Dick Francis's Bloodline (9781101600931)

by Francis, Felix

  “What?” I said, suddenly taking in what he was saying. “Are you telling us that the second man was in her room when the girl fell?”

  “I not know,” he said. “You ask Mario. But Mario say so to me, yes.”

  8

  Clare’s funeral was brief—far too brief, I would have said—but it wasn’t up to me, as I had left all the arrangements to my father, my brothers, and my sister. I’d thought that was the best policy for avoiding further arguments and shouting. But as I sat in the Surrey and Sussex Crematorium chapel at three o’clock on Monday afternoon, I deeply regretted that decision.

  Not that the day had started well either. I had tried to call Detective Sergeant Sharp to ask him about the CCTV from the London Hilton only to be informed that he was away on leave for the week and that no one else seemed to have any knowledge of any recordings or indeed of anything else to do with Clare’s death. Call back next week, I was told most unhelpfully, and speak to DS Sharp.

  Next I’d called the Injured Jockeys Fund to ask them about the guest list for their gala dinner. Mrs. Green, the organizer of the event, was in Portugal, I was told, enjoying a well-earned break after all her hard work. She also would be back next week.

  Then my father’s insistence on “immediate family only” at the funeral further added to my frustration.

  The arrival at the crematorium, ten minutes before the service, of my father’s younger brother, my uncle George, and his wife, Catherine, from Spain had not been a welcome addition to the immediate family as my father obviously defined it. When Cousin Brendan had then turned up, along with his wife, Gillian, and their two teenage children, closely followed by his brother Joshua plus second wife, I thought my father was about to postpone the whole thing, but the minister had then made a timely appearance, ushering us all into the chapel.

  So there were a total of seventeen of us who sat in the first three rows of chairs as four pallbearers from the undertaker’s carried the simple oak casket past us and placed it on the high dais at the front. Five other mourners stood at the back near the door, having been banished there by my father, who had loudly accused them of invading his grief.

  Not that I was particularly pleased to see one of them, Toby Woodley, the diminutive racing correspondent from the Daily Gazette, a tabloid best known for celebrity exposés and rumor-mongering.

  As well as trying to comfort my mother, I spent time looking out for the mystery boyfriend, but none of the five non-family attendees appeared to fit the bill. Apart from Woodley, there was an elderly couple I vaguely recognized, and two young women who told my father that they had known Clare from school, not that he had made them any more welcome for it.

  Just as the minister was starting the service, the back doors of the chapel creaked open and one further individual joined the congregation. Geoff Grubb came forward and sat down in an empty row behind Uncle George and Aunt Catherine. My father stared angrily at him from across the aisle, but if Geoff noticed, he didn’t react.

  If it hadn’t been so sad, it might have been funny.

  My father couldn’t see past his anger with Clare for bringing this on us all. He couldn’t grasp that the death of a much-loved daughter and sister transcended the method of her passing and that her memory should be cherished for what her life had been, not vilified for how it had ended.

  The service was embarrassingly short, with just a single hymn, “The Lord’s My Shepherd,” sung badly by us over a recorded sound track, a few prayers, and a concise Bible reading that was delivered not by a member of the family but by the minister himself.

  The whole thing lasted less than ten minutes. There had been no eulogy, no family recollection of childhood, no . . . love.

  I sat there fuming. How could my siblings have allowed this to happen?

  I started to get up. Surely someone had to speak.

  “Don’t,” my brother-in-law Nicholas said while grasping the tail of my jacket to stop me. “Trust me. Don’t.”

  I turned and looked at him, and also at my cousin Brendan sitting next to him.

  “Leave it,” Nicholas whispered. “This is not the time or place.”

  “And not with him here,” Brendan added, nodding toward Toby Woodley at the back of the chapel.

  “But this is precisely the time and place and it’s so wrong,” I whispered back to them.

  “I know it’s wrong,” Nicholas said. “We have all said so, but your father won’t be moved.”

  Well, I was moved.

  As the minister was starting the committal to conclude the proceedings, rather to his surprise, and mine, I stood up and went forward to stand close to the coffin.

  I turned to face the Shillingford family and looked straight at my father. As was so often the case, his face was puce with rage, but I didn’t care. This service was for Clare, not for him.

  “I wish I had prepared a few profound words to say about Clare, but I hadn’t expected to be the one speaking here. But now that I am, I suppose I’d better say something.”

  In all, I spoke for nearly ten minutes.

  I talked at length about our childhood and the bonds of being twins, about our teenage years and us both wanting to be jockeys, about Clare’s success in her career, and how we had all thought she had so much to live for.

  My mother sobbed.

  Finally, I turned to face the wooden box that contained the broken mortal remains of my dear twin.

  “Clare, we loved you and we failed you. We should have prevented this and we are so sorry. I hope you are somewhere in a better place and you can forgive us.”

  I went back to my seat and sat down with a heavy heart.

  Nicholas patted me on the back. He was crying. Brendan next to him was crying. In fact, there was crying going on all around me.

