by Dick Francis
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well… some people connected with her turned up here today unexpectedly, and he wanted to escape meeting them.’
‘Ah,’ he said with satisfied understanding, in that case, I’m glad to have been of help.’ He chuckled. ‘They didn’t really look like elopers.’
He shook my hand and went away, and with a couple of deep breaths I left the Members’ bar and walked back to the weighing-room to pick up my gear. There was still one more race to be run but it already felt like a long afternoon.
George and Jo were there when I came out carrying saddle, helmet, whip and holdall, saying they’d thought they’d catch me before I left.
‘We’ve decided to run Young Higgins again two weeks tomorrow at Kempton,’ Jo said. ‘You’ll be free for that, won’t you?’
‘Yes, indeed.’
‘And Park Railings, don’t forget, at Cheltenham next Thursday.’
‘Any time, any place,’ I said, and they laughed, conspirators in addiction.
It occurred to me as they walked away, looking back and waving, that perhaps I’d be in Singapore, Australia or Timbuktu next week or the week after; life was uncertain, and that was its seduction.
I saw none of the family on my way to the exit gate, and none between there and my car. With a frank sigh of relief, I stowed my gear in the boot and without much hurry set off towards Epsom, a detour of barely ten miles, thinking I might as well pick up my mail and listen to messages.
The telephone answering machine did have a faculty for listening to messages from afar, but it had never worked well, and I’d been too lazy to replace the remote controller which, no doubt, needed new batteries anyway.
With equally random thoughts I drove inattentively onwards, and it wasn’t until I’d gone a fair distance that I realised that every time I glanced in the rear-view mirror I could see the same car two or three cars back. Some cars passed me: it never did, nor closed a gap to catch up.
I sat up, figuratively and literally, and thought, ‘What do you know?’ and felt my heart beat as at the starting gate.
What I didn’t know was whose car it was. It looked much like the hired one I was driving, a middle-rank four-door in underwashed cream; ordinary, inconspicuous, no threat to Formula One.
Perhaps, I thought sensibly, the driver was merely going to Epsom, at my own pace, so at the next traffic lights I turned left into unknown residential territory, and kept on turning left at each crossroads thereafter, reasoning that in the end I would complete the circle and end up facing where I wanted to go. I didn’t hurry nor continually look in the rear-view mirror, but when I was back again on a road — a different one — with signposts to Epsom, the similar car was still somewhere on my tail, glimpsed tucked in behind a van.
If he had only a minimal sense of direction, I thought, he would realise what I had done and guess I now knew he was following. On the other hand, the back roads between Sandown Park and Epsom were a maze, like most Surrey roads, and he might possibly not have noticed, or thought I was lost, or …
Catching at straws, I thought. Face facts. I knew he was there and he knew I knew and what should I do next?
We were already on the outskirts of Epsom and almost automatically I threaded my way round corners, going towards my flat. I had no reason not to, I thought. I wasn’t leading my follower to Malcolm, if that was what he had in mind. I also wanted to find out who he was, and thought I might outsmart him through knowing some ingenious short cuts round about where I lived.
Many of the houses in that area, having been built in the thirties without garages, had cars parked permanently on both sides of the streets. Only purpose-built places, like my block of flats, had adequate parking, except for two or three larger houses converted to flats which had cars where once there had been lawns.
I drove on past my home down the narrow roadway and twirled fast into the driveway of one of the large houses opposite. That particular house had a narrow exit drive also into the next tree-lined avenue: I drove straight through fast, turned quickly, raced round two more corners and returned to my own road to come up behind the car which had been following me.
He was there, stopped, awkwardly half-parked in too small a space with his nose to the kerb, rear sticking out, brake lights still shining: indecision showing all over the place. I drew to a halt right behind him, blocking his retreat, put on my brakes, climbed out, took three or four swift strides and opened the door on the driver’s side.
There was a stark moment of silence.
Then I said, ‘Well, well, well,’ and after that I nodded up towards my flat and said, ‘Come on in,’ and after that I said, ‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have baked a cake.’
