Decider

by Dick Francis

  This box held no photographs and no mysterious packets, but only mementoes of social events to do with the hunt of which Conrad was joint master; stiff gilt-edged invitations, menus, order of speeches. A longer box next to it held dozens of loose clippings from newspapers and magazines, all showing either future hunting programmes or accounts of past sport.

  Box after box contained the same sort of thing: Conrad was not so much secretive, as Dart had described him, as a compulsive collector of the minutiae of his life, far outdoing Carteret’s diaries or my balance-sheet memories as a proof of existence.

  I tried to think my way into Conrad’s mind, to imagine just where he would have stowed the most sensitive knowledge: and baulked at wondering if I should simply be searching his desk or the bookshelves. If the packet’s existence had been enough to worry William Stratton into passing it on, Conrad wouldn’t leave it anywhere where an unsuspecting person could open it accidentally. Given the hidden cupboard, for all that its lock was child’s play, Conrad would use it.

  I hurried along the rows, tipping open the lids, turning over reams of irrelevant papers, finding nothing worth the risk. It was in an ordinary shoe box that I finally came across a gem that I’d been hoping for, though not the ultimate jackpot.

  I found myself looking at a black and white glossy photograph of Rebecca: not by any means a portrait, but a picture of her in ordinary clothes, not jockey’s colours, holding out her hand and receiving a wad of what looked like banknotes from a man whose back was to the camera, but who wore a trilby hat with hair curling from beneath the brim and a jacket cut from a distinctive check cloth. The background, a shade out of focus, was nevertheless identifiable as a racecourse.

  I turned the photograph over: no notes, no provenance, nothing.

  In the same box, where the photograph had been lying, lay a recording tape. Apart from those two objects, the box was empty.

  The tape, ordinary looking, bore no information as to what it carried.

  Even without believing in extra-sensory perception, I felt an unusual frisson over the juxtaposition of photograph and tape, and their sole occupancy of a box. I took them out and put them on Conrad’s desk, meaning to look around for a tape-recorder; but meanwhile I returned to the cupboard, still obstinately seeking a packet that was quite likely not there to be found.

  Old out-of-date lists of hounds. Years old estate accounts. Boxes packed with Dart’s school reports. On the maxim thieves work by, that everyone hides valuable things at the bottom of drawers, and that the quickest way of finding profit is to empty the drawer out onto the floor, I began, not emptying exactly, but tipping up all the contents to look at the bottom-most in each box, and it was by doing that that I finally came across an ordinary brown envelope with the single word ‘Conrad’ written on it.

  I drew it out from under a pile of similar envelopes holding ancient insurance policies, long out of date. The ‘Conrad’ envelope had been slit open. I looked inside without excitement, having by then concluded I’d been clutching at straws, that anything of critical importance would be somewhere else after all. Sighing, I drew out a single sheet of paper with a short note handwritten on it. It said:

  Conrad

  This is the envelope I told you of. Take care with it.

  Knowledge is dangerous.

  S.

  I looked into the brown envelope further. Inside it lay another brown envelope, this one smaller and unopened, but fatter, with more sheets than one or two inside.

  Either it was what I was looking for, or it wasn’t. In either case, I was taking it with me, and so as to conceal my pilfering even from Dart, I hid the outer envelope, with letter and unopened envelope inside it, in my clothes: in, to be exact, my close-fitting underpants, against the skin of my abdomen.

  Looking round to make sure that all the boxes were closed and appeared undisturbed, I went out to Conrad’s desk to put the grandstand plans back in their folder, to prop them where they had been, to relock the cupboard door and beat an undiscovered retreat.

  The photograph of Rebecca and the tape lay on top of the plans. Frowning, I unzipped my trousers again and put the photograph face down against my stomach, where the glossy surface stuck to me, the brown envelope outside it, both of them held snugly, too large and flat to slide out down my legs.

  It was at that point that I heard voices out in the hall, near, coming nearer.

  ‘But, Father,’ Dart’s voice reached me loudly, desperately, ‘I want you to come and look at the fence along the five-acre covert –’

  ‘Not now, Dart,’ Conrad’s voice said. ‘And why were you not at the meeting?’

