by Dick Francis
The second time someone had tried to kill him …
‘When was the first time?’ I asked.
‘Last Friday.’
It was currently Tuesday evening.‘What happened?’ I said.
He took a while over answering. When he did there was more sadness in his voice than anger, and I listened to his tone behind the words and slowly understood his deepest fears.
‘One moment I was walking the dogs… well, I think I was, but that’s it, I don’t really remember.’ He paused, ‘I think I had a bang on the head… Anyway, the last thing I remember is calling the dogs and opening the kitchen door. I meant to take them through the garden to that field with the stream and the willows. I don’t know how far I went. I shouldn’t think far. Anyway, I woke up in Moira’s car in the garage… it’s still there… and it’s damn lucky I woke up at all… the engine was running …’ He stopped for a few moments.
‘It’s funny how the mind works. I knew absolutely at once that I had to switch off the engine. Extraordinary. Like a flash. I was in the back seat, sort of tumbled… toppled over… half lying. I got up and practically fell through between the front seats to reach the key in the ignition, and when the engine stopped I just lay there, you know, thinking that I was bloody uncomfortable but not having any more energy to move.’
‘Did anyone come?’ I said, when he paused.
‘No… I felt better after a while. I stumbled out of the car and was sick.’
‘Did you tell the police?’
‘Sure, I told them.’ His voice sounded weary at the recollection.‘It must have been about five when I set off with the dogs. Maybe seven by the time I called the police. I’d had a couple of stiff drinks by then and stopped shaking. They asked me why I hadn’t called them sooner. Bloody silly. And it was the same lot who came after Moira. They think I did it, you know. Had her killed.’
‘I know.’
‘Did the witches tell you that too?’
‘Joyce did. She said you couldn’t have. She said you might have… er…’ I baulked from repeating my mother’s actual words, which were ‘throttled the little bitch in a rage’, and substituted more moderately, ‘… been capable of killing her yourself, but not of paying someone else to do it.’
He made a satisfied noise but no comment, and I added, ‘That seems to be the family concensus.’
He sighed. ‘It’s not the police concensus. Far from it. I don’t think they believed anyone had tried to kill me. They made a lot of notes and took samples… I ask you… of my vomit, and dusted over Moira’s car for fingerprints, but it was obvious they were choked with doubts. I think they thought I’d been going to commit suicide and thought better of it… or else that I’d staged it in the hope people would believe I couldn’t have killed Moira if someone was trying to kill me …’ He shook his head.‘I’m sorry I told them at all, and that’s why we’re not reporting tonight’s attempt either.’
He had been adamant, in the sales car-park, that we shouldn’t.
‘What about the bump on your head?’ I asked.
‘I had a swelling above my ear. Very tender, but not very big. The word I heard the police use about that was “inconclusive”.’
‘And if you’d died …’ I said thoughtfully.
He nodded, ‘If I’d died, it would have wrapped things up nicely for them. Suicide. Remorse. Implicit admission of guilt.’
I drove carefully towards Cambridge, appalled and also angry. Moira’s death hadn’t touched me in the slightest, but the attacks on my father showed me I’d been wrong. Moira had had a right to live. There should have been rage, too, on her behalf.
‘What happened to the dogs?’ I said.
‘What? Oh, the dogs. They came back… they were whining at the kitchen door. I let them in while I was waiting for the police. They were muddy… heaven knows where they’d been. They were tired anyway. I fed them and they went straight to their baskets and went to sleep.’
‘Pity they couldn’t talk.’
‘What? Yes, I suppose so. Yes.’ He fell into silence, sighing occasionally as I thought over what he’d told me.
‘Who,’ I said eventually,‘knew you were going to Newmarket Sales?’
‘Who?’ He sounded surprised at the question, and then understood it. ‘I don’t know.’ He was puzzled, ‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t know myself until yesterday.’
‘Well, what have you been doing since the police left you last Friday night?’
