Straight

by Dick Francis

  She didn’t look displeased. She repeated “Office Manager” as if trying it on for size.

  I nodded. “Then I’ll start looking from now on for a business expert, someone to oversee the cash flow and do the accounts and try to keep us afloat. Because it’s going to be a struggle, we can’t avoid that.”

  They both looked shocked and disbelieving. Cash flow seemed never to have been a problem before.

  “Greville did buy diamonds,” I said regretfully, “and so far we are only in possession of a quarter of them. I can’t find out what happened to the rest. They cost the firm altogether one and a half million dollars, and we’ll still owe the bank getting on for three-quarters of that sum when we’ve sold the quarter we have.”

  Their mouths opened in unhappy unison.

  “Unless and until the other diamonds turn up,” I said, “we have to pay interest on the loan and persuade the bank that somehow or other we’ll climb out of the hole. So we’ll want someone we’ll call the Finance Manager, and we’ll pay him out of part of what used to be Greville’s own salary.”

  They began to understand the mechanics, and nodded.

  “Then,” I said, “we need a gemologist who has a feeling for stones and understands what the customers like and need. There’s no good hoping for another Greville, but we will create the post of Merchandise Manager, and that,” I looked at her, “will be June.”

  She blushed a fiery red. “But I can’t ... I don’t know enough.”

  “You’ll go on courses,” I said. “You’ll go to trade fairs. You’ll travel. You’ll do the buying.”

  I watched her expand her horizons abruptly and saw the sparkle appear in her eyes.

  “She’s too young,” Annette objected.

  “We’ll see,” I said, and to June I added, “You know what sells. You and the Finance Manager will work together to make us the best possible profit. You’ll still work the computer, and teach Lily or Tina how to use it for when you’re away.”

  “Tina,” she said, “she’s quicker.”

  “Tina, then.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’ll be General Manager. I’ll come when I can, at least twice a week for a couple of hours. Everyone will tell me what’s going on and we will all decide what is best to be done, though if there’s a disagreement I’ll have the casting vote. Right or wrong will be my responsibility, not yours.”

  Annette, nevertheless troubled, said, “Surely you yourself will need Mr. Franklin’s salary.”

  I shook my head. “I earn enough riding horses. Until we’re solvent here, we need to save every penny.”

  “It’s an adventure!” June said, enraptured.

  I thought it might be a very long haul and even in the end impossible, but I couldn’t square it with the consciousness of Greville all around me not to try.

  “Well,” I said, putting a hand in a pocket and bringing out a twist of gauze, “we have here five uncut diamonds which cost about seventy-five thousand dollars altogether.”

  They more or less gasped.

  “How do we sell them?” I said.

  After a pause, Annette said, “Interest a diamantaire.”

  “Do you know how to do that?”

  After another moment’s hesitation, she nodded.

  “We can give provenance,” I said. “Copies of the records of the original sale are on their way here from Guy Servi in Antwerp. They might be here tomorrow. Sight-box number and so on. We’ll put those stones in the vault until the papers arrive, then you can get cracking.”

  She nodded, but fearfully.

  “Cheer up,” I said. “It’s clear from the ledgers that Saxony Franklin is normally a highly successful and profitable business. We’ll have to cut costs where we can, that’s all.”

  “We could cut out Jason’s salary,” Annette said unexpectedly. “Half the time Tina’s been carrying the heavy boxes, anyway, and I can do the vacuuming myself.”

  “Great,” I said with gratitude. “If you feel like that, we’ll succeed.”

  The telephone rang and Annette answered it briefly.

  “A messenger has left a packet for you down at the front desk,” she said.

  “I’ll go for it,” June said, and was out of the door on the words, returning in her usual short time with a brown padded Jiffy bag, not very large, addressed simply to Derek Franklin in neat handwriting, which she laid before me with a flourish.

  “Mind it’s not a bomb,” she said facetiously as I picked it up, and I thought with an amount of horror that it was a possibility I hadn’t thought of.

