by Dick Francis
So much for Lucy and Edwin, I thought. What about Donald and Helen?
Donald Pembroke (44) eldest of Mr Pembroke’s offspring, lives at Marblehill House, detached chalet-style house which goes with his job, Secretary, Marblehill Golf Club (rich club, high fees) near Henley-on-Thomas. Long waiting list for membership, rich members.
Mr D. has staff (green keeper, club steward, etc). He himself oversees and runs the whole place, is said to be good at it, members like him, say he gets things done, runs tight ship, decent bar, club rooms, tournaments etc, always listens to and deals with complaints, seen as friend, authority figure, social equal. Mr D. likes his work. His social standing extremely important to him (my opinion). Keeps up high appearances.
As to alibis for the Friday and Tuesday in question: no alibis ascertainable. Is always ‘round the place’, never at any place at set hours except first thing in the mornings (9 am) to see to post with office staff. Has Mondays off, works Saturdays and Sundays.
Walks to work (barely 100 yds). Usually returns home at 7 pm (much earlier in winter), sometimes stays until bar closes. Often walks round later to see all is well everywhere. Dedicated.
Mr D. has daughter in art school, high fees. Also twin sons who have started this term at Eton, previously at good prep, school. (How does he afford it?)
Mr D. drives silver Mercedes, 2 years old. Clean. No marks of collision with Mr Ian.
Mr D. thinks it’s very bad news Mr Ian is back in Mr Pembroke’s favour. Certain to mean less inheritance for him (Mr D.). He’s angry about that. But he also thinks Mr Ian the only one who can persuade Mr Pembroke to distribute some wealth now. Sees no inconsistency in these beliefs. (He’ll use Mr Ian, doesn’t have to trust him, he said.) Thinks Mr Pembroke’s recent expenditure unreasonable, ‘insane’ (!). Says he’s senile.
Mr D. gave me rapid answers; busy. Says his financial affairs were none of my business, edgy on subject. Is he in debt? (My opinion, considering his expenses, probably.) Champagne lifestyle.
End of enquiry.
And Helen?
Mrs Helen Pembroke (43) wife of Mr D. Very good looking lady. Very worried, wouldn’t say what about.
I interviewed her in Marblehill House - big name for fairly ordinary-sized three-bedroom, nice sitting-room, though, overlooking golf course. Good furniture, appearance of wealth.
Mrs H. works at home (on dustsheet in dining-room) painting views of Henley by hand onto plates, jugs, boxes; all china. Very quick, very good (to my eyes), nice pictures. They go off to be glazed, she said, then sell in local shops. Reasonably paid, she says. (What’s reasonable? She says her work was to be seen as a hobby. Mr D. refers to it in that way.)
Mrs H. works alone nearly every day, no alibis for Friday or Tuesday. Sometimes drives into Henley to shop, no regular pattern. Mrs H. has white Cavalier, clean, no dents.
No children at home. Daughter shares flat with friends near art school (more expense).
Mrs H. ultra-loyal to Mr D. Says my enquiries unnecessary. Says it’s ridiculous to suppose Mr D. would attack his father. Out of the question. (My opinion, she wasn’t too sure.) They need more cash badly (my opinion).
Mrs H. mostly shares Mr D’s opinion of Mr Ian, but doesn’t seem to dislike him personally.
End of enquiry.
On Friday morning, I called in on a public library and looked up ‘explosives’ in encyclopaedias. Ammonium nitrate was there, also the proportion of fertiliser to diesel oil needed, also the formula for relating volume to kilos. The knowledge was available to anyone who sought it.
On Friday after lunch I went to the Marblehill Golf Club and found Donald in the clubroom placating a foursome who had arrived late and missed their game.
‘Go over to the house,’ he said when he saw me. ‘I can’t talk here.’ He turned decisively back to the problem in hand and I did what I was told, like a good little brother.
Helen was resigned more than annoyed to see me. ‘Ferdinand said you would come, and we had the police here yesterday. Not that we could tell them anything, or you either.’