Debs giggled. Ferdinand, who had been driving, looked sheepish. Serena, unrepentant, said, ‘Is Daddy here?’
They came up to my flat where they could see pretty clearly that no, Daddy wasn’t. Ferdinand looked down from the sitting-room window to where his car was now parked beside mine in neat privacy, and then up at the backs of houses opposite over a nearby fence.
‘Not much of a view,’ he said disparagingly.
I’m not here much.’
‘You knew I was following you, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Like a drink?’
‘Well… scotch?’
I nodded and poured him some from a bottle in the cupboard.
‘No ice,’ he said, taking the glass. ‘After that drive, I’ll take it neat.’
‘I didn’t go fast,’ I said, surprised.
‘Your idea of fast and mine round those goddam twisty roads are about ten miles an hour different.’
The two girls were poking about in the kitchen and bedrooms and I could hear someone, Serena no doubt, opening doors and drawers in a search for residues of Malcolm.
Ferdinand shrugged, seeing my unconcern. ‘He hasn’t been here at all, has he?’ he said.
‘Not for three years.’
‘Where is he?’
I didn’t answer.
‘We’ll have to torture you into telling,’ said Ferdinand. It was a frivolous threat we’d used often in our childhood for anything from ‘Where are the cornflakes’ to ‘What is the time’ and Ferdinand himself looked surprised that it had surfaced.
‘Mm,’ I said. ‘As in the tool shed?’
‘Shit,’ Ferdinand said. ‘I didn’t mean …’
‘I should absolutely hope not.’
We both remembered, though, the rainy afternoon when Gervase had put the threat into operation, trying to make me tell him where I’d hidden my new cricket bat which he coveted. I hadn’t told him, out of cussedness. Ferdinand had been there, too frightened of Gervase to protest, and also Serena, barely four, wide-eyed and uncomprehending.
‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ Ferdinand said. ‘You’ve never mentioned it.’
‘Boys will be bullies.’
‘Gervase still is.’
Which of us, I thought, was not as we had been in the green garden? Donald, Lucy, Thomas, Gervase, Ferdinand, Serena — all playing there long ago, children’s voices calling through the bushes, the adults we would become already forming in the gangling limbs, smooth faces, groping minds. None of those children… none of us… I thought protestingly, could have killed.
Serena came into the sitting-room carrying a white lace negligée and looking oddly shocked.
‘You’ve had a woman here!’ she said.
‘There’s no law against it.’
Debs, following her, showed a more normal reaction. ‘Size ten, good perfume, expensive tastes, classy lady,’ she said. ‘How am I doing?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Her face cream’s in the bathroom,’ Serena said. ‘You didn’t tell us you had a… a …’
‘Girl-friend,’ I said. ‘And do you have… a boy-friend?’
She made an involuntary face of distaste and shook her head. Debs put a sisterly arm round Serena’s shoulders and said, ‘I keep telling her
to go to a sex therapist or she’ll end up a dry old stick, but she won’t listen, will you love?’
Serena wriggled free of Debs’ arm and strode off with the negligee towards the bedrooms.
‘Has anyone ever assaulted her?’ I asked Ferdinand. ‘She has that look.’
‘Not that I know of.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘She’s never said so.’
‘She’s just scared of sex,’ Debs said blithely. ‘You wouldn’t think anyone would be, these days. Ferdinand’s not, are you, bunny?’
Ferdinand didn’t react, but said, ‘We’ve finished here, I think.’ He drained his scotch, put down his glass and gave me a cold stare as if to announce that any semi-thaw I might have perceived during the afternoon’s exchanges was now at an end. The ice-curtain had come down again with a clang.
‘If you cut us out with Malcolm,’ he said, ‘you’ll live to regret it.’
Hurt, despite myself, and with a touch of acid, I asked, is that again what Alicia says?’
‘Damn you, Ian,’ he said angrily, and made for the door, calling, ‘Serena, we’re going,’ giving her no choice but to follow.
