by Dick Francis
‘You can leave Mrs Joyce Pembroke out,’ I said.
‘Huh?’ Malcolm said.
‘You know perfectly well,’ I told him, ‘that Joyce wouldn’t kill you. If you’d had any doubts, you wouldn’t have gone off in a car with her yesterday.’
‘All right, all right,’ he said, grumbling. ‘Cross Joyce off.’
I nodded to West, and he put a line through Joyce.
‘Yesterday I called on Mrs Alicia Pembroke and then later on Mrs Ursula Pembroke.’ West’s face showed no joy over the encounters. ‘Mrs Alicia Pembroke told me to mind my own business, and Mrs Ursula Pembroke had been crying and wouldn’t speak to me.’ He lifted his hands out in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I couldn’t persuade either of them of the advantage of establishing alibis.’
‘Did you get any impression,’ I asked, ‘that the police had been there before you, asking the same questions?’
‘None at all.’
‘I told you,’ Malcolm said. ‘They didn’t believe I was attacked. They thought I’d just staged the whole thing.’
‘Even so …’
‘They checked everyone out over Moira, as you no doubt remember, and came up with a load of clean slates. They’re just not bothering to do it again.’
‘Do you happen to have their telephone number with you?’
‘Yes I do,’ he said, bringing a diary out of an inner pocket and flicking over the pages. ‘But they won’t tell you anything. It’s like talking to a steel door.’
I dialled the number all the same and asked for the superintendent.
‘In what connection, sir?’
‘About the attempted murder of Mr Malcolm Pembroke a week ago yesterday.’
‘One moment, sir.’
Time passed, and a different voice came on the line, plain and impersonal.
‘Can I help you, sir?’
‘About the attempted murder of Mr Malcolm Pembroke …’
‘Who are you, sir?’
‘His son.’
‘Er… which one?’
‘Ian.’
There was a brief rustling of paper.
‘Could you tell me your birth date, as proof of identity?’ Surprised, I gave it.
Then the voice said, ‘Do you wish to give information, sir?’
‘I wanted to find out how the investigation was going.’
‘It isn’t our custom to discuss that.’
‘But…’
‘But I can tell you, sir, that investigations into the alleged attack are being conducted with thoroughness.’
‘Alleged!’ I said.
‘That’s right, sir. We can find no evidence at all that there was another party involved.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
With slightly exaggerated patience but also a first flicker of sympathy, he said, ‘I can tell you, sir, that there was no evidence of Mr Pembroke being dragged from the garden to the garage, which he alleged must have happened. No marks on the path. No scrapes on the heels of Mr Pembroke’s shoes, which we examined at the time. There were no fingerprints except his own on the door handles of the car, no fingerprints except his anywhere. He showed no signs of carbon monoxide poisoning, which he explained was because he had delayed calling us. We examined the scene thoroughly the following morning, after Mr Pembroke had left home, and we found nothing at all to indicate the presence of an assailant. You can be sure we are not closing the case, but we are not at this time able to find grounds for suspicion of any other person.’
‘He was nearly killed,’ I said blankly.
‘Yes, sir, well I’m sorry, sir, but that’s how things stand.’ He paused briefly, ‘I can understand your disbelief, sir. It can’t be easy for you.’ He sounded quite human, offering comfort.
‘Thank you at least for talking to me,’ I said.
‘Right, sir. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said slowly, but he had already gone.
‘Now what’s the matter?’ Malcolm asked, watching my face.
I repeated what I’d just heard.
‘Impossible!’ Malcolm said explosively.
‘No.’
‘What then?’
‘Clever.’
Eight
‘Which door did you go out of, with the dogs?’ I asked.
‘The kitchen door, like I always do.’
‘The kitchen door is about five steps along that covered way from the rear door into the garage.’
‘Yes, of course it is,’ Malcolm said testily.
‘You told me that you set off down the garden with the dogs, and I suppose you told the police the same thing?’
‘Yes, of course I did.’
‘But you can’t really remember actually going. You remember that you meant to, isn’t that what you told me?’
He frowned, ‘I suppose it is.’