She was wearing a painter’s smock over jeans and looked dressed by Dior. She took me into the sitting-room and pointed to a chair, and with unconscious grace sat herself half-on, half-off a polished table, raising her wrists to keep her paint-smudged hands away from the furniture.
Donald came bustling in, telling me he could give me ten minutes. ‘Don’t see what you can do,’ he said. ‘Leave it to the police.’
‘What did they ask you?’
‘About Fred blowing up the tree stump. I said yes, of course we’d been there. Helen and I weren’t then married. It was the first time she’d met Malcolm, she was staying the weekend.’
‘Saturday morning,’ she said, nodding. ‘The gardener came in specially to blow up the tree trunks. Not something one would forget, seeing him knocked flat. I took a photograph of the tree roots afterwards. It’s still in one of our albums.’
‘And the time-switch clocks, do you remember those?’ I asked.
‘Naturally,’ Donald said.
Helen added, ‘Dear Thomas made two for our boys for their birthday once, when they could just tell the time.’ She had said Dear Thomas, I noticed, as if she had meant it, not as Berenice said it. ‘They got lost in one of our moves.’
‘Where’s Malcolm?’ Donald asked brusquely.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re lying,’ he said, but for once I wasn’t. Malcolm and Ramsey Osborn had left the Osborn residence, according to the female voice on the line the evening before, and had given her no number at which they could be reached. I could try again tomorrow, she said. Mr Osborn should have let her know by then; he usually did.
‘Did either of you,’ I asked, ‘trace Malcolm to Cambridge the weekend he was put in the car?’
I hadn’t expected any answer but negative, but the question came at them unexpectedly and Helen practically jumped.
‘Did you?’ I said to her.
‘No, of course not,’ Donald said quickly. ‘We had no way of knowing he would go to Newmarket Sales, if that’s what you’re inferring.’
‘The hotel at Cambridge said three people - two men and a
woman - had asked if Malcolm was staying there,’ I said. ‘One was Norman West, who were the others? I’m not saying you went to Newmarket Sales, just did one of you trace Malcolm?’
They looked at me glumly. Then Helen said, ‘I suppose so.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
Donald cleared his throat, I needed his signature on a guarantee.’
‘Go on, what guarantee?’
‘For a temporary bank loan.’ He swallowed. ‘I thought he might…’
‘We had to have the money in a hurry,’ Helen said. ‘The bank manager told Donald we could borrow it if Malcolm would guarantee it. Then we couldn’t get hold of Malcolm. We had to think where he might be, and he’s always going to Cambridge. Donald and I just talked about it, guessing, wondering… And then, well, Donald went over to the club house and I just picked up the AA book and found those hotels in Cambridge, and without really believing in it I tried two… only two… and he was there, at the second. When Donald came home I told him and the extraordinary thing was, he’d had the same idea and got the same result.’ She paused. ‘We were pretty desperate, you see.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Donald said.‘ “Desperate“ gives the wrong picture.’
‘What did you need the money for?’ I asked.
They looked at each other, foreheads wrinkled in worry. Finally, reluctantly, but as if coming to a decision, Donald said, ‘We had some interest to pay unexpectedly. I had negotiated three months’ deferment of interest on a loan, or at least I thought I had, and then I got a threatening demand. I had to pay at once or they’d start proceedings.’ The desperation he said wasn’t there, definitely had been; it still echoed in his voice, i couldn’t have it getting around the golf club, could I?’ he demanded. ‘No one in the family could lend
me a large sum in a hurry. Our ordinary bank overdraft is always at maximum. The finance company was inflexible. I knew Malcolm wouldn’t give me the money, he has those stupid warped views, but I did think he might guarantee… just for a short while…’
To save the whole pack of cards collapsing, perhaps he might. Malcolm wasn’t cruel. He’d lent Edwin money sometimes in the past. Donald, I thought, had stood a good chance.
‘But when you’d found where he was, you didn’t get in touch with him, did you?’
‘No,’ Donald said, i didn’t relish telling Malcolm our troubles. I didn’t want to look a fool, and Helen thought of a different way out.’
I looked at her enquiringly.