‘Thinking.’ And the thoughts, it was clear, had been melancholic: the thoughts now saddening his voice.
‘Mm,‘ I said, ‘along the lines of why was Moira killed?’
‘Along those lines.’
I said it plainly.‘To stop her taking half your possessions?’
He said unwillingly,‘Yes.’
‘And the people who had a chief interest in stopping her were your likely heirs. Your children.’
He was silent.
I said,‘Also perhaps their husbands and wives, also perhaps even the witches.’
‘I don’t want to believe it,’ he said.‘How could I have put a murderer into the world.’
‘People do,’ I said.
‘Ian!’
The truth was that, apart from poor Robin, I didn’t know my half-brothers and half-sisters well enough to have any certainty about anyof them. I was usually on speaking terms with them all, but didn’t seek them out. There had been too much fighting, too many rows: Vivien’s children disliked Alicia’s, Alicia’s disliked them and me, Vivien hated Joyce and Joyce hated Alicia very bitterly indeed. Under Coochie’s reign, the whole lot had been banned from sleeping in the house, if not from single-day visits, with the result that a storm of collective resentment had been directed at me whom she had kept and treated as her own.
‘Apart from thinking,’ I said, ‘what have you been doing since Friday night?’
‘When the police had gone, I… I…’ he stopped.
‘The shakes came back?’ I suggested.
‘Yes. Do you understand that?’
‘I’d have been scared silly,’ I said.‘Stupid not to be. I’d have felt that whoever had tried to kill me was prowling about in the dark waiting for me to be alone so he could have another go.’
Malcolm audibly swallowed.‘I telephoned to the hire firm I use now and told them to send a car to fetch me. Do you know what panic feels like?’
‘Not that sort, I guess.’
‘I was sweating, and it was cold. I could feel my heart thumping… banging away at a terrible rate. It was awful. I packed some things… I couldn’t concentrate.’
He shifted in his seat as the outskirts of Cambridge came up in the headlights and began to give me directions to the hotel where he said he’d spent the previous four nights.
‘Does anyone know where you’re staying?’ I asked, turning corners.‘Have you seen any of your old chums?’
Malcolm knew Cambridge well, had been at university there and still had friends at high tables. It must have seemed to him a safe city to bolt to, but it was where I would have gone looking for him, if not much else failed.
‘Of course I have,’ he said in answer to my question, ‘I spent Sunday with the Rackersons, dined with old Digger in Trinity last night… it’s nonsense to think they could be involved.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, pulling up outside his hotel.‘All the same, go and pack and check out of here, and we’ll go somewhere else.’
‘It’s not necessary,’ he protested.
‘You appointed me as minder, so I’m minding,’ I said.
He gave me a long look in the dim light inside the car. Thedoorman of the hotel stepped forward and opened the door beside me, an invitation to step out.
‘Come with me,’ my father said.
I was both astounded by his fear and thought it warranted. I asked the doorman where I should park, and turned at his suggestion through an arch into the hotel’s inner courtway. From there, through a back door and comforta
ble old-fashioned hallways, Malcolm and I went up one flight of red-carpeted stairs to a lengthy winding corridor. Several people we passed glanced down at my torn trouser-leg with the dried-blood scenery inside, but no one said anything: was it still British politeness, I wondered, or the new creed of not getting involved? Malcolm, it seemed, had forgotten the problem existed.
He brought his room key out of his pocket and, with it raised, said abruptly, ‘I suppose you didn’t tell anyone I would be at the sales.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But you knew.’ He paused.‘Only you knew.’
He was staring at me with the blue eyes and I saw all the sudden fear-driven question marks rioting through his mind.
‘Go inside,’ I said.‘The corridor isn’t the place for this.’
He looked at the key, he looked wildly up and down the now empty corridor, poised, almost, to run.
I turned my back on him and walked purposefully away in the direction of the stairs.
‘Ian,’ he shouted.
I stopped and turned round.
‘Come back,’ he said.