  I noticed that even my father was now in tears. Maybe it hadn’t simply been anger but guilt that had made him behave so strangely.

  The minister completed the committal, and the electrically operated curtains closed around the casket, masking it from our sight.

  “Well done,” Nicholas said to me as we stood up. “You were right.”

  “But what is wrong with you all?” I said to him in frustration. “Was that really the best the collective minds of the Shillingford family could come up with?”

  “There’s no such thing as collective minds in our family,” he replied. “You should know that by now. The truth is that no one did anything because we were all terrified of upsetting someone else, so, in the end, nothing got done at all. This funeral wasn’t planned, it simply drifted into existence.”

  Geoff Grubb came over to me. “I thought there would have been more people here.”

  “It was for immediate family only,” I said.

  “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m pleased you came.”

  “She was a nice girl.” He, too, seemed close to tears. “I’ll miss her.” He turned away from me and wiped his eyes, clearly embarrassed by his crying. “She was like immediate family to me. Looked after me, she did, since my Gloria passed away last year. We had no kids of our own.”

  I was quite surprised by his show of emotion, as well as by the thought of Clare in any way looking after him. Everyone thought of Geoff Grubb as a training machine with a heart of stone. But I still didn’t think he could possibly have been the elusive secret boyfriend.

  Geoff and I walked out of the crematorium chapel together into the watery sunshine. My father was standing there.

  “Dad,” I said, “this is Geoff Grubb, who Clare rode for. He also owns Stable Cottage where she lived.”

  My father shook Geoff’s offered hand and thankfully resisted the urge to ask him why he was here.

  “Well spoken, Mark,” he said instead, looking me in the eye.


  “Thank you, Dad,” I said, looking straight back at him.

  It was the first time I could remember in my whole life that my father had praised me for anything. He held out his hand to me and I shook it warmly.

  “Excuse me,” said a voice on my right, breaking the moment.

  I turned to find the elderly couple who had been standing at the back. My father faced the opposite direction, away from them, and walked off. I actually thought he was crying again.

  “Hello, Mark,” said the man, holding out his hand.

  “Hello.” I shook his hand. “And you are?”

  “You must remember us,” the lady said.

  I looked at them more closely.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Yates,” I said, smiling broadly. “How lovely to see you again.”

  “Fred and Emma,” Mr. Yates said. “It is good to see you again, too, Mark, but it’s a shame about the circumstances. Clare was such a sweet girl.”

  Fred and Emma Yates had been our regular babysitters when Clare and I had been kids, always coming to the house together, and even staying over if our parents were away. I hadn’t seen them for nearly twenty years.

  “We’ve always followed Clare’s riding,” Fred said.

  “And you on the television,” added his wife. “Really proud of both of you, aren’t we, Fred?”

  “Thank you,” I said, meaning it.

  The two young women who knew Clare from school were hovering to my right. I, meanwhile, was trying to look over them to see where my father had gone.

  “Hello,” I said, turning my eyes to the women. “Sorry about my father. He can be rather rude at times.”

  “We know,” said the taller of the two, “from our school days.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t remember you from school.”

  “We were in the tennis team with Clare. I’m Hanna and this is Sally.”

  We shook hands. “I’m Mark.”

  “We know,” said Sally, smiling. “We always watch the racing on the telly. Mostly because of Clare. We loved it when she won. We even went to Ascot this year with some other friends just to see her ride. We were in the Silver Ring, wearing our fancy hats. We stood by the rail and cheered every time she came past. And she waved to us on the way to the start for every race.” She paused. “We loved Clare.”

  Fred and Emma Yates, Hanna and Sally, Geoff Grubb: how many other people had loved Clare? How many were proud of her and had admired her achievements?

  But what about the race fixing? Would they be proud of her for that as well?

  As far as I was aware, I was the only person who knew about the seven definite cases and the four possible ones that I had found on the database.

  I must use that knowledge with care. The last thing I wanted to do was to blacken people’s memory of my sister.

  —

  TOBY WOODLEY spoke to me outside the chapel, coming up as I was guiding my mother back to the cars.

  “Can you give me a quote?” he asked in his squeaky voice.

  “I’ve said all I wanted to, thank you.”

  “You should be nice to me,” he whined. “I’ve been good to you.”

  “And how is that exactly?” I replied, my voice heavy with irony.

  “I was going to write all about you in last Monday’s paper.”

  “What about?” I asked.

  “Never you mind,” he said. “But, luckily for you, my editor’s better nature convinced me not to kick a man when he’s down.”

  “Well, that would make a change. I didn’t realize your editor had a better nature. Now, please go away.” I was doing my best to keep my temper and to remain polite.

  “I wish now he hadn’t been so kind,” he sneered, “but he said it wouldn’t make us any friends, not being so soon after your sister and all. Said it would be too tough on the family.”

  “Death is always tough on the families,” I replied, not really knowing what he was talking about.

