by Dick Francis
Miss S. says Mr Ian must have killed Mrs Moira because she (Mrs Moira) took away both Mr Pembroke and his (Mr Ian’s) inheritance, and he hated her. She says Mr Ian must have tried to kill Mr Pembroke for the money. The police are fools not to arrest him, she says. I told her Mr Ian couldn’t have killed Moira or attacked his father as he was seeing round a racehorse training stable forty miles away at both times, with thirty or more witnesses. I said he obviously hadn’t been driving the car which nearly ran him down. She says he could have arranged it. In my opinion, Miss S. doesn’t want to be convinced of Mr Ian’s innocence. She wants the killer to be Mr Ian because she doesn’t want to find any others in her family guilty. If it is Mr Ian, she can bear it, she says, because it would serve him right for being Daddy’s pet. (Muddled thinking!)
End of enquiry.
The three pages of notes on Serena were held together with a paperclip. I shuffled Serena to the bottom of the pack and came to the next paperclip, holding notes on Debs and Ferdinand.
Norman West used grey paperclips, not silver. Most appropriate, I thought.
The first page read:
Mrs Deborah Pembroke (27) second wife of Mr Ferdinand, lives with him at Gables Cottage, Reading Road, Wokingham, Berkshire.
Mrs Deborah works as a photographic model chiefly for mailorder catalogues, and was engaged in London on the Tuesday of Newmarket Sales modelling a succession of swimsuits. There were two other models there, also a photographer and two assistants,also a dresser, a representative of the mail-order firm and a notetaker. The swimsuit session went on until 6 pm. Mrs D. was there until the end. Vouched for without possibility of doubt. Mrs Debs has no firm alibi for the previous Friday evening. She finished work early in London at 3.30 (corroborated by mailorder people) and drove home. No witness to arrival (Mr Ferdinand was out).
Owing to her Tuesday engagement, Mrs Debs could not have been at Newmarket. Friday, inconclusive.
Mrs Debs drives her own car, a scarlet Lancia. When I inspected it, it was dusty overall, with no sign of contact with Mr Ian.
Mrs Debs appeared undisturbed in the main by my questions and gave the following answers. She says her husband is the only good one in the Pembroke family, the only one with any sense of humour. She says he listens to his mother too much, but she’ll change that in time. She says they’ll be well off one day as long as Mr Ian doesn’t queer their pitch. She said that she was happy enough and is in no hurry to have children. She objected to my asking about such a personal matter.
End of enquiry.
I turned over the page and on the next one found:
Mr Ferdinand Pembroke (32) married to Deborah (2nd wife), lives at Gables Cottage, Reading Road, Wokingham, Berks.
Mr Ferdinand is a statistician/actuary for the Merchant General Insurance Company, head office in Reading, Berks. He works about a third of the time at home, where he has a computer with a link to the one in the insurance company offices. Both he and his company like the arrangement, which means he can do exacting work without constant interruption. In addition, his company arranged for him to go on an anti-fraud course, as they are pleased with his ability.
I visited his office and explained to his boss that Mr Pembroke senior wanted to prove his children couldn’t have been implicated in attacking him. Mr Ferdinand’s boss wanted to be helpful, but in the end couldn’t satisfy me.
Mr F. was not in the office on Friday afternoon, nor on the following Tuesday. On the Friday he’d worked at home, on Tuesday he was on the course.
I checked with the course at the Bingham Business Institute, Cityof London. Mr F. signed in on the first day, Monday, but after that no stringent attendance records were kept. Mr F. couldn’t suggest anyone on the course who knew him well enough to swear he was there on Tuesday. I asked if he had made notes on the lectures. He said he didn’t take any: the Tuesday lectures were about statistical probabilities and how to calculate them; basic stuff which he knew about. I checked this on the course schedule. The Tuesday lectures were as he said.
Mr Ferdinand drives a cream/grey Audi. It was clean when I saw it. Mr F. says he washes it himself with a brush on a hose (he showed it to me) and he does it frequently. He says he likes things to be clean.