I went back slowly.‘You said you trusted me,’ I said.
‘I haven’t seen you for three years… and I broke your nose …’
I took the key out of his hand and unlocked the door. I supposed I might have been suspicious of me if I’d been attacked twice in five days, considering I came into the high-probability category of son. I switched on the light and went forward into the room which was free from lurking murderers that time at least.
Malcolm followed, only tentatively reassured, closing the door slowly behind him. I drew the heavy striped curtains across the two windows and briefly surveyed the spacious but old-fashioned accommodation: reproduction antique furniture, twin beds, pair of armchairs, door to bathroom.
No murderer in the bathroom.
‘Ian …’ Malcolm said.
‘Did you bring any scotch?’ I asked. In the old days, he’d never travelled without it.
He waved a hand towards a chest of drawers where I found a half-full bottle nestling among a large number of socks. I fetched a glass from the bathroom and poured him enough to tranquillise an elephant.
‘For God’s sake …’ he said.
‘Sit down and drink it.’
‘You’re bloody arrogant.’
He did sit down, though, and tried not to let the glass clatter against his teeth from the shaking of his hand.
With much less force, I said, ‘If I’d wanted you dead, I’d have let that car hit you tonight. I’d have jumped the other way… out of trouble.’
He seemed to notice clearly for the first time that there had been any physical consequences to our escape.
‘Your leg,’ he said, ‘must be all right?’
‘Leg is. Trousers… can I borrow a pair of yours?’
He pointed to a cupboard where I found a second suit almost identical to the one he was wearing. I was three inches taller than he and a good deal thinner but, belted and slung round the hips, whole cloth was better than holey.
He silently watched me change and made no objection when I telephoned down to the reception desk and asked them to get his bill ready for his departure. He drank more of the scotch, but nowhere was he relaxed.
‘Shall I pack for you?’ I asked.
He nodded, and watched some more while I fetched his suitcase, opened it on one of the beds and began collecting his belongings. The things he’d brought spoke eloquently of his state of mind when he’d packed them: about ten pairs of socks but no other underwear, a dozen shirts, no pyjamas, two towelling bath-robes, no extra shoes. The clearly new electric razor in the bathroom still bore a stick-on price tag, but he had brought his antique gold-and-silver-backed brushes, all eight of them, including two clothes brushes. I put everything into the case, and closed it.
‘Ian,’ he said.
‘Mm?’
‘People can pay assassins… You could have decided not to go through with it tonight… at the last moment…’
‘It wasn’t tike that,’ I protested. Saving him had been utterly instinctive, without calculation or counting of risks: I’d been lucky to get off with a graze.
He said almost beseechingly, with difficulty, ‘It wasn’t you, was it, who had Moira… Or me, in the garage…? Say it wasn’t you.’
I didn’t know really how to convince him. He’d known me better, lived with me longer than with any of his other children, and if his trust was this fragile then there wasn’t much future between us.
‘I didn’t have Moira killed,’ I said, ‘If you believe it of me, you could believe it of yourself.’ I paused, ‘I don’t want you dead, I want you alive. I could never do you harm.’
It struck me that he really needed to hear me say I loved him, so although he might scoff at the actual words, and despite the conditioned inhibitions of my upbringing, I said, feeling that desperate situations needed desperate remedies, ‘You’re a great father… and… er… I love you.’
He blinked. Such a declaration pierced him, one could see. I’d probably overdone it, I thought, but his distrust had been a wound for me too.
I said much more lightly, ‘I swear on the Coochie Pembroke Memorial Challenge Trophy that I would never touch a hair on your head… nor Moira’s either, though I did indeed loathe her.’
I lifted the suitcase off the bed.
‘Do I go on with you or not?’ I said, ‘If you don’t trust me, I’m going home.’