  Bloody hell, I thought. I snatched up the tape and stuck it into my trousers pocket, and leaned over the set of grandstand plans as if they were the only interest in my life.

  Conrad pushed open the door of the room, his until-then friendly expression becoming rapidly surprised and then thunderous, as anyone’s would on seeing their most private heartland invaded.

  Worse; behind him came Keith.

  Conrad looked at his open cupboard with the light shining within, and at me by his desk. His bullish features darkened, his heavy eyebrows lowered, his mouth hardened implacably.

  ‘Explain yourself!’ he demanded, his voice harsh and scathing.

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ I said awkwardly. I put the plans into the folder and closed it. ‘I can’t excuse myself. I can only apologise. I do, very sincerely, apologise.’

  ‘It’s not good enough!’ His anger was deep and all the worse for being alien to his everyday nature, which was not quick to violence, like Keith’s. ‘That cupboard was locked. I always lock it. How did you open it?’

  I didn’t answer him. The shaved key I’d used was still in the keyhole. I felt appallingly embarrassed, which no doubt he could see.

  In an access of real rage he snatched up my walking stick, which lay on his desk, and raised it as if he would strike me.

  ‘Oh no, Conrad,’ I said. ‘Don’t.’

  He hesitated, his arm high. ‘Why not? Why bloody not? You deserve it.’

  ‘It’s not your sort of thing.’

  ‘It’s mine,’ Keith said loudly. He tugged the walking stick unceremoniously from his unprotesting twin and took a quick slash at my head.

  I put an arm up in a reflex parrying action, caught the stick in my hand and, with more force than he’d envisaged, pulled it vigorously towards me. He held on long enough to overbalance, his weight coming forward, and he let go only in order to put both hands on the desk to steady himself.

  All three of them, Conrad, Keith and Dart, looked stunned, but in truth that morning I’d felt some of my old strength returning like an incoming, welcome and familiar tide. They’d grown used to my weakness: had been unprepared for anything else.

  I leaned on the stick, nevertheless; and Keith straightened himself, and in his eyes promised me death.

  I said to Conrad, ‘I wanted to look at the plans.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘He’s an architect,’ Dart said, defending me, though I wished he hadn’t.

  ‘A builder,’ contradicted his father.

  ‘Both,’ I said briefly, ‘I’m very sorry. Very. I should have asked you to give me a sight of them, and not broken in here. I’m humbled… mortified…’ And so I was, but not repentant nor truly ashamed.

  Conrad interrupted my grovelling, saying, ‘How did you know where the plans were?’ He turned to Dart. ‘How did he know? He couldn’t have found that cupboard by himself. It’s practically invisible.’

  Dart, looking as uncomfortable as I felt, came round the desk and stopped a pace behind my left shoulder, almost as if sheltering from the parental ire brewing in Conrad.

  ‘You told him where to look,’ Conrad accused his son indignantly. ‘You showed him.’

  Dart said weakly, ‘I didn’t think it would matter. What’s the big deal?’

  Conrad gaped at him. ‘How can I explain if you can’t see? But you,�
� he turned to me, ‘I’d just begun to think we might trust you.’ He shrugged defeatedly. ‘Get out, both of you. You disgust me.’

  ‘No,’ Keith protested, ‘how do you know he’s not stolen anything?’ He looked round the room. ‘You have all these silver and gold pieces in here. He’s a thief.’

  Damn bloody Keith, I thought, smothering panic. I’d stolen better than gold, and intended to keep what I’d taken. Stronger I might be, but couldn’t yet swear to the outcome of a straightforward brawl, one against two. Guile, I told myself: all I had in the locker.

  I raised my chin, until then tucked down in abashment. I looked as unworried as I could manage. I propped the walking stick against the desk, unzipped the front of the easy jacket which had spent several days earlier draped over the chair in Roger’s office, slid my arms out of it and threw it to Conrad.

  ‘Search it,’ I said.