Although he was working at home on the Friday afternoon, he was not in when Mrs Debs arrived from London. He says he had finished the job he’d been working on and decided to drive over to Henley and feed the ducks on the Thames. He found it peaceful. He liked the fresh air. He often did it, had done all his life, he said. He didn’t know Mrs Debs was finishing work as early as 3.30 that day, but he said that wouldn’t have stopped him going out. They were independent people and not accountable to each other for every minute.
I stopped reading and lifted my head. It was true that Ferdinand had always been attracted to the ducks. I couldn’t count the number of times we’d walked along the Henley towpath, scattering bread and listening to the rude laughter of the mallards. Malcolm was the one who took us, whenever Alicia started throwing plates. She squawked rather like the ducks, I’d thought, and had had enough sense not to say so.
I went on reading:
Mr Ferdinand is hard working and successful, going to be more so. (My opinion and his boss’s.) He has planning ability and energy. He is physically like his father, stocky and strong. (I remember Mr Pembroke 28 years ago. He threatened to throw me over his car when he found out I’d been following him, and I believed he could do it. Mr Ferdinand is the same.)
Mr F. can be very funny and good company, but his moods change to black disconcertingly fast. He is casual with his wife, not possessive. He is protective of his sister Serena. He is attentive to his mother, Mrs Alicia. He seems to have ambivalent feelingsabout Mr Pembroke and Mr Ian; I gathered from his inconsistent attitude that he liked them both in the past but no longer trusts them. Mr F. is capable of hate, I think.
End of enquiry.
I put Debs and Ferdinand to the back of the pile but had no mental stamina left for the next section on Ursula and Gervase. I put all the notes into the envelope and ate some pub steak instead and decided I would see the family in the age-reversed order Norman West had handed me, taking the easy ones first. Where was the bravado that had led me to tell Malcolm at Cambridge that I would stay with him just because it was dangerous?
Where indeed.
Somewhere under the rubble of Quantum.
In the morning, I rode out on the windy Downs, grateful for the simplicity of horses and for the physical pleasure of using one’s muscles in the way they were trained for. Vigour seemed to flow of its own accord in my arms and legs, and I thought that maybe it was the same for a pianist sitting down after a few days to play; there was no need to work out what to do with one’s fingers, it was easy, it was embedded in one’s brain, the music came without thought.
I thanked my host sincerely after breakfast and drove towards Quantum thinking of the telephone call I’d made to Malcolm the evening before. It had been nearly midnight for me: nearly six, early evening, for him.
He had arrived safely, he said, and Dave and Sally Cander were true blue cronies. Ramsey Osborn had flown down. The Canders were giving a party, starting in five minutes. He’d seen some good horses. He’d had some great new ideas for spending money (wicked chuckle). How were things in England?
He sounded satisfactorily carefree, having shed depression with the miles, and I said things were the same as when he left except that the house was wrapped up in tarpaulins. The state of the house troubled him for roughly ten seconds, and after that he said he and Ramsey might be leaving Lexington on Tuesday or Wednesday; he wasn’t sure.
‘Wherever you go,’ I said, ‘will you please give the Canders a telephone number where I can reach you?’
‘I promise,’ he said blithely. ‘Hurry up with your passport, and come over.’
‘Soon.’
‘I’ve got used to you being with me. Keep looking round for you. Odd. Must be senile.’
�
��Yes, you sound it.’
He laughed. ‘It’s a different world here, and I like it.’
He said goodbye and disconnected, and I wondered how many horses he would have bought by the time I reached him.
Back at the pub in Cookham, I changed out of riding clothes and dutifully telephoned Superintendent Yale. He had nothing to tell me, nor I to tell him: the call was short.
‘Where is your father?’ he asked conversationally.
‘Safe.’
He grunted. ‘Phone me,’ he said, and I said, ‘Yes.’
With a heavy lack of enthusiasm I returned to the car and pointed its nose towards Bracknell, parking in one of the large featureless carparks and walking through to the High Street.
