by Dick Francis
While we stood in the drive waiting for Aunt Deb to come out of the house, Kate explained that Uncle George never went to church.
‘He spends most of his time in his study. That’s the little room next to the breakfast room,’ she said. ‘He talks to all his friends on the telephone for hours, and he’s writing a treatise or a monograph or something about Red Indians, I think, and he only comes out for meals and things like that.’
‘Rather dull for your Aunt,’ I said, admiring the way the March sunlight lay along the perfect line of her jaw and lit red glints in her dark eyelashes.
‘Oh, he takes her up to Town once a week. She has her hair done, and he looks things up in the library of the British Museum. Then they have a jolly lunch at the Ritz or somewhere stuffy like that, and go to a matinee or an exhibition in the afternoon. A thoroughly debauched programme,’ said Kate, with a dazzling smile.
After lunch, Uncle George invited me into his study to see what he called his ‘trophies.’ These were a collection of objects belonging to various primitive or barbaric peoples, and, as far as I could judge, would have done credit to any small museum.
Ranks of weapons, together with some jewellery, pots and ritual objects were labelled and mounted on shelves inside glass cases which lined three walls of the room. Among others, there were pieces from Central Africa and the Polynesian Islands, from the Viking age of Norway and from the Maoris of New Zealand. Uncle George’s interest covered the globe.
‘I study one people at a time,’ he explained. ‘It gives me something to do since I retired, and I find it enthralling. Did you know that in the Fiji Islands the men used to fatten women like cattle and eat them?’
His eyes gleamed, and I had a suspicion that part of the pleasure he derived from primitive peoples lay in contemplation of their primitive violences. Perhaps he needed a mental antidote to those lunches at the Ritz, and the matinees.
I said, ‘Which people are you studying now? Kate said something about Red Indians…?’
He seemed pleased that I was taking an interest in his hobby.
‘Yes. I am doing a survey of all the ancient peoples of the Americas, and the North American Indians were my last subject. Their case is over here.’
He showed me over to one corner. The collection of feathers, beads, knives and arrows looked almost ridiculously like those in Western films, but I had no doubt that these were genuine. And in the centre hung a hank of black hair with a withered lump of matter dangling from it, and underneath was gummed the laconic label, ‘Scalp’.
I turned round, and surprised Uncle George watching me with a look of secret enjoyment. He let his gaze slide past me to the case.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘The scalp’s a real one. It’s only about a hundred years old.’
‘Interesting,’ I said non-committally.
‘I spent a year on the North American Indians because there are so many different tribes,’ he went on. ‘But I’ve moved on to Central America now. Next I’ll do the South Americans, the Incas and the Fuegians and so on. I’m not a scholar, of course, and I don’t do any field work, but I do write articles sometimes for various publications. At the moment I am engaged on a series about Indians for the Boys’ Stupendous Weekly.’ His fat cheeks shook as he laughed silently at what appeared to be an immense private joke. Then he straightened his lips and the pink folds of flesh grew still, and he began to drift back towards the door.
I followed him, and paused by his big, carved, black oak desk which stood squarely in front of the window. On it, besides two telephones and a silver pen tray, lay several cardboard folders with pale blue stick-on labels marked Arapaho, Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo and Mohawk.
Separated from these was another folder marked Mayas, and I idly stretched out my hand to open it, because I had never heard of such a tribe. Uncle George’s plump fingers came down firmly on the folder, holding it shut.
‘I have only just started on this nation,’ he said apologetically. ‘And there’s nothing worth looking at yet.’
‘I’ve never heard of that tribe,’ I said.
‘They were Central American Indians, not North,’ he said pleasantly. ‘They were astronomers and mathematicians, you know. Very civilised. I am finding them fascinating. They discovered that rubber bounced, and they made balls of it long before it was known in Europe. At the moment I am looking into their wars. I am trying to find out what they did with their prisoners of war. Several of their frescoes show prisoners begging for mercy.’ He paused, his eyes fixed on me, assessing me. ‘Would you like to help me correlate the references I have so far collected?’ he said.