  “Suicide, you mean. Why do you think she did it?”

  I ignored him and settled my weeping mother into the front seat of my father’s old Jaguar.

  “Any ideas?” he persisted, coming up close to my side.

  I thought about pushing him away, but, knowing the Daily Gazette, there’d be a photographer watching every move. Instead, I tried to ignore him.

  “Come on, Mark,” he whined, prodding my arm, “you must have some idea why she killed herself. You don’t just jump off a hotel balcony for no reason.”

  I was sure he was goading me into a reaction. So I looked around for a camera and, sure enough, a man was standing half hidden in the gardens of remembrance with a telephoto lens at the ready. His editor’s better nature obviously hadn’t prevailed for very long.

  “Sorry, Toby, you little creep,” I said, unable to keep the anger out of my voice any longer, “I can’t help you. Now, piss off, and leave my family alone to grieve in peace.”

  He didn’t, of course, asking more questions of my brothers. But he didn’t really know who they were and they gave him short shrift anyway. When he asked Brendan for directions to my parents’ house, he was told in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t be welcome at the family home—or anywhere else, for that matter.

  At one point I thought Brendan was actually going to hit him, but thankfully, with the photographer in mind, good sense prevailed, and we all drove away, leaving Toby standing alone in the crematorium parking lot.

  —

  ONLY THE FAMILY returned to my parents’ house, Geoff Grubb declining my invitation, while Mr. and Mrs. Yates, plus Hanna and Sally, had obviously thought better of it.

  But so little planning had gone into Clare’s funeral that no provision had been made for any refreshments afterward.

  “Surely there’s some drink in the house?” I said to Stephen incredulously.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “Dad’s been knocking it back all week. I bet there’s nothing left.”

  “I’ll go and get some wine. You see if you can find some glasses. I’ll try to organize some food as well.”

  I cleaned a local filling station out of its remaining sandwiches and also bought four bottles each of red and white wine, none of which would have won any prizes for taste, but it would have to do.

  Nicholas and I stood side by side in the kitchen, cutting up the sandwiches and opening the bottles of wine.

  “Will you still be coming to Tatiana’s eighteenth on Friday?” he asked with a sigh.

  “Of course.” Tatiana was Nicholas and Angela’s only child, my niece, and also my goddaughter. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Your father says he and your mom won’t be coming now. He says it’s too soon after all this and that we should cancel or postpone. But I think that life has to go on, and we’ve made all the arrangements and paid for them too. The bloody tent costs a fortune, and don’t even talk to me about the caterers. I can’t afford to cancel and then do it all again later. And Tatiana is so looking forward to it. All her chums from school are coming. I don’t really know what to do.”

  “I am sure Clare would not have wanted you to cancel. Anyway, I’ve been writing my godfatherly speech in readiness.” I smiled at him.

  “But are you sure it’s all right to go ahead?”

  “Certain. Take no notice of Dad. I’ll try and have a word with him and change his mind about coming.”

  “He’s been very quiet since the service.”

  “Silly old bugger,” I said. “I wonder why he gets so angry all the time.”

  “It’s because he feels challenged by you.”

  I looked at him. “Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m not,” he said. “You and Clare, but especially you, you’re the only ones in this family who d
on’t do what he tells you to. Angela is all for canceling Tatiana’s party simply because he says we should. But then you tell me to take no notice of him. So, you see, you are the only one who doesn’t do as he says. And, what’s more, you never have.”

  “But why does that challenge him?”

  “He’s the eldest male member of the family and he believes it is his role to decide on family matters and that everyone else should agree with his decisions without question. But I think he knows deep down that you are likely to make better decisions than him, and that if you feel he’s wrong, to not follow his orders.”

  “Damn right,” I said.

  “That is why you should have been here this week helping him make the right decisions for the funeral. All week he’s been trying to second-guess what you would have said.”

  “But we would have fought. It would have all ended in a shouting match and I would have walked out. Better that I kept away.”

  “You think that service was better for you keeping away?” His voice was full of sarcasm.

  “No. I suppose not.”

  “No? Then you and your father will have to learn how to make compromises without fighting and to make yourselves heard without shouting.”

  “You should be a counselor,” I said.

  “I am.”

  “Are you really?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “But don’t tell your father. He thinks I’m a merchant banker in the City. And I do work for a bank, but I don’t deal with the money. I’m the company counselor.”

  “Doing what exactly?”

  “Counseling the staff. It is one of their inclusive company benefits.”

  “Counseling them on what?”

  “Anything they like, but marital problems mostly. They all work so bloody hard and for such long hours, trying to earn the tons of money they need to pay their huge mortgages, and only because they think their families will be happier living in enormous houses with indoor swimming pools. The families, however, would much rather live somewhere smaller and see more of Daddy. By the time these guys get to fifty-five and are ready to give it all up to live on their accumulated millions, their wives and kids have had enough of being on their own, have left them, taken half their money, and gone to live with someone else. It’s all rather sad.”