  He caught the bunched cloth. Keith seized the jacket and went through the pockets. No silver or gold. Nothing stolen.

  I was wearing my loose wool checked shirt. I unbuttoned the cuffs and undid the front buttons, tugged off the shirt and threw it too to Conrad.

  I stood bare to the waist. I smiled. I unzipped my fly and began to unbuckle my belt.

  ‘Trousers next?’ I asked Conrad lightly. ‘Shoes? Socks? Anything else?’

  ‘No. No.’ He was confused. He made an upzipping gesture. ‘Put your shirt on again.’ He threw the shirt back to me. ‘You may be untrustworthy – I’m disappointed, I admit – but not a petty thief.’ He turned to Keith. ‘Let him go, Keith. Pick your fight somewhere else. Not in this room.’

  I put my shirt on and did up the buttons, but left the tails hanging down, like a coat.

  Dart said abjectly, ‘Father, I’m sorry.’

  Conrad made a dismissive gesture. Dart edged round the desk, looking warily at Keith, who still held my jacket.

  I followed Dart, limping slowly, the walking stick both a prop and a defence.

  Conrad said mordantly, ‘I don’t want to see you again, Mr Morris.’

  I ducked my head, acknowledging fault.

  Keith clung onto my jacket.

  I was not going to ask for it back. Don’t push your luck, I thought: the slightest quiver could erupt the volcano. I was glad simply to reach the door unmolested and to creep through into the hall, and scuttle across it ignominiously, as low in Conrad’s esteem as a cockroach.

  I held my breath until we were out of the house, but no angry yells stopped us. Dart scurried into his car, now flanked by Keith’s Jaguar, and waited impatiently during my slower progress.

  He let out an agonised ‘Whew’ of relief as his engine fired and we sped to the road. ‘My God, he was angry.’

  ‘You’re a bloody lousy look-out,’ I said bitterly. ‘Where was my warning?’

  ‘Yes, well, look, sorry.’

  ‘Were you asleep?’

  ‘No… no… I was reading.’

  Comprehension arrived. ‘You were reading that damned magazine about hair loss!’

  ‘Well… I…’ He grinned, shamefacedly, admitting it.

  There was nothing to be done about it. The toots on the horn would have given me time to transfer from Conrad’s sanctum to the innocence of the bathroom near the rear entrance. Being caught with my hand in the till, so to speak, had not only been a rotten experience but might set Conrad checking the contents of the boxes. The consequences could be utterly disastrous.

  ‘You took such a long time,’ Dart complained. ‘What kept you so long?’

  ‘Just looking around.’

  ‘And it was Keith’s car they came back in,’ Dart said, excusing himself. ‘I was on the look-out for Father’s.’

  ‘Not much of a look-out.’

  ‘You looked terribly guilty,’ Dart said accusingly, shifting the blame.

  ‘Yes, I felt it.’

  ‘But as for Keith thinking you’d steal…’ He paused. ‘When you took your shirt off… I mean, I knew parts of the stands fell on you, but all those stitches and bruises… they must hurt.’

  ‘Not any more,’ I sighed. I’d forgotten, in the urgency of the moment, that he’d been standing behind me. ‘It’s the cuts on my legs that have made walking difficult, but they’re all getting better.’

  ‘You gave Keith a shock, catching that walking stick.’

  I had made him more careful, I thought ruefully, which might not be a good thing, from my point of view.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Dart asked. He’d turned out of the gates in the direction of the racecourse, automatically. ‘Back to the Gardners?’

  I tried to think, to pull together a few scattered wits.

  I asked, ‘Is Rebecca racing today, do you know?’

  He answered as if bewildered, ‘No, I don’t think so. She was at the meeting, of course.’

  ‘I need to talk to Marjorie,’ I said. ‘And to go to Stratton Hays.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘No, but will you take me?’

  He laughed, ‘I’m your chauffeur, now?’

  ‘You’re a better chauffeur than look-out.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Or lend me your car,’ I suggested.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll drive you. Life’s never boring, with you around.’