‘Well… er… er…’ I began.
Uncle George’s jowls shook again. ‘I didn’t suppose you would,’ he said. ‘You’d rather take Kate for a drive, no doubt.’
As I had been wondering how Aunt Deb would react to a similar suggestion, this was a gift. So three o’clock found Kate and me walking round to the big garage behind the house, with Aunt Deb’s grudging consent to our being absent at tea-time.
‘You remember me telling you, a week ago, while we were dancing, about the way Bill Davidson died?’ I said casually, while I helped Kate open the garage doors.
‘How could I forget?’
‘Did you by any chance mention it to anyone the next morning? There wasn’t any reason why you shouldn’t… but I’d like very much to know if you did.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘I can’t really remember, but I don’t think so. Only Aunt Deb and Uncle George, of course, at breakfast. I can’t think of anyone else. I didn’t think there was any secret about it, though.’ Her voice rose at the end into a question.
‘There wasn’t,’ I said, reassuringly, fastening back the door. What did Uncle George do before he retired and took up anthropology?’
‘Retired?’ she said. ‘Oh, that’s only one of his jokes. He retired when he was about thirty, I think, as soon as he inherited a whacking great private income from his father. For decades he and Aunt Deb used to set off round the world every three years or so, collecting all those gruesome relics he was showing you in the study. What did you think of them?’
I couldn’t help a look of distaste, and she laughed and said, ‘That’s what I think too, but I’d never let him suspect it. He’s so devoted to them all.’
The garage was a converted barn. There was plenty of room for the four cars standing in it in a row. The Daimler, a new cream coloured convertible, my Lotus, and after a gap, the social outcast, an old black eight-horse-power saloon. All of them, including mine, were spotless. Culbertson was conscientious.
‘We use that old car for shopping in the village and so on,’ said Kate. ‘This gorgeous cream job is mine. Uncle George gave it to me a year ago when I came home from Switzerland. Isn’t it absolutely rapturous?’ She stroked it with love.
‘Can we go out in yours, instead of mine?’ I asked. ‘I would like that very much, if you wouldn’t mind.’
She was pleased. She let down the roof and tied a blue silk scarf over her head, and drove us out of the garage into the sunlight, down the drive, and on to the road towards the village.
‘Where shall we go?’ she said.
‘I’d like to go to Steyning,’ I said.
‘That’s an odd sort of place to choose,’ she said. ‘How about the sea?’
‘I want to call on a farmer in Washington, near Steyning, to ask him about his horse-box,’ I said. And I told her how some men in a horse-box had rather forcefully told me not to ask questions about Bill’s death.
‘It was a horse-box belonging to this farmer at Washington,’ I finished. ‘I want to ask him who hired it from him last Saturday.’
‘Good heavens,’ said Kate. ‘What a lark.’ And she drove a little faster. I sat sideways and enjoyed the sight of her. The beautiful profile, the blue scarf whipped by the wind, with one escaping wisp of hair blowing on her forehead, the cherry-red curving mouth. She could twist your heart.
It was ten mi
les to Washington. We went into the village and stopped, and I asked some children on their way home from Sunday school where farmer Lawson lived.
‘Up by there,’ said the tallest girl, pointing.
‘Up by there’ turned out to be a prosperous workmanlike farm with a mellow old farmhouse and a large new Dutch barn rising behind it. Kate drove into the yard and stopped, and we walked round through a garden gate to the front of the house. Sunday afternoon was not a good time to call on a farmer, who was probably enjoying his one carefree nap of the week, but it couldn’t be helped.
We rang the door bell, and after a long pause the door opened. A youngish good-looking man holding a newspaper looked at us enquiringly.
‘Could I speak to Mr Lawson, please?’ I said.
‘I’m Lawson,’ he said. He yawned.
‘This is your farm?’ I asked.
‘Yes. What can I do for you?’ He yawned again.