  “I didn’t mean it,” she said teasingly, seeing me hesitate. “Do you want me to open it?”

  “And get your hands blown off instead?”

  “Of course it’s not a bomb,” Annette said uneasily.

  “Tell you what,” June said, “I’ll fetch the shears from the packing room.” She was gone for a few seconds. “Alfie says,” she remarked, returning, “we ought to put it in a bucket of water.”

  She gave me the shears, which were oversized scissors that Alfie used for cutting cardboard, and for all her disbelief she and Annette backed away across the room while I sliced the end of the bag.

  There was no explosion. Complete anticlimax. I shook out the contents which proved to be two objects and one envelope.

  One of the objects was the microcassette recorder that I’d left on Prospero Jenks’s workbench in my haste to be gone.

  The other was a long black leather wallet almost the size of the Wizard, with gold initials G.S.F. in one corner and an ordinary brown rubber band holding it shut.

  “That’s Mr. Franklin’s,” Annette said blankly, and June, coming to inspect it, nodded.

  I peeled off the rubber band and laid the wallet open on the desk. There was a business card lying loose inside it with Prospero Jenks’s name and shops on the front, and on the reverse the single word, “Sorry.”

  “Where did he get Mr. Franklin’s wallet from?” Annette asked, puzzled, looking at the card.

  “He found it,” I said.

  “He took his time sending it back,” June said tartly.

  “Mm.”

  The wallet contained a Saxony Franklin checkbook, four credit cards, several business cards and a small pack of banknotes, which I guessed were fewer in number than when Greville set out.

  The small excitement over, Annette and June went off to tell the others the present and future state of the nation, and I was alone when I opened the envelope.

  18

  Pross had sent me a letter and a certified bank draft: instantly cashable money.

  I blinked at the numbers on the check and reread them very carefully. Then I read the letter.

  It said: Derek,

  This is a plea for a bargain, as you more or less said. The check is for the sum I agreed with Grev for the twelve teardrops and eight stars. I know you need the money, and I need those stones.

  Jason won’t be troubling you again. I’m giving him a job in one of my workrooms.

  Grev wouldn’t have forgiven the brick, though he might the wallet. For you it’s the other way round. You’re very like him. I wish he hadn’t died.

  Pross.

  What a mess, I thought. I did need the money, yet if I accepted it I was implicitly agreeing not to take any action against him. The trouble about taking action against him was that however much I might want to I didn’t know that I could. Apart from difficulties of evidence, I had more or less made a bargain that for information he would get inaction, but that had been before the wallet. It was perceptive of him, I thought, to see that it was betrayal and attacks on our brother that would anger both Greville and me most.

  Would Greville want me to extend, if not forgiveness, then at least suspended revenge? Would Greville want me to confirm his forgiveness or to rise up in wrath and tear up the check....

  In the midst of these somber squirreling thoughts the telephone rang and I answered it.

 
; “Elliot Trelawney here,” the voice said.

  “Oh, hello.”

  He asked me how things were going and I said life was full of dilemmas. Ever so, he said with a chuckle.

  “Give me some advice.” I said on impulse, “As a magistrate.”

  “If I can, certainly.”

  “Well. Listen to a story, then say what you think.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Someone knocked me out with a brick....” Elliot made protesting noises on my behalf, but I went on, “I know now who it was, but I didn’t then, and I didn’t see his face because he was masked. He wanted to steal a particular thing from me, but although he made a mess in the house searching, he didn’t find it, and so didn’t rob me of anything except consciousness. I guessed later who it was, and I challenged another man with having sent him to attack me. That man didn’t deny it to me, but he said he would deny it to anyone else. So ... what do I do?”

  “Whew.” He pondered. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I need the advice.”

  “Did you report the attack to the police at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you suffered serious aftereffects?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see a doctor?”

  “Not.”