‘So what if you never made it to the garden, but were knocked out right there by the kitchen door? And what if you weren’t dragged from there into the garage, but carried?
His mouth opened. ‘But I’m …’
‘You’re not too heavy,’ I said. ‘I could carry you easily in a fireman’s lift.’
He was five foot seven, stocky but not fat. He weighed ten stone something, I would have guessed.
‘And the fingerprints?’ Norman West asked.
‘In a fireman’s lift,’ I said, ‘you sling the person you want to carry over your left shoulder, don’t you, with his head hanging down your back. Then you grasp his knees with your left arm, and hold his right wrist in your own right hand, to stop him slipping off?’
They both nodded.
‘So if you’re holding someone’s wrist, you can put his hand easily onto any surface you like, including car doorhandles… particularly,’ I said, thinking, ‘if you’ve opened the doors yourself first with gloves on, so that your victim’s prints will be on top of any smudges you have made.’
‘You should have been an assassin,’ Malcolm said. ‘You’d have been good at it.’
‘So now we have Malcolm slumped in the back seat, half lying, like you said. So next you switch on the engine and leave the doors open so that all the nice fumes pour into the car quickly.’
‘Doors?’ Malcolm interrupted.
‘The driver’s door and one of the rear doors, at the least.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And then you have,’ I said, ‘a suicide.’
‘And when I woke up,’ Malcolm said gloomily, ‘I put my prints all over the place. On the ignition key… everywhere.’
‘No one could have counted on that.’
‘It just looked bad to the police.’
We contemplated the scenario.
‘If it happened like that,’ West said, ‘as indeed it could have done, whoever attacked you had to know that you would go out of the kitchen door at around that time.’
Malcolm said bleakly, ‘If I’m at home, I always go for a walk with the dogs about then. Take them out, bring them back, give them their dinners, pour myself a drink. Routine.’
‘And… er… is there anyone in your family who doesn’t know when you walk the dogs?’
‘Done it all my life, at that time,’ Malcolm said.
There was a short silence, then I said, ‘I wish I’d known all this when that car nearly killed us at Newmarket. We really ought to have told the police.’
‘I was fed up with them,’ Malcolm said, ‘I’ve spent hours and hours with the suspicious buggers since Moira’s death. I’m allergic to them. They bring me out in a rash.’
‘You can’t blame them, sir. Most murdered wives are killed by their husbands,’ West said. ‘And frankly, you appeared to have an extremely strong motive.’
‘Rubbish,’ Malcolm said, ‘I don’t see how people can kill people they’ve loved.’
‘Unfortunately it’s common.’ West paused. ‘Do you want me to continue with your family, sir, considering how little progress I’ve been able to make with them?’
‘Ye
s,’ Malcolm said heavily. ‘Carry on. I’ll get Joyce to tell them all to answer your questions. She seems to be able to get them to do what she wants.’
To get them to do what they want, I thought. She couldn’t stir them into courses they didn’t like.
Norman West put his notebook into his jacket pocket and shifted his weight forward on his chair.
‘Before you go,’ I said, ‘I thought you might like to know that I asked the telephonist of the Cambridge hotel if anyone besides yourself had asked if a Mr Pembroke was staying there last weekend. She said they’d definitely had at least three calls asking for Mr Pembroke, two men and a woman, and she remembered because she thought it odd that no one wanted to talk to him, or would leave a message; they only wanted to know if he was there.’
‘Three!’ Malcolm exclaimed.
‘One would be Mr West,’ I pointed out. To West, I said, ‘In view of that, could you tell us who asked you to find my father?’
West hesitated. ‘I don’t positively know which Mrs Pembroke it was. And… er… even if I became sure during these investigations, well, no sir, I don’t think I could.’
‘Professional ethics,’ Malcolm said, nodding.
‘I did warn you, sir,’ West said to me, ‘about a conflict of interests.’
‘So you did. Hasn’t she paid you yet, then? No name on any cheque?’
‘No, sir, not yet.’
He rose to his feet, no one’s idea of Atlas, though world-weary all the same. He shook my hand damply, and Malcolm’s, and said he would be in touch. When he’d gone, Malcolm sighed heavily and told me to pour him some scotch.
