by Dick Francis
I thought good assassins used rifles,’ I said.
‘Some do. Most don’t. They pick their own way. Some use knives. Some garotte. I knew of one who used to wait at traffic lights along his victim’s usual route to work. One day, the lights would be red, the victim would stop. The assassin tapped on the window, asking a question… or so it’s supposed. The victim wound down the window and the assassin shot him point blank in the head. By the time the lights turned green and the cars behind started tooting their horns, the assassin had long gone.’
‘Did they ever catch him?’ I asked.
West shook his head. ‘Eight prominent businessmen were killed that way within two years. Then it stopped. No one knows why. My guess is the assassin lost his nerve. It happens in every profession.’
I thought of jump jockeys to whom it had happened almost overnight, and I supposed it occurred in stockbrokers also. Any profession, as he said.
‘Or someone bumped him off because he knew too much,’ Malcolm said.
‘That too is possible.’ West looked at the list. ‘After Mrs Joyce?’
Malcolm said sourly, ‘The lady you so artfully photographed me with at the instigation of, as you call her, Mrs Joyce.’
The West eyebrows slowly rose. ‘Miss Alicia Sandways? With, if I remember, two little boys?’
‘The little boys are now thirty-five and thirty-two,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘As I said, I recently dug out that file. I didn’t realise that… er… Well, so we have wife number three, Mrs Alicia Pembroke. And her children?’
Malcolm said, ‘The two boys, Gervase and Ferdinand. I formally adopted them when I married their mother, and changed their surname to Pembroke. Then we had little Serena,’ his face softened, ‘and it was for her I put up with Alicia’s tantrums the last few years we were together. Alicia was a great mistress but a rotten wife. Don’t ask me why. I indulged her all the time, let her do what she liked with my house, and in the end nothing would please her.’ He shrugged. ‘I gave her a generous divorce settlement, but she was very bitter. I wanted to keep little Serena… and Alicia screamed that she supposed I didn’t want the boys because they were illegitimate. She fought in the courts for Serena, and she won… She filled all her children’s heads with bad feelings for me.’ The old hurt plainly showed. ‘Serena did suggest coming back to look after me when Coochie was killed, but it wasn’t necessary because Moira was there. When Moira was killed, she offered again. It was kind of Serena. She’s a nice girl, really, but Alicia tries to set her against me.’
West, in a pause that might or might not have been sympathetic, wrote after Alicia’s name:
Gervase. Illegitimate at birth, subsequently adopted
Ferdinand. The same
Serena. Legitimate
‘Are they married?’ he asked.
‘Gervase has a wife called Ursula,’ I said. ‘I don’t know her well, because when I see them they’re usually together and it’s always Gervase who does the talking. They too, like Thomas, have two little girls.’
West wrote it down.
‘Ferdinand,’ I said, ‘has married two raving beauties in rapid succession. The first, American, has gone back to the States. The second one, Deborah, known as Debs, is still in residence. So far, no children.’
West wrote.
‘Serena,’ I said, ‘is unmarried.’
West completed that section of the list. ‘So we have wife number three, Mrs Alicia Pembroke. Her children are Gervase, wife Ursula, two small daughters. Ferdinand, current wife Debs, no children. Serena, unmarried… er… a fiance, perhaps? Live-in lover?’
I don’t know of one,’ I said, and Malcolm said he didn’t know either.
‘Right,’ West said. ‘Wife number four?’
There was a small silence. Then I said, ‘Coochie. She’s dead. She had twin sons. One was killed with her in a car crash, the other is brain-damaged and lives in a nursing home.’
‘Oh.’ The sound carried definite sympathy this time. ‘And wife number five, Mrs Moira Pembroke, did she perhaps have any children from a previous marriage?’
‘No,’ Malcolm said. ‘No previous marriage, no children.’
‘Right.’ West counted up his list. ‘That’s three ex-wives… er, by the way, did any of them remarry?’
I answered with a faint smile, ‘They would lose their alimony if they did. Malcolm was pretty generous in their settlements. None of them has seen any financial sense in remarrying.’
