by Dick Francis
Blue Clancy accelerated. Malcolm was shouting, Ramsey was speechless. Blue Clancy in third place, all the crowds roaring. Blue Clancy still faster, second now. Malcolm silent, mouth open, eyes staring. The incredible was happening, awesome, breathtaking… and Blue Clancy had definitely, indubitably won.
Malcolm’s eyes were like sapphires lit from inside. He still couldn’t speak. Ramsey grabbed him by the arm and pulled him, and the two of them ran, almost dancing, weaving through slowcoaches, making their way down to greet their champion’s return. I followed close on their heels, marvelling. Some owners were always lucky, some owners always weren’t; it was an inexplicable fact of racing life. Malcolm’s luck was stupendous. It always had been, in everything except wives. I should have known, I supposed, that it would come with him onto the track. King Midas had touched him, and Blue Clancy was his latest gold.
I wondered ironically what the family would say. The fortune he’d flung away on horses had already come back: Blue Clancy was worth at least double what he’d been before the Arc.
Chrysos, I daydreamed, would win the Derby. The tadpole film (about sharks actually, Malcolm had told me) would win at Cannes. The Pol Roger would appreciate. Everyone would see the point of not murdering the golden goose (Wrong sex, never mind. It was a lightheaded day.) We could return home to welcomes and safety.
Only it wasn’t like that. We would return home to an unassessable danger, and it was essential to be aware of it, and to plan.
Sobered as always by what lay ahead, I nevertheless went to a post-race party in fine spirits, and after that to Los Angeles airport to fly through the night to Australia. The party, the people came with us. Melbourne took up the impetus, pressing forward to its own Cup, always held on the first Tuesday in November. Everything, they told us there, stopped for the race. Schoolchildren had a holiday and the Melbourne shops closed. The Hyatt Hotel, where we stayed (Watson and Watson), had a lobby criss-crossed by people known better in Newmarket, all with the ready grins of kids out of school.
Ramsey had surpassed himself in the matter of reservations. Even to reach our floor, we had to use a special key in the elevator, and there was a private lounge up there for cocktails and breakfast (but separately). Malcolm appreciated it, took it all in his stride, ordered champagne, breathed Melbourne air and became an instant Australian.
Out at Flemington racecourse (no château), there was less sophistication than at Santa Anita, just as much enthusiasm, very good food, a much better parade ring. Malcolm found the day’s racing less compulsive than Paris or California through not owning a runner. He’d tried to remedy this on arrival, but no one would sell one of the top bunch, and he wanted nothing less. Instead, he set about gambling with method but only in tens and soon tired of it, win or lose. I left him and Ramsey in the Committee rooms and wandered down to the crowd as in Paris, and wondered how many in the throng struggled with intractable problems in their shirtsleeves, no shirts, carnival hats. When the party was over, Malcolm would grow restless and want to move on, and I wasn’t ready. Under the shade trees, surrounded by beer cans, listening to the vigorous down-under language, I searched for the solution that would cause us least grief.
There was no truly easy way out. No overlooking or dodging what had been done to Moira. But if someone could plead guilty and plead diminished responsibility owing to stress, there might be a quiet trial and a lifetime for us of visiting a sort of hospital instead of a rigorous prison. Either way, any way, there were tears in our future.
On top of that I had to be right, and I had to convince Malcolm beyond any doubt that I was. Had to convince all the family, and the police, without any mistake. Had to find a way of doing it that was peaceful and simple, for all our sakes.
I watched the Melbourne Cup from ground level, which meant in effect that I didn’t see much of it because of the other thousands doing the same. On the other hand, I was closer to the horses before and after, watching them walk, listening to comments, mostly unflattering, from knowledgeable elbowers striving for a view.
The Melbourne Cup runners were older and more rugged than stars back home. Some were eight or nine. All raced far more often, once a week not being unusual. The favourite for that day’s race had won on the course three days earlier.