‘Don’t you want some?’ he said, when I gave him the glass.
‘Not right now.’
‘What did you think of Mr West?’
‘He’s past it.’
‘You’re too young. He’s experienced.’
‘And no match for the female Pembrokes.’
Malcolm smiled with irony. ‘Few are,’ he said.
We flew to Paris in the morning in the utmost luxury and were met by a chauffeured limousine which took its place with regal slowness in the solid traffic jam moving as one entity towards Longchamp.
The French racecourse, aflutter with flags, seemed to be swallowing tout le monde with insatiable appetite, until no one could walk in a straight line through the public areas where the crowds were heavy with guttural vowels and garlic.
Malcolm’s jet/limousine package also included, I found, an invitation from the French Jockey Club, passes to everywhere and a Lucullan lunch appointment with the co-owner of Blue Clancy, Mr Ramsey Osborn.
Ramsey Osborn, alight with the joie de vivre gripping the whole place, turned out to be a very large sixtyish American who towered over Malcolm and took to him at once. Malcolm seemed to see the same immediate signals. They were cronies within two minutes.
‘My son, Ian,’ Malcolm said eventually, introducing me.
‘Glad to know you.’ He shook my hand vigorously. ‘The one who fixed the sale, right?’ His eyes were light grey and direct. ‘Tell you the truth, there’s a colt and a filly I want to buy for next year’s Classics, and this way Blue Clancy will finance them very nicely.’
‘But if Blue Clancy wins the Arc?’ I said.
‘No regrets, son.’ He turned to Malcolm. ‘You’ve a cautious boy, here.’
‘Yeah,’ Malcolm said. ‘Cautious like an astronaut.’
The Osborn grey eyes swivelled back my way. ‘Is that so? Do you bet?’
‘Cautiously, sir.’
He laughed, but it wasn’t unalloyed good humour. Malcolm, I thought, was much more to his liking. I left them sitting down at table together and, confident enough that no assassin would penetrate past the eagle-eyed doorkeepers of the upper citadel of the French Jockey Club, went down myself to ground level, happier to be with the action.
I had been racing in France a good deal, having for some years been assistant to a trainer who sent horses across the Channel as insouciantly as to York. Paris and Deauville were nearer anyway, he used to say, despatching me from Epsom via nearby Gatwick airport whenever he felt disinclined to go himself. I knew in consequence a smattering of racecourse French and where to find what I wanted, essential assets in the vast stands bulging with hurrying, vociferous, uninhibited French racegoers.
I loved the noise, the smell, the movement, the quick angers, the gesticulations, the extravagance of ground-level French racing. British jockeys tended to think French racegoers madly aggressive, and certainly once I’d actually had to defend with my fists a jockeywho’d lost on a favourite I’d brought over. Jockeys in general had been insulted and battered to the extent that they no longer had to walk through crowds when going out or back from races at many tracks, and at Longchamp made the journey from weighing-room to horse by going up an elevator enclosed with plastic walls like a tunnel, across a bridge, and down a similar plastic-tunnel escalator on the other side.
I wandered around, greeting a few people, watching the first race from the trainers’ stand, tearing up my losing pari-mutuel ticket, wandering some more, and feeling finally, without any work to do, without any horse to saddle, purposeless. It was an odd feeling. I couldn’t remember when I’d last gone racing without being actively involved. Racing wasn’t my playground, it was my work; without work it felt hollow.
Vaguely depressed, I returned to Malcolm’s eyrie and found him blossoming in his new role as racehorse owner. He was referring to Le Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe familiarly as‘the Arc’ as if it hadn’t swum into his consciousness a bare half-week earlier, and discussing Blue Clancy’s future with Ramsey Osborn as if he knew what he was talking about.
‘We’re thinking of the Breeders’ Cup,’ he said to me, and I interpreted the glint in his eyes as a frantic question as well as an instant decision.
‘If he runs well today,’ Osborn put in, qualifying it.
‘It’s a long way to California,’ I said, agreeing with him. ‘To the world championships, one might say.’