‘Popped my baubles,’ she said with a brave attempt at lightness. ‘Took them to London. All my lovely rocks.’ She held her head high, refusing to cry.
‘Pawned them?’ I said.
‘We’ll get them back,’ she said valiantly, trying to believe it.
‘What day did you pop them?’
‘Wednesday. Donald took the money in cash to the finance company, and that gives us a three-months’ breather.’
Wednesday, I thought. The day after someone had failed to kill Malcolm at Newmarket.
‘When did the finance company start threatening you?’
‘The Thursday before,’ Helen said. ‘They gave us a week. They were utterly beastly, Donald said.’
‘Vivien tried to get Malcolm to give us some money,’ Donald said with resentment, ‘and he flatly refused.’
‘Well,’ I said, half smiling, ‘she called him an evil, wicked, vindictive tyrant, and that’s not the best way in the world to persuade Malcolm to be generous. If she’d used honey, she might have succeeded.’
Helen said, ‘You’re the only one he’ll listen to. I don’t care if you get millions more than us. All the others are furious about it, they don’t believe it about equal shares in his will, but I don’t care. If you could just… I mean…’
‘I’ll try,’ I promised, ‘but the equal shares are true.’
It fell on deaf ears. They believed what they believed, the whole lot of them, feeding and reinforcing their fears every time they consulted.
I left Donald and Helen among their antique furniture and behind their shaky facade and trundled along to Quantum to see how things were developing.
Not fast, was the answer. The place was abandoned except for a solitary uniformed policeman sitting in a police car outside what had been the front door. One could see right through the house now. The tarpaulin that had hung from the roof had come down. The policeman was the one who had accompanied me on my tour of peering in through the windows, and I gathered he was pleased to have a visitor to enliven a monotonous stint.
He picked up his car radio and spoke into it to the effect that MrIan Pembroke had come by. A request came back, which he relayed to me: would Mr Pembroke please drop in at the police station when he left? Mr Pembroke would.
The policeman and I walked round to the back of the house. Mr Smith had gone, also his helpers. The last of the rubble was away from the house and overflowing a skip. A flat black plastic sheet, the sort used for roofing hayricks, lay where a week ago the walls of my bedroom had come tumbling down. The interior doors had been sealed with plywood, like the windows, to deter looters, and the broken end of the staircase had been barred off. A house with its centre torn out; a thirty-foot yawn between surviving flanks.
‘It looks terrible,’ I said, and the policeman agreed.
Arthur Bellbrook was cleaning his spades, getting ready to leave. I gave him a cheque for his wages for that week and the next, and added a chunk for the care of the dogs. He gave me dignified thanks. He hoped Mr Pembroke was all right, poor man, and I said I thought so.
I had my picture in the paper,’ he said. ‘Did you see it?’
I said I was sorry I hadn’t.
‘Oh, well. I did.’ He shrugged disappointedly and set off homewards, and I walked down to where he’d earlier been digging potatoes, and then further, to check that the nettles were still untrampled on the far side of the wall.
The green sea looked dusty and ageing but upright. They too, I supposed, would die with the frost.
The policeman was watching me incuriously. I stopped and stared at the house from a distance, giving the impression that that’s why I had gone as far as I had, and then walked back and took my leave. The house from a distance looked just as bad, if not worse.
Superintendent Yale shook my hand. Things were almost friendly at the police station but they were no nearer discovering who had planted the bomb. Enquiries were proceeding, the superintendent said, and perhaps I could help.
‘Fire away,’ I said.
‘We interviewed the former gardener, Fred Perkins,’ Yale said. ‘We asked him about the tree stump and what he used to blow it up. Besides cordite, that is. What sort of a fuse.’
I was interested. ‘What did he say? Does he remember?’
‘He said he’d got the black powder and some detonators and some fuse cord from a quarryman friend of his. The black powder was in the box which we saw, the detonators were in a separate tin with the cord and the instructions.’
‘The instructions!’ I repeated incredulously.
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘Fred Perkins says he followed the instructions because he’d never blown anything up before. He said he used a bit of extra black powder just to make sure.’