The High Street, long before, had been the main road through a minor country town; now it was a pedestrian backwater surrounded by the factories, offices and convoluted ring roads of mushroom progress. ‘Deanna’s Dance and Aerobics Studio’ looked like a wide shop-front flanked by a bright new shiny newsagent on one side and on the other a photographic shop whose window display seemed to consist chiefly of postcard-sized yellow fluorescent labels with prices on, mostly announcing ‘20% OFF’.
Deanna’s studio consisted firstly of a reception area with a staircase on one side leading upwards. A young girl sitting behind the reception desk looked up and brightened when I pushed open the glass entrance door and stepped onto some thick grey carpet, but lost interest when I asked for Serena, explaining I was her brother.
‘Back there,’ she said. ‘She’s taking class at the moment.’
Back there was through white-painted double doors. I went through and found myself in a windowless but brightly lit and attractive area of small tables and chairs, where several women sat drinking from polystyrene cups. The air vibrated with the pulse of music being played somewhere else, and when I again asked for Serena and was directed onwards, I came to its source.
The studio itself ran deeply back to end in a wall of windows overlooking a small strip of garden. The floor was of polished wood,sprung somehow so that it almost bounced underfoot. The walls were white except for the long left-hand one, which was entirely of looking-glass. The music, warm and insistent, invited rhythmic response.
Serena herself danced with her back to the mirror. Facing her, in three spread-out rows, was a collection of clients, all female, bouncing in unison on springy ankles, arms and legs swinging in circles and kicks. On every face, concentration and sweat. ‘Go for the burn,’ Serena commanded, looking happy, and her class with an increase of already frenetic energy, presumably went.
‘Great, ladies, that’s great,’ Serena said eventually, stopping jumping and switching off the music machine which stood in a corner near where I’d come in. She gave me an unfriendly glance but turned with radiance back to the customers. ‘If any of you want to continue, Sammy will be here within a minute. Take a rest, ladies.’
A few of the bodies stayed. Most looked at the clock on the wall and filed panting into a door marked‘changing rooms’.
Serena said, ‘What do you want?’
‘Talk.’
She looked colourful but discouraging. She wore a bright pink long-sleeved body-stocking with white bouncing shoes, pink and white leg-warmers and a scarlet garment like a chopped off vest. ‘I’ll give you five minutes,’ she said.
She was hardly out of breath. A girl who was apparently Sammy Higgs came in in electric blue and started taking charge, and Serena with bad grace led me back through the refreshment area and the entrance hall and up the stairs.
‘There are no classes up here just now. Say what you’ve come for and then go.’
Upstairs, according to a notice on the wall, Deanna offered ballroom dancing tuition, also‘ballet and posture’. Serena stood with her hands on her skinny pink hips and waited.
‘Malcolm wants me to find out who bombed Quantum,’ I said.
She glowered at me. ‘Well, I didn’t.’
‘Do you remember the day old Fred blew up the tree stump?’
‘No,’ she said. She didn’t bother to think, hadn’t tried to remember.
‘Thomas gave you a ride on his shoulders out of the field, and the blast of the explosion knocked old Fred over.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Why are you so hostile?’
‘I’m not. Where’s Daddy?’
‘With friends,’ I said. ‘It saddens him that you’re hostile.’
She said bitterly, ‘That’s a laugh. He’s rejected all of us except you. And I’ll bet you killed Moira.’
‘He hasn’t rejected you,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t.’
‘He kicked us all out. I loved him when I was little.’ Tears appeared suddenly in her eyes and she shook them angrily away. ‘He couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’
‘He tried to keep you, but Alicia wouldn’t have it. She fought him in the courts for custody, and won.’
‘He didn’t want me,’ she said fiercely. ‘He only said so to spite Mummy, to make her suffer. I know all about it.’
‘Alicia told you?’
‘Of course she did. Daddy couldn’t wait to get rid of us, to get rid of Mummy, to get married again, to… to… throw everything about us out of the house, to tear out all the pretty rooms… blot us out.’
She was deeply passionate with the old feelings, still smouldering after twenty years. I remembered how upset I’d been when Alicia tore out my own mother’s kitchen, how I’d felt betrayed and dispossessed. I had been six, as Serena had been, and I still remembered it clearly.