I said I understood he had a horse-box for hire. He rubbed his nose with his thumb while he looked us over. Then he said, ‘It’s very old, and it depends when you want it.’
‘Could we see it, do you think?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Hang on, a moment.’ He went indoors and we heard his voice calling out and a girl’s voice answering him. Then he came back without the newspaper.
‘It’s round here,’ he said, leading the way. The horse-box stood out in the open, sheltered only by the hay piled in the Dutch barn, APX 708. My old friend.
I told Lawson then that I didn’t really want to hire his box, but I wanted to know who had hired it eight days ago. And because he thought this question decidedly queer and was showing signs of hustling us off at once, I told him why I wanted to know.
‘It can’t have been my box,’ he said at once.
‘It was,’ I said.
‘I didn’t hire it to anyone, eight days ago. It was standing right here all day.’
‘It was in Maidenhead,’ I said, obstinately.
He looked at me for a full half minute. Then he said, ‘If you are right, it was taken without me knowing about it. I and my family were all away last week-end. We were in London.’
‘How many people would know you were away?’ I asked.
He laughed. ‘About twelve million, I should think. We were on one of those family quiz shows on television on Friday night. My wife, my eldest son, my daughter and I. The younger boy wasn’t allowed on because he’s only ten. He was furious about it. My wife said on the programme that we were all going to the Zoo on Saturday and to the Tower of London on Sunday, and we weren’t going home until Monday.’
I sighed. ‘And how soon before you went up to the quiz show did you know about it?’
‘A couple of weeks. It was all in the local papers, that we were going. I was a bit annoyed about it, really. It doesn’t do to let every tramp in the neighbourhood know you’ll be away. Of course, there are my cowmen about, but it’s not the same.’
‘Could you ask them if they saw anyone borrow your box?’
‘I suppose I could. It’s almost milking time, they’ll be in soon. But I can’t help thinking you’ve mistaken the number plate.’
‘Have you a middleweight thoroughbred bay hunter, then,’ I said, ‘with a white star on his forehead, one lop ear, and a straggly tail?’
His scepticism vanished abruptly. ‘Yes, I have,’ he said. ‘He’s in the stable over there.’
We went and had a look at him. It was the horse Bert had been leading up and down, all right.
‘Surely your men would have missed him when they went to give him his evening feed?’ I said.
‘My brother—he lives a mile away—borrows him whenever he wants. The men would just assume he’d got him. I’ll ask the cowmen.’
‘Will you ask them at the same time if they found a necktie in the box?’ I said. ‘I lost one there, and I’m rather attached to it. I’d give ten bob to have it back.’
‘I’ll ask them,’ said Lawson. ‘Come into the house while you wait.’ He took us through the back door, along a stone-flagged hall into a comfortably battered sitting-room, and left us. The voices of his wife and children and the clatter of teacups could be heard in the distance. A half-finished jig-saw puzzle was scattered on a table; some toy railway lines snaked round the floor.
At length Lawson came back. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said, ‘the cowmen thought my brother had the horse and none of them noticed the box had gone. They said they didn’t find your tie, either. They’re as blind as bats unless it’s something of theirs that’s missing.’
I thanked him all the same for his trouble, and he asked me to let him know, if I found out, who had taken his box.
Kate and I drove off towards the sea.
She said, ‘Not a very productive bit of sleuthing, do you think? Anyone in the world could have borrowed the horse-box.’
‘It must have been someone who knew it was there,’ I pointed out. ‘I expect it was because it was so available that they got the idea of using it at all. If they hadn’t known it would be easy to borrow, they’d have delivered their message some other way. I dare say one of those cowmen knows more than he’s telling. Probably took a quiet tenner to turn a blind eye, and threw in the horse for local colour. Naturally he wouldn’t confess it in a hurry to Lawson this afternoon.’
‘Well, never mind,’ said Kate lightheartedly. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well Farmer Lawson had nothing to do with it. It would have been rather shattering if he had turned out to be the head of the gang. You would probably have been bopped behind the ear with a gun butt and dumped in a bag of cement out at sea and I would have been tied up on the railway lines in the path of oncoming diesels.’