They were racing for a purse of a million Australian dollars, of which sixty-five per cent went to the winner, besides a handsome gold cup. Thwarted this year, Malcolm, I imagined, would be back next year. He’d met in Paris and California several of the owners now standing in the parade ring and I could guess the envy he was feeling. No one was as passionate as a new convert.
When the race was finally off, I couldn’t hear the commentary for the exhortations around me, but it didn’t much matter: the winner was owned by one of the international owners and afterwards I found Malcolm beside the winner’s enclosure looking broody and thinking expensive thoughts.
‘Next year,’ he said.
‘You’re addicted.’
He didn’t deny it. He and Ramsey slapped each other on the back, shook hands and promised like blood brothers to meet regularly on every major racecourse in the world. Ramsey, the bulky manufacturer of millions of baseball caps, had somewhere along the line realised what ‘metal’ really meant in Malcolm’s vocabulary and from cronies they had become comfortable friends, neither feeling at an advantage over the other.
They discussed staying on in Australia but Ramsey said the baseball caps needed guidance. Malcolm wavered about going to see some gold mines in Kalgoorlie but decided on a gold share broker in Melbourne instead. We spent Melbourne Cup night in a farewell dinner, and when Ramsey had departed in the morning and left us alone in the quiet breakfast room upstairs, Malcolm looked at me as if coming down to earth for the first time since we’d left England. With a touch of despondency, he asked for how long he was to be exiled for safety’s sake.
‘But you’ve enjoyed it,’ I said.
‘God, yes.’ The remembrance flashed in his eyes. ‘But it’s not real life. We have to go back. I know I’ve avoided talking about it, it’s all dreadful. 1 know you’ve been thinking about it all this time. I could see it in your face.’
I’ve come to know them all so much better,’ I said, ‘my brothers and my sisters. I didn’t care for them all that much, you know, before Moira died. We’ve always met of course from time to time, but I’d forgotten to a great extent what we had been like as children.’ I paused for a bit, but he didn’t comment. ‘Since the bomb went off at Quantum,’ I said, ‘a great deal of the past has come back. And I’ve seen, you know, how the present has grown out of that past. How my sisters-in-law and my brother-in-law have been affected by it. How people easily believe lies, old and new. How destructive it is to yearn for the unobtainable, to be unsatisfied by anything else. How obsessions don’t go away, they get worse.’
He was silent for a while, then said, ‘Bleak.’ Then he sighed and said, ‘How much do they need, then? How much should I give them? I don’t believe in it, but I see it’s necessary. Their obsessions have got worse as I’ve grown richer. If the money wasn’t there, they’d have sorted themselves out better. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes, partly.’ It hadn’t been, entirely, but as it had produced a reaction I’d wanted but hadn’t expected, I kept quiet.
‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a bloody good holiday and I’m feeling generous, so draw up a list of who’s to get what.’
‘All equal,’ I said.
He began to protest, but sighed instead. ‘What about you, then?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll decide about that later.’
‘I thought you wanted half a million to set up as a trainer.’
‘I’ve changed my mind. For now, anyway. There’s something else I want to do first.’
‘What’s that?’
I hesitated. I’d barely admitted it to myself, had certainly told no one else.
‘Go on,’ he urged.
‘B
e a jockey. Turn professional.’
‘Good Lord,’ he said, astonished, ‘haven’t you left it too late?’
‘Maybe. We’ll see. I’ll have three or four years, perhaps. Better than not trying.’
‘You amaze me.’ He reflected. ‘Come to think of it, you’ve constantly amazed me since you came to Newmarket Sales. It seems I hardly knew you before.’
‘That’s how I feel nbout you,’ I said, ‘and about all of the family.’
We set off homewards later the same day, travelling west via Singapore. Malcolm’s gold share broker happened to be going there at the same time, so I changed places with him on the aeroplane and let the two of them say things like ‘percussion and rotary air blast drilling to get a first idea’ and ‘diamond core drilling is necessary for estimating reserves accurately’, which seemed to entertain them for hours.