  He pondered some more. “On a practical level you’d find it difficult to get a conviction, even if the prosecution service would bring charges of actual bodily harm. You couldn’t swear to the identity of your assailant if you didn’t see him at the time, and as for the other man, conspiracy to commit a crime is one of the most difficult charges to make stick. As you didn’t consult a doctor, you’re on tricky ground. So, hard as it may seem, my advice would be that the case wouldn’t get to court.”

  I sighed. “Thank you,” I said.

  “Sorry not to have been more positive.”

  “It’s all right. You confirmed what I rather feared.”

  “Fine then,” he said. “I rang to thank you for sending the Vaccaro notes. We held the committee meeting and turned down Vaccaro’s application, and now we find we needn’t have bothered because on Saturday night he was arrested and charged with attempting to import illegal substances. He’s still in custody, and America is asking for him to be extradited to Florida where he faces murder charges and perhaps execution. And we nearly gave him a gambling license! Funny old world.”

  “Hilarious.”

  “How about our drink in the Rook and Castle?” he suggested. “Perhaps one evening next week?”

  “OK.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll call you.”

  I put the phone down thinking that if Vaccaro had been arrested on Saturday evening and held in custody it was unlikely he’d shot Simms from a moving car in Berkshire on Sunday afternoon. But then, I’d never really thought he had.

  Copycat. Copycat, that’s what it had been.

  Pross hadn’t shot Simms either. Had never tried to kill me. The Peter Pan face upon which so many emotions could be read had shown a total blank when I’d asked him what he was doing on Sunday afternoon.

  The shooting of Simms, I concluded, had been random violence like the other murders in Hungerford. Pointless and vicious; malignant, lunatic and impossible to explain.

  I picked up the huge check and looked at it. It would solve all immediate problems: pay the interest already due, the cost of cutting the diamonds and more than a fifth of the capital debt. If I didn’t take it we would no doubt sell the diamonds later to someone else, but they had been cut especially for Prospero Jenks’s fantasies and might not easily fit necklaces and rings.

  A plea. A bargain. A chance that the remorse was at least half real. Or was he taking me again for a sucker?

  I did some sums with a calculator and when Annette came in with the day’s letters I showed her my figures and the check and asked her what she thought.

  “That’s the cost price,” I pointed. “That’s the cost of cutting and polishing. That’s for delivery charges. That’s for loan interest and tax. If you add those together and subtract them from the figure on this check, is that the sort of profit margin Greville would have asked?”

  Setting prices was something she well understood, and she repeated my steps on the calculator.

  “Yes,” she said finally, “it looks about right. Not overgenerous, but Mr. Franklin would have seen this as a service for commission, I think. Not like the rock crystal, which he bought on spec, which had to help pay for his journeys.” She looked at me anxiously. “You understand the difference?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Prospero Jenks says this is what he and Greville agreed on.”

  “Well then,” she said, relieved, “he wouldn’t cheat you.”

  I smiled with irony at her faith. “We’d better bank this check, I suppose,” I said, “before it evaporates.”

  “I’ll do it at once,” she declared. “With a loan as big as you said, every minute costs us money.”

  She put on her coat and took an umbrella to go out with, as the day had started off raining and showed no signs of relenting.

  It had been raining the previous night when Clarissa had been ready to leave, and I’d had to ring three times for a taxi, a problem Cinderella didn’t seem to have encountered. Midnight had come and gone when the wheels had finally arrived, and I’d suggested meanwhile that I lend her Brad and my car for going to her wedding.

  I didn’t need to, she said. When she and Henry were in London, they were driven about by a hired car firm. The car was already ordered to take her to the wedding, which was in Surrey. The driver would wait for her and return her to the hotel, and she’d better stick to the plan, she said, because the bill for it would be sent to her husband.

  “I always do what Henry expects,” she said. “Then there are no questions.”