Debs gave me a mock gruesome look as she went in their wake. ‘You’re Alicia’s number one villain, too bad, lovey. You keep your hooks off Malcolm’s money or you won’t know what hit you.’
There was a fierce last-minute threat in her final words, and I saw, as the jokey manner slipped, that it was merely a facade which hid the same fears and furies of all the others, and her eyes, as she went, were just as unfriendly.
With regret, I watched from the window as the three of them climbed into Ferdinand’s car and drove away. It was an illusion to think one could go back to the uncorrupted emotions of childhood, and I would have to stop wishing for it. I turned away, rinsed out Ferdinand’s glass, and went into my bedroom to see how Serena had left it.
The white negligée was lying on my bed. I picked it up and hung it in its cupboard, rubbing my cheek in the fabric and smelling the faint sweet scent of the lady who came occasionally for lighthearted interludes away from a husband who was all but impotent but nevertheless loved. We suited each other well: perfectly happy in ephemeral passion, with no intention of commitment.
I checked round the flat, opened a few letters and listened to the answering machine: there was nothing of note. I spent a while thinking about cars. I had arranged on the telephone two days earlier that the hotel in Cambridge would allow my own car to remain in their park for a daily fee until I collected it, but I couldn’t leave it there for ever. If I took a taxi to Epsom station, I thought, I could go up to London by train. In the morning, I would go by train to Cambridge, fetch my car, drive back to the flat, change to the hired car and drive that back to London. It might even be a shade safer, I thought, considering that Ferdinand, and through him the others, would know its colour, make and number, to turn that car in and hire a different one.
The telephone rang. I picked up the receiver and heard a familiar voice, warm and husky, coming to the point without delay.
‘How about now?’ she said. ‘We could have an hour.’
I could seldom resist her. Seldom tried.
‘An hour would be great. I was just thinking of you.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘See you.’
I stopped worrying about cars and thought of the white lace negligee instead; more enticing altogether. I put two wine glasses on the table by the sofa and looked at my watch. Malcolm would scarcely have reached the Savoy, I thought, but it was worth a try; and in fact he picked up the telephone saying he had that minute walked into the suite.
‘I’m glad you’re safely back,’ I said. ‘I’ve been a bit detained. I’ll be two or three hours yet. Don’t get lost.’
‘Your mother is a cat,’ he said.
‘She saved your skin.’
‘She called me a raddled old roue done up like a fifth-rate pastrycook.’
I laughed and could hear his scowl down the line.
‘What do you want after caviar,’ he said, ‘if I order dinner?’
‘Chefs special.’
‘God rot you, you’re as bad as your mother.’
I put the receiver down with amusement and waited through the twenty minutes it would take until the doorbell rang.
‘Hello,’ she said, as I let her in. ‘How did the races go?’
I kissed her. ‘Finished third.’
‘Well done.’
She was older than I by ten or twelve years, also slender, auburn-haired and unselfconscious. I fetched the always-waiting champagne from the refrigerator, popped off the cork and poured our drinks. They were a ritual preliminary, really, as we’d never yet finished the bottle and, as usual, after half a glass, there was no point in sitting around on the sofa making small talk.
She exclaimed over the long black bruise down my thigh. ‘Did you fall off a horse?’
‘No, hit a car.’
‘How careless.’
I drew the bedroom curtains to dim the setting western sun and lay with her naked between the sheets. We were practised lovers and comfortable with each other, philosophical over the fact that the coupling was usually better for one than the other, rarely earth-moving for both simultaneously. That day, like the time before, it turned out ecstatic for her, less so for me, and I thought the pleasure of giving such pleasure enough in itself.
‘Was it all right for you?’ she said finally.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Not one of your great times.’
‘They don’t come to order. Not your turn, my turn. It’s luck.’
‘A matter of friction and angles,’ she teased me, repeating what I’d once said. ‘Who’s showering first?’