I thought meantime about invitations. About invitations like meat over bear pits. The right invitation would bring the right visitor. The problem was how to make the invitation believable.
Part of the trouble was time. When we reached England, Malcolm would have been out of harm’s way for four weeks, and I for almost three. We’d been safe, and I’d had time to reflect: those on the plus side. On the minus, as far as the invitation was concerned, was the fact that it would be six weeks since Malcolm had survived in the garage, and ten since Moira had died. Would a classic trap invitation work after so long an interval? Only one thing to do: try it and see.
Malcolm’s voice was saying,’… a section assaying five point eight grams per tonne’ and a bit later,’… Big Bell’s plant milling oxide and soft rock’, and’… the future is good in Queensland, with those epithermal gold zones at Woolgar’. The broker listened and nodded and looked impressed. My old man, I thought, really knows his stuff. He’d told me at one point on our journeyings that there were roughly twenty-five hundred active gold mines in Australia and that it would soon rival or even surpass Canada as a producer. I hadn’t known gold was big in Canada. I was ignorant, he said. Canada had so far come regularly second to South Africa in the non-communist world.
We’d taught each other quite a lot, I thought, in one way and another.
I would need someone to deliver the invitation. Couldn’t do it myself.
‘Market capitalisation per ounce…’ I heard the broker saying in snatches, and’… in situ reserves based on geological interpretation…’
I knew who could deliver the invitation. The perfect person.
‘As open-cut mining cost as little as two hundred Australian dollars an ounce …’
Bully for open-cut mining, I thought, and drifted to sleep.
We left spring behind in Australia on Wednesday and came home to winter on Friday in England. Malcolm and I went back to the Ritz as Mr and Mr Watson and he promised with utmost sincerity that he wouldn’t telephone anyone, not even his London broker. I went shopping in the afternoon and then confounded him at the brandy and cigar stage late that evening by getting through to Joyce.
‘But you said…’ he hissed as he heard her voice jump as usual out of the receiver.
‘Listen,’ I hissed back. ‘Hello, Joyce.’
‘Darling! Where are you? What are you doing? Where’s your father?’
‘In Australia,’ I said.
‘What?’ she yelled.
‘Looking at gold mines,’ I said.
It made sense to her, as it would make sense to them all.
‘He went to California, I saw it in the paper,’ she said. ‘Blue Clancy won a race.’
‘We went to Australia afterwards.’
‘We? Darling, where are you now?’
‘It doesn’t matter where I am,’ I said. ‘To make it safe for us to come home, will you help to find out who killed Moira?’
‘But darling, the police have been trying for weeks… and anyway, Ferdinand says it has to be Arthur Bellbrook.’
‘It’s not Arthur Bellbrook,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ She sounded argumentative, still wanting it to be Arthur, wanting it to be the intruder from outside. ‘He could have done it easily. Ferdinand says he could have done everything. It has to be him. He had a shot-gun, Ferdinand says.’
I said, ‘Arthur didn’t use his shot-gun. More importantly, he wouldn’t have made a timing device exactly like we’d made as children, and he hadn’t a motive.’
‘He could have detested Moira.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, ‘but why should he want to kill Malcolm, whom he liked? I saw his face when he found Malcolm was alive that morning after the bomb, and he was genuinely glad.’
‘Everyone wants it to be Arthur Bellbrook,’ she said obstinately. ‘He found her body.’
‘If the police thought he’d done it, they wouldn’t have been so suspicious of Malcolm.’
‘You’ve got an answer for everything,’ she complained.
I had myself for a while wished it to be Arthur. After all, there had been the affair of the prize vegetables (but he’d sounded philosophical about them, and would anyone kill for so little?) and he’d been in the army and might know about explosives. But he stood to lose rather than gain from Malcolm’s death, and it was beyond believing that he would trace Malcolm to Cambridge, follow him to Newmarket Sales and try to run him down. That was the work of obsession. Arthur placidly digging potatoes; Arthur enjoying the temporary fame; Arthur looking after the dogs. Arthur had been the personification of stolid, sensible balance.