‘Give him a chance,’ I suggested.
‘I did give him a chance. I offered to help him after Moira died and he still didn’t want me. And look at the way he’s behaving,’ she said. ‘Throwing money away. If he thinks I care a tuppenny damn about his stupid scholarships, he’s a fool. You can toady up to him all you like, but I’m not going to. He can keep his damned money. I can manage without it.’
She looked hard-eyed and determinedly stubborn. The old man in all of us, I thought.
‘You’ve had your five minutes,’ she said. She side-stepped me in swift movements and made for the stairs. ‘See you at the funeral.’
‘Whose funeral?’ I asked, following her.
‘Anyone’s,’ she said darkly, and ran weightlessly down the stairs as if skimming were more normal than walking.
When I reached the entrance hall, she was vanishing through the white double doors. It was pointless to pursue her. I left Deanna’s studio feeling I had achieved nothing, and with leaden spirits went back to the car and drove to Wokingham to call on Ferdinand.
I half-hoped he wouldn’t be in, but he was. He came to the door frowning because I had interrupted him at his computer, and grudgingly let me in.
‘We’ve nothing to say,’ he said, but he sounded more resigned than forbidding; half-relaxed, as he’d been in my flat.
He led the way into the front room of the bungalow he and Debs had bought on the road to Reading. The front room was his office, a perfectly natural arrangement to Ferdinand, since Malcolm’s office had always been at home.
The rest of the bungalow, which I’d visited two or three times before, was furnished sparsely in accordance with Debs’ and Ferdinand’s joint dislike of dirt and clutter. One of the three bedrooms was completely empty, one held a single bed and a chest of drawers (for Serena’s visits), and in the third, the couple’s own, there was a mattress on a platform and a wall of cupboards and enclosed shelves that Ferdinand had put together himself. The sitting-room held two chairs, a standard lamp, a lot of floor cushions and a television set. In the tidy kirchen, there was a table with four stools. All visible life was in the office, though even there, in direct contrast to Malcolm’s comfortable shambles, a spartan order of neatness ruled.
Ferdinand’s computer bore a screenful of graphics. He glanced at it and then looked with some impatience back to me.
‘What do you want?’
he asked. ‘I’ve a lot to do after being away on a course.’
‘Can’t you save all that,’ I gestured to the screen, ‘or whatever it is you do? Record it, and come out to a pub for krtich.’
He shook his head and looked at his witch. Then, in indecision, said, ‘I suppose I have to eat,’ and fiddled about with the computer. ‘All right. Half an hour, max.’
I drove us to the town centre and he pointed out a pub with a carpark. The bar was full of business people similarly out for lunch breaks, and I bought scotch and sandwiches after a good deal of polite elbowing. Ferdinand had secured a table from which he was clearing the past customer’s detritus with a finicky expression.
‘Look,’ I said, handing him his drink as we sat down, ‘Malcolm wants me to find out who’s trying to kill him.’
‘It isn’t me,’ he said. He took a swallow, unconcerned.
‘Do you remember old Fred blowing up the tree roots, that time? When we were about twelve or thirteen? When the blast blew old Fred flat?’
He stared. ‘Yes, I do,’ he said slowly, ‘but that’s years ago. It can’t have anything to do with the house.’
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘That bang made a big impression on us. Memories last more or less for ever, they just need digging up. The explosives expert working at Quantum asked if I knew what cordite was, and I remembered old Fred.’
Ferdinand did his own digging. ‘Black powder… in a box.’
‘Yes, it’s still there in the tool shed. Still viable, but not used on the house. They’re working now on its being a homemade explosive called ANFO.’
Ferdinand was visibly shaken and after a minute said, ‘I suppose I hadn’t considered… what it was.’
‘Do you know what ANFO is?’ I asked.
He said no uncertainly, and I thought he wasn’t being truthful. Perhaps he felt that knowing could be considered guilt. I needed to jolt him into being more positive. Into being an ally, if I could.
‘Malcolm’s made a new will,’ I said.
‘And left you the lot, I suppose,’ he sneered bitterly.