Malcolm was grateful for the information and far from dismayed by it. Pretty well the opposite, I saw. It would be to California we would go on the way to Australia, I guessed, rather than Singapore.
Lunch seemed to be continuing all afternoon, in the way French lunches do, with tidy circles of chateaubriand appearing, the empty plates to be cleared before small bundles of beans and carrots were served, followed by fresh little cheeses rolled in chopped nuts, and tiny strawberry tartlets with vanilla coulis. According to the menu, I had through my absence missed the écrevisses, the consommé, the crpês de volatille, the salade verte and the sorbet. Just as well, I thought, eyeing the friandises which arrived with the coffee. Even amateur jockeys had to live by the scales.
Malcolm and Ramsey Osborn passed mellowly to cognac and cigars and watched the races on television. No one was in a hurry:the Arc was scheduled for five o’clock and digestion could proceed until four-thirty.
Ramsey Osborn told us he came from Stamford, Connecticut, and had made his money by selling sports clothes. ‘Baseball caps by the million,’ he said expansively, ‘I get them made, I sell them to retail outlets. And shoes, shirts, jogging suits, whatever goes. Health is big business, we’d be nowhere without exercise.’
Ramsey looked as if he didn’t exercise too much himself, having pads of fat round his eyes, a heavy double chin and a swelling stomach. He radiated goodwill, however, and listened with kind condescension as Malcolm said reciprocally that he himself dealt modestly in currency and metal.
Ramsey wasn’t grasping Malcolm’s meaning, I thought, but then for all his occasional flamboyance Malcolm never drew general attention to his wealth. Quantum was a large comfortable Victorian family house, but it wasn’t a mansion: when Malcolm had reached mansion financial status, he’d shown no signs of wanting to move. I wondered briefly whether that would change in future, now that he’d tasted prodigality.
In due course, the three of us went down to the saddling
boxes and met both Blue Clancy and his trainer. Blue Clancy looked aristocratic, his trainer more so. Malcolm was visibly impressed with the trainer, as indeed was reasonable, as he was a bright young star, now rising forty, who had already trained six Classic winners and made it look easy.
Blue Clancy was restless, his nostrils quivering. We watched the saddling ritual and the final touches; flick of oil to shine the hooves, sponging of nose and mouth to clean and gloss, tweaking of forelock and tack to achieve perfection. We followed him into the parade ring and were joined by his English jockey who was wearing Ramsey’s white, green and crimson colours and looking unexcited.
Malcolm was taking with alacrity to his first taste of big-time ownership. The electricity was fairly sparking. He caught my eye, saw what I was thinking, and laughed.
‘I used to think you a fool to choose racing,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t understand what you saw in it.’
‘It’s better still when you ride.’
‘Yes… I saw that at Sandown. And about time, I suppose.’
Ramsey and the trainer claimed his attention to discuss tactics with the jockey, and I thought of the summer holidays when we were children, when Gervase, Ferdinand and I had all learned to ride. We’d learned on riding-school ponies, cycling to the nearby stables and spending time there grooming, feeding and mucking out. We’d entered local gymkhanas, and booted the poor animals in pop-the-balloon races. We’d ridden them backwards, bareback and with our knees on the saddle, and Ferdinand, the specialist, standing briefly on his head. The ponies had been docile and no doubt tired to death, but for two or three years we had been circus virtuosi: and Malcolm had paid the bills uncomplainingly, but had never come to watch us. Then Gervase and Ferdinand had been whisked away by Alicia, and in the lonely vacuum afterwards I’d ridden almost every possible morning, laying down a skill without meaning it seriously, not realising, in the flurry of academic school examinations, that it was the holiday pastime that would beckon me for life.
Blue Clancy looked as well as any of the others, I thought, watching the runners walk round, and the trainer was displaying more confidence than uncertainty. He thanked me for fixing the sale (from which he’d made a commission) and assured me that the two-million-guinea yearling was now settled snugly in a prime box in his yard. He’d known me vaguely until then as another trainer’s assistant, a dogsbody, but as son and go-between of a new owner showing all signs of being severely hooked by the sport, I was now worth cultivation.