‘They all should have done,’ Malcolm grumbled. ‘They wouldn’t be so warped.’
West said merely, ‘Right. Then, er, six sons, two daughters. Four current daughters-in-law, one son-in-law. Grand-children… too young. So, er, discounting the invalid son and Mr Ian here, there are fourteen adults to be checked. That will take me a week at least. Probably more.’
‘As fast as you can,’ I said.
He looked actually as if he had barely enough strength or confidence to get himself out of the door let alone embark on what was clearly an arduous task.
‘Can I tell them all why I’m making these enquiries?’ he asked.
‘Yes, you damned well can,’ Malcolm said positively. ‘If it’s one of them, and I hope to God it isn’t, it might put the wind up them and frighten them off. Just don’t tell them where to find me.’
I looked down at the list. I couldn’t visualise any of them as being criminally lethal, but then greed affected otherwise rational people in irrational ways. All sorts of people… I knew of a case when two male relatives had gone into a house where an old woman had been reported newly dead, and taken the bedroom carpet off the floor, rolling it up and making off with it and leaving her lying alone in her bed above bare boards, all to seize her prize possession before the rest of the family could get there. Unbelievable, I’d thought it. The old woman’s niece, who cleaned my flat every week, had been most indignant, but not on her aunt’s account. ‘It was the only good carpet in the house,’ she vigorously complained. ‘Nearly new. The only thing worth having. It should have come to me, by rights. Now I’ll never get it.’
‘I’ll need all their addresses,’ West said.
Malcolm waved a hand. ‘Ian can tell you. Get him to write them down.’
Obediently I opened my suitcase, took out my address book and wrote the whole list, with telephone numbers. Then I got out the pack of photographs and showed them to West.
‘Would they help you?’ I asked. ‘If they would, I’ll lend them to you, but I want them back.’
West looked through them one by one, and I knew that he could see, if he were any detective at all, all the basic characters of the subjects. I liked taking photographs and preferred portraits, and somehow taking a camera along gave me something positive to do whenever the family met. I didn’t like talking to some of them; photography gave me a convincing reason for disengagements and drifting around.
If there was one common factor in many of the faces it was discontent, which I thought was sad. Only in Ferdinand could one see real lightheartedness, and even in him, as I knew, it could come and go; and Debs, his second wife, was a stunning blonde, taller than her husband, looking out at the world quizzically as if she couldn’t quite believe her eyes, not yet soured by disappointment.
I’d caught Gervase giving his best grade-one bullying down-the-nose stare, and saw no good purpose in ever showing him the reflection of his soul. Ursula merely looked indeterminate and droopy and somehow guilty, as if she thought she shouldn’t even have her photo taken without Gervase’s permission.
Berenice, Thomas’s wife, was the exact opposite, staring disapprovingly straight into the lens, bold and sarcastic, unerringly destructive every time she uttered. And Thomas, a step behind her, looking harried and anxious. Another of Thomas alone, smiling uneasily, defeat in the sag of his shoulders, desperation in his eyes.
Vivien, Joyce and Alicia, the three witches, dissimilar in features but alike in expression, had been caught when the
y weren’t aware of the camera, each of them watching someone else with disfavour.
Alicia, fluffy and frilly, still wore her hair brought youthfully high to a ribbon bow on the crown, from where rich brown curls tumbled in a cascade to her shoulders. Nearly sixty, she looked in essence younger than her son Gervase, and she would still have been pretty but for the pinched hardness of her mouth.
She had been a fair sort of mother to me for the seven years of her reign, seeing to my ordinary needs like food and new clothes and treating me no different from Gervase and Ferdinand, but I’d never felt like going to her for advice or comfort. She hadn’t loved me, nor I her, and after the divorce we had neither felt any grief in separation. I’d detested what she’d done afterwards to Gervase, Ferdinand and Serena, twisting their minds with her own spite. I would positively have liked to have had friendly brothers and sisters as much as Malcolm would have valued friendly children. After nearly twenty years, Alicia’s intense hurt still spread suffering outward in ripples.