Besides, whoever had tried to run Malcolm down at Newmarket had guessed Malcolm would leave the sales with me and would come to the car-park, and at that point Arthur would have had no reason to think so. He didn’t know me. Hadn’t met me until he came into the house with his shot-gun, thinking I was a burglar. I’d had to exclude Arthur, although with regret.
Joyce said, ‘Darling, how do you expect to succeed where the police have failed?’
‘The police can’t do what we can do.’
‘What do you mean? What can we do?’
I told her. Malcolm’s mouth opened and there was a long silence from Joyce.
‘Let me get this straight,’ she said eventually. ‘You want me to telephone to everyone in the family…’
Everyone? I said emphatically. ‘If a husband answers, tell him, then ask to speak to the wife, and tell her too. And vice versa.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m to say you’re in Australia, both of you. Right?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m to gush. Dreadful word, where did you learn it? I’m to let all this drip out as if it were of absolutely no importance but something I’ve just thought of? Darling, you can’t mean I have to ring up Alicia}’
‘Especially Alicia. Tell her I told you she has a boyfriend. That should stir her up nicely.’
‘Darling, you don’t mean it!’
‘Ask her. And… er… do you know if the police are still guarding Quantum?’
‘They told Donald that if he wanted constant guards, he’d have to get his own now. No one in the family wants to spend the money, so the police just have it on their occasional surveillance list, apparently.’
‘And has anything else much happened in the family since we’ve been away?’
‘No, nothing new. Thomas left Berenice, did you know that?’
‘Yes… Is he still with Lucy?’
‘Yes, darling, I think so. Do you want me to tell him too?’
‘You might as well.’
‘I’m to think of something to phone them about and gossip a bit, and then I’m to say that I don’t really care who killed Moira, but I don’t think the police were thorough. Is that right? They never thought of looking for her notepad, the one she used to keep in the kitchen, in one of the drawers of those dazzling white cabinets. When anyone telephoned when she was in the kitchen, which was a lot of the time, she doodled their names with stars and things round it and wrote notes like “Donald, Sunday, noon” when people were coming to visit. I’m to say the
police could never have found it but I’ve just remembered it, and I wonder if it’s still there. I’m thinking of telling the police about it after the weekend. Is that right?’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
‘And I’m to say, what if she wrote down the name of her murderer?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Darling, why do you think her murderer telephoned? To make an appointment to kill her? You don’t mean that, do you?’
‘To make an appointment to see her, yes. To kill her, I don’t know.’
‘But why, darling? Why do you think the killer telephoned?’
‘Because Malcolm told me she didn’t like people just dropping in,’ I said. ‘She preferred people to telephone first. And because Moira’s greenhouse can’t be seen from the road, the drive, or from any windows of Quantum. Malcolm made her put it where it was well out of sight on that patch of lawn surrounded by shrubs, because he didn’t like it. If anyone had come to see Moira unannounced that evening, they’d have found the house empty. If they’d telephoned first, she’d have said to come round to the greenhouse, that’s where she’d be.’
‘I suppose that’s logical, darling. The police always did say she knew her killer, but I didn’t want to believe it unless it was Arthur Bellbrook. He knew her. He fits all round, darling.’
If Arthur had killed her, why would he go back later and find her body?’
‘Darling, are you sure it wasn’t Arthur Bellbrook?’
‘Positive.’
‘Oh dear. All right then, darling. You want me to start those phone calls tomorrow but definitely not before ten o’clock, and to go on all day until I’ve reached everyone? You do realise, I hope, that I’m playing in a sort of exhibition bridge game tomorrow evening?’
‘Just keep plugging along.’
‘What if they’re out, or away?’