  “Suppose Brad picks you up from the Selfridge after you get back?” I said, packing the little stone bears and giving them to her in a carrier. “The forecast is lousy and if it’s raining you’ll have a terrible job getting a taxi at that time of day.”

  She liked the idea except for Brad’s knowing her name. I assured her he never spoke unless he couldn’t avoid it, but I told her I would ask Brad to park somewhere near the hotel. Then she could call the car phone’s number when she was ready to leave, and Brad would beetle up at the right moment and not need to know her name or ask for her at the desk.

  As that pleased her, I wrote down the phone number and the car’s license plate so that she would recognize the right pumpkin, and described Brad to her, going bald, a bit morose, an open-necked shirt, a very good driver.

  I couldn’t tell Brad’s own opinion of the arrangement. When I’d suggested it in the morning on the rainy way to the office he had merely grunted, which I’d taken as preliminary assent.

  When he’d brought Clarissa, I thought as I looked through the letters Annette had given me, he could go on home, to Hungerford, and Clarissa and I might walk along to the restaurant at the end of Greville’s street where he could have been known but I was not, and after an early dinner we would return to Greville’s bed, this time for us, and we’d order the taxi in better time ... perhaps.

  I was awoken from this pleasant daydream by the ever-demanding telephone, this time with Nicholas Loder on the other end spluttering with rage.

  “Milo says you had the confounded cheek,” he said, “to have Dozen Roses dope-tested.”

  “For barbiturates, yes. He seemed very sleepy. Our vet said he’d be happier to know the horse hadn’t been tranquilized for the journey before he gave him an all-clear certificate.”

  “I’d never give a horse tranquilizers,” he declared.

  “No, none of us really thought so,” I said pacifyingly, “but we decided to make sure.”

  “It’s shabby of you. Offensive. I expect an apology.”

  “I apologize,” I said sincerely enough, and thought guiltily of the further checks going on at that moment.


  “That’s not good enough,” Nicholas Loder said huffily.

  “I was selling the horse to good owners of Milo’s, people I ride for,” I said reasonably. “We all know you disapproved. In the same circumstances, confronted by a sleepy horse, you’d have done the same, wouldn’t you? You’d want to be sure what you were selling.”

  Weigh the merchandise, I thought. Cubic zirconia, size for size, was one point seven times heavier than diamond. Greville had carried jewelers’ scales in his car on his way to Harwich, presumably to check what the Koningin Beatrix was bringing.

  “You’ve behaved disgustingly,” Nicholas Loder said. “When did you see the horse last? And when next?”

  “Monday evening, last. Don’t know when next. As I told you, I’m tied up a bit with Greville’s affairs.”

  “Milo’s secretary said I’d find you in Greville’s office,” he grumbled. “You’re never at home. I’ve got a buyer for Gemstones, I think, though you don’t deserve it. Where will you be this evening, if he makes a definite offer?”

  “In Greville’s house, perhaps.”

  “Right, I have the number. And I want a written apology from you about those dope tests. I’m so angry I can hardly be civil to you.”

  He hardly was, I thought, but I was pleased enough about Gemstones. The money would go into the firm’s coffers and hold off bankruptcy a little while longer. I still held the Ostermeyers’ check for Dozen Roses, waiting for Phil Urquhart’s final clearance before cashing it. The horses would make up for a few of the missing diamonds. Looking at it optimistically, saying it quickly, the millstone had been reduced to near one million dollars.

  June out of habit brought me a sandwich for lunch. She was walking with an extra bounce, with unashamed excitement. Way down the line, I thought, if we made it through the crisis, what then? Would I simply sell the whole of Saxony Franklin as I’d meant or keep it and borrow against it to finance a stable, as Greville had financed the diamonds? I wouldn’t hide the stable! Perhaps I would have learned enough by then to manage both businesses on a sound basis: I’d learned a good deal in ten days. I had also, though I found it surprising, grown fond of Greville’s firm. If we saved it, I wouldn’t want to let it go.