He was looking at me searchingly, as if I were a stranger, which I suppose in some ways I was. He had never before, I guessed, had to think of me not as a son but as a man, as a person who had led a life separate from his, with a different outlook, different desires, different values. Sons grew from little boys into their own adult selves: fathers tended not to see the change clearly. Malcolm, I was certain, thought of me basically as still having the half-formed personality I’d had at fifteen.
‘You’re different,’ he said.
‘I am the same. Trust your instinct.’
Some of the tension at last slackened in his muscles. His instinct had been trust, an instinct strong enough to carry him to thetelephone after three silent years. He finished the scotch and stood up, filling his lungs with a deep breath as if making resolves.
‘Come with me, then,’ he said.
I nodded.
He went over to the chest of drawers and from the bottom drawer, which I hadn’t checked, produced a briefcase. I might have guessed it would be there somewhere: even in the direst panic, he wouldn’t have left behind the lists of his gold shares or his currency exchange calculator. He started with the briefcase to the door, leaving me to bring the suitcase, but on impulse I went over again to the telephone and asked for a taxi to be ready for us.
‘But your car’s here,’ Malcolm said.
‘Mm. I think I’ll leave it here, for now.’
‘But why?’
‘Because if I didn’t tell anyone you were going to Newmarket Sales, and nor did you, then it’s probable you were followed there, from… er… here. If you think about it… the car that tried to kill you was waiting in the sales car-park, but you didn’t have a car. You went there by taxi. Whoever drove at you must have seen you and me together, and known who I was, and guessed you might leave with me, so although I didn’t see anyone following us tonight from Newmarket, whoever-it-was probably knew we would come here, to this hotel, so… well… so they might be hanging about in the courtyard where we parked, where it’s nice and dark outside the back door, waiting to see if we come out again.’
‘My God!’
‘It’s possible,’ I said.‘So we’ll leave through the front with the doorman in attendance, don’t you think?’
‘If you say so,’ he said weakly.
‘From now on,’ I said, ‘we take every exaggerated precaution we can think of.’
‘Well, where are we going in this taxi?’
‘How about somewhere where we can
rent a car?’
The taxi-driver, however, once we’d set off without incident from the hotel, bill paid, luggage loaded, doorman tipped, informed us doubtfully that nine o’clock on a Tuesday night wasn’t going to be easy. All the car-hire firms’ offices would be closed.
‘Chauffeur-driven car, then,’ Malcolm said.‘Fellows who do weddings, that sort of thing. Twenty quid in it for you if you fix it.’
Galvanised by this offer, the taxi-driver drove us down some backstreets, stopped outside an unpromising little terraced house and banged on the door. It opened, shining out a melon-slice of light, and gathered the taxi-driver inside.
‘We’re going to be mugged,’ Malcolm said.
The taxi-driver returned harmlessly, however, accompanied by a larger man buttoning the jacket of a chauffeur’s uniform and carrying a reassuring peaked cap.
‘The firm my brother-in-law works for does mostly weddings and funerals,’ the taxi-driver said.‘He wants to know where you want to go.’
‘London,’ I said.
London appeared to be no problem at all. The driver and his brother-in-law climbed into the front of the taxi which started off, went round a corner or two, and pulled up again outside a lock-up garage. We sat in the taxi as asked while the two drivers opened the garage, disclosing its contents. Which was how Malcolm and I proceeded to London in a very large highly-polished black Rolls-Royce, the moonlighting chauffeur separated from us discreetly by a glass partition.
‘Why did you go to the sales at all?’ I asked Malcolm. ‘I mean, why Newmarket? Why the sales?’
Malcolm frowned. ‘Because of Ebury’s, I suppose.’
‘The jewellers?’
‘Yes… well… I knew they were going to have a showroom there. They told me so last week when I went to see them about Coochie’s jewellery. I mean, I know them pretty well, I bought most of her things from there. I was admiring a silver horse they had, and they said they were exhibiting this week at Newmarket Sales. So then yesterday when I was wondering what would fetch you… where you would meet me… I remembered the sales were so close to Cambridge, and I decided on it not long before I rang you’