Serena’s picture showed her as she had been a year earlier, before aerobic dancing had slimmed her further to a sexless-looking leanness. The fair hair of childhood had slightly darkened, and was stylishly cut in a short becoming cap-shape which made her look young for her twenty-six years. A leggy Peter Pan, I thought, not wanting to grow up: a girl-woman with a girlish voice saying ‘Mummy and Daddy’, and an insatiable appetite for clothes. I wondered briefly whether she were still a virgin and felt faintly surprised to find that I simply didn’t know and, moreover, couldn’t tell.
‘These are very interesting,’ West said, glancing at me. ‘I should certainly like to borrow them.’ He shuffled them around and sorted them out. ‘Who are these? You haven’t put their names on the back, like the others.’
‘That’s Lucy and Edwin, and that’s Donald and Helen.’
‘Thanks.’ He wrote the identification carefully in small neat letters.
Malcolm stretched out a hand for the photographs which West gave him. Malcolm looked through them attentively and finally gave them back.
‘I don’t remember seeing any of these before,’ he said.
‘They’re all less than three years old.’
His mouth opened and shut again. He gave me a brooding look, as if I’d just stabbed him unfairly in the ribs.
‘What do you think of them?’ I asked.
‘A pity children grow up.’
West smiled tiredly and collected the lists and photographs together.
‘Right, Mr Pembroke. I’ll get started.’ He stood up and swayed slightly, but when I took a step forward to steady him he waved me away. ‘Just lack of sleep.’ On his feet, he looked even nearer to exhaustion, as if the outer greyness had penetrated inwards to the core. ‘First thing in the morning, I’ll be checking the Pembrokes.’
It would have been churlish to expect him to start that afternoon, but I can’t say I liked the delay. I offered him another drink and a reviving lunch, which he declined, so I took him to the hotel’s front door and saw him safely into a taxi, watching him sink like a collapsing scarecrow into the seat cushions.
Returning to the suite, I found Malcolm ordering vodka and Beluga caviar from room service with the abandon to which I was becoming accustomed. That done, he smoothed out the Sporting Life and pointed to one section of it.
‘It says the Arc de Triomphe race is due to be run this Sunday in Paris.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Then let’s go.’
‘All right,’ I said.
Malcolm laughed. ‘We may as well have some fun. There’s a list here of the runners.’
I looked where he pointed. It was a bookmaker’s advertisement showing the ante-post prices on offer.
‘What are the chances,’ Malcolm said, ‘of my buying one of these horses?’
‘Er,’ I said. ‘Today, do you mean?’
‘Of course. No good buying one after the race, is there?’
‘Well…’
‘No, of course not. The winner will be worth millions and the others peanuts. Before the race, that’s the thing.’
I don’t suppose anyone will sell,’ I said, ‘but we can try. How high do you want to go? The favourite won the Epsom Derby and is reported to be going to be syndicated for ten million pounds. You’d have to offer a good deal more than that before they’d consider selling him now.’
‘Hm,’ Malcolm said. ‘What do you think of him as a horse?’
I smothered a gasp or two and said with a deadpan face, ‘He’s a very good horse but he had an exceptionally exhausting race last time out. I don’t think he’s had enough time to recover, and I wouldn’t back him this time.’
‘Have you backed him before?’ Malcolm asked curiously.
‘Yes, when he won the Derby, but he was favourite for that, too.’
‘What do you think will win the Arc de Triomphe, then?’
‘Seriously?’ I said.
‘Of course seriously.’
‘One of the French horses, Meilleurs Voeux.’
‘Can we buy him?’
‘Not a hope. His owner loves his horses, loves winning more than profit and is immensely rich.’
‘So am I,’ Malcolm said simply, i can’t help making money. It used to be a passion, now it’s a habit. But this business about Moira jolted me, you know. It struck me that I may not have a hell of a lot of time left, not with enough health and strength to enjoy life. I’ve spent all these years amassing the stuff, and for what? For my goddam children to murder me for? Sod that for a sad story. You buy me a good horse in this race on Sunday and we’ll go and yell it home, boy, at the top of our lungs.’
