feel the balance'.

  His 'curiosities' tended to be ever more fearsome. There were several knives along the lines of the American trench knife (the genuine thing, 1918) and a whole terrifying group of second cousins to the Armadillo, knives with whole-hand grips, semi-circular blades and rows of spikes, all dedicated to tearing an opponent to shreds.

  As I gave each piece back to him he re-wrapped it and restored it to its box, tidying methodically as he went along.

  He showed me a large crucifix fashioned in dark red cloisonne, handsome on a gold chain for use as a chest ornament, but hiding a dagger in its heart. He showed me an ordinary-looking belt that one could use to hold up one's trousers: ordinary except that the buckle, which slid easily out into my hand, proved to be the handle of a sharp triangular blade that could be pushed home to kill.

  Professor Derry delivered a grave warning. “Thomas ...” (we had progressed from 'young man') “Thomas, if a man - or woman - is truly obsessed with knives, you must expect that anything he or she carries on their person may be the sheath of a knife. One can get key rings, money clips, hair combs, all with hidden blades. Knives can be hidden even under the lapels of a coat, in special transparent sheaths designed to be stitched onto cloth. A dangerous fanatic will feed on this hidden power. Do you at all understand?”

  “I'm beginning to.”

  He nodded several times and asked if I would be able to help him replace the top tray.

  “Before we do that, Professor, would you show me one more knife?”

  “Well, yes, of course.” He looked vaguely at the seas of boxes. “What sort of thing do you want?”

  “Can I see the knife that Valentine Clark once gave you?”

  After another of his tell-tale pauses, he said, “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “You did know Valentine, didn't you?” I asked.

  He levered himself to his feet and headed back into his study, switching off the bedroom light as he went: to save electricity, I supposed.

  I followed him, and we resumed our former positions in his wooden armchairs. He asked for my connection with Valentine, and I told him about my childhood, and about Valentine recently leaving me his books. “I read to him while he couldn't see. I was with him not long before he died.”

  Reassured by my account, Derry felt able to talk. “I knew Valentine quite well at one time. We met at one of those ridiculous fund-raising events, all for a good cause, where people stood around with tea or small glasses of bad wine, being civil and wishing they could go home. I hated those affairs. My dear wife had a soft heart and was always coaxing me to take her, and I couldn't deny her... So long ago. So long ago.”

  I waited through his wave of regret and loneliness, unable to comfort the nostalgia.

  “Thirty years ago, it must be,” he said, “since we met Valentine. They were raising funds to stop the shipment of live horses to the Continent to be killed for meat. Valentine was one of the speakers. He and I just liked each other ... and we came from such different backgrounds. I began reading his column in the newspapers, though I wasn't much interested in racing. But Valentine was so wise ... and still an active blacksmith ... a gust of fresh air, you see, when I was more used to the claustrophobia of university life. My dear wife liked him, and we met him and his wife several times, but it was Valentine and I who talked. He came from one sort of world and I from another, and it was perhaps because of that that we could discuss things with each other that we couldn't have mentioned to our colleagues.”

  I asked without pressure, “What sort of things?”

  “Oh ... medical, sometimes. Growing old. I would never have told you this once, but since I passed eighty I've lost almost all my inhibitions, I don't care so much about things. I told Valentine I was having impotency problems, and I was not yet sixty. Are you laughing?”

  “No, sir,” I said truthfully.

  “It was easy to ask Valentine for advice. One trusted him.”

  “We were the same age. I asked him if he had the same problem but he told me his problem
was the opposite, he was aroused by young women and had difficulty in controlling his urges.”

  I exclaimed, astonished.

  “People hide things,” Derry said simply. “My dear wife didn't really mind that I could no longer easily make love to her, but she used to joke to other people about how sexy I was. Such a dreadful word! She wanted people to admire me, she said.” He shook his head in love and sorrow. “Valentine told me a doctor to go to. He himself knew of all sorts of ways to deal with impotence. He told me he'd learned a lot of them from stud farms! He said I must be more light-hearted and not think of impotence as an embarrassment or a tragedy. He told me it wasn't the end of the world.” He paused. “Because of Valentine, I learned to be content.”