  ‘The Gardners first, then.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  In the Gardners’ kitchen Mrs Gardner greeted my return with friendly dismay, saying I’d lent her the five cooks for less than an hour, not long enough. I offered their services for another few hours. Accepted, she said.

  ‘Tell me if I’m leaving them with you too much,’ I begged her.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I love it. And besides, Roger says that but for you he’d be halfway out of his job and we’d be sick with worry.’

  ‘Does he think so?’

  ‘He knows it.’

  Grateful and partially comforted I left Dart in the kitchen and went over to the bus, and there in the privacy of the cab fed the tape I’d stolen into the tape-playing slot of the radio.

  It proved to be a recording of a telephone call made on a cellular phone: the sort of spying that was diabolically easy if one listened on a scanner close to the transmitting and receiving cell.

  I’d always had misgivings about the randomness of overheard conversations that had come to public light: what sort of person listened in to other people’s privacy day in and day out and taped it all, hoping to overhear marketable secrets? Someone apparently had, in this case.

  The conversation was between a voice provisionally identifiable as Rebecca’s and a man speaking in a south-east accent, not cockney, but all glottal stops where ‘d’s, ‘t’s or ‘c’s occurred in the centre of words. Stratton came out as ‘Stra- on’. Rebecca as ‘Rebe-ah’.

  ‘Rebe-ah Stra-on?’ said the man’s voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What have you got for me, darlin’?’

  ‘How much is it worth?’

  ‘Same as usual.’

  After a short pause, speaking quietly, she said, ‘I’m riding Soapstone in the fifth, it’s got no chance, it’s only half fit. Lay off all you can on Catch-as-Catch, it’s jumping out of its skin and they’re putting a bundle on it.’

  ‘That’s the lot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks, darlin’.’

  ‘I’ll see you at the races.’

  ‘Same place,’ the man agreed. ‘Before the first.’

  The tape clicked and fell silent. I ejected it grimly and returned it to my pocket and, climbing back into the body of the bus, unzipped my trousers and retrieved the glossy photograph and also the packet of dangerous knowledge.

  From that I took out the interior, fatter brown envelope and slit it open with a knife. Inside were yet another envelope, white this time, and another short letter from William Stratton, third baron, to his son Conrad, fourth.

  It read:

  Conrad,

  This grieves me
beyond measure. Remember always that Keith, to my despair, tells lies. I sought out knowledge, and now I don’t know how to use it. You must decide. But take care.

  S.

  Apprehensively, I slit open the white envelope and read its lengthier contents and by the end found my hands trembling.

  My non-grandfather had shown me a way, once and for all, of dealing with Keith.

  I reassembled the packet in its original order and, finding some sticky-tape, sealed the outside brown envelope so that no one could open it by chance. Then I sat for a while with my head in my hands, realising that if Keith knew what I’d got he would kill me immediately, and also that saving myself from him posed a dilemma I’d never imagined.

  Dangerous knowledge. Not dangerous: deadly.

  CHAPTER 15

  Dart drove me to Stratton Hays. On the way, using my own mobile phone (anyone listening?) I got through to Marjorie’s house and found her at home, forthrightly displeased.

  ‘You didn’t come to the meeting!’

  ‘No. Very sorry.’

  ‘It was a shambles,’ she said crossly. ‘Waste of time. Keith shouted continually and nothing got done. He couldn’t ignore the gate receipts, which were excellent, but he’s fanatical about selling. Are you sure you cannot uncover his debts?’

  ‘Does Imogen know them?’ I asked.

  ‘Imogen?’

  ‘If I got her paralytically drunk, would she know anything at all of her husband’s affairs?’

  ‘You’re disgraceful!’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘I wish she did. But don’t try it, because if Keith caught you at it…’ She paused, then said without pressure, ‘Do you take his threats seriously?’

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘Have you thought of… retreat?’

  ‘Yes, I have. Are you busy? I need to tell you a few things.’

  She said if I gave her an hour I could come to her house, to which I agreed. Dart and I continued to Stratton Hays, where he parked in the same place as on my first visit and as usual left the key in the ignition.