It took all afternoon and early evening to get even a tinge of interest from anyone. I telephoned to the trainers of the English — or Irish — runners, asking if they thought their owners might sell. I promised each trainer that he would go on training the horse, and that my father would send him also the two-million-guinea colt he’d bought yesterday. Some of the trainers were at the Newmarket Sales and had to be tracked down to hotels, and once tracked, had to track and consult with their owners. Some simply said no, forget it.
Finally, at seven forty-five, a trainer from Newmarket rang back to say his owner would sell a half-share if his price was met. I relayed the news and the price to Malcolm.
‘What do you think?’ he said.
‘Urn… the horse is quite good, the price is on the high side, the trainer’s in the top league.’
‘OK.’ Malcolm said. ‘Deal.’
‘My father accepts,’ I said. ‘And, er, the colt is still in the Sales stables. Can you fetch it tomorrow, if we clear it with the auctioneers?’
Indeed he could. He sounded quite cheerful altogether. He would complete his paperwork immediately if Malcolm could transfer the money directly to his bloodstock account, bank and account number supplied. I wrote the numbers to his dictation. Malcolm waved a hand and said, ‘No problem. First thing in the morning. He’ll have it by afternoon.’
‘Well,’ I said, breathing out as I put the receiver down, ‘you now own half of Blue Clancy.’
‘Let’s drink to it,’ Malcolm said. ‘Order some Bollinger.’
I ordered it from room service, and while we waited for it to arrive I told him about my encounter with his gardener, Arthur Bellbrook.
‘Decent chap,’ Malcolm said, nodding. ‘Damned good gardener.’
I told him wryly about Moira and the prize vegetables, which he knew nothing about.
‘Silly bitch,’ he said. ‘Arthur lives in a terrace house with a pocket handkerchief garden facing north. You couldn’t grow prize stuff there. If she’d asked me I’d have told her that, and told her to leave him alone. Good gardeners are worth every perk they get.’
‘He seemed pretty philosophical,’ I said, ‘and, incidentally, pretty bright. He’d spotted that the kitchen garden wall is thicker than it should be at the corner. He’d asked old Fred, and heard about the room I built the
re. He wanted to know how to get in, so he could use it as an apple store.’
Malcolm practically ejected from his armchair, alarm widening his eyes, his voice coming out strangled and hoarse. ‘My God, you didn’t tell him, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I said slowly. ‘I told him it was empty and was bricked up twenty years ago.’ I paused. ‘What have you put in there?’
Malcolm subsided into his chair, not altogether relieved of anxiety.
‘Never you mind,’ he said.
‘You forget that I could go and look.’
I don’t forget it.’
He stared at me. He’d been interested, all those summers ago, when I’d designed and built the pivoting brick door. He’d come down the garden day after day to watch, and had patted me often on the shoulder, and smiled at the secret. The resulting wall looked solid, felt solid, was solid. But at one point there was a thick vertical steel rod within it, stretching from a concrete underground foundation up into the beam supporting the roof. Before I’d put the new roof on, I’d patiently drilled round holes in bricks (breaking many) and slid them into the rod, and arranged and mortared the door in neat courses, so that the edges of it dovetailed into the fixed sections next to it.
To open the room, when I’d finished everything, one had first to remove the wedge-like wooden sill which gave extra support to the bottom course of the door when it was closed, and then to activate the spring latch on the inner side by poking a thin wire through a tiny hole in the mortar at what had been my thirteen-year-old waist height. The design of the latch hadn’t been my own, but something I’d read in a book: at any rate, when I’d installed it, it worked obligingly at once.
It had pleased me intensely to build a door that Gervase would never find. No more dead rats. No more live birds, shut in and fluttering with fright. No more invasions of my own private place.
Gervase had never found the door and nor had anyone else and, as the years passed, grass grew long in front of the wall, and nettles, and although I’d meant to give the secret to Robin and Peter some day, I hadn’t done so by the time of the crash. Only Malcolm knew how to get in — and Malcolm had used the knowledge.