‘It was quite an explosion.’
‘Yes. We asked him what he’d done with the other detonators. He says Mr Pembroke took them away from him that morning, when he came running out of the house. We need to ask Mr Pembroke what he did with them, so… er… where is he?’
‘I really don’t know,’ I said slowly, ‘and that’s the truth. I can probably find him, but it’ll take a day or two.’ I thought for a moment, then said, ‘Surely he would have thrown away those detonators years ago.’
If he had any sense he wouldn’t have thrown them anywhere,’ Yale said. ‘Mr Smith says you handle detonators with extreme caution if you don’t want to lose a finger or an eye. They can explode if you knock or drop them or make them too warm. Mr Pembroke’s correct course would have been to turn them over to the police.’
‘Maybe he did,’ I said.
‘We’d like to find out.’
‘But would detonators still detonate after twenty years?’ I asked.
‘Mr Smith thinks it possible, perhaps likely. He wouldn’t take any liberties, he said.’
‘What does a detonator look like?’ I asked.
He hesitated, but said, ‘Mr Smith said we might be looking for a small aluminium tube about the thickness of a pencil or slightly less, about six centimetres long. He says that’s what the army used. He used to be in the Royal Engineers. He says the tube contains fulminate of mercury, and the word “fulminate” means to flash like lightning.’
‘He should know.’
‘Fred Perkins can’t clearly remember what his detonators looked like. He remembers he had to fasten the cord into the end of the tube with pliers. Crimp it in. Mr Smith says civilians who touch explosives should be certified.’
I reflected. ‘Did Mr Smith find out exactly what the Quantum bomb was made of?’
‘Yes. ANFO, as he thought. He said the whole thing was amateur in the extreme.’
‘Amateurs,’ I said dryly, ‘run faster than anyone else.’
As an amateur, I went to Kempton Park the next day and on Young Higgins beat the hell out of a lot of professionals.
I didn’t know what possessed me. It seemed that I rode on a different plane. I knew it was the horse who had to be fast enough; the jockey, however determined, couldn’t do it on his own. Young Higgins seemed inspired and against more formidable opponents than at Sandown produced a totally different race.
There were no aunts riding this time, no lieutenant-colonels falling off. No earl’s son to chat to. No journalist to make it look easy. For some reason, Geo
rge and Jo had entered Young Higgins in a high-class open three-mile steeplechase, and I was the only amateur in sight.
I’d ridden against an all-professional field of top jockeys a few times before, and it was usually a humbling experience. I had the basic skills and a good deal of touch. I could get horses settled and balanced. I liked speed, I liked the stretch of one’s spirit: but there was always a point against top professionals at which that wasn’t enough.
George and Jo were unfussed. Young Higgins was fitter than at Sandown, they thought, and at Kempton there was no hill to tire him. They were bright-eyed and enthusiastic, but not especially hopeful. ‘We didn’t want to change you for a professional,’ they said in explanation. ‘It wouldn’t have been fair.’
Maybe not fair, but prudent, I thought. The top pros raced with sharper eyes, better tactics, more strength, quicker reactions. Theirs was an intenser determination, a fiercer concentration. Humour was for before and after, not during. Race-riding was their business, besides their pleasure, and some of them thought of amateur opponents as frivolous unfit nuisances who caused accidents and endangered lives.
Perhaps because of an arrogant desire to prove them wrong, perhaps because of the insights and realities I’d faced in a traumatic week, perhaps because of Young Higgins himself: I rode anywaywith a new sharp reveiationary perception of what was needed for winning, and the horse and I came home in front by four lengths to a fairly stunned silence from the people on the stands who’d backed everything else on the card but us.
George and Jo were vindicated and ecstatic. Young Higgins tossed his head at the modest plaudits. A newspaperman labelled the result as a fluke.
I’d cracked it, I thought. I’d graduated. That had been real professional riding. Satisfactory. But I was already thirty-three. I’d discovered far too late the difference between enjoyment and fire. I’d needed to know it at nineteen or twenty. I’d idled it away.