She liked to return clean to her husband, acknowledging the washing to be symbolic. I showered and dressed, and waited for her in the sitting-room. She was an essential part of my life, a comfort to the body, a contentment in the mind, a bulwark against loneliness. I usually said goodbye with regret, knowing she would return, but on that particular afternoon I said, ‘Stay,’ knowing all the same that she couldn’t.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
‘Nothing.’
‘You shivered.’
‘Premonition.’
‘What of?’ She was preparing to go, standing by the door.
‘That this will be the last time.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back.’
She kissed me with what I knew was gratitude, the way I too kissed her. She smiled into my eyes. ‘I’ll be back.’
I opened the door for her and she went away lightheartedly, and I knew that the premonition had been not for her, but for myself.
I ferried the cars in the morning, going from London to Cambridge and Epsom and back to the hire firm, and no one followed me anywhere, as far as I could see.
When I’d departed, Malcolm had been full of rampaging indignation over the non-availability of first-class seats on any flight going to Paris the following day for the Arc de Triomphe.
‘Go economy,’ I said, ‘it’s only half an hour.’
It appeared that there were no economy seats either. I left him frowning but returned to find peace. He had chartered a private jet.
He told me that snippet later, because he was currently engaged with Norman West who had called to give a progress report. The detective still seemed alarmingly frail but the grey on-the-point-of-death look had abated to fawn. The dustbin clothes had been replaced by an ordinary dark suit, and the greasy hair, washed, was revealed as almost white and neatly brushed.
I shook his hand: damp, as before.
‘Feeling better, Mr West?’ I asked.
‘Thank you, yes.’
‘Tell my son what you’ve just said,’ Malcolm commanded. ‘Give him the bad news.’
West gave me a small apologetic smile and then looked down at the notepad on his knee.
‘Mrs Vivien Pembroke can’t remember what she did on the Friday,’ he sai
d. ‘And she spent Tuesday alone at home sorting through piles of old magazines.’
‘What’s bad news about that?’ I asked.
‘Don’t be obtuse,’ Malcolm said impatiently. ‘She hasn’t an alibi. None of the whole damn bunch has an alibi.’
‘Have you checked them all?’ I said, surprised. ‘You surely haven’t had time.’
‘I haven’t,’ he agreed.
‘Figure of speech.’ Malcolm waved a hand. ‘Go on telling him, Mr West.’
‘I called on Mrs Berenice Pembroke.’ West sighed expressively. ‘She found me unwelcome.’
Malcolm chuckled sourly. ‘Tongue like a rhinoceros-hide whip.’
West made a small squirming movement as if still feeling the lash, but said merely, with restraint, ‘She was completely uncooperative.’
‘Was Thomas there, when you called?’ I asked.
‘No, sir, he wasn’t. Mrs Pembroke said he was at work. I later telephoned his office, to the number you gave me, hoping he could tell me where both his wife and himself had been at the relevant times, and a young lady there said that Mr Pembroke left the firm several weeks ago, and she knew nothing of his present whereabouts.’
‘Well,’ I said, stumped. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘I telephoned Mrs Pembroke again to ask where her husband worked now, and she told me to… er… drop dead.’
Thomas, I thought, had worked for the same firm of biscuit makers from the day he’d finished a course in book-keeping and accountancy. Berenice referred disparagingly to his occupation as ‘storekeeping’ but Thomas said he was a quantity surveyor whose job it was to estimate the raw materials needed for each large contract, and cost them, and pass the information to the management. Thomas’s promotions within the firm had been minor, such as from second assistant to first assistant, and at forty he could see, I supposed, that he would never be boardroom material. How bleak, I thought, to have to face his mid-life limitations with Berenice cramming them down his throat at every turn. Poor old Thomas …
‘Mrs Joyce Pembroke,’ West said, ‘is the only one who is definite about her movements. On each relevant day, she was playing bridge. She didn’t like me snooping, as she called it, and she wouldn’t say who she was playing bridge with as she didn’t want those people bothered.’