I laughed. ‘If I’d thought he could have possibly been the leader of the gang I wouldn’t have taken you there.’
She glanced at me. ‘You be careful,’ she said, ‘or you’ll grow into a cossetting old dear like Uncle George. He’s never let Aunt Deb within arm’s length of discomfort, let alone danger. I think that’s why she’s so out of touch with modern life.’
‘You don’t think danger should be avoided, then?’ I asked.
‘Of course not. I mean, if there’s something you’ve got to do, then to hell with the danger.’ She gave an airy wave with her right hand to illustrate this carefree point of view, and a car’s horn sounded vigorously just behind us. A man swept past glaring at Kate for her unintentional signal. She laughed.
She swung the car down to the sea in Worthing, and drove eastwards along the coast road. The smell of salt and seaweed was strong and refreshing. We passed the acres of new bungalows outside Worthing, the docks and the power stations of Shoreham, Southwick and Portslade, the sedate façades of Hove, and came at length to the long promenade at Brighton. Kate turned deftly into a square in the town, and stopped the car.
‘Let’s go down by the sea,’ she said. ‘I love it.’
We walked across the road, down some steps, and staggered across the bank of shingle on to the sand. Kate took her shoes off and poured out a stream of little stones. The sun shone warmly and the tide was out. We walked slowly along the beach for about a mile, jumping over the breakwaters, and then turned and went back. It was a heavenly afternoon.
As we strolled hand in hand up the road towards Kate’s car, I saw for the first time that she had parked it only a hundred yards from the Pavilion Plaza Hotel, where I had driven Clifford Tudor from Plumpton ten days earlier.
And talk of the devil, I thought. There he was. The big man was standing on the steps of the hotel, talking to the uniformed doorman. Even at a distance there was no mistaking that size, that dark skin, that important carriage of the head. I watched him idly.
Just before we arrived at Kate’s car a taxi came up from behind us, passed us, and drew up outside the Pavilion Plaza. It was a black taxi with a yellow shield on the door, and this time it was close enough for me to read the name: Marconicars. I looked quickly at the driver and saw his profile as he went
past. He had a large nose and a receding chin, and I had never seen him before.
Clifford Tudor said a few last words to the doorman, strode across the pavement, and got straight into the taxi without pausing to tell the driver where he wanted to go. The taxi drove off without delay.
‘What are you staring at?’ said Kate, as we stood beside her car.
‘Nothing much,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you about it if you’d like some tea in the Pavilion Plaza Hotel.’
‘That’s a dull dump,’ she said. ‘Aunt Deb approves of it.’
‘More sleuthing,’ I said.
‘All right, then. Got your magnifying glass and bloodhound handy?’
We went into the hotel. Kate said she would go and tidy her hair. While she was gone I asked the young girl in the reception desk if she knew where I could find Clifford Tudor. She fluttered her eyelashes at me and I grinned encouragingly back.
‘You’ve just missed him, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘He’s gone back to his flat.’
‘Does he come here often?’ I asked.
She looked at me in surprise. ‘I thought you knew. He’s on the board of governors. One of the chief shareholders. In fact,’ she added with remarkable frankness, ‘he very nearly owns this place and has more say in running it than the manager.” It was clear from her voice and manner that she thoroughly approved of Mr Tudor.
‘Has he got a car?’ I asked.
This was a very odd question, but she prattled on without hesitation. ‘Yes, he’s got a lovely big car with a long bonnet and lots of chromium. Real classy. But he doesn’t use it, of course. Mostly it’s taxis for him. Why, just this minute I rang for one of those radio cabs for him. Real useful, they are. You just ring their office and they radio a message to the taxi that’s nearest here and in no time at all it’s pulling up outside. All the guests use them…’
‘Mavis!’
The talkative girl stopped dead and looked round guiltily. A severe girl in her late twenties had come into the reception desk.
‘Thank you for relieving me, Mavis. You may go now,’ she said.