  “He was great to so many people,” I said.

  The professor nodded, still reminiscing. “He told me something I've never been able to verify. He swore it was true. I've always wondered ... If I ask you something, Thomas, will you answer me truthfully?”

  “Of course.”

  “You may be too young.”

  “Try me.”

  “In confidence.”

  Nothing, I'd told Moncrieff, was ever off the record. But confessions were, surely?

  The professor said, “Valentine told me that restricting the flow of oxygen to the brain could result in an erection.”

  He waited for my comment, which took a while to materialise. I hesitantly said, “Er ... I've heard of it.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “I believe it's a perversion that comes under the general heading of auto-erotic mania. In this case, self-inflicted partial asphyxia.”

  He said impatiently, “Valentine told me that thirty years ago. What I'm asking you is, does it work?”

  “First hand, I don't know.”

  He said with a touch of bitterness, “Because you've never needed to find out?”

  “Well, not yet, no.”

  “Then ... has anyone told you?”

  “Not first hand.”

  He sighed. “I could never face doing it. It's one of those things I'm never going to know.”

  “There are others?”

  “Don't be stupid, Thomas. I am a mediaevalist. I know the facts that were written down. I try to feel my way into that lost world. I cannot smell it, hear it, live it. I can't know its secret fears and its assumptions. I've spent a lifetime learning and teaching at second hand. If I went to sleep now and awoke in the year fourteen hundred, I wouldn't understand the language or know how to cook a meal. You've heard the old saying that if Jesus returned to do a replay of the Sermon on the Mount, no one now living would understand him, as he would be speaking ancient Hebrew with a Nazareth carpenter's accent? Well, I've wasted a lifetime on an unintelligible past.”

  “No, Professor,” I protested.

  “Yes,” he said resignedly. “I don't think I any longer care. And I no longer have anyone to talk to. I can't talk to boring social workers who think I need looking after, and who call me "dearie". But I find I'm talking to you, Thomas, and I'm an old fool who should know better.”

  “Please go on talking,” I said. “Go on about Valentine.”

  “These last years, I haven't seen him much. His wife died. So did mine. You might think it would have drawn us together, but it didn't. I suppose it was our wives who had arranged our meetings. Valentine and I just drifted apart.”

  “But,” I said, “years ago ... he knew you were interested in knives?”

  “Oh yes, of course. He was enthusiastic about my collection. He and his wife used to come over to our house and the women would chat together and I would show Valentine the knives.”

  “He told me he gave you one.”

  “He told you....?”

  The professor frowned. “I remember him saying I wasn't ever to say who had given me that knife. He said just to keep it in case he asked for it back ... but he never asked. I haven't thought about it. I'd forgotten it.” He paused. “Why do you want to see it?”

  “Just curiosity ... and fondness for my old friend.”

  The professor thought it over, and said, “I suppose if he told you, he wouldn't mind.”

  He got to his feet and returned to the bedroom, with me on his heels. The light went on dimly; an economical bulb. “I'm afraid,” my host said doubtfully, “that there are three levels of knives in this chest, and we have to lift out the second tray to reach the knife you want to see. Are you able to lift it out onto the floor? It doesn't have to go up onto the bed.”

  I assured him I could, and did it left-handed, a shade better. The third layer, revealed, proved not to be of brown cardboard boxes but of longer parcels, each wrapped only in bubble plastic, and labelled.

  “These are mostly swords,” Deny said. “And sword-sticks, and a couple of umbrellas with swords in the handles. They were a defence against footpads a hundred or two hundred years ago. Now, of course, they are illegal. One has nowadays to allow oneself to be mugged.” He cackled gently. “You mustn't hurt the poor robber, you know.”

  He surveyed the labels, running his fingers along the rows.

  “Here we are. 'Present from V.C.'” He lifted out a bubble-wrapped package, snapped open a sellotaped fastening and unrolled the parcel to reveal the contents.

  “There you are,” Professor Derry said, “that's Valen­tine's knife.”

  I looked at it. It was like no knife I'd ever seen. It was at least fifteen inches long, possibly eighteen. Its blade, double-edged and clearly sharp, took up barely a third of the overall length and was of an elongated flat oval like a spear, with a sharp spear's point. The long handle was narrow and was twisted throughout its length in a close spiral. The end of the spiral had been flattened into a circular embellishment, perforated with several holes.

  “It's not a knife,” I said. “It's a spear.”

  Derry smiled. “It's not meant for throwing.”

  “What was it for?”

  “I don't know. Valentine simply asked me if I'd like to put it in my collection. It's hammered steel. Unique.”

  “But where would he buy such a thing?”

  “Buy it?” The full cackle rang out. “Have you forgotten Valentine's trade? He was a smith. He didn't buy it. He made it.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Early Friday morning I worked in peace from four o'clock to six-thirty in the projection room, cutting scenes into rough order, a process that apart from anything else always told me what necessary establishing shots hadn't been provided for in the screenplay. A five-second shot here and there could replace, also, patches of dialogue that hadn't gone well. I made notes, fiddled about, hummed with contentment, clarified the vision.

  By six-thirty Moncrieff was setting up the cameras in the stable yard, by seven the horses (back from Huntingdon) were out at exercise on the Heath, by seven-thirty the wardrobe and make-up departments were at work in the house, and at eight-thirty O'Hara's car swept into the yard with the horn blowing.

  The lads, back from the Heath to groom and feed their charges, came out of the open-doored boxes at the summons. Wardrobe and make-up appeared. The camera crews paused to listen. Actors and extras stood around.

  Satisfied, O'Hara borrowed Ed's megaphone and announced that the Hollywood company was pleased with the way things were going, and that as he himself was now leaving for Los Angeles, Thomas Lyon would be in sole charge of the production.

  He handed the megaphone back to Ed, waved everyone away to resume work, and gave me a challenging stare.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I'd rather you stayed.”

  “It's your film,” he insisted. “But you will please not go anywhere without your driver and your bodyguard.” He looked around. “Where are they, anyway?”

  “I'm safe here,” I said.

  “You are not to think you're safe anywhere, Thomas.” He handed me a key, explaining it was his hotel key. “Use my rooms if you need them. The two knives are in the safe in there. The combination is four five,
four five. Got it?”

  “Yes ... but how will I reach you?”

  “Phone my secretary in LA. She'll know.”

  “Don't go.”

  He smiled. “My airplane leaves at noon. See you, guy-”

  He climbed into his car with finality and was driven away, and I felt like a junior general left in charge of a major battlefield, apprehensive, half confident, emotionally naked.

  The schedule that morning was for some of the earliest scenes of the film, the arrival of the police to investigate the hanging. Moncrieff set about lighting the actors - some in and some out of police uniform - explaining exactly where he wanted them to stop and turn towards the camera. He and they would be working from the plans and diagrams we'd drawn the evening before on my return from Cambridge.

  Leaving Ed to supervise, I drove back to Bedford Lodge for a quiet breakfast in my rooms and found my driver and black-belt distractedly pacing the lobby and fearing the sack.

  “Calm down,” I said. “Your day starts in an hour.”

  “Mr O'Hara said ...”

  “One hour,” I reiterated, and went upstairs thinking that as they hadn't saved me from the Armadillo I might do equally well on my own.

  Room service brought my breakfast and a visitor, Robbie Gill.

  “I should be listening to chests and prescribing cough mixture,” he said. “My receptionist is dealing with a seething line of disgruntled patients. Take your clothes off.”

  “Do what?”

  “Sweater and shirt off,” he repeated. “Undo your trousers. I've come to save your unworthy life.”

  Busily he unpacked things from his case, moving my croissant and coffee aside and eating my ham with his fingers.

  “Hope you're not hungry,” he said, munching.

  “Too bad. Get undressed.”

  “Er ... what for?”

  “Number one, fresh dressing. Number two, knife-proof vest. I tried to get a proper bullet-and-knife-proof vest but neither the police nor the army would let me have one without bureaucracy, so we'll have to trust to home made.”